For a decade, the Faculty of Education of the University of Cambridge worked with colleagues in the newly established Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education (NUGSE) in a programme designed to build research capacity. Though this involved some research training in the early stages, it functioned mainly by bringing research teams from the two institutions together into a research collaboration focused on the progress of educational reform in Kazakhstan. This chapter considers some of the issues raised by a somewhat asymmetrical international collaboration, the ‘translation’ of ‘international’ practice into this new environment and the development of what might be understood as a ‘research culture’. It considers the impact of the structural hierarchies built into the foundation of Nazarbayev University and, in particular, our research collaboration, with some reference to knowledge hierarchies (academic research, teachers’ professional knowledge as reflected in action research and lesson studies), the problematic nature of the discourse of the ‘international’ and ‘world class’ in educational research and the charge of neocolonialism levelled against the whole enterprise.

Undergraduate research differs by country, being embedded in distinct national systems of higher education. These systems differ structurally and, culturally, are lived differently. Part IV is devoted to the implementation of undergraduate research around the world, providing summaries from 27 countries. The structure of Part IV is aligned with geographic regions: The Americas; Africa & the Middle East; Asia & Oceania; and Europe. One trend we see worldwide is that the development of undergraduate research is being linked to the federation and establishment of excellent research at universities.