Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

Table 6.1. Teaching/learning approaches in all coded documents (number of
references)
Student/
Learner
Centred
Respecting
Learner's
diversity
Interdisciplinary
Wholeschool
approach
Use of ICTs/
Social media
Kazakhstan 623 50 72 0 50
Kyrgyzstan 23 2 12 0 8
Mongolia 18 16 4 4 7
Uzbekistan 76 1 12 1 11
TOTAL 740 69 100 5 76
Although a student-centred approach is heavily emphasised in education policy
and curricula, a tradition of teacher-centred pedagogy remains — as does a strong
emphasis on preparation for national-level high-stakes examinations such as
the National Graduation Test, and Maths Olympiads. A boom in private tutoring
and examination preparation courses across the region has been connected
to a number of drivers, including the deteriorating quality of education in
mainstream schools, the persistent importance of high-stakes examinations, and
the increasingly competitive and insecure nature of the labour market combined
with the collapse of Soviet-era welfare guarantees (Silova, 2009b) (the issue of
supplementary private tutoring is taken up in the next section).
In Kyrgyzstan, teachers were offered little training for the task of creating new
materials for the purpose of school-based curriculum development, as envisaged
in official policy (de la Sablonnière, Taylor and Sadykova, 2009). Central authorities
did not allow schools to choose texts, and those they had were rarely updated.
Research in the late 1990s reported that, in the absence of substantial training
and new resources, teachers could only ‘follow slavishly’ the approach laid down
in such materials, leading to a ‘very passive stance’ (Webber, 2000). Although the
central authorities introduced new concepts and approaches such as assessing
the surrounding environment, critical analysis, collective decision-making and
the use of phrases such as ‘learner autonomy’ and ‘critical thinking’, they did
not provide any specific guidance or new resources to assist in operationalising
these ideas. In the Central Asian societies,
teachers had little exposure to the discourse of
alternative ways of conceptualising education
(de la Sablonnière, Taylor and Sadykova, 2009).
As Amsler (2009) observed in Kyrgyzstan,
the hope that education promises a brighter
future for both the individual and society often
coexists awkwardly with teachers’ extremely low
salaries and declining professional legitimacy.
The social status of teachers has weakened in
The hope that education
promises a brighter
future for both
the individual and
society often coexists
awkwardly with
teachers’ extremely low
salaries and declining
professional legitimacy
Rethinking Schooling for the 21 st Century:
The State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship in Asia
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