Omani English teachers' perceptions of the teacher education program at Sultan Qaboos University : an evaluative study.
مؤلف
Al-Shihiyah, Hanan Ibrahim.
الملخص الإنجليزي
The present study investigated Omani EFL teachers' perceptions of the EFL teacher education program at Sultan Qaboos University. The study examined four aspects related to the EFL teacher education program. These are: (1) the academic training (2) the pedagogical training (3) the organizational aspects and (4) the teaching and evaluation techniques used by the University professors. A total of 120 EFL teachers from the regions of Muscat, Dakhiliah, Batinah (South) and Batinah (North) participated in the study. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire consisting of 120 items concerning the above four aspects of EFL teacher education program. Descriptive statistics revealed that teachers perceived the pedagogical courses they had taken as part of their EFL teacher education program as being useful. They perceived the specialization courses to be very useful while the general education courses to be unuseful.
The teachers indicated their moderate to high achievement of a list of 40 pedagogical objectives supposed to be the bases of a successful teacher education program As for the teaching practicum, teachers rated the items as being inadequate to moderately adequate while they rated items related to program management and academic policies as being moderately adequate to adequate.
The teachers believed that their instructors moderately used most of the listed teaching techniques. They believed also that their instructors moderately to highly used most of the listed evaluation techniques.
Based on the findings, some recommendations are proposed at the end of the study.
