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This critical interpretive paper deploys Walter Mignolo's geopolitics of knowledge concept to examine higher education internationalisation in Kazakhstan. Amidst growing concerns about economic and environmental sustainability, elitism and cognitive justice, among other critical issues, internationalisation remains a vital government policy. By tracing Kazakhstan's development since independence from the Soviet Union and focusing on key higher education development policy frameworks, the paper argues and illustrates that: (1) the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan promotes a specific representation of the world that is considered universal and modern; (2) the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan illustrates the existing hierarchical global higher education system that is dominated by the West as centres of knowledge and learning while allocating other countries peripheral roles; and (3) the geopolitics of knowledge concept enables the reading of higher education internationalisation beyond what is knowledge to who, why and where knowledge is produced. The data for this paper came from a qualitative study that involved 15 semi-structured interviews with graduates who studied abroad at Western universities through the government-sponsored Bolashak Scholarship. Three focus group sessions with 21 graduate students at Nazarbayev University complemented the interviews. The qualitative data suggest that Mignolo's geopolitics of knowledge offers a close-to-perfect description of the internationalisation of higher education in Kazakhstan. The conclusion drawn from this post-Soviet study is the universalisation of Western knowledge as nations utilise it for meaningful development, despite decolonial and cognitive justice concerns.

The paper examines the degree of digitalization of Academic Writing and Information Literacy (hereafter AW & IL) course in the countries of the post-Soviet era. Numerous research demonstrated that digital transformation has taken place toward the teaching of AW & IL in most of the developed countries and beyond, yet little is studied about the digitalization in countries of the former Soviet Union that have passed a long way to align their education with the globe. Keeping up with the four main categories of digitalization, the paper will look at its application as a part of curriculum development, assessment, students' competency, and university maintenance. The paper employs a phenomenological approach confirmed through the qualitative analysis of 18 in-depth interviews conducted with AW & IL instructors from nine countries. The study revealed that recently AW & IL course has moved through partial digitalization, providing that the university stakeholders do not exert any necessary support.

Soviet higher education had a distinctive institutional landscape. It combined two institutional types in a uniform model that embedded higher education in the national economy. This paper focuses on the post-Soviet system-level changes in the institutional landscape in all 15 countries of the former USSR. It shows that over last three decades the Soviet two-type institutional model evolved into a three-type model, with the specialized university as a new institutional type. Highlighting the instruments of horizontal and vertical differentiation for each country, the paper explains how structural reforms and market forces led to the rise of the university/multiversity form of institution, and the strengthening of vertical stratification at system level. The comparative analysis shows that there have been different patterns of transformation in the 15 countries, shaped by unique combinations of structural reforms and marketization policies, with certain countries having made more distinctive steps away from the Soviet institutional model. There are now 15 formally different systems of higher education which poses further questions for comparative analysis.

The current trends in professional military education and professional activity of special military school graduates as future officers require a more thorough and detailed approach not only to assessing the development of their professional and general competencies, but also constant monitoring of the quality of curricula and speciality-oriented study guides. This paper provides a brief substantiation for the need to create an internal automated programme adapted to the capabilities of a special military school and designed for self-assessment of the quality of cadets' training and key performance indicators for evaluating the training process. The paper also describes the current developments on this matter, proposes approaches to the solution and offers some recommendations. The present paper also presents the results of an empirical study on evaluating the cadets' satisfaction with the quality of teaching and customers' satisfaction with the degree of readiness of special military school graduates. This study is prepared and published within the framework of the grant research project "Development of a comprehensive methodology for evaluating the quality of education of special military school graduates" by order of the Committee of Science of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Research methods: theoretical analysis, generalisation, comparison, modelling, survey, SPSS data processing, interpretation. Expected results: substantiation of the key performance indicators of the educational activities of the special military school, the results of the survey on two samples.

The pandemic resulted in countless tips about how technology can replace face-to-face instruction. This paper illustrates how pedagogical philosophies can impact online course decisions and how a PCK frame offers a gateway for thinking about epistemological access and social justice during Emergency Online Teaching (EOT). This research followed an intrinsic case study design including multiple data sets that were analyzed through inductive, deductive, and axial coding before generalizing patterns across students' reflective journals, FlipGrid recordings, daily tasks, and end-of-course feedback. The results showed that a collaborative online community of practice, self-directed learning, and integrated assessment provided student access and encouraged voice and engagement. Thus, post-COVID-19 PCK holds potential for instructional design and emancipatory online pedagogies in higher education.

