Alumni Perceptions of NIS Impact on Their Preparedness for University Studies and Career

Author(s):

Dana Kerimkhanova(presenting / submitting)Aizhan Ramazanova

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

11. Educational Improvement and Quality Assurance

Format:

Paper

Session Information

11 SES 08 B, Quality of Teaching in Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-24

09:00-10:30

Room:

W2.05

Chair:

Jana Poláchová Vaštatková

Contribution

The preparation of future workers for country’s labor market and ensuring their quality and skills development is one of the primary functions of educational institution.

Impact of the school-level educational quality on the ‘distribution of skills and income’ of students only becomes evident once they join the labour force (UNESCO, 2005, p.40).To evaluate the effectiveness of an institution’s program in preparing quality human resources alumni surveys are widely used (Cabrera et al, 2005).

According to Cabrera et al (2005), there are three primary types of alumni surveys: 'alumni outcomes' surveys, focusing on professional achievements of institution’s alumni; 'engagement and competencies' surveys, which assess a set of skills of particular cohort; and 'alumni giving' surveys, which are designed primarily to attract financial support (p.5).

The expanding body of literature on alumni surveys lists their various benefits. Surveys can serve as a guide for improving educational policy and development strategies for school principals (Dickmann et al, 2007) and for identifying the aims and focus of curriculum (Younis, 2002). According to Dinneen (2016), alumni are valuable sources of information, as they are able to evaluate what influence the study program has on their future and how they make use of knowledge obtained while studying at particular institution.For alumni tracking and receiving feedback, as analysis of international experience demonstrates, the method of alumni survey is practiced in a country-wide scale in many states such as Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, and Italy (Gaebel et al, 2012). These countries blaze a trial for Kazakhstan, where no unified system implemented for gathering data from alumni of different education institutions. Yet some institutions implement alumni survey on their own initiative.

In some countries, such as New Zealand, Lichtenstein, Shanghai, Qatar, and Singapore, collecting feedback from alumni is widely practiced even in secondary education: more than 85% of schools in these countries use this method for practice improvement (OECD, 2013). Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS), Kazakhstan, also carry out surveys among students, but to have a full picture of the situation alumni feedback is needed.

This study relies upon first two approaches listed by Cabrera et al (2005) and mostly focuses on the issue of competencies and skills development.The research is being carried out among NIS alumni.

NIS is a set of twenty schools for gifted children, which is expected to 'enhance the intellectual potential of the nation' (Mehisto, 2015, p.110).NIS fulfils not only an educational function, but is also considered as a platform for ‘developing new educational practices’, which aims to bolster education reforms implemented throughout Kazakhstan (OECD/The World Bank, 2015, p.38). NIS educational policy is currently being piloted and disseminated across all comprehensive schools of the country (OECD, 2014).

The first NIS alumni graduated in 2010, and today the overall number of alumni is 5256 students.

Taking the opinions of alumni as a primary source, this research aims to identify impact of studying at NIS on the preparedness of students for university studies and future careers. The key research question is ‘To what extent did learning experience at NIS prepare NIS alumni for their university studies and career?’ To answer it, following sub-questions were identified:

-What are the perspectives of NIS alumni related to university studies, career and life?

-What are alumni perceptions about knowledge, skills, attitudes and values development at NIS?

-What do alumni suggest to improve NIS policy in better preparing students for future study, career and life?

Authors believe that research results will be an asset for revealing shortcomings of NIS policy in preparing students for university studies and career, especially in terms of skills and competencies development, and developing useful recommendations for policy improvement.

Method

This alumni study is insider research, which provides an opportunity ‘to study a particular issue in depth and with special knowledge about that issue’ (Costley et al, 2010, p. 3). Accessibility of respondents and necessary data is another privilege of insider research (ibid). To ensure research methodology robustness the project was discussed with Research Advisory Board, a group of Kazakhstani and international experts. As this research aims to cover the alumni of all years, for data collection the quantitative method, namely questionnaire, was chosen for the opportunity to gather large-scale data and obtaining ‘wider picture’ (Wellington, 2015, p. 191). Moreover, questionnaire aids to collect ‘information, providing structured, often numerical data, being able to be administered without the presence of the researcher, and often being comparatively straightforward to analyse’ (Wilson and Mclean, 1994, in Cohen et al, 2011, p.377). A thirty-two item long questionnaire was rigorously designed and then was reviewed by Zsolt Lavicza, Doctor at Cambridge University, and Kazakhstani experts in educational field. The questionnaire consists of four sections: general data, education, employment, and others. As there exists a risk of perceiving the questionnaire too long by the respondents and of receiving low response rate, the questions were arranged by the level of importance. In order to collect the data, it was decided to engage the services of the career counselors at the twenty NIS schools, as they constantly keep in touch with the school alumni and have email address databases of all alumni cohorts. Prior to gathering the data, there was a training provided for the career counselors. Ethical issues as well as their and respondents rights were explained to them. Data collection process commenced at the end of December 2016. After quantitative data analysis, depending on the responses of the participants, focus groups will be conducted with participants representing different year cohorts. In a case, respondents provide employers’ email addresses (questionnaire includes such item), there will be an attempt made to attract them to participate in research.

