Running head: LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE Language Policy, Ideology and Practice: Parents Views on the Trilingual Policy Nazira Ayazbayeva Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Multilingual Education Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education June, 2017 Word count: 19464 ©Copyright by Nazira Baktigaliyevna Ayazbayeva 2017 LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE ii LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE iii LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE iv Ethics approval Dear Nazira, The NUGSE Research Committee reviewed the project entitled "Language Policy, Ideology and Practice: Parents Views on the Trilingual Policy" and decided: ☐ To grant approval for this study subject to minor changes, to be discussed with supervisor Approval subject to minor changes: The study is approved subject to minor changes. Reviewer 1: Researcher claims to use "typical case sampling" but later says the survey will be distributed at schools to get "as many responses as possible." This is a contradiction in sampling! And what is meant by "typical case"? Typical only in terms of socioeconomic class as identified in the application? Or other criteria? And is ever parent a case? Or is typical sampling only for the interview portion of the research while the survey uses another sampling technique? Reviewer 2: Anonymity: Please discuss with your supervisor how the survey should be returned to the teachers and make sure that the teachers will not know the identities of the respondents. Before starting your data collection, you need to discuss these changes with your supervisor, revise your proposal accordingly, and then ask your supervisor to check the revised proposal. Sincerely, NUGSE Research Committee LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE v Acknowledgements I would like to dedicate my thesis to the people whose presence in my life had enormous impact on it. I am a lucky person blessed to have so many incredible people in my life. First and foremost, it is my family, my mother and father and my sister Ainura, who have always supported me in all my endeavors. My whole life, their love and encouragement are the force that pushes me to excel. Then there are my two oldest and closest friends, Arailym and Aigerim. For over a decade I have a pleasure and honor to be friends with these ladies, who are so bright, so brave and so bold; it was their example and encouragement that gave me the courage to pursue this new live. In the last two years, I have made new friends in Markhabat, Kamila, Arina, Dilnoza and Rizagul, and making friends does not come easy for me. This small group of people have become my community; I could only wish to retain this strong bond for life. This acknowledgement is just a small fraction of my love, respect and gratefulness that I feel towards you all. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE vi Abstract Language Policy, Ideology and Practice: Parents Views on the Trilingual Policy At present, Kazakhstan is at the initial stage of implementing nationwide the new language policy that is designed to reform education system from being taught in one of the two languages used as medium of instruction to use of three different languages to teach certain subjects. Such language-in-education policies have great impact on the society, thus not only teachers and students but the whole nation are its implementers. All members of a society, especially multilingual one like Kazakhstan, have a complex mixture of beliefs about languages that form their language ideologies. These ideologies are constantly negotiated, affirmed or changed and base the criteria according to which people evaluate all languages and language policies like the trilingual policy in Kazakhstan. This study aims to explore view on the new policy of parents that chose to start Kazakh-medium schools in 2016 by finding out their language ideologies and practices. Parents’ reasons for their choice of the language of instruction and their home language use can reveal their prevalent language ideologies that are not always articulated and conscious. However, opinions of parents belonging to the majority group about new language policies are rarely asked and heard. This concept driven qualitative study employed surveys used to select and recruit participants and ten one-to-one semi- structured interviews. The result of the study show that parents’ choice of MOI and their reported everyday language practices reflected their multiple language ideologies. All of these language ideologies echo the language ideologies of the past policies and played great role on informing their views on the trilingual policy. It is argued that a deeper understanding of parents’ complex language ideologies can inform actions that will help endorse new policy. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE vii Абстракт Языковая политика, идеология и практика: Взгляды родителей на политику трехъязычия В настоящее время Казахстан пребывает в начальной стадии внедрения новой языковой политики, направленной на преобразование системы образования на просторах всей страны. Данная реформа подразумевает переход от преподавания всех предметов на одном языке, казахском или русском, к преподаванию определенных предметов на трех различных языках. Такая языковая политика в образовании оказывает огромное влияние на общество, таким образом, не только учителя и ученики, но и все граждане страны осуществляют ее внедрение. Все члены общества, особенно такого многоязычного как Казахстан, имеют различные убеждения, об языках, которые формируют языковые идеологии людей, которые постоянно оспариваются, подтверждаются или изменяются. Они основывают критерии оценки языков и языковых политик, подобных политике трехъязычия в Казахстане. Данное исследование стремится исследовать взгляды родителей первоклассников, которые решили обучать своих детей в классах с казахским языком обучения с 2016 года, на новую языковую политику, узнав их языковые идеологии и практику. Для того, чтобы ответит на вопросы концепт-образованного квалитативного исследования было проведено десяти индивидуальных полу-структурированных интервью с участниками, привлеченными и отобранными с помощью опроса. Причины, повлиявшие на родительский выбор языка обучения, и их языковые практики, соблюдаемые дома, могут показать доминирующие языковые идеологии семей. Эти идеологии не всегда LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE viii могут быть признанными и осознанными. Однако мнения родителей, принадлежащих к группе этнического большинства, о новой языковой политике часто остается без внимания, а их языковые идеологии не исследуются. Результаты исследования выявили, что родительский выбор относительно языка обучения своих детей и языковые практики, применимые в семье, отражают их множественные сложносоставные языковые идеологии. Все эти языковые идеологии основываются на главных языковых идеологиях прошлых лет и играют большую роль в формировании их представлений о политике трехъязычия. Более глубокое понимание сложных языковых идеологий, которых придерживаются родители, может продиктовать действия, необходимые для утверждения новой языковой политики. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE ix Аңдатпа Тіл саясаты, тілдік идеологиялар және практикалар: ата-аналардың үштілдік саясатына көзқарастары Қазіргі уақытта, Қазақстан мемлекеттік деңгейде білім беру жүйесін өзгертуіне бағытталған жаңа тіл саясатын жүзеге асырудың бастапқы кезеңінде тұр.Бұл реформаның негізгі бағдары барлық пәндерді қазақ немесе орыс тілдерінде оқытудан белгілі бір пәндерді үш түрлі тілде оқытуға ауысу. Білім беру саласында қолданылатын тілдерге әсер ететін мұндай тіл саясаты еліміздің барлық азаматтарына үлкен әсер етеді, сондықтан оның жүзеге асырылуына оқытушылар мен студенттермен қатар қоғамның барлық мүшелерінің үлесі зор. Қоғамның барлық мүшелері, әсіресе Қазақстан сияқты көптілді қоғам өкілдері тіл туралы бір қатар пікірлер ұстанады. Бұндай тіл туралы пікілер адамдардың тілдік идеологияларын (тілдік нанымдарды) құрайды және де осы идеологиялар күнделікті түрде тұрақтанады немесе өзгертіледі. Олар әртүрлі тілдерді және үш тілділік саясатты сияқты тіл саясаттарын бағалауына арналаған критерийлерді құрайды. Бұл зерттеу, 2016 жылы өз балаларын қазақ сыныптарында оқытуға шешкен бірінші сынып оқушыларының ата-аналарының тілдік идеологиялары мен тіл қолдану практикалары білу арқылы олардың жаңа тіл саясатына деген көзқарастарын зерттеуге бағытталған. Осы зерттеуге қатысушыларды таңдаумен тарту үшін алдын ала ата- аналар арасында сауалнама алынды. Осы тұжырамдарға негізделген квалитативті зерттеудің сұрақтарына жауап беруге бетпе-бет жартылай құрылымданған сұхбаттар жүргізілді. Ата-аналардың Қазақ тілін балаларының оқыту тілі ретінде таңдау себептері мен олардың отбасыларында асырылатын тіл LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE x практикалары олардың үстем тілі идеологиялардың көрсете алады. Бұл идеологиялар кей кездерде санасыз болуы да мүмкін. Алайда, этникалық көпшілік топқа жататын ата- аналардың жаңа тіл саясаты туралы пікірілері мен тілдік идеологиялары көп зертелінбеген. Осы зерттеудің нәтижелері, ата-аналардың оқыту тілін таңдау жасағанда және үйде жаласалынатын тіл практикаларына әр-бір ата-ананың өзінің бірнеше құрмалас тілдік идеологияларды басты себеп болғанын көрсетті. Осы тілдік идеологиялардың барлығы бұрынғы тілдік саясаттардың негізіндерінде пайда болып, тұрақталған және ата-аналардың жаңа үштілді саясат туралы піңірлеріне үлкен әсер етті. Қоғамдағы күрделі тілдік идеологияларды терең түсіну жаңа тіл саясатының жемісті болуына қажетті іс-шараларды уақытылы және орынды түрде жүзеге асыруға пайдалы. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE xi Table of content List of Tables xiv List of Figures xv Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Research Problem 4 Purpose of the Study 5 Research Questions 5 Significance of the Study 6 Outline of the Study 6 Chapter 2. Literature Review 8 Concepts 9 International Studies 13 Kazakhstani Context 18 Chapter 3. Methodology Chapter 24 Research Design 24 Participants. 26 Research site. 27 Data collection instruments. 28 Research Procedures 29 Limitations. 32 Analysis. 33 Chapter 4. Findings 36 LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE xii The Choice of Kazakh as MOI 37 Reasons for choosing Kazakh MOI. 37 Parental language ideologies. 39 Parental Views on the Trilingual Policy 41 Knowledge about the trilingual policy. 42 Interpretation of the trilingual policy. 44 Expectations for the trilingual policy. 46 Chapter 5. Discussion 48 Parents’ Choice of MOI and Language Ideologies 48 The Kazakh language maintenance. 49 Official multilingualism. 53 Monolingual language ideologies. 