Globally, scholarships for international higher education play a critical role in human capital development. While substantial research has documented the benefits such scholarships provide for individuals, their impact on the creation of pathways for social change remains under-researched. This paper bridges this gap by examining the extent to which a government scholarship for international education has created pathways for social change in Kazakhstan. Data were collected through interviews with 67 scholarship alumni. Drawing on Dassin et al.'s (2018) framework for pathways to social change, the findings reveal that international education fosters social change in Kazakhstan in four ways. First, the scholarship program develops local talent and builds agents of change. Second, it widens access to international education, particularly for individuals from marginalized communities, who would otherwise lack access owing to their scarce financial resources. Third, the program develops alumni's cosmopolitan and intercultural competencies and strengthens international collaborations. Finally, it creates associations and groups through which alumni can collectively contribute to society. The findings highlight that while the interviewed alumni foster strong patriotic feelings and are determined to contribute to the prosperity of their country, underdeveloped industries, economic volatility, and top-down bureaucracy in workplaces limit their potential contributions to social changes. These findings may help policymakers and administrators to reconsider and improve on the design and structure of scholarship programs.

The paper analyses an institutional approach and international faculty responses to implementation of social-distancing measures during COVID-19 on a residential campus of an international university in Kazakhstan. Terror-Management Theory is used to interpret the behavioral responses of the faculty. The theory predicts three types of international faculty responses to the conscious fear of death from COVID-19--death avoidance, death acceptance, and death negation. These responses determine the extent of compliance with social distance-control measures. In addition three anxiety-buffering mechanisms proposed by the theory--commitment to particular worldviews, self-esteem enhancement and maintenance of social connections--serve as factors of variation in responses. Implications are drawn from the results about the relevance of the theory to the analysis of campus population responses to COVID-19-control measures on domestic and international campuses. Recommendations for university administrators at international universities are made about managing the three types of responses.

This qualitative analysis describes the socialist legacy in the governance of higher education within the former Soviet-led member countries that entered the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) between 2001 and 2010. In joining the EHEA these countries signed on for the Bologna Process (BP), but are not members of the European Union. The analysis is based on EHEA BP Country Reports and a survey of Western academic literature and sources from the former-socialist region. It is argued that ministries of education are little engaged with academic and civic communities, in large part because policymakers underestimate the depth of the cultural and institutional changes that are necessary for educational reforms. Therefore, deep convergence of the new signatory countries to the EHEA via the BP has not occurred. Concurrently, West European measures intended to empower educational communities operate perversely in the post-socialist region, characterised by low civic and state capacities. The over-emphasis on bureaucratic checks and controls negates two important aspirations of Bologna: on the one side, university autonomy, empowerment of faculty, and development of local communities; and on the other side, the free flow of international knowledge. Without an adjustment of policies, the prospects for effective reforms are dimmed.

Modern society stands in need of a next-generation teacher, in the light of which this study acquires particular relevance. The paper investigates the urgent issue of modern pedagogy -- the study of the scientific foundations of the methodology for preparing future computer sciences teachers for the development of electronic educational resources. In the study, the following general scientific methods were used: logical-historical method, pedagogical observation, analysis, synthesis, systematisation and generalisation, methods of pedagogical experiment, methods of mathematical statistics. The authors propose criteria and indicators of the readiness of future informatics teachers to develop electronic educational resources, as well as levels to identify the readiness of future informatics teachers to create electronic educational resources. In the paper, the authors share the results of an experiment to determine the suitability of their proposed methodology, describe the ways of forming the skills of future teachers to develop EER.

The paper deals with the scientific analysis in the sphere of social and pedagogical education and with the professional self-development of future teachers. In the paper the structure of the professional development that introduces the interconnection of the four members is presented: self-identification, self-esteem, self-determination, self-government. Attention is focused on the integrity of the system of self-development of a social pedagogue as a competent specialist, who also possesses a set of general culture of personality with professionally significant qualities. The theoretical bases of social and pedagogical support, its essence and content are considered. The role of practice as an integrative component of the professional development of a specialist is emphasized. The necessity of introducing the self-development trajectory in the educational process for successful professional formation of a future social teacher is acknowledged. The paper is intended for researchers and educators involved in the training of future social pedagogues.

