Background

This is an account of an ongoing teacher professional education programme in Qatar, Bahrain and Dubai, conducted since 2010 by Arab and European service providers working in these countries and myself (UK-based) as professional consultant, with teachers, schools, higher education institutions and government agencies. Validated evidence shows that: teachers’ improved practices are influencing the quality of their own and students’ learning (Tribal and McNiff 2010); students are undertaking their practice-based enquiries into improving their own learning (McNiff 2012); schools have developed research-based practices for institutional improvement (Supreme Education Council (SEC) (2010); national policies support teachers’ practice-based research for professional education (Qatar University, online at http://www.qu.edu.qa/education/cder/professional_development.php ). Thus it is suggested that groups of teachers working collaboratively can exercise systemic influence for school and organisational improvement.

Research questions

However, such innovations have raised critical research questions about the need not to exercise cultural imperialism through importing foreign epistemological, methodological and pedagogical systems, in order to preserve and build capacity for developing indigenous epistemological and cultural capital. There is especial need to safeguard the identity and social values of cultural formations, especially within a global context of privatisation, marketisation and performativity: such agendas can threaten the very cultural and social identity of the region (Mazawi 2008). Given also that ‘impact’ is currently a key international criterion for judging research quality, it is essential to offer appropriate definitions in the form of living practices to judge the quality of foreign providers’ interventions in the form of indigenous end-users’ experiences, in efforts to verify the ethical and culturally sensitive nature of emergent knowledge claims while establishing methodological rigour. 

Objectives

The ongoing enquiry therefore focuses on how to enable individuals and social formations develop innovative teacher education methodologies while negotiating culturally responsive standards for judging the quality and validity of practitioners’ educational knowledge. The aim is to support the development of indigenous knowledge systems that draw on standards and validation principles for judging practices and research recognised by the international educational research communities, while preserving traditional cultural and epistemological values and avoiding cultural and intellectual hegemony. 

Theoretical frameworks

The study, and analyses of data are located within theoretical frameworks of radical research (Schostak and Schostak 2008) informed by orientalist studies (Said 1995) that perceive and represent the other through a particular ideological lens. Debates about judging quality in practice-based research (e.g. Coulter and Wiens 2002; Feldman 2003) highlight the need for developing culturally- and socially-responsive knowledge bases (Baker et al 2010; Donn and Al-Manthri 2010) to promote teachers’ professionalisation. Values regarding judging impact from the perspective of the other’s experience (Buber 2002; Macmurray 1961) emerge as validating principles for strengthening the robustness of claims to improved practices. The same principles inform the development of dialogical practices that perceive identity as self in relation with others (Macmurray 1961), always in processes of emergence. 

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