Applicability of the NSW Quality Teaching Model to the Abu Dhabi School System

Abstract

Educational reform and sustainability is a top priority for the federation of the United Arab Emirates as it seeks to establish itself at the forefront of educational excellence and the building of quality education for the country in the 21st Century. The focus of this research is on Abu Dhabi Emirate as it seeks to bring its education system and the achievement of its students in line with international standards. The restructuring agenda which started in 2000, has an emphasis on quality education focusing on teaching and learning approaches, modernizing the curriculum, and improving the quality of its teaching workforce. To facilitate this reform agenda, the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) plan to implement a new education model to underpin the new strategies for system improvement. The United Arab Emirates like other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has been influenced by western education which has informed both their policies and practices as a means of addressing low student performance. With its focus on best practice and active learning pedagogies the Emirate has tried to emulate education systems/models that it perceived as being successful. Over a 10 year period the Emirate has reviewed, adopted or/and attempted to implement various models of education, mainly those of Finland, Singapore, Australia, Canada and the United States. Similar to other national education systems worldwide, the UAE policymakers' responses to low student performance have been to focus on teacher quality and teacher improvement as a key to educational reform. The NSW model was one of preference as it was standard based, could be easily aligned to the NSW curriculum that was being implemented in the schools, and a measure by which teachers and school leaders quality could be measured.