We are building long-term partnerships between Palestinian and UK educational institutions by working together in creative and innovative projects. Our work with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, UNRWA, Palestinian universities, colleges and schools focuses on supporting policy development, quality assurance, distance and e-learning and information communication technology (ICT) in Education, as well as English language and library resource development.
We are working with the Palestinian Accreditation & Quality Assurance Committee as part of a third major regional with Ministries of Education and universities to improve the relevance of their HE programmes to labour markets, develop more transferable qualifications and knowledge exchange. Through workshops in Damascus and Tunis we have brought together a network from Egypt, Palestine, Tunisia and Syria who have agreed to produce common guidelines for university departments to use as subject reference standards at bachelor’s level to redesign their curriculum; develop new approaches to learning and teaching; and assess student performance against the desired learning outcomes. The group will travel to the UK in July to look at best practice there and we are developing an online community as support. Each country is developing two subjects (from science and humanities) with the Palestinians tasked with pharmacy and business administration.
We have been exploring the role of e-learning in the Higher Education sector. We began with a pilot project in 2004 linking the Islamic University Gaza and Middlesex University who provided work-based professional development in e-learning for 35 academics from Islamic University of Gaza. This ran over 6 weeks during May and June 2004 and was delivered fully on-line. The course used a mixture of pedagogies (learner agreements, peer-review) and a range of distance learning techniques (on-line learning environments, webcams and videoconferencing).
This project offered a solution to the challenges Islamic University Gaza staff and students face travelling to the university and provided staff with practical experience in e-learning. The project won the Times Higher Education Supplement e-tutor of the year award.
Now, through a series of Video Conference forums we aim to connect Palestinian policy makers and practitioners with their UK counterparts to share experiences and explore issues of concern around e-learning including pedagogy, models, evaluation and assessment methodologies.
We have been working with the Ministry of Education and UNRWA to develop teachers’ skills and confidence in using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) effectively in the classroom. Our aim is to develop a community of enthusiastic practitioners able to support other teachers as well as provide a forum for policy makers and managers to discuss educational leadership in ICT. We have been training 60 teachers in the West Bank and Gaza and a further 120 teachers in the region with ministries of Education in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
After an initial needs assessment, we began our training programme in 2005 led by trainers from the UK’s Imagine Education and the Ministry. We ran intensive courses in the West Bank and Gaza, supported by Birzeit and Al Aqsa universities, which was followed with monthly face-to-face sessions for the participants. This allowed teachers from different areas to meet up regularly outside school, to share ideas and experience and access good technology. In March, we gathered policy makers and teachers from the region in Cairo to share experience and plan our next steps.
This autumn, we start an intensive course for 12 of the Palestinian teachers, who will then train around 150 others in the West Bank and Gaza. We’ll also link them up through a new online community, also with a growing number of teachers in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. We are planning an International conference in Jordan early in 2007 to share the results of the project more widely and discuss how using computers in schools can best benefit teaching and learning.
We began our school linking programme in Nablus where we have set up four links with secondary schools in Salford, UK. We have developed the partnership through a series of exchange and study visits by the Director of Education, teachers, heads and supervisors in Nablus to Salford and in return visits by teachers, heads and the Directors of the Local Authority and City Learning Centre in Salford to Nablus. The project is designed to strengthen mutual understanding through virtual exchange in joint curriculum projects and benefit teacher development such as in using more learner-centred approaches and Information and Communications Technology (ICT.) The lead UK school Salford Hope High this year won the Leading Aspect Award for international links for its work with Nablus on the project. Six teachers from the Salford schools are due to visit next in late April 2007 to meet teachers and students to develop their joint programmes and experience Palestinian education in general.
To know more about our work in this area please get in touch with us or please e-mail our programmes team.
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