Teachers' Views of the Effectiveness of United Arab Emirates Kindergarten Curriculum, Instructional Strategies, and Assessment Procedures

Abstract

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is located in the Arabian Gulf region to the north and east of Saudi Arabia and west of Oman. Its population is about 4.25 million. The rise of the oil industry since the 1950s, accompanied by wise political decisions, has dramatically changed the UAE people's traditional way of life to that of a highly modernized country. A quick look at UNICEF statistics regarding education and health gives an impression of this modernization; the youth (15-24 years) literacy rate during 2000-06 was around 98% (males) and 96% (females); the primary school enrollment ratio during that same period was 85% (males) and 82% (females); the annual number of births in 2006 was 69,000 and deaths of children under 5 was 1,000; and GNI per capita was about $23,950 (UNICEF, 2001).The UAE started formal schooling in the 1953/54 academic year with one school in Sharjah. Since then, education has been flourishing in numbers as well as in quality. Earlier, in the beginning of the 20th century, schooling was semisystematic in nature or even arbitrary. Schools were located in big cities and were managed by individuals who decided the curricula with the purpose of helping people to understand the religion and deal with pearl merchants-the business that was popular in the Gulf area.The first public kindergarten in UAE was established in 1955 in Ras Al-Khaimah. By 1974, there were 7 kindergartens; by 2004, there were 97, accommodating about 2,300 children (National Childhood Committee, 2005). As part of a centralized system, public kindergartens follow certain mandates, including that teachers should teach academics using a direct instructional approach, instruction and evaluation Abstract. The present study aimed at investigating kindergarten teachers' views of the curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Data were collected by an open-ended questionnaire, interviews, and observations. Forty-four kindergarten teachers in the United Arab Emirates responded to the questionnaire; six teachers were later interviewed. Results revealed that some teachers believe that the official curriculum is not developmentally appropriate, as it focuses more on academics rather than on child development in social, physical, emotional, and intellectual aspects. Results also revealed that the vision of developmentally appropriate practices among these kindergarten teachers has not been well-acknowledged and that their instructional and assessment practices emphasize teaching academic skills, using a direct instructional approach.

The Effectiveness of an Instructional Program on Promoting English Language Literacy among Jordanian Kindergarten Children

“…The results of this study support those of the previous studies such as )Nemours Health Prevention Services, 2006;Momani, Ihmeideh, and Momani, 2008( Who found out that children learn from participating in kindergarten setting, while paying attention to all the educational surroundings, with their physical, psychological, social, cognitive, language learning, and games.…”

Investigating the Perceptions of Social Studies Teachers’ Practices in Qatari Preschools/Katar Anaokullarında Görev Yapan Sosyal Bilgiler Öğretmenlerinin Uygulamalarına İlişkin Algılarının İncelenmesi

“…This implies that teachers in Qatari preschools still need to focus more on child-centered activities rather than teacher-centered ones. Six years ago, in their study of teachers' views of curriculum, instructional, and assessment practices in the United Arab Emirates Kindergartens, Al-Momani, Ihmeideh, and Momani (2008) found that direct instruction and teacher-centered approaches were prevalent, which they postulate may be related to the centralization of the decision-making process at the administration level. Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Winter 2015 pp.…”

“…In order to find out the practices of social studies teachers, the researcher prepared a questionnaire as a tool to measure these practices and uncover their consistency with the four domains of child development. While preparing the questionnaire, the researcher made use of the tools in previous studies and literature related to teachers' teaching practices in an early childhood context (i.e., Al-Momani, Ihmeideh, and Momani, 2008;Zarrillo, 2004;Bredekamp and Copple, 1997).…”

“…In the region, there was only one study in the United Arab Emirates that investigated the views of Kindergarten teachers on curriculum, instruction, and assessment (Al-Momani, Ihmeideh, and Momani, 2008). The authors revealed that the curriculum was deemed inappropriate as it emphasized more "academics" than children's development in social, physical, emotional, and intellectual realms.…”

Tensions in policy and practice: influences on play in Abu Dhabi's New School Model KG framework

“…To this aim, in 2010, ADEC embarked on a 10-year strategic educational reform process in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, entitled the New School Model (NSM). In the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, the NSM is influenced by Western-educated elites, 'which translates into the adoption of a hybrid model of education in which many or all of the new ingredients are imported' (Kirk & Napier, 2009, p. 309).The NSM bi-literate kindergarten (KG) curriculum is based on a Euro-American 'whole child philosophy' (ADEC, 2012) with play as a component in what had traditionally been a formal and highly didactic method of teaching and learning (Al-Momani, Ihmeideh, & Momani, 2008). All Emirati children can voluntarily attend two years of KG schooling which has two components: 'Approaches to Learning' which involves observable and measurable skills, attitudes, values and character traits important to the learning process for KG learners and are classified into: social, emotional, attitudinal, innovation and problem-solving.…”