Teachers’ perceptions of the recent curriculum reforms: a case study on Kazakhstani teachers’ utilization processes for the new course plan for English

Abstract

The ways in which teachers perceive, interpret, and respond to curriculum reforms can make or break any potential for innovation in their curriculum implementation journey. This study explored the perceptions, interpretations, and actions of teachers at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools with regard to implementing a recently embedded course plan for teaching English as part of curriculum reforms. We conducted interviews with school teachers and found that, while the course plan was innovative, its contents, learning objectives, and materials were too vague, ambiguous, and unfamiliar to the target population. Subsequently, the study results showed that the ambiguity of the contents and objectives and the target population’s unfamiliarity with them led to different perceptions, interpretations, and divergent actions.

Keywords:

• Integrated curriculum
• curriculum reform
• course plan for English
• Kazakhstan
• language policy

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• Arif H. Kabir, School of Education, Deakin University School of Education, Australia

SUBJECTS:

• Classroom Practice
• Curriculum Studies
• Education Policy & Politics

Introduction

After gaining independence in 1991, Kazakhstan’s government initiated intensive reforms in the education sector and introduced several innovations. These reforms were intended to modernize the education sector with the aim of moving away from Soviet traditions toward a more Western-oriented system (Karabassova, 2021). Herewith, the establishment of Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) for talented and gifted students were a significant part of the ‘Strategic Plan for the Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan 2020’ as part of efforts to innovate and modernize the secondary education sector.

These schools aimed to adopt the best experiences and practices of successful educational organizations across the world and implement them in a manner that would reflect Kazakh tradition and national identities.

The representatives of these schools thus approached the prominent universities of Western countries to assist in developing a new curriculum in collaboration with Kazakh educators and professors. Consequently, in 2013, a new integrated curriculum was embedded into the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools of Kazakhstan as a pilot project.

The new educational program mainly intended to address and develop students’ ‘skills’ (Shamshidinova et al., 2014, p. 78). This indicates that rather than encouraging rote learning from textbooks, the new integrated curriculum focused on teaching students to apply their acquired knowledge to real-world problems. Thus, the main innovations of the integrated curriculum included focusing on student-centred approaches to teaching and making connections between disciplines, concepts, and subjects instead of memorization.

Generally, the integrated curriculum offered a fundamentally different manner of teaching and learning, which could serve as the key to preparing individuals for a constantly changing world. The integrated curriculum which means having to move the focus ‘beyond second language learning to learning language for academic purposes and beyond language learning to content learning’ (Mohan, 1990, p.144), has also become strong in various language policy and educational change strategies of Kazakhstan. This initiative to renew the school curriculum at NIS was a starting point for an ambitious national language policy and educational change in Kazakhstan which promotes the use of three languages: Kazakh as the state language, Russian as the language of interethnic communication, and English as the language of integration into the global economy. The underlying rationale of the reform, thus, was to use the integrated curriculum to promote fluency in three languages, enhance students’ skills in Physics and Mathematics, Chemistry and Biology directions, and ‘combine the best traditions of Kazakhstani education and international best pedagogical practices’ (Decree of the President of the RK No. 922, 2010). Overall, the plan was that, after teachers approved the new integrated curriculum in Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, all state schools in the country would start functioning according to the new curriculum in 2017.

However, the lack of sufficient investigation for measuring the value of the innovation offered by the integrated curriculum to education programs in these schools still posed a problem. The implementation of the integrated curriculum remained in the interpretation and adoption stages even after 2013.

While some studies have focused on the implementation of criterion-based assessment (CBA) as part of curriculum reforms in Kazakhstan (Turganalina & Malone, 2023), or the trilingual education model of the new curriculum (Karabassova, 2021), and student-centered approaches to teaching (Ayubaeva, 2012), no study has explored the underlying contents, structure, knowledge, and materials of the integrated curriculum. Therefore, this study aimed to understand and explore these aspects of the integrated curriculum. We did so by focusing on the implementation of the newly embedded Course Plan for teaching English. While the curriculum had a broader conception and included all the strategies applied to the whole school, the course plan consisted of all the contents that must be covered during a particular course.

In particular, this paper’s primary objective was to understand how the concept of the new Course Plan for teaching English was introduced into the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools in Kazakhstan, investigate teachers’ perceptions of the structure, knowledge, and materials of this English course plan, and explore the extent of the changes its implementation caused in classroom practice. Thus, the research questions of this study were as follows:

1. How was the concept of the new Course Plan for teaching English being introduced into Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools in Kazakhstan?

