No politics zone: Educational reform plans in the Arab Gulf States (AGS)

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Rapid change has become a fixed characteristic of educational policy in many regions around the world. International Development Organization (IDOs) have marketed policy reform as a way for “developing countries” to “catch-up” with the developed world. However, with all the reforms unfolding across the Arab Gulf States (AGS), there have been things impossible to change, red lines impossible to cross, and also exceptional cases of change in what are deemed impossible contexts. This panel seeks to expose what remains undiscussed in this drive for education reform, notably inherited political and social structures, that the policy overlooks as it fails to capture the contextual changes and continuities in each contexts where “injustice, oppression, and destruction caused by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy” continues to manifest itself in our educational spaces (Santos, 2018, p.1). The presenters will begin by presenting examples of reforms in the context of K-12 schools in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, including Higher Education reforms in Qatar and the rest of AGS, to demonstrate the persistent and changed in each context with special attention to the social responsibility of different actors in those scenarios and the ethics around relating to the “Other” (Haraway, 2016). Within each context different factors mitigate the possibility for meaningful change but also in these different contexts the red lines are revealed. The acceptance and resistance to change is mitigated by a) actors involved in the process of designing reform plans; b)actors that try to implement the reform plans; and c) societies that both sets of actors try to sometimes challenge and many other times simply adapt to. Depending on who is developing the policy, who is implementing it, and when and where this is taking place, the outcomes are drastically different, emphasizing once again how social structures, geographical locations, and political encounters play a major role in our lived experiences and are grounds of our social and political struggles.

The four presentations in this panel offer comparative and international case studies that critically pinpoint “the broader societal dynamics in which the local is inextricably enmeshed” (Mazawi & Sultana, 2010, p. 5). To do that, the presentations draw on a variety of methods, including ethnography, qualitative comparative approach, genealogy, case-study method and critical discourse analysis (CDA). The first presenter demonstrates the dangers of overlooking the historical and colonial underpinnings driving girls schooling and citizenship education reform initiatives in Bahrain’s K-12 schooling systems. Specifically, she argues that failing surface-level K-12 education reform interventions reproduce “the desired ideal girl citizen-subject, a figure that is necessarily ahistorical and apolitical”, erasing in effect the girls’ political agency, in a rich socio-political context within which these policies unfold. Similarly, the second presentation underscores that even in states that seem to be relatively similar politically, culturally, and economically (Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain), much is to be learnt when critically examining the decision-making processes that unleashed school reforms in each context individually. The second presenter argues that while much resources have been exhausted by foreign consultants, very little has changed because these consultants overlook, perhaps strategically, the political reforms necessary to enable a successful implementation of educational reforms. The last two presentations follow a similar path, emphasizing the need for a contextual understanding to create meaningful and socially responsible change, but in higher education settings. The third presenter echoes the second’s finding. She likens the strategies proposed by higher education institutions as taking the position of the “medieval fool[s]...expected to tell stories and wear masks to amuse [royal] audiences”. This requires overlooking how AGS institutions are embedded in their State’s political and economic agendas and forming instead technical strategies filled with rhetoric and beyond reach. Finally, the last panelist exposes the ways in which these reforms, isolated from their contexts, result in grave impact for the lived experiences of academics teaching and researching in AGS and within these complex political and social settings. Bringing the presentation to a wrap, our discussant will pose questions to each panelist and the audience to open up the conversation about what can be done to ensure educational reform in the region moves in the direction of social justice, enabling the design of reforms from “less-privileged epistemic zones of being” that pay attention to the “‘geometries of power’ that enact and constitute the Arab region” (Shahjahan & Morgan 2015, p. 95; Mazawi & Sultana, 2010, p. 10)

This panel offers a nuanced analysis of educational reform in AGS where emerging young scholars from the region will talk about their first-hand experiences, frustrations, and hopes for educational reforms being implemented in AGS. The insights offered here are important to researchers, academics, policy-makers, and practitioners working in the education and development arena in the region. While the cases presented are context-specific, they collectively also echo a common struggle shared with many other marginalized peoples in the Global South, calling for “a radical demand for the democratization of knowledge” (Santos, 2018, p. 295). Hence, this panel is part of a wider conversation that we – as researchers and academics – should have in the Global South as we attempt to ground our educational reforms in our lived experiences, our ever-forming and transforming sociopolitical contexts, and our dreams for more just futures for peoples residing in the region.

Sub Unit

• Middle East SIG

Individual Presentations

• The perpetual [gendered] crisis in education: A genealogical analysis of the desired ideal girl in (post)colonial Bahrain - Sara J. Musaifer, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

• The political mechanisms of reforming educational systems in the Gulf region - Ibrahim Alhouti, UCL Institute of Education

• Strategizing in higher education: A critical discourse analysis - Hadeel AlKhateeb, Qatar University

• Academic mobility, between the past and the present: The case of Qatar University - Esraa Al-Muftah, Qatar University / University of British Columbia