Importing education: Europeanisation and the Bologna Process in Europe’s backyard—The case of Kazakhstan

Abstract

This article studies the problem of the implementation of European educational standards in Kazakhstan higher education. This is considered in the frame of post-socialist education, when reforms in several post-Soviet states were undertaken under the Bologna Process. Kazakhstan, as this article argues, is justified for consideration in the frame of those post-Soviet countries involved in the Bologna Process (the Caucasus and the Baltic states) rather than in the context of neighboring Central Asian countries, which is the case found typically in the existing literature. The outcome derives from the nature of educational reforms in Kazakhstan undertaken at the system level similar to those of states that joined the European Higher Education Area. The theme is grounded in the theory of educational policy borrowing and focuses on how the borrowed patterns display themselves in the local Kazakhstan context and how they are "recontextualized" there. This article draws upon the analysis of interviews with teaching professionals conducted in four Kazakhstan higher education institutions. While the typical package of the standards of the Bologna Process to be implemented includes a wide range of norms, this article is limited by the analysis of the implementation of a testing system in Kazakhstan higher education.

From pedagogy to quality: the Europeanised experience of higher education in post-Soviet Armenia

“…This shows how local discursive and meaning-making contexts are re-contextualised or de-contextualised (as in case of pedagogy). ‘Educational borrowing’ is evident in most post-socialist countries where they voluntarily adopted international educational models and practices (Tampayeva, 2015: 75; Silova, 2004; Steiner-Khamsi, 2012) and, as argued in this paper, exhibited European managerial identities (or those perceived as such) through imitation as displayed by those academic community representatives concerned about educational issues in Armenia. In this respect the necessity of recognising the dynamic interaction between international pressures for Westernisation, as related to their ‘me’, and the constraints imposed by Soviet legacies, as related to their ‘I’, becomes critical in the context of the emergent discursive power of Western models (Silova, 2002).…”

Factors influencing the legal regulation and management of education system in Kazakhstan: a review and analysis

“…This also includes introducing virtual and distance education (Piven & Pak, 2006); an idea of the expansion of Western educational values ( . In light of the study of the problems of the Bologna process, two directions of its assessment are clearly distinguished from a negative understanding of this process, inclined towards westernization (Tampayeva, 2015), to the idea of it as the most effective way of achieving the quality and competitiveness of national higher education (Yakavets, 2014).…”

“…However, the contradictory nature of the educational standards and the norms of civil, tax, budget, labor, and other branches of the legislation raises the question of the priority of a particular industry in regulating educational legal relations (Yakavets, 2014). The jurisprudence demonstrates examples when the norms of civil, administrative, tax, and other branches of law are applied without considering the specifics of educational legal relations, which leads to an infringement of the rights of partici-pants in these legal relations and to restrain the development of the education sector (Tampayeva, 2015). However, this does not solve the problem of correlation in legal regulation of the sphere of education of norms of various branches of legislation.…”

Concepts of quality in independent accreditation in Kyrgyzstan

“…However, economic and financial statuses of the Central Asian countries are different, and that impacts the educational reforms in five Central Asian countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Thus Tampayeva (2015) analyzed the implementation of a testing system in Kazakhstan higher education and discussed the western researchers' view on educational reforms in Central Asian countries under the umbrella of "European standards." Kazakhstan's situation is different from Kyrgyzstan's mainly in terms of funding; according to Kalikova and Silova (2008) as cited by Tampayeva (2015), Kazakhstan is "the most -donor independent country in Central Asia and the Caucasus" (p. 76), while Kyrgyzstan is pretty much dependent on international donors to fund higher education reforms.…”