This paper examines college students` participation behaviors and the use of social media tools. The descriptive survey model was applied to investigate university students' participation behaviors. The data was collected through a "Participation Questionnaire" from 284 college students in Kazakhstan. The result showed that students who spend less time on social media are positively related to participatory citizenship. Moreover, students with fewer social media accounts are more likely to engage in political, volunteer, and social events than students with fewer social media accounts.

The purpose of this paper is to identify protective factors for students' anxiety management under exam stress. Students experience a range of negative emotions in addition to exam anxiety throughout university exams including stress, fear of knowledge assessments and fear of low performance. However, students' exam preparation and passing can be changed by identifying protective factors for exam stress coping while focusing less on reducing risk factors. Possible protective factors for exam anxiety coping in the present study were resilience, self-efficacy, stress tolerance, overall life satisfaction and coping behavior. In general, our assumption was confirmed that stress tolerance, proactive coping behavior, overall life satisfaction and resilience are the most important factors in overcoming exam fear. Self-efficacy as a latent factor that has a significant impact on overcoming exam fear was not identified. The study validated that stress tolerance, proactive coping, life satisfaction and resilience are pivotal in conquering exam-related fear. However, self-efficacy did not emerge as a significant factor.

In this time of disinformation and misinformation, libraries remain a reliable source of truthful and factual information. As they fervently support the agenda of lifelong learning, libraries recognise that there are various influences that redefine the process of student learning. Admittedly, librarians need to be more creative in motivating post-millennial students to help them fully develop their Media and Information Literacy (MIL) skills. This paper explores how games are adopted and utilised by academic libraries as an interactive approach to entice students to learn essential MIL competencies. It shows how games can be a viable tool not only to deliver information literacy (IL) instruction in a collaborative learning environment but to also effectively engage and attract students to use the library resources and services. While the use of games is not novel, the way it is delivered and re-purposed to meet MIL competencies is vital for today's young generation of learners. This report demonstrates how two academic libraries in the Philippines and Kazakhstan were able to embed MIL skills through a library race challenge. Furthermore, this paper discusses the practical steps undertaken in the preparation of the game as well as the observations made during and after the activity was conducted. From this, other libraries may gain insights and best practices on how to leverage this method to further champion MIL in their own communities.

The main idea behind single-sex schooling is to reduce the interaction with the opposite sex for better academic, social and emotional development in a belief that this safe environment will eliminate destruction arrived created from opposite-sex classmates. In fact, single-sex schooling results in a decrease in the likelihood of attending the party and having romantic relationships at adolescence (Cardona, Kaufmann, 2017). But, does this perpetuate better outcomes in the short and long run for participants of this schooling type is an abiding interest in many studies? Debates over the pros and cons of single-sex schooling are widespread and some papers are taking an ideological stand, and holding upon polarizing views (Gordillo, 2017). Gordillo (2017) analyzed some meta-analysis studies and found that these papers did not include valuable research papers with opposing findings which give doubtful conclusions. Most of the existing studies evaluated the academic attainment of single-sex school students and comparative analyses are done to cross-analyze with coeducational students' achievement. This paper, on another hand, focuses on how single-sex school graduates find it challenging their relationship with the opposite sex in mixed-sex spaces in the post-school period. This study particularly focused upon challenges in relationships with individuals of the opposite sex at university, work-space and with the spouse. The study is taken place at Kazakhstan's educational foundations which run both single-sex and coeducational schools. Findings reveal graduates of single-sex schools have not faced significant challenges in relationships with the opposite sex at university, work-space, and spouse compared to coeducational school graduates.

Purpose: Academics' perceptions of the motives of the introduction of quality management are still rarely investigated, particularly in Central Asian countries. Thus, this paper aims to understand the internal dynamics of organisational change within higher education institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents evidence from an online survey of academics from three Kazakh national universities. Their perceptions are presented with a quantitative descriptive approach using means and standard deviations. Findings: The results show that academics perceive institutional (e.g. regulations, professional standards, existing norms, etc.) and instrumental explanations (e.g. institutional learning, improvement, intra- and inter-organisational competition, etc.) of the introduction of quality management as equally important. This contradicts existing evidence from surveys of other groups within higher education institutions. Originality/value: In addition to evaluating the literature, the paper combines institutional and instrumental reasons for the introduction of quality management in Kazakh universities. Taking a perspective centred on academics, the results indicate that scholars' assessments reveal a comparatively low variance regarding the importance of quality management. Based on these results, the paper suggests that empirical studies need to be broadened with comparative perspectives from different organisational contexts, groups and administrative traditions.

