Abstract
Education plays a crucial role in the Kingdom of Bahrain’s “Economic Vision 2030”,
and the country is now working to reform its education system to meet the economic
and social challenges of the 21st century.
Currently the country is focusing on improving schools’ performance and enhancing
their quality to keep pace with the educational reform plan. International research
has demonstrated that teachers’ continuous professional development (PD) is one of
the fundamental strategies that improves educational quality.
Although the Bahraini Ministry of Education has encouraged teachers to adopt peer
observation as a tool for PD, a number of obstacles have emerged over time.
Following a mixed methods approach, this thesis describes the design and
implementation and piloting of a tailor made peer coaching programme which
involved 24 teachers in seven state primary schools. Questionnaires were
administered to 14 senior teachers and 50 Grade Two teachers of the First Cycle of
Basic Education, along with observation sheets and reflective journals. In-depth
interviews were also conducted with 11 of the participating teachers.
This study reveals that such a peer coaching programme is an effective form of PD
because the teachers took ownership of the approach in meeting their professional
needs. This enabled them to apply strategies imposed by the Ministry of Education,
thereby aiding the implementation of educational changes as required.
More broadly, this research demonstrates that if teachers are involved in their
professional development provision their motivation is enhanced. A refined version of
Wagner and French’s model (Motivation, work satisfaction, and change in practice,
2010) is presented to illustrate this effect