2. What were teachers’ perceptions and interpretations concerning the benefits or drawbacks of the structure, knowledge, and materials of the Course Plan?

3. What changes in classroom practice were attributable to the plan’s implementation?

Contextual background

Any investigation of the value of the above-discussed curriculum reforms must consider the historical background of Kazakhstan’s education and teaching professions, which have created the initial conditions for reform implementation.

The current Republic of Kazakhstan, which extends west to east from the Caspian Sea to the Altay Mountains and north to south from Western Siberia to the deserts of Central Asia, was historically one of the most Sovietized states (Yembergenova et al., 2021). For example, Yembergenova et al. (2021), stated that one of the major negative externalities caused by Kazakhstan’s Soviet past was the high centralization of the planned economy. Accordingly, education was subordinated to the political aims of advancing communism, and Soviet citizens were educated to comply with the state’s authority (Fimyar & Kurakbayev, 2016). Knowledge production in all spheres of social life was strictly controlled, and the ‘correct’ approach to the curriculum was maintained and closely supervised by the government (Fimyar & Kurakbayev, 2016; Grant, 1967). The curriculum was filled with classical texts, formulations, and algorithms, and there was minimum space for personal interpretation, communication, or creativity (Dunstan, 1987; Grant, 1967).

The nature of curriculums and the need to control their content often necessitated a teacher-centered approach to education. Thus, Kazakh education was imbued with the viewpoint that knowledge should be simply transferred from teacher to student and that students must silently listen to the teachers’ instructions while seeking little or no involvement in the emergence of knowledge during the lesson. Therefore, a student-centered approach to education was a new teaching method that teachers in Kazakhstan found unfamiliar compared to several other approaches in the teaching profession (Fimyar & Kurakbayev, 2016).

However, the second decade of independence established a new trend in educational reforms, entailing the establishment of flagship institutions such as Nazarbayev University and Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (Karabassova, 2021). These institutions were designed to adopt and test the best experiences and practices of successful educational organizations worldwide and translate them to other educational institutions in the country. The Nazarbayev Intellectual School (NIS) system, named after President Nazarbayev, encompasses a network of 21 state-funded and highly selective schools situated in 19 major cities in Kazakhstan. This specialist state school accepts gifted and talented students based on their test results; students enroll during the 7th grade (aged 11–12 years) and complete their schooling in 12th grade (aged 16–17 years). In 2011, the president of Kazakhstan mandated that the NIS should take a leading role in the renewal of the school curriculum and a cascade teacher training system (AEO NIS, 2020).

Research has shown that, at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools for gifted and talented students, teachers, in general, hold positive attitudes toward a student-centered approach to teaching (Ayubaeva, 2012). The current authors claimed that teachers actively engaged in the self-reflection process, obtained feedback from students, and conducted peer collaboration to enhance their confidence with regard to instructing students (Ayubaeva, 2012).

Although teachers at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools generally hold positive attitudes toward student-centered teaching approaches, according to Fimyar and Kurakbayev (2016), most teachers still draw a clear line between ‘we’ and ‘Western’ approaches to educational content. Fimyar and Kurakbayev (2016), say that, politically bound and belonging to a particular community such as ‘Kazakh’ tradition and ‘Western’ education, teacher professionalism currently dominates attitudes toward the purpose of education in Kazakhstan. The authors also claim that this approach is opposed to practice-bound teacher professionalism, which is defined not in terms of belonging to a particular political community but to a community of practice.

Thus, questions remain concerning the methods of introducing the concept of an integrated curriculum into the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools in Kazakhstan, the extent of teachers’ satisfaction with the new curriculum’s contents, and the implementation of its objectives in classroom practice. Furthermore, although the implementation of an integrated curriculum at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools has continued since 2013, it is currently still stuck in the approbation stage, and no study has explored teachers’ perceptions concerning the benefits or drawbacks of the integrated curriculum’s contents, structure, knowledge, and materials. Therefore, this aspect must be considered.

Theoretical framework

The success of each educational change relies on the personal responsibilities of individual teachers (e.g. whether to implement them as planned or to ignore them). Kelly (2009, p.14) emphasizes teachers’ ability to ‘make or break’ innovations in terms of curriculum. Teachers’ beliefs, knowledge, and perceptions play indivisible roles in the successful execution of educational reforms (Little, 1993). Although national or local/school level curricula are prepared with great premises in many countries, teachers rarely implement them as they are written (Bümen & Holmqvist, 2022).

