Learning languages for the sake of…?

Photo credit: http://www.returnofkings.com

The episode of the podcast “Is Learning a Foreign Language Really Worth It?” was dedicated to the issues of learning foreign languages in terms of psychological and economic (ROI)  pros and cons. It was clear that the creator did not try to persuade us, because he just had been asking diverse questions upon this topic from experts in psychology and economics to inform the listeners about this issue. It is a very tough question to discuss. By listening to and taking some notes of the experts’ viewpoints, voices of children, I also would like to add some ideas of my own.

The presented information by Boaz Keysar, Albert Saiz, Bryan Caplan was supported by researches. Each of them gave a particular argument supporting it by introducing to us evidence and examples. For instance, Albert Saiz conducted a study with 9000 graduates in the USA. He highlighted that there is a low financial return if graduates know the second language. The speaker states that “If you speak the second language, you get only 2% more wage premium”, it is compared to Turkey, Russia, Israel contexts, where knowing English as a foreign language gives an opportunity to get a salary from 10 to 20% more. I think that there is similar tendency in Kazakhstan as well. People who know English would get a chance to be employed to a well-paid and prestigious job. Adding to this point, the proficiency in the Kazakh language is also essential while getting a job.

Many psychological insights about bilingual people were mentioned by another interviewee. I would like to describe only one of them. Boaz Keysar suggests that learners are ready to take risks and think of dilemmas in a foreign language frequently. From my own experience, I support this point. It may be because of the mentality, but I am not adapted to take risks in the Kazakh or Russian languages. For instance, I would never be as honest and brave as while speaking English; and I cannot elaborate on the reasons for now. While listening, I have heard the voices of children talking about the benefits of learning a foreign language. It was shocking for me that many of them, in the beginning of the episode, told about the prestige. I consider it as ‘worrying moment’, because they think of only material benefits. On the other side, they mentioned the opportunity of communicating with people all around the world. Thus, I found the balance, and the ‘worrying moment’ subsided. Overall, these constructive talks gave me food for thoughts.

I got to know a lot of new information, and I would do a further research on this topic. I would definitely recommend listening to this episode to everyone, because it discloses the topic of being bilingual from diverse perspectives. Find some time to listen to the podcast, it is worth it. If you listen to this episode, what will you agree and argue with most?

How is your backbone?

After very positive posts of my peers about their literature review sections of the thesis, I had second thoughts of writing about my own as it is still a very weak one. But anyway, my thesis paper is a unique story, which has its own ups and downs and will hopefully have a happy end. So, let me tell you my story called “Teachers’ experiences in supporting students from orphanages studying in mainstream classrooms”.

If we consider a thesis paper as a human organism, we shall understand that every part of it is like an organ, which has its own functions. Their significance cannot be denied and should be accordingly valued. From this perspective I find the literature review part as a backbone. It is like a core particle that holds other parts together. If it is weak or crooked, then the whole body probably will not be strong.

The backbone of my organism for now looks very weak. First of all, it is only approximately 800 words. Quantity is not as important as quality they say. However, for literature review at this point I find it too little. Secondly, my main challenge is to find relevant data. There is a lot of information about institutionalized children, orphans, and their challenges at these institutions, however it is hard to find information on their inclusion process into mainstream schools. It looks as if this practice is very rare worldwide or there has not been so much research on it. In addition, investigations of the impact of institutional care do not usually include the education process. Mostly psychological and health aspects are mentioned. Of course there is a connection, but I am still on the way to make this connection in relevance to my topic.

For now I have divided my literature review section into 2 parts: the impact of institutional care and condition of orphans in Kazakhstan. In both parts I use general to specific method of writing. For example, in the first part I start saying that there have been a lot of research into this topic. Next, I explain aspects that were considered in these investigations, such as age and conditions of institutions. And then I gradually move to revealing the outcomes of those researches, explaining specific impacts of institutional care that were found out. I tell about these impacts one by one dividing them into separate paragraphs.

