... HUNG, WEI LOONG DAVID BURBULES, NICHOLAS BURGE, KIM HUNTER, LISA BURNETT, PAUL INOKUCHI, HIRO... more ... HUNG, WEI LOONG DAVID BURBULES, NICHOLAS BURGE, KIM HUNTER, LISA BURNETT, PAUL INOKUCHI, HIRO BUTIN, DAN BUTLER, JIM ... DIPPO, DON KING, JIM KIRK, DAVID DUDLEY-MARLING, CURT KNOBEL, MICHELE EPSTEIN, DEBBIE KOH, AARON ...
Second language teacher education is an important agency with a powerful capacity to impact stude... more Second language teacher education is an important agency with a powerful capacity to impact student teachers’ socialization. Like all other prospective teachers, second language student teachers go through various experiences while attending their initial training program and these experiences impact their beliefs, images, and thinking in relation to teaching and learning (foreign) languages. This paper, hence, triangulates data from the Philosophy and Guidelines for the Omani English Language School Curriculum document (Nunan, Tyacke & Walton, 1987), which I will herewith refer to as the National English Language Policy/Plan (NELP), other policy texts, the pertinent literature, and semi-structured interviews conducted with various agents involved in the Omani English language teaching (ELT) system. The paper critically discusses the different ideologies embodied in the various statements and draws conclusions about their implications to initial English language teacher education in...
Ever since its establishment in 1997, the College of Law formerly known as the College of Sharia ... more Ever since its establishment in 1997, the College of Law formerly known as the College of Sharia and Law at Sultan Qaboos University has been heavily criticized for the lack of English language skills of its graduates, who have either failed to impress their employers or struggled to find jobs related to the legal field which has had negative implications for the Omanization process. English language in Oman is the only official foreign language and a significant tool for achieving multiple uses and values. This triggered a strong call for change by Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) and the College of Law administration to integrate English language into various legal courses offered at the college. This article discusses the steps and decisions taken by the decision makers at SQU and the College of Law to introduce the necessary changes to cater for the needs of the job market to help contribute to the development of Oman’s economy. The discussion may have implications for change in o...
Arid International Journal of Educational and physcological sciences
The current study aimed to reveal the extent of the use of reflective practices tools among under... more The current study aimed to reveal the extent of the use of reflective practices tools among undergraduate students from the science curriculum majors at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University. To achieve the objective of the study, the quantitative approach was used to answer the main question: What is the degree of use of reflective practice tools among undergraduate students from the science curriculum majors at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University? An electronic questionnaire prepared by the researcher was applied to determine the degree of practice (high - medium - weak - non-existent) for several reflection tools, namely: action research, portfolio, reflective reports, self-assessment of performance, listening thinking, peer observation, ideas record, and learning groups. The study sample consisted of (58) undergraduate students from the science curriculum majors at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University, (48) of them were female, and...
Ever since its establishment in 1997, the College of Law formerly known as the College of Sharia ... more Ever since its establishment in 1997, the College of Law formerly known as the College of Sharia and Law at Sultan Qaboos University has been heavily criticized for the lack of English language skills of its graduates, who have either failed to impress their employers or struggled to find jobs related to the legal field which has had negative implications for the Omanization process. English language in Oman is the only official foreign language and a significant tool for achieving multiple uses and values. This triggered a strong call for change by Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) and the College of Law administration to integrate English language into various legal courses offered at the college. This article discusses the steps and decisions taken by the decision makers at SQU and the College of Law to introduce the necessary changes to cater for the needs of the job market to help contribute to the development of Oman's economy. The discussion may have implications for change ...
Historically and as a developing country, the Sultanate of Oman has always been culturally depend... more Historically and as a developing country, the Sultanate of Oman has always been culturally dependent on Britain to plan and implement its English Language Teaching (ELT) and in-service teacher education. This dependency has negatively affected preparing English language teachers with a new global professional identity capable of introducing change to the Omani ELT system. This argument is at the heart of my response to Wyatt and Sargeant’s article in this issue of Changing English. I argue for professionalism as a political ideology capable of resisting and challenging the ELT cultural imperialism.
