Rania Sawalhi, PhD Educational Leadership from University of Warwick, currently, Rania works in Qatar Foundation. Rania has won a number of awards such as the Sheikh Faisal bin Qasim Award for Educational Research 2019 and the ICSEI/JPCC 2020 Innovation Award, and has a number of research published in peer-reviewed journals. In addition, Rania is a co-founder of Eduenterprise a non-profit organization registered in USA and has launched the Educational Leadership Lab applying design thinking approach and launched Rushd educational leadership coaching e-platform, she is a co-founder of WomenEdMENA, and a member of BELMAS & ICSEI
This study is a qualitative investigation of education policies and decision making during COVID-... more This study is a qualitative investigation of education policies and decision making during COVID-19 pandemic in five Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) countries: Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Qatar. It aims at scrutinizing how these countries responded to the education disruption caused by the pandemic between February 2020 and July 2021 and how they managed the resulting turbulence. We also investigate the extent to which these decisions were equitable and innovative. Data were collected from Ministerial notes, media content, and international organizations reports about the situation of education in the region. Walt and Gilson’s (1994) policy analysis triangle and the Cynefin framework ( Kurtz & Snowden, 2003 ) guided the objectives and the analysis of the data. Findings revealed that these countries muddled through the education policy at the beginning of the pandemic, centralized decision making, and faced difficulties to implement online and distance learnin...
Educational Management Administration & Leadership
This study compares teachers’ perceptions of teacher leadership in three Arab countries: Qatar, O... more This study compares teachers’ perceptions of teacher leadership in three Arab countries: Qatar, Oman and Egypt. Using the Teacher Leadership Inventory tool, the study examined the factors and demographic variables associated with teacher leadership in the selected countries. Specifically, the study explored the four factors identified by the TLI: Sharing Expertise (SE), Sharing Leadership (SL), Supra-Practitioner (SP), and Principal Selection (PS) and investigated if teachers’ perceptions of these factors would differ based on their country, gender and school type. Three sets of data were collected from the selected countries, and the respondents were teachers working in primary and middle public schools. Means, standard deviations, t-test and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The results showed the overall level of teacher leadership to be moderate, with Sharing Expertise being the highest ranked factor, followed by Sharing Leadership, Supra-Practitioner and Principal Se...
Educational Management Administration & Leadership
Middle leaders were required to navigate the complexities of educational disruption and respond t... more Middle leaders were required to navigate the complexities of educational disruption and respond to internal and external demands throughout the pandemic. This shifting educational context necessitated a sensemaking process to better understand and act on the issues which gave rise to ambiguities in their school environment. This study investigated the sensemaking processes employed by 27 middle leaders from 20 government schools in Qatar, at a time when COVID-related restrictions had been lifted and face-to-face learning had resumed. To collect and analyze data, Q-methodology was applied. A 34-statement Q-sample was developed based on a proposed conceptual framework of sensemaking during times of disruption which included three dimensions: intrapersonal, relational, and institutional. Q-factor analysis revealed two significantly different viewpoints regarding how participants enacted certain practices in response to educational disruption. These were (1) sensemaking as a relational ...
This study is a qualitative investigation of education policies and decision making during COVID-... more This study is a qualitative investigation of education policies and decision making during COVID-19 pandemic in five Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) countries: Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Qatar. It aims at scrutinizing how these countries responded to the education disruption caused by the pandemic between February 2020 and July 2021 and how they managed the resulting turbulence. We also investigate the extent to which these decisions were equitable and innovative. Data were collected from Ministerial notes, media content, and international organizations reports about the situation of education in the region. Walt and Gilson’s (1994) policy analysis triangle and the Cynefin framework ( Kurtz & Snowden, 2003 ) guided the objectives and the analysis of the data. Findings revealed that these countries muddled through the education policy at the beginning of the pandemic, centralized decision making, and faced difficulties to implement online and distance learnin...
Educational Management Administration & Leadership
This study compares teachers’ perceptions of teacher leadership in three Arab countries: Qatar, O... more This study compares teachers’ perceptions of teacher leadership in three Arab countries: Qatar, Oman and Egypt. Using the Teacher Leadership Inventory tool, the study examined the factors and demographic variables associated with teacher leadership in the selected countries. Specifically, the study explored the four factors identified by the TLI: Sharing Expertise (SE), Sharing Leadership (SL), Supra-Practitioner (SP), and Principal Selection (PS) and investigated if teachers’ perceptions of these factors would differ based on their country, gender and school type. Three sets of data were collected from the selected countries, and the respondents were teachers working in primary and middle public schools. Means, standard deviations, t-test and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the data. The results showed the overall level of teacher leadership to be moderate, with Sharing Expertise being the highest ranked factor, followed by Sharing Leadership, Supra-Practitioner and Principal Se...
Educational Management Administration & Leadership
Middle leaders were required to navigate the complexities of educational disruption and respond t... more Middle leaders were required to navigate the complexities of educational disruption and respond to internal and external demands throughout the pandemic. This shifting educational context necessitated a sensemaking process to better understand and act on the issues which gave rise to ambiguities in their school environment. This study investigated the sensemaking processes employed by 27 middle leaders from 20 government schools in Qatar, at a time when COVID-related restrictions had been lifted and face-to-face learning had resumed. To collect and analyze data, Q-methodology was applied. A 34-statement Q-sample was developed based on a proposed conceptual framework of sensemaking during times of disruption which included three dimensions: intrapersonal, relational, and institutional. Q-factor analysis revealed two significantly different viewpoints regarding how participants enacted certain practices in response to educational disruption. These were (1) sensemaking as a relational ...
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