Thus, it was relevant to use sense-making theory to examine teachers’ perceptions of curriculum reforms and lesson planning (Kelly, 2009). Sense-making has been acknowledged as a catalyst for shifting research focus from system-centered to user-centered phenomena. Sense-making is the process by which individuals give meaning to their collective experiences.

While there is no universally agreed-upon definition for sense-making in the literature, Turner et al. (2014) discusses that humans live in an ever-changing reality and this reality produces information gaps, puzzles and ambiguities. According to the authors, humans, thus, need perceptual processes to bridge these information gaps to inform their actions. However, according to Turner et al. (2014), besides information gaps, individuals themselves at the micro level create cracks or gaps in their cognition during perceptual processes. These cognitive cracks describe one’s ability to make sense of various situations and structures, how these understandings differ from current knowledge structures, and one’s ability to create new structures that frame a new situation around its constraints (Weick et al., 2005).

Thus, Weick’s work is deeply grounded in dissonance theory and a dual-processing model of cognition. Sense-making is thus primarily a process theory, which maps complex mechanisms of individual and whereby collective sense-making and institutionalisation of certain practices within a general perspective of change (Weick et al., 2005).

Since teachers in Kazakhstan still draw a clear line between ‘we’ and ‘Western’ approaches toward educational content and since the integrated curriculum at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools is still at the approval stage, we made a negative behavioral expectations that teachers may experience certain gaps in cognition while making sense of new reform strategies and implementing them. Thus, to answer all three research questions, we used sense-making theory to understand how information about the integrated curriculum was being introduced into the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools in Kazakhstan and how teachers perceived, interpreted, and acted upon it to bring about changes in classroom practice.

According to sense-making theory, sense-making by individuals occurs through three specific processes: information, interpretation and action (Hagen‐Zanker & Mallett, 2022; Sandberg & Tsoukas, 2015). Hagen‐Zanker & Mallett, 2022 states that the acquisition of limited, partial, inaccurate, or overwhelming information can be the first reason why agents experience certain information gaps in their cognition and do not implement changes in the manner that developers of reforms may require. Depending how these processes play out, there is a potential here that teachers might be extremely uncertain about the contents, structure, knowledge, and materials of the new course plan.

The second reason is the interpretation of information, which refers to the ways in which agents perceive and make sense of received information in light of personal, political, economic, or historical circumstances. According to the sense-making theory, interpretations might change over time and space owing to various circumstances, which might further widen the gap between the stated reform objectives and innovation outcomes (Hagen‐Zanker & Mallett, 2022). In other words, in the light of limited or inaccurate information and different personal or political circumstances, teachers might make various interpretations and perceptual cues to bridge information gaps, which may inform their further actions.

Finally, the issue of action refers to the ways through which agents act based on received and interpreted information, thus producing a physical response that may or may not resemble the intended reform objectives (Hagen‐Zanker & Mallett, 2022).

Overall, since the success or failure of any classroom reform depends on teachers, the sense-making theory helps to clarify how teachers receive information regarding the reforms, perceive and interpret the aims of educational reforms, and act upon these to successfully implement them.

Methodology

Research strategy

In general, this paper attempted to explore the utilization of a recently embedded course plan for teaching English at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools as part of curriculum reform. Although we used a certain deductive approach and prior expectations, the primary aim of this study was to obtain inductive insights into teachers’ perceptions of the curriculum reforms. Therefore, we considered an exploratory case study the most appropriate research design for the research.

Exploratory case studies allow researchers to study phenomena regarding which little or no systematic knowledge exists (Kumar, 2018; Van Thiel, 2014). This approach can be used to gain more information about a given phenomenon that is not clear enough or too contrived to make conceptual distinctions or posit explanatory relationships beforehand (Shields & Rangarajan, 2013). Exploratory research could therefore lend itself well to investigating the utilization of a recently embedded course plan for teaching English at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools as part of curriculum reforms.

As curriculum level case studies can be characterized by the use of multiple sources of evidence, this study’s data collection instruments included document analyses and semi-structured interviews. To answer Research Question 1, we analyzed English course plans for each year group and conducted semi-structured interviews with teachers to determine how the concept of a new course plan for teaching English was being introduced into the selected Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools as part of the curriculum reforms. To address Research Questions 2 and 3, we focused only on teachers’ perceptions toward obtaining in-depth information about their experiences and ideas for a new course plan. Each interview lasted approximately 30–40 minutes based on the busy schedule of the teachers. Interviews were conducted in English; however, we gave the teachers the freedom to choose the most suitable language to respond to particular questions. The responses were recorded and transcribed for further analysis.

