Lessons for Good Citizenship: Creating Attachments and Sense of Belonging in the Multi-Ethnic Countryside of Kazakhstan

University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository

Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations

2020-01 Lessons for Good Citizenship: Creating Attachments and Sense of Belonging in the Multi-ethnic Countryside of Kazakhstan

Mombayeva, Diana

Mombayeva, D. (2020). Lessons for Good Citizenship: Creating Attachments and Sense of Belonging in the Multi-ethnic Countryside of Kazakhstan (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. http://hdl.handle.net/1880/111530 master thesis

University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

Lessons for Good Citizenship: Creating Attachments and Sense of Belonging in the

Multi-ethnic Countryside of Kazakhstan

Diana Mombayeva

A THESIS

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ANTHROPOLOGY

CALGARY, ALBERTA

JANUARY, 2020

Abstract

This thesis focuses on citizenship education in the post-Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan. By drawing on insights in anthropology and education, I examine the state project to construct the ideal of good citizenship and its transformation through daily practices that shape the social life of school, community, family, and school ecology. My work is grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, most of which was conducted in the multi-ethnic countryside in northern Kazakhstan. Based on testimonies of my project’s participants, including teachers, families, and students as well as the artwork of students, I argue that the state’s ideals of citizenship are localized through place-based practices, which create informal learning spaces informed by class sentiments and ethnic sensibilities of teachers, students, and their families. These practices transform hegemonic narratives of citizenship, generating collaboration, creativity, sustainable lifestyle, and attachment to the place. I believe the focus on place-based education in the thesis can help teachers to design elective courses in curriculum based on localities, involving students and communities.

Acknowledgements

No research journey could be done alone. I am grateful to all people, who encouraged me to pursue it. Firstly, I would like to thank the community and all participants in my research, who shared with me their experiences, candor, time, and generous hospitality. Without their contribution and support I could not accomplish my project. Furthermore, I am fortunate to have two mentors, incredible women, who tirelessly provided their support and guidance, a supervisor, Dr. Saulesh Yessenova of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the

University of Calgary and a co-supervisor from the Werklund School of Education at the

University of Calgary, Dr. Jackie Seidel. I am eternally grateful to both of them for their valuable advice, encouragement, and constant willingness to help me become a better scholar and writer.

Their contribution is priceless. I am also exceedingly grateful to Galicia Blackman, a PhD candidate of the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, who supported my writing process by providing feedback and being a good friend. In addition, my sincere thanks to my examiners, Dr. Ben Mckay and Dr. Diane Lyons of the Department of Anthropology and

Archaeology at the University of Calgary for their feedback. Many thanks go to the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology for supportive spirit, warm relationships, and encouragement of graduate students in all their endeavors. I owe special thanks to my family and friends who support me, sharing with me my anxieties, doubts, and successes. Moreover, my project was carried out with generous financial support from the Bolashak International Scholarship and the

Department of Anthropology and Archaeology of the University of Calgary. Finally, thank you, the city of Calgary where I have met many people who supported me in this journey!

iii

Note on Language and Transliteration

My thesis contains terms and phrases in Kazakh and Russian languages, which are printed in italics and accompanied by English translations. I have used (kaz.) to indicate their origin in the

Kazakh language and (rus.) for Russian terms. All translations are my own. I use the terms

“Kazakh” or “Russian” school to indicate the primary language of instruction used in these

Kazakhstan’s schools and not the ethnic composition of either the student body or teachers.

Glossary of Terms

Asharshylyk famine (kaz.)

Aul village, nomadic encampment (kaz.)

Komsomol Union of the Communist Youth (rus.)

Mangilik El Eternal Nation (kaz.), the state’s program promoting national values, common beliefs and patriotic feeling among citizens of Kazakhstan.

Oblast administrative region (rus.)

Pervotselinniki workers and their families who arrived in Kazakhstan to participate in the Virgin Land Campaign, which was a large-scale agricultural project in 1950s (rus.)

Pioneer member of the Communist youth organization at school (rus.)

Rayon district (rus.)

Ruhani Zhangyru Spiritual Enlightenment/Modernization of Kazakhstan’s identity (kaz.). The state’s program dedicated to modernization of Kazakhstan’s identity through realization of cultural, educational, and social projects.

The House of Culture formally Soviet public institution serving as a community center intended to promote state’s initiatives on the ground. (rus.)

Tugan Zher Native Place (kaz.), a subprogram of Ruhani Zhangyru dedicated to the exploration of local history, nature, and ecology.

Virgin Land Campaign a large-scale modernization agricultural project which was initiated by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 and was driven to cultivate wheat in northern and central Kazakhstan (rus.).

Vospitanie values-oriented education, where schools manage child-rearing, socialization, moral and “cultural” education through formal curriculum and extra-curriculum activities (rus.).

Zhas Ulan United Children and Youth Organization, the purpose of which is to educate the younger generation as patriots of the motherland on the basis of love and devotion to the Kazakh people, culture, traditions of tolerance and peacemaking, national values, desire of knowledge, and self-improvement (kaz.).

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Acknowledgements ...... iii Note on Language and Transliteration ...... iv Glossary of Terms ...... iv Table of Contents …………………………………………………………………………...……vi List of Maps and Figures ...... viii

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………….1 Place and Environment as the Third Teacher...... 7 Citizenship and Citizenship Education ………………………………………………...……..11 School Ecology, Creolization, and the Hidden Curriculum …………………………………...19

Chapter 1. Kazakhstan: Schooling and Society in Historical Perspective ...... 26 Incorporation into the Russian Empire ...... 26 Building the Soviet State ...... 29 The Soviet Education...... 32 Independent Kazakhstan ...... 37 The Education System ...... 41

Chapter 2. Field Site and Methodology…………………………………………………………. 46 My Journey ...... 46 The Road to the Village ...... 49 Pioneerville...... 51 Methodology ...... 54 Recruitment process ...…………………..……………………………………………….....54 Data Collection …………………………………………………………………………...... 56

Chapter 3. The World of Schooling…...... 61 Teachers ...... 63 Students ...... 68

Chapter 4. Lessons from the School ...... 72 Values-oriented Education ...... 76 The Youth Organization and the Hidden Curriculum ...... 83

Chapter 5. School Ecology ...... 88 The House of Culture ...... 88 Library ...... 92

Chapter 6. Lessons from Families: Transmitting Values and Habits ...... 96 Anara and Talgat ...... 97 Kseniya and Nikolay ...... 101 Tatyana and Berik ...... 103

Chapter 7. Lessons from the Place...... 109 Nature, Sense of Belonging and Attachments ...... 110 Infrastructure, Creativity and Environmental Citizenship ...... 114 Community Activities ...... 117

Conclusion ………...... 121

References ...... 125

Appendix A ...... 147 Appendix B ...... 148 Appendix C ...... 149

vii

List of Maps and Figures1

Map of Kazakhstan ……...... ix

Figure 1. School Ecology...... 21

Figure 2. The Steppe Road to Pioneerville ...... 50

Figure 3. The # 1 section of Pioneerville …………………………...... 51

Figure 4. Research Methods……...... 56

Figure 5. Sarah’s2 Collage ...... 96

Figure 6. Vlada’s Drawing ………………...... 111

Figure 7. Almaz’s Drawing …………...... 111

Figure 8. Botagoz’s Drawing ……...... 112

Figure 9. Valeria’s Drawing...... 113

Figure 10. Akmaral’s Drawing...... 113

Figure 11. Sergey’s Photograph ...... 116

Figure 12. Sergey’s Photograph…...... 116

1 All photographs are taken by me, unless indicated otherwise. 2 For protection of my participants I am using pseudonyms.

viii

Map of Kazakhstan3

3 Kostanay on the map is identified as Qostanay. Source: https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/kazakhstan-administrative-map.htm. ix

Introduction

Kazakhstan became a nation-state upon the collapse of the USSR in 1991. It was the most multiethnic republic within the Soviet Union. The government of Kazakhstan has granted equal rights to all citizens of the country regardless of their ethnic backgrounds while embarking on a nation-building project. As part of this endeavour, Kazakhstan’s leadership has tried to create a positive image of their new nation state, which includes being a “good citizen” of the world.4

Internationally, Kazakhstan has followed this agenda, both consistently and comprehensively.

The country gave up nuclear weapons that the country inherited from the USSR (1994) and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1995), became a signatory of Kyoto Protocol

(1999). Kazakhstan founded the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions (2006) and won the chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (2010) as well as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (2011). Finally, it engaged with the world through public diplomacy by hosting international mega-events, including the Asian Olympics

Games (2011), the Winter Universiade (2017), and the Astana Expo (2017).

State revenues from the export of oil helped the state to fund these international events in

Kazakhstan; but, on the other hand, these windfall revenues helped to solidify an authoritarian regime in the country, overconfident in its capacity to represent the nation without civic participation (Ostrowski, 2010).5 This is why, the state in Kazakhstan has a much less successful track record in terms of supporting democratic development based on public participation in political life of the country. The autocratic nature of the political regime in Kazakhstan can be traced through the policies that prohibit peaceful protests against government policies, allow the

4 Saulesh Yessenova (2011) examined how the government of Kazakhstan tried to present and brand the country, its people, history, and economy on the world stage through the large-scale film Nomad. 5 Not all scholars agree with the resource course argument (e.g., see Yessenova, 2015). 1 appointment of governors at all political levels and blocking of websites, including social media, as well as speedy election campaigns guaranteeing the victory of selected individuals (Lillis,

2019; Tukmadiyeva, 2017).

The state’s behaviour not only stalled democratic reforms implemented in the 1990s, but also generated strong feelings of uncertainty and dissatisfaction among citizens, especially among younger generations, about their country and their place in it. According to a survey, The

Portrait of the Representatives of Generation Z in Kazakhstan, which was conducted in the country’s major cities in 2017, one-third of young citizens in Kazakhstan did not consider themselves “useful for the country,” and about the same proportion of young respondents claimed to have no confidence in their future (Coi, 2017). Moreover, the World Values Survey, an international research project conducted in 2011, showed that merely 61.6% of respondents were proud to be citizens of Kazakhstan (Bocharova, 2018). A strong sense of political disengagement was also reflected in a study that was organized by Friedrich Ebert’s Foundation, in which more than 40% of the respondents in Kazakhstan said that “it is not so important to participate in political life” or “participate in the civic initiatives,” and more than 30% of them replied that “it is not important to participate in [the country’s] political life” (Sanseeva, 2017).

Aware of the situation, the state has been attempting to create an effective field of communication with its citizenry in order to boost its confidence in the country and increase citizens’ participation in political life, but without changing the nature of the political regime.

For this purpose, the state has designated education as an instrument for convincing citizens of their role in the country’s development and achievements by trying to articulate a strong bond between education and professional success: good citizens prosper and contribute to the national

2 economy and society.6 In this project, I examine this state project to construct the ideal of “good citizenship” in Kazakhstan and to promote this ideal through schooling.

The choice of schooling as the means for constructing citizens in Kazakhstan is not accidental. Historically, empires and nation-states used public education as a tool for (re)shaping societies, collective sentiments, and strengthening the authority of political regimes at the same time. Scholars, including Michel Foucault (1979), Antonio Gramsci (1971/1999), Edward Said

(1978), and Eugene Weber (1976), have referred to education as a tool of power that the state uses to achieve political goals. For instance, in the middle of the 19th century, the French government used public schooling in order to create the collective feeling of belonging to France among the people who identified themselves with their immediate localities and not necessarily with the nation-state. Weber (1976) has demonstrated how the French government transformed

“peasants into Frenchmen” by means of schooling. She explained the expansion of the public- school system in France in the 18th century as a primary means of citizens of the French nation,

“Teachers taught or were expected to teach not just for the love of art or science,” she stressed,

“But for the love of France” (Weber, 1976, p. 336). This new political sentiment was to replace traditional attitudes, practices, languages, and identities hitherto grounding rural communities in their habitat and produce national cohesion that the post-Revolution France needed. Weber specified that in this process schools promoted the transformation from religious to secular education whereas “Catholic God” was displaced by a “secular God (the fatherland and its living symbols, the army and the flag)” and French became the common language for national unity, rather than a sign of educated people, which it was before (Weber, 1976, p. 336).

6 The president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev emphasized in his public statements connections between education and national development (see more details in the section “Independent Kazakhstan”). 3

The same strategy was used by the Soviet government that understood that the pace of societal progress depended on the development of science and education. School was deemed to be a central agent for the transformation of the old society and its values and the creation of the

“New Soviet Man.” Paula Michaels has examined the introduction of biomedicine in Soviet

Kazakhstan during Stalin’s period. She has emphasized that through education and labor, school taught students “rules of good behaviour,” which every person was supposed to follow

(Michaels, 2003, p. 96). She pointed out that these rules were “rules of respect for the socio- technical division of labor” and “the rules of the order established by class domination”

(Michaels, 2003, p. 96). By drawing on Gramsci, Michaels highlighted the role of schooling and professional training that the Soviet state used to persuade the society to accept its hegemonic values. According to Gramsci, hegemony is an activity of a state “with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 244 as cited in Crehan, 2002, p. 102). Gramsci analyzed how the state used institutions, including schools, for the purpose of society’s management. In this analysis, he highlighted the role of knowledge in constructing social reality and achieving domination for the ruling class. Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is a theoretical foundation in my study as it helps to retrace the state’s techniques for creating ideals about good citizens through schooling and education more broadly. In this thesis, I examine how these ideals intended to promote common values among people in Kazakhstan intersect with the state’s desire to reinforce its hegemonic role in the society.

It is important to note that many scholars, have followed Gramsci’s lines of analysis but, at the same time, they showed that people have never been passive recipients of hegemonic ideas of the state. For instance, James Scott (1985) examined the way power worked by focusing on a

4 peasant community in rural Malaysia. Stressing that resistance can be analyzed not only through open protests, revolutions or rebellions, Scott paid attention to the everyday life in this community. By looking at the ways this peasant society responded to domination and class oppression he argued about everyday resistance of powerless groups. This resistance materialized as “foot dragging,” “dissimulation,” “feigned ignorance,” “sabotage” and other techniques that he argues were “weapons of the weak” (Scott, 1985, p. 29). The advantage of these techniques, he argued, is that “they require little or no coordination or planning; they often represent a form of individual self-help; and they typically avoid any direct symbolic confrontation with authority or with elite norms” (Scott, 1985, p. 29). Analyzing peasants’ resistance Scott has critically engaged with Gramsci’s discussion of hegemony and Marx’s concept of false consciousness,7 emphasizing popular resistance to class domination by the peasants who were well aware about their exploitation. Building on Scott’s research, Aurolyn

Luykx (1999) expanded the discussion of resistance by focusing on Bolivian students. Through ethnographic research, she has analyzed school practices that were supposed to transform

“Aymara Indians” into “Bolivian citizens,” promoting ethnic, class, and gender images. These school practices were met with resistance, Luykx (1999) argued. She has identified students’

“cheating,” “plagiarism,” “truancy,” “tardiness,” “withholding of participation,” “appropriation of school ceremonies for satirical purposes” as tactics of resistance (Luykx,1999, p. 218), which helped them have a measure of control over state-run education.

Similar experiences of spontaneous and non-organized resistance were documented in the

7 Even though Gramsci continued the Marxist tradition his concept of hegemony is not identical to the idea of false consciousness. Gramsci turned his focus not only to economic factors, but also to cultural practices in building consent. Moreover, Gramsci stressed that people could identify and critique hegemonic ideas, which can lead to counter hegemony.

5 literature examining the society where the dominance of the communist ideology was unquestionable; and yet, people accepted and used state-promoted ideas differently. In Memory,

History, and Opposition: Under State Socialism (Watson,1994), several authors have discussed specific historical events that were included in official narratives of the Soviet state. They focused on how those events were interpreted by the individuals who participated in them or attributed great significance to them, which allowed them to see the divergence of individual understandings from the official discourse. Watson (1994) concluded that they found the opposition to the socialist regime everywhere: in “hidden histories enshrined in Georgia’s national epics, in the unapproved memorialization that transforms Chinese ritual and opera into a protest, and orally transmitted religious histories of Mongolia” (p. 19). In other words, people did not blindly accept hegemonic views of the state. In contrast, they developed different perspectives that they used to compromise the validity of the official discourse without challenging the political system as a whole.8

In sum, these arguments complicate Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, providing a more refined prism through which one can analyse power relations that has informed my analysis. I am interested in how state-promoted ideals of citizenship are transformed in form and meaning through the combination of formal and informal education practices that have been informed by class sentiments and ethnic sensibilities of teachers, students, and their families. Combined, these practices constitute a school ecology and education mosaic, which constitute central concepts in my analysis that I define below.

8 For similar works see Guha, 1999. 6

Place and Environment as the Third Teacher

During my fieldwork, I shared my time between Astana, which is the capital of

Kazakhstan, and Pioneerville,9 a village situated some 700 kilometres northwest from Astana.

Pioneerville will be introduced below as a key site of my research. I arrived in Astana on 8 May

2018, after being away from my home country, Kazakhstan, for almost two years. Many changes happened during this time: new high-style monumental architecture, wide well-paved roads, neon streetlights, and many flashy billboards and decorations. Seeing this transformation of the city, I felt proud and optimistic about the country. However, the farther away I travelled from the

Left Bank of Astana, which is where urban development is concentrated, the more I felt the contrast between what was happening in the capital, on the one hand, and rural areas, on the other. While residents in Astana witnessed changes, participated in modernization projects, and were enticed with the prospects of the arrival of cutting-edge technologies, people in Pioneerville had problems with the most basic infrastructure, such as roads, internet connectivity, running water, mobile connections, and public space.

In addition to the urban-rural differential, there are major regional discrepancies in

Kazakhstan that add complexity to its cultural and economic landscapes. Kazakhstan is a large country that occupies the area of 2.7 million square kilometers. It is the ninth largest country in the world, where every region has specific social, geographical, and cultural characteristics determined by historical experiences of colonization, natural environment, demographics and economic profile. My discussion is focused on the Kostanay oblast, an administrative region situated in northern Kazakhstan. I have chosen this region because it has the longest history of formal education in Kazakhstan, which can be traced back to the 18th century. Based on this

9 For protection of my participants I am using pseudonyms of all villages and participants’ names in the research. Pioneerville is a village which is located in Kostanay oblast (i.e., an administrative region), Northern Kazakhstan. 7 well-established tradition of education, this region enjoys a vibrant school ecology, consisting of libraries, museums, a pedagogical youth association, training counselors for summer camps, the

Kostanay State Pedagogical University named after Omirzaq Sultangazin, and several teacher’s colleges. Moreover, this region is interesting because of its multi-ethnic composition, which was created by Tsarist and Soviet policies of population resettlement. As a result of these policies, ethnic Kazakhs became a minority on their own territory in northern and central Kazakhstan unlike, western and southern Kazakhstan where ethnic Kazakhs dominated demographics and consequently, the Kazakh language and traditions remained important throughout the Soviet period and especially in its aftermath.

These differences in demographic situations and language use, as well as economic profiles and development (e.g., unlike the new capital and oil-rich western Kazakhstan, Kostanay did not experience an economic boom) prompted me to ask questions about the role of locality in shaping a political relation between citizens and the state. Specifically, it pushed me to think about how place, which has its own biography and memory can affect cultural values, practices, and a sense of belonging. Anthropologists have studied the role of place, considering it from a variety of perspectives, searching for its symbolic and social meanings (Appadurai, 1988, Low &

Lawrence-Zúñiga, 2003, Rodman, 2006). According to Low and Altman, place “refers to space that has been given meaning through personal, group, or cultural processes” (1992, p. 5). In

Place Attachment: a Conceptual Inquiry, they have argued that people bound through context of relationships which occur in specific places, identifying such factors as “biological, environmental, psychological, sociocultural, or interrelatedness of all of them” which affect the attachment to place (Low & Altman, 1992, p. 9). In my thesis, I focus on two interrelated factors: environmental and sociocultural.

Some educational scholars analyze the role of place, nature and community as part of educational process (Coutler, 2014; Sobel, 2013). Place-based education is “rooted in the context of places” (Deringer, 2017, p. 334), whereby teachers incorporate natural surroundings and local community practices in the learning process. These activities create bonds between community and students, providing spaces for learning from place-based experiences. Some scholars identify the interest in place-based education as a critical response to standardized curriculum, based on uniform practices and tests (Gruenewald, 2003). Deringer (2017) analyzing schooling system in the USA, criticized the approach that focused on the goal of producing “good workers,” rather than development of students’ personal enrichment and connection with their lived experiences

(p. 334).

This approach, highlighting the pedagogical potential of place, aligns with my personal experience of living and studying in Canada. Learning from Indigenous people in Canada, their philosophy and connections with the land motivated me to consider people-place relationship as an important factor that shapes, among other things, citizens’ understanding of belonging to the state. Furthermore, examination of place reminded me of conversations with my co-supervisor,

Dr. Jackie Seidel from the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. When I was preparing to do fieldwork, she suggested to look at the environment as the third teacher, referring to practices of Reggio Emilia schools.

Reggio Emilia schools were founded soon after the World War II, when the Italian government sought to revive old towns in the country and bring back a sense of community. As a result, many of these old towns constructed community centres. In contrast, residents of Villa

Cella, which was outside the centre of Reggio Emilia, built a school: Scuola del popolo, or

“School of the People” (Wurm, 2005, p. 1). Loris Malaguzzi and other educators of Reggio

Emilia created a new education philosophy inspired by ideas of John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and

Lev Vygotsky. This philosophy was grounded in a partnership between children, teachers, parents, educational coordinators, and the community (Gandini, 2012, p. 318). I find their views on the environment, which can act as a third teacher, and their general philosophy on education as “a communal activity and sharing of culture through joint exploration between children and adults” particularly useful (Edwards, Gandini, Forman, 2012, p. 7-8). This philosophy helps me analyze the role of place in citizenship identity and belonging.

Reggio Emilia scholars interpret the environment broadly, stressing that everything what surrounds people can be a “teacher.” They focus not only on the natural environment, but also highlight the importance of classrooms’ and schools’ surroundings as well as parks, public spaces, and community. They emphasize the role of the environment in stimulation of children’s senses and emotions. Thus, in treating the environment as a third teacher, scholars of Reggio

Emilia identified such principles as “aesthetics, active learning, collaboration, transparency,

‘bringing the outdoors in,’ flexibility, relationship, and reciprocity” (Fraser, 2012, p. 118-119).

All these principles are interwoven and interconnected, providing space for community involvement and interaction. In other words, learning in Reggio Emilia “is viewed as a collaborative process that does not take place in isolation” from the broader environment (Fraser,

2012, p. 113).

Following the Reggio Emilia approach as well as the scholarship on place-based education and anthropology of place, I discuss natural surroundings, built environment, infrastructure, and community activities as a third teacher in Pioneerville. This approach allows me to see how this composite social place creates educational spaces, where local people develop

10 ideas about citizenship and belonging by localizing hegemonic ideas promoted by the state through formal schooling.

Citizenship and Citizenship Education

Prior to fieldwork, my reading of academic literature made me realize that citizenship is a contested and open concept, which can have different meanings. Upon my arrival in

Kazakhstan, I had casual chats with several individuals about my research. When they heard the word “citizenship,” they identified the focus of my research with civil society. One of them rolled their eyes and said, “Understood. You are going to criticize the lack of civic society in

Kazakhstan” (Astana, July 2018). This reaction reflects the public response to the Western critique of Kazakhstan as a country with poorly developed civil society and case of human rights abuse. Intended to improve the situation, this patronizing critique has only reinforced the idea of citizenship and civil society as Western concepts, which makes it difficult or even unnecessary to implement in Kazakhstan, according to some local citizens. Yet, citizenship is a familiar concept in Kazakhstan, which was introduced by the Soviet state. The Soviet government used this concept to denote a collective belonging to the state, which was supplemented with the concept of nationality that reflected the political-administrative organization of the USSR as a union of

Soviet republics and individual ethnic backgrounds of its bearers (Bassin & Kelly 2012, p. 4).

From the 1930s forward, Soviet citizens had a “sort of dual identity that was inscribed in their internal passports: on one level as Soviet citizens but more especially as members of a specific nationality who belonged to a particular national territory” (Bassin & Kelly, 2012, p. 4). Thus, nationality correlated with a specific republic and ethnic group, which led to using terms

“nationality” and “ethnicity” interchangeably. Nancy Lubin (1984) stressed that the lines

11 between “nationality,” “ethnicity,” “people” were blurred, making distinctions between them vague (p. xii).

I have noticed this confusion of terms and concepts in my conversations with residents of

Astana and Pioneerville, learning that identities, such as “citizens,” “residents,” “human beings,”

“locals,” and “nationalities” overlap and interconnect. Local testimonies reminded me of the lyrics I’m Only Human after All from a song by a British singer Rang’Bone’Man. Indeed, what are the lines of difference and commonality between notions of “citizen” and “human being”?

What are the values behind these words? How do citizenship and nationality connect? Reflecting on peoples’ responses and understanding that the word “citizenship” is complex and multilayered, I would like to discuss the meaning of citizenship from an historical perspective, focusing on how this concept has changed through time. This discussion is important for understanding approaches to citizenship education in the global as well as the Kazakhstani context. As scholars David Lawson and Helen Scott put it, “the aims and objectives of citizenship education will be influenced by understandings of citizenship” (Lawson & Scott,

2002, p. 2).

The roots of the concept of citizenship can be traced back to the city states of the ancient period (Tetreault, 2000, p. 71). The meaning and practice of citizenship varied in space and time.

According to Gleen (2002), in the Aristotelian formulation, citizens were free from material interests, they gathered for decision-making on “behalf of general welfare” (p. 21); while in the

Roman formulation, being a citizen meant having rights and protection under the Roman law.

Moreover, opposite to the Aristotelian ideas in the Roman tradition the main characteristic of citizens was “the capacity to act on things,” where “possession of property was evidence of this capacity” (Gleen, 2002, p. 21). However, despite these differences, individual independence was

12 an important part for both traditions. In addition, in both formulations the public realm of citizenship was defined through “bracketing household, domestically, and ‘civil society’ as outside the domain of equality and rights” (Gleen, 2002, p. 21).

Over time, this earlier concept of citizenship changed. The main shift happened during the 17th and 18th centuries when political and intellectual revolutions challenged the old dynastic orders (Gleen, 2002, p. 19). Particularly, social changes and liberal thoughts provoked discussions about states which were governed by monarchs, who claimed their direct connections with the God for legitimizing their rights to rule (Anderson, 1983). Liberal ideas against this order and statements of citizens about their political rights were expressed in English

(1688), American (1776), and French (1789) revolutions (Dwyer, 2010, p. 20). The French

Revolution that abolished aristocratic titles was particularly instructive. Everybody became a citizen10 in the new society, everyone was equal in opposed to having titles, which represented traditional hierarchies (Wallerstein, 2003, pp. 650-651). Weber (1976), whose work I have already mentioned, analyzed this post-revolutionary transformation in France. Her analysis captures the shift from the subjecthood-monarchy to citizenship-nation-state. As Veronique

Benei has pointed out, “subjects were deemed to have been held back by their ‘primordial ties,’ citizens would be freed from such ethnic, cultural or religious bonds, at last bound together by a common sense of universal civic virtue” (Benei, 2005, p. 14). Benei’s words capture the transformation from premodern to modern periods, and how it affected the meaning of citizenship.

John Hoffman noted, citizenship is “a concept that is sensitive to historical change”

(Hoffman, 2004, p. 1). Indeed, decolonization, globalization, collapse of the Soviet regime,

10 The emphasis on the concept of citizenship can be traced even in French Declaration of 1789 - “Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen” (Eide, 2000, p. 97). 13 movements for human and women rights prompted significant revisions of citizenship.

Postcolonial and feminist studies shed light on untold stories, contributing to new perspectives about citizenship. According to Engin Isin and Patricia Wood the rise of “new identities and claims for group rights” are a “challenge to the modern interpretation of universal citizenship, which is itself a form of group identity” (Isin & Wood, 1999, p. 15). Manuela Boatca and Julia

Roth raised the question about the “coloniality of citizenship” (Boatca & Roth, 2016, p. 192).