Throughout my thesis paper I have often mentioned two sources: ”The risk of harm to young children in institutional care” by Browne K. and “Community based care for separated children” by Tolfree D. Both papers contain results of thorough researches on the effects studying and living in an institution can have on children’s state of health and mind. Also both authors are members of the world’s independent children rights’ organization “Save the Children”. This Alliance brings together organizations and individuals concerned about children without adequate parental care. Its mission is to facilitate active information exchange and collaboration on these issues and advocate for technically sound policy and programmatic action on global, regional, and national levels. Sounds very convincing.

Overall, I find writing literature review part very difficult in terms of finding relevant resources and having time for reading, summarizing and writing it. But I hope to eventually “have it right”!

Organization of a literature review section

To date, I have almost finished writing a literature review part of my thesis proposal, but, of course, it may need revising and editing. After reading a number of materials, in my thesis work, I have made a lot of changes with respect to which direction I should go in, and what I need to concentrate while writing the literature review. In my previous blog post, I wrote that teacher-centred learning, which makes students be oppressed, was/is practised in education systems of post-Soviet countries. However, having read various articles on teaching, I came to a conclusion that this style of teaching dominates in other countries as well, such as Turkey, Indonesia, and Qatar. Therefore, it can be wrong to state that such a way of teaching and learning exists only in post-Soviet contexts. Instead, I wrote that ‘teacher-centered learning’ continues to be used in many parts of the world.

Now, I would like to demonstrate how I organized my major themes in the literature review part, and some influential phrases or texts used to cite. My major theme relates to the training pre-service teachers receive in pedagogical universities. In order to smoothly go to that specific topic, I decided to begin my literature review with providing some general data on teaching quality as ‘one of the important school variables influencing student achievement’ (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, as cited in Silova, 2009). That is, I write about the necessity of using appropriate teaching methods/pedagogies which develop learners’ skills/talents, empower them for social change, and create an inclusive environment in classrooms/schools in order for every learner to feel accepted.

In the following paragraphs, I gradually turn to discussing on teaching methods utilized to train pre-service teachers in pedagogical universities in both western and post-soviet contexts. For that purpose, for example, I cite the studies of Iveta Silova (2009, 2010) who clearly illustrates the current state of teacher preparation processes in post-Soviet countries. Afterwards, I proceed with discussing specifically three theories of teaching and learning such as behaviourism, constructivist and critical pedagogical approach. To do this, I use research works of Kasey R. Larson (critical pedagogy), Kablan and Kaya (constructivist teaching) amongst others. I believe that these materials will assist me to better understand and analyze what teaching methods teachers at pedagogical universities of the country employ to teach pre-service teachers, and what pedagogies they teach pre-service teachers.

One of the challenges in my research project is a shortage of relevant and reliable data on teacher training in pedagogical universities in Kazakhstan. The country needs to pay much more attention to developing research studies as these may contribute to the improvement of an education system. I hope my research study will be a useful resource for other researchers.

P.S. Dear colleagues, if you have any suggestions/recommendations regarding the organization of my literature review, please, let me know.  Your opinion is important to me, as I am still working on it.

 

References:

Silova, I. (2009). The crisis of the post-soviet teaching profession in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Research in Comparative and International Education, 4, 4.

Silova, I., Moyer, A., Webster, C. & McAllister, S. (2010). Re-conceptualizing professional development of teacher educators in post-Soviet Latvia. Professional development in education, 36:1-2, 357-371, doi: 10.1080/19412550903457596

Kablan, Z. & Kaya, S. (2014). Preservice teachers’ constructivist teaching scores based on their learning styles. Australian Journal of teachers education, 39, 12.

For every researcher, help

The week 18-22 of September I was lucky to take part in the first in Europe and Central Asia cognitive testing of the module on inclusive education developed by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Washington Group. Students of Nazarbayev University completed training on conducting interviews and tested the module on functional features of development and disability of children. Apart from gaining a huge experience in interviewing people and summarizing the results, we discovered a lot about UNICEF’s activities and programs in Kazakhstan. I want to share some knowledge and sources that will probably be useful for other young researchers.

