Issues in Educatn/Devt:MENA

1.5 Credits · Level: Graduate

What is education for? What is quality education? How does what is measureable frame and/or limit educational goals or perceptions of educational quality? How can we assess pedagogical goals not easily measured? In this six-week course, we will engage critically with each of these questions with a particular focus on what we know about quality education in the Arab world. The intellectual engagement with these questions will provide the basis for work on an educational case study throughout the class. In particular, we will consider the challenges of assessing the efficacy of a non-formal education program that has been functioning in Jordan for over 10 years. The assignments for this course will be very specifically related to the case, and students will be tasked with designing an assessment that addresses: 1) how effective the program is in meeting pedagogical goals; 2) the effects of this program on teacher pedagogy across different contexts; and/or 3) the potential of such a program to inform dropout prevention policies in a public school system. Prerequisites: This course is designed for students who have taken ARST 611 (Knowledge, Power and Politics: Education in the Middle East & North Africa) or ARST 640 (Development in the Arab World). Students who have not taken either of these classes will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Course Goals: • Students will familiarize themselves with some of the ways in which quality education is defined and measured, and the limits of these measures. • Students will learn about the existing research on quality education in the Arab world, assess the research critically, and identify educational goals and methods reflected in this literature. • Students will be exposed to a variety of ideas about what constitutes quality teaching and what empirically we know about teaching in the Arab world. They will learn to distinguish between outcomes-based frameworks for assessing quality, and those more grounded in a concern with pedagogy (i.e. teaching and learning processes). • Students will develop their own measures of educational quality, as well as tools of assessment for an alternative non-formal education program in Jordan. In the process they will learn about a range of qualitative assessment techniques, and to identify the most suitable techniques for the case at hand.