Teacher Education (TE) study programs play a crucial role in providing efficient preparation to prospective teachers for their teaching career. The quality of teacher preparation determines the effectiveness of classroom instruction which in turn influences the quality of student learning (National Research Council, 2010, in Feuer et al., 2013). Hence, it is important to ensure that prospective teachers receive good preparation. The aims of this study are to identify the structural components of TE programs, to examine the balance between theoretical and practical courses, and to analyze the TE programs in selected universities from Lebanon and United Arab Emirates (UAE) by benchmarking them against the conceptual orientations of the theoretical framework of Feiman-Nemser.

In Lebanon, TE programs are offered by fifteen universities (El-Mouhayar & BouJaoude, 2012). Elementary school teachers are required to receive three years of undergraduate education at the Education Department of any university to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education or in Elementary Education. Furthermore, students holding a bachelor’s degree in any other field who want to become teachers can receive a TD by completing an additional year of study (“Education in Lebanon,” 2018).

The development of TE programs in the UAE has gone through several steps. In 1979, the Ministry of Education founded two-year teacher training colleges. In the mid-1980s, the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), the first public university in the UAE, took over the responsibility of teacher preparation from the government. (Gardner, 1995, in Gallagher, 2019). In 1998, the College of Education at Zayed University initiated TE. Afterwards, UAE’s first teachers’ college, Emirates College for Advanced Education (ECAE), started in-country TE (Gallagher, 2019). Obtaining a Bachelor of Education in the UAE equips graduates to be able to teach students of different ages. For the secondary grades, many schools require a degree in the teacher’s field of expertise in addition to the degree in education. (“Bachelor of Education in the UAE,” n.d.).

The theory of Sharon Feiman-Nemser will be used as a framework. According to this theory, a set of ideas that guides the practical activities in TE programs is known as an “orientation.” Such practical activities can be identified as developing courses, teaching, supervising, assessing, and planning programs. An orientation would identify the goals of TE and the ways of realizing these goals. Views of teaching and learning and theories about learning how to teach make a “conceptual orientation.” Five conceptual orientations have been identified, each having a proposition that features certain aspects of teaching and TE programs: academic, practical, technological, personal, and critical/social orientations (Feiman-Nemser, 1990).

Examining the effectiveness of TE programs may provide insight into how well graduates are prepared and equipped to satisfy the requirements of their workplace (Mayer et al., 2015). Exploring the course offerings, the required hours, practicum policies and hours, and the number of required content courses provides the possibility to make comparisons across different programs. Such types of information are usually accessible on institution websites and catalogs, and hence a researcher who is not an insider may access them and examine them (Feuer et al., 2013).

Based on the theoretical framework, a review of relevant literature, and a survey of the TE program structures of the universities from Lebanon and UAE selected for this study, the following research questions have been identified:

- Which theoretical elements of the conceptual framework of Feiman-Nemser theory are implemented in the TE curricula of universities in Lebanon and the UAE?

- What is the distribution of theoretical and practical courses in the structural frameworks of the TE programs of universities in Lebanon and the UAE?

In this study, TE programs of selected universities in Lebanon and the UAE will be surveyed through university websites and course catalogues and benchmarked against Feiman-Nemser’s theory’s five conceptual orientations: academic, practical, technological, personal, and critical/social orientations. An examination of TE programs provides an understanding of the program structure, content, distribution of courses, and the practical experience prospective teachers receive (Mayer et al., 2015). TE program evaluations can be achieved by examining different forms of evidence used to measure TE attributes. For example, to evaluate the quality of instruction, course syllabi, textbooks, hours, and the number of required content courses may be reviewed; to assess the quality of student teaching experiences, practicum hours and qualifications of mentors may be considered (Feuer et al., 2013). Surveying publicly available online information about TE programs on university websites provides documentation of program content, length, and structure, practical experiences, and the balance between theory and practice (Mayer et al., 2015). According to Feiman-Nemser (1990), teacher preparation programs can be analyzed through structural and conceptual models. Structural models focus on the general organization of programs such as the number of years to complete a program, the number of required credit hours of education and content, the duration of field-based experience, and alternative certification methods. Conceptual models, on the other hand, reflect different insights about teacher preparation and accentuate the importance of orientations derived from the different views of teaching and theories of learning to teach. The information in this comparative study will be derived from the websites and course catalogues of the selected universities from Lebanon and the UAE that are part of the study. To compare TE programs in Lebanon and in the UAE, the websites and course catalogues of the Modern University for Business and Science (MUBS) in Lebanon and the American University in the Emirates (AUE) in the UAE will be reviewed and analyzed. To put the two universities of this study in the context of the larger framework, a survey will be done of 3 other universities from each of the countries that are being compared. From Lebanon, in addition to MUBS, TE programs of Haigazian University (HU), the Lebanese University (LU), and the American University of Beirut (AUB) will be surveyed. From the UAE, in addition to AUE, TE programs of the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), and Zayed University (ZU) will be examined.

One of the main issues related to TE in Lebanon is the lack of sufficient practical courses in TE programs (Freiha, 1997, as cited in BouJaoude & El-Mouhayar, 2010). According to BouJaoude and El-Mouhayar (2010), a critical issue in TE programs in Lebanon is that they do not emphasize field work. Another issue is the insufficient acquisition of classroom skills by prospective teachers. Concerning TE programs in the UAE, many universities require students to spend one semester teaching in a public school as part of their student teaching experience (Faculty of Education, 2003, in Al-Awidi & Alghazo, 2012). However, not much attention is paid to the practice teaching experience; it is viewed mainly as a part of studies that needs to be completed. Sometimes practice teaching is done in a traditional way: student teachers are placed in government schools to work with cooperating teachers, and the university supervisors visit them two or three times throughout the whole experience. This does not allow for a fruitful experience as university supervisors are not fully engaged in the schools, and the cooperating teachers are unaware of the practice teaching requirements (Ibrahim, 2013). Based on a review of relevant literature and based on an initial surveying of the websites of MUBS and AUE, the two universities involved in this study, the following results can be expected: universities in Lebanon adopt the academic approach to teacher preparation more than universities in the UAE, and that universities in the UAE adopt the technological and critical/social approaches to teacher preparation more than universities in Lebanon. Moreover, the practical orientation of Feiman-Nemser’s theory is manifested in the practicum courses that both universities offer. However, it is expected that the theoretical courses in both universities will be more than the practical courses.

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