Sampling strategies

Documents

For the purposes of this study, we selected English course plans for each year group, which we had obtained with the official agreement and permission of the teachers and administrative departments of the selected schools. School Course plans, or syllabi, play a vital role in structuring and implementing educational reforms. The learning objectives of the course plan serve as essential components of the curriculum contents. The objectives of the course plan formed a focus for the teachers, who had to organize teaching materials and develop lesson plans that would be implemented in classroom practice. The Course plan provides key learning objectives and an explanation of the supporting strategies (e.g. scaffolding and differentiation).

Furthermore, the hallmark of these Intellectual Schools is their trilingual education model, in which different languages must be used for teaching different curriculum subjects. Thus, choosing an English language course plan was necessary for determining how this policy would be reflected in the course plan contents and how teachers would deal with it.

Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools

As mentioned earlier, the NIS system forms a network of 21 state-funded and highly selective schools located in 19 major cities in Kazakhstan. From among these 21 school networks, we selected two Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools situated in the southern region of Kazakhstan—more specifically in Kyzylorda City—and in the western region of Kazakhstan—more specifically in Aktau City. Because of certain budget and time constraints, we selected only 2 schools for the research. However, it should be noted that all schools in the network are managed by the NIS Central Office and have the same policies, infrastructures, curriculums, course plans, assessments, student selections, and teacher-training systems (Karabassova, 2021).

Participants

Sixteen teachers from two Nazarbayev Intellectual School were chosen for the semi-structured interviews. The teachers were selected using a purposive sampling strategy. Among the different types of purposive sampling, we chose critical case sampling. Critical case sampling helped us identify a particular cohort of teachers who could provide the most accurate and reliable information on the investigated issue. Therefore, critical case sampling, which is a purposive sampling technique, helped us select teachers who had worked with the Course Plan for at least five years and who could provide the most crucial and reliable information.

On top, critical-case sampling has been particularly useful to avoid the possibility of superficial perspectives that can result from interviewing large numbers of people. Critical-case sampling was useful to study a restricted number of participants who can provide a wealth of information.

The interviews were conducted via Skype and audio recorded with the consent of teachers. Initially, invitation to participate in the study has been sent to twenty teachers via email. Among twenty teachers, sixteen teachers agreed and eventually took part in the study. Interviews took place in February and March in 2023.

To minimise the potential for bias, we avoided asking direct questions and instead we asked six general questions for all teachers and two specific questions regarding the course plan. For example, during the interviews we first probed lightly asking questions such as ‘How the new curriculum were introduced in the school?’ and ‘How did teachers perceive the new curriculum?’. Then, participants were asked questions about the impact of new curriculum on the development of students’ skills and their specific experience and further actions in implementing the new curriculum in the classroom practice. In general, participants were asked questions around three themes: (a) information; (b) interpretation; and (c) action.

Ethical considerations related to conducting interviews in an online settings have been taken into account. In particular, consent form has been provided to all participants where all the information regarding audio recording, data storage and usage were clearly indicated. Also, once interviews were conducted, audio recordings were securely uploaded to Open Science Framework (OSF). Only co-authors had access to password-protected cloud server.

Overview of the analysis

The data were transcribed by all co-authors and were analyzed deductively and inductively. First, we used research questions to code all the obtained data, which were consequentially presented as section headings. We then applied the theoretical framework to generate deductive themes. In particular, we used the pre determined three main mechanisms of the sense making theory such as information, interpretation and action and operationalised the structure of analysis on the basis of these mechanisms. Furthermore, inductive analysis was performed to identify recurring themes or differences in the reported perceptions. Based on these recurring views and perceptions, we formed clusters and linked them to build new concepts. The trustworthiness and credibility of the data were verified by conducting a cross-case analysis. In particular, each participant was given the opportunity to analyse the data individually, then the analysed data were compared to identify similarities and differences.

Results

Introduction of a new course plan for teaching English in Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools in Kazakhstan

Information

If curriculum reform measures are to influence outcomes, teachers, as the main agents, must receive proper information about the objectives, contents, structure, pedagogical interaction, and materials of the course plan; understand it; interpret it correctly; and respond in the intended manner. Therefore, we first analyzed the newly embedded course plan (from the 7th to the 12th grade) for teaching English in order to understand the kinds of information it provided to teachers.

