Seismic Shifts in Teaching and Assessment Practices in Kazakhstan

• In Event: Implementing and sustaining systemic educational change – a three year study of the challenges and key issues

Proposal

A critical element to reform of the education system in Kazakhstan is described inside Kazakhstan as ‘The renewed content of education in Kazakhstan’. By this, a new curriculum with supporting resources such as textbooks and online materials has been phased in with accompanying changes in pedagogies and assessment practices. This highly significant change started in 2014 with an adaption and rationalisation of the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools’ (internationally designed) curriculum such that it was redesigned to be suitable for all mainstream schools in Kazakhstan. The work was conducted by a team of experts working together from NIS and from the National Academy of Education named after Y. Altynsarin. The new content was piloted in 30 schools from September 2015 for Grade 1 only; to then be taken up in all mainstream schools for Grade 1 from September 2016. The same process took place for Grade 2 such that 30 pilot schools worked with the new curriculum and content from September 2016 for this to then be introduced nationally the following year. Similarly, Grades 3 and 4 in pilot schools worked with (are working with) new content from September 2017 and 2018 such that by September 2019 all primary grades’ curricula will have been piloted and then implemented nationally. The case for Grades 5 and above is different in that the renewed content of education was not and will not be piloted. From September 2017, new content was introduced directly across all mainstream schools for Grades 5 and 7. Grades 6 and 8 is being updated nationally as of September 2018 with September 2019 seeing Grades 9 upwards introduced and the new content of education in place across all schools and all grades.
To accompany the roll-out of the new curriculum, new pedagogies have been needed. These new teaching practices are supposed to promote more active and independent learning by students, group-work and, since the curriculum adopts a spiral approach, the development of higher order cognitive skills to progressively deepen understanding of material through evolving analytical skills to synthesise and apply knowledge rather than simply rote-learn it. The change in assessment practices involve a radical overhaul of the familiar and previously longstanding (since 1937) use of a 1 to 5 mark given at the end of each class to be replaced by more formative classroom assessment techniques and an accompanying criteria-based assessment paradigm. This has involved a significant shift in the social expectations of not only teachers but parents and many others in the education system as the ‘success’ of students becomes measured and communicated in new ways.
The work presented here is based on empirical findings. It examines the process of the roll-out of the new pedagogic approaches and assessment systems through the findings from a large-scale multidisciplinary and international research team that has followed (and continues to follow) the curriculum reform process from 2015 to now. Aspects of changes in teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the new pedagogies and assessment practices will be presented.

Authors

• Liz Winter, University of Cambridge Faculty of Education

• Natallia Yakavets, University of Cambridge Faculty of Education

• Zhadyra Makhmetova, Nazarbayev University

• Kathy Malone, Nazarbayev University

• Zhanyl Zhontayeva, Nazarbayev University

• Zarina Khamidulina, Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools