Rural School Stakeholders’ Perceptions and Practices of Trilingual Education: Same or Different?

Abstract

Trilingual education is one of the drastic reforms in education in the Republic of Kazakhstan that aims at shaping a future generation fluent in Kazakh, Russian and English. Although such initiative appears important, studies say that stakeholders’ perceptions of trilingual education may impact the way they practice it in their domains, thus, there is a need to study these perceptions to ensure a successful implementation of the reform. The purpose of the study was to explore various groups of stakeholders’ perceptions and practices of trilingual education in a rural school in Almaty Oblast. The study sought answers to the research questions regarding stakeholders’ perceptions, practices in different domains and similarities and/or differences in their perceptions of trilingual education. The study applied a qualitative case study design with semi-structured interviews as data collection instrument. The sample included ten participants from the following groups of stakeholders: parents, teachers and administrators. The findings revealed that the stakeholders’ perceptions of trilingual education vary from understanding it mostly as the teaching of English to the teaching of three languages or teaching in three languages. As for the language use, the triangulated data uncovered that all three languages were used within their domains, though Russian was neglected in certain levels. From the study findings, it is possible to conclude that the application of triangulation of data sources: parents, teachers and administrators was beneficial because it disclosed insights into the way how trilingual education is differently perceived and practiced by various groups of stakeholders. Thereby, there is an urgent need for creating efficient communication and information channels between policy-makers and schools, between parents and schools to explain trilingual education and its implementation processes.