An exploration of English-medium teaching at an international school towards joining the globalised world: An autoethnographic account from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Abstract

Within international secondary education, English is frequently positioned as a primary pedagogical vehicle intended to cultivate global competitiveness among students. Consequently, English language proficiency has emerged as a fundamental benchmark of institutional success. In Kyrgyzstan, international schools are officially licensed by the Ministry of Education and Science to employ English as the medium of instruction; however, this mandate explicitly excludes Kyrgyz and Russian literature, alongside socio-historical disciplines. These subjects are deliberately reserved for local educators to safeguard students' historical consciousness, cultural heritage, and traditional values. Crucially, English is not the sole global lingua franca, nor do Anglo-American contexts exclusively define the global arena. Numerous highly developed nations utilize alternative instructional languages while offering superior socio-economic opportunities for emerging generations. Therefore, it is imperative to deconstruct and historicise the dominant discourse that equates English proficiency with quality education to analyze how this logic operates within contemporary Kyrgyzstan. More fundamentally, interrogating educational structures through the lens of global power dynamics—specifically the global matrix of power—is essential to provide novel insights into the role of education in navigating the structural complexities of modern societies.

An autoethnographic approach is utilised to explore the dominance of English in the international schools. Using her two years (2023–2024) of personal experience of teaching English at the selected international schools in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan the researcher explored the complexities of teaching English that impede an understanding of education. Qualitative research methods were used to collect data, 22 interviews being conducted with international and local educators, government officials, parents and administrative staff. Two focus group discussions (FGDs) were also conducted with 34 participants, and four months of participant observation took place in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Data was analysed using grounded theory to develop themes from the findings.

The study shows that English is presented as education to the detriment of subjects that are critical in addressing the challenges faced by the societies concerned. Access to the global world does not necessarily translate into opportunities but in fact can put young people in a more precarious position because of the shifting global powers. More saliently, there is now less favourable emphasis on multiculturalism, which had been the foundation of globalisation and internationalisation, which were premised on diversity. Education should ideally foreground different epistemologies to produce education with a wider capacity for good. This entails a call for epistemic justice which will propel social justice as a response to coloniality. This is a much-needed intervention because colonial logic continues to determine how and what we should consume despite the promises of globalisation and internationalisation to include everyone. English thus becomes an example of how dominance of other countries is maintained.

This study therefore calls for an alternative logic that is not premised on exclusionary knowledge but rather on the inclusion of all knowledges to provide a meaningful understanding of education and role for it. The shifting geopolitics is central to the argument of this thesis that the cornerstone of education is not the language of communication but rather skills. The weakening of globalisation and internationalisation is opening possibilities for many centres of power. The main contribution of the study is the call for education to be redefined to draw on diverse epistemologies that are beyond the limits of Western epistemology.