CHAPTER 8: Putting Equity into Action: A Case Study of Educators’ Professional Development in Twenty-First Century Kazakhstan

In this chapter, we describe how an ethic of participatory citizenship is developing across a professional association of educators in Kazakhstan. Our discussion explores how members of this association, the Kazakhstan Reading Association (KazRA), created a nongovernmental organization governed by the entire membership of the association. Today, this group aims to provide opportunities for all members to vote in the election of representatives and to participate in setting goals and developing activities of the association.

The efforts that led to the creation of KazRA began in 1997 with the introduction of the Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking Project (RWCT). RWCT was a joint offering of the International Reading Association (IRA) and the Soros Open Society Institute of New York (OSI-NY) and was built upon the concepts and methods of the highly successful Orava Project in Slovakia, which was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (Meredith & Steele, 2000). Since 1992, the Orava Association for Democratic Education has introduced instructional practices that support students’ active involvement in schools and communities. As a result of the efforts of educators in Slovakia, the RWCT has introduced a philosophy of education and methods of instruction that promote participatory citizenship through educational reform to a much larger group of educators and students around the world. Since 1997, RWCT has involved at least 50,000 educators in Eastern Europe, Central and Southeast Asia, and Central and South America (RWCT International Consortium, 2005).