Department of Education Leads Conference for Regional School Reform

Participants at the TAMAM workshop in College Hall B1

The Department of Education and the Arab Thought Foundation held their second conference under the Tamam Project series. The Tamam Project, developed in 2007 and aimed at initiating school- and classroom-based reform throughout schools in the Middle East, was largely a reaction to the UNDP's 2002 Human Development Report, which stated that the quality of education in the region has been deteriorating.

The project's participants consisted of school, university, and ministry representatives from Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. The project steering committee was composed of Saouma BouJaoude, Murad Jurdak, Sumaya Muhtaseb, and Sally El-Turky from the three countries. The first conference took place in Jordan in the summer of 2007, where the teams shared strengths and weaknesses and discussed preliminary aspects of concern, namely implementing research to study the specific needs of each school. Following the conference, each school was asked to create a research proposal that would serve as the subject matter of the second conference.

The second conference was held from January 18 through 20 in College Hall at AUB. Titled "Research Tools and Data Analysis," the conference focused on teaching school participants how to conduct a research study and carry through data analysis. The teams would then use the information gathered at the conference to advance their proposals and start with the study. The lectures that took place over the three-day conference were presented by the members of the AUB team.

The first day of the conference included a presentation by Rima Karami, who discussed the practical use of focus groups as a preliminary step in conducting a research project, followed by a presentation by Saouma BouJaoude about conducting interviews and the different structures an interview can take.

BouJaoude also gave the opening presentation on the second day, in which he discussed interviewing as an important part of research and later dealt with the ways to analyze qualitative data. Following that came Murad Jurdak's discussion on constructing a questionnaire, how it allows for the collection of quantitative data, and how this is different from open-ended interviews and focus groups.

The final day of the conference began with a lesson on quantitative data analysis given by Jurdak and Mary Saad. Finally, Saad concluded the three-day conference with a discussion about classroom observation techniques and how to use those observations to enhance classroom quality.