Language challenges in medical education in Kazakhstan: Faculty perspective

• In Event: Governance and Policy Transformations in Central Asian Higher Education Systems

Proposal

This paper aims to critically evaluate the challenges of introducing a new national language as a medium of instruction (MOI) in a post-socialist higher education (HE) context. Specifically it explores how structural pressure leads to particular language practices in medical universities, which sustain structural and material inequalities. To counter the dominance of Russian, language policies have been developed to establish Kazakh as a legitimate medium in academia and to introduce English as an additional language of instruction for certain subjects. Previous research (Kucherbayeva & Smagulova 2023) indicates that adopting Kazakh-medium instruction policies in Higher Education faces practical and ideological challenges, including the lack of L1 Kazakh-speaking faculty, lack of teaching and learning resources in Kazakh, and insufficient elaboration of academic and scientific Kazakh.
This chapter examines the challenges associated with implementing multilingual reforms in medical education in Kazakhstan. In many post-colonial contexts and non-English speaking countries professionals are debating whether medical education should be provided in local languages or in major languages like Russian or English in which most of scientific, professional, technical and academic information is easily available. Language barriers in second-language-based and foreign-language-based medical education significantly impede academic performance and patient communication skills (Hamad et al 2025). However, integrating instruction in native, often under-resourced and not adequately elaborated, languages may impact quality of medical education and healthcare delivery.
Drawing on the historical-structural approach (Tollefson 2015) which views language and MOI policies as situated sociocultural processes, we explore and identify academic challenges related to medical training in Kazakh. Thus, in seeking explanations for language use, language planning, and language policy decisions in medical schools we emphasize historical and structural issues of dominance and hegemony.
The data comes from in-depth interviews with medical school instructors teaching in Kazakh. Thematic analysis of audio-recorded interviews reveals the following challenges for Kazakh-language instruction: quality of medical training, quality of teaching resources, elaboration of medical Kazakh, language proficiency by faculty and students, classroom practices, employability and readiness for the workplace, and the doctor–patient relationship and health care. The paper finishes with practical recommendations for language policy for medical schools.


References:

Hamad A., Mustaffa D., Alnajjar A., Amro R., Deameh M., Amin B., Alkhawaldeh I. (2025). Decolonizing medical education: a systematic review of educational language barriers in countries using foreign languages for instruction. BMC Medical Education 25(1), 701.
Kucherbayeva, D., & Smagulova, J. (2023). Language Revitalization: Challenges for Kazakh in Higher Education. Journal of Eurasian Studies 14(2), 166-178.
Tollefson J. W. (2015). Historical-structural Analysis. In Research methods in language policy and planning, pp. 140–151. John Wiley & Sons

Authors

• Juldyz Smagulova, KIMEP University

• Dina Kucherbayeva, KIMEP University