Renewing the Palestine education system from the ground up

• In Event: Teaching and leadership for social justice in Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Turkey

Proposal

This paper focuses on a recent initiative in Ramallah, in the occupied territory of Palestine. The author draws on her doctoral study (Ramahi, 2017) in which she used an action-based methodology to demonstrate what can be done to support educational renewal from the ground up. The methodology adopted a critical social science perspective with a strong action research dimension and therefore a programme and attendant of cycles of action, monitoring, reflection and evaluation (Carr & Kemmis, 1986). The scope of the research is limited only in the sense that it is a case study of the programme in a single school, but the insight gained has wider implications.

The project featured a practical innovation designed to enable teachers to initiate and manage change in order to develop practice and develop their capacity for leadership. The ‘Teachers Leading the Way’ programme was an adaptation of a teacher leadership support programme originally developed in the UK (Frost, 2018) and subsequently adapted for use in many different countries including several in the Western Balkans (Vranješević & Čelebičić, 2014), others in EU countries (Flores, 2013) and more recently in various parts of the Middle East (Ramahi & Eltemamy, 2014).

The first part of this paper summarizes the author’s analysis of the context, focusing on the history of the emergent Palestinian state and its education system. It highlights how, in spite of the ushering in of ‘self-rule’ in 1994, the education system has reflected a dire lack of an authentically Palestinian narrative about education and its potential role in social renewal. An account of the initiatives, interventions and funding originating from foreign sources since 1994 focuses on the in appropriate nature of many of these approaches. It becomes clear that such foreign interventions inevitably entail foreign agendas which can distort what might be the desirable goals of educational reform (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004). The analysis also highlights the problem of sustainability in the sense that programmes funded by donors may simply evaporate once the funding is withdrawn.

The intervention at the heart of this paper contrasts sharply with the scenario outlined above in that, although it was an adaptation of an approach developed in the UK, it does not involve the introduction of curricular and pedagogical solutions. Rather, it is based on principles of empowerment, facilitation and transformative learning (Mezirow, 2000; Taylor, 2007) which enable local actors to develop their own programmes. The pedagogical content and the direction of innovation is determined by teachers themselves who are enabled to clarify their own values, set agendas for change and work collaboratively with colleagues to develop practice in ways which fit with the particular parameters of the social context and the organizational cultures of the schools.

The doctoral study from which this paper arises included both a rich critical narrative and a detailed assessment of impact both of which being consistent with action research methodology (Zuber-Skerritt & Perry, 2002). The narrative form of reporting facilitates a nuanced account of events and critical reflection on the challenges faced in the unfolding of the initiative (Elliott, 2005). It allows for multiple voices to be heard and provides an evidential base for the assessment of impact and the implications for education reform. In this paper, the impact of the programme is considered in relation to the teachers who participated and the school as an institution. That teachers made a difference is highly evident but the wider implications for the education system and for the emerging state of Palestine constitute the substantive reflections in the final part of this paper. The doctoral thesis on which this paper is based argues that interventions such as the Teachers Leading the Way programme can be empowering for individuals but there is also a collective impact on teacher professionality which becomes activist and innovation focused. Programmes such as this can not only build capacity but are inherently democratizing (Giroux, 1989). The approach to support for such programmes is self-generating as teachers and school principals seize ownership of the means of facilitation and support.

The paper concludes with a vision of how the concept of non-positional teacher leadership could be deployed to support action that has the potential to contribute to social and cultural renewal and reconstruction throughout the Middle East.

Author

• Hanan Ramahi, University of Bethlehem