The education system in general and ELT in particular are rigidly controlled in the Sultanate of ... more The education system in general and ELT in particular are rigidly controlled in the Sultanate of Oman, which gives teachers little room to supplement the mandated textbook. This article, hence, discusses ideologies about the ‘flexible’ ELT syllabus and the role of the teacher’s professionalism in the syllabus implementation process. One of the powerful ‘ideologies’ that govern ELT in the Sultanate of Oman is thus the ‘neocolonial/communicative’. Another powerful ideology is the ‘professional’, which is exclusively concerned with the teacher’s professionalism. These two ideologies complement each other and are present in the various statements made by different agents involved in the Omani ELT system, the pertinent literature and the Philosophy and Guidelines for the Omani English Language School Curriculum (Nunan et al. 1987), herewith referred to as the National English Language Policy/ Plan (NELP). However, these seem to conflict with the ‘colonialist/culturalist’ ideologies incorporated in the content of the materials produced locally by the Ministry Education—Our World through English (OWTE) and its suggested means of implementation. This is considered to negatively impact ‘Omanization’. This research paper, therefore, critically examines and discusses this state of ideological conflict via triangulating data from semi-structured interviews conducted with different agents involved in the implementation of ELT in Oman, pertinent literature and policy texts and NELP. Such examination and discussion have their implications for second language policy implementation.
Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2018
Critical Pedagogy (CP) has been proposed as an alternative pedagogy capable of meeting the comple... more Critical Pedagogy (CP) has been proposed as an alternative pedagogy capable of meeting the complex demands of teaching English within a particular sociopolitical context. Despite the fact that CP has been present in education since the 1960s, much of the research on CP has been conducted recently in Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) contexts. There is a growing but as yet small amount of research that addresses the usage of CP in TESOL contexts, to which this study hopes to make a useful contribution. Therefore, this study investigates the extent to which TESOL teachers from four higher education institutions in the Sultanate of Oman are aware of CP. In order to achieve this, a questionnaire is administered to 178 English Language Teachers. The main findings reveal a widespread lack of awareness of the concept of CP among TESOL teachers. Nonetheless, minorities of teachers are aware of CP and implement it in a limited fashion in their classes. On the other h...
... HUNG, WEI LOONG DAVID BURBULES, NICHOLAS BURGE, KIM HUNTER, LISA BURNETT, PAUL INOKUCHI, HIRO... more ... HUNG, WEI LOONG DAVID BURBULES, NICHOLAS BURGE, KIM HUNTER, LISA BURNETT, PAUL INOKUCHI, HIRO BUTIN, DAN BUTLER, JIM ... DIPPO, DON KING, JIM KIRK, DAVID DUDLEY-MARLING, CURT KNOBEL, MICHELE EPSTEIN, DEBBIE KOH, AARON ...
Second language teacher education is an important agency with a powerful capacity to impact stude... more Second language teacher education is an important agency with a powerful capacity to impact student teachers’ socialization. Like all other prospective teachers, second language student teachers go through various experiences while attending their initial training program and these experiences impact their beliefs, images, and thinking in relation to teaching and learning (foreign) languages. This paper, hence, triangulates data from the Philosophy and Guidelines for the Omani English Language School Curriculum document (Nunan, Tyacke & Walton, 1987), which I will herewith refer to as the National English Language Policy/Plan (NELP), other policy texts, the pertinent literature, and semi-structured interviews conducted with various agents involved in the Omani English language teaching (ELT) system. The paper critically discusses the different ideologies embodied in the various statements and draws conclusions about their implications to initial English language teacher education in...
Ever since its establishment in 1997, the College of Law formerly known as the College of Sharia ... more Ever since its establishment in 1997, the College of Law formerly known as the College of Sharia and Law at Sultan Qaboos University has been heavily criticized for the lack of English language skills of its graduates, who have either failed to impress their employers or struggled to find jobs related to the legal field which has had negative implications for the Omanization process. English language in Oman is the only official foreign language and a significant tool for achieving multiple uses and values. This triggered a strong call for change by Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) and the College of Law administration to integrate English language into various legal courses offered at the college. This article discusses the steps and decisions taken by the decision makers at SQU and the College of Law to introduce the necessary changes to cater for the needs of the job market to help contribute to the development of Oman’s economy. The discussion may have implications for change in o...