56 Parental Views on the Trilingual Policy 58 Chapter 6. Conclusion 63 Summary of Main Findings 64 Limitation of the Research 65 Implications for Practice 66 Implications for Policy 67 Implications for Research 67 References 69 Appendix A 76 Appendix B 81 Appendix C 83 LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE xiii Appendix D 86 Appendix E 89 Appendix F 93 LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE xiv List of Tables Table A1. Summary of analysis on relationship between parents’ language ideologies and their perceptions of the trilingual policy LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE xv List of Figures Figure 1. Reasons for choosing Kazakh-medium school. Figure2. Parental language ideologies. Running head: LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE Chapter 1. Introduction Since acquiring its independence in 1991, Kazakhstan has prioritized education modernization and development of its human capital as key objectives to achieve its long- term strategic goal to become a prosperous and developed country. A number of educational changes have already been introduced while some more are being implemented at present; however, as early as 2004, Shaukenova conducted public survey, “On the views of Kazakhstani society on reforms in the education system”, and found that reforms in the educational and scientific spheres are implemented but are not understood [by the public] (2004). She concludes that the Kazakhstani public did not fully support these reforms probably because the society’s endorsement of drastic changes areas like education is hard to gain without its sufficient understanding of the change and their benefits. At present, Kazakhstan is at the initial stage of implementing the latest major reforms in education, which are the transition to 12-year schooling incorporated with a new language policy that affect languages of education. Education is the domain of language use that can consolidate or threaten the role of the language in a community, while language of instruction has a great impact on students’ linguistic, cognitive and affective development (Tam, 2011). Therefore, the matter of public understanding and accepting the policy becomes even more crucial. The new language policy is aimed at raising the level of competence to the same level in three languages, Kazakh, Russian and English, among the majority of population through program called “Trinity of Languages” (Zhumanova, Dosova, Imanbetov & Zhumashev, 2016). It was introduced in 2007, and since then the implementation of the trilingual education has been widely advertised and promoted in mass media states Smagulova (2008). In his interview to the press in April 2016, the Minister of Education and Science of LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 2 Kazakhstan, Erlan Sagadieyev, announced the gradual transition to countrywide educating the first students in three languages starting new academic year of 2016 (Tengrinews, 2016). In September 2016, children that enrolled in the first grades in mainstream schools of Kazakhstan started their education in accordance with the trilingual education program. The new model of language of instruction will teach certain subjects in designated language. For example, English will be used to teach science disciplines; while subject like the Kazakh language and Literature, Geography and History of the country will be taught in Kazakh; whereas in Russian students will learn about the World History. By using three languages as mediums of instruction, Kazakhstan aims to create “harmonious language policy to ensure the full functioning of the state language as an important factor in strengthening national unity while preserving the languages of all ethnic groups living in Kazakhstan” (MoES, 2010, p. 3). This means that the new program will consolidate the status of the Kazakh language, promote societal multilingualism by preserving the linguistic diversity and use of Russian and develop. At present, Kazakhstan has a unique situation with multiple languages legitimized to be used as medium of instruction. Since 1989, when the Kazakh language was officially allowed to be used as a medium of instruction, Kazakhstani education has offered education in two types of mainstream school; first is so called “pure schools” which uses only one language as MOI, and the other is called “mixed school” where children separated by different MOI share a building (Fierman, 2006). Both pure and mixed schools predominantly teach in Kazakh and Russian, schools with other languages as MOI are extremely few. Although, all parental units or caretakers can decide which type of school and which MOI to choose, Fierman states that Kazakh medium of instruction schools are quite homogeneous since non-Kazakhs rarely choose this language as MOI (2006). 75 per cent of all Kazakhstani LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 3 students attend Kazakh- medium school; however, among them only 1 per cent belongs to ethnicity other than Kazakh (IAC, 2015). At the same time a sizable portion of Kazakh children and children from other ethnic groups study in Russian medium of instruction or in small number of ethnic medium of instruction schools. According to the plan, by 2020 all mainstream schools of the country will study with this program and while those students in secondary levels will be educated in the three languages the public’s competence in English by changing the current use of language in education. Trilingual education program directly influences the language in education and society; however, this program is only called as a trilingual policy in the word of mouth (NIS of Astana, n.d.). This also implies that policy- makers that designed the program for trilingual education do not regard it as a language policy, hence can overlook certain aspect of language policy such as language beliefs all language policies have (Spolsky, 2004). The public’s, - and especially the parents’- opinions of new language policy that influences language(s) used in mainstream education can determine society’s acceptance of or resistance towards it. Hornberger (2009) warns that proposing a language policy, issuing a law supporting it and creating a state program of its implementation sometimes are not enough to make people adhere to the new policy. The Ministry of Education and Science (hereinafter MoES) conducted some public polls that show more positive perception and support of new policy by the public; however, there have been few polls conducted by non- partisan or independent entities. One of the main factors that decides whether there will be parental approval and backing is parents’ sufficient understanding of education process: what their children would learn, how parents would be able to help their children, how it would influence their families and their children’s futures. People base their interpretations of the LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 4 reform on their own educational and linguistic experiences and beliefs about languages (Liddicoat and Taylor-Leech, 2015). While much effort is being given to educate teachers as future implementers of the new reform (MoES, 2010), comparatively less is seemingly being done to educate parents on the matter. Therefore, all factors that can influence successful implementation of new language policy like parents’ perceptions that affect their support or rejection should be learned and taken into account. Research Problem Sociolinguistics is the field of social science that investigates languages and policies about languages. This field has not been fully researched in Kazakhstan. Therefore, local policy-makers who seem to be, unaware of the integral aspects of any language policy like language ideologies when designing and implementing language policies do not consider them. The fact that “Trinity of the Languages” program has not lead to the appearance of official language policy and accompanying documents can atone to the fact. In other contexts, people’s language ideologies otherwise are well researched at possible level of existence and from different standpoints. At the same time, most research investigates family language policies, ideologies or practices of immigrant rather than marginalized ethnic and language minority families; however, at home level language ideologies of people belonging to the language and ethnic majorities are considerably less researched. Each multilingual context is unique, and language policies and ideologies of majority groups are not necessarily monolingual as Spolsky (2004) suggests. Multilingual and multiethnic Kazakhstan has a post- colonial past, so the current ethnic majority then have been numerical and linguistic minority and in the last couple of decades has implemented several major language policies. While some study of national language policies and public language ideologies has been conducted LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 5 in the country, these studies have not examined post-Soviet language revitalization as it affects family language policies and ideologies of any ethnic, linguistic groups. Purpose of the Study Within the frame of education and schooling as related to the language policy, it is important to explore the perspectives of the affected parties. Therefore, this paper aims to identify parental language ideologies to reveal most common ideologies of the society, and to explore how parents’ language ideologies and language practices shape their views on, expectations of the trilingual policy. This purpose leads to investigating the following research questions. Research Questions Central question I employed in my study is “What are parents’ understanding of and expectations for the trilingual policy in education?” To understand this central question, I developed the following sub-questions: - What factors are relevant in the choice of medium of instruction? - How are they connected to parents’ language ideologies and language practices? - What do parent’ language ideologies reveal about their views on trilingual policy? The first sub-question aims to reveal the reasons that played into parental decision about choice of medium of instruction that can be connected to various circumstances. The second question, then, will look into the relation of these circumstances on the formation of people’s language ideologies, which are not always conscious and articulated. Parents’ decision about children’s language of instructions is the outward display of their language ideologies and family language policies. And, finally the third sub-question will help reveal parents’ views on trilingual policy which were based on their language ideologies. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 6 Significance of the Study This study is very important for me as it gave me valuable opportunity to hone my research skills and gain experience of organizing and carrying a project from the beginning to the end. It is also my first contribution to the existing body of knowledge. In addition, there is a great significance of my work for Kazakhstan as it draws attention to the important societal phenomena like language policy not being recognized and treated as such. This study also contributes to the existing gap in the research regarding the language policy in Kazakhstan; it sheds some light on current ideologies and language practices that occur at family level. Knowing the views of parents on the trilingual policy that come from their language ideologies can help policy-makers in better managing its implementation. Suggestions for the current practice and even policy based on the findings will increase chances of successful implementation of the policy, thus benefit both policy-makers and general public. The findings of the parental language ideologies of group of people belonging to the complex multilingual society of Kazakhstan should make an important contribution to the field of sociolinguistics. Outline of the Study The introduction chapter recounts the background information and the context of the topic by highlighting some relevant aspects of the new language policy (how it came to be and what it is aimed at achieving), elaborates on the lack of study into people’s opinions that became the research problem and its significance to the existing body of knowledge and to the society, recounts the research questions and outlines the structure of this paper. The literature review chapter explores the concepts of language policy, language ideology and language practice, presents the review of literature on international and local studies that investigated LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 7 these concepts. The methodology chapter describes the research design and methodological procedures of survey which served as recruitment tool and ten interviews that were conducted in two urban centers of Kazakhstan and constitutes the source of empirical data for this article, and reports on the analysis methods that was used to identify the findings. The findings chapter reports on the reasons for choosing medium of instruction compiled from survey answers that lead to discovery of the parental language ideologies that are similar to the dominant language ideologies in the society and parental viewpoints on the new policy. The discussion chapter offers attempts to provide probable explanations as to why parents have certain language ideologies and how they