Near and Middle Eastern Journal of Research in Education - Volume 2014, Issue 1

UNESCO has reported that progress on the Education For All movement has been slow in the Arab world, including the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The low levels of achievement on national and international assessment tests in these states support this judgment. In this conceptual paper, we explore risk factors that can impact the education and educational outcomes of children and youth, reviewing the existing literature and considering its applicability to the Gulf. We argue that risk factors exist in the Gulf that affect short- and long-term outcomes and create barriers to success. Three such factors identified include societal change, familial factors, and gender.

The emergence of information and instructional technologies and their influence on teaching and learning has brought about significant changes in academic environment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). The new learning trend has made it mandatory to equip teachers in educational institutions with the necessary skills to cope with the new challenges. The urgent need for e-learning in KSA has resulted from the massive population growth vis-à-vis the scarcity of teachers in both quantity and quality, including the need to reduce financial burden.

Since 2002, when e-learning started in KSA, it has gained recognition and interest among academic institutions, academics and students, though with a relatively slow pace. This paper takes into account the growth of e-learning in KSA. It analyzes the potential need and the overall impacts of e-learning on various stakeholders. The paper also discusses the current e-learning developments as well as future prospect.

This study reports on the development and implementation of the Student Learning Outcomes Assessment process and the system implemented at Qatar University. This system consists of two phases, initiation and enhancement, with progressive and continuous improvement in the assessment efforts. The initial 2006–2011 findings suggest effective strategies that can be used to build and develop assessment culture and knowledge. This study is significant because it provides ways that other universities in the region can be engaged in building their quality assurance system and continuously improving student learning outcomes.

The first years of teaching are well known as being the most challenging of new graduates' careers, corresponding to the highest attrition rates. Numbers of novice teachers leaving the profession during the first three years are universally high. The challenges faced by novice teachers vary from struggling with classroom management issues to coping with lesson planning, to name just two. In Abu Dhabi, the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, novice Emirati teachers face additional dimensions to these challenges, in that they are joining public schools which are undergoing substantial educational reform. They are also in the minority as Emirati English medium teachers, working among mainly Western teaching staff. We interviewed a group of Emirati primary school teachers during their first year of teaching. It was found that they had faced multiple challenges, some of which are universal among novice teachers, such as managing student behavior and learning to cope with their new workload. However, they also faced additional unique challenges, such as navigating inter-cultural relationships with colleagues, and balancing their new working lives with their demanding home lives.

A growing body of empirical evidence points to a child's earliest years as a critical period for developing the foundation for later learning. Yet neither parents nor public policy in the Middle East and North Africa actively support such development. We developed, tested, and administered a survey to a small number of parents of children aged six years and under in Casablanca, Morocco in 2013 to assess parents' child development knowledge and how they view their role as teachers of their young children. We used multiple regression models to predict parental knowledge and parental engagement in learning activities with their sons and separately with their daughters. Results indicate that nearly half of parents believe that brain development does not begin until after a child's first year of life. Consistent with these beliefs, parents report engaging in learning activities with their young children less frequently than Western parents; they also relate that they would be unlikely to enroll their young children in high quality child care programs, even if cost were not a factor. Parents who indicated feeling a high level of individual control over life events were less knowledgeable about child development. Those who believe that God controls life events were both more knowledgeable and reported more engagement in learning activities. Parents who reported turning to professional sources for information on child development were likelier to engage in learning activities. The general view that teaching and learning in the first years are unimportant may help to explain the poor academic performance of Moroccan children later in life relative to those of children from other nations with similar economic status. Education of the public regarding the importance of early-years development could help inform parents and policymakers. Services that might be offered to reinforce this message are discussed.