According to the Kazakhstan State Program of Education Development, by year 2020, the percentage of teachers who will teach in English science and math at Higher Educational Schools should increase to 15%. However, the reality shows that in 2014 only 0.15% of teachers are conducting lessons in English. All of these data required us to develop process of implementing trilingual policy at Higher Educational Schools.
One of the ways of developing the use of L2 in teaching mathematics at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools(further NIS) was the use of team-teaching method, where one local mathematics teacher and one international mathematics teachers worked together. However, the implementation of this new method of teaching brought new challenges.
First was a language challenge, when it was not easy to understand each other and it affected for the quality of lesson planning. The understanding of the importance of the English language lead NIS to use the CLIL technology. Yet, because local teachers are not ready to teach in foreign language, team-teaching method is the only one way to develop language skills of local students and teachers.
Second is mathematical education challenge, aroused when two teachers educated by two system (east and west) of teaching mathematics started to work together. By working hand by hand with Cambridge experts, NIS teachers designed and developing a new integrated curriculum for mathematics.The implementation of team teaching also influenced to the curriculum and lesson materials. Teachers met differences between English (west) and Soviet methods of teaching mathematics as well as differences in methods of explaining some mathematical topics. There were also preferences between English and Soviet mathematics in mathematical language. Finally, there were mathematical topics in which west and east mathematics teachers have strong knowledge.
In the framework of “action research”, practitioner teachers who have been, teaching mathematics with international mathematics teachers focused on the questions: what is the benefit of using team teaching in teaching high mathematics and what kind of challenges might local mathematics teacher and international teacher met by working in one team and using new integrated curriculum of mathematics which based on both: West and Pre-Soviet mathematics?