Caracterización Magnética

Considered to be a valuable asset to the delivery of new programmes to students, teachers form a major concern for the Ministry of Education in their ability to effectively convey changes to students. The academics and educators employed to teach in universities and schools, as well as other types of academic institutes educating the countries’ young population, are part of the labour force that play an effective role in developing the cosmopolitan arena of the UAE. Teaching in schools, universities and other academic institutes offers an attractive package to expatriates coming from abroad. Consequently, the majority of teachers working for the public sector come from surrounding Arabic speaking countries due to the lack of available local teachers. Table 2.3 provides an example of the diverse population that formulated teachers of grade seven (12-13 years old) in 2005.

As noted in Table 2.3, only 16.49% of English teachers are UAE Nationals, with the majority of teachers coming from Jordan, Egypt and Syria. These teachers have brought with them a very rich mix of educational cultures, which has a different impact on separate groups of students but a serious impact on the generation as a whole.

Table 2.3: Percentage of Grade Seven English Language Teachers Teaching in UAE Public Schools

Nationality Number of Teachers Percentage

UAE 61 16.49 Bahrain 1 0.3 Jordan 97 26.2 Egypt 87 23.5 Syria 59 15.95 Tunisia 34 9.19 Palestine 20 5.41 Algeria 3 0.81 Iraq 2 0.54 Lebanon 1 0.27 Sudan 4 1.08 Iran 1 0.27 Total 370 100

Source: UAE MOE Archives, 2007

The difference in the educational and academic contexts teachers came from, created a conflict between the UAE’s policy of unifying the approach and style of teaching English in the hope of providing an equal learning opportunity to all of its students, and what teachers practiced while teaching. Providing an equal learning opportunity to all students was, and remains, a key objective for the Ministry of Education. This was a challenge that would be difficult to overcome in the short term. Teachers coming from a variety of backgrounds and educational settings meant that they would have different experiences and points of view regarding teaching and educational practices. This would have a strong impact on how teaching is carried out within schools, limiting the ability to monitor, assess and control how teaching is taking place within the classroom. One major issue that was found to be common between the expatriate teachers employed in the UAE, based on a questionnaire distributed to all English language

secondary teachers aimed towards assessing their professional development needs, was the fact that a small minority of them had received official post-graduate teacher training in educational practices of a non promotional nature. The majority of teachers had attended sessions that promoted a particular publication. Most post-graduate training that teachers experienced had been conducted by educational suppliers such as publishing houses who conducted training to serve the successful implementation of a newly adopted course by an educational institute. This would mean that training was commonly dedicated to a specific product or criteria, and not towards improving the general pedagogical standards of teachers while using the books.

As a step towards unifying learning experiences for students, the UAE Ministry of Education has been trying to address the need for qualified and well trained teachers in its educational system, initially through the provision of educational programmes offered to Emirati citizens by the Higher Colleges of Technology. However, as indicated in Table 2.3, Emirati teachers are only a small proportion of the total number of English language teachers employed within the public sector. The UAE’s intention towards implementing official teacher education degrees is to develop a group of well-trained teachers that are capable of addressing the current needs and interests of students today. This has most probably also been set with an objective to overcome the general educational teaching diversity existing because of the variety of teaching cultures brought forward by expatriate teachers, aimed at making language teaching a more standardised procedure.

Following the development of all the educational policies, the evaluation and assessment of the effectiveness of such teacher preparedness programmes still has to be undertaken. Although a lot of investment is being made to implement new educational policies, no official evaluation has taken place to assess the effectiveness of such policies. Little work is being done to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the outcomes of these policies.

The varied cultural and educational mixture that teachers bring into the Ministry creates a need to understand the cultural and educational background of teachers, to further

comprehend the social and environmental circumstances that helped build the context of this research.

