A future scenario to activate the learning communities in Sohag public schools

By/ Dr. Fify Ahmed Tawfeek [1]

Summary

    Human communities, currently, experience the age of knowledge explosion. They look forward to the future by inserting the systems of accreditation, quality guarantee and control into their educational policies. They, also, make use of technology in their educational activities. Consequently, modern learning communities, that develop the educational process and overcome its problems, will be established. 

   Education, whether based on community change or as a key motive of this change, is, by nature, viable to change. Consequently, severe changes and challenges imposed by the future must create great shocks in the educational system; regarding its philosophy, policy, role, institutions, curricula and styles. This requires education and educationalists to reconsider their responsibilities and methods of preparing generations, looking forward to future horizons regarding this preparation and defining acceptable and balanced formula of the educational system because sound educational planning requires a balanced and interactive development to the factors of the educational process. 

   Therefore, there is a need that school becomes a knowledge organization that generates, invests and applies knowledge. There is, also, a need to have school leadership through modern administrative concepts working on improving efficiency and productive effectiveness and increasing the competitive ability. Preparing an active man who is able to correspond to current events and face the crisis of globalization age and its key cognitive, knowledge and technological revolutions starting from a clear social and educational philosophy, definite aims and comprehensive approaches and methods that take the existence with competence, efficiency and feasibility into account.

  Hence, the need to face challenges of the twenty first century requires school to become an organization that generates, invests and applies knowledge. In addition, it has to have a clear social and educational philosophy as a starting point and to adapt modern approaches and comprehensive methods. 

  In addition, looking to the status quo of public education schools in Egypt illustrates many problems that the Egyptian education faces, such as: weak infrastructure, lack of cooperation and intimacy among the staff, high class density and absence of renovation, development and creating the required skills.   

  These problems and challenges require the activation of learning communities in the Egyptian public schools enabling the achievement of educational reformation and development. Consequently, suggesting a future scenario to activate such communities in Sohag public schools attracted the attention of the researcher.

  Therefore, the current study aims to provide future scenario to activate such communities in Sohag public schools to improve the educational process and achieve the desired school reform there.

It is a significant study because: -

  1. Facing current and future challenges is a must. In addition, we have to establish educational projects based on the concepts of quality, excellence, shared vision, established institutional values, spirit of team work and promoting the sills of teachers and learners to produce, instead of consume, knowledge.
  2. The proposed scenario may benefit officials, educational policy planners and decision makers to define the most appropriate approaches to reform public education in Egypt, promoting school performance and continuous improvement. This can be done within learning communities and making school a key factor towards change, improvement and development in the community. Furthermore, there are many users of this study's results, such as: makers of the educational decision, principals, teachers and students.

Hence, the current study has achieved various results, as follows: - 

  • Obstacles of activating learning communities in Sohag public schools are various and varied. They include: lack of financial allocation to support professional learning communities in the operational budget, weakness of physical capabilities, absence of intellectual dialogue on the professional practices of teachers, separating theory and practice, failure to link education to learners' issues, problems and motives, overcrowding of curricula and occupancy of teachers in implementing what they are required to do regardless of quality and improvement, absence of real partnership between school and guardians, school's isolation from local community, lack of cultural awareness of applying these communities among public education teachers, weakness of community participation between public schools and other organizations, lack of awareness of implementing professional learning communities as a new school pattern (of students and teachers), concentrating on memorization and indoctrination, absence of applying experimental and operation research among teachers, weakness of the teacher's professional development, lack of supportive school leadership, lack of teacher's readiness to practice these communities, widening the gap between the content of school's mission and real practices, shortage of training programs to fulfill teachers' professional needs, absence of an infrastructure that helps in applying such communities, absence of participatory leadership practices, delegation leadership by the principal and a high school density limiting the application of modern teaching strategies.  
  • On calculating the significance of differences of the questionnaire's sections among the various samples, it was found out that there were statistically significant differences in some sections and there are not in the others.
  • Consequently, the researcher suggested a future scenario to activate these learning communities in Sohag public schools.

 

 

 

[1]-Dr. Fify Ahmed Tawfeek , assistant professor of Fundamentals of Education, Faculty of Education, Sohag University