"My English seems not enough": Moving from language deficit views to Kazakhstani CLIL teachers' funds of knowledge.

Abstract

Abstract In Kazakhstan, the rich diversity of local knowledge seems to be ignored by policymakers who favor discourses of globalization and internationalization that disempower local expertise in favor of dominant Eurocentric thinking. Such discourses can marginalize teachers' philosophical assumptions, beliefs, and values that underlie their teaching practices. This article argues for including teachers' Funds of Knowledge (FoK) and practice-based insights to foreground their responsive and lived pedagogies despite their limited English proficiency. We used a qualitative approach that included teachers' reflections on multimodal teaching scenarios (comics) to elicit their values and beliefs about science pedagogy. The second instrument was teachers' narrative descriptions of language use in their science classrooms, collected and observed during a 45-hour professional development program. The third instrument was focus group interviews to identify biology teachers' practical, theoretical, and value-laden pedagogical choices. We conclude that a FoK framework diverted our gaze from measuring teachers against a Western-oriented standard and allowed us to foreground teachers' professional identities and practice-based EMI pedagogies as locally and contextually relevant.