UNICEF works across 190 countries protecting the rights of children, providing them with opportunities to study, and improving standards of living. The activities vary from country to country depending on the context of the country and living conditions. UNICEF supports children who fall a victim to violence, natural disasters, migrant crises or terroristic acts. In Kazakhstan, UNICEF is mostly involved in actions for the protection of children’s rights and research about children’s wellbeing.

Unicef.kz is a good source of publications and research studies on children’s living and studying conditions in Kazakhstan. One of the latest publications is “The statistical yearbook “Children of Kazakhstan” (available in 3 languages) which was published in June 2017 on a joint initiative of the Committee on Statistics of the Ministry of National Economy of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Representative Office of UNICEF in Kazakhstan. This yearbook contains all the statistical data about children in the Republic of Kazakhstan and includes such sections as Demographic Characteristics, Health and Healthy Lifestyle, Education, Leisure for Children, Social Protection of Children, Employment of Youth. Many others publications present reports on UNICEF activities in Kazakhstan and data analysis across different regions of the country.

Also, you can watch a series of simple and entertaining videos with the results of UNICEF’s studies (ex. Results of the study “Violence against children in the family” Results of the MICS – Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey in Kazakhstan).

I hope these resources will be useful for those who write about children’s education and their position in the society of Kazakhstan.

P.S. Do not forget to evaluate critically all the information you use in your research!

How I work on Literature review part

Literature review is a very important part of any research as it establishes the context of any research, connects it to the existing knowledge, and therefore shows the depth of a research paper. In this post, I would like to talk about my personal process of working on literature review part.

Let me start with reminding the topic of my thesis project which is “Examining inclusive education policies and infrastructure in schools of Astana”. The scope of my study will include mainstream schools as well as inclusive schools where I will investigate inclusive education policies, their nature, content and common patterns. Another goal of my research project would be to reveal how well schools in Astana are equipped to maintain inclusive education.

Overall, I feel confident about the content of my literature review, that is to say, what subtopics to include and how to organize them. Now, the draft of my literature review is on the stage of general editing process where I work on connecting ideas and sentences to make them more cohesive, and on improving an overall structure of the draft.

Following the targets of my research work, I considered to divide the literature review part into two major sections. First section touches upon the issues of inclusive policies, specifically, I talk about the importance of inclusive policies, how policy relates to practice and creating inclusive schools, and research done about inclusive school policies in other parts of the world. Second section is more brief, and includes the role of infrastructure and how effective inclusive schools look like in terms of physical resources.

The process of finding relevant resources might seem the most challenging when writing literature review. At least for me, it was difficult to find exactly what I needed when I finally reached the point when I was confident I would never find anything. However, it appeared to be so only in the beginning, and as the process went on, I could not stop from saving one more “useful” article. So, how did I manage to do that? Firstly, I changed usual searching systems to our library’s electronic resources. Secondly, I always start from broader topics. Considering my topic, I might start from searching just an “inclusive policy” or “inclusive infrastructure”. Thirdly, I narrowed my key words eliminating articles and prepositions. For example, instead of searching “the importance of inclusive school policies” it is better just to write “inclusive policies importance”. Finally, I tried to use various combinations of word phrases meaning the same thing. Sometimes new relevant articles appeared when I searched “role inclusive policy” instead of “importance inclusive policy” or “inclusion school building” instead of “inclusive school infrastructure”.

Next step after I had enough materials was to read, summarize, analyze, evaluate and synthesize all the sources to come to certain conclusions and make your own suggestions. Here, I usually create a simple table where I briefly write all the information about each article: name, author/s, date, aim of research paper, methodology, results in bullet points. This kind of summary of each article in a table is more convenient for me to structure my ideas, to analyze, look through the information and compare between sources rather than making a summary as a text.