They have argued that the combination of gender, race and ethnicity as “products of the colonial crucible that the institution of citizenship is revealed to be a key element in the maintenance of the coloniality of power of the modern world-system” (Boatca & Roth, 2016, p. 198). Thus, they linked citizenship to colonial and neocolonial domination by showing that citizenship is used for inclusion as well as exclusion of individuals and communities.

Indeed, citizenship shows itself as a major mechanism of exclusion once we look at the use of passports and visas, and the presence of what Boatca identifies as a “premium citizenship”

(Boatca, 2014 as cited in Boatca & Roth, 2016, p. 201). Based on Boatca’s idea, at the state border, passports operate as materialized citizenship, providing some with power and domination, and serving as a source of discrimination and exclusion of others. There is a global index, which ranks passports from the most to the least powerful based on their mobility scores, that (not surprisingly) reflects global racial hierarchy and paternalism.11 The link between power and citizenship pushed researchers to re-examine relationships between the state and citizenship.

A good example of this is Hoffman’s work Citizenship Beyond the State, in which he argued that citizenship in its dominant interpretation as legal membership in a particular state should be reconsidered (Hoffman, 2004). Specifically, by drawing on experiences of European countries,

11 Passport index – https://www.passportindex.org/byRank.php. 14

Hoffman pointed out that citizenship should be revised and understood from a variety of perspectives. I discuss some of these perspectives next.

Movements and reconsideration of citizenship12 have provided an opportunity for scholars to see this concept not only from the perspective of legal status or participation in the political life in a given country, but also from other perspectives, reflecting the state of the world as defined by globalization and the global spread of neoliberalism. As Isin and Wood highlighted, citizenship is defined as “both a set of practices (cultural, symbolic and economic) and a bundle of rights and duties (civil, political and social) that define an individual’s membership in a polity” (Isin, & Wood, 1999 p. 15). This definition captures global citizenship

(O’Byrne, 2003; Robinson & Shallcross, 2006); flexible citizenship (Ong, 1999); inclusive citizenship (Guo, 2008); consumer citizenship (Bulakh, 2017; Ozkan & Foster, 2005;

Seliverstova, 2017), to name a few interpretations of citizenship that define it as an open and contested concept, which subject to change meaning in terms of context and focus.

Different approaches to citizenship and global movements have stirred debates about citizenship education (Nabavi, 2010; Sears & Hughes, 2006). For a long time, education was used for shaping national identities, which formed the practice of citizenship education (Starkey,

2019, p. 185). Building on Weber’s research, Ernest Gellner (1983) viewed formal education as a tool for the creation of a homogenous society that he treated as a major requirement in the nation-building process. In this process, nation-state and citizenship became bound together, whereas education is used as the vehicle to build shared culture and common identity (Green,

2013). As a result, the concept of citizenship was interwoven with the state’s ambitions and was

12 Revisioning citizenship discriminations such as political rights to women pushed scholars to re-examine citizenship and childhood (e.g., see Osler & Starkey, 2006; Starkey, 2019).

15 presented as a stable and universal concept just like the nation-state. This practice is still used in many countries, including Kazakhstan. However, issues such as global inequality, xenophobia, and human rights abuse have created debates about the aims of citizenship education. What is it for? How it should be promoted? Should it be a part of compulsory education? How is it planned and realized?

These discussions have prompted researchers to re-examine approaches to citizenship education, especially the importance of relationships between formal education and people’s cultural backgrounds (Osler & Starkey, 2006). This focus connects with the topic of citizenship education in theory and practice. Specifically, how are the government’s ideas about citizenship realized in practice in terms of interactions with pre-existing cultural and ethnic sentiments of students, teachers, and families? Alan Sears (n.d.) has examined citizenship education in Canada, providing examples of policies and situations at schools. He has argued that despite the fact that democratic citizenship is supposed to be “a central goal of public education, there is very little real consensus what we meant by a “good citizen” (Sears, n.d.). He has pointed out that in official documents and public surveys the concept of citizenship is considered as well-known, assuming all people understand it the same way. However, Sears argued that even people from the same background may have different interpretation of citizenship, and this fact should be counted in creating the policies and practices of citizenship education.

Other scholars have used similar approaches, in terms of trying to trace official definitions of citizenship and people’s perceptions and practices as citizens. For example,

Tupper, Cappello, and Sevigny (2010) have examined citizenship education at school and students’ understandings about citizenship by asking students about their roles as citizens according to school curriculum and their lived practices. They suggested that citizenship

16 education should not only be considered as part of social studies “but be better connected to students’ lived experiences and social locations” (Tupper, Cappello & Sevigny, 2010, p. 359).

Debates about different understandings of citizenship draw attention to limitations and exclusions in the promotion of citizenship education. Scholars have challenged existing approaches in education by asking questions about what kind of citizens it does not prepare, who is left behind, and is it happening based on ethnicity or race. For example, Audrey Osler and

Hugh Starkey (2001) comparing the French and British national programs of citizenship education warned that they could potentially promote alienation among students rather than inclusion. Specifically, since these countries are multicultural and multi-racial places, the scholars have stressed that perspectives of minorities should be included in the national programs. Osler and Starkey believed that this action allowed to avoid exclusion of ethnic and racial minorities (Osler & Starkey, 2001, p. 302-303). Researchers studying the relationship between the Indigenous people and citizenship education also highlight the topic of exclusion of citizenship identity. For instance, McLeod (2012) analyzing the progressive education in the interwar years in Australia, has challenged the practices included in citizenship education as dividing people. McLeod argued that official “normative descriptions of the desired cosmopolitan student citizen simultaneously constructed a non-citizen, the problematic student excluded from recognition” (McLeod, 2012, p. 355). The author has stressed that the cosmopolitan curriculum which promoted free and critical thinking and autonomous identity contradicted Aboriginal students’ practices, whose identity was bound with family and kinship.

As a result, it converted Aboriginal students into non-citizens (McLeod, 2012).

Even though McLeod and other scholars have challenged the idea of what citizenship education is for, emphasizing the role of communities in the promotion of shared values, it is still

17 common to identify citizenship education as a practice limited to the classroom. For example, the

UNESCO report Citizenship Education for the 21st Century (UNESCO, 1998) explains what citizenship education is and what it is for, connecting it with human and citizens rights, equality, justice, and tolerance. This document stresses that citizenship education “poses” a problem “how to blend together the particular and the universal, the national and the international, the individual and society,” suggesting that to integrate “human rights education in new subject, civics education” in the classroom is a solution to this problem (UNESCO, 1998). Thinking about this solution I wonder if it is possible that children can learn about their participation in local communities and the global society during a 45-minute class. What about educational spaces beyond the school? What is the role of their families and communities in creation of knowledge about citizenship? How can schools involve families and community for teaching about citizenship education?

Moreover, even though the importance of diversity and the organization of citizenship education based on cultural traditions of education systems has been acknowledged, I believe it can be a challenge to successfully implement the suggestions from this report. Specifically, the report stressed the connections between democratic culture and citizenship education. I agree that it is important to develop democratic culture, as it relates to citizenship education; however, what about the situations in which citizenship education bonds with other topics, such as patriotism and nationalism? Should the report suggest any ways of teaching citizenship education beyond the definition of democracy?

Having these questions and relying on scholarly discussions about citizenship education,

I intend to contribute to the dialogue about how and why citizenship is used as a practical concept, by using Kazakhstan as a case study. By drawing on Henry Maitles’s idea that

“education for citizenship throws up the central questions as to what sort of education we want”

(2013), I explore the complexity of educational practices and the social ecology of these practices where citizenship identity is built. I would like to show “lived realities” (Tupper,

Cappello & Sevigny, 2010, p. 336), identifying educational spaces beyond school and experiences in which people characterize themselves as citizens. In other words, I am searching for narratives of citizenship, which allow me to see beyond the dichotomies of formal and informal education or power and oppression. To achieve this aim, I situate education within a broader context of an “education mosaic,” which is a combination of students’ experiences at schools, home, community activities, as well as the natural and built environment. Grounding my research within the disciplines of anthropology and education, I rely on importance of holistic understandings since “nothing can be understood in isolation” (Levinson, Gonzales, &

Anderson-Levitt, 2015, p. 728). Searching to see the multi-layered processes of citizenship education in a variety of places I am going to rely on such concepts as “school ecology,”

“creolization,” and the “hidden curriculum,” which I discuss in the next section.

School Ecology, Creolization, and the Hidden Curriculum

To address my research questions, relating to how different practices relating to citizenship coexist together, influence, transform, and complement each other, I draw on “school ecology,” “creolization,” and the “hidden curriculum,” i.e., concepts which help me to see a variety of relationships which affect citizenship education. Stacey Waters, Donna Cross, &

Therese Shaw (2010) considered school ecology from the holistic perspective, rejecting the traditional definition of school ecology as school environment or school climate. Particularly, the authors, relying on the approach of Waters, Cross, and Runions (2009 as cited in Waters, Cross,

& Shaw, 2010, p. 383), identified different aspects of school ecology, including built

19 environment, schools’ structure and function, which all interlinked, and in combination with interpersonal relationships affect students’ connectedness to school. Coming from a similar standpoint of defining school ecology Ping Lui (2002) highlighted that “ecology” represents “all tangible environmental variables in a school that are contextually organized and closely connected to curriculum and instruction” (Lui, 2002, p. 120). Based on experience of Linzhou

Pre-School the author showed that school ecology, where teachers used environment in combination with meaningful pedagogical approaches positively affected students’ learning process.

Acknowledging the importance of mentioned research and interpretations of school ecology, in my research I consider school ecology beyond school. School is a place of social interaction between teachers, students, parents, and administrators, who all are key actors within a broad interconnected field that constitute “school ecology.” I define school ecology as a field that in addition to teachers, students, and administration includes public institutions, such as museums, art galleries, libraries, summer camps, Houses of Culture,13 media, and cultural centres which influence students’ understanding of citizenship. In my research, school ecology resonates with Gramsci’s idea of civil society.14 He considered it as “the so-called private organizations like the church, the trade unions, the schools, etc.” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 56, as cited in Simon,

1982, p. 68). Based on Gramsci’s definition of civil society, school ecology nourishes and promotes government’s ideas, creating the field of interaction between different institutions. It creates the realm for producing and popularizing the state’s ideology among citizens through formal and informal educational practices15 (Figure 1).

13 This institution will be introduced below. 14 Thanks Dr. Ben Mckay for referring me to this idea. 15 The network of school ecology can be consisted from a variety of institutions. Some of them are common for many countries (e.g., libraries, museum, art galleries), others are specific for particular countries (e.g., the House of 20

Figure 1. School Ecology.

The network of institutions involved in school ecology is supposed to “manufacture consent” (Burawoy, 1979).16 However, actors who shape school ecology’s practices are not merely passive recipients of ideas, as has been noted earlier; instead, they diversify, modify, and localize state’s hegemony, which may lead to what Gramsci called the “war of position” or “the war of maneuver” (Gramsci, 1971/1999, p. 446). Gramsci related the war of maneuver to the

“frontal attack,” where people showed open confrontation (e.g. revolutions), while the war of position was identified as “passive-revolution,” which causes gradual transformations to counter- hegemony (Gramsci, 1971/1999, p. 446). Applying Gramsci’s approach to school ecology it is possible to see how actors of school ecology attain legitimacy to present and organize the state’s ideas, transferring and adapting them to local realities.

Culture). The dots (“…”) in the Figure 1 identify specific institutions, which can be added to the analysis of the school ecology. 16 Michael Burawoy (1979) analyzing the labour process, has argued that workers consent to participate in production through engagement the “game.” He used the “game” as a metaphor which masked exploitative relations and manufactured consent. As he put it, “We do not collectively decide what the rules of making out will be; rather, we are compelled to play the game, and we then proceed to defend the rules” (Burawoy, 1979, p. 93). 21

Indeed, the ideas promoted from the top down usually are changed as they pass through different levels from the government agencies to students based on varied perspectives, experiences and understandings of differently positioned local actors. This process recalls the ideas of Luykx (1999), Scott (1985), and Watson (1994) emphasizing that people can change, adapt or resist top – down decisions. As a result, the processes and the outcomes of programs vary, especially in such broadly defined areas as citizenship and nation-building. This argument, the negotiation of values and processes that affect the outcomes of undertaken projects, echoes

James Ferguson’s critical analysis of development projects conducted by international agencies and non-governmental organizations. Ferguson (1990) has explained the failures and unsustainability of these projects as an outcome of the interaction between the projects as conceived by the international agencies and local political realities within which these projects were implemented. At the same time, on the example of agricultural development project,

Ferguson has argued that despite the projects’ acknowledged failure (they did not change the farming in the region); they still achieved something, such as building a road or construction of an administrative center that generated powerful, yet, unintended, “side effects” which changed local realities (Ferguson, 1990, p. 252).

Ferguson’s idea about “side effects” correlates with the notion of “creolization” (Hannerz

1992 as cited in Anderson-Levitt, 2003, p. 16). Anthropologists of education identify creolization as a process of adjustment of imported models at different levels of their implementation. Top- down models could change in their entirety, leading to the creation of new forms. Diane Brook

Napier (2003) analyzing policies and practices of global imported reforms in South Africa, argued that these reforms accompanied by processes of creolization and re-creolization. Tracing reform implementation at different levels (e.g., provincial or sub-provincial), Napier urged that

“global-local model oversimplifies the picture” (Napier, 2003, p. 71). In doing so, she noted that at every stage of implementation suggested models get “creolized as a result of selective adoption, reinterpretation, resistance, or other processes” (Napier, 2003, p. 53). This idea of

“creolization” is useful in the study of the situation in Kazakhstan, where all programs in education are conceived at the national level, and whether they fail or succeed in terms of their formal objectives, their implementation is likely to be creolized or localized on the ground.

Moreover, the realization of state projects in schools can be traced through the hidden curriculum, which “expresses and represents attitudes, knowledge, and behaviour, which are conveyed or communicated without aware intent” (Jerald, 2006 as cited in Alsubaie, 2015, p.125). The concept of hidden curriculum originates in Jackson’s work Life in Classrooms

(1990), in which he argues that “both aspects of school life, the celebrated and the unnoticed, are familiar to all of us, but the latter, if only because of its characteristic neglect, seems to deserve more attention than it has received to date from those who are interested in education” (Jackson,

1990, p. 4). Thus, it is important not only to analyze the evident practices in schools, but also to focus on “hidden” ideas, which can be more valuable in understanding of citizenship education.

Jackson’s concept provoked discussions in educational philosophy and theory, reinforcing scholars to reconsider education practices from the angle of the hidden curriculum (Lynch, 1989;

Margolis, Soldatenko, Acker, & Gair, 2001). Henry Giroux (2001), analyzing approaches to the hidden curriculum, argued that it should be considered as curriculum which “encompasses all the ideological instances of the schooling process that ‘silently’ structure and reproduce hegemonic assumptions and practices” (p. 71). This approach according to Giroux, changes the focus from

“a one-sided preoccupation with cultural reproduction to a primary concern with cultural intervention and social action” (p. 71). He suggested that this approach will provide an

23 opportunity to use “the schools as important sites to wage counter-hegemonic practices” (Giroux,

2001, p. 71).

Following the aforementioned concepts, I have developed several questions that guided my research in Kazakhstan:

1. What ideal of the citizen does the state promote through education?

2. How do teachers understand and practice citizenship education?

3. What are students’ perspectives on citizenship?

4. How can family influence the ideas which students learn at school?

5. What is the role of natural surroundings, infrastructure, and community in the

construction of citizenship identity and sense of belonging?

These questions guided my inquiry into important topics such as nation building, state reforms, citizenship identity, education, and multiculturalism. Even though multiple studies addressed these topics by focusing on the nation-building (Isaacs, 2015; Laruelle, 2015;

Mkrtchyan, 2014), state’s infrastructural projects (Beisenova, 2014; Koch, 2018; Laszckowski,

2016), educational reforms (Burkhalter, & Shegebayev, 2010; Fimyar & Kurakbayev, 2016) all of them have been based in Kazakhstan’s major urban centres. This focus on privileged places leaves behind perspectives and voices of rural people, constituting 42.6% or almost half of the total population of Kazakhstan (Dubovaya, 2018). I believe that shedding the light on citizenship in the countryside through ethnographic research and applying the art-based participatory approach makes my research unique.

Before proceeding to the discussion of my data, in Chapter 1, I situate my inquiry within the historical context, re-tracing how earlier (primarily Soviet) policies and educational practices have affected the ongoing process of nation-building and teaching practices in Kazakhstan. In

Chapter 2, I discuss my journey to the field, introducing the village where I conducted my project, and my methodology. In Chapters 3 and 4, I examine the promotion of state’s ideals of citizenship at the local school, discussing teachers’ and students’ practices and perspectives. In

Chapter 5, I turn to local school ecology as the field for mixed interrelated institutions, which promote the government’s ideas and ideologies. I analyze the role of informal learning within the family and community in forming students’ values, ideas, and skills by focusing on community practices as a part of spontaneous placed-based education in Chapters 6 and 7. With that in hand,

I will finally address potential implications of this research for educational practices, especially in rural areas by highlighting the voices of rural residents whose perspectives have been neglected in design of the national curriculum. I believe this research can help teachers (who are often caught in the middle, between government requirements and community values) to shape elective courses in curriculum that involve students to place-based education.

Chapter 1. Kazakhstan: Schooling and Society in Historical Perspective

Incorporation into the Russian Empire

Multiple tribes of Turkic origin that occupied the territory of the present-day Kazakhstan shaped the cultural background of the indigenous population of this country (Klyashtornyi &

Sultanov, 1992). Turkic language and traditions as well as the engagement in pastoral nomadism continually informed local culture after Kazakh lands were incorporated in the Mongol Empire in the 13th century (Kushkumbayev & Sabitov, 2013; Uskenbay, 2006). The disintegration of the

Mongol Empire led to the establishment of the Kazakh khanate in the middle of 15th century, an indigenous polity whose tripartite organization and political structure was informed by the centuries of Mongol dominance. Between 1730 and 1867 the remains of the khanate were incorporated to the Russian Empire as a result of local political quarries that fed into imperial ambitions of the Russian government (Abdrahmanova, 1998).

From the 19th century, the Kazakh territory was governed by the Russian state. However, the promotion of education among Kazakh children started earlier. In 1789, the first school for

Kazakh children was opened at a mosque in Orenburg (Uspanova, 2002), a town which was an important center of interaction between Kazakh elites and colonial authorities. The Tsarist mission introduced formal education for Kazakh children intending to create administrators and translators to be recruited from local communities. These individuals were needed to act as the intermediaries between the Tsarist regime and local society with the goal of furthering the colonization of the region (Sabol, 2017, p. 214). Initially, education was limited to formal training of relatively few young men drawn from local elites. However, by the middle of the 19th century the Russian government began using education as not only the way for preparation of

26 political intermediaries, but also as the method for gaining loyalty to the colonial regime among the Kazakh population at large.

In 1850, the Tsarist government founded another school in Orenburg for Kazakh children. In the instruction of the school admission it was stressed that children of noble families and ordinary people could be accepted (Tazhibayev, 1961). Trying to generate political loyalty among Kazakhs, the Tsarist government tried to change local culture and, at the same time, expressed certain sensibility towards Kazakh culture, some aspects of which were incorporated in the everyday practices of education. Kazakh children went through a two-month training at home before going to the school to reduce the stress of leaving home and abandoning the pastoral nomadic way of life upon joining the school in Orenburg. The school had the following subjects: Calligraphy, Mohammedan law, Geography, Language Studies (Russian, Arabic, Tatar, and Persian), Arithmetic with numeration on accounts, and Preparation to translation in administrative work. After graduation students returned home to work as translators or low-level administrators (Tazhibayev, 1961). As Michael Khodarkovsky (2002) argued, these individuals were more than merely interpreters who rendered “words from one language into another” (p.

70). Translating meant to render the Russian government’s interests and policies into native terms and to relate native concerns to the appropriate imperial language. These translators were, in other words both “a critical tool of Moscow’s policies and principal actors in the long process of colonization of the natives’ consciousness” (Khodarkovsky, 2002, p. 70). After finishing their training as translators their roles within the Kazakh society increased, and some of them actively promoted education as a means of social advancement upon graduation.

One of these individuals was Ibray Altynsarin (1841-1889), who worked in the Kostanay region. After finishing school in Orenburg, Altynsarin worked as a translator, and then launched

27 a new career as a promoter of formal education among Kazakhs. Altynsarin traveled from one aul (kaz., village, nomadic encampment) to another, trying to explain the meaning of secular education. He initiated the process of setting up more schools for Kazakhs, including schools for female students, and contributed the establishment of the first Kazakh Teacher’s School in

1883.17

Altynsarin’s work was useful for the imperial plans in the 19th century. In the 1860s,

Russian imperial education used native vernaculars as languages of instruction. Nikolay

Il’minskii who promoted this system believed that education in native languages transmitted

Russian imperial ideas and ideology better, helped reinforce loyalty to the empire and, ultimately, led natives to adopt Russian culture and habits. As the Russian minister of education,

Dmitry Tolstoy wrote, “To enlighten the natives, to draw them closer to Russia and to the

Russian spirit, constitutes, in my opinion, a goal of highest political importance” (as cited in

Sabol, 2017, p. 214).

In contrast, the education practices which were promoted by the Russian Empire had the opposite effect: instead of producing obedient, supportive, and loyal population, it produced new elite and intelligentsia among Kazakhs who openly opposed colonial policies and practices at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. This situation was an unintended side effect of the Tsarist projects whereby Kazakh elites identified education as one of the important strategies for survival and overcoming Russian colonialism. As historian Sabol noted, “they aspired to use the dominant culture to their advantage, via education and economic advancement, to defend

17 Altynsarin developed his own methodologies of teaching the Russian language to Kazakh children and authored several textbooks. These textbooks, which were written in new Kazakh alphabet based on Russian alphabet, became the results of Altynsarin’s collaboration work with other Kazakh teachers and students. Unfortunately, there is the lack of deep knowledge about these Altynsarin’s activities. Being unaware of this knowledge gap before, I believe this topic should be a proper subject of research.

28 their own nationality and its culture against the encroachment of another” (Sabol, 2003, p. 4).

Kazakh intelligentsia was a witness of impacts of colonial practices such as the land crisis, suppression of Kazakh people’s rights, economic and social issues. Trying to find the ways to solve these problems, the intelligentsia promoted the idea of defending themselves through

“cultural awakening” by printing newspapers and publishing books in the Kazakh language, promoting education and political organizations (Sabol, 2003, p. 1). This politically active intelligentsia initiated the nationalist movement Alash, which later became a political party

(Amanzholova, 2009). The Alash party identified socialised education as a key strategy for political survival of Kazakhs as a nation. The Alash party established an autonomous state the

Alash Orda (1917-1920), and during its short history tried to materialize their plans.

Unfortunately, the Alash Orda could not find success after the Soviet regime was established generating turmoil and famine in the Kazakh steppe in the late 1920s. Understanding that the nationalistically-minded Kazakh intelligentsia was dangerous to the Soviet state almost all representatives of Alash Orda were executed in the 1930s as political rivals.

Building the Soviet State

It was the spring of 1933, and Kazakhstan had been in the grip of famine for over a year. It had already taken a great many lives… Apart from the increasingly frequent incidents of families running out of food, there were growing numbers of people roaming around begging. To start with, these beggars were greeted in the aul with alarm and quickly given something to eat and anxiously asked how they had been reduced to such a state; but it did not take long for the residents to tire of their increasing numbers and offer them less charity. When the snow had thawed and the fields dried off, the famine victims started gathering the ears of corn from the fields and cooking them. Once there were none left and the fields had been ploughed and summer arrived, people started shaking the straw chaff on the old stacks and searching for edible grain. (Shayakhmetov, 2002/2006, p. 162)

This is a passage from The Silent Steppe: The Story of a Kazakh Nomad under Stalin, a memoir by Mukhamet Shayakhmetov (2002/2006). Being a child during that period,

Shayakhmetov witnessed the darkest days and the main catastrophe in Kazakh history – asharshylyk (kaz., famine). Asharshylyk was the result of Soviet policies in 1920s – 1930s intended to eradicate the Kazakh nomadic way of life (Ayagan, 2012). The Soviet government developed the first Five Year plan by the late 1929, according to which the Soviet economy and society were supposed to be modernized. The key role in this modernization project played agriculture, as a result, the government announced collectivization and the establishment of kolkhozes (rus., collective farms), grain and meat acquisition, as well as forced sedentarization.

The Soviet planners believed that sedentarization would “free up arable land and increase grain production” (Cameron, 2018, p. 8). The Kazakhs were forced to move from their nomadic encampments in Kazakhstan, providing places for establishing collective farms. Massive confiscation of livestock and food suppliers, as well as forced sedentarization, where pastoral nomadism could not be managed, led to “Sovietisation by hunger” (Kindler, 2018), where hundreds of thousands of Kazakh people suffered and died, as well as many people migrated to other countries trying to escape suffering (Cameron, 2018).

Dead Kazakhs were replaced by newcomers from other parts of the USSR, which created the multi-ethnic society in northern Kazakhstan that began to be formed already during the

Tsarist period. The Russian Tsarist government used a number of strategies for spreading its power, one of which was the resettlement of Russian peasants to the newly acquired territories in the 18th and 19th centuries. These peasant communities became representatives of the Russian

Empire, helping to promote and consolidate its policies in the region (Sunderland, 2004). During the Stalin’s period, when Kazakhstan was already part of the Soviet Union, Stalin orchestrated the forced deportation of Balkarians, Crimea Tatars, Chechens, Germans, Kalmyks, Karachays,

Koreans, Ingush, and Poles. These people were labeled as “unreliable” in the eyes of the Soviet

30 regime and exiled from their homeland to different parts of the Soviet Union, including

Kazakhstan in the 1930s – 1940s to prevent their alleged collaboration with external enemies of the state (Conquest, 1970). Descendants of deported families still remember that terrible time and express their acknowledgment to Kazakhs who shared their homeland. On the other hand, resettled and deported communities became an additional tool for the transformation of the

Kazakh into a multiethnic conglomerate (Brown, 2004, 173).

After Stalin’s death in 1953, the Soviet policies continued to transform the Kazakh territory into a multi-cultural place, providing justification of Soviet power. One of the significant projects was Tselina (rus.) that is the Virgin Land Campaign, which was initiated by

Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s (McCauley, 1976). This campaign was a large modernization agricultural project which was driven to cultivate wheat on pastures and previously fallow lands in Siberia, North and Central regions of Kazakhstan (Pohl, 1999, p. 2). The formal reason to initiate this campaign was a food crisis that required the expansion of agricultural land.18

Economic, environmental, and demographic consequences of the campaign are still debated by scholars (Orynbayeva, 2018). The demographic shift in central and northern

Kazakhstan was one of the most significant changes, which affected cultural and political lives of the republic. Between 1953-1959 the population of Kostanay oblast almost doubled: from

423,299 to 711,000 (Vyshnechenko, 2016, p. 13). Pervotselinniki (rus., workers and their families who arrived in Kazakhstan to participate in the Virgin Land Campaign) came from the

European parts of the USSR, becoming promoters of a multicultural society and the Russian language (Dave, 2007, p. 59). They established new settlements that came to dominate, both

18 The Soviet government attempted to establish in the Kazakh lands the massive wheat production earlier in 1920s and 1930s. However, this goal was reached only during the Virgin Land Campaign, which was supported by human, financial, and technical resources (Saktaganova & Abylhozhin, 2018). 31 economically and socially, local realities. In the Kostanay oblast alone, 175 sovkhozes were established by 1965 (Vyshnechenko, 2016, p. 13).

Tsarist peasant resettlement, Soviet collectivization as well as the outmigration and deaths it induced, the Virgin Lands Campaign, and mass deportation transformed the demographic fabric of Kazakhstan. As a result, ethnic Kazakhs became a minority on their own territory in northern Kazakhstan. This situation helped create Soviet citizens in the region.