This paper aims to investigate early career researchers' (ECR) needs and barriers in conducting research at Kazakhstani regional universities employing a mixed methods research design with the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data. We surveyed one hundred and twenty university academic staff undertaking the first stages of their research careers at the higher education institutions of West Kazakhstan in the cities of Aktau, Aktobe, Atyrau, and Oral to understand the needs and challenges faced by this community better. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the research administration of the above-stated institutions to understand the issues under study. Understanding these issues is central to developing informed policies for promoting teacher research engagement, as well as taking steps to build the research capacity of university academic staff in their early research career. The study depicts that the university academic staff, in their early research career, face barriers such as the lack of time to conduct research, the difficulty in publishing research, and the lack of research mentorship and university support. The study resulted in the relation of ECRs' knowledge of languages to their research experience, and the ECRs' research directions are as well associated with their (1) conducting research for enhancing teaching skills, (2) applying for research grants, and (3) receiving research funding adds to a deeper understanding of the ECRs' research needs and barriers. Kazakhstani regional universities' ECRs need specifically targeted policies to be undertaken to facilitate their research careers.

This explanatory sequential mixed-method study explored the effectiveness of blended learning (BL) courses offered to graduate students at an English medium university in Kazakhstan. The study's purpose was to explore and understand graduate students' experiences while enrolled in BL courses by learning their perceptions of the benefits and challenges of BL, as well as its potential for enhancing their teacher leadership skills. A survey (n=81) and semi-structured individual interviews (n=17) were used as the main research instruments. This allowed for a detailed and rich data set on the conceptual underpinnings of the BL courses, their effectiveness, and their potential to inform higher education institutions towards implementing BL policies and practices, specifically in the field of education. Through the lens of the Interaction equivalency theorem, we analyzed students' experiences and their interactions with their teachers and peers, as well as the mode, place, and pace of learning. This investigation revealed that the benefits of learning using BL outweighed its challenges. However, most of the participants preferred the face-to-face part of the BL course over its online teacher-student interaction component due to the opportunity to gain immediate feedback. Most importantly, the BL courses facilitated the enhancement of teacher leadership skills among the students. Finally, the paper provides recommendations for further development and revisions to current BL courses to enhance their learning value.

The paper aims at determining the principles of participative management and the nuances of their implementation into integrated e-learning, which complements the traditional forms of education in emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The research uses a semi-structured questionnaire adapted from Dashkova for the education sphere and developed with the consideration of participative management principles. The survey involved 289 students and 293 university teachers. The study found that participative management is the best approach to integrating e-learning into the education process. It ensures effective communication contributing to the uniting of objectives of all participants by expanding their engagement in the management of the education process. Assessment and recognition of participative management in university may be one realistic scenario for more rapid adaptation and effective implementation of diverse learning trajectories.

This special issue expands the scope of a panel presentation at the Society for Research into Higher Education Annual Conference 2019 and makes two identified contributions to the field. First, drawing from existing literature, this introductory paper proposes three categorisations of employability as: outcomes approach, process approach and conceptual approaches. This moves beyond normative conceptualisation of employability from mostly the outcomes approach. The applicability of the categorisation is further enumerated by the diversity of contributions in this special issue that highlights (a) the complexity in the field and (b) the interrelatedness of the categories. Second, the special issue puts together a rarely combined collection of global perspectives on conceptualisations of employability, and insights from research on little studied groups in Western and non-Western contexts (the UK, Portugal, Australia, the Indo-Pacific Region, Germany, Kenya and Kazakhstan). The papers, therefore, illustrate the need to widen our scope of understanding employability beyond current dominant perspectives. The broadening that is required in employability discourses is further needed in view of unprecedented disruption brought on higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic. This suggests the need to rethink our conceptualisations of employability amidst uncertainty and potential disruption to the future of work.