To conclude, I would like to share few examples of research works which highly influenced my own research project. This is the work of Garrick Duhaney where he makes a deep analysis of the content of inclusive policies of 50 state educational agencies in the USA. Apart from this, the paper talks about a policy itself as a tool in changing a system, its importance and drawbacks. I also appreciate the work of Mcallister and Hadjri who highlighted the role of a school infrastructure when placing children with special educational needs into mainstream settings. I also liked that the authors indicated four-stage approach for an adequate evaluation of an environment for better inclusion.

References

Garrick Duhaney, L. M. (1999). A content analysis of state education agencies’ policies/position statements on inclusion. Remedial and Special Education, 20(6), 367-378.

McAllister, K., & Hadjri, K. (2013). Inclusion and the special educational needs (SEN) resource base in mainstream schools: physical factors to maximise effectiveness. Support for Learning, 28(2), 57-65.

 

 

My Literature review

We made a quite thoughtful description of our thesis topics last time, explaining reasons to choosing particular problems, identifying purpose, and making precise research questions.  Frankly speaking, the comments made me think a lot whether I am on the right path or not.  Certainly, I will keep revising and editing this part throughout the academic year. Another part, which is a foundation of the whole work is a literature review. The process of searching right sources of topic-related information is a very engaging and time-consuming one.  Though, I have some basic sources, I still try to find more and more valuable literature. I would like to refine the definition on inclusive education, not to deviate from it too much and make it more accurate, specific, to be exact.

I divided my thesis into three main themes: Inclusive Education, Inclusive Teachers’ Competences, and Supplementary Tutoring. Why have I chosen this trajectory? Mostly, because I have been involved in supplementary education sector for many years so far and I want to analyze the issue from this particular perspective.  In order to make reading the thesis smooth and easy –to – follow, I will start with general concepts and gradually specifying the sub-themes I will examine in the paper. For instance, “The latest demands of modernization of education system include integration of children with limited health opportunities in mass mainstream schools. …” is an introduction to the topic, while “Inclusive education is aimed at providing learners with special educational needs (SEN) and preferences with equal opportunities to access educational resources and services…” is a more specific notion. Each theme will have paragraphs, so that we could distinguish sub-themes. “The Background of Private Tutoring”, “Pros and Cons of Private Supplementary Tutoring” are examples of it.  The challenge here is to find enough relevant peer-reviewed literature to support ideas and arguments. Especially, in the Kazakhstani context. However, the topic I am analyzing is a very popular phenomenon abroad and has been started to be actively researched. So, I would like to refer to Bray & Kwo (2014) who identified in their studies that 87% of students chose supplementary tutoring before university exams in the Republic of Korea. According to Silova (2009), “of all the Central Asian countries reviewed, the scope of private tutoring was found to be highest in Kazakhstan (64.8%)” (p. 88). Therefore, we do need to conduct research on this phenomenon and identify any relationship of it with inclusive education, it is probable positive or negative impact, and see to what extent specialists are ready to practice inclusive education in their workplaces.

 

 

 

Working on the literature review section

In this post I would like to share my experience of working on the literature review section. I believe that this process is  fundamental to my research  as it defines the directions in which I will explore teachers’ perceptions and experiences of differentiated instruction.  So, I have been reading a lot on differentiated instruction since I decided to research this approach to teachers’ instructional practices. It has been a focus of attention of many scholars who investigate the problem of contemporary teaching practices to meet the needs of all individual learners. The readings that I have done so far prompted me to identify the following themes: theories and concepts around differentiated instruction, teachers’ understandings and experiences of differentiated instruction, and challenges in implementing differentiated instruction. I am still thinking if strategies that are generally expected to be employed in differentiated instruction should be included into the section about teachers’ practices or outlined as one more theme. Some sources research and discuss the strategies based on the theory of multiple intelligences and constructivist approach as an effective way to address the diversity of learning profiles, while some propose that differentiated instruction do not provide recipes to fit all. Some authors firmly believe and promote the idea that differentiated instruction is not entrenched in dogma. On the contrary, it is a thinking paradigm which endorses multiple contextual approaches to teaching. So, I continue reading in order to get more informed about the existing teaching practices and their methodological underpinnings.