made up their opinions about the new policy from the reviewed literature and elaborates on their possible affect the policy. This paper concludes with remarks on the limitations of the current work and the implications of the findings for the larger Kazakhstani context and recommendations for the research and practice. Running head: LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE Chapter 2. Literature Review Language policy is a social phenomenon that tries to regulate the public’s use of languages. Some language policies are designed to regulate languages used in education, a crucial domain of language that affects the whole society and can also determine the future of the language (Delarue & De Caluwe, 2015; Liddicoat & Taylor-Leech, 2015). Most studies that exist on the perceptions of main stakeholders about language policies explore the opinions of teachers and students as their main implementers (Bridwell-Mitchell & Sherer, 2017; Heineke & Cameron, 2011; Valadez, Etxeberria, & Intxausti, 2015). However, other members of the society like students’ family members also play important role in the implementation. Public’s support or rejection of the new policy directly influence its success or failure. People have beliefs about and assign certain values to the languages based on their own linguistic, cultural, educational backgrounds and experiences (Curdt-Christiansen, 2009). These language beliefs are the prism through which people evaluate the language policy and form their attitudes towards it (Liddicoat &Taylor-Leech, 2015). Learning such language beliefs of society members, especially ones that are directly affected by the language-in- education policy like parents of students, allows finding out the dominant language ideologies existing within the society. This can serve as a predictor of how people will react to the new policy. However, all individuals have a complex mixture of multiple language beliefs not all of which are consciously articulated but all of which influence their language choices (Martínez, Hikida & Durán, 2015). Most researchers use ethnographic tools of inquiry such as interviews and observations to find out people’s language beliefs through their everyday language choices and practices (Curdt-Christiansen, 2009; Phyak, 2013). Home is the domain where people can LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 9 create their own language policies because they do not feel the pressure to adhere to societal language norms (Johnson, 2013). Learning about parents’ home language practices, and reasons for choosing certain language as medium of instruction can to uncover people’ s language beliefs. To answer the central research question of this study, that is to find out about how people understand the language policy, one must learn what language beliefs public had in the societies that experienced introduction of major language policy and to learn what language ideologies Kazakhstani public might have before the implementation of the trilingual policy. This section explores the concepts related to language policies and language beliefs, examines family language policies and the connection between choice of school and the language beliefs, investigates how existing public language beliefs influenced their views and reactions to the language policies in different settings and presents the past language policies that formed the language beliefs of members of Kazakhstani society. Concepts Language policy and language ideology are the two central concepts that guided this study. In the scope of this work, language policy is defined as “a situated socio-cultural process – the complex of practices, ideologies, attitudes, and formal and informal mechanisms that influence people's language choices in profound and pervasive everyday ways” (McCarty 2010, p. xii). From this definition, it can be deduced that that language policy strongly affects the society, as it informs people’s opinions and actions related to languages. People can adhere to the policy or reject it. Therefore, it can be said that not only policy-makers but all members of the society are the implementers of the policy. All language policies, regardless whether they exist at a nation or family unit levels, one way or another affect all groups and communities of the society. Some language policies LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 10 have even bigger impact on society than others. Language policies, whether they are covert or overt that have any impact on the languages that are used in the education as language of instruction, communication or simply taught as a subject, are referred to as language-in- education policies (Johnson, 2013). Such language-in-education policy is said to impact the society the most since it vocalizes the plan for society members’ future (Delarue & De Caluwe, 2013). Since according to Fishman (1991) survival of the language is closely tied to its use in formal education, language-in-education policy defines the role, the function and the value of the languages and can even determine its fate. Therefore, any change to the existing language-in-education policy should be carefully planned and learning from experiences of other countries or societies that changed their language-in-education policies can facilitate its success. In the scope of this work, language ideologies are defined as “the set of beliefs about the appropriate practice of languages in the society that also assigns values and prestige to them” (Spolsky, 2004, p.14). Finding out the prevalent language ideologies of the society is important because Liddicoat and Taylor-Leech state that “the prevailing ideologies within a society and the attitudes and values they (re)produce are an important part of the context in which language education occurs” (2015, p.2). It seems that people evaluate languages and language policies through their own beliefs about languages built their past experiences. Because of strong connection between people’ ideologies on languages and the way people interact with language policies, knowing dominant ideologies in the society can help predict if people will adjust to, ignore, internalize or refute the new policy. Therefore, beliefs about languages can be the factor that that can play into the effective implementation of the new language-in-education policy. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 11 Language ideologies are complex phenomena. Spolsky (2004) argues that one ideology is usually dominant in the society, while other scholars believe that individual have multiple ideologies not all of which are expressed and demonstrated (Kroskrity, 2004; Martínez, Hikida & Durán, 2015). This means that while some of the many language ideologies that people possess are explicit, there can be some that can be only deduced from speakers’ language use (Kroskrity, 2004). Moreover, public language ideologies are not “predetermined or fixed but continuously negotiated, contested, and reshaped by people’s everyday sociocultural experience and future trajectories” (Bae, 2015, p. 643). Which means that they are not constant and can change along shift in society that happen under influence of various circumstances. According to Spolsky (2004) there are four linguistic and non- linguistic forces that influence the emergence of language ideologies: the sociolinguistic force, which influences the formation of the common understanding which language or its variation is acceptable and not; the sociocultural force, which impacts what value people assign to languages; the socioeconomic force, which regards languages through their benefits; and the sociopolitical force, which is connected to official language policies and being a force that derives from the top can strongly influence people’s opinions about languages. The values assigned to the languages can be purely symbolic which stem from the emotional ties person has with the language, while the prospective benefits of the language increase its instrumental value (de Jong, 2014). These four forces can influence perceptions of people at the same time, they can overlap or one of them can overpower the others. Therefore, two members of the same society that have experienced exposure to the same forces can have complex set of ideologies that can be similar or different, close or opposite. Peoples’ backgrounds, life circumstances and linguistic competences can play into the formation of LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 12 their ideologies. Language ideologies can also change along with people’s new life experiences; thus language policies are individual as well as community or national. Language and as was mentioned before it can help uncover covert language ideologies that people have. While language policies and the accompanying rules of language use can occur at the macro level, the level of the whole society, the domain where people can decide on their own policies and practices is home. In this domain language policy is called Family Language Policy (FLP). According to Curdt-Christiansen (2009), FLP is “shaped by what the family believes will strengthen the family’s social standing and will best serve and support the family members’ goals in life” (p. 352). In other words, FLP is based on family members’ beliefs on language(s), and language practices that are beneficial to their family. Bae (2015) states that investigating people’s discourses and everyday language practices can reveal their language ideologies. Meanwhile, choice of medium of instruction as part of the FLP management is considered the ultimate manifestation of family language policy (Curd- Christiansen, 2009) and can serve to identify the strongest language ideology in the family. Finding out the reasoning behind choosing one language of certain number of families can help to find out the most common language ideologies among population in their residence. Change in the official language policy can affect home language policy management which can hence result in community language shift. This means that home language policy can change community language; however, in its turn community also can influence family language policy. From various papers on FLP, several factors that impact people’s FLP were compiled. These factors include parents’ own educational experiences and values assigned to languages (Leung & Uchikoshi, 2012), media and peer-group interactions (Curdt- Christiansen, 2009), the official governmental language policy and parental educational LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 13 expectations and aspirations for their children’s bilingual development that is usually connected to perceived market values of the different languages and conflict of explicit and implicit ideologies (Curdt-Christiansen, 2016) and parental understanding of how children acquire language(s) and about their own roles in this process (Moin, Scwartz & Leikin, 2013). All of these factors can have different impacts on individuals. Since each person is individual with their own unique experience and set of values and beliefs, members of the same family can have the same, opposing, or at times conflicting language ideologies. Family members can adhere to one FLP consistently or each member can try to implement their own FLP at home. International Studies There have been a number of studies conducted on perspectives of different stakeholders on language policies in the world, especially on language policies that were employed in education. From the vast number of studies conducted about the language-in- education policy, the overwhelming majority were investigated from the sociolinguistics perspective. Sociolinguists predominantly use discourse analysis or critical ethnographic approaches. Social sciences also research public perspectives and attitudes to understand deep incentive behind social behavior (Hodges, 2012). This implies that in order to better understand social behavior it is preferable to study deeply one person and their incentives than to study society to understand one person. This means that because not all members of the same social