The impact of shadow education and multilingualism on personal development

Galym-Galam: Anas Hajar, Associate Professor at NU GSE

NU professor Anas Hajar has extensive teaching experience. After graduating from Warwick University in England, he worked for some time as a teacher in elementary and secondary schools, as well as at a university in Aleppo.

Holder of the doctoral degree in Language Education and author and co-author of numerous scholarly articles and books,?Anas Hajar, explores motivation issues in language learning and intercultural interaction. He researches shadow education phenomena, internationalization, education abroad, and language learning strategies.

Can you please tell us about your educational and professional background?

I am a graduate of Warwick University in England, holding a Ph.D. in language education. I commenced my career as a teacher in primary and secondary schools and as an English-language lecturer at Aleppo University, Syria. I have also worked as post-doctoral research and teaching fellow at Warwick, Coventry, and Christ Church Universities in England, and as an Assistant Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

I am currently an Associate Professor of multilingual education, and the Ph.D. program director, at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) at Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. I am particularly interested in motivational issues in language learning and in intercultural engagement. I also work in the areas of shadow education, internationalization, education abroad, and language learning strategies.

Can you please tell us about your current research projects and main findings?

I am glad to announce the publication of Shadow Education in the Middle East: Private Supplementary Tutoring and its Policy Implications (London, Routledge). It is a path-breaking study of a region that has received little attention in the shadow education literature and can be downloaded for?free.

I wrote this book with UNESCO Chairholder, esteemed Professor Mark Bray at the University of Hong Kong. The book focuses on 12 countries in the region and underlines that private tutoring has a long history as a significant phenomenon in many countries, but in others developed more recently. Some governments have had active policies to dampen the phenomenon, but with little success. Factors in the complex dynamics include social, economic,?and cultural forces.

We know that you have also done research on shadow education.

My other research project is about the phenomenon of “Shadow Education” in Kazakhstan from the perspectives of young children.?In this project, three participatory methods- children’s drawings, photographs, and group interviews- along with a short questionnaire were used to explore Grade 6 pupils’ experiences and perceptions of the private tutoring they had received in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan. The questionnaire data suggest that 316 out of 406 (79.87%) attended private tutoring. The qualitative data from 30 pupils reveal that the participants’ motives for having private tutoring ranged from adult-imposed reasons (e.g. complying with parents’ wishes by studying for an elite school place) to reasons associated with achieving their ideal selves by boosting their interest in learning and imagining themselves working/studying abroad or pursuing an international career. The participants acted as proactive agents by explaining not only the private tutoring benefits but also its disadvantages, including the unethical practices of some schoolteachers, increasing tiredness and it being a potentially unfair advantage in a competitive context. This study suggested pedagogical implications and areas for ongoing research. One of the papers based on this project was published in Cambridge Journal of Education. You can read it?here.

Have you researched other fields of your interest?

Yes, my third project is “Ideal Multilingual Self, English Language Learning Motivation and Strategy Uses among Students in Kazakhstan”. This project reports on secondary school and university students’ reflections and assessment of their learning and teaching experiences at highly selective schools and universities in Kazakhstan, where EMI (English Medium Instruction) is used for teaching science subjects.

The special focus is on the participants’ challenges of studying science subjects in English, and the strategies they used to deal with these challenges. The findings of this project reveal that the national policies adopted in Central Asian countries seem to be similar to those followed in many other developing countries, based on creating divisions in terms of educational resources among rural and urban schools and non-key and key institutions.

In this project, almost all the participants indicated that although it was their parents’ decision to send them to outstanding EMI schools, they gradually realized that studying in an elite school supported their identity formation as users of English and helped them visualize their ideal end state, relating mainly to professional, intercultural and academic gains. Therefore, educational policy, cultural values, and distribution of resources can impact on students in similar contexts. Several papers will be published based on this project in 2022-2023.?

Why did you choose to join NU?

I joined Nazarbayev University in 2019. It was not an easy decision for me, especially since I had two job offers at the same time from UK universities. However, I decided to come to NU after I read carefully about the university from different resources and had my questions answered by the hiring Committee at GSE about the ambitions of NU in terms of research in particular. Now, I am pleased that I took the right decision by coming to NU, meeting amazing faculty members from different parts of the world and working in a positive, encouraging environment with the most hard-working and respectful students.?

What are your future plans?

I plan to expand on local and international networks to engage in further Multilingual, School and Higher Education projects, both research and development focused. One of these projects is about mapping, evaluating and regulating the phenomenon of shadow education in Central Asia. The other project is about understanding international students’ linguistic and sociocultural experiences in Kazakhstan.??