Building Capacity for Teaching and Research in STEM Teacher Education in Kazakhstan: A Research-Practice Partnership

Collaborative Research Program 2021-2023

The purpose of this action research project is to understand more deeply the state of STEM teacher education in Kazakhstan and to investigate the ability of an intervention by a team from an international university in Kazakhstan (NU) to transform teaching and research in Kazakhstani teacher education institutions (partner institutions). The research questions are:1.What are the research and teaching resources and needs of teacher educators in the fields of biology, chemistry, and physics in Kazakhstani teacher education programs?a.What higher education research methods do STEM teacher educators have or want access to?b.Which innovations in STEM pedagogy have they adopted or wish to acquire?c.What orientations to teaching and learning in a third language (English) in a multilingual environment do teacher educators utilize? 2.How does in-service training of teaching approaches transform teaching of STEM teacher educators in Kazakhstan? a.How do workshops of STEM pedagogies transform teaching beliefs and practices?b.How do workshops on multilingual education pedagogies transform teaching beliefs and practices?3.How can action research shape educational research practices in Kazakhstani teacher education institutions? The project is novel in its integration of STEM pedagogy research, English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) pedagogy research, and action research in a single project. The findings are expected to inform and shape the practice of the participant teacher educators and their peers. Sharing their experiences in publication form can also contribute to the wider body of knowledge of STEM teacher education, STEM pedagogy, and teaching of STEM subjects in English.The impact of the development of science and technology inside of Kazakhstan will be a byproduct of this work. As methods that allow for the teaching of problem solving start to be used on a regular basis to teach science from primary through tertiary education, the critical thinking and collaborative skills of young people will be engendered as well as their identity for science. This could lead to more students choosing STEM careers as well as more capable young scientists entering the workforce of Kazakhstan over the years. The changes in pedagogy that are the focus of this project have been shown to have such an effect in other contexts (e.g., Godwin & Potvin, 2017; Jeffrey et al., 2016; Williams et al., 2019). In turn, this could help to further develop the science and technology base in Kazakhstan over the years.