Teacher Preparedness

From another perspective, having the minority of language teachers being UAE nationals, local students apparently interact with them in a more welcoming manner during their classroom participation (Personal Journal, 2007). This may not only be due to sharing the same background, but it may have to do with the fact that the majority of local teachers have been involved in a structured teacher education programme that specifically works on developing the skills necessary to become an efficient English language teacher.

Prepared with the most recent knowledge of educational theory and practice, local student teachers practice the skills they have learned at their college in actual classroom situations throughout the teacher education programmes offered at the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCTs). The majority of local language teachers attend free teacher preparation programmes at the HCTs. Unlike expatriate teachers, this practical approach to learning gives UAE student teachers the teaching skills they need to excel in their careers as educators and teachers. This perhaps explains why students are better accommodated in lessons being taught by local teachers.

On the other hand, local students tend to respond and interact differently to expatriate teachers. A contributing factor could be that local teachers have recently graduated from teacher education colleges, which prepare them with the teaching practices and techniques necessary to become an effective language teacher. Expatriate teachers, however, are employed with little or no proper teacher training or experience in educational practices.

It seems that students do sense the difference in quality and style between local and expatriate teachers, and how they are addressed, and tend to react accordingly. A well- qualified local teacher is evidently more popular than an unqualified expatriate teacher. Although expatriate teachers outnumber local teachers, investments are only being made towards local teachers. This reflects unrealistic expectations since the Ministry of Education in the UAE, with its educational policy to provide equal learning

opportunities, only emphasises local teachers rather than preparing all teachers that teach their students.

Social Class

The majority of expatriate teachers coming from surrounding Arabic countries usually belong to a poorer social class than the class they would relate to upon moving to the UAE. The average income expatriate teachers would make in their home countries would be almost 25% of the average income they make in the UAE. Having such a difference in social environment between their home country and the UAE, teachers seemed to have developed a sense of envy towards the UAE students. A few teachers I met and interviewed had similar concerns about the students they were teaching. Comments like “lazy”, “rich” and “always get what they want because they think they can buy their way through everything” were used to describe the UAE students. A few teachers seemed to explain that their students’ lack of interest and motive to learn was due to them being too rich to worry about needing an education to a secure a job in the future.

Many teachers do not seem to be aware of how to motivate their students and involve them in the learning process while considering their psychological and environmental surroundings. Instead of working on means to encourage their students and get them engaged in the learning process while considering their surrounding environment, teachers appear to lay the blame on students and do not work on developing their own strategies to improve their students’ interest. Of course, this is not the case with all expatriate teachers in the UAE nor all UAE students. However it is one of the issues that I found played an effective role in how the student-teacher relationship is built. All students enrolled in public schools are UAE nationals: free public school education is only offered to Emarati citizens. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, the majority of language teachers are expatriates. This is one of the social economic barriers that come between the students and the teachers. From the students’ point of view, it is more difficult for them to socially accept and relate to their “expatriate” teachers. Keeping in mind that such an issue is rather sensitive and would not be publicly announced, it can be seen through classroom observations studying the student-teacher relationship and

how students engage with teachers in the classroom. This also plays a significant role with regards to how students respect and value their teachers.

Shared Mother Tongue

Having the shared mother tongue of Arabic in the majority of cases makes it easier for teachers and students to exchange information when facing difficulty in communicating with one another in English. This always allows students and teachers the comfort of referring back to their mother tongue to offer an explanation if something in the lesson is not clear. This usually applies when addressing comprehension questions on particular reading or listening texts, as well as vocabulary prompts. It also has an impact on the development and use of students’ sentence structures.

Using Arabic in the classroom has had a delayed impact on student language learning opportunities. It further encourages students to translate from Arabic into English and vice versa. It perhaps makes it easier for students to understand the notion or structure being taught, but it definitely does not improve their language skills, since there rarely is a need to actually use English efficiently in the classroom. As a result, due to mother tongue interference, it seems that the language learning process as a whole focuses on the structural knowledge of English language rather than developing the ability to use the language as a means of communication within an academic setting.