Campus crisis management remains an understudied topic in the context of COVID-affected higher education. In this paper, we contrasted the ability to tame the wicked problems brought by the pandemic of COVID-19 in private and public universities in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Colombia, India, Kazakhstan, Uganda, and Ukraine. The cross-country analysis and diversity of institutional types allowed us to consider a wide range of challenges faced by academic leaders and their institutions during the global pandemic. By drawing on institutional policy reviews and interviews with university administrators, we have examined tensions between the human and institutional agencies on these crisis-stricken campuses given differing institutional coupling, sizes, resources, and missions. The focus on agential co-dependencies and institutional coupling lays the ground for conceptualizing campus crisis management as a culturally specific construct in the context of higher education affected by the global pandemic.

Both internationalization of higher education and use of English as a global language (EGL) coexist, for the latter is a vital tool to attain the former and vice versa. Although the former came into existence in non-native English-speaking countries in Europe, and the latter became the major medium of instruction at universities with the de facto 'extraterritorial' lingua franca, research into international students' issues has mainly been conducted in English-speaking countries. This paper, therefore, aims to explore such value and use of EGL in a higher education internationalization context in Bulgaria. With the qualitative research approach, two themes emerge, answering two research questions. The results collected from 13 students from European and former Soviet backgrounds offer insights into linguistic, cultural, and psychological challenges international students tend to encounter as well as determinants that impact their adjustment.

This paper explores the contemporary relationship between international student migration and diaspora formation. It argues that international students have been largely absent from recent discussions of 'knowledge diasporas', where migrants' 'home' states attempt to harness and co-opt the skills and knowledge of their émigrés. This is surprising, given students' evident role in knowledge circulation and exchange. In this paper, we foreground the significance of international students but also explore their relationship to diaspora formation from a different angle. We argue that some states are increasingly engaging in (sometimes seemingly contradictory) policies designed to "obstruct" overseas diaspora formation, and these policies centre on their international student populations. Through a number of case studies and drawing on the secondary literature, we demonstrate the ways in which states are strategising to repatriate international students following their studies overseas. More broadly, we argue, this represents an alternative to popular notions of brain circulation and knowledge diasporas, chiming with a far more long-standing concern with 'brain drain'.

Purpose: This study examines diaspora engagement and return migration programs aimed at providing diaspora youth with an opportunity to obtain higher education in Estonia and Kazakhstan. In particular, the authors sought to identify the main motivations, benefits and challenges of the programs, as well as understand how the programs contribute to the ethnic identity formation of diaspora students. Design/methodology/approach: The paper employed a qualitative multiple-case study research design. In both countries, data were collected by means of 26 semi-structured interviews with return migrant students and experts involved in implementing the programs. Findings: The study findings suggest that the primary motivations for diaspora youth to return to their homelands are tuition-free higher education, financial support and repatriation prospects in both countries. In Estonia, the scholarship holders struggled with language requirements for university admissions, the cost of living insufficiently covered by the monthly stipend and limited integration opportunities. In Kazakhstan, the students had to face the Russian language barrier and socio-cultural marginalization in their everyday life. It was also found that the return migrant students in Estonia and Kazakhstan develop hybrid identities to integrate into their domestic society. They reinforce their ethnic identities and negotiate their diasporic identities to make sense of their own background and cultural heritage and acclimatize to life in the new context. Originality/value: The study provides practical implications for policy implementers and policymakers in Estonia and Kazakhstan. It can also be useful for the worldwide research community interested in exploring education-oriented diaspora engagement and return migration programs and their influence on the ethnic identity of diaspora students.