Almost all newcomers started new lives in Kazakhstan by participating in the state projects, having no connections with new places or family histories. The foundation for the promotion of common values and beliefs in the multi-ethnic region became the Soviet education. In the next section, I examine Soviet educational policies and how these policies still affect the schooling system in post-Soviet Kazakhstan.

The Soviet Education

Education in the USSR was made free and compulsory for children between ages of eight and seventeen (McClelland, 1985, p. 116). In the Soviet schools, students followed a standardized, centrally designed curriculum, with minor local adaptations to accommodate specifics of Soviet republics. The state controlled educational institutions, teaching appointments, syllabuses and textbooks to ensure that all learners were exposed to the same knowledge and attitudes (Akcali & Engin-Demir, 2013, p. 135-136). This system was designed for producing technically literate, politically inept, and obedient citizens.

A tight bond between learning and vospitanie was an important feature of the Soviet schools. As a Russian-born American educator Urie Bronfenbrenner stressed “the virtues of the

Soviet school system for placing as much emphasis on vospitanie, or correct behavior, as it did on developing children intellectuality” (as cited in Raleigh, 2011, p. 70). It is difficult to translate

32 the concept vospitanie into English, because Bronfenbrenner’s correct behaviour does not really capture it. Vospitanie overlaps with upbringing, socialization, aesthetics, norms, moral and values education, as well as Bourdieu’s habitus (Bourdieu, 2010). Herschel Alt and Edith Alt, analyzing the Soviet education practices, used child-rearing to denote vospitanie (Alt & Alt,

1964); while Anatoli Rapoport (2009) has argued that “academic education which is focused on providing students with knowledge and skills, whereas moral education (upbringing) is focused on moral development through teaching values and manners (Rapoport, 2009 as cited in Sanina,

2017, p. 25). Rapoport’s definition captures Gramsci’s ideas of instruction and education, where he wrote “… in addition to imparting the first ‘instrumental’ notions of schooling – reading, writing, … history – ought in particular to deal with an aspect of education that is now neglected

– i.e. with “rights and duties”, with the first notions of the State and society…” (Gramsci,

1971/1999, p. 171). Even though ideas of Alt, Rapoport, and Gramsci capture what vospitanie is, it has a broader meaning and purpose than upbringing and rearing. Gramsci’s term “education” does not thoroughly recall the term either because vospitanie can happen during instruction. For example, a teacher might promote specific values, moral norms during History or Literature classes. During the Soviet period teachers were trained to be not only people who transmit knowledge and develop skills, but also people who actively participate in students’ lives within and beyond learning process, promoting values and norms. Bourdieu (2010) used the notion

“habitus” to show how individuals and their sociocultural position linked, highlighting that people learn particular habits, skills, and attitudes from their environment. The concept of habitus captures the idea of vospitanie. However, it is too broad, and can be applied not only to schools’ activities, but also to practices at home. Thus, in my project, I define vospitanie as

33 values-oriented education, where schools manage child-rearing, socialization, moral and

“cultural” education through formal curriculum and extra-curriculum activities.

Values-oriented education in the USSR has emerged as a result of secularization and separation of public education from religion. Nadezhda Krupskaya, an educator and the wife of

Vladimir Lenin, emphasized the role of collective work in “atheistic upbringing” (Netylko, 1969, p. 256), which would involve a variety of extra-curricula activities. These measures allowed the state to legitimize its power through education, obtaining the role of sharing responsibilities with parents to carry out the upbringing of their children (Bronfenbrenner, 1976).

One of the roles in values-oriented education was given to socialized education, which was developed by a Soviet educator Anton Makarenko. Makarenko was a director of the Gorky colony, a reform school for juvenile offenders in the 1930s. This professional experience informed his methods based on the socialized labour, responsibilities, peer pressure, and discipline, which were adopted as the main teaching methodology in the USSR. Makarenko believed that labour and collective education could impact “any child, however unpromising his background and however reactionary his parents, could be transformed into a good Soviet citizen” (Applebaum, 2012, p. 321). This transformation was based on the idea that labor in the collective could change and improve people,19 promoting loyalty, responsibility, and hard work.

Makarenko’s approach was implemented in the Soviet schools and supported the Soviet ideology, which emphasized the importance of socialized labour. According to Zajda (1979) political socialisation in the Soviet Union was interwoven with labor socialisation or “the creation of ‘positive attitudes’ to labor, particularly blue-collar occupations” (p. 288). School children were taught that socially useful labor was one of the main characteristics of the New

19 The same ideology was used in the Soviet labor camps (see Applebaum, 2003).

Soviet Man (Tomiak, 1986, p. 10), contributing to the construction of the communist society.

According to Hoffman, the Soviet authorities’ promoted ideas that people “could realize their full human potential only by joining the collective and engaging in socially useful labor”

(Hoffman, 2003, p. 16).

Practices of values-oriented education were not only focused on labor socialization at schools, but also included out-of-class activities such as sport contests, art festivals, summer camps, visits to theaters and museums. These venues formed the Soviet school ecology, promoting the state’s ideas and programs. It was common that activities outside the school connected with culturally significant places, which were supposed to promote “cultural education” among the population. Some of them were the Houses of Culture,20 which managed diverse activities. In Joachim Otto Habeck’s words:

… the House of Culture performed the task of “caring culture to the masses;” it is the symbol of the state’s attempt a “enlightenment” and edification. By perpetuating mainstream norms and values, it participates in stabilizing the ideological order. With the school system it shares the commitment to education and the virtuous upbringing of children. (Habeck, 2011, p. 5)

Along with schools, local Houses of Culture promoted the state’s ideology not only among students, but also adults. As Anne Applebaum put it “if propaganda for the young didn’t cease at the end of the school day, propaganda for adults didn’t end with the workday” (Applebaum,

2012, p. 342). Cultural workers and teachers were agents of Soviet propaganda, given the mission to implement the role of education for society’s transformation.

In Soviet Kazakhstan, the purpose of compulsory education included an additional component: the promotion of the Russian language as the language of instruction. In rural areas

20 The Houses of Culture are similar to Community Centres in Canada based on activities, but it is run by the government representatives. 35 of Kazakhstan where ethnic Kazakhs constituted a majority of population, the Kazakh language remained important not only in the daily household life but also as the language of school and workplace. The situation was different in the capital city (then Alma-Ata) and in northern and central Kazakhstan where Slavic and other non-Kazakh populations became the catalysts of a cultural change. The Russian language in these parts of Soviet Kazakhstan became much more prominent over the years. By the 1980s, the use of the Russian language became a sign of

“modernity” in Kazakhstan. For Kazakh children, the Russian language provided opportunities for upward mobility within the Soviet labor system. As a result, many urban Kazakh parents preferred to send their children to Russian schools, limiting the practice of the Kazakh language at home. As Bhavna Dave noted, “Russian was more than just a survival tool; it also became a source of personal and collective empowerment and an emblem of becoming ‘cultured’ and

‘civilized’” (Dave, 2007, p. 2).

In retrospect, the Soviet government used the schooling system to cultivate ideals about good citizens, building common sense among multi-ethnic society. The image of schooling engendered an understanding among young generations who did not experience the Soviet school “as an imaginary quality standard, somewhat similar to a universal golden standard”

(Fimyar & Kurakbayev, 2016, p. 98). It is common to hear people say that the Soviet system was effective, that everybody obtained solid knowledge unlike the post-Soviet education, which is understood as ineffective in terms of providing knowledge that would last. These reactions are the evidence that Soviet hegemonic ideas outlived the regime itself (Yakavets, 2016, p. 694).

Many older people in northern Kazakhstan, who graduated from Russian schools during the

Soviet period and speak only Russian refer to the Soviet school system as “a universal golden

36 standard” indeed. In the next sections I am going to address how the Soviet legacy affects educational policies and teaching practices in Kazakhstan.

Independent Kazakhstan

After the Soviet Union collapsed Kazakhstan was the only post-Soviet state where the share of indigenous population, Kazakhs, was smaller than other ethnicities.21 The early post-

Soviet period in Kazakhstan was marked by reverse migration of families and individuals.

Taking advantage of their home countries’ repatriation policies, many Germans, Slavs and Jews went to their ancestral homelands in 1990s. On the other hand, almost a million of ethnic

Kazakhs, including families of those who left their homeland in order to escape the Soviet regime, returned to Kazakhstan, being supported the state program on repatriation.22 This is an ongoing program, which provides assistance to oralmans (kaz., repatriates) to return home. This program is expected to balance the demographic situation in the country marked by a high proportion of non-Kazakh populations in the north. Yet, the repatriates prefer to settle in Kazakh- dominated areas in the west and south where they feel more comfortable and more at home operating in the Kazakh language. In addition, in 2014, the government launched another program, the goal of which has been to stimulate the movement of students and young professionals from the Kazakh-dominated south to the north of the country. The outcomes of this program are yet to be seen.23

21 The last Soviet census in 1989 indicated that Kazakhs constituted 39.5 %, while the Slavs constituted 44.2 % of the population (Cummings, 2009, p. 31). 22 Trough the state program Nurly Kosh (kaz., A Light Resettlement) over 952, 882 ethnic Kazakhs have returned to their homeland and became citizens of Kazakhstan between 1991 and January 1, 2015. The majority of repatriates came from Uzbekistan, China, Mongolia, Turkmenistan, and Russia (Ministry of Labor, n.d). 23 According to this program “Mangilik Yel Zhastary – Industriyaga – “Serpyn” (kaz., “The Eternal Nation of the Youth for Industrialization – “Impulse”), students receive such initiatives as scholarships, dormitories, and jobs (Lahanuly, 2019, August 26). 37

On the other hand, the state in Kazakhstan has been decidedly promoting the idea of a multi-ethnic civic nation, respecting cultures and traditions of all ethnic groups living in the country (Burkhanov, 2017, p. 4). To ensure successful implementation of this national policy, in

1995, the state established the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan as a constitutional body the main purpose of which is to represent the interests of ethnic groups in the Parliament.24

Burkhanov and Sharipova (2014) have defined the multi-ethnic strategy of nation-building in

Kazakhstan as a “neo-Soviet approach of a big family,” where people can leave together in piece and friendship, and Kazakhs obtained the role of the “older brother,” replacing Russians (p. 47).

Even though I partially agree with Burkhnov and Sharipova arguments, I believe that Laruelle’s idea to look at the nation-building process in Kazakhstan as “a textbook case in terms of building a hybrid state identity” (Laruelle, 2014, p. 23) better reflects processes in Kazakhstan. Thus, the significant shift from the ethnic component in the nation-building process to a common values approach is reflected in Doctrina Natsionalnogo Edinstva Kazakhstana (rus., The Doctrine of

National Unity of Kazakhstan, which is a state document adopted in 2010. It stresses that “the nation unity should be based on the recognition of the value system and principles common to all citizens” (Doctrina Natsionalnogo Edinstva Kazakhstana, 2010). This idea is also reflected in other state projects: Kazakhstan-2050 and Mangilik Yel (kaz., Eternal Nation). “Kazakhstan-

2050” (2012)25 is a strategy, the main goal of which is “the creation of a welfare society based on a strong state, developed economy and opportunities for universal labor, as well as entering into the top thirty most developed countries of the world.” In 2014, the national idea - Mangilik Yel

24 The Assembly of People of Kazakhstan elects nine deputies of Mazhilis (rus., the Lower Chamber of Parliament), who represents the organization’s interests as a set of interests of all ethnic groups of the country. 25 This program became the continuation of the strategy “Kazakhstan-2030,” which was announced in 1997

38 intended to serve as the ideological base and foundation for a new Kazakhstani Patriotism grounded in connection to land and history as well as emphasizing national unity.26

In April 2017, Nursultan Nazarbayev, then the President of Kazakhstan, highlighted in his report to the nation that every Kazakhstani should aim at competitiveness, pragmatism, preserving national identity, and desiring knowledge,27 as well as should seek “evolutionary, not revolutionary development of Kazakhstan, and open attitude” (Nazarbayev, 2017, April 12). This report became the basis of the program Ruhani Zhangyru (kaz., Spiritual

Enlightenment/Modernization of Kazakhstan’s identity), which consists of several programs, such as: Transformation to the Latin Alphabet, 100 New Textbooks in the Kazakh Language,

Tugan Zher (kaz., Native Place), Sacred Geography of Kazakhstan, Modern Kazakh Culture, and

100 New Faces of Kazakhstan.28

The most important program for my research is Tugan Zher, which means native place, and is focused on the exploration of local history, nature, and ecology as an important contributing force to the national development. The essence of this program is to ground

Kazakhstani patriotism in citizens’ attachment to their localities or “little” homelands. As

Nazarbayev highlighted, “Homeland lays the ground for love of greater Homeland – our home country” (Nazarbayev, 2017, April 12). Tugan Zher includes such projects as Tarbie zhane bilim

26 In 2015 the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan developed the document Mangilik Yel for promotion of these ideas among population, including schools. 27 On the official website of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan this expression refers to the idea of cult of knowledge. 28 All these projects have different aims, for example, the project Transformation to the Latin Alphabet focuses on the gradual transformation of the Kazakh language to the Latin Alphabet, which is now based on Cyrillic. The importance of developing disciplines in Humanities and Social Sciences in the Kazakh language is outlined in the program 100 New Textbooks in the Kazakh language, which is dedicated to the translation of 100 world textbooks into the Kazakh language. Such programs as Sacred Geography of Kazakhstan, and Modern Kazakh Culture are supposed to promote and popularize Kazakh culture. The program 100 New Faces of Kazakhstan aims to highlight achievements and contributions of Kazakhstan’s citizens. 39

(kaz., Values-oriented Education and Academic Education), Atameken (kaz., Fatherland),

Akparat tolkyny (kaz., Information Distribution), and Ruhani Kazyna (kaz, Spiritual Treasure).

Tarbie zhane bilim is the most relevant to school29 since its aim is to prepare competitive, pragmatic, strong, creative, patriotic, and proactive people of the nation, whose values-oriented education and desire of knowledge are the foundation of successful future. I will discuss how the project work in schooling in the following chapters.

In November 2018 Nazarbayev in his public statement Seven Facets of the Great Steppe suggested the addition of other projects to the program Ruhani Zhangyru, which would be dedicated to modernization of historical identity (Nazarbayev, 2018, November 21). In the statement the president stressed the importance of understanding “our role in global history, based on strict facts” (Nazarbayev, 2018, November 21), highlighting such valuable historical topics as Culture of Horsemanship, Ancient Metallurgy of the Great Steppe, Animal Style,

Golden Man, Cradle of the Turkic world, The Great Silk Road, Kazakhstan – the Birthplace of

Apples and Tulips (Nazarbayev, 2018, November 21). Having analysed the main achievements in Kazakhstan history, the president suggested the addition of projects such as Archive – 2025,

The Great Names of the Great Steppe, The Genesis of the Turkic World, The Museum of Ancient

Art and Technology of the Great Steppe, A Thousand Years of Steppe Folklore and Music, and

History in Film and Television (Nazarbayev, 2018, November 21).

These projects show the hybridity of policies in nation building in Kazakhstan. By turning to history and trying to establish a cultural heritage of the Great Steppe, the government wants to highlight the importance of Kazakhstan within Eurasia. At the same time, the idea of building citizenship based on attachment to locality and the country construct an ideological

29 This program consists of such projects as Otany – tagdyrym (kaz., Motherland), Olketanu (kaz., Regional Studies), and Sanaly Azamat (kaz., A Responsible Citizen). 40 foundation for the creation of shared values, unity among ethnic groups, and patriotic feelings to homeland. Ruhani Zhangyru program promotes these ideas, continuing long-term reforms intending to build the Kazakhstani nation around the Kazakh language and culture. This process corresponds to the desire of decolonization, the desire to critically examine and (re)approach the colonial legacy of Kazakhstan in education institutional practices, and understandings of history.

This post-colonial desire is not unique to Kazakhstan. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012) discussed projects of decolonization elsewhere designed to revive “Indigenous land and life” as core values in the society. These projects are about just that, they argue, and “not about … other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools.” These “other things,” other goals prevent meaningful decolonizing projects from happening, reducing decolonization to a metaphor (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 1). This is exactly what I have observed in Pioneerville where the process of decolonization has overlapped with that of the loss of social status of Russian and

Russian-speaking populations, constituting the demographic majority in the area. As a result, local people cling to the Soviet narrative as a life boat in which their social lives take place, which has reduced the Ruhani Zhangyru program to a loose metaphor.

The Education System

In addition to recycling Soviet strategies and ideas which will be discussed in the next chapters, the government of Kazakhstan set a goal of globalizing its educational system by reforming the formal structures of education as well as curriculum. Adjusting education to the new realities, the Kazakhstan government established the Bolashak International Scholarship in

1993, which created opportunities for Kazakhstan’s students to study at the best universities of the world and bring back knowledge and skills to their home country. In 2010, Kazakhstan entered the European Higher Education Area (Bologna Process): academic mobility, the

41 adoption of three-step education (Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate), and the autonomy of universities.

The same trend occurred in the schooling system, where the government reformed the system according to global trends. The basis for the latest transformation of the schooling system in Kazakhstan is the development of functional literacy and critical thinking among students.30

Pursuing the development of functional literacy, the government of Kazakhstan works on the development of the new curriculum (Appendix A),31 where the learning process is supposed to be organized in three languages (Kazakh, Russian, and English). Transitioning to the new curriculum is supposed to be gradual, taking place between 2016 and 2020. The new curriculum and the new approach to schooling education generally require the incorporation of new teaching approaches and assessment methods. According to the updated curriculum, students are assessed based on summative assessment of a unit and summative assessment of a term. The final mark is based on results of both these assessments (National Academy of Education Named after Y.

Altynsarin, 2017, p. 33).

Based on the updated curriculum teachers can trace which skills and values are promoted in Kazakhstan schools32 through the official documents which are dedicated to the learning process and values-oriented education. According to Gosudarstvennym Obsheobrazovatel’nym

Standartam Nachal’nogo i Srednego Obrazovaniya (rus., the State Compulsory Education

30 Functional literacy refers to the ability to use the acquired knowledge and skills to solve a wide range of life tasks in various areas of human activity, as well as in interpersonal communication and social relations (National Academy of Education Named after Y. Altynsarin, 2017, p. 9). 31 The new curriculum was created based on the experience of the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) in collaboration with the trainers of the University of Cambridge. 32 Comparing to Canada, there are no programs which are specifically dedicated to citizenship education in Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan’s context the aim of citizenship education is interwoven to goals of learning process and values-oriented education in the official documents. 42

Standards of Primary and Secondary Education) 33 for updated program, schools are supposed to promote such basic values as “Kazakhstani patriotism and civil liability, respect, cooperation, labor and creativity, openness, as well as lifelong education” (Gosudarstvennyi

Obsheobrazovatel’nyi Standart Obrazovania, 2015, 2016). Moreover, it is emphasized in these documents that content of education is realized as part of a trilingual education policy, whose purpose is “to form a multilingual person - a citizen of Kazakhstan, who speaks at least three languages, knows how to conduct a dialogue in various fields of activity, appreciates the culture of their nation, understands and respects the culture of other nations (Gosudarstvennyi

Obsheobrazovatel’nyi Standart Obrazovaniya, 2015, 2016).

The values and aims outlined in the State Compulsory Education Standards mirror previously mentioned state’s programs Mangilik El and Ruhani Zhangyru. The program Ruhani

Zhangyru pushes educators to establish new connections with different educational organizations in order to enrich school practices. As the president of the National Academy of Education

Named after Y. Altynsarin,34 Zhanbolat Zhilbayev, has stressed, “it is important to go beyond school walls through organizing ‘life’ lessons in museums, libraries, and expeditions”

(Mayseitova, 2018, August 20). His words reflect the government’s desire to create values- oriented space beyond schools, involving a variety of institutions which shape the school ecology.

Although the updated program promotes important values and includes new methods of teaching, which concentrated on the development of students’ critical thinking and creativity

33 Gosudarstvennyi Obsheobyazatlnyi Standart Obrazovaniya (rus., State Compulsory Education Standard) is one of the main documents based on which schools operate. 34 National Academy of Education Named after Y. Altynsarin is the pedagogical center, which is supposed to promote new approaches in education.

(Lahanuly, 2012, April 12), the desire to globalize the curriculum as a means to get to the same level with developed countries, preparing competitive workers, has led to the blind mimicry of

Western structures and programs. A case in point is the introduction of English as a language of instruction in schools where this language is foreign not only to the students but also to the teachers. The attempts to develop the education system has led to significant problems. The lack of English knowledge leads to misunderstandings of materials by students, quitting the jobs by teachers, struggling with school’s infrastructure (poor internet connection, the lack of technical equipment), overwhelming teachers by paper and service works – this is a short list of the reform’s results which shows the reality of many Kazakhstan’s schools. Thus, the state’s plans for integration to an international community through education are led by hurtful and much less thoughtful strategies, which in fact can be subversive to the higher goals.

This situation in Kazakhstan can be considered as a result of Global Educational Reform

Movement (GERM), which Finish education leader and reformer Pasi Sahlberg compared with a

“virus” (Sahlberg, 2011).35 Sahlberg defined such the infection’s symptoms as: standardizing teaching and learning, focusing on literacy and numeracy, teaching prescribed curriculum, borrowing market-oriented reform ideas, and implementing test-based systems (Sahlberg, 2011, p. 103). Comparing the Kazakhstan educational policies and the main characteristics of GERM, it is possible to see common symptoms.

The “habit” to evaluate and rank schools based on the Unified National Test (UNT) as a result of “schools’ productivity and efficiency” is one of the examples of these harmful strategies. Since 2004 when the UNT was introduced, the test’s structure has been numerously changed. The current UNT contains of 120 multiple choice questions and takes three hours fifty

35 Thanks to Dr. Jackie Seidel, in personal communication, for introducing me education scholars, as well as helping to situate my research in the context of global perspectives. 44 minutes (Zhussipbek, 2019, p. 16). This test is a sign of contradictions in Kazakhstan policies, where the popularization of “value of knowledge” is becoming equal to the counting scores.

Linda McNeil (2004) noted that when education is run by an “accountability system,” the public languages (for e.g. the languages of equality, of academic quality, etc.) are “displaced by an expert technical language” (p. 278). One of the most harmful effects of this system is the way these tests are prepared for and conducted. Schools’ administrations and teachers are forced to prepare students for the test in ways that do not promote actual learning. This way of preparation includes not only subject trainings and memorization of materials, but also preparing students how to cheat on the exam by taking cellphones and sending tasks to their teachers during exams.

There are many different stories in the news from students who passed the exam, where they describe the whole process (Nur KZ, 2016, May 18). Moreover, there were cases when some students hired other people to take the exam in their place (Oraz-Muhamed, 2014), or teachers who advertised their services on the internet (Almaty TV, 2019, February 4). These cases spark discussions about schooling, the learning process, and the whole education system in the country.

Elliot Eisner, a 20th century American curriculum philosopher who critically observed and studied decades of educational reform in the United States, critiqued this pattern of reformation, writing that in “our desire to improve our schools, education has become a casualty” (Eisner,

2004, p. 301). Unfortunately, Eisner’s words capture Kazakhstan’s experience, where such initiatives as standardization and test system “infect” the schooling system. I am going to address the reform’s effects in my thesis, but first I situate my intentions to conduct this research, present the field site and methodology in the following chapter.

Chapter 2. Field Site and Methodology

My Journey

My research touches several crosscutting topics, including ethnicity, identity, education, culture, teachers, children, nature, social environment, and infrastructure, which all relate to my main theme – citizenship. My journey through thinking about the issues, which I am raising in my work started a long time ago, extending through diverse experiences in my life. Being a

Kazakh woman who was born and raised in northern Kazakhstan, I lived in the Russian-speaking world. Television, education, social media, chatting with friends, conversations at home, all of my life was soaked in the Russian language. Studying in Russian schools where priority was given to the Russian language and literature, knowledge of which defined “an educated” and

“cultured” person, according to the Soviet standards, continued to shape my understanding of the world through the Russian language. Nothing changed when I attended the Kostanay State

Pedagogical Institute between 2006 and 2010. Almost all official speeches and presentations at this institute were in the Russian language despite the fact that Kazakhstan was an independent country for 15 years. There were students who chose Kazakh as the language of instruction at the university, but they constituted a minority, while I felt I represented the majority.

In 2010, when I entered graduate school at L. N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University in Astana, the situation changed for me. In fact, the situation was reversed: Kazakh-speaking students constituted a majority of the student-body, most faculty gatherings were conducted in

Kazakh with small inclusions of Russian, and most paperwork was done in the Kazakh language.

I still remember my very first visit to the library where I greeted the librarian in Russian

“Здравствуйте” (rus., Hello), as usual, and heard a judgmental response in Kazakh

“Сәлеметсізбе” (kaz., Hello). This experience became the first lesson for me, that I must, at least, begin my conversation in Kazakh.

The Kazakh language also became part of my private space. I shared my dormitory room with other women, who spoke both Kazakh and Russian fluently. They could participate in every conversation, playing with words and switching easily from one language to the other. Living with them, sharing food, sad and happy moments, and becoming close friends I noticed our differences in language expressions. For example, one of the girls was always surprised when she heard me referring to “my parents’ derevnya” (rus., village); from her point of view, I was supposed to say “aul” (kaz. village, nomadic encampment). Aul is associated with the Kazakh nomadic past, while “derevnya” is associated with Russian peasants and the Soviet legacy.

Interaction with friends motivated me to learn the Kazakh language. At the same time, it pushed me to think “who am I?” Why could I not speak my native language? How did this happen?

What was the role of my education, family and the social environment in this process?

These questions led me to think about my learning and teaching experiences. I thought about my learning habits, school and university. My school in the village was modelled on the state where, at the least, their structures had similarities. The principal of the school had the role of the president, the vice-principal corresponded to the prime-minister, teachers were like mayors, and finally, students were the population of the “state.” At the same time, every class was a region of the state, which had its own administration. For example, my class had its own

“government.” We elected someone to be our class starosta (rus., a leader). The leader represented the interests of our class at school, ensured our class participation in school events, and did other things. The right hand of the leader was zamstarosty (rus., a vice-leader) who managed the inner life of the class, and organized the events and work of different committees.

We had three types of committees: the educational committee that analyzed the quality of education among peers, and organized events which could improve skills and knowledge of the students; the sports committee, which organized athletic competitions and promoted healthy lifestyle; finally, the cultural committee which created different concerts, participated in cultural events, and organized entertainments. It was our small world, where we all gained not only knowledge, but we were also trained for “adult” life. We learned that we must be disciplined, avoid conflicts, conform to what adults told us, and follow the rules. I think every person who went through the Soviet or post-Soviet school would remember practices such as, greeting the teacher by standing up when they enter the classroom, never interrupting or arguing with the teacher, wearing a uniform, standing in long lines at the dining room. We were taught what it meant to be a “good” person, a citizen of Kazakhstan, how to behave and live our lives.

During my studies in the Kostanay State Pedagogical Institute, significant emphasis was given to our preparation as teachers, whose role was not only to educate, but also to provide values-oriented education. We spent much time in the library learning about the ideas of the

Soviet educators Suhomlinskii, Ushinskii, and Makarenko, whose work was still deemed to be the most important even after the demise of the USSR. As future teachers, we took courses in pedagogy and psychology. We were supposed to learn about the organization of values-oriented education, as well as child and family psychology. Professors stressed the importance of our future role in children’s lives. My engagement in course work as well as participation and collaboration with different institutions of school ecology (summer camps, schools, museums, and pedagogical youth associations) gave me an opportunity to see how everything was interwoven.

Analyzing these components of my living and learning experiences led me to my research topic. Citizenship education helps one to see and discover experiences of people, connections between diverse institutions, and interrelations between identity, places, and community. Trying to examine these links and connections brought me back to the beginning, where everything started, the Kostanay oblast in northern Kazakhstan. Before presenting my key findings, I introduce Pioneerville, the village where I conducted my research.

The Road to the Village

My journey to Pioneerville started in Kostanay, at a local marketplace, the bazar. It was

Friday about 3:30 pm, and my minibus departed at 4:00 pm. The market was crowded but it had a comfortable feel as I went exploring. Its convenient location adjacent to the taxi and bus stand brought together people from Kostanay and the countryside, including residents of Pioneerville, who have gone to the bazar or elsewhere in the city.

