Moroccan teachers’ perspectives toward new Arabic language textbooks in elementary schools

• In Event: Supporting students through culturally responsive teaching & learning materials: Lessons from Afghanistan, Liberia, and Morocco

Proposal

In Morocco, the book sector represents less than 1 percent of all industrial transactions. The most active publishing houses are medium size businesses and don’t produce more than 100 titles each year (Sefrioui, 2019). In many Moroccan homes, the only two books you will find are the Holy Quran and school textbooks. These textbooks are widely used by students and teachers in Morocco and in many cases are referred to as “the curriculum” itself. Therefore, the school textbook industry is of importance to students and a topic of high-level controversy when it comes to textbook production, distribution and usage by educators and parents.

The Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training (MNEVT) does not author, publish, or distribute textbooks. These functions are carried out by the private sector. The role of the MNEVT is threefold: a) issuing specifications for the textbooks; b) releasing a call for publishers to author textbooks and associated teacher guides; and c) reviewing the authored instructional materials and giving permission for printing. However, in 2018, as the ministry was getting ready to update the elementary school curriculum after 18 years, the original publishers were still in the textbook market, as allowing new publishers to compete had been put on hold, awaiting the formation of a Permanent Committee for Programs, as required by a new education law. This committee will be responsible for issuing the call for authoring new textbooks based on the new curriculum. At that time, there will be an open competition among all the professional publishers operating in Morocco. Morocco has 178 publishers according to a recent report (IPA, 2018).

In the school year 2018-2019, the MNEVT took the updated Arabic language curriculum for grades 1 and 2 to scale after experimentation in 90 schools located in eight provinces. The scale -up process started with the training of the textbook authors who work with the authorized publishers. The training focused on the methodology of teaching early grade reading, including reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The training was extended to cover story writing techniques, with the content of the stories based on themes specified by the MNEVT. For the layout of the textbooks, the specifications remained the same, with the publishers producing the same number of pages and one textbook per year, per subject. Any updates to the layout would have to wait for updated guidance from forthcoming the Permanent Committee for Programs. Meanwhile, the Ministry made it clear that the 2018-2019 school year would be a pilot year for the new textbooks and asked the National Reading Program to conduct a study on teachers’ perspectives toward the new grades 1 and 2 Arabic language textbooks.

Through the analysis of the data from the study, the presenter will examine the following questions:
1. To what extent do the instructional materials embrace the principles and components of the National Reading Program?
2. What are the teachers’ views of the quality of stories and listening and speaking activities?
3. What are the teachers’ views of the quality of the writing activities?

Author

• Fathi El-Ashry, Creative Associates International