This double symposium draws on a programme of research currently being undertaken by a team at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge in collaboration with their partners at the Nazarbayev University Centre for Educational Policy, Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, and University of Pennsylvania. The context of this research is a wide-ranging reform endeavour undertaken by a number of institutions in Kazakhstan including Nazabayev University and Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools in association with major international educational providers from all around the world. The research project is funded by the Ministry of Education and Sciences of the Republic of Kazakhstan and managed by the Centre for Educational Policy (NU). 

Major features of this reform effort include the creation of a network of new schools, the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS), the development of a new curriculum, and the reform of the assessment system. Linked to this, there has been a major in-service training programme which will impact on 120,000 teachers and their classroom practice in state schools across Kazakhstan. This programme has been provided through the ‘Centres of Excellence’ which are linked to the NIS organisation. Key aspects of these reforms have included a deliberate attempt to bring perspectives from other countries by employing a particular proportion of international staff in the NIS network of schools. In addition, NIS has adopted a tri-lingual education system and incorporated English as a third language in addition to Russian and Kazakh.

This symposium arises from research focused on the school system and the programme of in-service education provided by the ‘Centres of Excellence’. Data was collected through intensive field work undertaken by colleagues from Cambridge, Pennsylvania and Astana. The research programme is currently in its second year and so the papers presented in the symposium draw from the report and accompanying research papers submitted in November 2012 as well as from case studies carried out in the current year.

The papers in this symposium all contribute to the debate about how large-scale educational reform works. The focus of the research is shifting from the features of the school system to the operation of change processes, and so it is now possible to shed new light on questions of leadership, the management of change, organisational development and professional learning. Key questions are concerned with the roles of school principals and teachers and how they are affected by change initiated from outside the school. Linked to these questions is the exploration of school and system-wide professional cultures which act as affordances and inhibitors in the process of reform.

Contributors to the proposed symposium reflect a wide range of experience and expertise. The University of Cambridge team include researchers of long standing together with post-doctoral researchers who have had direct experience of the post-soviet context. Researchers from the Centre for Education Policy at Nazarbayev University have collaborated with the Cambridge team in ways that have added value through their insider knowledge and command of strategic matters.

Our approach to the symposium will be interactive and will allow for discussion and debate.