When analyzing and evaluating course plans for teaching English at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, it was noted that these course plans did not resemble any course plans used in most of the mainstream schools in Kazakhstan. One major difference was the presence of clearly articulated long- and medium-term goals that teachers were expected to achieve. Another strength of the course plan was its greater focus on inputs, contents, and processes instead of outcomes. For example, long-term goals clearly described content-based learning and indicated how teachers could meaningfully organize and present information to students, compare and contrast, explain causes and consequences, and develop intercultural awareness among students. Therefore, the course plan did not just lay out the desired outcomes for students to achieve in speaking, writing, reading, and listening abilities; it also explained how teachers could involve and engage students in different subject areas through the use of an English medium.

Long-term goals

In the long-term goals sections of the course plan, the document clearly provided explanations of overarching learning versus lesson objectives. As stated above, the course plan did not provide certain objectives; rather, it explained the required processes and inputs for teaching and learning. For example, the document states that ‘by the end of the lesson, students will understand the Past Perfect, cannot be measured, by the end of the lesson, students will be able to distinguish Past Perfect sentences from Simple Past sentences, write five sentences in the Past Perfect correctly, use in speech (or writing) three sentences correctly in Present Perfect, can be measured.’

Furthermore, the long-term goals section of the course plan specifies the required teaching strategies (e.g. scaffolding and differentiation) that can help to involve all students in the classroom equally despite any differences in their abilities.

Medium-term goals

In the medium-term goals section, the course plan should normally provide specific learning objectives to be achieved, directions for lessons, and the necessary teaching resources and materials. However, the analysis of the document indicated that, although the objectives emphasized the inputs and processes required for teaching and learning, they did not provide clearly articulated visions for teachers to plan their lessons. Instead, the available information was overwhelming and too vague. For example, there are four terms in one academic year, and each term has three topics that must be completed within the term. Each topic had approximately 20 learning objectives. Learning objectives under each topic emphasized and highlighted the inputs and processes required for teaching and learning such as ‘respect different points of view or develop and sustain a consistent argument when speaking or writing’. While such an approach to teaching and learning can be innovative, the existence of completely unrelated and vague sub-goals can leave for teachers ample room for personal interpretations and distortions. Sometimes, when information is too vague and overwhelming, the key details of the course that must be delivered to students can be lost, and the delivery of lessons can vary in quality and accuracy.

Based on the above-discussed insights, we found that, although most teachers understood the main idea and intention of the New Course Plan, they affirmed that the present course plan was the latest version that had been updated numerous times based on teacher feedback. Most teachers claimed that the previous course plans were too vague and that the learning objectives were too ambiguous; furthermore, they stated that the NIS Central Office changed them almost on a yearly basis. The teachers also said that the NIS Central Office did not consider regional differences when introducing the Course Plan to all Nazarbayev Intellectual School networks. For example, one experienced teacher stated, ‘In the northern regions or in bigger industrial cities, students enter the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools with a certain level of English. In the southern regions and in smaller peripheral areas of Kazakhstan, students do not have the same level of English when they enter school. Consequently, the contents of the course plan and its learning objectives were too difficult to comprehend and achieve not only for the students but also for the teachers in smaller cities’.

In some cases, the ambiguity of the contents and objectives and the target population’s unfamiliarity with them may bleed into perceptions of inequality and discrimination among teachers; one teacher explained: ‘There are students whose level of English is very low at our school. A teaching strategy such as differentiation is indicated in the course plan. This differentiation means that teachers have to find a way to include every student in the classroom despite their differences. However, paying special attention to a student whose English level is low actually discriminates against him’. The important thing to note here is that the teacher’s comments may not be a statement of fact, because differentiation does not mean that teachers should lower their expectations for certain students or devise different lessons for different children; rather, differentiation means teachers should employ the most appropriate methods at the most appropriate time. Although differentiation is not a form of discrimination, it is poorly understood by teachers.

Topics of the course plan

Furthermore, the interviewed teachers were uncertain about the topics of the course plan, particularly regarding discrete topics. The following comments from one respondent capture it in this way: ‘The contents of the course plan were related to another culture, which was not Kazakh. For example, although there may be topics on queer people in the course plan, these topics should be taught with discretion. However, most teachers did not understand these topics themselves or how to teach them to the children. Furthermore, queer topics are not relevant to our culture. In particular, the southern region is more traditional, and parents do not accept this kind of education. Thus, we must improvise most of the time’. Although there are strong elements of truth in teachers’ opinions, most discrete topics nonetheless entail teaching children to be tolerant and compassionate toward diversity and differences.