Arid International Journal of Educational and physcological sciences
The current study aimed to reveal the extent of the use of reflective practices tools among under... more The current study aimed to reveal the extent of the use of reflective practices tools among undergraduate students from the science curriculum majors at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University. To achieve the objective of the study, the quantitative approach was used to answer the main question: What is the degree of use of reflective practice tools among undergraduate students from the science curriculum majors at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University? An electronic questionnaire prepared by the researcher was applied to determine the degree of practice (high - medium - weak - non-existent) for several reflection tools, namely: action research, portfolio, reflective reports, self-assessment of performance, listening thinking, peer observation, ideas record, and learning groups. The study sample consisted of (58) undergraduate students from the science curriculum majors at the College of Education at Sultan Qaboos University, (48) of them were female, and...
Ever since its establishment in 1997, the College of Law formerly known as the College of Sharia ... more Ever since its establishment in 1997, the College of Law formerly known as the College of Sharia and Law at Sultan Qaboos University has been heavily criticized for the lack of English language skills of its graduates, who have either failed to impress their employers or struggled to find jobs related to the legal field which has had negative implications for the Omanization process. English language in Oman is the only official foreign language and a significant tool for achieving multiple uses and values. This triggered a strong call for change by Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) and the College of Law administration to integrate English language into various legal courses offered at the college. This article discusses the steps and decisions taken by the decision makers at SQU and the College of Law to introduce the necessary changes to cater for the needs of the job market to help contribute to the development of Oman's economy. The discussion may have implications for change ...
Historically and as a developing country, the Sultanate of Oman has always been culturally depend... more Historically and as a developing country, the Sultanate of Oman has always been culturally dependent on Britain to plan and implement its English Language Teaching (ELT) and in-service teacher education. This dependency has negatively affected preparing English language teachers with a new global professional identity capable of introducing change to the Omani ELT system. This argument is at the heart of my response to Wyatt and Sargeant’s article in this issue of Changing English. I argue for professionalism as a political ideology capable of resisting and challenging the ELT cultural imperialism.
The education system in general and ELT in particular are rigidly controlled in the Sultanate of ... more The education system in general and ELT in particular are rigidly controlled in the Sultanate of Oman, which gives teachers little room to supplement the mandated textbook. This article, hence, discusses ideologies about the ‘flexible’ ELT syllabus and the role of the teacher’s professionalism in the syllabus implementation process. One of the powerful ‘ideologies’ that govern ELT in the Sultanate of Oman is thus the ‘neocolonial/communicative’. Another powerful ideology is the ‘professional’, which is exclusively concerned with the teacher’s professionalism. These two ideologies complement each other and are present in the various statements made by different agents involved in the Omani ELT system, the pertinent literature and the Philosophy and Guidelines for the Omani English Language School Curriculum (Nunan et al. 1987), herewith referred to as the National English Language Policy/ Plan (NELP). However, these seem to conflict with the ‘colonialist/culturalist’ ideologies incorporated in the content of the materials produced locally by the Ministry Education—Our World through English (OWTE) and its suggested means of implementation. This is considered to negatively impact ‘Omanization’. This research paper, therefore, critically examines and discusses this state of ideological conflict via triangulating data from semi-structured interviews conducted with different agents involved in the implementation of ELT in Oman, pertinent literature and policy texts and NELP. Such examination and discussion have their implications for second language policy implementation.
Khazar Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2018
Critical Pedagogy (CP) has been proposed as an alternative pedagogy capable of meeting the comple... more Critical Pedagogy (CP) has been proposed as an alternative pedagogy capable of meeting the complex demands of teaching English within a particular sociopolitical context. Despite the fact that CP has been present in education since the 1960s, much of the research on CP has been conducted recently in Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) contexts. There is a growing but as yet small amount of research that addresses the usage of CP in TESOL contexts, to which this study hopes to make a useful contribution. Therefore, this study investigates the extent to which TESOL teachers from four higher education institutions in the Sultanate of Oman are aware of CP. In order to achieve this, a questionnaire is administered to 178 English Language Teachers. The main findings reveal a widespread lack of awareness of the concept of CP among TESOL teachers. Nonetheless, minorities of teachers are aware of CP and implement it in a limited fashion in their classes. On the other h...
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