Abstract
The aim of the research is to establish whether the attitudes held by master’s students majoring in Education towards the traditional values of the Kazakh people change as a result of studying an elective course in Ethnopedagogy. Based on an analysis of works by Kazakh researchers, a classification of the traditional values of the Kazakh people was made. On the basis of this classification, the authors developed a questionnaire to identify attitudes towards these values. A survey was conducted among master’s degree students majoring in Education at S. Toraighyrov Pavlodar State University and L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian National University. The sample of the study was 119 people: 59 students formed the experimental group (the one where the elective course was taught), the remaining 60 were in the control group (that did not study the course). The survey was conducted twice: before the beginning and after the end of the course. The results of the first survey showed no statistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups. The second survey clearly showed positive changes in the attitudes towards the traditional values of the Kazakh people in the experimental group, while in the control group the results remained approximately at the level of the first survey. The authors came to the conclusion that it is necessary to strengthen the national and cultural components in the content of pedagogical education in the Republic of Kazakhstan.