The work of NETRUZ in Uzbekistan was the focus of one of the sessions during the International Festival of Mentoring Teacher-Research (2024-2025). Here, Elyanora Menglieva and Ella Maksakova explain how NETRUZ was launched, and how it has grown over the last few years. You can access the recording of the event here.
This blog post showcases the process of launching an independent community of teacher-researchers who wished to address their teaching challenges through teacher-research, as well as the project’s achievements, its national-level impact, and the lessons learned.
Launching NETRUZ
Nowadays, there are more and more professional development opportunities for teachers who want to focus on their professional and personal growth. However, in the context of Uzbekistan, teachers need more bottom-up professional development schemes that are empowering, accessible, relevant to their context and the needs of both English language teachers working in urban and rural educational settings. Some English teachers of Central Asia may encounter various teaching challenges and look for possible solutions in the existing literature; however, they may not be able to find solutions to each of their teaching context-specific challenges and need to develop their own teaching methodologies.
With this thought, five leading teacher educators in Uzbekistan decided to set up the new Network of English Teacher-Researchers in Uzbekistan (NETRUZ). It was launched with the help of an A.S. Hornby Teacher Association Award in 2021.
NETRUZ was intended to serve as a collaborative platform that supports teachers by providing various free online training courses (with a particular focus on teacher-research), webinars, discussion sessions, mentoring sessions, etc. Another aim of this network was to raise awareness of teachers in Central Asia about teacher-research and its benefits for their teaching, professional growth, and teacher agency.
NETRUZ has now become more than just a platform. It has evolved into a dynamic network in which both in-service and pre-service teachers share a common goal – “we learn, research, develop and grow together!” (NETRUZ logo). Within this project, teachers have been trained and mentored to inquire into their teaching practices and students’ learning, and to share their findings and recommendations with others.
NETRUZ Achievements
Since its launch, NETRUZ has made remarkable strides in supporting teacher-researchers across Uzbekistan. We have successfully delivered several teacher-research training and mentoring courses:
In our first mentor training course in April-June 2021, based on Richard Smith’s Mentoring Teachers to Research Their Classrooms: A Practical Handbook, 12 participants were trained, with six successfully completing the programme. We had four trainers and guest speakers who delivered mentor training sessions. The trained mentors completed their Exploratory Action Research (EAR) projects successfully and presented at the IATEFL ReSIG Teachers Research! Online conference in December 2021.
In 2022, these mentors trained and supported over 20 teachers, 11 of whom completed EAR projects. That same year, NETRUZ and Namangan State University organised the 1st EAR Conference and published: “Teacher research journey: Voices from champion teacher-researchers from Uzbekistan”. These 11 teacher-researchers presented their research stories at this conference.
During the spring of 2023, Ella Maksakova took the lead on this project. Under her leadership, eight mentors trained and supported 19 teacher-researchers, 11 of whom completed EAR projects. The outcomes of this training were the following:
- Five teachers published their research in local professional journals.
- Two mentors applied for educational grants using the research skills and mentoring experience gained through NETRUZ projects and pursued their education abroad.
- Several mentees presented their research findings on newly developed teaching strategies at international conferences (TESOL Arabia 2023, Teachers Research! Online 2024).
During the autumn of 2023, NETRUZ trained over 20 teacher-researchers, with 10 completing EAR projects. Seven of these teachers presented their projects at the Teachers Research! Online 2024 Conference and at the TESOL Arabia conference. In December 2024, Guzal Turaeva, one of the mentees, published an EAR-based article in the IATEFL Teacher Development Academic Journal.
Impact of NETRUZ
We believe NETRUZ has had a profound impact on the community members who have become successful mentors and teacher-researchers. Many teacher-researchers have shared how this platform has transformed them, their careers, and overall, their agency. For example, Nilufar Tillaeva in this compilation of NETRUZ success stories says the following:
“Overall, NETRUZ has been instrumental in achieving my goals and has had a profound impact on both my professional and personal life. It has altered my views on teaching, enriched my academic career, and instilled a deeper appreciation for continuous learning and community contribution.”
You can read others’ testimonials in the NETRUZ book of success stories and watch the Festival event “The work and impact of NETRUZ”.
During the event, Ella Maksakova expressed that being part of this community had significantly enriched her identity as a teacher-researcher and a mentor in Uzbekistan and in the Thailand EAR projects. She not only became a successful teacher educator with diversified teaching styles but also developed as a project lead of NETRUZ (2023), improving her collaboration skills, administrative abilities, and communication skills. Through NETRUZ, she expanded her professional network, became a moderator in the Teacher-Research for Professional Development EVO in 2024, and joined the global teacher-researcher community (MenTRNet).
All the achievements of the members highlight how NETRUZ not only supports research but also opens doors to international collaboration and leadership opportunities.
Another profound impact of NETRUZ was its contribution to shaping a mentoring programme for the USDA McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program led by Mercy Corps in Uzbekistan. This project aimed to create a more contextualised professional development opportunity for rural preschool teachers in Uzbekistan through mentoring. With the experience gained from leading NETRUZ, Elyanora Menglieva was able to integrate EAR and adapt the EAR-mentoring framework for preschool teacher training and mentoring programmes of Mercy Corps and the Ministry of Preschool and School Education. Overall, 94 mentors and 539 preschool teachers were trained. By adapting EAR-mentoring to the rural preschool environment, the initiative supported preschool teachers in developing and sharing contextually-appropriate teaching practices that promote children’s early literacy development, nutrition and hygiene skills, home reading and parent engagement activities.
Lessons learned from this project
If you are planning similar projects, you might not have trainers who have EAR experience. When we introduced this mentoring framework, we selected trainers who have good mentoring skills. We allocated topics such as how to communicate, how to plan, and how to ask questions to these trainers. The trainers, who had done EAR themselves, organised the sessions in which they shared their experiences with mentees. This contributed to the success of the project.
Another reason for the success of the NETRUZ project has been the way it has integrated topics such as teacher identity development and teacher empowerment through teacher-research (teacher as researcher, autonomy, informed decisions in the classroom) since the first mentor training. In 2020- 2021, most teachers did not know much about teacher-research, particularly EAR. It was also challenging for us to change beliefs and perceptions about research. However, when teachers began doing EAR, they recognised its value. Now, NETRUZ mentors have become agentic change-leaders who are promoting EAR and mentoring in Central Asia.
About the Author(s)
Elyanora Menglieva is a PhD student in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. She has been contributing to many educational projects in Uzbekistan led by the Ministry of Education, British Council, US NGOs such as Mercy Corps. With the support of Hornby Trust, she founded the Network of English Teacher-Researchers in Uzbekistan. This network provides free training courses on teacher-research, particularly exploratory action research, formative assessment practices, mentoring of teacher-research, etc. Currently, she is leading a project to integrate exploratory action research into preservice teacher education programs.
Ella Maksakova
Ella Maksakova has been in ELT for more than 12 years. Ella got her MA in TESOL from Webster University, Uzbekistan. She is working as a teacher of EAP for an undergraduate program and as a teacher trainer for an MA TESOL program at Webster University. In 2021 Ella joined a growing community of teacher researchers “NETRUZ” (Network of English Teacher Researchers of Uzbekistan) and one year later became a mentor. She contributed to the publication of the book about Uzbekistan teacher- researchers journey as a co -editor and a co-author. In March 2023, Ella became a project lead for one of the cohorts of local teacher researchers organized under the NETRUZ community. Currently Ella has joined the publishing support team of the MenTRNet community to assist teacher-researchers and mentors in writing and publishing their research articles.
