Domestication, decolonization, and diversity of discourses: Implementing, indigenizing, and interrogating imported ideas

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session (English)

Proposal

Ideas travel instantaneously through multiple electronic forms. Societies change more slowly, as practices, beliefs, and infrastructure make change difficult, either intentionally, or because societal structures make implementing change a complicated process, with many auxiliary changes along the way, or because an idea from Society A simply does not work in Society B. Phillips and Schweisfurth (2014) present a Spectrum of Educational Transfer, outlining the different degrees of coercion that may apply in the adoption of educational ideas: imposed, required under constraint, negotiated under constraint, borrowed purposefully, or introduced through influence.

However, other options may be possible. An organization can adopt the discourse connected to an idea, with or without transferring the idea itself. Some institutions in a society can take on both the discourse and the meaning of an idea, while other elements of the society hear the words but do not implement the concept. An institution can domesticate an idea (Alasuutari, 2009), using its terminology but modifying and “taming” the meaning for the local context. A society can interrogate an idea, questioning its fundamental premises, deconstructing it, and taking only the pieces that work at home. Or thinkers can reject the binaries of old and new, east and west, and can create third ways.

The papers in this panel show how complex and nuanced the implementation of imported ideas can be. The geographical contexts the authors consider – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – share a Soviet past, but 28 years later, have embarked on very different trajectories, politically, economically, and educationally. Kazakhstan is the tenth largest country in the world, and with its oil and gas wealth, had an estimated per capita GDP of $26,300 in 2017, while Kyrgyzstan is smaller than South Dakota and Tajikistan smaller still, with per capita GDPs in 2017 of $3700 and $3200 respectively (data from the CIA World Factbook). Moreover, Kazakhstan’s geographic location means that it is the only country of the three that has territory in Europe, and thus is the only one eligible for membership in the Bologna Process, which it joined in 2010.

Given the nations’ Soviet pasts, with, to use Phillips and Schweisfurth’s terms, educational ideas some considered imposed, and their geographical and economic realities, with the Kazakh government having agreed to take on Bologna Process practices and Kyrgyzstani and Tajikistani educational authorities adopting some of those reforms from either belief or economic necessity, while in other cases taking on simply the relevant discourses, reforms in each society are deeply nuanced. Chynarkul Ryskulova demonstrates how the new accrediting process in Kyrgyzstan makes use of Bologna Process terms such as learning outcomes, but government agencies can not agree on a common definition for the term, faculty do not know how to write such objectives, and neither institutional authorities nor accrediting agencies know how to assess for their achievement. Dilrabo Jonbekova and her colleagues show, in their research, how the term “trilingual education,” widely used by the Kazakh government, and at the elite Nazarbayev University, is not understood by potential employers of Master’s graduates, and some of the potential trilingual educators found that, “contextual, individual, and institutional barriers did not enable them to fully contribute their knowledge and skills to the implementation of the trilingual policy.” The researchers believe that universities also share responsibility for not adequately communicating the content of their programs and the skills that their graduates possess. Zumrad Kataeva, in a comprehensive discourse analysis of public and private university mission statements and other policy documents, shows how discourses of globalization and the knowledge economy are widespread among contemporary Kazakhstani universities: “discourses of globalization, knowledge economy, internationalization of higher education, positioning in national and global university ranking, and digitalization of universities are indeed embedded in missions and strategic development plans of selected Kazakh universities.” Moreover, the universities also have taken on the discourses of employment preparation and practical skills. Sarfaroz Niyazov and Sergiij Gabrscek, looking theoretically at knowledge and research, recognize “post-colonial and post-socialist calls for alternative, non-western knowledges and methods” yet warn against the “romanticization” of these alternatives and instead suggest “a third way forward.”

Imported ideas and discourses, as they are implemented, thus are domesticated, indigenized, interrogated, and possibly transformed as they enter new cultural, economic, political, and social contexts. Education always involves interaction, and thus diverse interpretations of ideas.

References:
Alasuutari, Pertti (2009). The domestication of worldwide policy models. Ethnologia Europaea. Vol. 39, No. 1, 66–71.
Central Intelligence Agency (2019) The World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
Phillips, D. and Schweisfurth, M. (2014) Comparative and International Education: An Introduction to Theory, Method, and Practice London: Bloomsbury

Sub Unit

• Eurasia SIG

Chair

• Maya Satlykgylyjova, Kent State University

Individual Presentations

• The transition of Master degree graduates from university to work: Multilingual education misconstrued by employers in Kazakhstan - Dilrabo Jonbekova, Nazarbayev University; Sulushash I Kerimkulova, Nazarbayev University; Bridget A. Goodman, Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education; Jason Sparks, NU; Gulfiya Zhasulanovna Kuchumova, Nazarbayev University

• Student learning outcomes and competencies: how are they determined and evaluated? - Chynarkul Ryskulova, American University of Central Asia

• Global forces, national policies and institutional responses in Central Asia: A discourse analysis of Kazakhstani universities’ missions and strategic development plans - Zumrad Kataeva, Nazarbayev University

• Educational research and knowledge production in Post-Soviet Tajikistan: Challenging the decolonization talk and suggesting a way forward - Sarfaroz Niyozov, Aga Khan University; Sergiij Gabrishek, European Union

Discussant

• Martha Merrill, Kent State University