BOOK REVIEW

Teaching and learning in the Arab World

By Christina Gitsaki (ed.). Peter Lang, New York, 2011, 473 pp.ISBN 978-3-0343-0408-5 (pbk), ISBN 978-3-0351-0201-7 (e-book)

Ali Ait Si Mhamed

Published online: 14 March 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Reading through Teaching and Learning in the Arab World is a very interesting

journey in three ways. First, the book is very thorough in analysing current

practices, challenges, reforms and approaches in teaching and learning in an ‘‘Arab

World’’ – not the Arab World. Second, the book can be described as being a ‘‘case-

by-case empirical analysis’’ of teaching and learning in the ‘‘Arab World’’ without

any comparative analyses to enrich the content and the analysis. Third, the actual

complexity – in a good way – of the Arab World’s culture and societies is not

manifested in this analysis, which shows the book to be a mere combination of

selected articles under many ‘‘unspecified’’ themes.

To begin with, Teaching and Learning in the Arab World discusses many

stimulating topics concerning different education levels, including secondary and

higher education. Those topics investigate various aspects related to motivation,

attitudes and pedagogies implemented in various educational institutions to

somehow meet goals of teaching and learning in those specific institutions. The

topics discussed in each chapter cannot be generalised to the whole population in

the specific country studied, nor could we claim, based on small sample sizes used,

that the issue studied is applicable to the whole country. Still, these case studies

may plausibly be seen as emerging important analyses and contributions to teacher

education, teacher training, leadership reforms and development of innovative

approaches for successful teaching and learning in the region. For example, the

topic in chapter 1, attitudes among Saudi university-level students towards learning

English, sheds light on a specific aspect of teaching strategy. Based on a survey and

interviews, students explain their attitudes towards how they learn and what they

would like to see while learning English. Being an active learner is their choice of

preference and their recommendation to their teachers. In a sense, the topic of

A. Ait Si Mhamed (&)

School of Education and Human Services, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, USA

e-mail: aitsimha@canisius.edu

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Int Rev Educ (2012) 58:303–307

DOI 10.1007/s11159-012-9278-4

the chapter is limited to the English learning strategy; however, in a broader

sense – although we should not generalise at all – it is plausible to say that some of

the attitudes of these students may be the attitudes of many other students in the

Kingdom and therefore the contribution of this chapter may have its impact on

rethinking teacher training and student learning in the country. Similar aspects of

this kind of outlook can be applied to many chapters in this book due to reasonable

and good empirical analysis done in each chapter. Chapter 4 is another example of

an issue related to teaching using critical thinking approaches. In many ways the

chapter sees that the students’ background can hinder their free critical thinking at

the specific private university chosen for this study. This is a good contribution to

shedding light on critical thinking strategies in a specific area of the Arab World

(i.e. the United Arab Emirates, UAE), if we attempt to overcome the chapter’s

vagueness in terms of addressing ‘‘free critical thinking’’. The point is, even though

many chapters have their flaws either in analysis, sample size, discussions or

conclusions, they are all contributions to the general spectrum of teaching and

learning in a specific part of the Arab World, specified and chosen by the editor.

This leads us to the next point which can be seen by many researchers, editors

and reviewers to be the most disturbing weakness of this book. If its aim is to

investigate current changes, reforms, trends and issues in education in the Arab

World, as Christina Gitsaki specifies in the preface, then the book has literally

covered Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, to some

extent Palestine and that is all. This issue – which I see as a big fallacy of this book

unless the title is changed – puts this whole work in jeopardy of misrepresenting

what it aims to present. Owing to this, a better, yet more suitable title for this book

would be Teaching and learning in the Gulf States: Cases from Saudi Arabia, UAE,Qatar and Bahrain. Many countries which at least geographically constitute ‘‘the

Arab World’’ are not included. In a book carrying ‘‘the Arab World’’ in its title, the

reliability of such research becomes questionable with the book’s inconsistency

with what it claims to represent.

Comparative analysis of international education issues is a good thing for many

reasons. I will only specify three here: (1) comparative analysis helps us understand

the framework of reference; that is to say the theme or idea under which we set out

to compare two countries or systems; (2) comparative analysis helps us as readers to

understand why we choose specific systems, cultures or countries to compare,

avoiding the trap of comparing apples and oranges; and (3) comparative analysis

helps us in the organisation of compared systems or countries on a specific issue.

Based on these elements of importance of comparative analysis, it is obvious that

this book could and should be a comparative study, but it is not. If it were, the

following would have happened:

(1) The framework of reference would have been clear and the role of the debate

on educational issues would have been more exciting. In other words,

countries compared would have been specified and the themes of reference

would have been discussed comparatively. And, most of all, many countries –

not four countries falsely representing the ‘‘Arab World’’ as a whole – would

have been covered or at least mentioned as not being part of this work.

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(2) Cultural and perhaps traditional and religious aspects shaping education in

Arab countries would have been extensively discussed in specific countries

chosen for this study, and the reader would have understood why other Arab

countries were not part of this study. The discussion taking place would have

clearly attempted to discuss policies, practices and reforms under an umbrella

of policy duplication.

(3) The organisation of comparison would have dealt with specific issues between

systems or countries more horizontally and vertically for comparative

purposes, especially taking into account that these countries have common

cultural, social and religious traditions which shape their educational systems.

(4) Under the umbrella of comparative analysis there is no doubt that this study

would have been more beneficial in identifying linking issues and how those

issues might be tackled or even solved in this specific region of the world,

since more than two decades of policy duplication have not contributed to

substantial equity and quality in education in the Arab World. That is very

evident because policy duplication reforms do not take into account cultural,

economic and social contexts.

In the preface of the book, the editor recognises complications of, or perhaps, as she

puts it ‘‘the lack of extensive public debate in the Arab countries, together and

individually, on the nature, goal and challenges of education reform, and the dearth

of published studies, research, and documents on these issues have caused reform

efforts to be … oversimplified’’ (p. xiii). Ironically, any attempts at debate and

communication are also impeded by this study owing to misrepresentation. No one

who has conducted research in education in Arab countries will believe the claim

that research on and debate over educational issues are scarce in these countries.

There is an abundance of research written in Arabic, French and English in many

Arab countries. As a researcher in higher education finance in the Arab World, I

would like to refute the fact that research is scarce on education issues and moreover

stress that it is important to recognise and distinguish efforts towards data updates

and displays in most Ministries of Education in Arab countries on most educational

issues in the Arab World such as academic achievement, financial aid, grants,

student room and board statistics, gender and education, teacher qualifications,

reforms, curricula, etc.

Finally, the topic of this book is clearly a current issue and very important,

particularly during these times of educational policy-borrowing, global efforts

towards monopolisation and hegemony of policies in education and higher

education. A strategic and well-planned debate would be very effective for Arab

countries to find ways to be good players in generating useful and contextual

educational policies instead of being good borrowers of policies, as the current

reality shows in the Arab World. No doubt the book means to introduce a

‘‘synchronised’’ discussion on practices, reforms and approaches of teaching and

learning and that is a good thing.

However, the lack of cultural context, in fact the shallowness of some analyses

and conclusions and discussions in the book have unfortunately taken things out of

their context. This is due to the fact that many of the studies conducted are specific

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to some institutions and regions, but the book then attempts to overgeneralise the

results by linking field study research to literature on the topic. There are many

examples illustrating this issue. For instance, chapter 17, ‘‘Implementing problem-

based learning in the Gulf: A case study of Arab students’’ by Mick King, discusses

the importance of adopting independent learning techniques. The research was

conducted with eight students as a sample for this mixed-method action research

study. The author highlights a section in his literature review and calls it ‘‘Can Arab

students study independently?’’, in which of course he cites and references studies

such as the one by Michele Ricks and Agata Szczerbik (2010) who, King claims,

concluded that Arab students’ overreliance on memorisation made them unprepared

for independent learning. He also cites many other studies making these assumptions

or general conclusions which are out of context. In empirical studies, if the beginning

is prejudiced, what do we expect from the end?

As an expert in teacher education, and an Arab educator and intellectual who

studied both in the Arab region and in the Western world, I have the following

questions which I see to be the backbone of rethinking not only this chapter, but

many other chapters in this book as well:

(1) Which Arab students are Mick King and many of the other authors in this book

writing about? Memorisation is an old concept in the Arab World besides

reciting and memorising the Qur’an. All other norms of learning and

pedagogies are innovative in public and private schools around the Arab

World, including higher education.

(2) What field is studied in this book and what, in each chapter, is the perception

of the author? Clearly writing about memorisation being a problem for Arab

students to learn independently is a perception, not a field one can study, or

data-based information, which raises a red flag related to ethics of research in

these studies.

(3) How can a study based on eight students determine whether one strategy or

another works in an educational atmosphere? Studying an educational policy

or strategy of teaching and learning requires some good methodological points

including sample size and so forth.

(4) What is independent learning according to each author? Learning the same

way American students do? Learning the same way European students do? We

clearly need an operational definition for these terms to contextualise them

before we start making our judgment calls about teaching and learning.

My list of questions would be longer if I were to specify a question or two for each

chapter in the book. The point is that these kinds of questions require us to

understand the cultural contexts of our research sites (i.e. regions, countries) to help

us distinguish our conventional attitudes and perceptions from what the field study

dictates systematically.

To conclude, Teaching and Learning in the Arab World is clearly a contribution

to the discussion already taking place in the Arab World in other forms and with

other norms. Still, many methodological issues should be seen as sensitive in the

picture the book keenly aims to draw. Some of these issues are related first and

foremost to the title of the book, Teaching and Learning in the Arab World, then to

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the enrichment of analysis using comparative analyses as – at least – one way of

introducing effective debates on educational issues in general and on teaching and

learning more specifically, and finally the lack of accounting for cultural contexts in

the analysis and relying merely on perceptions and small samples of what I might term

‘‘indirect’’ generalisations, meaning generalisations via literature review findings.

Reference

Ricks, M., & Szczerbik, A. (2010). Independent learning & Gulf students – culture clash?

In M. Al-Hamly, C. Coombe, P. Davidson, A. Shehadeh, & S. Troudi (Eds.), Proceedings of the15th TESOL Arabia conference. Learning in English: English in learning (pp. 159–167). Dubai:

TESOL Arabia Publications.

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