Serving the Less-Commonly-Trained Teacher: Perspectives from Arabic Instructors (original) (raw)
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Teacher Education and Training for Arabic Language Teachers
Teacher Education and Training for Arabic Language Teachers, 2012
The teaching of Arabic in contemporary classrooms, especially in teacher education programs, involves a range of challenges. These challenges stem from the conflict between the pedagogical approaches employed by educators and their personal beliefs about how the language should be taught. This paper explores the tensions between the teaching of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), colloquial dialects, and Qur'anic Arabic. It examines how these tensions impact teacher training programs and classroom practices, particularly in contexts where Arabic is taught as a second language. Drawing on case studies and experiences from the UK, the paper highlights how heritage learners, diverse student goals, and communicative language teaching methods complicate the Arabic language learning process. It advocates for a more culturally sensitive and linguistically flexible approach to teacher education that reflects the multifaceted nature of Arabic, its learners, and the globalized context in which it is taught.
Arabic language teacher training in the Arabian Peninsula: Great teachers don't grow on trees
Arabic language teacher training in the Arabian Peninsula: Great teachers don't grow on trees, 2023
Although teacher training has been described as the most important factor influencing students' achievement, it, however, has not been a priority for Arabic teachers in many Arab countries. With the race for knowledge economy and modernization, many Arab countries invested in English language to the detriment of Arabic. Rather than introducing national policies that adopt and celebrate Arabic as the language of a civilization that boasted a rich body of literature, scientific writings, and magnificent verse, what is witnessed nowadays is a shunning en masse of Arabic and adoption of English language as a misguided form of modernity. Student results on Arabic literacy standardized tests in the region have consistently been below the world average despite many educational reforms initiated over the last two decades. Those reforms focused mainly on curriculum reform and digitization of content rather than teacher training reform. Few schools around the region invest in their Arabic language teachers. This chapter will focus on a success story in terms of Arabic language teacher training in Saudi Arabia (KSA), telling the narrative and the many stories of what effective schools do in order to upskill their teachers and how quality, consistent and focused teacher training and follow-up can have an impact on students' literacy. A school in KSA whose students consistently rank highly on international and regional standardized tests of Arabic literacy will be highlighted as a case study to showcase success stories from the region in terms of teacher training. This might possibly help start the conversation that leads to the construction of a teacher training framework that could work for schools in the region.
A Review of Arabic Teacher Candidates’ Profiles
2022
Although the history of training foreign language teachers in Turkey dates back to the Tanzimat period until the 19th century, in the first years, the French teacher was trained in the last years. Arabic, on the other hand, has been perceived as a religious language rather than a foreign language for a long time, and this perception has not changed completely even today. Perhaps because of this perception, the first program to train Arabic teachers within the higher education system was established in 1984. Sixteen years after the establishment of the first Department of Arabic Language Education established at Gazi University, departments to train Arabic teachers in both private/foundation and public universities began to open. In this study, the profiles of a total of eight hundred and forty-three teacher candidates who settled in the Arabic teaching program at eight universities between 2019, 2020 and 2021 were examined from various angles. At the end of the study, Arabic teachin...
Arabic Language Teacher Education Chapter 12.pdf
Quality teacher preparation programs have been shown to greatly impact student learning outcomes as studies often refer to the importance of quality teacher education as a key factor in learning. Linguistic realities in the Arab world reflect a bleak situation where Arabic language teachers remain largely poorly prepared and deprived of sustained and meaningful professional development. This situation is manifested in students’ results on international standardized Arabic language proficiency tests. This chapter describes current practices in teacher Arabic language teacher education and cites student Arabic language learning outcomes as demonstrated on the 2011 PIRLS test. The chapter covers research done on the importance of effective teacher education including quality of preservice admissions, and field experiences associated with those programs.
Arabic Language Teachers in the State of Michigan: Views of Their Professional Needs
Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 2014
A full-day summer conference directed by this investigator took place in Dearborn city under the umbrella of Western Michigan University for professional development of Arabic teachers serving public, private, and academic charter schools in Michigan. The theoretical framework for conducting the conference was focused on the issue of teaching strategies as well as the needs assessment of teachers for improving their professional development. A group of fifty teachers volunteered to participate in the conference and were asked to complete a twelve-item questionnaire designed to provide their professional profile and their preference in developing professional development. Their professional profile included years of Arabic teaching experience in the United States, teaching level (elementary school, middle school, or high school), teaching certificate, academic credentials, and type of school (public, private, or charter school). The findings indicated that among the ten sub-items related to the professional development skills of the teachers, "Implementing differentiated language instruction" was rated by the participating teachers as the most important components of their professional development skills; followed in order by "Integrating technology and Arabic instruction"; "Using effective learner-centered teaching strategies"; "Using and maintaining Arabic language"; "Implementing a standards-based curriculum"; "Developing curriculum and thematic units"; "Implementing performance assessment methods"; "Conducting constructive action research in Arabic instruction"; "Conducting the Oral Proficiency Interview"; and "Learning how to be a certified Arabic language teacher in Michigan". In response to the questions regarding the role of Council in supporting Arabic teachers, the participating teachers made a number of constructive suggestions to help improve the quality of teaching Arabic with special focus on facilitating appropriate teaching materials and other instructional tools as a part of curriculum development.
