KZBlog

Kazakhnomad has a series of interesting pieces up on teaching and teachers in Kazakhstan. She did a survey of students, teachers and people who have studied abroad on their opinions about how education should be and also had some teachers write essays about why they are teachers and how they can help their country. If you start with this post on the survey results, and keep reading up to the present, you’ll hit all the posts.

One major theme of this little series is how to change the attitude of teachers and students from teacher-centered instruction methods to student-centered methods. Personally when I work with teachers, I find that most of them want to change their teaching styles but they literally do not know how to. No one has ever told them. The teacher’s colleges still teach the old traditional methods of drilling, memorizing and making students feel stupid. Amazingly enough, a lot of them teach in schools that are too cheap to buy the teacher’s edition of textbooks–which tend to have lots of teaching methodologies and suggestions for diverse ways to approach the subject matter. So the first problem is just that teachers don’t know how to teach in a way oriented to the students.

Another problem is that teachers tend to teach the way they were taught. That is, teachers remember what our past teachers were like and teach in the same way because they feel that that is what being a teacher means. So it’s a cyclical problem. Our future teachers are learning in a very strict, controlled and teacher-oriented classroom meaning that they will also construct their classrooms in the same way. Until teachers learn how to give students autonomy and focus less on grading and more on educating, future teachers won’t embrace these new ideas.

Also, the fact is that a lot of decisions for education in this country are made at the Ministry of Education in Astana. The system is still very centralized and closely controlled. Textbooks are ordered and designed by the Ministry, hiring practices are also centralized as is the syllabus and accreditation of schools. So we need to educate the policymakers too. Otherwise they create systems in which teachers have no room to inspire students or adjust to different learning styles.

Finally, we need to hire more teachers and raise their salaries. Why? Many teachers don’t make enough money to live on. So they have to get other jobs (some of them write papers for students for money) or take bribes. Meaning they don’t have enough time to work a full day as a teacher, work their second job and read up on the latest teaching methodologies. In fact, some teachers need to work both shifts of the school day (8am-1:30pm and 1:45-7 or 8pm). These teachers don’t even have time to plan their lessons. I know one young teacher who says that she never knows what she is going to teach until she walks into the room and opens the textbook. Of course she is unable to go off the book or incorporate more creative ways to teach the subject matter. There’s no time. So teachers need to be guaranteed a living wage so that they have free time to improve themselves. Related to this, I don’t think universities here teach non-degree classes or continuing ed. It’s be nice if there were some seminars or short-term classes teachers could take to improve their teaching without having to go back and study full-time for a graduate degree.

So those are my thoughts on teaching in Kazakhstan. Be sure to look at Kazakhnomad’s as well.