Evaluating Critical Thinking Skills in Moroccan EFL Textbooks: Gateway to English 2 as a Case

The aim of this study is to evaluate critical thinking skills (CTS) in a Moroccan textbook of English as a foreign language entitled Gateway to English 2 (GTE2 henceforth) according to Bloom’s taxonomy. Alongside with this, a survey is conducted to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of a sample of Moroccan high school teachers towards CTS and their inclusion in the aforementioned textbook. The research design adopted in this study is the mixed methods research approach and three instruments are used to collect data: document analysis, a content analysis card and a questionnaire. The participants’ sample consists of 75 Moroccan high school teachers of English who use GTE2 textbook. The three instruments were intended to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. The findings of the study revealed that the current educational policy aims to foster the CTS of Moroccan students, but the textbooks used, namely GTE2, targets only lower order thinking skills, especially comprehension, and application at the expense of higher order thinking skills which will benefit students both academically and professionally. For this reason, the study suggests activities and materials to enrich the textbook in terms of thinking skills

Solving Non-Rectangular Reward-Robust MDPs via Frequency Regularization

In robust Markov decision processes (RMDPs), it is assumed that the reward and the transition dynamics lie in a given uncertainty set. By targeting maximal return under the most adversarial model from that set, RMDPs address performance sensitivity to misspecified environments. Yet, to preserve computational tractability, the uncertainty set is traditionally independently structured for each state. This so-called rectangularity condition is solely motivated by computational concerns. As a result, it lacks a practical incentive and may lead to overly conservative behavior. In this work, we study coupled reward RMDPs where the transition kernel is fixed, but the reward function lies within an $\alpha$-radius from a nominal one. We draw a direct connection between this type of non-rectangular reward-RMDPs and applying policy visitation frequency regularization. We introduce a policy-gradient method, and prove its convergence. Numerical experiments illustrate the learned policy's robustness and its less conservative behavior when compared to rectangular uncertainty

Barriers to ICT Integration in Moroccan Secondary School EFL Classrooms

There is a broad consensus in the literature that the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become an effective tool that can be used for educational purposes. The use of ICT in the classroom creates better learning opportunities and enhances the quality of teaching. However, barriers to ICT integration hinder this process. The aim of this paper is to explore the perceived barriers to ICT integration that Moroccan secondary school teachers encounter in EFL classrooms. This study adopted a mixed-methods design, and data were collected through two instruments: a survey questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. Secondary school EFL teachers in the area of Agadir, Morocco, participated in this study and of the 80 informants who completed and returned the questionnaire, 8 of them were interviewed. The findings indicate that the major barriers that teachers encounter in integrating ICT into the classrooms were lack of adequate ICT facilities in the schools, lack of time, lack of continuous and effective ICT training, technical problems, and lack of technical support. Further, various solutions and recommendations are offered to minimize these barriers and maximize the beneficial use of ICT in the teaching and learning process in Moroccan EFL secondary school settings. Keywords: Barriers, EFL Settings, ICT, Moroccan Educational Context, Technology Integration DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-26-04 Publication date:September 30th 202