Becoming a language teacher educator: An outsider perspective
This is a reflective piece theorizing my personal and academic experiences working with preservice teachers who are pursuing a Teaching English as a Second Language Certificate with immersion experience participating in a study abroad program teaching English to university students in Ecuador. Teaching predominantly white students as a woman of color is always full of stories, both real and imaginary. This is an opportunity to theorize the role of non-native English speakers guiding preservice teachers to teach English learners in the global south while discussing or contesting language aspects such as pronunciation, accuracy, proficiency, among others. The teacher education field is complex enough as students try to figure out what they need to know to develop their own teaching practice based on a combination of theories, ideas, teaching models, and sets of rules enacted by schools, without a prescriptive set of guidelines to follow for perfect results. Teaching is a completely unpredictable undertaking since it varies based on student's needs, diverse sociocultural contexts, and personal identities of teachers, among many other factors involved in the outcomes, and language teaching is not the exception. Yet, the latest research on language teaching suggests turning the attention to the development of language teacher identity (Sang, 2022). Hence, it is also important to consider the identity of language teacher educators, especially those who are non-native speakers. This is particularly important in supporting the efforts of language teacher educators who are endeavoring toward enacting decolonizing the curriculum and pedagogies. Barkhuizen (2021) identifies 14 categories as partial representations of the types of language teacher educators according to their roles, place
As a high-stakes international language proficiency benchmark, the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) requires different and special Language Learning Strategies (LLS), which pose numerous challenges to its takers. Some Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) majoring in English Language Teaching (ELT), have therefore, failed to achieve an overall score of Band 6 on the IELTS as a language proficiency requirement and a condition mandated by the Ministry of Education for selecting English language teachers among. This qualitatively driven hermeneutic phenomenology study, hence, discusses this issue from an ideological perspective. The study triangulates data from semi-structured interviews made with six fourth-year ELT Student Teachers (STs) at SQU and the pertinent literature. The critical discussion revealed various ideologies about the powerful impact of the IELTS on the STs’ English language development. The findings have important implications for the practices of the teachers in the Omani ELT school system and elsewhere.
2013
""In the context of rapidly expanding English-medium higher education in the UAE (United Arab Emirates), this thesis investigates how a group of native speaker English language teaching professionals perceive the social aspects of the environment in which they are working and the extent to which these perceptions affect the conceptualisation of their professional identities. Specifically, it focuses on how a complex interplay of cultural, economic, religious and political ideologies may impact upon the working lives of the respondents. This research was carried out at eleven higher educational institutes in the UAE and data was gathered through interviews with English language teachers, teacher trainers and managers. The study’s findings reveal a complex, diverse and often conflicting picture of the way the respondents perceive the context in which they are working and a wide variety of attitudes regarding the ideological issues identified as impacting upon ELT in the region. However, emerging from the data was a dominant discourse of fear related to issues of power, religion, gender and money, maintained by uncertainty regarding the extent to which a censorial approach to teaching was required. The perceived precariousness of the respondents’ employment was also identified as the source of practises which raise ethical questions about the construction of professionalism in a context dominated by a discourse of fear and, in turn, implications for both practitioners and institutions. Overall, this study reveals that in a context where ‘Gulf Arab/Muslim’ students interact with ‘Western native-speaker’ teachers, the preconceptions that often adhere to such labels in their respective societies may bear little resemblance to the attitudes, actions and beliefs of the individuals concerned. This raises implications both for the training of English teachers in the importance of contextual considerations and for the construction of the native speaker teacher in the literature. ""
Non-Native Arabic Language Teacher: Low Teacher’s Professional Competence Low Quality Outcomes?
Arabiyat : Jurnal Pendidikan Bahasa Arab dan Kebahasaaraban
This study aimed at investigating the problems of Arabic teachers’ professional competence in improving the quality of the graduates at MA Al-Musdariyah 2 Cimahi. Phenomenology, scientific approach, and a formal juridical approach were used as the method in this study. This study belonged to a case study. The result of this study showed that the main problems related to the teacher’s professional competence in teaching and learning Arabic were an unsuitable academic qualification, the lack of teachers’ welfare, teachers’ discipline and awareness, tutoring, and training. The implication of this study indicated that teachers’ professional competence to improve the quality of the graduates had been implemented. However, the implementation of teachers’ professional competence was considered less than optimal. It influenced the quality of the graduates. In other words, the objectives of teaching and learning activities were not achieved. Therefore, in this case, teachers as the most impo...