This article is based on a large study that explored quality issues in Kazakhstani rural schools from the perspective of key stakeholders, including school leaders, teachers, students, parents, and education managers. As the understandings and approaches to education quality vary from one context to another, there is no universally agreed definition of quality education. We employed the UNESCO Quality Framework to guide this study—the framework that suggests to seeing the quality in four main domains of education: 1. Contexts / environments (physical, academic, psychological, and social atmosphere in schools); 2. Inputs (teachers, curriculum, leadership, and others); 3. Processes (teaching and learning, assessment, and other processes); 4. Outputs (students’ learning outcomes, teachers’ professional growth and others). Within the larger study, this article focuses on teachers’ quality only.
The investigation of previous literature and the study's theoretical framework demonstrate that the rural school education challenges greatly impact the conditions of rural teachers’ professional activity.
The study employed a mixed methods research design, including both quantitative and qualitative inquiries: survey and semi-structured interviews [1]. The quantitative survey included 125 respondents from 40 rural schools across Kazakhstan. For qualitative part, 90 interviews (41 individual and 49 focus group) were conducted with participants from rural schools in Almaty, Kyzylorda, South Kazakhstan, Mangystau, and East Kazakhstan regions. Interviewees included teachers, principals, vice principals, subject coordinators, students of Grades 7–11, regional and district education managers, and parents.
The study's main findings describe the core teachers' issues, challenges, perceptions, and suggestions about facilitation processes for the quality of the rural teacher profession. The findings are organized across the main topics, which have been retrieved from qualitative and quantitative data.

To answer the question of how women's and gender studies are developing in Kazakhstan today, the author analyzes such a type of scientific publications as an article in an academic journal. The object of the study is scientific articles of the authors of Kazakhstan in scientific journals of the Republic of Kazakhstan for the period 2015-2022. The sample included 100 articles in Russian, Kazakh, English and French.
Quantitative analysis was performed on such indicators as the number of authors of the article, the number of sources in the article, the difference between the year of publication of the most recent source in the list of references and the year of publication of the article.
In addition, during familiarization with the content of the articles, the author investigated such characteristics as the culture of academic writing, the erudition of the authors, compliance with publication ethics, links to foreign and Russian sources, the quality of data analysis, etc. All this made it possible to give a generalized characterization of scientific publications, to identify their pros and cons, thereby drawing conclusions about the level of development of women's and gender studies at the stage of their current extensive development, after the rapid rise and heyday in the late 90s - early 2000s.

In many countries of the Central Asian region a lot of attention is paid to the preservation and further development of traditional crafts, which represent an intangible cultural heritage of the peoples. Active maintenance and development of crafts at the present stage is primarily connected with a well-considered cultural policy aimed at supporting national cultural heritage, contributing to the development of tourism industry and rural economy.
The materials presented in this article are based on field research of crafts preservation and development experience in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the RK AR09259862 “Research of traditional crafts of modern Kazakhstan: status and ways of preservation”. For the study of existing practices, we selected the most significant sites with well-developed handicraft activity and professional academic institutions, specializing in the study of crafts as a part of intangible cultural heritage. These are the cities of Dushanbe, Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent.
This article is dedicated to the comprehension and analysis of the experience of preservation, revival and development of traditional crafts in the Central Asian region, using Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as examples. A field study of the analyzed experience, conducted in June 2022, has highlighted a number of important aspects, including a set of measures aimed at the preservation and development, and in some cases, the revival of lost traditional crafts. This experience is not only immense, but also allows us to outline the key points for the development of evidence-based practices of conservation and development of traditional crafts in Kazakhstan.

The article describes in detail the identity and the motive of Kazakh mourning called ‘zhoqtau’. The factual data and justifications on the utterance, publication of lamentations are given. Specific ideas about the history of the origin, the motive of singing, the essence and content of each lamentation are presented. We stopped at the originality of this type of oral writing, which is transmitted in verse form with a sad motive. It provides concrete examples and facts about the virtues and moral actions of the deceased person. Great importance is attached to the content and artistry of lamentations. The specifics of zhoqtau pronunciation are also described. Deep meaningful descriptions are given about the unique qualities of the deceased, about the good that he did for his child, about the morality that he left to posterity. The song of crying reveals the human sides that distinguish the deceased from others. It is a symbol of respect for the deceased. Its purpose is to show the people the good deeds and works of the deceased, regardless of his age. The importance of mourning is to perpetuate the memory of him, to leave his works and traces that he left as a legacy to the next generations.

The aim of the study is to define the British phenomenon “understatement”. The relevance of this research is due to the desire to better understand the English character, which still remains a mystery to representatives of other cultures due to a special historically established, indirect, veiled, and sometimes ambiguous tradition of communication. Understatement directly serves to create this ambiguity, causing enormous difficulties in communicating both foreigners with the British and the British themselves among themselves. The main methods of research are: descriptive and structural methods, component and definitional analysis. The results of the study showed that understatement represents a nationally specific communicative category which contains the attitudes and rules of speech behavior of the British and participates in the regulation of the communicative process. Understatement has a certain structure and includes verbal and non-verbal means of expressing communicative content aimed at harmonious, conflict-free communication. The theoretical significance lies in a clear definition of the British phenomenon “understatement”, in identifying its speech strategies, linguistic and extralinguistic ways of expression. The practical significance is expressed in using the results of the research in lecture courses of the theory of intercultural communication, stylistics and general linguistics.

Formation of modern critical thinking in the young generation is of particular importance. Critical thinking is needed to make responsible decisions independently in emergency situations and predict their possible consequences. There is a lot of discussion around the critical thinking method, but the program offered by the School of Liberal Arts was actually implemented in a completely offline format for two years at the Kazakhstan higher education institution. The article is about the "Writing and Thinking" program used at "Narxoz" University, the impact of the program on the development of future competencies and creative qualities of students. A key component of teaching writing in “Writing and Thinking” is an innovative, student-centered experience that directly engages students in a variety of activities. In the process of mastering writing, students begin to express their thoughts correctly. The main goal of this program is to develop students' deep learning, writing works using different methods, and thus thinking skills. In the process of learning, students themselves simulate a complex situation, interact, in the proposed situations, do not perceive dialogue as a mandatory test of knowledge, begin to behave more freely and openly express their thoughts, overcoming the fear of mistakes.

The article considers the possibility of forming the ecological culture of the younger generation through theatrical art, where the fairy tale is the main pedagogical technique of environmental education of students. Currently, along with the traditional genres of TYUZ (magic, social and household fairy tales, children's musical, etc.), the range of children's drama is expanding due to the integration of modern stage forms into the TYUZ repertoire, such as plastic drama, ecological theater, children's performance, etc. The maximum adaptability of the language of performance to children's emotional perception (stage entertainment and dynamics), the use of advanced technologies in the theatrical production industry and the danger of a potential environmental catastrophe justify the relevance of the functioning of the ecotheater for changing children's psychology and awareness of priority environmental values. The purpose of ecological productions of the world children's theater, including in Kazakhstan, is to form the correct children's ecological worldview, to foster a sense of responsibility to the living and inanimate nature, civic duty and national patriotism. The study of the problem of environmental education of children through theatrical art on the example of the play "The Adventure of the Snow Leopard" of the Theater for Children and Youth named after N. Sats allowed to identify the solution of a number of eco-pedagogical tasks of the state noted in the Message of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The research results obtained during the survey diagnose the relevance of an unconventional artistic approach through the visualization of a broadcast problem in the issues of environmental education of students.