I got to the taxi and bus stand about 3:45. Taxi drivers looking for fares asked everyone where they were going. I smelled freshly made cheburekv and pirozhkv. These Soviet style “hot dogs” were my supper during the two-and-a-half-hour bus ride. I boarded the bus at 4:00 pm and got a window seat. In addition to regular passengers, there were students going home for the weekend. The bus filled quickly to overflowing with everyone squeezing together. Children were on parents’ laps and the capacity of the bus was almost doubled. I heard repeatedly, “Squeeze!

Everybody needs to go!” I learned later that behind this “Squeeze! Everybody needs to go!” was the common practice where people wanted to help their zemlyakam (that was the people now living there or people born, but no longer living there). Because they had a feeling of belonging together as zemlyaky, they also felt that when they travelled together to the city, they should return together, even in an overcrowded bus. Despite the overcrowding, young people gave up

49 their seats for the elderly, knowing they might stand for the whole trip, but they did not mind.

Within minutes everyone was in their place, and the bus driver, whose bus operated also as a delivery van, had loaded packages people in the city wanted delivered to the village. Not surprisingly, the bus driver was well respected. A 22-year-old teacher, whom I subsequently interviewed said of him, “Uncle Manas is a good citizen; he helps us, local residents. If we did not have a bus, we would not be able to go to the city” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

We did not travel in silence. The bus ride was not only the way to get there, it was also the place to got caught up on news and gossip. Cloudless blue skies canopied the road all the way to the village. Staring out the window, I saw farmers using machines to plant this year’s crops and, like fresh green grass, crops have already sprouted. We passed ruins of buildings constructed during the Soviet era. Much older Muslim and Christian cemeteries, with crescents and crosses, told me that this land was inhabited long into the past (Figure 2).

Figure 2. The Steppe Road to Pioneerville.

We traveled 200 kilometres on the highway and then turned left onto the unpaved steppe road that has been there forever. The more direct route would have meant travelling another 20

50 kilometers down the highway and turning onto the paved “formal road” to Pioneerville. But this unmaintained Soviet-built road was in such a horrible condition; taking it would add 30 minutes to our travel time. Thus, except in winter, local people used the steppe road. The steppe road descends into Pioneerville from the hills. Spread out below I could see a vast landscape, lots of trees, and the village ahead.

Pioneerville

Pioneerville is a rural district consisting of three sections, the largest among which (called

“#1” by local residents) serves as the district’s center. A three-storey local school, which is the tallest building in the village, an administrative building hosting akimat (kaz., government’s office), a library, a post office, a hospital, a bakery, shops, a telephone tower, and convenience stores are found there. People’s houses are small, but almost each has a vehicle garage, a barn for livestock, and a vegetable garden. The second section is smaller and is located three kilometres away. In between are farm facilities and a water reservoir that floods out into the road in spring, isolating sections from one another. The third section is located almost 20 kilometers away from the first two, where only one family still lives (Figure 3).

Figure 3. The # 1 section of Pioneerville.

The population of Pioneerville is nearly 700 people. In terms of ethnic backgrounds, the local population is dominated by Kazakhs and Russians, but there are also Belarusian, German,

Moldovan, Udmurt, Ukrainian, and Uzbek families and individuals in the district. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were around 1,600 people. However, during the 1990s, significantly more than half of the village’s population left. People did not know what was going to happen and so they left. During that time, Germany initiated a program inviting ethnic

Germans return to their historical places of origin. In addition, many people migrated to Russia,

Ukraine, and Belorussia.

Most of the village’s residents lived there at least since the 1950s, when the Virgin

Lands Campaign began. Since then, many families became relatives through intermarriages that often crossed ethnic lines. Today, families celebrate different holidays, regardless of religion and ethnicity. They invite each other to celebrate religious holidays such as Kurban Bayram36 and

Easter. As one of my local interlocutors told me: “Everything is mixed these days, Muslims are going to swim during Epiphany frosts. Everyone cooks Kazakh national dishes as beshbarmak and baursaks during holidays.”37

People celebrate statutory holidays, some of which (e.g., New Year’s Eve, International

Women’s Day, and Victory Day) originated in the Soviet period. These holidays have established traditions that connect people to the common past. In addition to holidays, the Soviet period is reflected in common expressions originating in Soviet movies, songs, and anecdotes transmitted through the Russian language, which is the main language for communication in the village. Its prominence is reflected in the educational system: there is only one Kazakh middle school in the district, while all other schools use Russian as the language of instruction. The local

36 Kurban Bayram is one of the main Muslim holidays, which is celebrated 70 days after Ramadan. 37 Interview. A representative of a district education department, 35-year-old, July 2018. 52 government promised to build a new Kazakh boarding high school by 2020, where students from the whole district can study. More generally, Russian culture, music, and television remain very popular in this village. Local people use Russian social networks as platforms for keeping in touch with those who left, and even the local government uses these social networks to deliver news to the residents.

Both the prominence of the Russian language and geographical proximity to Russia stimulate back and forth migration for studying, working, and living. Some youngsters prefer to study in Russia for several reasons. They do not have to pass the Unified National Test to be eligible for studying there, the tuition fees are usually lower than at some universities in

Kazakhstan, and the Russian government provides scholarships for students from Kazakhstan.38

Other people go to Russia looking for jobs. Some of them are coming back after seasonal jobs, while others stay in Russia. There are many conversations about the advantages and disadvantages of migration in the village. The main argument for moving is the socio-economic situation. The Russian government has initiated a program for the resettlement of compatriots, which includes support for buying a house, finding a job, and compensation of moving expenses.

In addition to this program, social initiatives such as early retirement, and maternity capital motivate ethnic Russians to migrate.

However, it should be mentioned that not all ethnic Russians of the village are inclined to move to Russia or elsewhere. Some of them prefer to stay in the village, in the place where they were born and know everybody. It is their home. One ethnic Russian citizen told me, “Chto ya tam poteryala v Rosii? (rus., What did I forget in Russia? / What am I supposed to do in Russia?)

38 In 2019 the Russian government has provided 455 scholarships to Kazakhstan students for studying in the Russian universities (Sputnik Kazakhstan, 2019 February 12).

I know how people live there. I will stay here. I cannot live without Kazakhs [laughing].”39

Another ethnic Russian person said, “When people ask me what is my ethnicity? I am answering that I am Kazakh. This is my Motherland. If I do not see Kazakhs, I am not at home.40 These testimonies show people’s connection to the place, where they live, know everyone and rely on each other.

Farming is the main economic activity in this oblast, which is called “Khlebnyi Kray”

(rus., “The Bread Land”). Along with the school and akimat, farming provides income in

Pioneerville, so at least one family member is involved in farming full-time. The village population cultivates crops and keeps cattle, engaging children in farm work. After the Soviet collapse, many local residents established family farms, often collaborating with other families through sharing land leases. Farming demands hard work and physical endurance. Busy time starts in spring and continues until November. Every family farm is busy preparing machines for sowing in April. From April to November the work day usually starts at five or six o’clock in the morning and ends at night. During these months everybody is busy. While men are working in the field, cultivating crops and preparing fodder for winter, the entire housework lies on women’s shoulders. They prepare food for workers in the farms, plant their gardens, manage home issues, and care for children and elders. It is during this busy time that I began my fieldwork.

Methodology

Recruitment Process. Pioneerville is the main site of my research that also includes perspectives of government and cultural representatives, museum workers, and librarians from other villages and Kostanay city. I tried to avoid the over-representation of one gender, age or

39 An unemployed woman, 47-year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018. 40 A teacher of Geography, 42-year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018. 54 ethnicity in my research. However, it was a busy time in the village, and most men were in the fields. Moreover, the organizations (e.g. schools, libraries, and educational departments) that I included in my project have been dominated by female workers. For instance, four out of five workers in the local state administration office were women and only one man at the time of my fieldwork. A similar situation occurred in the local school, where the number of female teachers prevailed over male coworkers. As a result, most adult participants in my project are women (20 as opposed to 10 men).

I began my fieldwork with the distribution of recruitment materials at the school

(Appendix B). First, I visited the school where I spoke with school administrators and received permission to conduct my research. Then, I spoke with local people about my project. After having conversations with teachers, students, and residents about the recruiting process, I realized that potential participants did not pay attention to advertising materials, and it would be better to approach people in person. As a result, my recruitment process included presentations about my research to students in grades five to eleven, and small talks with teachers and parents at school, using snowball sampling as a technique.

To recruit families, I had conversations with people in public places such as the school, bakery, convenience stores, houses or workplaces. I recruited some participants in the minibus during my trips to Kostanay city. During the ride people were not busy, had enough time for listening to me, and showed their interest by asking questions about the research. As a result of detailed presentation and conversation during the ride, I could establish comfortable communication with local residents.

The most challenging part was to recruit students. On two days in May, I introduced my project to middle and high school students. Unfortunately, many students excused themselves

55 referring to the need to prepare for the final exams and apply to university, help parents or visit relatives elsewhere. Only eight students showed interest in research participation. And all of them were female. Later I recruited six more high school students: three girls and three boys. I informed students that they had an opportunity to take part in an art workshop or prepare their own art piece by using photographs, drawings, or stories. Overall, during my conversations with the students, six of them decided to work individually, while others showed their interests in the art workshop.

Data Collection. I was in Kazakhstan for three months. In May and June 2018, I established relationships with the local community, learned and analyzed school life, observed natural surroundings and infrastructure. The rest of the data was collected in July and August

2018. The main sources of my data were interviews, participant observation, state documents and programs, as well as students’ drawings, photographs, and stories. The purpose of my questioning was to learn about peoples perspectives about “citizenship,” “belonging,” “good citizens,” and “what they liked or not about living in this village.” The Figure 4 provides a summary of the methods which I used, number of participants, and their roles.

Methods Number of Participants’ roles participants Drawings, photographs, 8 Students and interviews Interviews 2 Students Interviews 11 Teachers Interviews 7 The government representatives (librarians, cultural workers, akim, representatives of Ruhani Zhangyru) Interviews 6 Local activists Interviews and 8 Families observations (6 adults and 2 children) Total 42 Figure 4. Research Methods.

During interviews, I tried to learn how every personal story and experience reflected on the “big picture” of citizenship and “good citizens” in Kazakhstan. The use of drawings and photographs helped me to understand students’ views and ideas about “citizenship” and

“belonging,” assisting me to develop my conversations with students, to feel their emotions, views, and ideas. I noticed how important place was in the creation of bonds between people and a sense of belonging, as well as in formation of their ideas about citizenship. I visited local fields, water bodies, public spaces, constructions, monuments, streets, and infrastructure, which in combination with interviews gave me an opportunity to understand connections between people and place. With the examples of residents’ experience, I traced the impact of place which can be considered as a teacher for residents, pushing people to adapt and find new creative ways to improve their lives.

I had an opportunity to interview and hear perspectives of teachers, students, families, administrative and government workers, librarians, and museum workers in neighboring villages and Kostanay. Interviews took place at school, in parks, cafes, working places, but mostly at participants’ homes. In workplaces an average time of interviews was from 45 minutes to one hour, and in participants’ houses or public places from one to four hours. I did not record any interviews. Instead, I took notes and transcribed every interview as a short story with key ideas.

I recruited three families, which were different in their occupations, family histories, ethnic backgrounds, and the level of involvement in community life. I had conversations with each of them about their families, traditions, views on life in the village and the country.

Sometimes I followed them as they repaired machines, worked in their convenience stores or picked berries. I enjoyed this experience because it provided me with an opportunity to better understand their lives.

The important part of my research was to hear voices from the community residents and learn from them. I understand that the citizenship concept is complex, and it would be difficult to immediately begin an exploration of the concept, especially for school children. In order to facilitate the process, I used art-based methods which can “serve as the point of departure for dialogue” (Leavy, 2015, p. 232). Students’ involvement as participants was both challenging and exciting. I was inspired by the works of Casey Burkholder (2017), Patricia Leavy (2015),

Claudia Mitchel (2011), Daniela Navia (2015), Sarah Pink (2012), and Caroline Wang, Mary

Ann Burris, and Xiang Yue Ping (1996), whose approaches provided insights about using arts as a method of inquiry, youth activism, problem-solving, and promotion of participants’ voices.

In the spirit of the arts-based participatory approach I used students’ drawings, photographs, and stories for shifting “from research on and about children to research with and for them” (Nedelcu, 2013, p. 275). It was important to establish trust with the students who would want to share their thoughts, ideas, and more importantly, identify themselves as co- researchers, co-ethnographers, and co-learners. Artwork provided an opportunity to analyse students’ perspectives about citizenship, to explore different ideas, as well as to challenge the state’s ideas at schools. As Leavy noticed, “arts-based research can be provocative, critical consciousness, raising awareness, empathy, challenge dominant ideologies, include marginalized voices and perspectives, promote dialog” (Leavy, 2015, p. 225, emphasis added). Indeed, working and learning through young people’s art I saw how this creative approach can empower them through thinking beyond common ideas about citizenship.

I prepared the following topics for students’ creative work “Citizenship from my perspective,” “Who is a good citizen?” “Why do I like the place where I am living?” or “Why I do not like the place where I am living?” As I noted earlier, 14 students volunteered to

58 participate in my project. Six of them planned to prepare photographs or drawings on their own and another eight students agreed to participate in the art workshop. However, three students left the village to visit their relatives and could not participate in the workshop. I collected students’ cellphone numbers and contacted their parents to ask about consent for their children’s participation in the research. All parents agreed that students could participate in the research, and some of them were delighted that their children would have this opportunity to engage in creative activities outside the house. Their support gave me confidence, but on the day of the scheduled art workshop, none of the students shown up. I came early, brought all the materials, snacks and drinks, prepared a classroom for the workshop and waited. Five, ten, fifteen minutes, half an hour passed. I double checked if I put the right date and the classroom’s number. I had called the participants in the morning to check if they still wanted to come or not. Everybody told me that they would come to the workshop, but nobody showed up. I saw some of them after, and they explained that they had different reasons for not coming. Some had problems at home, others had to babysit their younger brothers and sisters. Fortunately, some students asked me about organizing the art workshop another day. We rescheduled the event. After the drawing session, every student presented their work, where they could share ideas with their peers.

I organized a group discussion that included four students, who preferred to work by themselves, needed more time, and decided to create their own art pieces by using photographs, drawings, and stories. During this discussion, participants and I spoke about citizenship and belonging as students understood these concepts. I stressed that there were no “right” or “wrong” ideas, and that it was important to hear their perspectives. I tried to avoid my explanation of the topic in order to evade unintentional influence on students’ ideas.41 At the beginning two

41 In addition, I instructed students about the consideration of privacy issues during taking photographs, explaining that private properties, people, specific addresses and so on should not be depicted. 59 students told me that they would prepare drawings, three decided to work with photographs, and one wanted to prepare a collage. However, not all students had a chance to share their works with me. One student decided to draw graphic books, however, they did not come for the final conversation after a few meetings. During our conversations they promised to come, but they did not show up. The same situation happened with another student who wanted to draw but never got back to me. Another student told me that they had many places where they would like to take pictures (a playground, a local water body, football field), which described why they love to live in the village. However, after we rescheduled our meetings several times, they told me that they did not have time for taking pictures because of summer jobs. As a result, I had an opportunity to learn from perspectives and ideas of eight students, through five drawings, one collage, and two photographs. In the next chapters I am going to introduce these art works in combination with other participants’ views which shaped my main findings.

Chapter 3. The World of Schooling

The three-storey school, which was built in the 1970s and refurbished several years ago, can be seen from almost everywhere in the village. In addition to its main purpose, this school is a place for community gatherings and meetings with government representatives and holiday celebrations. Other public facilities, kindergarten, and the House of Culture, as well as agricultural processing enterprises did not survive the post-Soviet transformation, and so the school became the center of gravity in the village, the repository of collective memory and local history.

This history is visible in the appearance of the school and the yard around it, including

Soviet and post-independence symbolisms, and now the impacts of globalization that co-exist in this region. Thus, Kazakhstan’s flag flies on the school’s roof, the freshly whitewashed bust of

Lenin sits right in front of the building, and accessibility ramps that have been added recently testify to the country’s inclusion in the global community. These elements indicate how values and images from different periods have been mixed, creating space for the “material reality”

(Laszczkowski, 2014). Anthropologist Mateusz Laszczkowski noted, “while the state is a

‘construct,’ there is a material reality to its construction. That material reality can exert on citizen-subjects powerful feelings of incorporation, mobilization, or seduction” (Laszczkowski,

2014, p. 167). Following this idea, I think of the school as the material point that connects the local community with the past, the rest of the country, and the world.

An art exhibition entitled “My Homeland - Kazakhstan” was installed at the main hall in the school when I was there in 2018. Students’ paintings depict mountains, yurts (rus., Kazakh traditional house), shanyraks (kaz., the top part of the yurt, which has been adopted as a state symbol in Kazakhstan), the steppe and blue skies, conveying their ideas about homeland. The

61 exhibit also featured state paraphernalia – the text of the national anthem, the flag, the coat of arms and a big poster, indicating the trilingual educational policy, with the slogan “Knowledge of three languages – is our future.” The classrooms’ nameplates have been written in three languages, Kazakh, Russian, and English, reinforcing the same idea – construction of a trilingual society in Kazakhstan.

Some visual material presents other state’s programs, and significant events in the country. For example, a Ruhani Zhangyru’s poster, depicting a boy with an eagle and an inscription of Nazarbayev’s words about patriotism, articulates Kazakhstani patriotism and citizens’ loyalty to the nation-state. Moreover, the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Astana was one of the important events during the summer of 2018. The slogan “Astana is a product of all Kazakhstan citizens” circulated in TV programming and newspaper articles. The poster, depicting the capital’s development in different years, conveys the significance of this event suggesting the contribution of all citizens to the building of Astana. This poster presented Astana as an “exemplary center” which provided citizens with “a sense of positive social change and order,” and reaffirmed that “the goals of development, modernization, and progress are still being pursued by the state” (Beisenova, 2014, p. 133).

The positive changes and modernization in the country were also expressed through students’ point of view. For example, there was a collage dedicated to the EXPO in the

Elementary school classroom, that was created by a student, who had visited EXPO with his grandmother during Summer 2017. After coming back to the village, this student created the collage, combining photographs and stories about their experience at the Expo. The photograph in the centre of the collage was made in front of the giant sphere, which was the main symbol of this international event. The collage conveyed the feeling of “modernity” and changes, creating

62 spaces for imagination, which connected the “unspectacular periphery” (Koch, 2018) with the rest of the country through the main state’s symbols. Posters, decorations, in combination with the state symbols, represented unity of the local community with the country, and promoted ideology and images about the state.

Having considered meanings which school surroundings provide, representing the government’s policies to the local community, it is important to examine the relationships that govern the schooling system. Communication between teachers and students is of particular importance here. What are the interactions between them? How do teachers characterize good citizens? What do students think about schooling practices? I am going to address these questions, which are crucial for understanding the context where the ideals about citizenship are promoted, in the next sections.

Teachers

Gramsci identified two types of intellectuals “traditional” and “organic” based on their social functions (Gramsci, 1971/1999). “Traditional” intellectuals are professionals in literal and scientific realms “whose position in the interstices of society has a certain inter-class aura about it but derives ultimately from past and present class relations and conceals an attachment to various historical class formations” (Gramsci, 1971/ 1999, p. 131). “Organic” intellectuals, according to Gramsci, compose “the thinking and organising element of a particular fundamental social class.” These intellectuals are distinguished based on their “function in directing the ideas and aspirations of the class to which they organically belong,” rather than their profession

(Gramsci, 1971/1999, p. 131).

Teachers in Pioneerville are intellectuals, who are expected to promote and deliver hegemonic ideals from the state to students. They represent a combination of traditional and

63 organic intellectuals, having social function in the community. Every teacher is a product of particular “lived realities” (Tupper, Cappello & Sevigny, 2010, p. 336), which affect state’s projects in practice. Curriculum scholar Ted Aoki suggested the categorization of “curriculum- as-written,” “curriculum-as-plan” and “curriculum-as-lived-experiences” (Aoki, 1991, p. 7).

Aoki’s suggestion correlates with the idea of creolization, which recognize transformations in education as the part of complex, multilayered process, where teachers can interpret, adapt, and organize learning process based on their education, cultural, gender, and social backgrounds

(Napier, 2003). Borrowing Aoki’s suggestion, in this section I aim to examine how teachers in

Pioneerville define ideals of citizens based on their lived experiences.

The pathway to becoming teachers for students usually starts after grade 9 in colleges or grade 11 at universities (Appendix C). In Kazakhstan, colleges are post-secondary institutions that grant vocational diplomas and associate degrees. College graduates can continue to study at the university. Universities in Kazakhstan are institutions of post-secondary education, where students obtain academic degrees in a variety of subjects, full or part time. The Kostanay State

Pedagogical College and the Kostanay State Pedagogical University named after Omirzaq

Sultangazin were established in the 1930s. The government of Kazakhstan provides generous funding to both schools in the form of scholarships, trying to create more teachers for the country which is experiencing a deficit of people in this profession.42 The downside of the state’s desire to attract more students to education is that far from everyone who graduates with the teaching diploma wants to pursue a teaching career and ends up working elsewhere. On the other hand, the teaching profession in Kazakhstan provides certain opportunities for professional growth and income, especially in rural areas, which makes it attractive in the eyes of some villagers. As one

42 Tuition fees are at the university (full time – CAD 1224,34;/part time – CAD 684,14) and college (full time CAD 514,43) 64 of the teachers told me during informal conversation:

I want my daughter become a teacher. An English teacher can find work almost everywhere. Every school needs an English teacher. Who knows what is going to happen in future? Maybe she will marry a rural man and would move after him. As an English teacher, she can easily find a job there (Pioneerville, July 2019).

This testimony captures a general pathway of many teachers, who chose this career as a guarantee to have stable employment. In Pioneerville, obtaining a teaching diploma is a way for social advancement, which is why many young people who connect their future with the village want to be teachers.

The educational background of teachers in Pioneerville vary. Older teachers, who constitute a demographic minority were educated during the Soviet period. The majority of teachers gained their teaching degrees by studying part time. More recently one of them was a

20-year-old female teacher of English, who was to graduate in 2019. After graduation from the local school, she applied to the full-time program at university in Kostanay. However, after finishing the first year, she transferred to the part-time program and came back to the village where she was hired as an English teacher.

This case is a common practice among teachers in Pioneerville. Many of them start their careers as teachers while studying part time at colleges or universities. After receiving the first degree they continue to study part-time in other education programs. As a result, many teachers have two degrees. One of the main motivations for them to obtain the second degree is the increase of income. Two degrees allow them to have more teaching hours, and as a result, higher salaries. Teachers also attend education programs which give them skills that would be needed at the school. For instance, a 22-year-old teacher, having finished his part-time program in History

65 during the summer 2018, planned to apply to the Computer Science program the following year, because the school needed a teacher of this subject.

Considering teachers’ backgrounds, it is important to understand how it affects their ideas about citizenship. Looking at teacher’s narratives, I noticed that teachers who grew up and received their education during the Soviet period interconnected citizenship and patriotism into a single whole, identifying love of the motherland and contribution to the country as the main characteristics of good citizens. The testimony of a 42-year-old teacher of Geography captures this idea, “A citizen loves the Motherland, has good attitude to the nature. Citizens and patriots are the same, they should respect other ethnicities. Kazakhstan is the Motherland for everybody”

(Pioneerville, July 2018).

Opposite to this view, younger teachers divide notions of citizens and patriots, emphasizing rights and responsibilities of the former, rather than emotional feelings of the latter.

A 20-year-old teacher of English told me:

A citizen is a responsible person who lives in a particular country. The state should take care of citizens. Citizens have rights and responsibilities. I believe there is a difference between a citizen and a patriot. A citizen belongs to a specific country, while a patriot is the one who loves their country. Not everybody loves their country. (Pioneerville, July 2018).

This testimony captures the idea that many participants in my research shared, differentiating such notions as “citizen” and “patriot.” A patriot from their perspectives has an emotional attachment to the country, their collective homeland; a patriot is loyal to the state, ready to sacrifice himself or herself to their country and proud of making contribution to the national development. A citizen, on the other hand, has the legal status in particular country, who does not necessarily have any emotional attachments. From some participants’ perspectives, a citizen and the state have relationships of obligations and responsibilities, where the former is supposed

66 to contribute to the national development through their everyday work, parenting, and volunteering activities, while the latter should take care of citizens, providing workplaces, good living conditions, and peace.

Despite different views between teachers about citizens and patriots most of them referred to the people who they personally knew (relatives, friends, classmates, local people, and teachers), when I asked them to describe what good citizenship meant to them. They localized the image of a good citizen, emphasizing the importance of people’s contribution to the local community, dedication to improving living conditions and making changes. A 41-year-old teacher of the Russian Language told me, “I believe in our village farmers are good citizens.

They provide jobs to local people. Locals can earn money and have a good life” (Pioneerville,

July 2018). Through these conversations about examples of good citizens I noticed how these examples affect teachers, making them think about their contributions as citizens. A 22-year-old male teacher of History, referring to a colleague from another village who organized a variety of activities for students, said:

I believe he is a good citizen. He contributes to the society, changing the world around him. I would like to create something similar here, in our village. For a long time, we have planned to organize some summer activities in our school. Students asked why did not we create the summer camp in our village. I hope that we can organize it soon. I believe, the program Ruhani Zhangyru will help us get some financial support. My parents are going to move to Russia, but I want to stay here. I feel responsibility for my students” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

This testimony opens a discussion about teachers’ understandings and identifications of themselves as citizens. All teachers express themselves as citizens through their teaching practices, emphasizing their role in the learning process and values-oriented education. For example, a 63-year-old female Math teacher organizes free Math classes for students who have difficulties in understandings some themes. These classes are open for students from different

67 grades. She believes that as a citizen and a teacher she should transmit her knowledge to students. As she told me, “This is my contribution as a citizen to my country” (Pioneerville, July

2018).

All in all, having the function to promote the state’s policies and programs, teachers at the same time are part of the local community. Their testimonies provide the idea of how they understand and identify good citizens based on their local practices and examples. In the next section, I introduce students in Pioneerville, providing their complex relationships with teachers, as well as their perspectives about schools’ activities.

Students

The number of high school students in Pioneerville decreases every year. As it was discussed in the previous section, some students choose not to go to high school because of financial situations in their families or poor academic records. Many of them are not sure that they will get a scholarship for studying at universities after grade 11, so they decide to apply to the college’s program. One of the students told me, “Our class was big – 16 students. Now only five of us left in grade ten. However, almost all of us are going to apply for college this year. We are not going to finish grade eleven” (16-year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018). In contrast to this opinion, some of students would like to continue studying, but because all classmates are leaving the school, they have to apply to colleges as well. One said, “I wanted to finish 11 grades at our school, but all my classmates decided to leave. I do not want to study alone, so, I would have to apply to the regional college” (A student, 16-year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018).

In contrast, other students move to urban schools seeking better education, extra- curricula activities (e.g. sports and fine arts), and better living conditions in terms of access to the internet and mobile connection. Some parents sent their children to private schools or boarding

68 schools for gifted students that are tuition-based as well. Currently one of the most popular schools among students in Pioneerville is Nazarbayev Intellectual School (NIS) in Kostanay.

After grades seven, eight, and nine students take exams to be able to enroll in this school. For instance, a 13-year-old student from grade seven, Akmaral has applied to NIS in Kostanay during the summer 2018. She said, “My sister studies there. I applied this year, but I could not get the right score. I am on the waiting list now, hopefully, they will call me” (Pioneerville, July

2018).

Observing student-teacher relationships, I noticed that they are complex, where students are not passive participants of the teachers’ directives. In contrast, they can directly or indirectly resist practices at the school. Local people told me one of the cases which happened a few years ago when some students from the middle school threw eggs at the deputy principal’s house windows, after he gave them behaviour notes. However, the cases of open confrontation are rare.

Instead, students use such strategies as passivity or silence, which applying Scott’s idea (1985), became their “weapons” for resistance.

