Home-school relationships: a school management perspective

Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) is in the process of initiating major education reform designed to improve schools. Parental involvement in support of student learning ranks high on the reform agenda. This study explores managerial aspects of implementing home-school relationships in seven primary Public Private Partnership (PPP) schools in Abu Dhabi, UAE. Participants involved in this study were principals, social workers, teachers, parents and students. Managerial aspects discussed in this paper relate to: a) benefits of home-school relationships; b) roles and responsibilities of stakeholders; c) home-school communication; and d) constraints and challenges faced in the management of home-school relationships. The findings elicit recommendations for improvement which may inform the work of policy makers, principals, social workers, teachers and parents in their continued efforts to build home-school relationships

Constraints and subsequent limitations to parental involvement in primary schools in Abu Dhabi: stakeholders' perspective

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is developing its public schools by initiating reform agendas for school improvement. High on the list of reforms is the call to increase parental involvement in schools. For this reform to work successfully, it is important to identify and examine the constraints and subsequent limitations that exist. Seven primary Public, Private Partnership schools (PPP) in Abu Dhabi were the focus of this qualitative case study. Participants were school stakeholders: school administrators, social workers, teachers and parents. The findings will assist in developing continuing policies and practices which take these limitations into account and work to mitigate them. Recommendations are made based within the context of the findings

Challenges and Opportunities in Sourcing, Preparing and Developing a Teaching Force for the UAE

Teacher education occurs along a continuum that encompasses teacher candidate recruitment, teacher candidate preparation, novice teacher induction, teacher professional development, and advanced teacher qualifications. Since the formation of the state in 1971, teacher recruitment and teacher education in the UAE have undergone several stages of development, beginning with the sourcing of teachers from the Arab world, through the establishment of in-country teacher education programs designed to produce native teachers, to the hiring of teachers from high performing school systems in the Anglophone world. Teacher education is quite a challenging enterprise, being impacted by changes in the constantly evolving education system in this young nation. High-quality teacher education candidates can be elusive, and it is difficult to attract nationals to teaching, especially males. Yet, at the same time, there are opportunities for teacher education as the country works valiantly to raise educational standards, including the development of Arabic language teacher education, the provision of continuing professional development around teacher licensure, and induction programs for novice teachers

Action of earthworms on flint burial – A return to Darwin’s estate

For thirty years, from the early 1840s, Charles Darwin documented the disappearance of flints in the grounds of Down House in Kent, at a location originally known as the “Stony Field”. This site (Great Pucklands Meadow - GPM) was visited in 2007 and an experiment set up in this ungrazed grassland. Locally-sourced flints (either large - 12 cm, or small – 5 cm dia.) were deposited at two densities within sixteen 1 m2 plots in a randomised factorial design. The area selected was distant from public access routes and remained unmown throughout the duration here reported. Fixed point photographs were taken at the outset to enable later photogrammetric analysis. After 6 years, the site was re-examined. The flints had generally been incorporated into the soil. Photographs were re-taken, proportion of buried flints recorded and measurements made of burial depth from a quarter of each plot. Results showed that large flints were more deeply incorporated than smaller (p=0.025), but more of the latter were below the soil surface. A controlled laboratory experiment was also conducted using Aporrectodea longa (the dominant earthworm species in GPM) to assess effects of casting in the absence of other biota. Results suggested that this species has a major influence on flint burial through surface casting. Combined with a long term, but small scale collection of A. longa casts from an area close to GPM, all results were consistent with those provided by Darwin and showed that rate of flint burial was within the range 0.21-0.96 cm y-1