Conference Agenda

In recent decades, culturally responsive teaching (CRT) has emerged as a central framework in education research, particularly in response to increasing cultural diversity, migration, and persistent educational inequalities (Gay, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995). Teacher education programs increasingly emphasize the importance of developing teachers’ knowledge of cultural diversity, equity, and students’ socio-cultural backgrounds. However, despite this growing emphasis, research consistently demonstrates that possessing such knowledge does not automatically lead to equitable pedagogical action in classroom practice (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016; Sleeter, 2012).

This persistent discrepancy highlights a core problem in contemporary education research: the gap between knowing and acting. Teachers may recognize cultural differences, acknowledge structural inequalities, and endorse equity-oriented values, yet still struggle to enact culturally responsive practices in their daily professional decisions (Villegas & Lucas, 2002). Existing explanations often focus on individual deficiencies, such as lack of skills or insufficient training. While relevant, these explanations risk obscuring the broader institutional, epistemic, and professional conditions that shape teachers’ capacity to act on what they know (Biesta, 2010).

Within teacher education, this knowing–acting gap becomes particularly salient. Pre-service and in-service teachers are frequently positioned as holders of diversity-related knowledge, yet they are given limited opportunities to develop professional judgment for acting under uncertainty, negotiating competing demands, and responding to context-specific challenges (Biesta et al., 2015). As a result, culturally responsive teaching risks remaining a normative aspiration rather than a sustainable pedagogical practice.

Although the literature on culturally responsive education is extensive, there is still limited empirical and conceptual work that explicitly frames CRT as a knowing–acting dilemma. Addressing this gap is crucial for education research that seeks not only to produce knowledge about equity and diversity, but also to understand how such knowledge becomes actionable in practice. By conceptualizing culturally responsive teaching through the knowing–acting relationship, this study directly responds to the ECER 2026 theme and contributes to ongoing debates on the changing conditions and potentials of education research.

kIn the context of modernization of the education system of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the implementation of strategic national programs, the issue of professional development of new teachers has gained particular relevance. This study is devoted to the analysis and development of professional practices of training, adaptation, and support for beginning teachers within the Kazakhstani educational context.

The article examines the professional practice of a teacher who, through mentoring and systematic support, achieved significant professional growth: from a curator and teacher-organizer to a moderator teacher and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). In addition, the teacher won a government-funded scholarship under the “Bolashak” international scholarship program of the Republic of Kazakhstan to study abroad.

The study explores the theoretical and regulatory foundations of teachers’ professional development, analyzes existing and prospective mentoring models, induction programs, and practice-oriented forms of professional learning. Special attention is paid to institutional conditions, the role of professional learning communities, and the influence of national education policy on the effectiveness of professional practices. The results of the research may be used in the development and improvement of teacher education and professional development programs in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Keywords: teacher professional development, beginning teachers, mentoring, education system of Kazakhstan, pedagogical practices.

The first scientific concepts of teacher professional training were formed within the framework of classical pedagogy of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the works of J. A. Comenius, J. H. Pestalozzi, and A. Diesterweg, the teacher was viewed primarily as a bearer of knowledge and moral values, while professional training was largely limited to mastering teaching methods and subject knowledge. In the second half of the 20th century, pedagogical science shifted from a normative understanding of the teaching profession to an analysis of teachers’ professional activity and personality development. A significant contribution to this field was made by L. S. Vygotsky, A. N. Leontiev, and S. L. Rubinstein, who examined professional development in the context of activity, socialization, and personality growth.

During this period, studies emerged focusing on the stages of teachers’ professional development, the adaptation of novice specialists, and the role of the teaching staff. However, support for beginning teachers had not yet been formalized as a systematic pedagogical practice and was primarily considered through the lens of professional adaptation.

This paper responds directly to the ECER 2026 theme Knowing and Acting: The changing conditions and potentials of education research by advancing a critical racial and decolonial literacy framework as an urgent, praxis-oriented intervention in contemporary educational research and pedagogy. Drawing on the conceptual foundations and collective scholarship articulated in Critical Racial and Decolonial Literacies (Bargallie & Fernando, 2024), the paper argues that education research cannot meaningfully “act” without first confronting the enduring racial–colonial conditions that shape what is known, whose knowledge counts, and how educational institutions reproduce or resist white supremacy.

Situated in the settler racial–colonial context of Australia, the paper addresses the persistent silencing, denial, and obfuscation of race and racism within education systems, particularly preservice teacher education, and research cultures. Despite the proliferation of diversity, inclusion, Indigenisation, and decolonisation discourses across universities and schools, race itself remains marginalised, euphemised, or rendered unspeakable. This silencing is not accidental; rather, it is constitutive of liberal multicultural and neoliberal governance frameworks that individualise racism and foreclose structural critique. Within these conditions, education research risks becoming complicit in reproducing racial ignorance, even as it claims commitments to equity and social justice.

It provides educators and researchers with the conceptual language to identify how race operates as a governing technology for the management of human difference Lentin, 2020). Such a language can name experiences of racism that are often normalised or denied, and to interrogate how educational institutions are structured through racial–colonial logics.

Crucially, the paper distinguishes critical racial literacy from depoliticised institutional approaches to anti-racism, such as unconscious bias training, cultural competency frameworks, or surface-level curriculum reforms. These approaches, while often presented as evidence of institutional action, typically remain anchored in white analytic frames and neoliberal individualism. They leave intact the structural conditions of racial domination and epistemic racism that marginalise Indigenous and racialised scholars and constrain what kinds of knowledge can be produced within education research Whatman & McLaughlin, 2024). In contrast, critical racial and decolonial literacies insist that action must be oriented toward dismantling the systems, structures, and epistemologies that sustain racial inequality.

Drawing on examples from across disciplines and educational spaces, the paper illustrates how educators and researchers enact critical racial literacy in practice, often from the margins of institutions that are hostile to explicit engagements with race. These enactments include decolonial pedagogies that centre Indigenous sovereignty, critical interrogations of canonical knowledge, affective and embodied approaches to teaching about race, creative and artistic interventions, and dialogical practices grounded in solidarity (Brooks, 2024), care, and refusal. Collectively, these practices demonstrate that education research is not only a site of knowledge production but also a terrain of struggle, where scholars must navigate backlash, risk, and institutional constraint.