oa Developing The Teaching Performance Of Al Furgan Primary School Teachers

ABSTRACT This paper consists of two parts. It is argued in Part One that, the crisis in our educational systems, reflected in their poor outcomes (SEC) Supreme Education Council (2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006); Rand Organization (2007, 2009); Hoyt, (2002); The Office of the Undersecretary, (2002), is not so much a result of a crisis in classroom assessment per se, as Black and William ( 1998); and R. Stiggins (2001) would like us to believe, as it is a crisis in instructional design and practice. The most serious aspects of this crisis are a) many educators and teachers seem to have undermined the significance of the internal conditions for learning, i.e. the affective and cognitive variables, which are vital for the success of any type of learning, b) teachers have either neglected the role of verbal classroom discourse between them and their students, or used it in such an ineffective way that made most teachers test rather than instruct their students, and c), most educators seem to have misconceived the nature and role of formative assessment, or assessment for learning, as it is now popularly, called (Stiggins, 2001, 2005). Evidence for all of this is provided by the Practice of our local teachers, as well as by the practice of highly renowned educators from both sides of the Atlantic (Black, et al (2003); Bloom ( 1984); R. Gagne and Briggs (1979); Gagne et al (2005); and R. E. Slavin (1994). Part Two does not only elucidate how this crisis was resolved by developing and using "The Model of Effective Teaching Leading to Mastery" (Hamed el Neil el Fadil, 1995, 2011), but it also presents strong empirical evidence as to the effectiveness of this Model. Perhaps, this was mainly achieved by marrying classroom assessment to the instructional process. This was conceived by using both formative and summative assessments as phases within the instructional design of the single lesson. Moreover, it has also been possible to activate the internal conditions for learning by preparing the learners, affectively and cognitively. At the beginning of every lesson. Furthermore, the fruits of this marriage are presented and discussed. First, there was a substantive increase in the percentage of achievement of the primary school students9 (See Chart (1 attached). Second there had also been gains of more than 2 standard deviations for the students of 1st, 2nd and 3rd grades, of Al Furgan Primary Private School- Doha, State of Qatar. Less, but significant gains were reported for the students of the upper grades. Since our initial objective was to develop the teaching performance of Al Furgan Primary School teachers, and not to try out The Model of Effective Teaching, it has been possible to avoid some of the difficulties, which affect the internal and external validity of true experiments. Viz, the Hawthorne and Henderson Effects… Hence, it may also be reasonable to conclude that this investigation has high ecological validity. Given the state of the art, it may be reasonable to consider this research a breakthrough.