Guiding Questions by Kairat Kurakbayev

Question 1: How have the purposes of education been reconfigured in post-socialist countries, and what tensions arise between the preservation of socialist legacies and the adoption of neoliberal reforms?

kk3282 — 2024-08-12 09:24:07 UTC

Question 2: In what ways do the post-socialist education reforms reflect broader geopolitical shifts, such as European integration and the influence of global neoliberalism?

kk3282 — 2024-08-12 09:24:24 UTC

Question 3: Discuss the concept of 'post-socialism' as both a geopolitical and epistemological construct. How does this framework help in understanding the educational transformations in the region?

kk3282 — 2024-08-12 09:24:37 UTC

Question 4: How does the concept of 'quality' in education differ between the Soviet era and the post-socialist period, and what factors have influenced these changes?

kk3282 — 2024-08-12 09:24:56 UTC

Question 5: What role have international organizations played in shaping education reforms in post-socialist countries, and how have local contexts influenced the implementation of these reforms?

kk3282 — 2024-08-12 09:25:08 UTC

Question 6: Analyze the relationship between education and nation-building in post-socialist countries. How have language policies, in particular, been used to promote national identity?

kk3282 — 2024-08-12 09:25:56 UTC

Question 7: How have educational policies in post-socialist countries addressed (or failed to address) issues of equity and social justice, especially in the context of neoliberal reforms?

kk3282 — 2024-08-12 09:26:07 UTC

Question 8: Discuss the concept of 'education as a public good' versus 'education as a private good' in the context of post-socialist transformations. What are the implications of this shift for educational access and outcomes?

kk3282 — 2024-08-12 09:26:21 UTC

Group 6

2024-08-12 10:26:05 UTC

Post-socialist countries all employed different language policies to promote national identity. For instance, Estonian and Latvian policymakers successfully adopted their native languages as the medium of instruction. This was done to diminish the "Silent Russification" influence. Similarly, Georgia's current youth do not indicate Russian language proficiency showing the result of refusing to integrate the Russian language into the curriculum. On the other hand, the English language has experienced a steep rise in the purpose of internalization to the Western market at the expense of the Russian language.

2024-08-12 10:27:51 UTC

Question 5.

In post-socialist countries education was mainly perceived as a tool to serve the nation. Those countries’ collectivist and socialist values were deeply ingrained in education, promoting nation-building and national unification agendas. International organisations (with opposing aka individualistic views) pushed them to reconsider their goals and move towards a more capitalist, individualist market, which offers more opportunities to succeed in a highly competitive globalized economy. In Kazakhstan, local contexts such as hybrid identities, efforts to remove the remnants of socialism (modernization), and transnational image feed on international reforms and facilitate Kazakhstan’s self-presentation as a symbolic bridge between the East and the West.

Question 8

2024-08-12 10:28:21 UTC

When taken into the context of the Soviet times versus today (the independence), education can be seen as a public good and a private one, respectively. In the first case, education was a tool for the promotion and development of the state interests. In the latter instance, education is seen as a matter that has moved into the control of the stakeholders (students, parents, companies, etc.) The implications are numerous, and some of them include:

affordability: Can a person pay for her/his education?

accountability: Who is responsible for mistakes / change?
corruption: Is everything transparent / honest?
fluctuated state control: Who makes decisions?
curriculum change: Who designs study programs?
inequality aspects: Is everyone treated equally?

Group 7

aliyasairanova — 2024-08-12 10:30:51 UTC

Systematic privatisation and marketisation were parts of neoliberal view, it was argued that it increased efficiency, and opened competition between private and public schools. Post-soviet countries followed that ideal resulting in increasing amount of private schools. Individualisation and competition have become much more prominent than the equal treatment of socialist period. That led to social injustice between the rich and the poor, favorable treatment of those with influential families occurred. Thus, disadvantaged families had much-promoted free choice, they could not utilise it.

However, marketisation also allowed families of lower socioeconomic backgrounds to select better schools outside of their residence, having some success in battling social injustice.

Gender issues have also been a part of educational reforms in post-soviet countries, researchers that focused on feminist discource analysis found gendered nationalism to be prominent. Women were seen as incompetent and unqualified to promote changes within the national systems.

Funding per capita was a way to remove costly services from the national balance sheets in Armenia and Ukraine. However, underfunding led schools and parents to develop new shadow solutions mostly involving informal payments, such as private tutoring with school teachers and informal payments to support schools.

Question 3

madinamakulbekova — 2024-08-12 10:31:25 UTC

Post-socialism is based on the geographical, historical, political and economic commonalities. Transformations in post-Soviet countries are based on the desire to rebuild their national identity, unification, and the move toward European standards in education, capitalism and democracy. In educational settings all of these changes steered the focus from serving the needs of society to developing human capital, to market economy and global competitiveness.

Group 4

zhannurzhamisheva — 2024-08-12 10:32:42 UTC

The concept of quality in education during the Soviet era focused on practical, predifined , applied learning with a strong emphasis on moral values.

While the post-socialist era, the concept of quality in education shifted towards economic and political objectives. Quality became more associated with the development of human capital. The social and moral purposes of educationbecame less visible.

The factors that influensed these changes where the arrival of market economy, political changes and change in ideological values.

Group 2

iamaidaee — 2024-08-12 10:33:16 UTC

Baltic countries wanted to become part of EU and because of this they forced to changes in education. Aligning curricula with European studies. They also became a part of the Bologna process.
Also some of the countries wanted to erase USSR influence and add English and native language as main. For example, Latvia and Estonia declined Russian language at education. (Kazakhstan and Ukraine has implemented Trinity of languages project- because these countries are multinational).
Influence of global neoliberalism emphasized market oriented reforms, privatization, internationalization and efficiency. There was a trend towards decentralization of education system. For example, curricula shifted to more world wide known disciplines such as politics, business management, social studies. Instead of Leninism, Marxism.

Question 1

ayazhanaskarova03 — 2024-08-12 10:33:55 UTC

During the post-soviet union the policy of education change was associated with Europeanisation, democratisation, market-oriented globalization. The purpose of Soviet education used to serve the collective state rather than the indivuduals. Due to the arrival of the capitalist market economy Reforms in education have been perposed to econimic an political development and it had education quality focus. Education reforms prioritised the role of the market over the state.