As for challenges, I have not encountered any difficulties in finding relevant sources since there are many scholarly works and studies in my research area. What I found a bit challenging first is that  differentiated instruction highly resonates with many other instructional approaches such as personalization, individualization, Universal Design for learning, backward design and adaptive teaching. And now I think that this is  good  for  me because such similarities give me  more opportunities to point out its conceptual differences.

To my mind, one of the most meaningful works that I draw upon in my thesis is written by McTighe and Brown (2005) under the title “Differentiated Instruction and Educational Standards: Is Détente Possible?” The article discusses the challenges faced by teachers in their daily practices under the pressure of rigorous curriculum and assessment standards. It also considers backward planning which is based on the constructivist approach of meaning making. This planning design sends lots of implications for differentiated teaching.

Concluding, I want to say that I still have questions and in order to answer them I keep reading and simultaneously I keep integrating the new ideas and findings into my paper. I would like to wish my peers the best of success in writng their papers and meeting the deadlines!

Writing a literature review

Writing a literature review is one of the most challenging parts of a project because it is necessary to chose out all the information that exists on a given topic the one which is the most relevant to my project. After finding and reading all these sources, it is also important to present them in a coherent and logical way so that the reader would understand the background and actuality of the theme which I study, as well as why this theme is worth of studying. Organization of the main ideas plays an important role here. After reading a number of sources I decided to structure my paper in the following way. First of all, I would like to begin my literature review from defining main notions and terms which I use in it. So, I start from explaining what dyslexia is, what are its main symptoms, characteristics and causes. Then I move on to presenting the bigger picture about it, in particular, to what extent it is wide spread in the world. After that I narrow my focus to Kazakhstan. Due to the reason that it is extremely difficult to find material on dyscalculia among Kazakhstani population I provide an overview of attitudes and strategies concerning inclusive education in general in our country. I end my literature review with looking at  how others countries deal with student who suffer from it, what are the special programs for these students and what place students with dyscalculia have in inclusive education settings.
The main challenges in finding resources were about finding information in Kazakhstan. Also, there is not enough data on effectiveness of some programs, as many of them have been launched quite recently.
Now I am in the middle of the process. I found all my main sources, but I did not write much about situation in Kazakhstan and I need to revise the part about programs used in other countries because I constantly keep finding some new material.
The texts which I would like to share with you are “Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Mathematics: A practical guide” and “Dyscalculia: From Brain to Education” by Brian Butterworth, Sashank Varma and  Diana Laurillard.

The first one provides a detailed and very clear overview of dyscalculia as well as some useful strategies about how to deal with students who suffer from it. In particular, this book provides detailed guidelines on how to deal with various Math topics, for example, fractions, operations with numbers and so on. Also it constantly emphasizes importance of raising awareness about dyscalculia among the teachers. The second text provides a useful insight about the causes of dyscalculia from the neural perspective, in particular what changes happen in the brain of a child with dyscalculia. It also provides details on how special software, such as Number Race and Graphogame Maths can be used to help such students.

References:

Butterworth, Varma and Laurillard. (2011). “Dyscalculia: From Brain to Education” by Brian Scienc”, 332, 1049-1053.

Henderson, A. (2014). Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and Mathematics: A practical guide. London: Routlege.

Writing Literature Review

Currently, I am at a stage when the thesis proposal is written and being revised and edited. I feel confident about this stage as I have a clear understanding of what changes I would like to make in the current draft. I would like to enrich my literature review with more background information on the development of inclusive education policy in Kazakhstan in general as well as with specific examples how this process is perceived as top-down. In this post, I would like to share how I organized my main themes in the literature review and chose a couple of influential texts to cite.

My main themes in the thesis are inclusive education, civil activism, and grassroots movement. This choice might be explained by my background in political science, which creates a certain lens through which I examine inclusive education reform. In organizing my themes, I move from general to specific. For example, I start with explaining common views on policy formation in Kazakhstan in general saying “It is a common discourse in Kazakhstan that policy-making and reform are top-down processes…” and move to inclusive education specifically later “…scholarly work on inclusive education in Kazakhstan often starts with listing international and national agendas…” This is a smooth way to guide my audience to a specific research question raised in the thesis.