I experienced these strategies myself. After hearing that I wanted to recruit students for my research, the deputy principal of values-oriented education told me, “You should try to recruit students from grades 5 or 6, it is hard to involve older students. They do not hear us out. It is impossible to organize high school students for anything” (25-year-old, Pioneerville, July

2018). The proof of her words came a few days later when I was presenting my project to students. During my presentation students were silent and passive, showing no interest in what I was saying. Furthermore, even though the school administrators announced that students from middle and high school were supposed to gather in the meeting room, many students did not come. I was surprised that only five students from the high school attended, despite the fact that

69 almost all of them were at school that day. Later I learned that in students’ minds, my invitation was associated with the practice of dobrovolno-prinuditelno (rus., voluntary-compulsory) participation in a variety of the events. As one of the students told me, “Yes, we are participating in different sport, cultural, educational events. We defend the honor of the school or village.

However, it is often voluntary-compulsory,” which means that teachers use a variety of strategies to convince/force students to participate in school activities (a student, 16-year-old, Pioneerville,

July 2018).

These voluntary-compulsory practices are often forced by teachers, who draw on parents’ support. Specifically, homeroom teachers often ask for parents’ help in convincing their children to participate in various events. As one of teachers during informal conversation said, “If we want students to participate in contests or concerts, I call parents for help” (Pioneerville, July

2018). Sometimes, this teacher-parent collaboration delivers good results for all parties involved, including students who feel good about themselves by winning awards, participating in regional and republic events, as well as developing their skills. As one of the parents told me, “My son participated in the reader contest. At the beginning he did not want to participate, but a homeroom teacher suggested he should compete. We convinced him to participate. He did great and passed the second round of the contest” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

On the other hand, these practices reinforce sceptical attitudes about the school and education among students, who feel being left out in decision-making about the social life in school. As one of them told me, “The school can organize real events,” that is, the events that are meaningful to students, but it does not (17-year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018). Instead, the school promotes state programs without trying to connect with the students. As a result, even the best of state ideas get lost. For example, at the art workshop when we discussed how students expressed

70 themselves as citizens, they said that they cared about the environment by cleaning the school yard and participating in “ecological days.” Ecological days are activities which are dedicated to promoting ecological education by gardening or cleaning the school yard. One of the students ironically added, “We have never accomplished anything during the ecological days” (a student,

13-year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018). Indeed, I saw the summer schedule of “Ecological days,” including time and days for different school grades. Several times I tried to find students and teachers according to this schedule to recruit them for my research, but I could not find neither students nor teachers.

This case of Ecological days shows that students’ perspectives are often left behind during designing, planning, and organising school’s activities. They experience the lack of authority to express their reflection and ideas about practices into which they are involved. Yet, students’ testimonies provide insights that they are not blindly following rules or representations.

Instead, they are active participants of schooling practices, resisting activities which they are forced to do. Some examples are evidence of complex relationships, providing a fuller sense of the context of the schooling world. Gramsci believed that “the relationship between teacher and pupil is active and reciprocal so that every teacher is always a pupil and every pupil a teacher”

(Gramsci, 1971 p. 350, as cited in Giroux, 2011, p. 58). Indeed, as part of the interaction between teachers and students, they all learn from each other, exploring new ways of collaboration, resistance, and adaptation. Having considered these complex relationships, in the next chapter, I explore how the government’s ideals about citizenship realize in the local level.

Chapter 4. Lessons from the School

Reforms of Kazakhstan schools and curriculum reflect the goals of the government to prepare citizens, who will have technical skills, can speak three languages, and be competitive on the world stage. The school’s mission in Pioneerville43 reflects this goal. Thus, their vision is “to prepare a highly honest competitive person, a citizen and a patriot of the Republic of

Kazakhstan, who possesses the basics of knowledge according to the educational standards of

Kazakhstan.” This part of the mission reflects the national values of the country, recalling the state’s programs Ruhani Zhangyru and Mangilik El, where the priority is given to promotion of

Kazakhstani patriotism. Along with the national values another part of the mission highlights the importance of preparing citizens as members of the global community, stressing that school graduates “should have the ability to adapt to the international requirements of the world community and continue education in any country around the world.” This statement recalls state’s programs where Kazakhstan students are supposed to be competitive on the world stage.

Overall, the school’s mission is written in “the spirit of the national plan” (Napier, 2003, p. 70), presenting “curriculum-as-written” (Aoki, 1991, p. 7) and reflecting the main state’s program. I am interested to know teachers’ responses and opinions about these programs and reforms in

Pioneerville. How are they different from “written” plans in practice? These are the questions I am going to address in this chapter.

In Pioneerville many teachers are not enthusiastic about schooling reforms. They identify challenges such as new documentation, inappropriate teaching methods, new assessment system, and the lack of infrastructure. As I mentioned before the curriculum has been developed based on the experience of Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, which have better facilities and bigger

43 I found this mission on the school’s website. 72 budgets. The realization of reforms in practice opens a major disjuncture between the state’s expectations and local realities. It shows differences between schools in urban and rural areas, where centrally designed curriculum works differently. A testimony of a 42-year-old teacher of

Geography captures these problems:

It only looks beautiful: three languages, critical thinking, however, it is not appropriate for rural students. They are very busy, they are not going to read a lot, they have to help their parents at home and at the farm, or if they have time, they play. It is another level. Teachers are not ready, families are not ready, we even cannot learn Kazakh, and now we have to learn English (Pioneerville, July 2018).

This testimony depicts one of the main challenges of reforms is teaching and learning in English.

The practice of using English as a language of instruction has not started yet, and some teachers hope they will never have to worry about it. For example, one teacher said, “During my training courses in Kostanay, I have spoken with other teachers about the new system, some of them told me that they hope these reforms will be cancelled soon” (Pioneerville, July 2018). Some other teachers, however, have started to learn English, feeling that they must adapt to new realities.

One of them is a 56-year-old female teacher of Elementary school who never studied English in school (she studied German and French instead). She asked me to help her learn how to pronounce letters and read words in English. When I asked her how she was going to teach in

English, she smiled and replied to me: “Somehow. I hope at least I can read well. I have started to learn the alphabet recently” (Pioneerville, July 2018). This “somehow” is a common response for other new requirements, which teachers hope to implement during teaching practices.

However, analyzing teachers’ reactions and ideas of students and parents, I noticed that the main challenge to adapt the updated curriculum is the popular image of school as the place for getting technical knowledge. People have been trained to believe that school should provide knowledge, and students should learn facts. Teachers help instill good reading and writing skills

73 and habits necessary for obtaining information and memorizing facts and rules of engagement.

Teachers support this image referring to the Soviet period, idealizing it as the best education system in the world. As a result, many teachers do not accept new approaches and methods of teaching. A teacher of Russian Language and Literature, who received her training when

Kazakhstan was still part of the USSR, told me, “Can you imagine that in my class I would draw, mold or create something with my students,” referring to these methods as “inappropriate” for studying the Russian language (Pioneerville, July 2018). This testimony shows that the teacher identified the Russian language as a “serious” subject, where there is no room for interactive methods. It was hard for her to change her work routine, which she followed for years. Students are expected to concentrate on mastering the rules of the Russian language. Molding, drawings, and creating something are considered as inappropriate methods. Her words captured the reaction of a teacher of History and Biology from the neighbouring village, who I knew from the university. She told me, “Are you asking what kind of citizens we are educating according to the new program? You can write this down: we are educating lazy, uneducated, foolish students. Oh,

I am not sure, if your research is going to help us” (28-year-old, Kostanay, August 2018). She went to school after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when education was still following the

Soviet tradition. School was not treated as a place for self-development, joy, resistance, and justice, it was about getting knowledge and be disciplined. These attitudes resonate well with

Paulo Freire’s critique of the “banking” concept of education. He has pointed out that when all that is required from students is to “receive, memorize and repeat,” education becomes an act of deposing, in which the students are the depositories and the teachers is the depositor. In his own words, “This is the ‘banking’ concept of education, in which …the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best)

74 misguided system” (Freire, 1993, pp. 71-72). This system was hegemonic during the Soviet period, shaping the image about schooling practices. It still remains popular among teachers and parents in Kazakhstan.

The whole previous system was based on the idea to get good marks, which were supposed to motivate students to study hard. As a result, teachers and students do not accept the assessment system according to the new curriculum, where students receive their marks at the end of the specific theme, rather than getting them every class. This approach leads to misunderstandings among teachers and parents, as a 22-year-old teacher of History told me,

“Students used to get marks every classes, however, according to the new curriculum they are receiving only commentaries which causes decreasing of their motivation for studying

(Pioneerville, July 2018).

Examples of adaptation to the new curriculum reflect the government’s idea to promote global values, without providing necessary conditions. As a result, it leads to misunderstandings among teachers and the society. Spindler (2002) introduced the concept of “cultural therapy,” characterizing it as a process of “eliminating the illusions one carries in a particular area of perception” (p. 23). Applying this concept to Pioneerville, we can see that these “illusions” about the Soviet schooling system are still dominant in the society. This hegemonic approach to schooling system from the Soviet past hinders the promotion of new schooling reforms. Napier

(2003) emphasized that “loyalty to traditional ways, selective adoption of reforms mixed with resistance, and the power of local contextual factors combine here to suggest that transformation and creolization process are complex” (p. 68). In keeping with Napier’s idea, the Soviet hegemonic narrative about schooling created traditional views on learning processes at schools, which leads to contradictions, resistance, and creolization of new reforms. In contrast, the

75 approach to values-oriented education, which has not been changed significantly from the Soviet period is encouraged by teachers and parents, who continue activities which they practiced before. In the next section, I analyze these activities of values-oriented education in Pioneerville.

Values-oriented Education

Veronique Benei (2008), analyzing the experiences of students in Indian schools, has argued that “processes of identity formation” are realized daily and based on “cultural repertoires of emotionality” (p. 5). Consistent with Benei’s idea values-oriented education is a keyway for formation of “cultural repertoires,” which promote particular values and norms through everyday activities, rituals and celebrations. These activities create bonds and a sense of belonging, as

Montserrat Guibernau stressed:

…through the use of symbols and the repetition of rituals that constitute and strengthen the belief in a common identity shared by its members. By bringing about occasions on which they can feel united and by displaying emblems – symbols – that represent its unity, the nation establishes the boundaries that distinguish it from others (Guibernau, 2013, p. 37).

In keeping with Guibernau’s idea, the school in Pioneerville promotes ideals and values, providing guidelines for norms of behaviour and attitudes through a variety of events. These events (competitions, concerts, workshops, to name a few) are dedicated to cultural, environmental, civic-patriotic, and legal topics. However, the main priority is given to

Kazakhstani patriotism, which leads to equating notions such as patriots and citizens.

The emphasis on patriotism has been included in values-oriented education since after the

Second World War when the Soviet government began implementing a program aiming at the creation of cultural homogeneity within the socialist block (Wojnowski, 2017, p. 154). Anna

Sanina (2017) has analysed patriotic education in post-Soviet Russia, tracing its genealogy back to the USSR. In her work, she emphasized the importance of teachers’ and school administrators’

“experience of upbringing in the Soviet Union, and a symbolic heritage of memorialization”

(Sanina, 2017, p. 26). She argued that teachers have reproduced practices in patriotic education which they used to have during the Soviet period. Sanina stressed “the formation of patriotism is played out not only ideologically or politically, but also at the social and even individual level”

(Sanina, 2017, p. 24). As a result of these practices, patriotism became an important part of school’s life and values-oriented education.

I noticed a similar trend in Kazakhstan’s schools. Teachers collaborate and initiate patriotic education through such activities as rituals, collecting stories, and retransmitting families’ narratives. These initiatives build the connection between people, history, and places, cultivating attachments and the sense of belonging. Therefore, it was not surprising to hear participants from different ethnic, social, professional, and gender backgrounds expressed strong connections between patriotism and citizenship. This connection allowed me to move beyond the legal side of citizenship, focusing on patriotic feelings and cultural belonging. Diem Nguyen

(2012) studied the connection between Vietnamese immigrant youth and the school’s role in the formation of citizenship identity in the United States of America. She stressed that “Citizenship not only conveys a person’s legal standing and membership to a nation-state, but also his/her sense of cultural belonging and connection to a shared national narrative and history” (Nguyen,

2012, p. 3). In keeping with Nguyen’s statement, the hegemonic idea about patriotism creates the space for involving personal and families’ narratives with the country’s history, providing emotional bonds. Implementing and promoting patriotism through the schooling system, the government of Kazakhstan tries to build common values among multi-ethnic population. The main instruments of these activities in Kazakhstan schools became the collection of local

77 histories, school museums, and sacred places through the Ruhani Zhangyru program and its subprogram Tugan Zher, which has been designed to create feelings of cultural belonging.

Ethnic Kazakh teachers who grew up in the Soviet Union emphasize their positive attitude to these programs, stressing that it has given importance to local history and Kazakh culture. As one of them said:

This program should have been adapted a long time ago; we should learn Kazakh culture and language. Popularize the local history and people. When I was a student, we studied the History of Communist Party. Kazakh history courses did not exist at the university. These days, I am relearning Kazakhstan history, opening local stories to myself (62-year- old, Pioneerville, July 2018).

A deputy director of the learning process and a teacher of Elementary school provided a similar response when I asked her about this program:

In my classes we learn about Kazakh culture and traditions. For instance, students created animals, kystau (kaz., winter pasture) by using papier mache. I think Ruhani Zhangyru program is a good opportunity to learn about Kazakh history and language, everybody should learn the Kazakh language” (56-year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018).

These testimonies highlight the shift to building the state based on common history, by recovering stories from local people and popularizing the Kazakh language and culture.

Ruhani Zhangyru helps the establishment of small museums dedicated to local history.

Within the past several years, ninety-nine school museums have been opened in the Kostanay oblast alone (Strokova & Muhamedyarov, 2018, May 5). In addition, some schools named classrooms after the individuals who made significant contributions to education. In Pioneerville, teachers and local enthusiasts are planning to set up a village museum in 2019, having launched the collection of artefacts and stories associated with local community and its history. The process of collecting local stories began before the state program was initiated. Angelina

Wagner, who used to be a teacher, before migration to Germany in the 1990s collected life histories of local individuals aiming at preserving their stories for children who she believed should know them. Once Angelina posted the stories on her site, it became a social space for a dialogue as the residents and former residents of this village use it as a platform to communicate and explore village’s history.

Angelina still has strong attachments to the former home and people. Local teachers have close relations with Angelina whose work inspires students’ projects. An Elementary teacher said to me, “One of my students has done a project about his grandfather, who came to the village during Tselina (rus., the Virgin Land Campaign). He prepared his project relying on the

Angelina’s research, and developed it through interviews of his family” (Pioneerville, July

2019). In addition to Angelina’s project, teachers support initiatives where students will learn and explore about the village’s history and their families. For example, another teacher of the

Elementary school told me, “My students learn about the village’s and regional history. For instance, children collected information about people who participated in the Great Patriotic War and created booklets about our veterans” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

Most stories begin with the Virgin Land Campaign, which was the starting point for many non-Kazakh families in Kazakhstan. This means that it is these people and their descendants who have made a major contribution to the local history project. The information pertaining to earlier historical periods is brief and crumpled, while the stories about the Great

Patriotic War (which is how WWII was known in the former USSR), the Virgin Lands

Campaign, participation of villagers in the Socialist competitions are rich and inimical of painful moments in local history, including collectivization, famine, political repressions and their consequences. It reminded me the words of a historian Virginia Martin, “The task of

79 reconstructing a distinctly Kazakh history under colonial rule necessarily involves teasing the

Kazakh “voices” out of texts written about them, but not by them” (Martin, 1996, p. 21). Instead of “teasing out the voices” I noticed the reproduction of images and strategies which were popular during the Soviet time.

This tendency can be traced back to the realization of the program Ruhani Zhangyru, showing cultural distance of the local community from the new historical paradigm. To illustrate one of the important subprograms of Ruhani Zhangyru is Sacred Geography, which calls for the celebration of historical monuments and important locations in Kazakhstan from which students from different parts of Kazakhstan can learn about their country’s history, culture, and geography. When I looked at the list of the district monuments and places identified by the district government for this project, I saw only those tied to the Soviet period. Among seventeen monuments included to the program, ten of them are dedicated to World War II, and six statutes honored people from outside Kazakhstan whose lives were shaped by the Soviet state, and only one individual among them was born and raised in Kazakhstan. In addition, a historical narrative posted on the official website of the district begins with peasant resettlement during the Tsarist period, mentioning “the nomadic past” of Kazakh people who populated this territory before

Russian peasants arrived. After that, it focuses on the Soviet past, highlighting participation of local residents in World War II, success of the Virgin Land Campaign, and agricultural development of the district. These examples of representations of historical events and district monuments show that for the locals the Soviet period is one of the key sources of history and culture, where the Virgin Land Campaign symbolize the regional “development,” and World

War II creates emotional bonds with the Soviet past.

This Soviet legacy is so deeply ingrained in social life that it goes unrecognized and the

Soviet narrative that relegated Kazakh culture and history to ethnographic backwaters goes unchallenged supporting continuing practices stemming from Soviet “traditions.” One of the striking examples for me was exhibitions at local school and kindergarten where Kazakh culture was displayed through national clothes, music instruments, and yurts. These exhibitions were prepared as showpieces of popularization of Kazakh culture through the program Ruhani

Zhangyru. Instead, they follow the pattern of ethnographic halls in museums during the Tsarist and Soviet periods, when these kinds of artefacts were used to demonstrate “the size and diversity of the empire” (Remnev & Sukhih, 2006, p. 143). This imperial taste runs through cultural and political lives of the community, which is now required to embrace new political projects whose value is depreciated through their implementation on the ground, reducing them to a sheer formality, as I argue below.

The realization of the program Ruhani Zhangyru is accompanied by misrepresentations and difficulties in understanding of all subprogrammes by teachers and government representatives. During our conversations about the program many participants used common expressions “Kazakhstani patriotism,” “Modernization,” “Homeland” and after concluded that it was a new program and they started to implement it recently. The testimony of a 22-year-old teacher of History captures these ideas:

It is difficult to understand the main directions of the program. When somebody is presenting it, they sometimes concentrate only in one subprogram, for example, Transformation to the Latin Alphabet, which creates images that the main idea of Ruhani Zhangyru is transformation of the Kazakh language. Sometimes even we, people who are working with the program, have difficulties in understandings of subprograms, what we can say about people who are not related directly to the program’s realization (Pioneerville, July 2018).

This account highlights complications in realization and presentation of the program. Workers of education department and representatives of regional offices of Ruhani Zhangyru echoed this testimony, highlighting that the value of the program decreased during its realization. Indeed, reading the regional teachers’ newspaper “Uchitelskaya+” (rus., Teachers’ plus) during the fieldwork, I noticed that almost every page included events which were organized by different educational organizations dedicated to Ruhani Zhangyru. Moreover, reports of state representatives stressed increasing numbers of events and program’s results. I had a chance to look at the forms of the program’s reports, which consisted of the increasing percentage of people, who would be involved in variety of activities. The template for a report included a table where different indicators with percentages were supposed to identify changes from year to year, highlighting the program’s achievements. However, what was behind these numbers? During informal conversations teachers told me that they have organized many events for years and now they only add to reports “The event was realized in the framework of Ruhani Zhangyru.”

These contradict practices and misunderstandings, lead to transformation of Ruhani

Zhangyru to a metaphor, which covers all events and continues the Soviet narrative, loosing one of the important purposes to recognize the Kazakh language, history, and culture. Unfortunately, above-mentioned examples showed that the state’s strategy to involve local community did not work, leading to imitations and repetitions of the Soviet practices. Instead of trying to change the narrative, providing space to the local community for self-reflection, self-exploration, and self- awareness within a broader cultural matrix of the new state they are now part of, the government’s program has become an opportunity to recycle the Soviet initiatives in education, one of which will be discussed in the next section.

The Youth Organization and the Hidden Curriculum

The United Children's and Youth Organization Zhas Ulan, that has been created in 2011 is one of key instruments in promoting patriotic education in Kazakhstan’s schools. The main aim of the organization is “the formation of patriotic feelings, the desire for knowledge and self- improvement, responsible attitude, involvement in the history of the country, its present and future among the young generation” (Programma Zhas Ulan, 2005).44

Zhas Ulan is a replica of the Pioneer and Komsomol organizations that during the Soviet period operated as extensions of the Communist Party. James Muckle (1990), analyzing the

Soviet school, compared Komsomol with the nonconformist church, which in addition to religious practices provided “cricket teams, literary and dramatic societies, social activities and leisure pursuits all imbued with the spirit of religion. In the case of Komsomol, the uniting spirit was not religion, but a Marxist-Leninist worldview” (Muckle, 1990, p. 86). Muckle’s words capture the idea of Pioneer and Komsomol, which educated students according to the Soviet ideology as well as involving them in diverse extracurricular activities.

The Zhas Ulan organization inherited this tradition as the Soviet legacy, which along with providing a variety of activities to its members, it also promotes political socialization. One day, I saw a poster describing main characteristics of Zhas Ulan members at the office of a leader of the Zhas Ulan organization in Pioneerville. The description was as follows: “Zhas Ulan member is an honest patriot, a true leader, who contributes to the society, a responsible citizen, a trusted friend, and aim to be a prospective Zhas Otan member.”45 Zhas Otan (kaz., Young

44 The organization Zhas Ulan involves students aged 11 to 16, while its unit Zas Kyran was dedicated to engaging students aged from 6 to 10. 45 Subsequently, I found a similar poster which included the following information about a Zhas Kyran member: Zhas Kyran member loves Kazakhstan, studies very good at school, respects elders, only tells the true, and aim to be a prospective Zhas Ulan member” 83

Motherland) is the youth wing of Nur Otan (kaz., The Sun Country), which is the party that was established by the first president of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev. Along with promotion of diverse activities among young people, one of the main aims of the organization is popularization of the Nur Otan policies. According to the organization’s regulations, Zhas Otan is “an active guide of the Nur Otan party’s politics, whose activities are dedicated to formation of the youth, who support the policy of the Head of State and the Nur Otan party” (Ustav obshestvebnnogo obyedineniya, n.d.). Thus, the state uses schools as a recruitment strategy for this dominant party, promoting its values and ideas.

The Zhas Ulan organization adopted Soviet symbols and values but covered them with the new coat of ideology and names. During the Soviet period pioneers were instructed to study hard, be honest, and learn how to get along with others. They took an oath upon joining the organization “to dearly love my Soviet Motherland, to live, study, and struggle as the great Lenin bade [asked] us and the Communist Party teaches us” (Raleigh, 2011, p.106). Pioneers wore red neckties and a “badge with the motto “Always Prepared,” the response to the Pioneer call, “Be prepared to fight for the cause of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!” (Raleigh, 2011, p.106). The linguistical and symbolic backgrounds as well as attributes of the Zhas Ulan organization (blue neck ties, a badge, vozhataya (rus., a leader) have not changed. The practices are the same: students are taking an oath, singing the special song, and some honourable people are tying blue neckties.

These practices could be understood through the concept of “ideological recycling”

(Kendal & Koster, 2007 as cited in Sharipova, 2019). This concept suggests that some ideas and techniques are re-assigned from the past and used by the elites in post-communist societies in the nation-building tactics (Sharipova, 2019, p. 141). Through these tactics the youth in Kazakhstan

84 not only learn about patriotism, but also obtain political socialization as part of the hidden curriculum. Elliot Eisner emphasized that the “hidden curriculum consists of the messages given to the children by teachers, school structures, textbooks, and other school resources,” stressing that teachers may not be aware about these hidden messages (Eisner, 2002, p. 73). Consistent with Eisner’s idea, the promotion of the Zhas Ulan organization consists of hidden messages about dominant political forces in the country.

The school administration runs a bi-annual ceremony, trying to increase student membership in this organization, which they report to the district education department. Zhas

Ulan membership is expected to increase from year to year indicating the success of the Ruhani

Zhangyru program. At the level of the school, however, this organization serves the purpose of disciplining students. During one of my visits of school, there was an announcement that everybody should gather for a school meeting in the gym. A teacher of Basic Military Training, who was wearing the military uniform announced, “Straighten up! Dress!” Everybody was silent and the national anthem started to play. Everyone put their hands on their chests and turned to the flag. Some students and teachers sang, while others just listened to the anthem. After the anthem, the school administrators invited a student on duty to the centre of the gym. This student was supposed to keep order and record latecomers or students misbehaving during the week. A female student from the middle school, announced the names of students who were late or did not wear the blue neckties and provided details of those who misbehaved. After that the principal told the students that they should follow the rules and behave well. This case shows how the school uses public announcements as a form of reprimanding in order to achieve discipline and good behaviour among students. School administrators use a student peer, who would point out

85 misconduct, and publicly identify people who disobey rules. This speaks to what Michael

Foucault has argued:

The public execution was the logical culmination of a procedure governed by the Inquisition. The practice of placing individuals under ‘observation’ is a natural extension of a justice imbued with disciplinary methods and examination procedures… Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? (Foucault, 1977, p. 227-228 as cited in Guibernau, 2013, p. 55)

However, through my studies of the relationships at school, I understood that Foucault’s words can be only partially applied to school practices. Specifically, this form of reprimanding has stopped being effective, because students do not care about the organization. During my school visits, I noticed that many students who were members of this organization did not wear neck ties or badges, despite the possibility of public reprimanding. Students are skeptical and not as respectful towards the organization, as one would expect. One of my participants told me that

“Zhas Ulan and Zhas Kyran are just for the state” (a student, 16-year-old, Pioneerville, July

2018).

Moreover, students do not put any efforts to become members. As a leader told me, “We are supposed to accept only excellent students in the organization, however, we do not have many such students, so we accept students who have sport or other achievements” (a leader, 25- year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018). Membership in this organization is not popular among the young generation. They do not identify membership in Zhas Ulan as a sign of value or pride.

They do not directly connect their behaviour as political resistance, instead they do not value the organization and the way they become its members.

As demonstrated in this chapter, the state-promoted ideals about citizenship constitute contradictory practices at school. Misunderstandings of the new curriculum and teaching methods, as well as discussions about the trilingual learning process create negative reactions

86 among teachers. In contrast, the promotion of patriotic education, which continues traditions from the Soviet period, is widely supported and identified as crucial part of values-oriented education by teachers. Popularization of patriotism creates a hegemonic narrative about citizens as patriots, who are supposed to love and contribute to national development. Activities dedicated to values-oriented education actively engage the network of school ecology, all of which are supposed to promote states’ ideas. In the next chapter, I examine institutions which shape school ecology in Pioneerville, involving the school and local community.

Chapter 5. School Ecology

In this chapter, I focus on the House of Culture, the local library, and the school, all of which have shaped school ecology in Pioneerville. These institutions collaborate in terms of bolstering the state’s ideals about belonging and citizenship through a variety of activities. I argue that cultural workers and librarians who are charged with the promotion of state projects, transform the meaning of these political projects by infusing their own understandings that reflect their life experiences and local realities. Analysis of the state’s programs and local realities through complex activities in school ecology allows me to move beyond the dichotomy of domination and oppression, providing the prism to see “how power relationships exist in interwoven, multiple forms” (Bloch, 2010, p. 94) in the space of the House of Culture and the library.

The House of Culture

Anthropologist Virginie Vate and historian Galina Diatchkova argued in their analysis of the House of Culture in Anadyr’ in Chukotka, that the terms “culture” and “cultural” in this part of Russia have been “associated with the notions of education, civilization, and refinement”

(Vate & Diatchkova, 2011, p. 52). Cultural practices are tightly bound with values-oriented education and are supposed to promote specific values and ideas among the population. During my research, people described good citizens through such characteristics as “cultured” or

“vospitanniy” (rus., mannerly and polite person). This image of a “cultured person” has been promoted by the education system and cultural places. As Anne White stated, “A ‘cultured’ person is often described as such merely because of his or her polite behaviour, although it may also be because he or she is well-informed about cultural life” (White, 1990, p. 19). As I noted in the introduction, the tradition of associating “good manners” with culture started in the Soviet

88 period, when the state tried to use culture “as a tool to induce social change” (Donahoe &

Habeck, 2011, p. x). The House of Culture that was introduced by the Soviet state has been a key institution in this field.

