EMI and CLIL in Kazakhstani higher education: Current policies and future possibilities

Since joining the Bologna Process in 2010, the Kazakhstani government has increasingly encouraged universities to develop full or partial (i.e., trilingual) English-Medium Instruction (EMI) programs. In other contexts, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has simultaneously been advocated as an approach to teaching English and additional languages in higher education and treated as a separate entity from EMI (Macaro, 2018). Whether CLIL is advocated in policy or practice in Kazakhstani EMI contexts remains an empirical question. The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic overview of national policy documents and select institutional curriculum documents. The analysis will consider not only concrete policies and pedagogies but also ideological and implementational spaces (Hornberger, 2020) for CLIL pedagogy development. The paper concludes with recommendations for what may be possible and beneficial for the implementation of CLIL pedagogies in Kazakhstani higher education.