I organize the literature review in paragraphs, each having one major idea explained. For example, the first paragraph is dedicated to ways how civil society contributes to education reform, and the next paragraphs give specific cases one by one. This is done to draw the attention of the reader to specific ideas, separating them into topics or categories. However, it is important to glue these ideas by transitions such as “another example is…” or “an example from the higher education is…”, displaying the connection between the elements of the literature review.

For the purpose of my research to explore civil activism in inclusive education, it is important to provide evidence on bottom-up movement as well as on the state-driven top-down policies, because these two represent different approaches to policymaking. Therefore, I start the proposal citing Kassymova, D., Knox, C. and Mashan, M. (2008) who argue in their article that Kazakhstani government prescribes policies, and the citizens only execute. This view becomes a foundation of my thesis questions, which doubt such vision of policy initiatives and aim to discover how civil society actually contributes to inclusive education reform. Therefore, another work that I cite is chosen specifically to provide an example of this bottom-up activism. This work is produced by Kauffman and Popova (2013) and reveals a case of a school in Petropavlovsk city, where inclusive education has been practiced even before such policy was designed on a state level. These two works that I have cited are important to provide two different views on policy formation around inclusive education and to justify the need to fill the gap in how much we know of civil activism and movement for inclusion.

My challenge remains to find enough resources about Kazakhstan, especially speaking of such specific topics as parental activism and advocacy for the rights of children with disabilities. There is a limited selection of articles and authors who study inclusive education in Kazakhstan, although the number is growing constantly. However, a lack of certain resources is a finding of itself, so I turn this into a benefit by establishing one more cause of my thesis motivation, which is to fill the gap in the literature.

References:

Kauffman, N. & Popova, L. (2013). A path to inclusive education in Pertopavlovsk, Kazakhstan. The Journal of Social Policy Studies, 11:4, 501-516.

Kassymova, D., Knox, C. & Mashan, M. (2008). Public Management Reforms in Kazakhstan. Public Management Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe. Slovakia: NISPAcee Press, 151-172.

Blog post 2

Writing literature review has been always challenging for me. It is time consuming as I start reading many sources according to my topic and do lots of note taking and planning. The most difficult thing in writing is staying on a track and trying to synthesize the sources instead of summarizing. However, on the other hand, literature review is the most interesting part of a research where I usually come up with new ideas and get inspiration further. So, how am I organizing my main themes of literature review?

I divided literature review into 5 sections starting with the introduction part with the significance of the topic and explanation why “my claims matter” (from They say/I say). In the next part I compared findings of more than two studies which I ideally agreed with and reflected on them. In the third part I gave the explanation to the experimental results of the studies. Further, more studies have been analyzed which were of category less or least agreement. Finally, in conclusion I tried to summarize the state knowledge and introduced the gaps in existing researches.

Finding resources was the most difficult part about my topic. There are plenty of studies which prove the importance and positive effect of music therapy with autistic children abroad. However, I have not found any sources about it in Kazakhstan. Fortunately, I have an access to some centers for children with ASD and get information from their practice. That is why I am a bit late with the overall process of writing my thesis as I am still looking for more sources and information related to Kazakhstan, particularly, Astana.

Here, I would like to emphasize on a couple of significant studies influenced my work. One of them is Kate Simpson and Deb Keen’s work “Music Interventions for Children with Autism: Narrative Review of the Literature”. Their paper I read several times and found out many useful facts about the role of music for special children. Particularly, this study contains the summary of articles aiming to prove the use of music with autistic children. Another study that I often look at is done by Barnes and Geoffrey Prescott, “Moments of Meeting: Difficulties and Developments in Shared Attention, Interaction, and Communication with Children with Autism during Two Years of Music Therapy in a Public Preschool Class”. I work with preschool children and that is why I was very interested in the action research study and want to check here in Astana the role of music as an intervention with autism and discover the same results as the authors of this research found.