Learning materials of the course plan

Moreover, the learning materials of the course plan presented another concern for teachers. The interviewed teachers suggested that the existing learning materials and resources of the course plan were being introduced in ambiguous ways. According to the teachers, although the learning objectives were vast, and the content was diverse, the course plan materials and resources for teaching these objectives were very limited. While the absence of strict instructions with regard to certain materials may enable teachers to be creative, ambiguous expectations and a lack of resources could lead them to discard the course plan altogether.

Teachers’ perceptions concerning the benefits or drawbacks of the structure, knowledge, and materials of the course plan

Interpretation

The interviewed teachers stated that they referred to the requirements of learning objectives while planning their lessons. However, 16 teacher-participants in the current study expressed 16 different interpretations and divergent opinions toward accomplishing the Course Plan learning objectives and using its teaching materials. Rather than passively absorbing information, evidence suggests that teachers often actively engage with the information and interpret it in relation to various circumstances.

Boring and difficult to understand learning objectives and contents

However, more often, teachers expressed that they took only certain bits of information more seriously while discarding others because of the ambiguity and unfamiliarity of the contents and objectives. According to the teachers, the first ambiguity they faced was the structure of the learning objectives and contents in general. For instance, one teacher expressed his concerns regarding the structure as following: ‘I often ignore the objectives of the course plan. This was because there were too many objectives for 80 minutes—sometimes up to 10. Second, some of the objectives were too vague and difficult to understand’.

Another teacher explained the situation as follows: ‘I go beyond the Course Plan objectives. Honestly, I stick to my objectives only if my lessons are going to be observed. This is because the objectives are too long, boring, and difficult to understand for both teachers and students. Some objectives require a very lengthy explanations’.

Inconsistency of learning objectives and contents with summative tests

Regarding determining which particular piece of information they would take seriously, we found that, for most of the teachers, subjective factors played a major role in their assessment of information, such as ease of comprehending and explaining the relevant content. Sometimes, these subjective factors were colored not only by the emotions and personal preferences of teachers but also by the situational factors. This is because most teachers also confirmed that they actively sought out information in the Course Plan that confirmed the situational factors while looking at past information that did not. As one teacher stated, ‘We have summative tests on listening, speaking, writing, and reading at the end of each term. Students also take the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exams at the end of 12th grade. Not all course plan objectives relate to the improvement of these skills. That is why I only choose information that is related to the improvement of those skills’. Other teachers said that they completely ignored the information in the Course Plan and only prepared students for summative tests or IELTS exams throughout the year.

Inaccuracy of learning objectives and contents with students’ actual needs

However, for some teachers, who knew which information to take seriously, we found that ensuring consistency between the selected knowledge and the students’ actual needs appeared to be critical. Some teachers explained that they had to go beyond the learning objectives of the Course Plan because of the poor English proficiency of the students. For instance, one teacher said: ‘While planning my lessons, I try to simplify the Course Plan objectives or change them because—I must be honest here—we have these learning objectives for “genius” kids, but our students’ level of English is quite low’. Furthermore, the teachers also mentioned that, owing to the spiral content, most of the topics were ‘worn-out’ and repeated throughout the year. According to teachers, curriculum designers must consider students’ ideas to achieve a student-centered approach to education. Students must contribute to the development of basic curriculum topics.

Opinions about the lack of learning materials of the course plan

Crucially, the current study showed that, while some teachers felt ambiguity of information was the main reason for their different interpretations, others felt that it was the inaccuracy of information with students’ actual needs. However, regardless of whether the main content was too vague or inaccurate for the students’ levels or inconsistent with the test requirements, the lack of materials and resources to help teachers navigate through these ambiguities made things even more complicated. For instance, almost all the interviewed teachers asserted that the teaching materials and resources of the Course Plan were very limited. The teachers claimed that the teaching materials sometimes did not correspond to the learning objectives or that the provided materials were out-of-date. Therefore, the teachers had to spend more time searching for relevant materials and checking their reliability, which made them feel even more lost.

The teachers also mentioned the need for a central textbook that they could refer to when in doubt. This is because, according to the teachers, the innovative contents of the Course Plan and its learning objectives required a certain level of understanding and self-improvement, and they did not have the time to fulfil these requirements because they had to prepare for lessons and look for relevant materials all the time. As one teacher commented: ‘The course plan usually specifies the skills teachers should focus on working in a class with students. It identifies the strategies and activities that learners should obtain throughout the year. Thus the success of every lesson and success in summative test depends teachers’ skills and understanding. However, this requires correct implementation’.