community will have the same or similar language ideologies, finding out the dominant language ideologies in society comes from learning language ideologies of different individuals with various roles in the community. However, studies that specifically focus on LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 14 parents understanding, attitudes, beliefs and expectations seem to be less frequently conducted compared to studies of teachers’ and students’ perspective (Johnson, 2013). One of the emergent themes of such studies is that the success of the any policy implementation is closely connected to certain “practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules” its implementers have (Bridwell-Mitchell & Sherer, 2017, p. 223). In language policy implementation, this connection leads to teachers’ appropriation of the policy and their pedagogy practices according to their language ideologies and their classroom contexts (Heineke & Cameron, 2011). It seems that teachers react to language-in-education policies of which they are the immediate implementers through their own set of beliefs including those about languages. While a considerable amount of literature has been published on language policy and its aspects like language ideologies and management, these studies explore the existing or past language policies and not the language policies at the early stages of implementation. Such language policies under investigation have already some produced outcomes, thus researchers do not wonder what people expect of them. One of the few studies that explored teachers’ expectations in the context of language revitalization policy focused on probabilities of Basque dominant, Spanish dominant and recently settled immigrant students’ mastering the language (Valadez, Etxeberria, & Intxausti, 2015). The findings of this research suggest that the highest chances of learning the Basque language are expected from Basque dominant students, who assign symbolic and instrumental value to the language, and the lowest from new immigrants. At the same time, there is a relatively small body of literature that is concerned with parents’ views on the language policies predominantly focused on language policies at family level. Many researchers conducted studies to explore how FLP are negotiated and executed in LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 15 the family. However, most of these studies explore the cases of migrant or ethnic/ linguistic minority or immigrant families. Spolsky (2004) claims that literature on language ideologies of parents’ that belong to the majority group are scarce because they are usually monolingual. The existing literature on FLP and language ideologies at this level suggest that n some communities, the common language ideologies can be positive and supporting of the language policy, negative and opposing the language policy or mixed with some portion of population endorsing and other rejecting it. For example, in some communities all members share positive outlook on language-in-education policy. This is the case of bilingual school for Palestinian and Jewish children in Israel. Nasser (2010) claims that one the main reasons for Palestinian and Jewish parents to keep their children in bilingual education in Israel was their belief that the school promotes cultural understanding and tolerance among all children. Any country that tries to implement multilingual language-in-education policy should be aware of such occurrence, aim to try to avoid devaluing one of the languages. Meanwhile, some people can be against language policy with objective to maintain their minority language because of their language ideologies. Because of the perceived economic and cultural value assigned to the languages, people refuse to the use of mother tongue in education. It is often the case of parents from marginalized groups that perceive their native languages as language of poverty and the past (Hornberger, 2009). By resisting the language policy that aims to maintain the language they also refuse the societal multilingualism through language-in-education policy. That was the case of the ethnographical study of a multilingual school in Nepal, results of which show that indigenous communities did not see any cultural and linguistic capital of their own first language in the wider educational or economic market (Phyak, 2013) and actively tried to stop the use of LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 16 native language as MOI. At the same time, some communities can support language revitalization (Cho, 2015). The example of second-generation Korean-Americans show that contrary to the established process of heritage language shift towards its loss among children of first- generation migrants, the perception of Korean as prestigious language lead to positive attitudes towards its maintenance and revitalization. In other communities, public can be divided in their opinions about the language-in- education policy. Some members of the same community can support it wholeheartedly, while others oppose it. For example, in Catalonia, Pladevall-Ballester (2015) used open and close-ended opinion questionnaires to gather parents’ opinions and expectations of the CLIL program in primary schools. The results varied from convictions that this program is the only way to learn English, to fears that it is detrimental to children’s first languages. She speculated that those parents that regard this program with caution could be parents that feel that the language policy that promotes multilingualism endangers their position in society, undermines their language and cultural heritage, threatens their younger’ futures. The researcher concluded that such polar findings can be the result of parent not being well informed about the multilingual education with its own language-in-education policy. Moreover, because of the different language ideologies of society members sometimes language policies can achieve their aims only partially. Curdt-Christiansen’s six months long ethnographic study of three families of diverse origins revealed that while governmental language policy was the promotion of societal multilingualism through maintenance of mother tongue(s) and usage of English as MOI, some family members intentionally or not hindered development of children’s bilingualism (2016). Observations, parents’ interview and family language audit used as data collection tools showed that despite the expressed LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 17 language ideologies, interaction with children which is part of the FLP management can have the opposite results than those that were indicated by their expressed language ideologies, can simply be inconsistent and even conflicting among different members of the same family. Any country that plans for the successful implementation of the policy should be aware of the existing and possible divide in people’s opinions. Apart from ethnographic research that is the most commonly used research design, public’s language beliefs can be revealed by learning the reasons for choice of language of instruction. For example, Whiting and Feinauer (2011) used only opinion questionnaires with open and close-ended questions to find reasons highly motivated parents from diverse community chose Spanish- English two-way immersion program for their children. From open coding researchers synthesized six categories as reasons for parents’ decision according to their occurrence of being named: bilingualisms/biliteracy, educational experiences, future and career opportunities, cultural immersion/diversity, preserving heritage, and proximity to home. These six reasons were most common among parents tell what value did parents assign to studying in two languages. Parents’ ethnic, educational, socioeconomic or religious backgrounds played big part in their decision-making process. Heritage maintenance was relevant only for Spanish speaking parents, while bilingualisms/biliteracy was the most frequently named reason among both English and Spanish speaking parents. Learning how parents made choice of the language of instruction at the time of new multilingual language- in-education policy implementation can help reveal the prevalent existing language ideologies. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 18 Kazakhstani Context Studies discussed above illustrate how public language ideologies can positively or negatively influence the implementation of language policy proposing a language policy, issuing a law supporting it and a state program of its implementation sometimes are not enough to make public adhere to the new policy. The rejection of policy is the results of changing the language-in-education policy that Kazakhstan should try to avoid by taking into account all of the existing language ideologies among its population. Since the trilingual policy is a rather recent innovation, in Kazakhstan, there seem does not seem to be many studies conducted about its implementation, its results and public opinion about it. However, since all societies have certain language beliefs they would assess the new policies from the perspective of what they know and in what they believe. In Kazakhstan, sociolinguistics is the field that has not been fully investigated to date. While there are studies on language policies that have been implemented into the Kazakhstani society earlier and language ideologies that exist within it, they are either old written in the previous decade or are written based on them. For example, Arya, McClung, Katznelson and Scott (2016) on a 2004 study to claim that Kazakhstan’s citizens regard bilingualism is different compared to citizen of Canada basing their conclusion. Meanwhile Zhumanova, Dosova, Imanbetov, and Zhumashev (2016) analyze several Kazakhstani studies, none of which were written in the second decade of 2000s. Due to such scarcity of sources, this paper will use all sources available regardless of their publication date. Trilingual policy is the policy that changes the language of instruction in mainstream school making it the language-in-education policy which can have an enormous impact on the future of the country. Since the trilingual policy has not affected the majority of the LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 19 population yet which is planned to be achieved by 2019, public’s language ideologies were formed under influence of previous language policies. Language ideology might take some time to spread in the society and can stay in it for a long time. There are several studies about language policies in Kazakhstan most conducted before the nationwide implementation of the trilingual policy. The most noteworthy studies are the study of language shift in their function as mainstream schools’ medium of instruction in cities by Fierman (2006), the research about previous covert language policy called Kazakhization and its influence on citizens’ attitudes towards and use of languages of the community conducted in Almaty by Smagulova (2008) and research that Matuszkiewicz (2010) did on new ethnic relations that were constructed after independence under influence of language policies. These studies explored national language policies that were introduced before the trilingual policy in Kazakhstan, kazakhization of the society and official bilingualism. One of the language ideology that exist in Kazakhstani society is the result Kazakhization process that had the purpose of “derussification” the society and revitalizing the Kazakh language (Matuszkiewicz, 2010, p. 220). This process was described by Dave (2004), Fierman (2006), Smagulova (2008) and Matuszkiewicz (2010), and they all agree that the main aim of this process was the active and at times forceful revitalization of the Kazakh language, thus this language policy can be said to have nationalistic “one nation, one language” viewpoint (de Jong, 2014). Its main slogan was a quote by the president Nazarbayev that “Kazakhs should speak in the Kazakh language with other Kazakhs” used shaming for not knowing the “mother tonguage” which was said to deepen the