Title of the article: The Need for National Teacher Framework to Guide the Teaching Profession in Kuwait. Title relevance to content * It does not meet the scope of the journal Originality og forskning. In order to identify the necessary changes in the Kuwaiti education system, a five-year qualitative study of The Draft National Teacher Policy Framework (NTFW) was conducted in collaboration with the World Bank as part of one of the pillars of the reform. educational projects in Kuwait.
Comment [U1]: This manuscript does not meet the scope of the Journal because it addresses education in general instead of Arabic or English language education. In the past three decades, the State of Kuwait has undertaken a major comprehensive reform of the national education system, with one of its components specifically focusing on improving teacher effectiveness in the classroom (Almanea, 2018). To determine whether the objectives of this initiative have been achieved, the National Center for Education Development (NCED) with the support of the World Bank studied the current status of teachers in Kuwait.
Dramatically raising the quality of the teaching population is the challenge for Kuwait, as the government has the most influence on the timing of the first hire. Education policies are considered one of the core elements of the package of initiatives, reforms and approaches that the State of Kuwait seeks to achieve through its various institutions in order to realize its societal obligations and goals. Since these core elements of the educational process are traditionally centered on the learner, the teacher and the curriculum, in this policy framework NCED has focused on the status of the teaching profession in the State of Kuwait.
The World Bank team proposed the first broad outlines of the framework by considering findings from previous studies of teacher policies and best practices from other countries.
NTFW Progress April 2015−February 2016
Preservice: Interns are appointed to schools without:. i) adequate pedagogical skills in the new competency-based curriculum (subject formats and new assessment requirements) or (ii) sufficient teaching experience. Need to add proposed action: “Determine the projected number of teachers needed for each subject across the country over the next 5-10 years and provide these estimates to PAAET and KU to help plan the influx of students and the needs of teachers for teaching the various disciplines on that rigorous basis.” Action should be added on induction training and support for newly appointed teachers (alternatively this could be added under Policy 6 PD).
It is necessary to add the proposed measure to limit the number of teachers in grades 1-3. class to one or two. Each of these three policies is linked to the framework discussions on CPD and needs to be aligned. These should, and should, be defined in the new teacher career ladder/CPD framework.
Additional claims related to school management should be added, focusing on providing (i) conditions for improving the quality of teaching and (ii) stronger pedagogical support for teachers. Job performance appraisal is too narrow a field for this policy and should be amended. This will enable the adoption of a wider range of interventions such as using data reported by tutors, teacher self-assessments etc. related to teachers' practices to inform/improve their teaching while ensuring that teachers maximize their time on classroom tasks , rather than focusing on formal assessment.
Promotions should be limited to outstanding candidates (eg, those in the top third of the distribution on the most recent comprehensive performance evaluation). Add action regarding the need to update the teacher handbook/guide to ensure it is more compatible with changed expectations related to the competency-based curriculum and other changes to the above policies. In the absence of explicit standards and any tests or assessment processes that may be adopted to verify whether candidates meet those standards, there is essentially no way to identify the strongest and weakest teacher candidates.
This means that all candidates are employed, leading to one of the lowest student-teacher ratios in primary education in the world, which stood at 8:1 in 2015 (Kuwait National Report, 2019). The combination of automatic promotion based on seniority and the inability of the public sector to fire civil servants for poor performance has created weak incentives for teachers to develop their competencies, even though salaries in the education sector are high. The focus now needs to be on developing the details of each policy and identifying the various parties that should be involved in this process.
However, in the current context of a major teacher policy reform, it would provide two additional outcomes that would be even more valuable: (i) it would create a baseline picture of the system before the new framework is introduced; teachers that will help the government assess the impact of policy reforms and (ii) can help build the technical capacity for classroom observations that will be needed for comprehensive teacher evaluations in the future. Possible next steps include the actions and decisions to be taken in the coming months, as well as the formulation of long-term initiatives.
Priority Actions to Advance the NTPF
Nevertheless, it is difficult to make significant progress in education without a core set of policies that are addressed in a coherent way. As noted earlier in this study, when aligned, the key elements of an education system reinforce each other and help accelerate improvement. If this is not achieved, clear incentives are not created and different policies undermine each other.
The draft NTFW is commendable as it covers all key elements of teacher policy and lays the foundations for a comprehensive teacher reform. However, policies in each area as currently designed are not deep enough to produce major improvements. Therefore, it is hoped that this review and suggestions will be taken into account by the Government of Kuwait while developing revisions to the NTPF that can significantly deepen its impact.
It is also important that the NTPF is aligned with the complementary CPD framework being developed which is intended to align with the career path/ladder. Most importantly, a survey of teachers' classroom practices should be conducted using a validated, standardized instrument such as the Stallings Classroom Snapshot, along with a test of teachers' content mastery.
Recommendations
To analyze professional development localization plans of the Ministry of Education in Kuwait based on the TPACK model for rolling out competency-based curriculum. Analysis based on the three objective educational domains for summative final exams of the science subjects (chemistry, physics and biology). Retrieved from https://www.worldcces.org/article-2-by-alhouti/teacher-professional-development-in-kuwait-and-singapore-learning-form-others Alhouti, I., & Male, T.
The effect of using a “competency-based curriculum in teaching” on the acquisition of science subject inclinations among high school students, in the state of. The influence of department heads' instructional leadership, collaboration, and administrative support on school professional learning in Kuwait.
