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Paper abstract:

Kazakhstan is a complex environment for studying reforms concerning teachers and their assessment systems (attestation). In recent years, public education policy reforms have drastically changed the way teachers are assessed (Ayubayeva, 2018). These reforms, along with growing public attention, resulted from a widespread recognition that traditional teacher assessment systems did not promote teachers' careers and did not provide for financial compensation. Teacher appraisal (attestation) was first introduced back in the days of the USSR and served as a "test of knowledge." In addition, an appraisal system is a tool for monitoring the quality of teacher education based on national test scores and overall student quality (OECD, 2014). Most importantly, the old attestation system was complicated by additional bureaucratic procedures, which, in turn, gave rise to corruption. Thus, the government launched a new attestation mechanism, which NIS and international partners developed (Kanayeva, 2019). The most important innovation of the new appraisal system is the implementation of the National Qualification Testing (from now on referred to as NQT), that is, computer-based testing. The NQT is a high-stake test, as only after passing successfully can the teacher apply for the second stage. After careful literature review, very few academic articles have been written (except for Pak, 2020 on teacher appraisal system in NIS schools) on computer-based testing (NQT) as a teacher appraisal tool in Kazakhstan. This study aims to uncover Kazakhstani teachers' perceptions and beliefs about the newly implemented appraisal system. In order to understand the complexity of the teacher appraisal phenomenon and get a deeper understanding, a mixed method of research was used. As quantitative data, a survey was conducted for the month of 2021 among teachers who had experience taking the test. Six hundred sixty-seven responses were collected and analyzed. As quantitative data, six interviews were conducted with teachers from different geographical regions of Kazakhstan. Ultimately, the NQT has been implemented to minimize corruption and increase teachers' status. However, in the NQT questions focused on theory rather than practical implications, lack of clear guidelines for reliability and validity of tests, absence of piloted tests, and insufficient informational support have been the main barriers to the successful implementation of teacher assessment in Kazakhstan.

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Paper abstract:

The history of late Soviet Union under Brezhnev, often referred to as the period of ‘stagnation’, remains an understudied area of academic research, with scholarship on the Soviet periphery being even more scarce. The present study aims to fill in this gap by analyzing consumer culture in late Soviet Kazakhstan and using this framework in order to gain insights into the history of everyday life at the Soviet periphery during the late 1960s – mid 1980s. As Natalya Chernyshova (2013) points out, despite the common narrative of Soviet consumer being the victim of ‘shortage’ economy, the consumption scene by the time of Brezhnev’s rule demonstrated a more complex picture of consumer agency. In this research I use the lens of consumer culture analysis, and in particular, the culture of acquiring and using jeans in late Soviet Kazakhstan to explore the social and cultural implications of this ‘meeting’ with the 'West' - how the presence of this product of Western culture can inform our understanding of local society in relation to ‘national’, ‘Soviet’ and ‘global’ culture frameworks. This research, hence, adds benefit not only in the sphere of scholarship on Soviet Kazakhstan’s history, but also in the methodological way of approaching the study of Kazakhstan’s Soviet past through the lens of socio-cultural history.

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Paper abstract:

The 1930s and 1940s witnessed a dizzying series of regime changes in Xinjiang, shifts in the region's political winds that were reflected in the likewise frequently changing political orientation of the Ürümchi-edition Xinjiang Daily ( 新疆日报). Nonetheless, the Daily's local coverage of Ürümchi's own urban environment, city sanitation, and resident hygiene, as well as its discursive representation of the benefits to be derived from modernizing reform in these and other areas, exhibited significant continuity across regimes and despite such overarching political change. And, the Daily was not alone among Xinjiang’s newspapers in its modernizing focus. This paper utilizes the remarkable back-page spread of the April 22,1948 Daily as both an exemplar of the Daily’s long-running ‘discourse of the modern’ and as a case study with which to center a broader examination of newspaper discourses of modernity in other Chinese and Uyghur-language publications from the 1930s and 1940s in Xinjiang. Calling for a 'Large-scale Spring Cleaning', the April 22 Daily emphasized the importance of a variety of state-backed sanitation and hygiene-related matters for Urumqi, from snow removal and street cleaning to public restroom use and household waste disposal. Renewed efforts in such areas, the articles indicated, would improve, reform and modernize Ürümchi's citizenry. Comparison of these April 22, 1948 Daily articles, and the long-running discourse of the Daily regarding modernization that they emblemize, with other Xinjiang newspapers and periodicals of the period demonstrates both consistencies between the vision of modernizing reform exhibited by these different publications with that of the Daily as well as differences through which divergent (albeit still modern) futures for Xinjiang can be glimpsed. Taken as a whole, this comparative analysis argues for the importance of newspaper discourses of modernization in understanding society and politics in 1930s and 1940s Xinjiang as well as in laying the ‘discursive roots’ upon which similar future efforts would be founded.

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Paper abstract:

Having emerged as an independent scientific direction in the 1960-70s, the history of everyday life has rapidly developed as an interdisciplinary field of research.

Studies on the history of changes in the daily life of the Kazakh traditional society XIX - early XX centuries are largely based on texts written by travelers and explorers who visited the Kazakh steppe. A separate place in modern historiography is occupied by research on the study of illustrative collections of visual sources of the 19th – the beginning of 20th centuries and their interpretations.

To study the social changes that took place through everyday practices, in addition to narrative materials, visual sources began to be more widely used - drawings by Russian and European researchers for the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries, and for the second half of the 19th - early 19th centuries. XX centuries - photographs of researchers of this period.

Main research questions:

The space of everyday life as a social space: the interaction of Kazakh sultans, biys, foremen and ordinary nomads in the context of the spread of new management standards as a result of the reforms of the Russian Empire in the Kazakh steppe in the 19th century.

Official public space in the Kazakh village: yurt, the traditional dwelling of the Kazakh nomad, is in the daily practices of public life and the exercise of power of local officials.

Private-public space of the Kazakh traditional family in visual sources: household utensils, traditional costume and its elements in the context of production and consumption processes, as an element of social status and lifestyle, i.e. as a carrier of information about social characteristics. In the process of functioning, the thing acquires value characteristics and conveys certain meanings that are essential for everyday culture.

Official public space and private public space in the Kazakh nomadic society could be combined through the characteristics of everyday life and holidays.