$50,000 fellowship award goes to professor’s research in international education reform

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, education reform has been touted as a means to encourage democracy, create national identities, and strengthen market economies. However, little empirical data are available, particularly on more qualitative issues, such as parent involvement, curriculum implementation, and choices about the language of instruction in the classroom.

“This project is concerned with discovering the limits and possibilities of local schools as sites of social change in the Kyrgyz Republic, and documenting where and how these possibilities do or do not exist. International banks and NGOs are all scrambling for ways to improve schooling in Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere, but their efforts are invariably directed at textbooks and infrastructure improvements, not at ways that local schools can serve local communities, nor at ways that local schools can teach ‘democracy’” said DeYoung. “The results of this research may suggest some ways.”

DeYoung will carry out case studies on four Kyrgyz secondary schools in cooperation with collaborators Tolbaeva Guljan of the National Pedagogical University (Arabaev) and Rahat Joldoshalieva of Osh State University. The researchers will conduct interviews and observe operations at schools in Bishkek, Osh, and the southern village of Kurshab. They will also rely on statistical data from the local and national authorities and recent studies by the World Bank, USAID, and the Asian Bank of Development.

IREX is the premier US nonprofit organization specializing in higher education, independent media, Internet development, and civil society programs in the United States, Europe, Eurasia, the Near East, and Asia.

The Roberts Fellowship supports cutting-edge research in the social sciences in Afghanistan, Asia, Eurasia, Europe, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, and Turkey by annually providing one grant of up to $50,000. This year the program accepted applications for research in the field of education.

For more information on the John J. and Nancy Lee Roberts Fellowship Program, please refer to http://www.irex.org/programs/roberts/.