The House of Culture was built in Pioneerville in the early 1960s, that is before the village acquired a high school,46 which connotes the importance of this institution for the Soviet state. The building that would host the high school was erected right across from the House of

Culture whose facilities students and teachers used for rehearsals and performances. In the

1990s, the House of Culture burned down with only one wall left, symbolically reminding of the existence of this “cultural” facility in the past. Recently, the ruins of this building were finally removed, and replaced by trees. The name “House of Culture” no longer denotes a building as much as a set of activities conducted by designated cultural workers.

The House of Culture, local akimat, a library, a post office, a convenience store, and several business offices share a two-storey building in the village’s centre. This building was built in 1960s and hosted a variety of sovkhoze’s offices before. When I visited the building, the entire hallway of the first floor was covered by anti-corruption leaflets and printed instructions about what to do in case of terrorist attacks. I saw similar leaflets in the regional library and government departments. They caught my attention and reminded me of my childhood, where we barely knew what terrorism or corruption were.

There, I meet a cultural worker, Zhanna, a middle-aged Kazakh woman, who has started this job recently. She works part-time as a school nurse and a cultural worker at the same time.

She has a “Plan of Activities” for each year, which is designed based on recommendations of the

District House of Culture. Zhanna is supposed to organize activities such as dancing and singing

46 There were only elementary and middle schools before 1970s in Pioneerville. 89 classes, meetings based on interests, and promote leisure activities regularly. However, the lack of educators, equipment, and facilities has led them to the organization of one-day activities at school or the library. One of the main focuses in the plan is the celebration of state holidays in the village along with conversations about state’s programs. Topics for lectures and events for community depend on the plan, but the discussion about terrorism is mandatory: once a month according to recommendations of the regional office.

As a person whose youth took place during the Soviet time, Zhanna creates cultural activities in the village based on her experience and some scenarios that she borrows from various websites on the internet. She complains that the local community is very passive, and it is difficult to mobilize them for attending lectures or get involved in other public events. Zhanna plans to revive some practices which were popular during the Soviet period, such as a glee club.

She hopes that this activity would entice local residents to participate in other cultural events as well.

Before this could happen, the main collaborator with a cultural worker was the school.

One of the last events which Zhanna organized was a drawing contest for elementary students, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the capital city of Kazakhstan – Astana. She showed me students’ art works, all of which depicted Bayterek – a central monument and observation tower in Astana. The panorama of Astana can be seen from the top of Bayterek, where visitors can put their hand in an imprint of the first president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. This example connects the idea of introducing the capital of Kazakhstan as the “exemplary centre,” where the main symbol, Bayterek, provokes the imaginative capacity of the nation. Even though many children have not visited the capital, the image of Bayterek connects them with the rest of

90 the country, providing meanings about independence and the contribution of every Kazakhstani to the capital’s development.

Among other public events organized by the House of Culture is the celebration of the

National Unity Day on the 1st of May. During the Soviet period, this day was the International

Labor Solidarity Day having a slogan “Mir. Trud. May!” (rus., “Peace. Labour. May!”). In post-

Soviet Kazakhstan, this slogan was revised becoming “Mir. Trud. May. Edinstvo!” (rus., Peace.

Labour. May. Unity), to highlight the importance of political unity in the country. The celebration of the holiday is usually organized in the form of contests among different villages and government organizations in the district centre, where they are supposed to represent different ethnic groups. Regional organizers of the event stated in the contest’s regulations that the contest’s aims are to create a shared space for cultural exchange, promote ethnic traditions of hospitality and other important values, and help with the preservation of friendship and solidarity of Kazakhstan’s nation. In 2018, as part of this event, there was a contest in which the participants were to represent different ethnicities: Kazakhs, Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusian,

Tatars and Bashkirs, Armenians, Uzbeks, Kyrgyzs, Germans, and Lithuanians. They competed based on the quality of their artistic performances, preparation of ethnic food, and traditional clothes. According to the contest’s regulations, the jury assessed all these criteria, including the number of participants involved.

Zhanna told me that it was a very enjoyable event, which entertained and connected people. The local community of Pioneerville in collaboration with the neighboring village represented the Kyrgyz ethnic group. Since there was no Kyrgyz community in the village, the main source of information about the Kyrgyz people was the internet and local understandings about what the Kyrgyz culture was like. These performances created the space for imagination,

91 when people (re)produced their understandings about ethnicities, introducing these images to the public.

Ali İğmen’s comments of administrators’ role in ail47 clubs [the House of Culture] in

Kyrgyzstan during the Soviet time have an explanatory force to understand the role of cultural workers in Pioneerville. Analysing administrators’ activities İğmen stressed that they “became the inventors of new and revolutionary traditions. These Kyrgyz shepherds who became educators moved from being implicit participants in mundane activities to active and conscious makers of Soviet Kyrgyz culture” (İğmen, 2011, p. 169). Similar to the club’s administrators in

Kyrgyzstan, cultural workers in Pioneerville, through participation in festivals, obtain power to produce images about the multicultural society of Kazakhstan in the region. Laura Adams characterized culture as an “explicitly political project” in nation building in Uzbekistan, “in which a state attempts to unite its citizens and enhance its legitimacy as the representative of those citizens” (Adams, 2010, p. 10). Based on Adams’ idea, the festival in Pioneerville incorporate the local community with the political project, but the legitimacy to represent ethnicities is provided to participants of festivals, who (re)invent representations about ethnicity based on their imaginations, knowledge, and local practices.

Library

Analyzing the practices of the House of Culture, I noticed that many events were organized in collaboration with the local library, which was also supposed to organize public events with the participation of the local community. The librarian, Elena, a half Russian and half Ukrainian woman expressed her dissatisfaction with the local community similarly to the cultural worker, Zhanna. Indeed, I have visited the library several times, and met one visitor

47 Ail from the Kyrgyz language means village, nomadic encampment. 92 once. In summertime, “it is a common practice,” the librarian told me. People do not usually come to borrow books, and generally, the same people regularly visit the library. The busy time in the library usually starts during the school year when students are coming for preparation of homework or reports.

The library occupies one small office on the second floor of the building hosting the

House of Culture among other organizations. Most bookshelves are filled with old Soviet books, while the new books are shelved in a special section dedicated to Ruhani Zhangyru. This section was similarly to what I saw in Kostanay and Astana libraries displays the program’s symbol – a colorful bird. Yet, in Pioneerville, this symbol was barely visible on the top of the shelf because it was so small. Elena told me that the library was supposed to have a symbol of Ruhani

Zhangyru, but she did not have it, so she cut an image of the symbol from the local newspaper.

On the opposite side of Ruhani Zhangyru cupboard I saw shelves with special book exhibitions.

The first was dedicated to the President’s state of the nation address, while the second concentrated on the 20th anniversary of Astana. The last exhibition is dedicated to the reading campaign “One country – one book,” according to which Kazakhstan citizens should read specific books during a year. This reading campaign reminds me of Benedict Anderson’s work

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, where he sheds light on the origins of how the idea of a nation came to be. He defines the nation as an “imagined political community,” where print capitalism, among everything else (e.g., the fading of the religious community and the dynastic realm, the development of vernacular languages), had the biggest impact on this formation. Print capitalism bolstered the imagined community through its engendering of simultaneity in the “mass ceremony” of reading newspapers and connecting to fellow citizens through novels (Anderson, 1983, p. 35). Following Anderson’s idea, the

Kazakhstan government has attempted to use the reading ceremonies to connect citizens from different parts of Kazakhstan.

Like Zhanna at the House of Culture, Elena from the library has a plan where the main events are highlighted. The plan structure and main parts reminds me of the school values- oriented plan, but it is dedicated to the promotion of values among the local community. Elena is supposed to organize activities which would encourage people to preserve their ethnic cultures and languages, popularize healthy lifestyles, promote legal and ecological education, as well as reading habits among the local population. However, having the same problem of passive participation as Zhanna, Elena tries to organize events with the school. She actively invites students for the celebration of the state’s holidays, organizing contests and discussions. One of the last events, which Elena has organized with students, is the celebration of the 20th anniversary of Astana. During the event students created a collage which was dedicated to celebration of Astana Day. I had a close look at this collage which was mounted on the wall of the library. Elena provided the students with images and poems about the capital’s well-known monuments, including Bayterek, symbols of 20th anniversary from newspapers and magazines.

The images were accompanied with such slogans like “Kazakhstan is our common home,”

“Astana is my capital,” and “Prosper, Astana!” The case of the collage provides insights about the incorporation of local students with school ecology. It mirrors the drawing contests which were organized by the House of Culture and the school, where Astana is presented as the center for creation of images about the country, representing unity of the local community with the rest of the country.

Elena’s work is part of the network for reproduction of the state’s ideology, which connects residents with the state. Cultural and educational activities provide the basis for the

94 population’s involvement in the state’s discourse about the country and citizenship where one sees “hegemony reproduced – through the gentle tyranny of everyday practice” (Luykx, 1999, p.

126). The library in Pioneerville along with the House of Culture become the background which translate connections between the state and its citizens, incorporating community with political projects through mundane cultural rituals. However, in the process of these rituals, Elena and

Zhanna are not just passive performers of the state’s ideas. They have power to choose what kinds of events are organized, as well as what materials, scenarios, performers are involved. In other words, they decide what shape the state’s ideologies and programs would be taking. By making these decisions, they transform the state’s ideas from general/country wise to specific/local scale. Being part of the community and seeking support from the local people, they try to adapt the state’s programs to the local realities: organizing events which are interesting to village’s residents and collaborating with local activists. In the next chapters, I examine local realities, focusing on family practices and community activities, which create informal education space for the promotion of values and ideals about citizenship.

Chapter 6. Lessons from Families: Transmitting Values and Habits

Figure 5. Sarah’s Collage.

This collage was created by a 17-year-old student Sarah (Figure 5). This young woman has depicted a citizen through the crystal scale. This scale connotes family, society, and people’s contribution to the society, all of which are connected in the single mechanism. The society is the base of the scales, while the rod represents family. Sarah expresses family at the top of the rod through an image of parents’ arms which hold the baby’s feet. From Sarah’s perspective, family always supports and encourages people. Skills and previous experience, which people obtain through their mistakes are represented through rakes, located on the right scale. Sarah believes

96 that people learn and get experience by stepping on the rakes again and again. On the left scale, she depicts the future, where people develop their skills and realize themselves based on their previous experiences.

Sarah’s account about an ideal of citizens captures its complexity. However, her reference to “family” as a “rod” reflects many participants’ perspectives, who identify family as the foundation of citizenship education. In a different context, a 63-year-old Math teacher told me, “Of course, everything starts in a family. The foundation should be laid out by parents, and then developed in kindergartens, schools, universities, to name a few” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

These perspectives shift the focus of my discussion from formal to informal education spaces, specifically, households. Household, as Amato put it, is “the microcosm in which we learn and know all we will ever learn and know of our fellow human beings and the world at large”

(Amato, 2014, p. 236). In keeping with this idea, I seek to demonstrate the way students’ homes are places of informal education, where meanings and values are taught. In this chapter, I examine the experiences of three households, where children learn skills, habits, and values which are shaped by their families’ histories and parents’ ideas about upbringing methods.

Anara and Talgat

I met Anara, a 32-year-old Kazakh woman, at her family’s general store. She came to the village from Kostanay after she married a local Kazakh man, Talgat. They have two children, a

12-year-old son, Timur, and a 5-year-old daughter, Azhar. Following Kazakh tradition48 they live with Talgat’s mother. Talgat owns and manages a farm, while Anara is responsible for their family’s convenience store and household duties. Once in the village, Anara has learned to drive

48 It is common among Kazakhs that parents are living with their youngest son, who is an heir of parents’ house. 97 a minibus, so she can go to the city to buy goods. She set up their family store, which operates as a general store, selling not only groceries, but also all necessary goods for the local community

(household chemicals, cosmetics, house decoration, repair materials, and even some parts for farm machinery). Customers say that Anara has good taste and they can find what they need in the store. They highlight that her city background affects the store’s assortments and services.

Anara spends a lot of time in the store, so our conversation took place during her breaks.

Anara has brought new farming skills to the village by learning from the internet and other media. Having degrees in ecology and nursing, she tries to apply her knowledge on an everyday basis, with emphasis on the importance of caring about the environment and improving the living conditions in the village. While some local residents like to complain about life in the village, Anara likes to live there, highlighting how quiet it is and knowing everybody as advantages of living in the village. Comparing life in the city and the village, she emphasized that, “In the city, one has to pay every step we make,” highlighting that people can have a good income in the village and travel for entertainment to other places. She said, “we go to Kostanay or Astana during vacations. My husband and I have traveled abroad (Pioneerville, July 2019).

Anara and Talgat actively participate in the social life of the village. Along with other farmers, they sponsor many events and plan activities for students and local people. While Anara and other local women organize events at school, Talgat is the head of the local farmer’s association and he represents farmers’ interests. Moreover, even though during the farming season Talgat spends most of the time in the field or business trips, in wintertime, he and other parents organize boxing training for children in the local school.

Talgat and Anara’s house is relatively new and big as it was built in the 1980s for the sovkhoz’s chairman. They refurbished the house, equipping it with the amenities and facilities for

98 comfortable living. When I entered the house, I was greeted by Talgat’s mother – baba Katya49 – in the living room. Her ancestors come from this area, but she was born in the second section before Pioneerville was established. Her husband’s family lived in another village located some

20 kilometres away from Pioneerville. Local Kazakh herders who lost access to pastures as a result of the peasant resettlement policy moved there in the early 20th century. During the Virgin

Land Campaign, they were forced to move again, this time to Pioneerville.

Baba Katya lives in the village her entire life, working and raising six children. Four of her children now live in Astana, and she visits them often. They have invited her to move to

Astana because of the better health system and living conditions, but she rejected the invitation.

Baba Katya, who grew up in this region, where she knows everyone, cannot imagine living somewhere else:

I love this place, everybody is friendly. We all, different ethnicities, are living together. We are not separating by religion. When there is a funeral everybody comes, bringing money for showing their support. We all share history. When newcomers, Ukrainians and Russians, came to the village, Kazakhs provided housing for them. We organized everything together. Kazakh people are open and friendly, Russians learned this attitude from us. Our Russians are not the same Russians as those in Russia (Pioneerville, July 2018).

I noticed many examples of Kazakh culture in the house and references to Kazakh traditions during our conversation with baba Katya. Following Kazakh traditions, the women invited me for tea. In Kazakh households it was common to hear: “Nannan auyz tuyu,” which meant in Kazakh “at least to bite off a piece of bread.” Moreover, I noticed ornaments which are important elements in Kazakh culture. Kazakh ornaments decorated a wooden kitchen table, a teapot and keseler (kaz., small bowls for drinking tea). Tea was served to the oldest person first

49 It was a common practise to adapt Kazakh names to the Russians. Thus, everybody in the village calls her tetya/baba Katya (rus., aunt/grandma Katya) instead of Kazakh name Karlygash. 99 as a sign of respect, according to Kazakh tradition. Baba Katya stressed that the family has tried to stick to Kazakh traditions:

We are trying to follow Kazakh traditions through celebration of holidays. Every winter we make sogym.50 We invite local people to Kurmaldyk, Sheke, Auzanshar,51 to name a few. We try to teach our children by sharing our own example (Pioneerville, July 2018).

All family members try to contribute to child-rearing and transmit values which a good person is supposed to have. Baba Katya emphasizes that the important part in the process of bringing up children is instilling attitudes of discipline and hard work:

I brought up my children as I was brought up myself. If somebody failed, all children were going to be punished. They learned about responsibilities among each other. They had to obey and accomplish their tasks. We had to work, and they should help us. Boys should be physically strong” (Pioneerville, July 2019).

Anara supports baba Katya’s words about hard work, “Our children are small now, but we are trying to highlight the importance of labor. Our son helps me during house cleaning, dusting and vacuuming carpets. It is very important, especially in the rural area” (Pioneerville, July 2019).

The children are not actively involved in farming, because they are small, but visiting fields with parents, informal learning about farming and agriculture became everyday practices.

Anara told me:

In the future we will involve them with farming and teach them more. However, I do not know what they are going to do in future. These days, they are interested only in the internet, gadgets, and cellphones. The most important for me is that they should be good people (Pioneerville, July 2019).

Anara’s and Talgat’s narrative about family practices and the upbringing process show how multiple factors affect this process. Along with promotion of Kazakh traditions, the family tries to involve children in farming and educate them about human values.

50 Sogym (kaz., preparation of meat (usually horsemeat) for winter). 51 Kazakh celebrations which interwoven with cultural and religious (Muslim) traditions. 100

Kseniya and Nikolay

A deputy of values-oriented education recommended me to invite Nikolay and Kseniya to participate in my project, emphasizing that they were easy-going people who supported school activities, and participated in several events at school and in the village. She stressed, “Kseniya is a good person, she cares about her family. When she was 19, she became a guardian of her little brother. Despite her young age, she did not leave him. I think she deserves respect” (25-year-old,

Pioneerville, July 2018). In addition to her words, my interest in this family increased when I learned that it was a multiethnic family, which ran a farming business. 30-year-old Nikolay and

27-year-old Kseniya identify themselves as metis:52 Nikolay’s father was Moldovan, and his mother was from Kazakh-Tatar family. Kseniya’s parents were Ukrainian and Russian. Nikolay and Kseniya have four children, 10-year-old Anatoliy, 7-year-old Svetlana, 4-year-old Dmitriy, and 10-month-old Grigoriy.

When I arrived at their home for conversation, all family members were busy. Nikolay’s mother, Oksana, was playing with the baby outside. Kseniya’s brother, Stepan, and the three children were picking berries in the garden, while Ksenia was cleaning up the yard. We started our conversation about their family’s practices outside while Nikolay repaired a combine- harvester in the back yard, and finished it sitting on the bench under the cherry tree.

The family runs their own farm, cultivating crops and breeding animals. Nikolay started this business with his father while he was still in school. He learned about farming and how to repair machines from his father, who setup a small pig farm. Nikolay, his father and brother worked hard together, and gradually expanded their business. When the father passed away,

Nikolay continued to run the family business, involving his children just like his father:

We are trying to involve our children to work in the farm. Our son, Anatoliy, helps

52 People from interethnic marriage in Kazakhstan identify themselves as metis. 101

Nikolay. Last year we started to motivate him by paying for his contribution. He is going with father and other workers for grazing pigs every day. I think it is a good way for teaching them about farming and value of money (Kseniya, Pioneerville, July 2018).

Kseniya and Nikolay try to promote hard work and the value of labour among the children, not only through farming, but also through housekeeping. Children help them to water plants in their garden, wash dishes, clean the house, and do other chores. However, Kseniya complains that it is difficult to motivate Anatoliy to wash dishes or mop floors, because he identifies these as “female” jobs.

It is not the family’s intention to promote gender differences, but usually the sons spend most of their time with Nikolay, while the daughter spends her time with Kseniya. For example, a special ritual for Nikolay and Anatoliy was watching sports on television. The World Cup during the summer of 2018 caused them to gather and cheer for their favourite teams. Anatoliy wants to move to the city to become a professional soccer player. Kseniya told me, “He promised to be an outstanding student if we allow him to go to study in Kostanay. He knows that in the city he can go to the professional soccer training. What can he get here? However, he is small, maybe in the future he will go” (Pioneerville, July 2018). Anatoliy plays in the school soccer field every evening with students from the middle and high school. To support his son’s ambitions, Nikolay has built small gates in their yard, providing a space for his sons and local children to develop their skills. Many of Anatoliy’s classmates have also dreamed of being famous soccer players as Messi or Christiano Ronaldo.

Kseniya mentioned that they know their families’ histories, but they do not discuss them with children, “We are going to teach our children in the future, now they are too small. Only

Anatoliy asked us about the family’s history and cousins. Maybe it is Kazakh blood affects him”

– said Kseniya laughing. Kseniya’s words reflect representations about Kazakhs as people who

102 keep close relationships with their relatives and kinship, knowing their zhety ata (kaz., names of seven generations of their ancestors).

Nikolay and Kseniya celebrate state holidays such as Women’s Day, New Year, Nauryz, and birthdays, but they do not have special rituals and family traditions. The most important part for them is to work hard and provide everything for their children, teaching them by sharing their own example. The family spends most of their time together for work and rest. It was common to see their whole family in the bakery or convenience stores. During the summertime they go camping with friends to the nearest river or visit Kostanay. Growing up in Kostanay, Kseniya used to visit the Kostanay Regional Museum of Local Lore during her childhood. She tries to promote this tradition among her children, “I remember, my mother and I visited the local museum in Kostanay. It was fascinating. The vivid memory of my childhood. We organized the tour to our children, everyone of them liked different galleries of museums” (Pioneerville, July

2018).

Kseniya’s and Nikolay’s family provides the example where the ethnic sentiments are not the most important component in upbringing process. Unlike Anara and Talgat, they do not focus on practices of ethnic rituals, instead they promote family values through close interaction with the children regularly.

Tatyana and Berik

Tatyana is a 40-year-old teacher in the local school, who was on maternity leave with her three-month-old son during our conversation. She is half Russian and Ukrainian and is married to a Kazakh man, Berik. They have four children: three daughters and one son. The oldest 17- year-old daughter, Olga, studies at a college in Kostanay. A 15-year-old middle daughter,

103

Madina, just finished grade nine and is planning to apply to college in Kostanay. The youngest daughter, 5-year-old Saida, attends kindergarten.

Berik, like many other villagers, always looks for job opportunities outside of the village.

During the summer when I was there, he went to Kostanay, trying to find additional income. I saw him once when I visited their house for recruiting the family to my project. He was sitting outside the house when I approached him. Berik did not even let me finish my sentence, pointing towards their house and directing me to speak with his wife. I observed this attitude among many men, who directed me to their wives for conversation.

A history teacher referred me to this family, characterizing Tatyana as a descendant of the people who established Pioneerville. He knew that Tatyana with her daughter, Olga, initiated a project about the family’s history and their role in the village. Olga has presented this project in school competitions and her college’s contest, as she told me, “It was my mother’s idea. In the beginning, I was not so enthusiastic about it. However, learning about my family’s past, discovering new stories increased my interest. Now I am glad that my mother motivated me”

(Pioneerville, July 2019).

Tatyana always has a strong interest in her family’s history – she wants to know her roots and transfer knowledge about the family to their children. She is a granddaughter of one of the first families that settled in the village when they arrived as part of the Virgin Lands

Campaign. Her grandfather served in the Ukraine army before he came to Pioneerville and local people facetiously call his son, Tatyana’s father, “the first child of Tselina” (rus., the Virgin

Land Campaign). Tatyana’s father and mother live in Pioneerville, while many relatives migrated to Russia and Belorussia. Even though Tatyana is interested in the family’s history, she complains that they know almost nothing about her husband’s family, “I asked Berik about his

104 ancestors. It is so interesting, maybe they were khans or bays [i.e., members of Kazakh traditional nobility], who knows. Half of the village is his relatives, everybody is here. He should explore it, but Berik does not care” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

When I arrived at their house, Tatyana, all her children and one niece, who came from

Russia, were waiting for me in the living room. The room reminds me of a typical post-Soviet guest room: whitewashed walls, a sofa with two armchairs along the wall, a TV in the corner, and a table. There are not any elements or decorations which would highlight the ethnic or religious identity of the family as in the house of Anara and Talgat. On the table Tatyana displays all photographs, medals and documents, which belonged to her grandfather. She plans to provide copies of documents to the local museum, which will be opened in the school.

During our conversation Tatyana and her daughters emphasize that the most important thing for them is family. They associate good citizens with family members, specifically,

Tatyana’s father and mother, as Tatyana tells me, “A good citizen is my father, he is honest. A citizen should care about family, providing everything for children. Family should be in the first place” (Pioneerville, July 2018). Olga and Madina agree with the mother, referring to their grandfather as an example of a good citizen. Moreover, Tatyana does not only identify her parents as good citizens, but also as references for almost all her practices, she stressed:

I am bringing up children as my parents educated me: to respect elders, to study hard, to help each other and people. Every year we celebrate the anniversary of our wedding day. This tradition we borrowed from my parents’, we [children] usually gather together in my parents’ house for celebration of my parents’ anniversary. We created our family’s tree, I think it is a great idea (Pioneerville, July 2018).

Tatyana’s parents are not only an example of child-rearing practices, they also actively participate in the promotion of values and meanings. For example, Tatyana’s mother motivated

Madina to read daily, promoting a love of reading books:

105

I love to read detectives and romantic stories. My grandmother always reads, she inspires me. I loved to come to her house in my childhood, there were so many books. She read to me variety of stories (Pioneerville, July 2018).

Reading and drawing became the most favourite activities for Madina. The absence of the internet and entertainment places pushed her to spend a lot of time reading and drawing from books.

In addition to books, programs and films on the television became the main entertainment for the family. “I watch everything,” Tatyana told me, “Russian and Kazakh movies and TV programs. I hope I can learn Kazakh this way” (Pioneerville, July 2018). Tatyana’s testimony about learning the Kazakh language through movies captures the tendency among locals, specifically Kazakhs, who do not speak Kazakh fluently, but want to learn it. In contrast to

Tatyana, television for Olga and Madina became a source for getting information about other countries and cultures. Thus, Olga reflects, “I dream to go to the USA. I believe there is freedom.

I like images from movies about their culture.” Madina does not share Olga’s ideas, she dreams to visit South-East Asian countries, after watching Korean movies, which are popular in

Kazakhstan television.

This account of the three families provides a sense of complexity in the child-rearing process, where values are transmitted through generations, along with the incorporation of new ideals from television, popular sport, and the internet. Analyzing practices of three households, it is possible for me to see differences and commonalities among the families. The most vivid differences are the presence of Kazakh cultural elements and practices in Talgat’s and Anara’s house. Despite the fact that many Kazakh villagers do not use the Kazakh language at home, they try to follow traditions in the celebration of holidays and incorporate ethnic symbolism in their daily lives. The most common symbols are Kazakh ornaments in clothing, korpeler (kaz.,

106 patchwork quilt), blankets, carpets, housewares. It was common to see women wear kamzols

(rus. jerkins), a national Kazakh clothing decorated with Kazakh ornaments.

Kazakh traditions, celebration of holidays, connection between relatives created representations that Kazakhs value family and kinship. Kseniya’s expression “Maybe it is

Kazakh blood calling” reflects this idea. These vivid elements and rituals create an association that Kazakhs “preserve” and practice their culture. As a 22-year-old teacher told me, “I want to learn more about Russian culture,” and he believes that “Kazakhs are doing good for practicing their traditions” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

Even though Kazakh families are associated with traditions, there are commonalities in the approach to child rearing in all three families. It was common that multiple generations share the responsibilities of child rearing, relying on experiences of their parents and relatives. All participants mentioned their families’ traditions as an example of upbringing, referring to the idea “How I was taught.” This “How I was taught” recalls Bourdieu’s concept of “habitus”

(Bourdieu, 2010). People used to translate values which their parents used to teach them, preserving and modifying them according to the time. Many practices occur during mundane work, where children are actively involved in activities with parents: visiting fields, grazing animals, gardening, cooking, and cleaning together. In this process the priority is given to labor education, where labor is associated with a way which leads to success. Furthermore, emphasis on physical labor reinforces the creation of gender representations, especially about boys who should be physically strong and work hard. Translating these values and habits, families share the idea to raise human beings. During our interviews all parents’ prefer to use the notion of human beings rather than citizens, emphasizing the importance to promote such “human values” as kindness, honest, respect, to name a few. Anara’s words “The most important for me is that

107 they should be good people” capture an idea of families, who first of all emphasize the importance of bringing up a good person.

These narratives provide insights into the idea that households’ activities are interwoven with the local community. An example such as the organization of boxing training by Talgat is evidence that parents are not waiting for government or school support to organize some activities. Instead, motivation to create learning spaces for their children affects the whole community, where all students are welcomed. These examples of the families’ contribution to the local community urged me to think about the impact of community involvement in citizenship education. How can place shape a sense of belonging? What opportunities can the lack of infrastructure provide? Moving from the families’ experiences, I am going to address these questions in the next chapter, focusing on nature, infrastructure, and community activities as a “third teacher.”

