How to best prepare teachers is an issue fraught with unvoiced assumptions and strong opinions. This is not surprising, since a nation's hopes and fears for the future are necessarily linked to the abilities formed in the rising generation. This is especially true for Russia, a country still working to reform an educational system that retains many features of its proud but isolated Soviet past. Since the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, Russian scholars, teachers, and educators have gradually reconnected with broader global trends in education. This new work by Elena Aydarova (a native Russian raised in Ukraine and now working in the US) presents a deep anthropological dive into a particular aspect of those changes and debates—the effort during 2013–2015 to develop and promulgate a new model for teacher preparation in Russia.
Aydarova (who identifies herself as “an anthropologist of policymaking”) invites us to see the process of policy formation as an exercise in “political theater,” replete with actors, directors, audiences, scripts, stage sets, lighting, and all the other paraphernalia of a theatrical production. As I started reading the book, I asked myself whether this novel framework would provide an “answer,” in the sense of providing productive insights into Russian educational policymaking. As I finished the book, I found I could enthusiastically say, “Yes.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of the problems faced by Russian education were in fact variations of problems common among other developed countries: should schools prepare young people for life or further education with general abilities, or with specific workplace-relevant skills? There was also considerable debate within the Russian government, as well as the higher education establishment, as to the prominence to be given to western models and neoliberal economic policies as applied in education.
The book is based on the author's field work in Russia during the time in which a draft proposal for the reform of teacher education was first introduced, and then discussed and debated in a variety of settings around Russia. The presentation and examination of events is not strictly chronological; the aim is to delve into the relationships and connections (among both institutions and individuals) that underlay the reform proposal. (Throughout, the anonymization of the names of individuals and institutions, while likely justified by the setting and the nature of Russian policy debates, makes the study less valuable as a specific policy analysis.)
Aydarova notes the (probably intentional) “mask of uncertainty” in initial debates that allowed institutions to interpret the proposed teacher education reform variously. Other parts of the analysis borrow other aspects of theatrical language and production: the roles of director(s) and actors, the notions of front stage and backstage, and the place of auditions. In the Russian context, where many political decisions are still hidden from public view, this sort of metaphoric treatment seems particularly apt.
The author generally aligns with the emerging critique of neoliberal models of economic development, and the forms of schooling and worker preparation often associated with those models: education should prepare students to take on productive, flexible roles in the national economy, and education should therefore stress acquisition of general skills and dispositions (“the ability to work collaboratively on a team”) as opposed to concrete knowledge. Teacher education systems in Russia had stressed the centrality of the latter, and so there was a strong perception among government officials and corporate executives that preparation of teachers would need to change.
In terms of how Russian teacher education policy has actually changed, there is no dramatic conclusion in this work: education in Russia remains a contested domain, as it is in many parts of the world. Many Russian teacher-educators reacted negatively to the neoliberal aspects of the proposed reform. Aydarova sides with the critics of neoliberal educational approaches and the assumption that there are “universal” ways of addressing educational problems. But she also recognizes that these ideas have considerable currency both internationally and in Russia.
Another strong feature of the work is the author's own self-aware and reflexive stance. Aydarova is the consummate “insider-outsider”; this aspect of her position comes up a number of times during her work in Russia. She is aware of the complexities this presents and deals with them in a professional, transparent way. This is a rich analysis of Russian policy making, and the framework of political theater encourages us to think in new ways about what has happened and what may happen in that domain.