Changes in the classroom practice as a result of the course plan implementation

Action

Double accounting

Once the relevant information was made available to the teachers and interpreted by them, the teachers decided whether and how to physically act upon it. Our findings show that the changes in classroom practices appeared to be much more influenced by teachers’ interpretations. Most teacher respondents who had been teaching for 9–10 years in both the Southern and Western regions, for example, explained that they had originally started preparing their lesson plans and teaching in the classroom with different intentions and expected outcomes. However, after being exposed to the Course Plan for several years, the teachers confessed that they had ended up redirecting their lesson preparations and teaching practices. As one teacher explained: ‘When the Course Plan was first introduced, we used to follow it. We used it to deliver contents and objectives in classroom practice. However, since we were not monitored and guided with regard to following it, we started redirecting our actions’. In this regard, another teacher also commented: ‘We have double accounting. In paperwork and for control purposes, we beautifully write that we have followed the objectives and materials of the Course Plan; however, in reality, we prepare students for exams during the classes’.

Although these teachers still had to go through paperwork to keep up with their double accounting, including looking for external information and resources to teach their classes, they still chose to do the hard work rather than absorb the ambiguous or unfamiliar information as it was. This can be seen from the response of an interviewed teacher: ‘For this lesson, I did not use any objectives from the Course Plan. The question of whether the students understood the material can be seen from the results of the tests conducted, essays written, and so on. It is impossible to see whether the objectives of the Course Plan have been achieved. The objectives of a Course Plan are difficult to understand and measure. Furthermore, to achieve some objectives of the Course Plan, one lesson is not enough; weeks, months, and even years may be required’.

Although the teachers spent a lot of time looking for external information and materials, they claimed that following the contents of the Course Plan and choosing appropriate learning objectives consistent with their personal preferences, local values, situational factors, and students’ needs consumed even more of their time.

Discussion

This exploratory case study was based on several expectations. First, teachers’ perceptions and interpretations played a critical role in the implementation of new curriculum reform strategies. Based on sense-making theory, we stated that the ways in which information about the new reforms were made available and interpreted and acted upon by teachers could make or break the reforms. Based on this theory, we assumed that there might still be certain information gaps in teachers’ cognition when implementing new reform strategies. This is because, although the implementation of an integrated curriculum at Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools has continued since 2013, it was still at the approval stage.

Overall, this study confirmed our expectations. This research showed that teachers play a substantial role in in implementing new reform strategies. It is teachers who interpreted and responded to information on educational reforms, whereby bringing about certain changes in the classroom practice.

In this sense, by answering Research Question 1, we found that, although the newly embedded Course Plan for teaching English was innovative, the ways through with the information of this Course Plan was made available to teachers were actually too vague, overwhelming, and unfamiliar to the target population. For example, the medium-term goals section of the Course Plan did not have specific directions for lessons, and the implementation planning for the Course Plan in the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools did not consider the specificities of smaller regions. Thus, as was expected in the theoretical framework, due to ambiguity and unfamiliarity of information provided, teachers were extremely uncertain about the contents, structure, knowledge, and materials of the new course plan.

Following this, by answering Research Question 2, we found that all teachers interpreted information differently, which widened the gap between the stated reform objectives and innovation outcomes. In particular, the research showed that, in the light of limited, inaccurate and unfamiliar information and different personal or political circumstances, teachers made various interpretations to bridge information gaps, which informed their further actions. For example, while some teachers looked past the information in the course plan because they thought it was boring, other teachers looked past the information in the course plan because they thought the learning objectives and contents of the course plan were inconsistent with summative tests or students’ actual needs. Although teachers could follow the course plan by devising it to students’ needs while preparing students for summative tests, they tended to discredit the unfamiliar or inaccurate to them information and interpreted and recalled the information in a way that confirmed their beliefs.

Finally, by answering Research Question 3, we found that, although teachers had to spend a lot of time looking for external information and materials from outside sources, they still preferred to carry out the hard work of double accounting rather than absorbing the ambiguous or unfamiliar information as it was. As Turner et al. (2014) discussed new reform produced gaps, ambiguities and puzzles that required sense making and teachers engaged in the wealth of sense making tactics to interpret and justify their potentially inconsistent behaviour to themselves and others. For example, although teachers had to follow top down formal requirements of the Course Plan, they engaged in double accounting beautifully writing that they have followed the objectives and materials of the Course Plan; while, in reality, preparing students for exams during the classes. Therefore, the actions of the teachers that produced physical responses to the information did not resemble the intended reform objectives and the evidence on whether this new initiative has been a success in classroom practice remains contested.