The paper examines Kazakhstan's decision to join the Bologna Process (BP), its implementation, and its impact on the higher education system in the country. Many post-Soviet countries have joined the BP, while many developing countries are also aligning their higher education systems with it. A diverse body of literature attempts to address the questions as to why do countries engage in policy borrowing and what makes it successful. Through our in-depth primary case study of Kazakhstan and a comparative assessment of similar cases in the post-Soviet space researched by other scholars, we make twofold contribution to this literature. First, we argue that governments often borrow policies with less clearer objectives, making it difficult to evaluate 'success' or 'failure' of the policy transfer. Second, differentiating between the success of policy transfer itself and the achievement of its perceived or real goals, we contend that the success of policy transfer is not a guarantee for the achievement of policies' original objectives which may be disappointing for both exporting and importing parties. In that, wide-ranging socio-political institutional differences explain the varied rationales and outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to observe prospective teachers' cognitive structures related to Turkish World. In this scanning model study, WAT (Word Association Test) had been applied to 332 prospective teachers in Nigde Ömer Halisdemir University. And they were asked to write what comes into their heads when it is said Turkish Republics and Turkish World. Words were given to the prospective teachers. According to the research, "Turk" is the only common Word which is related to the concept of six independent Turkish Republics and Turkish World. There is no any other common word except this, perceived by prospective teachers. Students generally independent Turkish Republic and Turkey they do not have a lot of information and perceptions about the world; they know the general concept of popular culture, it said they did not know specific concepts or people belonging to the country. Independent of the Turkish states K.K.T.C. It has become the most irrelevant and disconnected with other countries. K.K.T.C. with the only common link between other countries "Turkey" was the word. Students are most perceptive grasp of Azerbaijan, while country-owned; they have been gripping the country at least perceptually Uzbekistan. [This article was presented at the 3rd International Dynamic, Exploratory and Active Learning Conference (IDEAL 2016).]

It seems obvious that that educational activity establishes conditions for the development of a person capable of combining ancestral traditions and values while maintaining their distinctive ethnoculture. This paper investigates how integrating ethnocultural material into English for Specific Purposes (ESP) university courses contributes to nation-building and students' identity development while at the same time exerting impact on ESP curriculum advancement. The empirical part of the research involved 104 first-year engineering students learning English as a foreign language for specific purposes. The experiment demonstrated that exposing students to regional material and enabling them to communicate in English about their region empowers them in their national and regional identity, while contributing to nation-building goals of university education. The findings of the study reveal that integrating ethnocultural material into ESP university courses positively impacts both students' motivation and their national identity development.

Like in many Global South countries, the vocational education and training system in Kazakhstan has some weaknesses, including low-competent educators poorly applying digital technologies in their instructional repertoire, which highlights the need for motivating teachers towards incorporating technologies representing students' everyday life in the educational process. Meanwhile, there are no practically applicable competency frameworks for Kazakhstani vocational teachers to date. This paper aimed to gather students' opinions on which skills are more or less important for vocational educators to outline a technological competency framework for Kazakhstani vocational teachers based on Digital Competency Profiler, with content validity tested by five experts. A set of nineteen items measured on a five-point Likert scale, organized into technical, communicational, informational, and epistemological domains, was uploaded to an online survey platform and distributed among Master degree students enrolled in vocational programs in Kazakhstan. Based on survey data, the construct validity of the model was assessed by confirmatory factor analysis, which yielded high entire reliability and internal consistency. The learners assigned importance to all the four domains. However, they estimated vocational teacher's ability to utilize productivity tracking tools as almost futile, which allegedly indicates the surveyees' insufficient awareness about those applications and their purposes. Generally, the participants tend to prioritize vocational educators' capacities to process mathematical computations, visualize numerical data, and operate with electronic text files and projectors, as well as their readiness for effective communication through messengers and electronic mail. The framework that emerged from this research can be used as a blueprint for synchronizing and improving educational programs in Kazakhstan.

The current paper reports the findings of a comparative study about the curricula designed for the English language teacher education programs (ELTEPs) in two countries, namely Kazakhstan and Turkey. The comparative analysis of the curricula focuses on the specific courses taken by the prospective teachers of English in each country. The courses are grouped under the categories of linguistic competence/L2 proficiency, pedagogic competence, and managerial competence to analyze the similarities, and differences between the two curricula. The findings show that the ELTEP curriculum in Turkey offers a substantial number of pedagogic courses whereas it offers considerably fewer courses related to improving student teachers' linguistic competence. Although the Kazakhstani ELTEP curriculum incorporates and balances the linguistic and pedagogic competencies to a certain degree, less importance is attached to foreign language teaching methodology courses. The study highlights the need of increasing the number of foreign language teaching methodology courses addressing the pre-service teacher's pedagogic competence in the Kazakhstani ELTEP. Furthermore, the study reveals the non-course-related similarities and differences between the ELTEPs in Turkey and Kazakhstan in the following variables: the length of education, the total number of credits needed for graduation, the practicum length, the school types where graduates can work after graduation, and the steps they have to take to start teaching officially.