clear divide between urban and rural Kazakhs in their ideologies and identities. Yessenova (2009) puts forward a notion that the Kazakh ethnic group was split into two groups of people that LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 20 identified themselves as “Kazakh speaking rural Kazakhs” and “Russian speaking urban Kazakhs”. Smagulova (2008) while agreeing with this notion also expands it by stating that it happened because of the perceived instrumental value of Russian as a tool for upward movement of several generations of city Kazakhs. In addition to the language differences, there seem to be ideological opposition where Russian speaking Kazakhs regard the Kazakh language as “language of old” while Kazakh dominant Kazakhs shame all those incompetent in Kazakh as “shala-Kazakh” (literary subpar Kazakh) or “mangurts” (someone who lost their language, name, origin) (Yessenova, 2009). It seems that Kazakh dominant Kazakh have deeper emotional connection to their mother tongue than city Kazakhs most of whom have a very limited competence in the language and a little interest in mastering it. Other scholars like Dave (2004), Smagulova (2008) and Matuszkiewicz (2010), that also investigated the Kazakhization process, agree that it did not fully reach the set aims. Kazakhization process was rather forceful and somewhat alienating (Matuszkiewicz, 2010), some of the minority ethnic groups and many Kazakh were against such change in the language use. Policy aimed at “derussification” of the society the nation lead to inter-ethnic tension (Dave, 2004; Matuszkiewicz, 2010; Smagulova, 2008). There were reports in the media on the attempts of people belonging to Slavic ethnic groups to separate northern regions Kazakhstan by creating an autonomy or by joining Russian federation. Many people belonging to Kazakh, Russian and other ethnicities living in Kazakhstan were in favour of retaining Russian as the language spoken in the society. To appease to all society and prevent interethnic conflicts that devastated many of the neighbouring countries, Kazakhstan issued the Law on the Languages of 1997 that stated that Kazakh is the state language and Russian is the official language of interethnic communication (Yakavetz & Dzhadrina, 2014). This law LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 21 also declared the right of all Kazakhstani citizens to use their mother tongues and get education in one’s mother tongue in areas of high enough density of population speaking the language. This pluralistic ideology is carried on in the new language policy that promotes use of many languages. However, Arya, McClung, Katznelson and Scott (2016) that use the paper published 12 years ago as an only reference in discussing language ideologies in Kazakhstan and conclude that here public regards acquiring bilingualism in Russian and native language as a “a mere nod of respect for one’s mother tongue” (p.44). It means that people of Kazakhstan do not see benefits in being bilingual and in knowing native language which is recognized as official state language only formally. Despite such conclusion made based on out dated study, Kazakhstani policy- makers designed a new language policy with name that refers to multilingualism. The trilingual policy with its aim to maintain and promote competency in the Kazakh language among wider number of population seems to carry the ideology promoting the societal multilingualism. The trilingual policy also takes into consideration languages of other ethnic groups of Kazakhstan. The trilingual policy has a complex ideology of preserving the Kazakh language and societal multilingualism at the same time. However, the studies that explore it do not look at the new language policy from sociolinguistic point of view. For example, Mehisto, Kambatyrova and Nurseitiva (2014) conducted the most salient study on the latest language policy. They explored how various stakeholders perceive government’s intentions concerning the trilingual policy and claim that the majority of respondents were positive views about the multilingual aims of the policy. The researchers concluded that despite support and optimism expressed by the clear majority of respondents, their limited knowledge of international experience can indicate that the implementation of the trilingual policy was initiated without LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 22 sufficient explanatory work to help society to prepare and adjust to changes. However, the latest study analyzed official government documents, and interviewed local and regional administration officials, pre-service teacher training institution executives, school principals and their deputy heads one to one, while teachers and students were interviewed in focus groups and this study did not reveal participants’ language ideologies. All of the studies discussed above explore the broad national language ideologies and do not look at the language ideologies that exist at community or family levels. Judging language policies only on by the official statements might not be enough to reveal the actual ideologies people have. Studying language ideologies at family level can help with that but FLP in Kazakhstan is an area of sociolinguistics that has not been researched in depth. There are a handful of studies done in the field if researches on choice of school can be counted as FLP studies. For example, one of the earlier studies explores the shift in the use of Kazakh language and made the prediction based on the analysis the statistical data of students enrolled in Kazakh and Russian medium of instruction schools. Fierman (2006) predicts that the divide in the Kazakh ethnic group as Russophone Kazakhs and Kazakh dominant Kazakh was most likely to remain in the society. This conclusion contradicts another study of FLP in Kazakhstan done by Smagulova (2017). She states that as far as 2008 she noticed the language shift towards revitalizing Kazakh among Russified urban population of a major city in Kazakhstan. She concludes that some Russian dominant urban Kazakh choose to enroll their children into Kazakh-medium school because of their implicit ideology of language revival and reconnection with one’s ethnic identity. To sum up, language policies regulate language use in the different domains of the society. National language policies like Kazakhization process or Law on languages affect the LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 23 whole nation and influence people’s languages beliefs. These beliefs form one language ideologies that can be adopted by person without conscious realization or be well articulated; nonetheless, people usually have multiple ideologies both expressed and not. Choice of school MOI, on the other hand, is usually a result of deliberate reasoning and can help determine people’ own language policies and ideologies. Existing body of literature on public’s language ideologies clearly indicates the direct influence of person’s language beliefs on their reaction to new language policy. In Kazakhstan, empirical and analytical literature on language policies, language ideologies and FLP and its management is rather scares. Nevertheless, the existing sources point to the existence of several language ideologies in Kazakhstani society. These ideologies are the strive to revitalize Kazakh language, the desire to retain interethnic peace and keeping societal multilingualism by valuing all languages of all ethnic groups and ideological divide within the ethnic majority as Russian-dominant and Kazakh-dominant portions that can have strong objection to others’ stance. The following section will discuss the methodology of the present study. Running head: LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE Chapter 3. Methodology Chapter The central phenomena of this study are parents’ perceptions of the new language-in- education policy and its connection to their language ideologies. To investigate the central phenomena, I designed the research questions to explore the parents’ understanding of and expectations for the trilingual policy in Kazakhstan that can be based on their language ideologies, which would be revealed in the analysis of reasoning for choosing children’s medium of education and their home language practices. This chapter presents the qualitative methodology employed to examine the topic of parents’ opinions of the new policy and provides justification for using the qualitative research design. It also explains why certain tools like survey and interview were chosen to collect the data and how they were developed, reports on how the participants and research sites were selected, describes how research procedure was carried out, explains the way the collected data was analyzed thematically and with elements of discourse analysis and discusses the limitations of the design of this study. Research Design This study employs a qualitative interview-based research design. According to Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2007), this particular design allows a researcher to gather sufficient and valid data on the central phenomenon of the study and to address the research problem. Furthermore, this study is an adaptation of Riches and Curdt-Christiansen’s (2010) work, which used ethnographic tools of inquiry: semi-structured interviews with members of selected families in their homes and participant observations in the school and community contexts in order to study parents’ aspirations and expectations for, and their support of and involvement in, their children’s education. However, its design was modified to accommodate the specific context of this particular study which addresses similar research LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 25 questions with a different focus within a shorter time frame. Because of the limited time given to collect the data in two geographically distant locations, observation was not seen as fit for the purposes of the present study. As with Hodges’ (2012) study on parental incentives for choosing a certain medium school for their children, I devised and administered the survey only for purposeful sampling in identifying participants with certain beliefs and recruit them for the follow-up interview. The research began with an interpretation of a research problem and a development of a research purpose and then research questions set out to reveal insight into the topics under investigation. The next step was the review of the concepts relevant to the research problem and the purpose along with the intention of gaining some understanding of the different context where these concepts would be investigated. After that, I developed two data collection instruments based on different purposes. The first data collection tool is the recruitment survey that contains 13 closed background questions and one open-ended question, which asked parents about the reasons took into account when choosing a certain language as MOI for their child’s education. The second data collection tool is the interview with a 10-question interview protocol designed to seek answers to the research questions. This study employed the qualitative research method and collected data by conducting ten one-to- one interviews, six of which were face-to-face and four which were done via telephone as per some participants’ requests. During the interviews, I asked questions additional to the ten from the interview protocol in order to clarify and allow the participants the opportunity to expand on their initial answers. Before starting the data collection, I pilot tested both instruments on five volunteers in both languages that would be made available to the actual participants. Initially, the LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 26 participants of this study were to be comprised of parents of children in the 1st grade of mainstream Kazakh and Russian schools in two large urban centers. The study intended to involve the participants with similar middle class socioeconomic status, however, of diverse linguistic, ethnic, cultural and educational backgrounds as the most likely representative of the views shared by the majority of citizens. However, during the data collection procedure due to time constraints and the unforeseen difficulties in gaining permission from the headmaster of a school with Russian MOI in the second city, the study had to be changed to perceptions of parents from only Kazakh MOI schools in two urban cities. All data collected from the parents of Russian MOI from the first city were not taken in account in the Findings and Discussion section of this paper. During the two weeks of data collection, I distributed 100 surveys at two Kazakh- medium schools in two cities out which only 44 surveys were fully completed. The preliminary analysis of the answer why parents chose a certain language of instruction showed the emergence of several of the most common trends and some unique reasoning. Based on these trends, I selected ten participants for the follow up interviews. The section below elaborates by describing the participants of this study. Participants. When carrying out the interview-based research, selecting the participants is very important. Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2003) and Creswell (2014) agree that in qualitative research, identifying and choosing participants is purposeful, thus they should be selected from those who are likely to be most helpful through their clear understanding of in understanding the central phenomenon. The participants of this study were parents of children enrolled in the first grade of mainstream Kazakh schools in two large cities of Kazakhstan and so had started their schooling careers in 2016 in the just recently reformed new program. At the moment, they are the only parents who were influenced by the LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 27 implementation of the trilingual language policy. Moreover, parents of these first graders had decided of the MOI only a half year prior to the data collection time, thus the process and factors that influenced this decision should have been fresh in their memories. Therefore, participants of this study were chosen through a purposive sampling technique, i.e. surveys of parents of children in the first grade of mainstream Kazakh schools in two large urban centers. The children were not involved in this research; they were neither interviewed or observed. From the participants that filled out the survey, I selected ten parents, five parents from the first city and five parents from the second city. In the language most convenient to them, I informed the participants about the purpose of the study, explained how the interview would proceed, with explanation of how the data collected from them would be further processed and asked permission to record their responses. The participants were informed about their right to withdraw from the interview or could decide not to answer a question at any time without any harm or punishment. I distributed the informed consent forms (see Appendix A) to participants in the language of their choice, one that was the language most convenient to them. I completed the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) (see Appendix B) training prior to approaching the possible respondents. No psychological, social, economic, or emotional pressure were put on them. All participants were assigned pseudonyms based on the order in which their interviews were conducted. I did not include in the research any of the identifiable features that the participants shared during the interviews. Research site. The research was conducted in two large urban centers, where some residents were born and raised and many others had moved to there from other parts of the country. Therefore, the participants from these two urban centers were able to reveal language ideologies typical to the communities of these cities and other parts of the country because LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 28 people can express opinions that are dominant in their place of origin. The first research site was an urban, mainstream, primary school with Kazakh MOI, which had number of Russian MOI schools in close proximity to it. The second research site was an urban mixed school that provides education in two separate streams in one of the languages, Kazakh and Russian. The schools are located in two different cities. Choosing such schools was done in such a way as in order to eliminate ‘proximity to home’ as a possible answer for question of the choice of MOI. However, I did not been anticipate that in mixed schools the proportion of classes with Kazakh MOI and Russian MOI was not equal. The local administration prescribed how many classes should be taught in Russian or Kazakh MOI without considering the number of students willing to enroll in classes with certain language of instruction. As such, it had an impact on the open-ended question of the survey on reasons for enrolling. The section below will present the information about the tools administered to gather the data in greater detail. Data collection instruments. The primary tool for collecting the data that answered the research questions was follow-up, semi-structured, one-to-one interviews, conducted either face-to-face or by telephone. Before interviews, a short survey with 13 closed questions capturing respondents’ ethnic, linguistic, cultural and educational background information and one open- ended question on the respondents’ reasons for choosing a particular MOI was administered (See Appendix C). I distributed the surveys that were available in two languages dominant in community personally. The surveys were accompanied by a covering letter with a request for further participation in the research and for participants’ contact details if they had a wish to participate. The surveys were used to observe trends indicated by responses to questions (Creswell, 2014) from which participants with certain ideologies and attitudes were identified and recruited for the interviews if contact information was provided. Data collected LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 29 from the survey helped to find emerging commonalities and possible themes for the analysis. Moreover, the information from the surveys helped to form essential interview questions to ensure that the research questions were answered. Participants for follow up interviews were chosen in accordance with the emerging themes. Each of the ten semi-structured, in-depth, focused, one-to-one, and face-to-face or telephone interviews took from 20 to 40 minutes. I conducted the interviews in the language the participants indicted was most comfortable for them. All questions in both languages were piloted beforehand. During the interviews, I asked ten question from the interview protocol and approximately 20 additional open-ended, semi-structured questions that elicited qualitative information about the respondents’ perceptions regarding the issues under investigation (See Appendix D). In order to get in-depth information, these additional questions were prepared before the interviews. Answers to the questions were divided into different themes according to the concepts that drive this research. The questions for all participants were the same, so that it was easier to compare and analyze the findings. The next section will elaborate on the research site where the parents were recruited or interviewed. The analysis of the collected data will be discussed more in-depth later in this chapter, while the section below recounts the procedures that I conducted. Research Procedures The whole process of the study started long before the data collection period. Prior to starting data collection, I completed the CITI training that helped her to receive approval to conduct this study from the NUGSE Research Committee. Before going into the field, I conducted pilot testing of survey and interview questions and another field test with alternative wording in Kazakh and Russian. I did not have gatekeepers at the chosen research LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 30 sites. After receiving the informative, permission letter from the NUGSE, I approached the headmasters of schools in the two cities asking permission to distribute the survey on the premises of their school grounds. Each school principals received the NUGSE letter informing them about the current study. By gaining permission, I was allowed to approach parents that were dropping off or picking up their children requesting that they fill in the survey. The participants could choose to fill out survey in the language that was comfortable for them. Due to the lack of cooperation of headmasters of several Russian medium schools approached in the second city, this study had to change focus from perspective of parents with children in both Kazakh and Russian schools to opinions of parents from Kazakh- medium schools. The data was collected from the 5th to the 16th of December in the first city and from the 10th to the 19th of January in the second city. However, in the first school when the parents were given the surveys in Kazakh, quite a number of them struggled to read, to understand the close-ended question and to reply to the open-ended question in Kazakh. I collected 23 completed and 13 partially filled in out of 50 distributed. I considered the surveys that did not contain an answer to the open-ended question as partially filled in and eliminated them from the data collection and the analysis. Out of the 23 fully filled in surveys, seven had contact information from parents willing to be interviewed. The information from the answers to the open-ended question allowed me to choose five interviewees that were later interviewed. In the second city, I followed the procedure of data collection exactly as I did in the first city with the only difference being the survey language. This time the surveys were double sided and contained questions in Russian on one side and in Kazakh on the other side. Nevertheless, some parents replied in Russian to questions written on the Kazakh side. I LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 31 collected 21 completed and 15 partially filled in surveys with 8 parents ready to be interviewed. The participants that expressed a willingness to take part in the follow up interviews were contacted by the means indicated in the survey. Before asking the interview questions, I gave each participant an informed consent form and thoroughly explained the purpose, procedure and the result of the research in the language that was most comfortable to them. The language of the interviews was either Kazakh, Russian or a code mix of the two languages depending on the interviewee’s preference, as I am fluent in both. In addition to that, I transcribed and analyzed the interviews contents while conducting the interviews. More on the analysis of the data will be elaborated on later in the analysis section of this chapter. The interviews were held at a time most convenient for the participants at places of their choice such as their homes, work place, multi-space rooms, or by telephone and ranged in length from 20 to 40 min. Six out ten interviews were held face-to-face and four were conducted via telephone as per participants’ requests. All four participants that answered to the interview questions via the telephone received consent form through emails, and after reading and signing them sent them back to me. Five participants gave formal agreement before the interview for me to record their answers, thus only five interviews were audiotaped and transcribed to facilitate the following data analysis. The rest of the interviews were not audio-recorded but notes were taken during and immediately after the interviews. Hard copies of the transcripts and protocols were kept in the safe, locked place, while the soft version of copies of transcripts, protocols, and data analysis were kept in the password-protected folder on school server. All raw and analyzed data was destroyed when this paper was finished. