factors that contribute the quality of education in developing countries

Proper pre-service training for teachers as well as contiguous in-service training needed to fulfill the teaching, learning requirements (UNESCO,2005)

Teachers’ subject knowledge and verbal abilities (Abby, 2008)

infrastructure and other related modern technological instruments

solid policy decisions,

monitoring and evaluation process

feedback and reflection

quality curricular and implementation abilities

quality leadership of administrators

budgetary restrictions

positive attitudes of teachers and students

academic freedom

as a methodology gap analysis, Kalb's reflective learning circle, and onion model could be applied as methodology in this regards

I do agree with the colleague Fernando. In addition, collective efficacy of the school team is crucial. This involves having a team of teachers holding strong self-efficacy as well as a director with a transformational style of leadership. This combination is very powerful and can alleviate negative effects of difficult family environment.

Dear Mr. Noel Fernando,

Greeting from Malaysia!

Thank you so much for your valued contribution. Your ideas are very helpful to conduct my research. I am looking forward to hearing our group members' comments and sharing. Thank you in advance! All the best, Sam Rany

Hi!

Very interesting question!

I used to believe that developing countries have some advantages, but I found out Education at all levels have problems, even Higher Education in US or UK. You can have excellent programs but the enviroment is going to be crucial.

Maybe these articles can give you an idea.

http://www.evolllution.com/curriculum_planning/successful-at-the-academy-less-so-at-finding-employment-different-skills-needed/

http://www.evolllution.com/curriculum_planning/what-is-the-secret-behind-successful-students/

http://www.evolllution.com/community_matters/the-evolution-of-higher-education-across-the-world/

http://www.evolllution.com/community_matters/the-evolution-of-higher-education-in-some-parts-of-the-world-part-2/

Now, your question is about Higher education or General education?

I have another about general education:

http://talkingaboutneurocognitionandlearning.blogspot.com/2012/05/teaching-competencies-incompetence.html

My best regards

Alma

Hello Alma, to be honest I am worried about the German higher education since universities tend to adjust to the level of their students instead of forcing the students to realise their limits. I definitely don't mean it in an inhuman way.

Another problem I observe for my country is that learning becomes more and more edutainment in schools. I doubt that this is a great advantage. If I look at the discipline of older

people and compare it to young people I definitely find a huge difference. And pupils leaving school find it more and more harder to find an apprenticeship.

I am not sure if we are able to define an academic environment, because people who wanted to make something out of their life always found a way to academic environments and a way to study at university, no matter what social background they experienced.

One restriction which is certainly existing is the problem of university fees and finding scholarships. This has also become a subject in the West since the financial crisis, because the money has been cut.

Dear Alma Dzib Goodin, thank you so much for your contribution and kind help. Actually, I focus on higher education. Have a good weekend! All best wishes, Sam Rany

Hi Gurdrum and Sam!

I hear often here at the United States complains about how system is trying to adapt to students and not students adapt to the enviroment. But on the other hand, in Spain, the system is too direct that students can find a way to find creativity for example. The Evolllution magazine is focus on higher education and I'm surprise to know even United States has a mess in that sense...

These article made me look around and think... what is going on??: http://www.evolllution.com/curriculum_planning/degrees-are-earned-not-sold/

http://www.evolllution.com/curriculum_planning/what-do-you-get-for-the-cost-of-a-degree/

They made me began my little research around the world and ask: how is Higher Education in yoru country?

There is not doubt, economy, skills and better programs are needed, the question is: is it possible?

Alma

Hi Sam

I am very pleased with the contributions given to you. I also would encourage you to look at: 1) the requirements of the job market because students will measure their attainment to the jods that they are looking forward to do after completing their studies. This may differ with different courses/subject areas. 2) The involvement of pvt industry in influencing the structure of the curriculum. 3)It may be difficult to establish, but corruption within the education system, the institutions and the political establishments will influence the results for well-connected individuals but may never be acknowledged because it is thought to directly affect an insignificant fraction, but it is important to look at how it may possibly affect those intelligent students without connections. These may look like trivial issues in developed countries, but for developing countries it holds back innovative thinking and development thereby negatively affecting the quality of work presented by students.

Cheers

Your proposed study is more of a survey in nature. Hence after the collection of your relevant data, I think the use of chi-square statistical method of analysis would be appropriate to analyse the data.

Fred Vanosdall Retired, Michigan State University

Formal Education is bound by and to the teaching and Research Faculty. Preparation of those who will/may lead our future will be challenged by the learning required. Which suggests that faculty from all disciplines are accountable for the preparation and teaching style to encourage, build up, and pace the level of instruction and progress to students, at what ever lervel they are aspiring to.enter. Faculty owe i tot their students to come from the disciplines in which they will be the teacher, the example, the mentor and have both depth of field experience and teaching skills.

The selection of new, experienced and highly regarded faculty who desire to teacg AND SHARE THEIR LIFE EXPERIENCES SHOULD BE CONSIDERED, HAVE PEER REVIEWS, STUDENT REVIEWS, PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF THEIR FIELD/DISCIPLINE AND STUDENTS.

It's true Ana!, If you think for a second, there are tons of research about how to teach and how to make sucessful students, so it seems that's kind of good, why doesn't it work? because politicians don't read them and they don't care. Any country will say: good education is about money!, but when you analize the case of Brasil, India and China, you find out something else....

It's never about money [only], it's about placing the right people (HR) where they belong, having a good strategy, will for change/progress and passion for the profession. Even in the US it's not about money - life scientists are not as well paid as people working in finance but their research has a huge impact on our lives.