Overall, the findings of this research lend support to the results of the study by Li et al. (2020) who did a systemic review of 281 studies on integrated curriculum from 2009 to 2019 and revealed that despite its widespread adoption, the majority of teachers are implementing the curriculum without appropriate knowledge, skills and the support of suitable published materials and resource banks. Thus, despite the integrated curriculum has great potential to serve and prepare students in Kazakhstan for the future, as with any other reform, its implementation has faced several problems and challenges that must be addressed.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we have used this article to argue that, for curriculum reform measures to work, teachers as main agents must receive proper information, understand it, interpret it correctly, and respond in the intended manner. Considerations of such dynamics are often absent from discussions of language or curriculum policy. As research has shown, teachers were ready to accept innovations and were committed to implementing the required changes in classroom practice. However, most teachers did not understand or were not satisfied with the content, structure and materials of the course plan and with the kinds of information it provided to teachers. Consequently, they interpreted and recalled the information in a way that confirmed their beliefs and the actions of the teachers that produced physical responses to the information did not resemble the intended reform objectives.

Therefore, it is necessary for curriculum developers to identify what kinds of information teachers actually use from the Course Plan to organise their lessons and make the structure, contents, and learning objectives of the Course Plan more precise, familiar, and consistent with teachers’ needs. Regional differences between teachers and students and their abilities should also be considered when introducing a new course plan.

Second, merely making revisions in the curriculum based on teacher feedback is insufficient for avoiding future misinterpretations of information, and teacher involvement in the conceptual and developmental stages of the reform is necessary. Not only will this help them understand the underlying fundamentals of the reforms and expected outcomes, but it will also develop practice-bound teachers’ professionalism, which is defined not in terms of belonging to a particular political or cultural community but to a community of practice.

Third, the shortage of teaching materials should also be addressed. The current study results showed that the teachers wished to have a common textbook that would be designed based on the contents of the course plan. Instead of searching for external resources in order to accomplish learning objectives, teachers wished to use this time for self-development.

Finally, despite integrated curriculum design at NIS was a starting point for sound and well-crafted language policy and educational change in the country, according to Karabassova (2020) the Government failed to communicate the policy concepts to a wide range of stakeholders including curriculum developers and did not articulate clear and coherent guidelines for education instruction. Thus, the Government of Kazakhstan should communicate the policy objectives and concepts more effectively among both curriculum developers and teachers and provide clear guidelines for education instruction. For example, despite the order imposing the new curriculum came top down, the alternative viewpoint of a curriculum being a guide for teachers to adapt and develop should also be considered.

Overall, sense-making theory is a promising framework that could capture the meaning-making processes carried out by teachers while implementing curriculum reforms at particular Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools. However, the dynamics illustrated in this paper are highly localised in space and time and can change depending on the personal and political circumstances. Thus, the study has potential limitations and the final conclusions are not typically generalizable to other settings. Yet, the findings can be used for identifying the relevant dynamics in other contexts, thus serving as starting points for additional research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes on contributors

Danagul Yembergenova

Dr. Danagul Yembergenova is a Researcher at Nazarbayev University. She is a former doctoral researcher at the University of Geneva. Her specific topics of interest include research in the field of education, starting with education management, educational leadership, education policy, language education, technology transfer in higher education and ending with implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in higher education institutions.

Akbota Mamadiyar

Akbota Mamadiyar is a teacher of English language at Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan. She has completed Korkyt Ata Sate University in Kyzylorda, the faculty of English language in 2006 and Leicester University, Master in Educational Leadership in 2016. Her research interests include curriculum innovations, teachers’ professional development and Lesson Study.

Serik Zhaiyrbayev

Serik Zhaiyrbayev is a teacher of Global Perspectives and Projects Works at Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan. He has completed Korkyt Ata Sate University in Kyzylorda, the faculty of World History in 2006 and Leicester University, Master in Educational Leadership in 2016. His research interests are connected with the innovations in educational sphere.

Ajit Kumar

Dr. Ajit Kumar is an Assistant Professor at Galgotias University. His research interests include management, strategic management, innovation, Change Management, strategic thinking