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 32 Limitations. While conducting this research I faced some challenges such as the limited time given for the data collection and a difficulty identifying suitable participants and gaining cooperation from the school administration and participants. While I managed to overcome these challenges, the research design still has some limitations. Due to the generally accepted cultural practice where mothers are caregivers while fathers are breadwinners, participants were predominantly females. On one hand, child raising and care giving is highly feminized in Kazakhstan, and many men tend to consider all matters concerning children’s up bringing as something unrelated to them. This limitation could not be overcome by a novice researcher like me with such short time given for data collection. On the other hand, as primary caregivers some of whom are stay at home mothers, female participants as people that spend more time with children should be more knowledgeable about the language practices at home. Both data collecting tools (interviews and open- ended survey) rely solely on participants’ memories and truthfulness. Moreover, participants reported on their everyday action such as choice of language of communication that often happen for different purpose but without conscious pondering on why such choice happened or even registering instances when such choice was done. The observation of such home language practices could have helped to uncover the actual linguistic situation at home and to triangulate the data. Instead, I analyzed participants’ discourses that is, according to Fairclough (2013) the main type analysis that can reveal language ideologies. Since telephone interview data was gathered without face-to-face contact, there was a limitation of me not seeing participants’ faces and not being able to notice non-verbal part of the communication like their face expressions, gestures, postures. This hindered my ability to LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 33 decipher fully the participant’s utterances and limited further interpretation of their emotional states. However, careful recording of intonation and conversation fillers like pauses, noise, throat clearing and words that were stressed helped overcome this limitation and added valuable information to discourse analysis. Analysis. Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2007) state that in a qualitative study, there is no one right way of analyzing the data and that the researcher should analyze it in accordance with the fitness for purpose principle. I used this principle to analyze the data collected using both data collection instruments. The first tool, although its main intent was to recruit the participants for the interview provided some relevant data. Most of the data from the surveys is mainly quantitative because 13 out 14 questions sought background information so were designed as closed type questions. This was done to speed up the answering the questions. One question was open-ended and provided word based qualitative data (see appendix E for data sample). This data was used to find out the most frequently identified trends that were later explored in the follow up interviews. This was achieved by manually recording all answers in one table, combining similar answers under the same category and counting the results. The categories from such analysis are presented in the findings section below. The second tool was designed to collect data to find out the participants’ perceptions of language-in-education, and what language ideologies prompted the parents’ selection of a certain MOI for their children’s learning. I started the analysis of vast qualitative data from interviews as soon as the first of ten interviews was conducted because many researchers agree that qualitative research data is emergent, and that data collection and analysis should be simultaneous and complement each other (Creswell, 2014; Cohen et al., 2003; Merriam & LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 34 Merriam, 1998; Miles, Huberman & Saldana, 2014; Weiss, 1994). In addition to thematic analysis I analyzed participants’ discourses because as Fairclough (2013) claims, discourse analysis is necessary to analyze language ideologies. This process of conducting a preliminary analysis while collecting the data helped in facilitating the following interviews and helped me to pose relevant questions from the themes that started emerging. Since new questions came to be from the analysis of the first interviews, it meant that I did not pose them to the first interviewees. I contacted the first participants and asked them these new questions so that all participants had answered the same set of questions and gave similar data that can be compared. Therefore, data analysis continued from the first interview to after all ten of them were conducted and transcribed. I started transcribing the scripts as closely to the original conversation by writing every word of each of the participants including descriptions of all verbal and non-verbal clues such as pauses, throat clearing, raise and fall of the voice, intonation, face expressions gestures, nodding or shaking the head and others. In addition, I recorded my thoughts, feelings and observations straight after the interview was completed. According to Creswell (2014), the thematic analysis that is chosen for data analysis in the study not only describes facts but also “makes interpretation of people and activities” (p. 473). After carefully reading all of the notes, I started noticing some commonalities and differences. The coding of the data was done by hand in several stages. As Miles and Huberman (1994) suggest, all assigned codes were gathered, displayed and reduced and organized into themes. These themes were translated into English because all interviews were conducted either in Kazakh or in Russian. At the same time, I also analyzed these scripts along with my field notes as participants’ discourses according to their informativeness, if discourses contain new information; situationality, under which circumstances they were LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 35 produced; and intertextuality, what is the connection of these discourses to the world outside. From these emerged themes, or as Creswell (2014) calls them categories, and my interpretations of participants’ utterances the findings were compiled. These findings are presented in the Findings Chapter and are interpreted and explained in the Discussion Chapter of this paper. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 36 Chapter 4. Findings This chapter presents the findings of the study about the perceptions of parents regarding the trilingual policy. In particular, this study focuses on the parents of the first graders with Kazakh MOI. This study was guided by the main research purpose of exploring parents’ understanding of and expectations for trilingual policy in education by learning the views of parents about the new policy, and how these views were connected to parents’ language ideologies and identities and by identifying the factors that were relevant in making a choice of medium of instruction. The results were obtained by implementation of two data collection instruments - a questionnaire and interview. Questionnaire results describing the reasons for enrolling in Kazakh-medium school were analyzed and synthesized to four major themes. From the results of the questionnaire survey ten parents were selected for the follow-up interview. They were assigned codes such as Parent 1, Parent 2 and so on according to the order that interviews where taken. Because parental language ideologies inform parental viewpoints about the new policy the findings chapter begins by presenting the discoveries about parental language ideologies. They come from analysis of data from survey related to the choice of school and data from interview about participants’ family language practices. The next section discusses parental understanding of the trilingual policy by exploring what parents know about the policy, how they interpreted what they know and what they expect from it. The results interpreted from this analysis and presented at the end of this chapter will be explored in greater depth in the following chapter. LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 37 The Choice of Kazakh as MOI Questionnaire asked parents for their reasons that guided their choice of MOI. Parents’ statements given as the answer open-ended question about the choice of language of instruction facilitated the initial overview of their FLP and language ideologies. Although 42 surveys were filled in by parents of children attending first grade in Kazakh MOI, some of the parents put down more than one reason in their answers. In the case when parents put down several reasons, each of these reasons were recorded as one token of reasons with a total number being 56. From all collected surveys, four main categories of reasons were created based on the respondents’ perceived language ideologies, counted for frequency of occurrence and presented below. These categories were also used to recruit the parents that had these reasons for the follow up interview. Reasons for choosing Kazakh MOI. As can be seen in Figure 1, ‘Mother tongue’ was most frequently named as the parents’ main reason for choosing Kazakh-medium education in almost three quarters of the surveys. All answers that were categorized under “mother tongue” were gathered from participants indicating Kazakh as their mother tongue, these answers also include such answers as “our language”, “language of our nation”, “heritage language”, “language spoken at home”, “we are Kazakhs, child is Kazakh” and “I want my child to speak Kazakh. In addition, this category was more favored over other categories by parents that chose to answer in the Kazakh language. The next most frequently occurring reasoning among parents is the official status of the Kazakh language, and it takes a little over 20 per cent of all reasons. This category is labeled as “state language”, categorized together answers like “it is the state language” and “we are citizens of Kazakhstan”. The third category is called “bilingualism in Kazakh and Russian” and include such answers as “I want LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 38 my child to know Kazakh and Russian” and “Kazakh is harder to learn than Russian”. This understanding that unlike Russian, Kazakh is harder to learn as second language was put down only in two surveys but was more common among interviewees when asked. The last category “no place in Russian class” was given by two respondents and falls under unexpected findings. These answers were noted in the surveys collected in the mixed school from the second city. Researcher has not taken into account that while classes with Kazakh MOI and Russian MOI shared the same building, the number of Kazakh-medium and Russian-medium classes were assigned by the local administration and not the parents’ choice. Another notable finding is that neither in surveys, nor in interviews respondents identified the trilingual policy as a factor for choosing to enroll their children into Kazakh- medium classes. Figure 1. Reasons for choosing Kazakh-medium school. In conclusion, four main categories of reasons for making the choice of MOI were identified from answers to open ended question in the survey. Two of the categories were most frequently named in almost 95 per cent of the cases. Another category was put down Mother tongue State language Bilingualism in Kazakh and Russian No place in Russian class Total number 41 11 2 2 41 11 2 2 LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 39 only twice in the surveys but was more frequently mentioned in the interviews. The last category was unexpected finding. The trilingual policy has not been named as the factor that informed their decision. These reasons were used to generate the themes in the analysis stage and to recruit parents with the most common and the least common reasons to the follow up interviews. Parental language ideologies. In the survey parents reported their reasons for selecting Kazakh as MOI for