Importing education: Europeanisation and the Bologna Process in Europe’s backyard—The case of Kazakhstan

Abstract

This article studies the problem of the implementation of European educational standards in Kazakhstan higher education. This is considered in the frame of post-socialist education, when reforms in several post-Soviet states were undertaken under the Bologna Process. Kazakhstan, as this article argues, is justified for consideration in the frame of those post-Soviet countries involved in the Bologna Process (the Caucasus and the Baltic states) rather than in the context of neighboring Central Asian countries, which is the case found typically in the existing literature. The outcome derives from the nature of educational reforms in Kazakhstan undertaken at the system level similar to those of states that joined the European Higher Education Area. The theme is grounded in the theory of educational policy borrowing and focuses on how the borrowed patterns display themselves in the local Kazakhstan context and how they are “recontextualized” there. This article draws upon the analysis of interviews with teaching professionals conducted in four Kazakhstan higher education institutions. While the typical package of the standards of the Bologna Process to be implemented includes a wide range of norms, this article is limited by the analysis of the implementation of a testing system in Kazakhstan higher education.