Based on the definition of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs can be considered as risk-takers. The literature contains conflicting theories as to whether risk-taking can be influenced by external factors. The current paper investigates the effect of entrepreneurship education and collaborative environment on financial risk-taking behavior among university-age young people. To this end, an online survey was conducted involving 510 participants and various statistical tests were utilized to test the research hypothesis. To measure financial risk-taking propensity, the Choice Dilemma Questionnaire methodology was implemented. The results of the analysis reveal that both the level of entrepreneurship education and a collaborative environment increase financial risk-taking. Moreover, multiple linear regression methodology was used to capture the significant factors that influence financial risk-taking when investing alone and investing in a collaborative environment. As a policy recommendation, the authors suggest that an entrepreneurship training curriculum should be developed that incorporates the various activities and elements of a collaborative environment.

The background of this paper is to present how education system of Kazakhstan evolved during the last 24 years of independence, highlighting the contemporary transformational processes. We defined the aim to identify the education quality in the context of competence-based approach. Methods: Analysis of references, interviewing, experimental work. Results: Education quality problems are revealed according to the results of the analysis of the state system of vocational education of the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is shown that the learning results description in the context of the competence approach is important at this stage of education system development. It is given recommendations on education quality assurance of the Republic of Kazakhstan in the context of competence-based approach. The novelty of the paper is that quality issues are considered in relation to VET and higher education, it is proposed to use the positive experience of each system. Conclusion: it is possible to solve many of these problems through the development of the National Qualifications Network based on the principles of the European Qualifications Network.

Kazakhstan, having joined the Bologna Declaration in 2010, committed itself to modernize the higher education in general and make a fundamental change in the approach to the development of regulations, in particular, the educational programs. The article describes the basic concepts of the problem, provides an overview of the regulatory frame-work and grounds modern approaches and the design algorithm of educational training programs. The purpose of this paper is to provide information about the current reform of higher education in Kazakhstan, about the problems and deficits occurring in this area, and about ways to correct unwelcome developments. The paper provides a review of appropriate programmatic documents, on the one hand, and of the results of relevant empirical studies on the other. On this basis deficits and risks of the Kazakhstan higher education policy are identified and feasible solutions discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to build and test a framework of four factors stakeholders in postgraduate higher education institutions in Kazakhstan perceive as supporting or hindering language development in English-medium programs. Data in this mixed-methods study were collected through student surveys and interviews with students, faculty and administration from six universities across Kazakhstan. Factor analysis confirmed the value of structural, pedagogical, sociolinguistic, and cultural factors for language development. Quantitative and qualitative data demonstrated that respondents highly valued structural factors such as academic mobility abroad and having an opportunity to interact with international faculty. However, they were less satisfied with national and university policies on the implementation of EMI. Additional structural factors including: a significant lack of pedagogical trainings, lack of collaboration with EFL instructors for curriculum development, and low overall English language proficiency of faculty and students, led to pedagogical challenges in classrooms. These challenges were somewhat mitigated by translanguaging practices. The sociolinguistic factors scale demonstrated that out of three languages, Russian was the most prevalent on campuses, which, according to qualitative data, creates pressure to maintain English. Finally, the cultural factors data revealed that students were highly motivated for their ideal self, whereas institutions strived to be research-oriented and included in the international ranking lists. Based on these findings, it is recommended that curricula be adjusted to include spaces for multilingual practices, and that faculty be provided support in teaching in English through professional development courses.

Achieving the maximum efficiency in teaching a second language (L2) has always been an important issue for educators. Current globalization processes, development of international business relations, political integrations among the various countries throughout the world, and the abilities of latest information and communications technologies (ICT) dictate the more significance of knowledge of foreign languages. All living conditions should be constructed according to the mentioned surrounding changes during the ICT era. Correspondingly, teaching methodologies are also being adapted in order to teach people more efficiently. This paper studies how cellular phones (cell phones) can be used in learning English phrases. In order to examine the impact of cell phones on learning a language an experiment was run among the college and university students in Kazakhstan, supported by GSM Network of KCell (Kazakhstan). This paper discusses the experiment results, in which 126 college and university students participated, and makes some suggestions based on the experimental mobile learning. Study reveals that users could make noticeable improvements learning through their cell phones after the conducted experiment. Positive improvements were noticed on the results of general tests of English language those conducted among all participants of the research.