108

Chapter 7. Lessons from the Place

I met a 16-year-old student, Rosa during our trip from the district to the village. There were only three people in the minibus, including myself and Rosa, so we started talking. During our conversation, I learned that she had just finished grade nine and planned to continue her studies in the regional vocational school. She agreed to participate in my project, and a week later, we met again at the school playground. She brought two photographs. The first depicted her family members: two brothers and the mother in their home. The second photograph, which was taken after her graduation ceremony, portrayed Rosa’s homeschool teacher, her classmates, and their parents at the school. Showing me the photographs, she said, “My family and my friends are the main reason why I love this place” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

In addition to family and friends, Rosa expressed strong bonds with the village, highlighting that it is a comfortable and quiet place, “Despite the fact we do not have all good living conditions: internet connection and roads, I love this place. I had the best childhood”

(Pioneerville, July 2018). Her references to the living conditions recall her understandings about citizens:

I think a citizen is a person who lives in a particular country and has respect for place despite the fact it does or does not have good living conditions. A good citizen is a person who respects the place where they live, tries to develop it and helps other people. (Pioneerville, July 2018)

Rosa applied this definition to herself, reflecting on how she expressed herself as a citizen, she told me, “I respect people and nature. For example, I garden and clean our yard everyday”

(Pioneerville, July 2018). Moreover, she chose her future profession, a chef, based on usefulness to the village. This profession would provide her with an opportunity to work at the local

109 school’s dining room. Rosa planned to live in this village in the future, summarizing, “It [village] is a part of my life” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

Rosa’s testimony about connections between citizens and place captures the main topic of this chapter – environment as the third teacher. Drawing on the Reggio Emilia philosophy and approach, in this chapter I examine relationships between place and people’s understandings about citizenship identity and belonging. The Reggio Emilia’s approach to identify school’s surroundings as “extended classroom space” (Gandini, 2012, p. 321) has helped me to organize my analysis by focusing on such “extended spaces” as natural surroundings, infrastructure, and community activities. I argue that students’ experiences as citizens are shaped by local practices, which create space for place-based education. Natural surroundings, infrastructure, and community activities, such as the organization of events, participation in improvement of local infrastructure, became “the third teacher,” which localized state-promoted ideals of citizenship.

Nature, Sense of Belonging and Attachments

Living in the countryside during my fieldwork, I noticed how nature shaped people’s understandings of themselves and their society. It was common to hear local residents say that they feel a sense of belonging to place, which is, first of all, articulated through nature. As one teacher told me, “Last year during my vacation I went to Sochi [Russia]. I was sitting on the shore of the Black Sea, it was beautiful, but I missed my home, our nature, and the steppe” (41- year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018). These words capture the connection between nature and a sense of belonging, which is built through everyday practices.

The outdoors is the main place for people’s gatherings during the summertime unlike winter when the school becomes the main venue for this purpose. Local residents go camping at the nearby river and water bodies, to celebrate events such as birthdays, finishing sowing and

110 haymaking campaigns, and to relax. Watching the sunrise by the river became a tradition following the graduation ceremony at school. Learning from these examples, I was not surprised when students who came to the art workshop regarded nature as the main reason why they loved their village (Figures 6 and 7).

Figure 6. Vlada’s Drawing. Figure 7. Almaz’s Drawing.

I organized the workshop at the local school in collaboration with a homeroom teacher of grade seven. Five 13-year-old students from grade seven, Akmaral, Almaz, Botagoz, Valeria, and Vlada participated in the workshop. I asked them to think of such topics as: “Why do I like the place where I live?” or “Why do not I like the place where I live?” When students heard these topics, some of them complained that they could not think of anything positive about life in the village. Ruins of old buildings, poor internet and mobile phone connections, as well as the lack of extracurricular activities at school were the main drawbacks of living in the village from their perspectives.

Despite these negative comments, all of them created positive images in their drawings by focusing on nature and outdoor activities:

“I love to hike with my friends, I love our steppe” (Valda, female, Pioneerville, July 2018)

111

“Our steppe is wonderful. We cannot see its end” (Almaz, male, Pioneerville, July 2018)

“We have fresh air here, and nature is beautiful” (Figure 8) (Botagoz, female, Pioneerville, July 2018)

Figure 8. Botagoz’s Drawing.

In addition to nature, Valeria drew her family house and explained, “This is my homeland. My parents live here. I love nature; everything is so familiar here” (Figure 9). Another student, Akmaral, stressed that she did not only like to walk or hike, but also to pick berries and mushrooms (Figure 10). This testimony draws on another important value of natural surroundings for the local people, where nature is not only the part of the entertainment, it is also the main source for survival. Children learn about the cycle of plants’ and animals’ lives, helping their parents and relatives. They are involved in gardening, raising livestock, and preparing products. I was amazed when a 4-year-old son of Kseniya and Nikolay told me, “Look, this flower will turn into a small green strawberry. We can eat it when it becomes red” (Pioneerville,

July 2019). This boy’s account captures other children’s reflections about plants and animals, as well as their observation of the natural surroundings.

112

Figure 9. Valeria’s Drawing. Figure 10. Akmaral’s Drawing.

As discussed in Chapter 2, most people in the village are engaged in farming, which brings people and nature together. All farmers depend on nature and the weather. It is important to have rain in spring and dry fall for good harvest. Children are growing up in the environment close to nature and machines, which affect their imagination and views. I was surprised to hear that little boys gave each other nicknames after tractors such as “T 150.” Farming and community needs affect students’ plans about their future professions. Many students prefer to study agriculture, engineering, or welding, which would give them the skills needed in the village. For example, a 14-year-old student, whose family runs a farm, told me, “I would like to be an elementary school teacher, but my father insists that I should be an agronomist because it is helpful for our business” (Pioneerville, July 2018).

All in all, participants’ narratives and students’ drawings examined in this section highlight the role of nature in the creation of place attachment, which affects their understandings about citizenship and belonging. Margaret Somerville (2012) noted, “a place story is not separate from us; it resides in our bodies and cannot be objectified or entirely externalised; it connects what is outside of us and what is inside” (p. 68). In keeping with

Somerville’s idea, nature affects people’s stories about who they are. It became a reservoir which

113 keeps memories and important moments of the locals’ lives. It provides them space for entertaining, surviving, and practicing a sustainable lifestyle. Each of these practices bound locals with place, shaping their values and attitudes. In the next section, I explore how this place teaches them not only to care about their landscape, but also to adapt to local realities and find creative ways for improving their living conditions.

Infrastructure, Creativity and Environmental Citizenship

In November 2018, I participated in the Thought Leaders Forum on Environmental and

Energy Education and Sustainability dedicated to the environmental issues in Alberta. For me, the important section in this forum was the one that stressed the role of the environment and place-based learning in Canadian schools. Discussions and presentations in this section led me to compare practices in Canadian and Kazakhstan schools, and to understand better the role of the environment in the creation of values and identities. This comparison helped me to analyse people’s practices in Pioneerville as a crucial part of citizenship identity which I took for granted before.

In Pioneerville, people often provide a second life to many items by reusing plastic bottles as flower’s pots, glass jars as a small gate in the garden, reused tires as a water tank, to name a few. One of the striking examples was a sauna from glass bottles created by a local resident, Ivan. He saw different constructions from glass bottles on television a few years ago and decided to build a sauna. It was a long journey, which took almost five years to complete.

The process of collecting glass bottles involved the whole family. They collected the required bottles in their village and everywhere they went. Ivan’s son remembers, “It is very hard work: to collect glass bottles and organize them by colors and shape to create ornaments, but our father

114 likes such a meticulous job. He can spend many hours for creating something new” (A businessmen, 37-year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018).

The family is happy about having this sauna, it is not only beautiful but also reduces coal consumption because the sauna heats up quickly and the glass holds warmth for a long time.

When I came to their house for a conversation with the family, I realized that almost everything in the sauna was made of reused materials: an oven, a small bench, coat hooks were constructed from old metal pieces. In addition, in the yard, old radiators were transformed to a new gate and scrap metal became the yard’s decoration. Being a welder, Ivan, usually reuses metal, converting it to useful things. He taught this skill to his sons so they can follow his example.

The creation of infrastructure and the built environment from reused materials is a practice that is used not only in private homes but also in public places. For example, the schoolyard has been decorated with reused plastic bottles and tires. Students and teachers reused these materials to create three bear sculptures in front of the school. As a 17-year-old student told me:

My classmates decorated almost the whole school yard. Have you seen decorations [small sculptures of animals from reused materials, benches, and a playhouse] for kindergarten? We have made them. Also, we helped our teachers to organize places for sports. They invited us and we helped (Pioneerville, July 2018).

This testimony is an example of “situated learning” (Levinson, Gonzales, & Anderson-Levitt,

2015, p. 728), where students are learning and expanding knowledge through informal education of everyday practices in the community.

The stories about reused materials in Pioneerville have reminded me about the importance of practicing the three R’s (reduce, reuse, recycle), which I learned about in Canada.

People in Pioneerville have developed a similar approach spontaneously as a result of pragmatic ways of living. I identify pragmatic thinking as a way of the practical utilization of materials.

115

The shortage of consumer goods during the Soviet period and the economic crisis after the collapse of the USSR in 1991 that reduced incomes reinforced people to practices of caring about food and products. This situation pushed people to think creatively and find ways for improving their lives, while simultaneously reducing waste. This habit is transmitted across generations through everyday practices and interactions.

However, not only pragmatic perspectives led people to actions and creative ways of living, but also the lack of organized management motivates them to become “independent citizens,” who must solve problems on their own. I believe photographs of a 16-year-old student

Sergey capture these problems. Sergey brought two photographs to our meeting, explaining:

At the beginning I took a picture of the coin for providing my view on the situation in the village. I wanted to stress, that everything has two sides, like in the expression “Two sides of the medal” (Figure 11).53 On the one hand, I attached to this place. My childhood was here. It is a part of my life. On the other hand, there are such issues as poor mobile and internet connections, and problems with water access. However, I think my second photograph better captures my ideas (Figure 12). Having visited the school’s gym, I decided to take a picture there. It reflects better the current situation, where the surface looks good, but the inside, under it, is not so good (Pioneerville, July 2018).

Figure 11. Sergey’s Photograph. Figure 12. Sergey’s Photograph.

53 The first photograph caught my attention when I saw the Soviet coin. I asked Sergey why he used this old coin that was out of circulation for over 20 years. He replied that it was unintentional – he just saw it and took the photo. This photograph with the coin captures the complexity of the place, where such material elements as coins, books, warehouse, board games from the Soviet past are interwoven tacitly to people’s mundane lives.

116

Sergey’s testimony captures one of the main problems in the village mobile and internet connections. It is very hard to catch the mobile signal and find an access to the internet in

Pioneerville. Mobile connectivity is poor, and people told me that some mobile providers promised they would cover the village soon, but the local residents added ironically and sceptically that they have been waiting for the mobile provider for years. In this situation, some inhabitants did not sit and wait for the state or companies to act. They found solutions themselves. I was surprised that local people, who had no training in either engineering or technology created an antenna which could catch a signal for mobile connections. This antenna consists of a wood piece with a small metal plate on it, which is fastened to the house’s roof. A cable connects the antenna to a small station (a small plastic piece with metal plates) in the house, which enables mobile and internet connections in one room of the house. Creating and setting up these antennas became a village business, providing an important service to people.

The price for setting up antennas was 4,000 Tenge ($14 CAD), and many people find it very convenient and affordable.

These examples provide insights into how the slow infrastructural development and a humble economic base teach people how to improve their living conditions with the resources which they have. These practices are part of their lives, letting children be involved in “seamless education” through participation in the families’ and the community’s activities. Initiated as responses to the everyday needs, such practices stand in sharp contrast with the initiatives suggested by the state, some of which fail to attract community participation.

Community Activities

Local residents are very passive, everybody is living for themselves, they do not care about social issues and problems. They are not suggesting any initiatives. I visited other villages where local businessmen tried to create workplaces and develop their homelands. In our case is nothing. Recently Kazakhstan government initiated the project, which was

117

dedicated to the self-governing in the community. I invited some people to join this project. They agreed to participate but did not initiate anything. Everybody only complains. Last year I initiated to plant a garden near to the school. What do you think was people’s reaction? Complains. (Pioneerville, August 2018)

This testimony of the local akim in Pioneerville recalls experiences of government representatives and workers of cultural departments in Kostanay oblast. Some of them stressed that it is difficult to gather people even to local concerts, others complained that people did not want to participate in local social life. Thus, a representative of the department of internal policies told me:

People think that everything is decided at the top, so they are not active. Citizens do not realise their political views, moral values, they are living by the principle “Moya hata s krayu” (rus., have nothing to do with it). Citizens are not showing their initiatives. There is still the legacy of the Soviet time, people think only about the material things (26- year-old, Kostanay, August 2018).

This narrative is common among the government representatives, however, learning from the local community in Pioneerville, I understood that their passivity became their “weapon” to resist a “sideshow” of activities and “old-school” methods to educate and involve them.

Moreover, unfulfilled promises to improve living conditions cause only a sceptical attitude among residents. Instead, many of them have accepted the fact that they must solve their problems on their own, collaborating and organizing events together. For example, local families support school activities, and they donate and participate in social events. In addition, local farmers contributed to the refurbishing of a local clinic, as well as provided funding for the creation of a water reservoir and a local garden. They regularly sponsor festivals and organize sport contests. As a result, it is not surprising that many participants identify local farmers as good citizens, who care about the village, improving living conditions and providing jobs. A 63- year-old Math teacher said, “Good citizens are heroes, examples from the TV, who help to other

118 people. Farmers in our village are good citizens, they can be considered as heroes. They provide jobs to local people, helping people to survive (Pioneerville, July 2018).

The most active population in the village are women, who collaborate for planning events and involving the whole community. They have different reasons for participation and organization of events. Some of them remark that it is boring during wintertime and they want to create something positive in the village, while others identify their children as the main motivation to organize something. Most of them started to participate in events at kindergarten and school, as one of the mothers told me, “If educators ask us to dance, we dance. If they ask us to participate, we participate. It is interesting and not difficult. Why not?” (a housewife, 29-year- old, Pioneerville, July 2018). Gradually, mothers started to think about organizing events beyond the school, planning to engage the entire village. As a result, they organized the celebration of

Maslenitsa54 in 2017 in collaboration with cultural workers and farmers, who co-sponsored the event, “It was amazing, we baked crepes together in the local dining room, prepared contests and games. We provided free tea and crepes for all visitors. I think people enjoyed it” (a businesswoman, 32-year-old, Pioneerville, July 2018).

These examples of community activities show how local people take care of themselves and the community. Local people come together for organizing events and finding creative ways to improve living conditions. They care about their village, the landscape, and each other.

Through community collaboration people learn from each other, promoting meanings and values. Tiziana Filippini (1990), who practices Reggio Emilia’s philosophy, pointed out that educators in Reggio Emilia “speak of space as a ‘container’ that favors social interaction, exploration, and learning, but they also see space as having educational ‘content’ – that is, as

54 Maslenitsa is an Eastern Slavic religious and folk holiday, celebrated during the last week before Great Lent. 119 containing educational messages and being charged with stimuli toward interactive experience and constructive learning” (Filippini, 1990, as cited in Gandini, 2012, p. 320). Consistent with

Filippini’s idea, people obtain “educational messages” from their environment, place where they live and interact. It creates unintentional place-based education where “everyday practice is a more powerful source of socialization than intentional pedagogy” (Lave, 1988, p. 14 as cited in

Rival, 1996, p.164). In this process of socialization, close interaction among school, families, and children create space for learning about support, civic virtue, volunteering, contribution and participation. As Tompkin noted, “Connecting students to community development teaches them to be good citizens of any place and builds their leadership capacity (Tompkin, 2008, p. 193).

In sum, natural surroundings, infrastructure, and community activities create educational space in Pioneerville, where people learn from everyday practices. It affects their understandings and beliefs, localizing and diversifying the government’s hegemonic ideals about citizenship. I would like to finish this chapter, with Amato’s words, which capture the connection between the natural and built environment, as well as interaction inside the community, and how this connection affect people’s understandings about themselves:

Natural and made environment combine to make a place a shell of life. A combination of nature, woods, fields, walls, civil structures, and buildings from outer surface, the boundaries, and the confines of experience. At the same time, this outer cover outlines the perimeters and horizons of social action and understanding. In a place there are common phenomena and unique manifestations of movement, motion, and growth and of forms, colors, and stimulants of primary perceptions. The latter give rise to and yet define emotions and senses, and they are inextricably entangled with passions, loves, and hates. All this stuff of first experiences becomes the signs, signals, and metaphors by which we think, from images and express dreams and hopes. (Amato, 2014, p. 216)

120

Conclusion

As I was finishing my project, I went back to the beginning of my thesis trying to summarize my discussion of teachers’ and students’ experiences at school and at home, school ecology, community practices, as well as the natural surroundings and infrastructure, which create a “pedagogical context” (Adalbjarnardottir, 2002, p. 132) for learning about citizenship. In my project, I did not consider citizenship education as something fixed. Instead, I identified it as continuum of formal and informal learning practices, which are based on students’ experiences at and beyond the school. Walter Parker and John Jarolimek, who analysed citizenship education in the United States emphasized, “Through family life, community living, and school experience, young citizens are expected to internalize a belief system that characterizes the behaviour of people” (Parker & Jarolimek, 1984, p. 10). In my thesis, I have analyzed how this belief system is formed through the complex relationship between different educational institutions in

Kazakhstan.

Considering school as a cultural place allowed me to see the coexistence of hybrid practices of global trends, the national policies, and the Soviet legacy. The government promotes global values through the learning process, specifically technical literacy, language skills among students, while the approach to values-oriented education stayed without significant changes since the Soviet period. One of the significant Soviet legacies of values-oriented education is patriotism, which is overlapping with citizenship education. As discussed in Chapter 4, patriotism and citizenship are often interchangeably used as synonyms. This interchangeable use can be traced in the school activities, class practices, and the state’s programs. The state program

Ruhani Zhangyru is a key instrument for cultivating Kazakhstani’s patriotism, which is supposed to promote unconditional love and support for the Motherland.

121

In addition to schools, the state in Kazakhstan has funded the wide realm of school ecology, which reproduces the images about citizenship from the top down. Such organizations as museums, summer camps, the House of Culture, and the youth organizations are supposed to support the state’s ideas and manufacture consent. Community involvement in cultural activities provides the space where ideology spreads through mundane practices, promoting hegemonic ideals about good citizenship. However, through these practices the local representatives choose through what means citizenship should be promoted, transforming the state’s ideas to the local level.

While schools are supposed to promote the state’s policies, place, where they are located, holds its own “teaching” potential, localizing people’s understandings of who they are. People attach themselves to place through their families, the natural and built environment, as well as community activities. In their narratives they identify families as the basis for the promotion of values and ideals about citizenship. Families’ activities are interwoven with the community practices shaping sense of belonging to place and, diversifying the state hegemonic ideas. People in Pioneerville identified themselves as citizens through images and activities which relate to place (e.g., gardening, caring about nature and animals, as well as helping people).

Working on my project, speaking with people, exploring place and writing my thesis the words of one of the teachers stayed with me, “Oh, I am not sure, if your research is going to help us.” These words were filled with irony, hopelessness and powerlessness. They pushed me to think about how my research can help teachers, students, and the education system. What is the value of my research? What can I suggest for citizenship education? It has become a convention to complete a policy-oriented project with policy recommendations, but I decided not to, because my recommendations are likely to be associated with state promoted top-down directives.

122

Moreover, I believe, “recommendations” often limit educational practices, establishing boundaries and pointing to only one “right” direction. Instead, inspired by Freire’s works (2005) and his letter exchanges I decided that after my MA is completed, I will use my learning to write letters to students, teachers, and school administrators in which I share my research findings and invite them to collaborate for practicing place-based education. Based on experience of people in

Pioneerville and joining scholars who promote place-based education, I believe place can be a valuable education resource for learning about collaboration, creativity, support, to name a few.

Scholars’ discussions about the future transformation of working places, and the importance of soft skills, such as emotional intelligence, creative thinking, and collaboration (Fleming, 2019,

March 12) justify the approach where students and teachers learn from living experiences. I would like to invite students, teachers, and scholars to explore and practice together, nourishing from our living experiences in particular places.

I believe that my research contributes to the relevant fields of study in Kazakhstan and post-Soviet countries, highlighting the complexity and interwovenness of a variety of institutions. In my project, I did not focus only on the state’s projects, school practices, families’ traditions, or community activities. Instead, I looked after interactions among all of them, introducing a kaleidoscope of relationships where the ideals about citizenship are formed. The concept of school ecology helped to add another spin to these relationships, showing the

“infrastructure” of schools, which helps to organize the learning process and values-oriented education, involving not only students but also adults. Moreover, the art-based approach helped me to provide voices to students, who are often overlooked or not included in research discussions. The creation of photographs and drawings established trustful and collaborative relationships between me and the students, where we were both co-learners. In addition, the case

123 of Pioneerville is applicable not only to rural areas in Kazakhstan, but it also contributes to studies about citizenship more broadly. Joining researchers who challenge Western perspectives about citizenship, I intended to contribute to a better understanding of the complexities of citizenship identity, where citizens can be identified beyond legal status. All in all, I believe that this project provokes discussions for future studies, where such concepts as school ecology and education mosaic can provide a valuable foundation for analysis of formal and informal education practices.

124

References

Abdrahmanova, B.M. (2010). Istoriya Kazakhstana: Vlast’, systema upravleniya,

territorialnaoe ustroistvo v XIX veke [History of Kazakhstan: Power, system of

management, territorial structure in the XIX century]. Karaganda: Glosir.

Adalbjarnardottir, S. (2002). Citizenship education and teachers’ professional awareness. In H.

Lawson & D. Scott (Eds.), Citizenship education and the curriculum. (pp. 131-149).

Westport: Ablex publishing.

Adams, L. (2010). The spectacular state: Culture and national identity in Uzbekistan. Durham

N.C.: Duke University Press.

Akcali, P. & Engin-Demir, C. (2013). Politics, identity and education in Central Asia: Post-

Soviet Kyrgyzstan. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Almaty TV. (2019, February 4). Karagandinskie uchitely predlagayut platnuyu pomosh’ po

sdache ENT na saytah obyavlenii [Teachers from Karaganda offer paid assistance for

UNT on ad websites]. Retrieved from https://almaty.tv/news/obrazovanie-i-nauka/1455-

karagandinskie-uchitelya-predlagayut-platnuyu-pomosch-po-sdache-ent-na-saytakh-

obyavleniy.

Alsubaie, M.A. (2015). Hidden curriculum as one of current issue of curriculum. Journal of

education and practice, 6 (33), 125-128.

Amanzholova, D. (2009). Na izlome. Alash v etnopoliicheskoi istorii Kazakhstana [On a break.

Alash in the ethno-political history of Kazakhstan]. Almaty: Taymas.

Amato, J.A. (2014). Local history: A way to place and home. In M.W. McClay & T.V.

McAllister (Eds.), Why place matters: Geography, identity, and civic life in modern

America (pp. 215-237). New York, NY: Encounter Books.

125

Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of

Nationalism. London: Verso.

Anderson-Levitt, K.M. (2003). A world culture of schooling? In K.M. Anderson-Levitt (Ed.),

Local meanings, global schooling: Anthropology and world culture theory (pp. 1-26).

New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Aoki, T.T. (1991). Teaching as in-dwelling between two curriculum worlds. In Ted Aoki (Ed.),

Inspiring curriculum and pedagogy: Talks to teachers (pp. 7-10). Edmonton, AB:

University of Alberta.

Appadurai, A. (1988). Introduction: Place and Voice in Anthropological Theory. Cultural

Anthropology, 3 (1), 16-20.

Applebaum, A. (2003). Gulag: A history (1st ed.). Toronto, Ont.: Doubleday

Applebaum, A. (2012). Iron curtain: The crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56. Penguin Group:

London, England.

Ayagan, B. (2012). 1932-1933 zhyldardagy asharshylyk akykat – Pravda o golode 1932-1933

godov [The truth about the famine of 1932-1933]. Almaty: Litera-M.

Bassin, M. & Kelly, C. (2012). Introduction: National subjects. In M. Bassin & C. Kelly (Eds.),

Soviet and post-Soviet identities (pp. 3-17). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Beisenova, A. (2014). The master plan of Astana: Between the “Art of Government” and the

“Art of being Global”. In M. Reeves, J. Rasanayagam & J. Beyer (Eds.), Ethnographies

of the state in Central Asia: performing politics (pp. 127-148). Bloomington, Indiana:

Indiana University Press.

Benei, V. (2005). Introduction. Manufacturing citizenship – Confronting public spheres and

education in contemporary worlds. In V. Benei (Ed.), Manufacturing citizenship:

126

Education and Nationalism in Europe, South Asia and China (pp. 1-34). New York,

NY: Routledge.

Benei, V. (2008). Schooling passions: Nation, history, and language in contemporary western

India. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Bloch, A. (2004). Red ties and residential schools. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania

Press.

Boatca, M. & Roth, J. (2016). Unequal and gendered: Notes on the coloniality of citizenship.

Current Sociology Monograph, 64 (2), 191-212.

Bocharova, M. (2018, January 3). Chemu detey uchim: Glavnye tsennosty Kazakhstantsev

[What do we teach children: The main values of Kazakhstani pople]. Vlast’. Retrieved

from https://vlast.kz/obsshestvo/26292-cemu-detej-ucim-glavnye-cennosti-

kazahstancev.html.

Bourdieu, P. (2010). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London:

Routledge.

Bronfenbrenner, U. (1976). Dva mira detstva: Dety v SSHA i SSSR [Two worlds of childhood:

Children in the USA and the USSR]. Moscow: Progress.

Brown, K. (2004). A biography of no place. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Bulakh, T. (2017). Made in Ukraine: Consumer citizenship during EuroMaidan transformation.

In A. Polese, J. Morris, E. Pawlusz, & Seliverstova, O. (Eds.), Identity and Nation

building in everyday post-socialist life (pp.73-91). London and NY: Routledge Taylor

&Francis Group.

Burawoy, M. (1979). Manufacturing consent: Changes in the labor process under monopoly

capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

127

Burkhalter, N., & Shegebayev, M. (2010). The critical thinking movement in Kazakhstan: A

progress report. Research in comparative and international education, 5-4.

Burkhanov, A. & Sharipova, D. (2014). Kazakhstan’s civic-national identity: Ambiguous

policies and points of resistance. In M. Y. Omelicheva. (Ed.), Nationalism and identity

construction in Central Asia: dimensions, dynamics, and directions (pp. 42-56).

Lanham: Lexington Books.

Burkhanov, A. (2017). Kazakhstan's national identity – building policy: Soviet legacy, state

efforts, and societal reactions. Cornell International Law Journal, 50, 1-14.

Burkholder, C. (2017). DIY media-making for social change: Hong Kong’s ethnic minority

youth speak back to exclusion and call for social action through cellphilms. In Sh.

Bastein & H.B. Holmarsdottir (Eds.), Youth as architects of social change: Global

efforts to advance youth-driven innovation (pp. 155-174). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave

Macmillan.

Cameron, S. (2018). The hungry steppe: Famine, violence, and the making of Soviet

Kazakhstan. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Coi, E. (2017, March 3). Molodezh kotoraya nikomu ne doveryaet [Young people who do not

trust anybody]. Vlast’. Retrieved from https://vlast.kz/obsshestvo/25511-molodez-

kotoraa-nikomu-ne-doveraet.html.

Conquest, R. (1970). The nation killers: The Soviet deportation of nationalities. New York: The

Macmillan Company.

Coutler, B. (2014). No more robots: Building kids’ character, competence, and sense of place.

New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Crehan K. (2002). Subultern culure. London: Pluto Press.

128

Cummings, S. N. (2009). Co-optation and control: Managing heterogeneity in Kazakhstan. In

K. H. Pedersen & L. Johannsen (Eds.), Pathways: A study of six Post-communist

countries (pp. 30-51). Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.

