Schooling future citizens : citizenship education in Kazakhstan /

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Student Theses

2023

Bozymbekova, Kuralay

Hong Kong : The Education University of Hong Kong

Thesis

Citizenship education can be an instrument for strengthening the legitimacy of the state. This study has investigated the perceptions and manifestation of citizenship education in secondary schools in Kazakhstan. Employing a multi-scalar approach, the study has explored the manifestation of citizenship education in schools at the meso-level and classrooms at the micro-level. However, encompassing the conversation are the larger societal ideals, political regime, and the national political rhetoric for citizenship at the macro-level. The study employed the comparative case study approach by Bartlett and Vavrus (2016). Eight schools were selected for the study as cases. Rather than bounding the cases, the study sought to analyze citizenship education through vertical, horizontal, and transversal axes of comparison. The vertical axis drew comparison on how educators respond to state directives and regime demands; at the same time, it helped juxtapose how institutional and structural conditions of schools influenced on teacher perceptions. On the horizontal axis, a comparison was drawn across teachers as units, allowing to understand how teachers adapt citizenship education into their subject curriculum. Transversal axis helped consider the historical factors that shape citizenship education in schools. The study found that teachers' citizenship and citizenship education conceptions fall into broadly three distinctive categories - character-driven, knowledge-driven, and action-driven. However, the authoritarian state regime and policy discourse of economic development before democratization fosters a patriotic and broadly pragmatic outlook on citizenship, hence, active citizenship often implies participation within the bounds of a tightly controlled society. The study found that teacher conceptions do not always align with the manifested citizenship education due to the institutional concerns and structural issues within schools. Nonetheless, history teachers especially demonstrated concern over the influence of the political regime on the development of democratic citizenship education in schools. The study found history to be a valuable subject for the development of democratic citizenship education. Teachers can navigate the constraints of the authoritarian regime and censorship for democratic citizenship using a critical historical perspective in which traditional civics or social studies classrooms may not always afford. As an empirical contribution, this study introduces the relatively unknown Central Asian perspective to the citizenship education literature and broadens the scope of the contemporary post-Soviet perspective. It highlights how contested Western ideas of democratic citizenship can be shaped differently in non-Western authoritarian contexts. As a theoretical significance, the study offers a new lens of considering school-based and classroom-level citizenship education which highlights the interactions of and discrepancies between citizenship conceptions and broader school culture. Regarding the practical and policy contribution, the study highlights the significance of political, cultural, institutional, and pedagogical contexts for addressing the current challenges in implementing citizenship education in schools and outlines the need for renegotiation of the role and status of civic education in the official curriculum plan

LG51.H43 Dr 2023eb Bozymbekovak

https://educoll.lib.eduhk.hk/records/7tQSEzJK