Understanding Teaching Beyond Content and Method: Insights from Central Asia

• Published in: European education Vol. 40; no. 4; pp. 46 - 69
• Main Author: Niyozov, Sarfaroz
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01-01-2008; M
• Subjects: Biographies; Case Studies; Cultural Context; Cultural Influences; Data Analysis; Democracy; Educational Change; Ethnography; Foreign Countries; Global Approach; Ideology; Kyrgyzstan; Qualitative Research; Social Change; Tajikistan; Teacher Attitudes; Teaching Methods; Western Civilization; Kyrgyzstan; Tajikistan
• ISSN: 1056-4934; 1944-7086
• DOI: 10.2753/EUE1056-4934400403

This study suggests the need for complex research approaches that provide richer, contested, and nondichotomous portrayals of classrooms, schooling life, and teachers. Drawing from a qualitative study of Tajik teachers' practices and perspectives (Niyozov, 2001) and studies on teaching conducted in Kyrgyzstan (De Young, Reeves, & Valyaeva , 2006; Shamatov, 2005) and other developing and industrializing societies, this article argues that good teaching is a broad, complex, and contested practice. Understanding teaching requires moving beyond simplified and dichotomous theoretical frameworks. Combining life history, case study, and critical ethnography, the author unearths deeper reasons behind teachers' voices and practices to show the complexity of classroom pedagogy. The author challenges some of the assumptions about child- vs. teacher-centered pedagogy, which have become the central element of teaching and have marginalized teachings' broader meaning in the region. This article connects the teachers' classroom practices to their biography, worldviews, and relationships to highlight that teaching is much more complex than content and pedagogy and much larger than what happens in the classrooms. Linking the data analysis to the broader educational, sociopolitical, economic, and ideological transformations resulting from globalization, the market economy, and the neoliberal notion of democracy in post-Soviet and developing countries, the goal is to examine implications for sustainable education reform and related issues such as reconceptualization of teaching, engagement with teachers' beliefs and practices, the transfer and borrowing of Western ideas into non-Western contexts, and consideration of the context and culture. (Contains 4 tables and 2 notes.)