their children. Parents that shared the most common reasons and those that had unique answers were asked to participate in the in-depth interviews because their statements given in their own words can best help to define their language ideologies. One of the most striking results to emerge from the data is that the answer given in the survey was not the actual reason that informed their action. Instead, in all cases a complicated mixture of circumstances, beliefs and attitudes was the real reason for choosing Kazakh MOI. Because each person’s life and linguistic experiences can be similar but are always unique and because each individual has a complex variation of diverse language beliefs grouping the ten interviewees under definitive categories is not possible. Two people can stand on antipodal opposite stance regarding one language and have similar views and beliefs about another language. Therefore, parents were grouped only according to the parents’ beliefs about the Kazakh language that they chose as language of instruction for their children. All participants believe in the benefit of knowing English for children’s future career perspectives; they share similar ideology towards it which will not be further discussed in this paper. The analysis of parents’ strongest beliefs that informs most frequently occurring language practices at home revealed three main language ideologies about the Kazakh LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 40 language. These ideologies are Kazakh revitalization with some parents having more nationalistic or pluralistic approach to the process, societal multilingualism and Russophone ideology. All but one participants endorse Kazakh revitalization. At the same time, eight out ten of them believe in societal bilingualism in Kazakh and Russian and view knowledge of multiple languages as an asset, while two parents consciously or inadvertently follow subtractive language practice. From this it can be deduced that all respondents had more than one language ideology. In all cases one belief that played the biggest role in making the decision was the strongest. Parents were roughly categorized according to their most prominent language ideology; however, discussing some cases in details can give clearer picture. Since the group of interviewees was rather homogeneous in ethnic belonging to the majority group and middle to upper-middle class economic status, their language ideologies regarding Kazakh seem to echo language ideologies of national language policies. As can be seen in Figure 2, half of ten parents strongly believe in their duty to maintain the Kazakh language, some of them do not feel that this should happen at the expense of other languages. Two parents of five that have language revitalization ideology have a more nationalistic view about the Kazakh language perseverance. As opposed to other three parents, they have a negative attitude towards other languages of the community. Irrespective of their beliefs about other languages, these five parents chose Kazakh language classes to ensure the future of the language. Four other parents’ language beliefs are similar to official language ideology of Kazakhstan which states that all languages are important and knowing more than one increases country’s competitiveness in the world market arena. They believe that by studying in Kazakh medium school their children can grow up multilingual. One parent has an LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 41 Russophone ideology because her language choices at home encourage shift from use of Kazakh to Russian. This parent did not want to enroll into Kazakh MOI class but was compelled to do so by other family members. This parent’s ideology is as strongly expressed and endorsed as two parents with nationalistic view point, and can be grouped under nationalistic ideology because it is born as the direct opposite of it. Figure2. Parental language ideologies. To sum up, all of participants agree that knowledge of English is necessary, but their views regarding other two languages, Kazakh and Russian differ. Interviewees have three main language beliefs about the languages of the trilingual policy including the Kazakh language revitalization, societal multilingualism and Russophone ideology. These ideologies played a great role when making the decision to choose Kazakh and can shape parental attitudes towards the new policy. Parental Views on the Trilingual Policy In the scope of this study parental views on the policy was regarded as participants’ knowledge about the policy such as its goals, planned time frame and how it being implemented in their children’s classrooms, the way participants interpret the policy and what they expect from it. 3 4 2 1 K A Z A K H R E V I T A L I Z A T I O N S O C I T A L M U L T I L I N G U A L I S M R U S S O P H O N E Pluralistic Nationalistic LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 42 Knowledge about the trilingual policy. The majority of the parents seem to be aware of the new policy that is being implemented in the mainstream schools of the country. Only half of the interviewed parents reported attended the informative seminars held by school principals and teachers about the new policy. Moreover, probably because these seminars were held 4-5 months prior to the interviews, even those that attended this seminar were vague when asked about the general knowledge about the new policy. Out of ten interviewed, only one parent demonstrated profound knowledge about the new policy aims and details of its implementation. Parent 6 who herself is the teacher of science at school and at the time of the interview was learning English as part of her teacher training courses knew and was able to elaborate on the specifics of the new policy. She could cite the main aims of the policy. She knew the information which subjects are to be taught in which language and the time frame constructed for gradual switch to the new mode of learning. In addition to that, she recounted her own experience of learning the English language and told about seminars and courses she attended. Although it was not the focus of this study, insight from Parent 6 revealed her attitude towards and expectations for the policy as a teacher as well as a parent. The rest of the respondents knew less about the new policy than Parent 6. While seven out of ten could recall basic facts, two of the participants did not know that their children were the first children that started education in new system before the interview happened. Parent 7 shared that she forgot to find out about the program of her child’s education because of her disappointment that all attempts to place in Russian school were futile and because of her worry that homework would bring a lot of hardship to her family. She has attended the seminar and all the parents’ meetings at the beginning of the school year but her limited LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 43 proficiency of Kazakh prevented her from getting all information. She said that she felt ashamed to ask to translate everything into Russian for her sake and did not want to prolong the meeting that was held in the late evening even more. Her attitude for lack of effort to learn about the new policy can be her in her speech: I guessed that since they(teachers) did not ask anything from me or told us that we did something wrong, my son and I were doing fine. I was simply glad that my son had Russian and English in first grade since it meant less work for us. While Parent 3 simply did not attend the seminar. Her eldest child of two already graduated from secondary school thus she speculated that the education system changed or that it was her youngest child’s school’s own system. Since the change was not big and all other classes followed the same program, this parent did not inquire about the change in the system. Both parents simply followed the new education system without knowing that it is new. The rest of the respondents knew some information about the trilingual policy. Almost half of this group did not participate the informative seminars held by teachers because at the time they could not do so or because another family member attended it in their stead. Regardless whether parents attend such seminars or not, their retention of information about the policy stemmed from their assessment of this information in terms of immediate relevance. Parent 2’s words can fully explain such attitude towards the policy: I did not attend this seminar. My mother did it. She told me that my son will have lessons of Russian and English. She did not say that it happened because of the trilingual policy. …I do not really care what is it called. It is more important to know to know the timetable and what was assigned as homework. I do not have time to think about such distant future. I will think about it when he (her son) moves to the LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 44 secondary school. And if it [teaching in some subjects in different languages] is still used at that time. Furthermore, all parents agree that implementation of the trilingual policy in the first year of education has not brought noticeable changes yet. Several parents recalled that even prior to 2016 some schools taught all three languages from the policy; therefore, the initiative of teaching Russian and English from grade 1 is not a novelty. Nevertheless, four parents shared their plans to read up on the trilingual policy when the interviews were completed. Interpretation of the trilingual policy. Since the majority of participants did not have extensive knowledge on the specifics of the trilingual policy, they interpreted it using their own comprehension of the word “trilingual” and their own experience with it. Since at the time of the interview participants’ children have already completed two terms of study in the new system, all of them had firsthand experience with new policy’s implementation. Parental opinions about the how the policy is being and how it will continue being implemented in their children’s classrooms differ and their attitudes towards it range from total and complete support of the way it is done now to wishes to make some changes, some big and some small. Some parents think that children would learn the three languages in primary school as separate subjects to master them and in secondary school would learn in all three languages within one lesson. Parent 3 that has strong nationalistic viewpoint about Kazakh revitalization thought of this interpretation. She became clearly upset with the possibility of her child not doing well academically because of child’s limited knowledge of Russian and the possible outcome of her daughter’s mixing other languages with Kazakh. She expressed her wish to drop Russian from the trilingual policy. As a parent that prohibits her child to play with LANGUAGE POLICY, IDEOLOGY AND PRACTICE 45 Russian speaking children, she stated that knowing Kazakh is a must, learning English is necessary for the career perspectives, but the dominance of Russian in the society is obsolete and should no longer be indulged. Another participant, Parent 10, who believes in the benefit of being multilingual, made the same assumption. However, he was more positive primarily because of his multilingual ideology. He stated that he did not care how it would be run in classrooms as long as his son mastered the three languages. In both cases, parents assessed their interpretation of the policy using their own language beliefs. Two other parents think that this policy would be managed by continuing teaching all three languages as subjects throughout all 12 years of secondary education while using designated language as MOI. They believed that policy teachers would build up students’ proficiency by increasing the amount of language lessons with time. Parent 8, whose prevailing language ideology is Kazakh maintenance without the need to eliminate Russian from the society, elaborated that she would not want her child to study in such a system. She also thinks that introducing English in the first grade is a grea