emotional challenge for the teachers for the reasons explained in the above section
(ibid, p. 57).’More recently individualistic rather than community focused practices
based on a competitive, neo liberal model have also been introduced. For example,
in order to raise the low levels of teacher salary, teachers were rewarded for
attending the previously referred to continuing professional development courses
and, if they met the criteria of development judged through a system of‘attestation’,
they could if necessary double their salaries. So the values of individualism,
competition and accountability are there too. This is a system that is also used in
Ontario to facilitate teacher development. The aspiration to involve teachers in the
development of the curriculum and practices was there when the action research
project was introduced. The processes of critical thinking and reflection were
central to many of the initiatives being introduced and it was in this context that the
action research project began.
39.6 The Action Research Project in Kazakhstan
The project drew on two models that the facilitators from the University of
Cambridge Faculty of Education had been involved in for many years. It was a
schools-university partnership called SUPER (Schools-University Partnership for
Educational Research) and the HertsCam project. Both involved teachers in
researching their practice within a formal partnership facilitated by both university
and school-based colleagues. The project in Kazakhstan set up the following
structures. Each school was to appoint a senior member of staff, who with the
school principal, (or Director in the Kazakh context), would be responsible for the
coordination and development in the school as well as being the primary contact for
the Cambridge team. There were teams of teachers who attended thefirst round of
action research training and practice. They comprised the principal, the research
coordinator and other interested teachers. Numbers in each team varied but the
recommended team size was four. The project is now in its third year and from
inception the plan was to develop facilitators of other groups from amongst the
cohort so thefirst year was going through the action research cycle twice in the
schools involved and setting up the processes and structures to facilitate the work.
Schools in Kazakhstan were paired on a regional basis and the teams of facilitators
from Cambridge University Faculty of Education consisted of university-based- and
school-based colleagues working together as critical friends to the Kazakh
group. The second year saw the development of a the Research Coordinator group
as more central to the sustainable future of the work and their development moved
more centre stage with faculty colleagues moving to a more clearly support rather
than teaching role. The action research questions and projects came from the
teachers concerns with in the areas of curriculum and pedagogy.
39 Researching Practice as Education and Reform 589