Our chapter focuses on a three-year project called ‘Teacher Leadership in Kazakhstan’ (TLK). In three years, the project grew to a nationwide initiative and had 500 active participants from thirty-five urban and rural schools. We adopted a narrative approach to explain the policy context for teacher leadership development, and we have reported the introduction of the TLK initiative in a sequential manner and summarised the key lessons that we learned throughout the project’s implementation.

This chapter presents the results of monitoring research conducted by the Center of Excellence in 2018–2021. The focus of the research was the professional potential of leading schools established in each region of Kazakhstan as a mechanism for testing innovative ideas and further large-scale translation, taking into account the accumulated experience and the optimal strategy of action. The theoretical and practical basis of the research consists of analytical materials and empirical research data, confirming the dominant role of professional capital. On this contextual basis, the methodology and criteria-evaluation framework were defined, research and interpretation of the data obtained were carried out and conclusions were formulated. The database was formed on the basis of self-evaluation of professional potential by managers and teachers of all leading schools and the evaluative opinion of partner schools, which were methodologically supported. The multiplicity of studies, the representative sample and the triangulation method used have provided sufficient qualitative and quantitative data for the formulation of objective findings and timely decision-making.

This chapter is a critical reflection on the reform and its implementation. It looks at the challenges in the past, present and future and some key lessons learned along the way. It examines the changes in the context and the importance of cultural and political factors and what can be learned about implementing large-scale reform, and speculates on the next steps.

This chapter is a case study that describes the reality of innovation and reform of the content of school education in a single region in the south of Kazakhstan. The region has a mix of urban and rural schools, although the majority are rural in nature since agricultural employment dominates the local economy with some very remote locations and many families on low incomes. Despite the difficulties of geography, ethnic diversity and poverty, the research showed that the regional authority tended to adopt a ‘can-do’ attitude and looked for solutions to implement the Renewed Content of Education successfully rather than respond passively. There were pockets of resistance evident which prevented full implementation of the Renewed Content of Education. Such instances demonstrated the magnitude of transformation expected and the critical role of communication between regional authorities, district authorities, schools and parents.

This chapter is a historical account and review of the educational reform in Kazakhstan from the perspective of those engaged in establishing the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS). It also describes the rationale for establishing the NIS, what drove it and the premises for the renewal of curricula for secondary education.

This chapter is an account of my experiences as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Columbia between 2004 and 2012. It describes the role of the dean and the structural position of the Arts and Sciences and the relationship between graduate teaching and research and undergraduate programs and units. It then goes on to characterize conflicts and controversies around the politics of the Middle East, questions around academic freedom and the place of political speech inside and outside the classroom, controversies over ethnic studies, core curricula and debates over “general education” and the “liberal arts” as well as about the relationship between core courses and ideas about the primacy of “western civilization,” university rankings, university budgets in relation to the financial crisis, relations between administration and faculty, and questions concerning intellectual as well as political purity and responsibility.

I conclude by referencing the draconian scenario proposed by Ronald Musto in a recent book in which he suggested the possibility that the modern university would collapse and disappear in much the same manner as did the medieval monastery in sixteenth-century Britain. I suggest that while this is unlikely to happen, the current crisis should not be minimized and action should be taken to begin to restructure the university system, while resisting calls for total disruption and adapting the humanities and the liberal arts to the needs of the future.

A brief history of the university, from Oxford and Cambridge to Harvard and Columbia, then from the University of Virginia to the University of California. The chapter focuses on the Morrill Act of 1862 (known also as the Land Grant Act) and on the influence of the German research university in the late nineteenth century. Considers the analysis of Laurence Veysey that the university was in some respects “incoherent” from the late nineteenth century on, given the competing constituencies made up of faculty, students, and alumni. Traces the twentieth-century history of the American university, especially the role of federal funding for research, the GI Bill after World War II, and then the Master Plan forged between Clark Kerr, President of the University of California, and Pat Brown, Governor of California, in 1960.

This chapter lays out the theoretical underpinning of self-regulated learning and the overlap between self-regulated learning and science and engineering practices. Examples of the cognitive processes of a self-regulated learner are explained as they attempt a learning task and travel through the cycle of forethought, performance, and self-reflection. Self-regulated learning cycles from both a naive and a skilled learner are explained. Examples of teacher support for each phase of self-regulated learning are described within the context of science and engineering practices.

This chapter focuses on teacher support for students evaluating and communicating information in science and engineering. In each chapter, the practice is dissected into distinct and clear learning tasks. These tasks are then examined within the context of a self-regulated learning cycle. A multistep coaching strategy is explained and points for instruction and assessment are given using the example of a design challenge for students in grades 3 through 5 to improve the school recycling program. The tasks are reassembled into two case studies – one positive and one negative – to demonstrate how the learning tasks can be used by students.

The study of teacher lesson planning is a thriving area of research in education, and understanding the process and products of lesson planning is needed to plan effective teacher education. This chapter will focus on how self-regulated learning strategies can be embedded through the use of a familiar tool, the 5E lesson format. An example of a physics lesson focused on investigating the movement of a pendulum with embedded science and engineering practices and SRL processes is explained at the end of the chapter.

This chapter focuses on planning and carrying out investigations. In each chapter, the practice is dissected into distinct and clear learning tasks that serve as process goals for learning the practice. These tasks are then examined within the context of a self-regulated learning cycle and coaching strategies for instruction and assessment are emphasized. The instruction and assessment strategies are contextualized for students in grades 6–8 and focus on a design challenge to build a hole for a miniature golf course that involves a pendulum. The tasks are reassembled into two case studies – one positive and one negative – to demonstrate how the learning tasks can be used by students and how teachers can support students learning how to plan and carry out investigations.

This chapter begins with examples of experiments of building new universities or investing significant new resources in old universities in India and China to make the point that there seems to be more dynamism in the higher education sector these days in Asia than in America. The chapter moves from this to considering some of the core ideas of the university – to borrow the title of Cardinal Newman’s famous nineteenth-century book The Idea of the University – focusing on the ideas behind the liberal arts. I look at the relationship of the liberal arts to the humanities and consider some of the debates over both curricular requirements and canons as well as more broadly the way the humanities have often been narrowly identified with western civilization and specifically with departments of European language and literature (with a little history, philosophy, and classics thrown in). I consider the tensions and divides between the “arts” and the “sciences” as well as the residual investments of religious belief and values in many understandings and depictions of the liberal arts. I use this to consider issues related to free speech and open inquiry more broadly, as well as the residual tensions between teaching and research.

This chapter focuses on developing and using models. In each chapter, the practice is dissected into distinct and clear learning tasks that serve as process goals for learning the practice. These tasks are then examined within the context of a self-regulated learning cycle and coaching strategies for instruction and assessment are emphasized. The instruction and assessment strategies are contextualized for students in grades 9–12 and focus on developing and refining a model for electrolysis. The tasks are reassembled into two case studies – one positive and one negative – to demonstrate how the learning tasks can be used by students and how teachers can support students learning how to develop and use models.

This chapter is an account of my experiences as a member of the faculty in different universities. I taught at Caltech where I was a member of an interdisciplinary group of faculty in the humanities and social sciences and came to know prominent humanists in other fields as well as scientists such as Richard Feynman, Murray Gel Man, and Max Delbruck. I then moved to the University of Michigan where I joined an active group of interdisciplinary scholars, encountered the attractions and problems of cultural studies, and then began to do institutional work by creating a new interdepartmental PhD program in Anthropology and History. Because of the success of that program, I was invited to Columbia University to chair the Anthropology Department and become the Franz Boas Professor at Columbia.