Session Information
23 SES 11 C, Learning about Leadership Challenges and Strategies in Nationwide Education Reform: Twenty Years after Kazakhstan’s Independence
Symposium
Time:
2016-08-25
17:15-18:45
Room:
NM-A109
Chair:
Alan Ruby
Contribution
The education system of Kazakhstan, as in many other post-Soviet countries, has inherited a highly centralised administration in which public education was managed in the form of a pyramid. Regional and local educational authorities implement policy, but at the same time have no power or the means to formulate legislation on education.
In this context in early 2012, the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) and a team from the University of Cambridge were charged with the role of modernising the teaching profession and educating school leaders. The NIS development team from Kazakhstan had a very clear vision of what they wanted and were keenly aware of what was happening in the field of education around the world. The Cambridge team helped them to implement this vision.
Our starting premise was that teachers’ professional learning ought to be self-motivated and self-regulated, and involve both intellectual and emotional processes. However, often the reality was that the conditions in which teachers work did not always promote their learning. We used three levels of capacity building to address this within the professional learning system. First the development of teacher capacity, whereby teacher’s knowledge, values and skills were challenged and extended. Second, school capacity, which we define as the conditions that build strong and accountable professional communities, which are influenced by leadership and so the third level, was to build leadership capacity at all levels throughout the regions and in schools (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012).
The ultimate aim of the whole country intervention was to develop the professional capital among the 50,000 teachers who took part so that pupils would be; challenged to learn to become deep thinkers who are self-regulated, high attainers who have well developed knowledge and skills of the subject being taught, who can use digital technology to help them to learn, who can read, talk and write about the subject.
The intervention was based on a ‘ soft’ approach to teacher development where support was provided to develop practice and was based on rich theory (Mehta, 2011). The paper will present the emerging findings from the large data set collected and will share narratives of the shift in culture in the classrooms and examples of how new networks are working to extend social capital with key players in education at regional and school
References
Mehta, J. (2015). The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling. Oxford , Oxford University Press. Hargreaves, A. & Fullan, M. (2012). Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. London, Routledge
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