Dave, B. (2007). Kazakhstan: Ethnicity, language and power. New York, NY: Routledge.

Deringer, S. A. (2017). Mindful place-based education: Mapping the literature. Journal of

Experiential Education, 40(4), 333–348

Doctrina Natsionalnogo Edinstva Kazakhstana [The Doctrine of National Unity of

Kazakhstan]. (2010). Online.zakon. Retrieved from

https://online.zakon.kz/Document/?doc_id=30501158#pos=5;-155.

Donahoe, B & Habeck, J.O. (2011). Reconstructing the house of culture: Community, self, and

the making of culture in Russia and beyond. New York, NY: Berghahn Books.

Dubovaya, M. (2018, April 12). Naselenie gorodov RK rastet v dva raza bystree, chem v selah

[Population of Kazakhstan cities is growing twice faster than villages]. Inform Buro.

Retrieved from https://informburo.kz/novosti/naselenie-gorodov-rk-rastyot-v-dva-raza-

bystree-chem-v-syolah.html.

Dwyer, P. (2010). Understanding social citizenship: Themes and perspectives for policy and

practice (2nd. ed.). Portland, OR: The Policy Press.

Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (2012). Introduction: background and starting points.

In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children:

The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation (3rd ed., pp. 5 – 26). Santa Barbara,

California: Praeger.

Eide, A. (2000). Citizenship and international human rights law: Status, evolution, and

challenges. In N.A., Butenschon, U., Davis, & M. S., Hassassian (Eds.), Citizenship and

129

the state in the Middle East: Approaches and applications (1st ed., pp. 88-122).

Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.

Eisner, E.W. (2002). The educational imagination: On the design and evaluation of school

programs (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Eisner, E.W. (2004). What does it mean to say a school is doing well? In S. J. Thornton & D.J.

Flinders (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (2nd ed., pp. 297-305). New York, NY:

Taylor &Francis Books, Inc.

Eve Tuck & K. Wayne Yang (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization:

Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1 (1), 1-40.

Ferguson, J. (1990). The anti-politics machine: “Development,” depoliticization, and

bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fimyar, O. & Kurakbayev, K. (2016). ‘Soviet’ in teachers’ memories and professional beliefs

in Kazakhstan: Points for reflection for reformers, international consultants and

practitioners. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29 (1), 86-103.

Fleming, S. (2019, March 12). Finland, Switzerland and New Zealand lead the way at teaching

skills for the future. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/finland-switzerland-new-zealand-lead-at-

teaching-skills/.

Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punishment: The birth of prison. New York, NY: Vintage

Books.

Fraser, S. (2012). Authentic childhood: Experiencing Reggio Emilia in the classroom. Toronto:

Nelson Education Ltd.

Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of oppressed. New York, NY: Continuum.

130

Freire, P. (2005). Teachers as cultural workers: Letters to those who dare teach (D. Mcedo, D.

Koike, & A. Oliveira, Trans.). Boulder, Colorado: Westview; Expanded ed.

Gandini, L. (2012). Connecting through caring and learning spaces. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini,

& G. Forman (Eds.), The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience

in transformation (3rd. ed., pp. 317 – 341). Santa Barbara, California: Praeger.

Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. New York: Cornell University press.

Giroux, H.A. (2001). Theory and resistance in education: Towards a pedagogy for the

opposition. Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey.

Giroux, H.A. (2011). On critical pedagogy. New York: The Continuum International

Publishing Group.

Gleen, E.N. (2002). Unequal freedom: How race and gender shaped American citizenship and

labor. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Gosudarstvennyi Obsheobrazovatel’nyi Standart Nachal’nogo Obrazovaniya [State

Compulsory Education Standard of Elementary Education] (2015). Retrieved from

https://nao.kz/loader/fromorg/2/22.

Gosudarstvennyi Obsheobrazovatel’nyi Standart Srednego Obrazovaniya [State Compulsory

Education Standard of Secondary Education] (2016). Retrieved from

https://nao.kz/loader/fromorg/2/22.

Gramsci, A. (1999). Selections from the prison notebooks. (Q. Hoare & G.N. Smith, Eds. and

Trans.). London: Lawrence& Wishart. (Original work published 1971).

Green, A. (2013). Education and state formation: Europe, East Asia and the USA. Houndmills,

Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave Macmillan; 2nd edition.

131

Gruenewald, D. A. (2003). Foundations of place: A multidisciplinary framework for place-

conscious education. American Educational Research Journal, 40 (3), 619-654 –

Guha, R. (1999). Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. Duke University

Press Books.

Guibernau, M. (2013). Belonging: Solidarity and division in modern societies. Cambridge:

Polity Press.

Guo, Sh. (2008). Toward minority group rights and inclusive citizenship for immigrants: The

role of a voluntary organization in Vancouver, Canada. In A.A. Abdi & L. Shultz

(Eds.), Educating for human rights and global citizenship. Albany: State University of

New York Press.

Habeck, J.O. (2011). Introduction: Cultivation, collective, and the self. In B. Donahoe & J.O.

Habeck (Eds.), Reconstructing the house of culture: community, self, and the making of

culture in Russia and beyond (pp. 1-25). New York, NY: Berghahn Books.

Alt, H. & Alt, E. (1964). The new Soviet man: His upbringing and character development. New

York: Bookman Associates, INC.

Hoffman, D. L. (2003). Stalinist values: The cultural norms of Soviet modernity, 1917-1941.

Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Hoffman, J. (2004). Citizenship beyond the state. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

İğmen, A.F. (2011). The emergence of the Soviet houses of culture in Kyrgyzstan. In B.

Donahoe & J.O. Habeck (Eds.), Reconstructing the house of culture: community, self,

and the makings of culture in Russia and beyond (pp. 163-187). New York, NY:

Berghahn Books.

132

Isaacs, R. (2015). Nomads, warriors and bureaucrats: Nation-building and film in post-Soviet

Kazakhstan. Nationalities Papers, 43(3), 399-416.

Isin, E. F. & Wood, K. (1999). Citizenship and identity. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Jackson, Ph. W. (1990). Life in classrooms: Reissued with a new introduction. New York, NY:

Teachers college press.

Khodarkovsky, M. (2002). Russia’s steppe frontier: the making of a colonial empire, 1500-

1800. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Kindler, R. (2018). Stalin's nomads: Power and famine in Kazakhstan (C. Klohr, Trans.).

Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Klyashtornyi, S.G. & Sultanov, T.I. (1992). Kazakhstan: Letopis’ treh tysyacheleyi

[Kazakhstan: A chronicle of three thousand years]. Alma-Ata: Rauan.

Koch, N. (2018). The geopolitics of spectacle: Space, synecdoche, and the new capitals of Asia.

Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Kushkumabyev, A.K. & Sabitov, Zh. M. (2013). Ulusnaya systema Zolotoi Ordy v XIII-XI

vekah: K voprosu o lokalizacii Ak Ordy i Kok Ordy [The ulus system of the Golden

Horde in the XIII-XI centuries: On the issue of localization of Ak Orda and Kok

Horde]. Zolotoordynskoe Obozrenie, 2, 60-67.

Lahanuly, A. (2012, April 12). Kembridzhskaya model nauchila kazahskih uchenikov ne

boyatsya uchitelei [Cambridge model has taught Kazakh students do not afraid

teachers]. Radio Azattyk. Retrieved from https://rus.azattyq.org/a/kazakh_schools

_education_besagash_almaty_province/24544989.html.

Lahanuly, N. (2019, August 26). Chto dala programma po privlecheniyu molodezhy s yuga na

sever? [What did the program provide to attract youth from south to north?]. Radio

133

Azattyk. Retrieved from https://rus.azattyq.org/a/kazakhstan-serpin-program-5-years-

results/30128912.html.

Laruelle, M. (2014). The three discursive paradigms of state identity in Kazakhstan.

Kazakhness, Kazakhstannes and Transnationalism.” In M. Omelicheva (Ed.),

Nationalism and Identity Construction in Central Asia. Dimensions, Dynamics, and

Directions (pp. 23-41). Lanham: Lexington Books.

Laruelle, M. (2015). In search of Kazakhness: The televisual landscape and screening of nation

in Kazakhstan. Democratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization, 23 (3),

321-340.

Laszczkowski, M. (2014). State building (s): Built forms, materiality, and the state in Astana. In

M. Reeves, J. Rasanayagam & J. Beyer (Eds.), Ethnographies of the state in Central

Asia: performing politics (pp. 149-172). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University

Press.

Laszczkowski, M. (2016). City of the future: built space, modernity and urban change in

Astana. New York, NY: Berghahn Books.

Lawson, H. & Scott, D. (2002). Introduction. In D. Scott & H. Lawson (Eds.), Citizenship

education and the curriculum (pp. 1-6). Westport, Conn.: Ablex Pub.

Leavy, P. (2015). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY:

Guilford Publications.

Levinson, B.A., Gonzales, N., & Anderson-Levitt. K. (2015). Anthropological approaches to

the study of education: The United States and beyond. International Encyclopedia of the

Social & Behavioral Sciences, 1, 728-733.

134

Lillis, J. (2019, June 10). Nazarbayev ally wins big in Kazakhstan election after hundreds

arrested. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun

/09/hundreds-arrested-as-kazakhs-protest-against-rigged-election

Low, S. M & Lawrence-Zúñiga, D. (2003). The anthropology of space and place: Locating

culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.

Low, S.M. & Altman, I. (1992). Place attachment: A conceptual inquiry. In I. Altman & S. Low

(Eds.), Place attachment (pp. 1- 12). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Lubin, N. (1984). Labour and nationality in Soviet Central Asia: An uneasy compromise.

Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Lui, P. (2002). School ecology and the learning of young children, Kappa Delta Pi Record, 38

(3), 119-123, doi: 10.1080/00228958.2002.10516357.

Luykx, A. (1999). The citizen factory: Schooling and cultural production in Bolivia. Albany,

NY: State University of New York Press

Lynch, K. (1989). The hidden curriculum: Reproduction in education, a reappraisal. New

York, NY: The Falmer Press.

Maitles, H. (2013). What type of citizenship education; What type of citizen? The magazine of

the United Nations, 4. Retrieved from https://unchronicle.un.org/article/what-type-

citizenship-education-what-type-citizen.

Margolis, E., Soldatenko, M., Acker, S., & Gair, M. (2001). Peekaboo: Hiding and Outing the

Curriculum. In E. Margolis (Ed.), Hidden curriculum in higher education (pp. 1-20).

New York, NY: Routledge.

135

Martin, V. (1996). Law and custom in the steppe: Middle horde Kazakh judicial practices and

Russian colonial rule, 1868-1898. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of

Southern California, Los Angeles.

Mayseitova, Zh. (2018, August 20). Formirovat’ model vospitaniya [To form the model of

values-oriented education]. Kazakhstanskaya Pravda. Retrieved from

https://www.kazpravda.kz/fresh/view/formirovat-model-vospitaniya.

McCauley, M. (1976). Khrushchev and the development of Soviet agriculture: The Virgin Land

programme 1953-1964. New York: The Macmillan Press LTD.

McClelland, J.C. (1985). The utopian and the heroic: Divergent paths to the communist

educational ideal. In A. Gleason, P. Kenez, & R. Stites (Eds.), Bolshevik culture:

experiment and order in the Russian revolution (pp. 114-130). Bloomington: Indiana

University Press.

McLeod, J. (2012). Educating for ‘world-mindedness’: Cosmopolitanism, localism and

schooling the adolescent citizen in interwar Australia. Journal of Educational

Administration and History, 44 (4), 339-359.

McNeil, L.M. (2004). Creating new inequalities: Contradictions of reform. In S. J. Thornton &

D.J. Flinders (Eds.), The curriculum studies reader (2nd ed., pp. 275-284). New York,

NY: Taylor &Francis Books, Inc.

Michaels, P. A. (2003). Curative powers: Medicine and empire in Stalin’s Central Asia.

Pittsburgh, PS: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Population of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Information about the repatriated Kazakhs. Retrieved from

http://www.enbek.gov.kz/en/node/327654

136

Mitchel, C. (2011). Doing visual research. London: SAGE publications LTD.

Mkrtchyan, N. (2014). The notion of “Kazakhness” behind the symbolic nation-building of

Kazakhstan. CEU Political Science Journal, 9 (1-2), 16-38.

Muckle, J. (1990). Portrait of a Soviet School under Glasnost. Palgrave Macmillan UK.

Nabavi, M. (2010). Constructing the ‘citizen’ in citizenship education. Canadian Journal for

New Scholars in Education, 3 (1), 1-10.

Napier, D. B. (2003). Transformations in South Africa: Policies and practices from ministry to

classroom. In K.M. Anderson-Levitt (Eds.), Local meanings, global schooling:

Anthropology and world culture theory (pp. 51-74). New York, NY: Palgrave

Macmillan.

National Academy of Education Named after Y. Altynsarin (2017). Instructivno-metodicheskoe

pismo: Ob osobennostyah organizatsyy obrazovatelnogo processa v

obsheobrazovatelnyh shkolah Respubliki Kazakhstan v 2017-2018 uchebnom godu [ An

instructive letter: About the features of the organization of the educational process in

secondary schools of the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2017-2018]. Astana.

Navia, D. (2015). Uncovering colonial legacies: Voices of Indigenous youth in child welfare

(dis)Placements (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB.

Nazarbayev, N. (2017, April 12). Course towards the future: Modernization of Kazakhstan’s

identity. The official site of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Retrieved from

http://www.akorda.kz/ru/addresses/addresses_of_president/poslanie-prezidenta-

respubliki-kazahstan-nnazarbaeva-narodu-kazahstana-5-oktyabrya-2018-g

Nazarbayev, N. (2018, November 21). Seven facets of the great steppe. The official site of the

president of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Retrieved from

137

http://www.akorda.kz/en/events/akorda_news/press_conferences/article-of-the-

president-of-the-republic-of-kazakhstan-nursultan-nazarbayev-seven-facets-of-the-

great-steppe

Nedelcu, A. (2013). Analysing students’ drawings of their classroom: A child-friendly research

method. Revista De Cercetare Si Interventie Sociala, 42, 275-293.

Netylko, A.M. (1969) Concerning an individual approach in the atheistic upbringing of pupils.

In F. Ablin (Ed.), Contemporary Soviet education: A collection of readings from Soviet

journals, (pp. 256-270). New York, NY: International arts and sciences press.

Nguyen, D.T. (2012). Vietnamese immigrant youth and citizenship: How race, ethnicity, and

culture shape sense of belonging. El Paso: LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC.

Nur KZ. (2016, May 18). Byvshie shkol’niki rasskazali shokiruyushuyu pravdu o ENT [Former

high school students told the shocking truth about UNT]. Retrieved from

https://www.nur.kz/1112406-byvshie-shkolniki-rasskazali-shokiruyu.html

O’Byrne, D., J. (2003). The dimensions of global citizenship: Political identity beyond the

nation state. London: F. Cass.

Ong, A. (1999). Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality. Duke University

press.

Oraz-Muhamed, B. (2014). Sdayushie ENT “po zakazu” i za den’gi [People who have passed

UNT for earning money] Radio Azattyk. Retrieved from https://rus.azattyq.org/a/ent-

sdacha-testov-na-zakaz-za-dengi/25383859.html

Orynbayeva, G.U. (2018). K istorii osvoeniya tselynnih i zalezhnyh zemel v Kazakhstane:

Problem i podhody [Towards the history of the development of virgin and fallow lands

138

in Kazakhstan: Problems and approaches]. Elektronnyi nauchnyi zhurnal edu.e-

history.kz,1-13. Retrieved from: http://edu.e-history.kz/ru/publications/view/801

Osler, A. & Starkey, H. (2001) Citizenship education and national identities in France and

England: Inclusive or exclusive? Oxford Review of Education, 27 (2), 287-305.

Osler, A. & Starkey, H. (2006). Education for democratic citizenship: A review of research,

policy and practice 1995-2005. Research Papers in Education, 21 (4), 433-466.

Ostrowski, W. (2010). Politics and oil in Kazakhstan. London, England: Routledge.

Ozkan, D. & Foster, R.J. (2005). Consumer citizenship, nationalism, and neoliberal

globalization in Turkey: The advertising launch of Cola Turka. Advertising & Society

Review, 6 (3).

Parker, W. & Jarolimek, J. (1984). Citizenship and the critical role of the social studies. NCSS

Bulletin 72. Washington, DC: ERJC Clearinghouse for Social Studies Education.

Pink, S. (2012). Advances in visual methodology. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Pohl, M. (1999). The virgin land between memory and forgetting: people and transformation in

the Soviet Union, 1954-1960. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Indiana University,

Bloomington, IN.

Programma Zhas Ulan [The program of Zhas Ulan] (2015). Retrieved from

http://osch6saran.asia.kz/30358.

Raleigh, D.J. (2011). Soviet baby boomers an oral history of Russia’s Cold War generation.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Remnev, A. & Sukhih. O. (2006). Kazakhskie deputatsii v scenariyah vlasty: Ot

diplomaticheskih missii k imperskim presentatsiyam [Kazakh deputations in power

139

scenarios: From diplomatic missions to imperial representations]. Ab Imperio, 1, 119-

155.

Rival, L. (1996). Formal schooling and the production of modern citizens in the Ecuadorian

Amazon. In B. A. Levinson, D. E. Foley, & D. C. Holland (Eds.), The cultural

production of the educated person: Critical ethnographies of schooling and local

practice (pp. 153 – 167). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Robinson, J. & Shallcross, T. (2006). Global citizenship and environment justice. Amsterdam

and New York: Rodopi.

Rodman, M.C. (2006). Empowering place: Multilocality and multivocality. In Low, S.M. &

Lawrence-Zuniga, D. The anthropology of space and place: Locating culture (pp. 204-

224). Victoria: Blackwell Publishing,

Sabol, S. (2003). Russian colonization and the genesis of Kazak national consciousness. New

York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sabol, S. (2017). The touch of civilization: Comparing American and Russian internal

colonization. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.

Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in

Finland? New York, NY: Teacher College Press.

Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. New York, NY: Pantheon Book.

Saktaganova, Z.G. & Abylhozhin (2018). “Tselinnyi proekt”: Dostizheniya i problem (socialno-

economicheskie i ecologicheskie aspekty osvoeniya tseliny) [“The project of the Virgin

Land Campaign”: Achievements and problems (socio-economic and environmental

aspects of the development of virgin lands)]. Vestnik Karagandinskogo universiteta.

Isoriya. Filosophiya, 4 (92), 92-114.

140

Sanina, A. (2017). Patriotic education in contemporary Russia: Sociological studies in the

making of the Post-Soviet citizen. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag.

Sanseeva, D. (2017, December 15). Traibalism, besperspektivnost’ i mysli pokinut’ rodinu

[Tribalism, hopelessness ’and thoughts to leave homeland]. Radio Azattyk. Retrieved

from https://rus.azattyq.org/a/kazakhstan-molodezh-mysli-pokinut-rodinu/28913467

.html

Scott, J.C. (1985). Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance. New Haven,

CT: Yale University Press.

Sears, A. (n.d.). In search of good citizens: Citizenship education and social studies in Canada.

Retrieved from

http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/sspp/html/pdf/in_search_of_good_citizens.pdf

Sears, A. M. & Hughes A. S. (2006). Citizenship: Education or indoctrination? Citizenship

Teaching and Learning 2 (1), pp. 3-17

Seliverstova, O. (2017) Consume citizenship and reproduction of Estonianness. In A. Polese, J.

Morris, E. Pawlusz, & O. Seliverstova (Eds.), Identity and Nation building in everyday

post-socialist life (pp. 109-129). London and NY: Routledge Taylor &Francis Group.

Sharipova, D. (2019). Youth organizations and state-society relations in Kazakhstan: The

durability of the Leninist legacy. In J. F. Caron (Ed.), Kazakhstan and the Soviet legacy:

Between continuity and rupture. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan (pp. 139-154).

Shayakhmetov, M. (2006). The silent steppe: The story of a Kazakh nomad under Stalin (J.

Butler Trans. and A. Gardner Ed.). London: Stacey International. (Original work

published 2002).

141

Simon, R. (1982). Gramsci’s political thought: An introduction. London: Lawrence and

Wishart.

Sobel, D. (2013). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities. Great

Barrington, Massachusetts: Orion.

Somerville, M. (2012). The critical power of place. In Sh. R. Steinberg & G.S. Canella (Eds.),

Critical qualitative research reader (pp. 67-81). New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Spindler, G. (2002). The collusion of illusions and how to get people to tell you what they don’t

know. In Y. Zou & E. T. Trueba (Eds.), Ethnography and schools: Qualitative

approaches to the study of education (pp. 13-25). Rowman & Little Field Publishers,

INC: Lanham, Maryland.

Sputnik Kazakhstan. (2019, February 12). Vuzy Rossii vydelili dlya kazakstanskih studentov

bolee 400 grantov [Universities of Russia provided over 400 grants for Kazakh

students]. Retrieved from https://ru.sputniknews.kz/education/20190212/

9263620/russia-vuz-granty-kazakhstan.html

Starkey, H. (2019). Learning to live together: Children’s rights, identities and citizenship. In M.

Drinkwater, F. Rizvi & K. Edge. (Eds.), Transnational perspectives on democracy,

citizenship, human rights and peace education (p. 180-197).

Strokova, N. & Muhamedyarov, E. (2018, May 18). Na restavratsiyu pamyatnikov kultury v

Kostanayskoy oblasty planiruyut napravit’ 88 mln. tenge [It is planned to allocate 88

million tenge for restoration of cultural monuments in Kostanay oblast]. Khabar 24.

Retrieved from https://24.kz/ru/news/social/item/240939-na-restavratsiyu-pamyatnikov-

kultury-v-kostanajskoj-oblasti-planiruyut-napravit-88-mln-tenge

142

Sunderland, W. (2004). Taming the wild field: Colonization of the Russian steppe. New York,

NY: Cornell University Press.

Tazhibayev, T. T. (1961). Kazahskaya shkola pri Orenburgskoy pogranichnoy komisii (1850-

1869 gg.) [The Kazakh school at the Orenburg border commission (1850-1869)]. Alma-

Ata.

Tetreault, M.A. (2000). Gender, citizenship, and state in the Middle Eats. In N.A. Butenschon,

U. Davis, & M. Hassassian (Eds.), Citizenship and the state in the Middle East:

Approaches and applications (1st ed., pp. 71-87). Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University

Press.

The Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (2015). Kontseptualnye

osnovy vospitaniya [Conceptual basis of values-oriented education]. Astana.

Tomiak, J.J. (1986). Introduction: The dilemmas of Soviet education in the 1980s. In J.J.

Tomiak (Ed.), Western perspectives on Soviet education in the 1980s (pp. 1-19).

Basingstoke, England: Macmillan.

Tompkin, R. (2008). Overlooked opportunity: Students, educators, and education advocates

contributing to community and economic development. In D.A. Gruenewald & G.A.

Smith (Eds.), Place-based education in the global age (pp.173-195). New York, NY:

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Tukmadiyeva, M. (2017). Kazakhstan. Freedom House. Retrieved from.

https://freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit/2018/kazakhstan.

Tupper, J.A., Cappello, M. P. & Sevigny, Ph. R. (2010) Locating Citizenship: Curriculum,

Social Class, and the ‘Good’ Citizen. Theory & Research in Social Education, 38 (3),

336-365.

143

UNESCO (1998) Citizenship Education for the 21st Century. Retrieved from:

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_b/interact/mod07task03/appendix.ht

Uskenbay, K.Z. (2006). Ulusy pervyh Dzhuchidov. Problema terminov Ak Orda i Kok Orda

[Uluses of the first Dzhuchi. The problem of Ak Orda and Kok Orda notions].

Turkologicheskyy sbornik - 2005, 355-382.

Uspanova, K. Zh. (2002). Idei narodnoi pedagogiki v razvitii obrzovaniya i v tvorchestve

kazahskih prosvetitelei v period prisoedineiya Kazakhstana k Rosii (Pervaya polovina

XVIII – seredina XIX veka) [Ideas of ethno-pedagogy in education development and

works of Kazakh scholars during incorporation of Kazakhstan to Russia (the first half of

the XVIII – middle of the XIX centuries]. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Tumen,

Russia.

Ustav obshestvebnnogo obyedineniya “Molodezhnoe krylo ‘Zhas Otan’ pri partii ‘Nur Ota”’

[Regulations of public association “The young wing ‘Zhas Otan’ at the party Nur

Otan].(n.d.). Retrieved from https://docplayer.ru/38397036-Ustav-obshchestvennogo-

obedineniya-molodezhnoe-krylo-zhas-otan-pri-partii-nu'r-otan.html

Vate, V. & Diatchkova, G. (2011). From collective enthusiasm to individual self-realization:

History of and experience in the House of Culture, Anadyr’ (Chukotka). In B. Donahoe

& J.O. Habeck. (Eds.), Reconstructing the house of culture: community, self, and the

makings of culture in Russia and beyond (pp. 29-54). New York: Berghahn Books.

Vyshnechenko, G. V. (2016). Osvoenie tseliny-grandioznyi socialno-ekonomicheskiy proekt XX

v. [Development of Virgin Land Campaign is a large-scale socio-economic project of

the twentieth century]. Vestnik Tambovskogo Universiteta, 2-3 (7), 10-18.

144

Wallerstein, I. (2003). Citizens all? Citizens some! The making of the citizen. Society for

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45 (4), 650-679.

Wang, C., Burris, M.A., & Ping, X.Y. (1996). Chinese village women as visual anthropologists:

A participatory approach to reaching policymakers. Social Science Medicine, 42 (10),

1391-1400.

Waters, S., Cross, D., & Shaw, T. (2010). Does the nature of schools matter? An exploration of

selected school ecology factors on adolescent perceptions of school connectedness.

British Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 381–402.

Watson, R.S. (1994). Memory, history and opposition under state socialism (an introduction).

In R.S. Watson (Ed.), Memory, history and opposition under state socialism (pp. 1-20).

Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.

Weber, E. J. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen. The modernization of rural France 1870-1914.

Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

White, A. (1990). De-Stalinization and the house of culture: Declining state control over

leisure in the USSR, Poland and Hungary, 1953-1989. New York, NY: Routledge.

Wojnowski, Z. (2017). The near abroad: Socialist Eastern Europe and Soviet patriotism in

Ukraine, 1956-1985. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Wurm, J. (2005). Working in the Reggio way: A beginner’s guide for American teachers. St.

Paul: Redleaf Press.

Yakavets, N. (2016). Societal culture and the changing role of school principals in the post-

Soviet era: The case of Kazakhstan. Journal of Educational Administration, 54 (6), 683-

702. doi:10.1108/JEA-12-2015-0118

145

Yessenova, S. (2011). Nomad for export, not for domestic consumption: Kazakhstan’s arrested

endeavour to ‘put the country on the map.’ Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 5 (2),

181-203.

Yessenova, S. (2015). The political economy of oil privatization in post-soviet Kazakhstan. In

A., Hannah, A., Mason, and M., Watts (Eds.), Subterranean estates: Life worlds of oil

and gas (pp. 291-307). Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Zajda, J. (1979). Education for labour in the USSR. Comparative Education, 15 (3), 287-299.

Zhussipbek, T. (2019). Students’ and teachers’ experiences and perceptions of studying in

‘Bilim-Innovation’ lyceum-boarding schools in Kazakhstan (Unpublished doctoral

dissertation). The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.

146

Appendix A

Table 1

Comparison between the Old and Updated Schooling Programs

# Criteria The old program The updated program 1. Years of studying 11-year-old model of education 12-year-old model of education

2. Model of education A knowledge-centric model A competency-based model

3. The language of Kazakh/Russian Kazakh/Russian/English teaching 4. The style of Passive role of students Active role of student teaching (collaboration)

5. Teaching methods Teacher-centered methods Active learning methods, tasks and techniques which are based on projects

6. Assessment Five-point rating system without Summative assessment based on any criteria criteria 7. The number of 6 days 5 days school days per week

147

Appendix B

Recruitment Material

148

Appendix C

The Education System in Kazakhstan

149