Sam, perhaps there are some good practices in the region. You can investigate how Singapore managed to improve education, what problems they had in the past, what Malaysia is doing right now - both pros and cons (e.g. foreign campuses, education in English, etc). I think that reforms should be made in early and secondary education first, and then in higher education.

Hi Sam! As you ask about methodology, from my experience here in Brazil, I'd like to collaborate saying that the anthropological qualitative action-research has contributed a lot to show some aspects of the classrooms day-to-day life that we could never imagine existing. I refer to racism, homophobia, social class bias and many types of bullying that surely influence on the development of students at higher education and all levels. Also as an ex-colonial country, we have incorporated certain cultural believing that result from old domination process and these are also to be faced, discussed and overcome. So, we usually value the process of the academic research, it is socialized in seminars and colleagues and teachers can participate on weekly debates. I wish you success!

Janina

Hi Sam and everybody, there is something else I'd like to add, it is about the theory that fundaments all reflections of a research. I mean, by my experience, the methodology is not enough in itself it is only a means. The process requires a theory on human rights to support and justify procedures and final conclusions. Don't you agree?

Thank you so much for your good comments, Haristina, Janina, and others! Your ideas are very helpful to broaden my knowledge to conduct my research. All the best,

study for Dr. Otaibi it may help

There are three aspects of the defect in education policy and lack of harmonization of outputs of higher

Hi everybody,

education to the labor market in Saudi Arabia, which led to a severe shortage in the number of workers in jobs that need to train scientific and warn of the need for large foreign labor and for justice in the case of non-alignment of the output, while increasing the unemployment in Saudi Arabia 20% of Saudis who are of working age, and imbalances are as follows:

1. High proportion of university students for more than three-quarters of the freshmen students with a percentage (75.8%), while the freshers students in the stage diploma has accounted for (21.9%), and should be a greater percentage for the category of diplomas medium that make up the broad base of the workforce in any economy.

2. Significant increase in the number of students graduating from the disciplines of science theory and business with a percentage (81.97%), while the percentages of college graduates did not add anything scientific about (18.02%) of the total graduates.

3. The third aspect of lack of harmonization between the outputs of higher education on the one hand and the needs of the market on the other hand is a social and legal constraints the women's work in the Kingdom that make the output of the educational process that is irrelevant to the productive sectors in the Kingdom, where concentrated the largest number of female graduates in the field of preparation schools teachers and by (39.3%).

most of the problems faced by institutions of vocational education and training include:

1 - the multiplicity of agencies supervising and implementing education programs and vocational training

2 - the inadequacy of educational programs to the needs of the labor market.

3 - leakage at all stages of education

4 - weak cooperation between education institutions and vocational training institutions and labor market

5 - inadequate the funding process.

Huda Badah Saudi Arabia.

Hi Sam. I come a cross a book that has good topics . Teaching for Quality Learning at University by John Biggs and Caterine Tan. Hope it is ok for you

My best regards

Mario

i have written a research paper and few aspects of teaching learning process are discussed with reference to quality education

Dear Sam. It depends on what you mean by "academic environment". The language of education is so diverse that it is not possible to have access to strong descriptions of the contexts, processes, events and facts occurring in this field. For example, it is not the same to say "academic environment" than to say "curriculum environment" or "pedagogic environment". Then, you must construct the descriptive and analytic categories in order to produce a relevant language of description.

Now, quality is related to different ideologies, from those provided by the market, to those including individual, social and political development of individuals and groups.

Then to improve quality is practice that depends upon conflicting interests. So you must, first, ask "in whose interests certain kinds of environments?" and for what purposes to improve quality?.

Modern pedagogies can be analized from instrumental points of view. This practice always silence the voices lying behind them. What we do not see are the retrospective, conservative, and most of the time, elite voices underlying the flexibility of these pedagogies. The same way happens when we intend to establish instrumental relations between academic environments and quality of education especially in the university field where quality has been distorted and recontextualized in terms of the principles of the market. Hope you read my comment.

Good evening Sam, I think about academic environment that includes students, teachers, curriculum, principle, instructional materials, etc. Can you identified academic environment?

Good afternoon from Lebanon - you would need to define in greater details what you mean by environment. I came across this very interesting OECD PISA study that shows that resource rich countries are not performing well in international tests. See http://oecdeducationtoday.blogspot.com/2012/03/knowledge-and-skills-are-infinite-oil.html . This is not an issue for Cambodia; however, the way education and skills are perceived to be linked to job and social success would play an important role in the "environment". I guess what I am trying to say is that it would be important to capture incentive systems from a high point perspective. Questions of return on education are crucial, but also the way that society as a whole values education. There are for instance interesting research on the link between education and marriage in the Arab World that show that wives are more educated than husbands in an increasing number of couples in the Arab world, while women labour participation is extremely low. I guess a research that would help capture this level of "incentive environment" would be of great value. I hope this helps. Keep us informed how it goes!

Good morning everbod. I am not a specialist in that matter, i am just a teacher and a public servant and i am studying every day semiology and my opinion is that the very important thing is the person itself: how to put the interests, energies, potential, values and conscious´functions of the persons at the center of every paradigm, methodologies, and so on.

YOU, Francisco are the most expert, because you see learning and teaching challenges every single day, we just research your challenges!. I believe if we can work all together, one day we will find answers. Education research can't be done in a lab, it must be done in a classroom, with real kids and real parents, because you know very well how parents can be!!!. Thanks for share your ideas!!!