Expected Outcomes

Analogous research with slightly different focus and only covering 2010 alumni was conducted in 2015 and its results were presented in ECER 2016 Conference. The data collection process will end by the end of January 2017. It is believed, that the research outcomes will clearly point out the gaps and benefits in NIS educational policy in terms of academic knowledge provision as well as engraining skills and competencies to students. This means that the research results are expected to show which skills, according to alumni opinion, were paid less attention and what skills they lack for better study and career outcomes. The authors also hope that the data gathered will help to carry out a comparative analysis across twenty schools and identify the catalysts of a particular problem revealed. It will be also possible to identify inconsistencies, if there is any, between school program and higher education and job requirements in terms of skills and competencies of alumni. Moreover, suggestions of the respondents on how to improve NIS policy for better preparing students for university studies and career will help develop useful recommendations for implementing across schools. The study will be carried out among NIS alumni periodically and the results will be used for creating alumni databases as well as setting a long-term target referring to calculation of return to investment in education. As NIS is a state-funded organization, so it is vital to identify the extent to which it can benefit the state economically. The alumni survey included an item asking respondents to indicate monthly income at the beginning of career and now. This data will allow tracking alumni professional development and calculating the rate of return to investment in future.

References

Cabrera, A.F., Weerts, D. J., and Zulick, B.J. (2005) Making an Impact with Alumni Surveys. New Directions for Institutional Research, Special Issue: Enhancing Alumni Research: European and American Perspectives, №126, pp. 5-17. Cohen, L., Manion, L., and Morrison, K. (2011). Research Methods in Education. 7th edition. Routledge. Costley, C., Elliott G. C., and Gibbs, P. (2010) Doing Work Based Research: Approaches to Enquiry for Insider-Researchers. SAGE Publications. Dickmann, E., Cooner, D. and Dugan, J. J. (2007) The Alumni Survey: Program Implications for School Leaders. Journal of Educational Research & Policy Studies, Vol. 7, №1, pp. 76-84. http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ809434.pdf Dinneen, P.L. (2016) Impact of Alumni Feedback on Faculty Member Attitudes about Course Design: A Multi-case Study. Gaebel, M., Hauschildt, K., Mühleck, K., and Smidt, H. (2012). Tracking Learners’ and Graduates’ Progression Paths TRACKIT. European University Association. http://www.eua.be/Libraries/publications-homepage-list/EUA_Trackit_web.pdf?sfvrsn=2 Mehisto, P. (2015) KAZAKHSTAN: From Twenty Trilingual Schools to Thousands? In: Mehisto, P. and Genesee, F. (eds), Building Bilingual Education Systems: Forces, Mechanisms and Counterweights, Cambridge University Press, pp. 109-130. OECD (2013) PISA 2012 Results: What Makes Schools Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices (Volume IV), OECD Publishing. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-volume-IV.pdf OECD (2014) Reviews of National Policies for Education: Secondary Education in Kazakhstan. OECD Publishing. OECD/The World Bank (2015), OECD Reviews of School Resources: Kazakhstan 2015, OECD Publishing, Paris. UNESCO (2005) EFA Global Monitoring Report. Education for All: The Quality Imperative. UNESCO Publishing. Wellington, J. (2015) Educational Research: Contemporary Issues and Practical Approaches. Second edition. Published by Bloomsbury Academic. Younis, N. (2002) Impact of Alumni Feedback on the Curriculum. Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition.

Author Information

Dana Kerimkhanova (presenting / submitting)

Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools AEO

Research Department

Astana

Aizhan Ramazanova

Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools AEO, Kazakhstan

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