English abstract
This study aimed to reveal the level of knowledge of social
studies teachers in the Sultanate of Oman of future foresight skills
and the difficulties of teaching them from their point of view. To
achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher used the mixed
approach; where she prepared two tools for the study (a cognitive
test and an interview). The cognitive test consists of (25) questions
distributed over five clusters: the skill of future imagination, the skill
of solving future problems, the skill of making decisions, the skill of
forecasting, and the skill of future visualization. The interview
consisted of (16) questions, and after verifying the validity and
stability of the two tools, they were applied to social studies
teachers in the following governorates: Muscat, North Al Batinah,
and South Al Batinah. Where the cognitive test was applied to (170)
male and female teachers, while the interview was applied to
eleven male and female teachers of social studies.
The results of the study revealed that the level of knowledge
of social studies teachers in the Sultanate of Oman of future
foresight skills was low, where the arithmetic mean percentage in
the teachers' cognitive test was (50.40%), the results also revealed
that there were no statistically significant differences in the level of
knowledge of social studies teachers in the Sultanate of Oman of
future foresight skills at the significance level (α ≥ 0.05)this is due
to the variable of teaching experience in all skills. The interviews
also revealed many difficulties that social studies teachers face in
teaching future foresight skills, the most important of which are:
teachers do not have sufficient experience in teaching skills, and
social studies curricula do not include these skills. In light of these
results, the researcher recommended the necessity of including
future foresight skills in social studies curricula, and intensifying
professional development programs that help develop these skills
among teachers.
