Conference Agenda

Since gaining independence, Kazakhstan has significantly emphasized language policies as part of the Kazakhization process (Fierman, 2006; Smagulova, 2008). The central focus has been on the development of the Kazakh language and the increase of Kazakh-medium schools. Despite this, Russian-medium schools constitute 17% of all schools, while mixed schools, incorporating Russian-medium classes, comprise 32%, indicating their relevance in the post-colonial context. International and domestic assessments reveal disparities in academic outcomes based on the medium of instruction, with Russian-medium schools significantly outperforming Kazakh language schools (Muratkyzy, 2020; OECD, 2012). This can lead parents to prefer Russian-medium schools, potentially contradicting Kazakhization policies and indirectly accentuating economic inequality which is important in creating a more culturally cohesive society. This study addresses the dearth of empirical research on parental school choice concerning the language of instruction.

Drawing on Spolsky’s (2009) language management and Kambatyrova’s (2020) language ideologies frameworks, it seeks to answer the following main research question: How do ethnic Kazakh parents make choices regarding the language of instruction for their children at primary schools? Specifically, it aims to uncover: 1) The underlying motivations and rationales driving ethnic Kazakh parents to choose a particular language of instruction for their children. 2) The existing ideologies among parents regarding languages of instruction and how these influence the overall decision-making process. 3) Other non-linguistic factors that may influence parents’ decisions regarding the language of instruction.

As practitioner-researcher working in Post-16 vocational education with 16-19 year olds and their teachers, my research aims to understand the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of literacy embedding. ‘Embedding’ is the deliberate teaching of literacy objectives as an integrated element of the vocational curriculum, and is found to produce enormous benefits for students’ vocational and skills qualification achievement when carried out effectively (Casey et al., 2006).

The last national embedding policy ended in 2011 with the discontinuation of the Skills for Life strategy (England and Wales). Since then, along with a decade of funding challenges, literacy embedding has been sidelined in favour of the 2014 GCSE English re-sit policy; GCSEs are end-of secondary school academic qualifications. The aim of this policy is to push as many students over the GCSE English pass-line as possible. This is a laudable aim, but unfortunately, there is little evidence that the policy produces literacy learning which students can transfer to their vocational subjects (Verhoeven, 2022). Vocational subject teachers comment that their students lack the literacy skills to do well in their courses, but that the teachers themselves lack the knowledge to support their students. With scant resources in post-16 education now focused on the GCSE English re-sit, embedding knowledge developed during the Skills for Life years may have been lost.

These suppositions are anecdotal – the last large-scale study into post-16 literacy embedding was conducted during the Skills for Life years in 2006 with the Casey et al. report. Skills for Life was an excellent starting point, but did not conceptualise literacy in terms of vocational epistemologies. There is compelling theoretical and empirical research which finds that subject epistemologies are directly related to text structures. Genre theory and Disciplinary literacy research, informed by Functional Linguistics, reaches this conclusion (Cope & Kalantzis, 1993; Shanahan & Shanahan, 2012; Swales, 1990; Tardy, 2011). This suggests that students should be taught explicitly how to ‘analyse’, ‘evaluate’, and ‘compare’ along with associated text and syntactical structures.

My research attempts to break new ground by using this theoretical grounding to focus on vocational subject teacher development. There are international implications; Genre and Disciplinary Literacy research is currently applied to academic subjects, particularly in the USA and Australian contexts, but not yet, as far as I know, to vocational education and training. I am attempting to understand:

1. What knowledge do vocational subject teachers need to do embedding?
2. How can teachers be supported to develop this knowledge?

In this vein, my research is informed by the teacher knowledge frameworks proposed by Shulman (1986), and developed in relation to literacy by Carney and Indrisano (2013), as well as Clarke and Hollingsworth’s model of teacher change (2002).

My research will hopefully result in a dual-framework: 1) a curricular and pedagogical toolkit for teaching vocational subject genres; 2) a ‘schedule’ of teacher genre knowledge required to embed literacy, with suggested approaches for developing this knowledge. My ultimate intention is to produce practical and theoretical findings which will support students’ literacy development in the vocational education context. This work is driven by a social justice agenda. Known as the ‘Cinderella sector’, FE is under-researched and under-resourced (Atkins & Flint, 2015). Its students tend to come from socio-economically deprived backgrounds, and are more likely to drop out of university after one year and gain a lower class degree than their academic subject counterparts (Myhill et al., 2019). This is the vocational-academic dimension of the attainment gap. My research aims to address this particular form of inequality.