شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

This report shares the main results of the second study in the mapping the terrain research started in 2018. It presents an exploration of values and competencies in communities of interest, namely Muslim-majority societies with focus on students in secondary schools and higher education as well as their teachers and university instructors (see map of participating countries in appendix c). Nearly 20,000 participants took part in the paper and pencil surveys. The participants were recruited based on permissions and approvals of ministries of education in some locations and directly from private school principals and supervisors in others. Convenience sampling was used based on granted access to schools and Muslim-majority communities and the districts where they may reside. The goals of the study were multiple and included expanding the research agenda in societies of interest to, in Said’s (2003) words, widen the discussion based on empirical and field-based results. The aim was also to highlight the importance of human development as one of the goals for reform of education. A human development framework was used, based on theoretical underpinning and previous research investigating pathways for prosperous and highly conscious states of existence. Drawing from various disciplines and adopting a multidisciplinary approach to research, the study also identifies a set of values and competencies necessary for transformation as well as those that may be critical for transition from one state of being to another. Some of these values and competencies—for example, empathy and its importance in predicting involvement in the community and the ability to forgive were included in the 2018-2019 study and showed promise in the results. It is suggested, based on a thorough review of the literature, that values in this study may be grouped into three sets of competencies identified as critical for transformation: 1) open- mindedness (adaptability and ability to think critically). 2) Responsibility (as part of a social responsibility orientation). 3) A sense of a collaborative collective (taking the collective to a collaborative state). Those three areas require the progression of the individual and the collective on the developmental spectrum, starting from the basic egocentric state, to the ethnocentric, to the worldly, including a worldview of tawhid and involving competencies such as meaning making, perceived hope, problem-solving, self-regulation, and a sense of belonging. This study sampled mostly youth who are younger than 18 (56%), followed by those ages 18–24 (28%) across countries. The participating sample is also highly educated among the adults, with most schoolteachers (72%) holding a bachelor’s or master's degree and most university instructors (75%) holding master›s or doctoral degrees. The structural equation models (SEM) for each category reveal interesting prediction pathways that tell the story of the general populations in one model. They also present the stories of students and educators separately with focus on needed traits to empower the various groups. The hypothesized sems were also designed based on the results of the 2018–2019 study and a thorough literature review on possible links between the constructs as they impact youth and adults. The results suggest the following: 1) measure reliabilities were high, suggesting well performing translations and adaptation of the scales in the target Muslim-majority societies. 2) Most mediation effects among constructs in any specific model were partial. For example, in the instructor’s model, both emotion regulation and self-regulation partially mediated the effects of meaning making and gratitude on the outcome variables teacher self-efficacy and life satisfaction. 3) In the general model, the collectivistic orientation partially mediated the effects of empathy and meaning making on gratitude. The analysis also suggested that forgiveness was not predicted as an outcome by our general and student models as we had predicted. 4) Gratitude was predicted by empathy, meaning making, and collectivistic orientation in the general model. On the other hand, gratitude positively predicted instructors’ self-efficacy and life satisfaction. 5) Empathy in the student model was positively predicted by problem-solving, emotion regulation, and sense of belonging. 6) Participants were higher on the collective orientation than the individualistic orientation. 7) There were no significant differences in the constructs based on demographic variables such as gender and age. The study results have implications for researchers, educators, and policy makers alike. Recommendations regarding teaching skills and content related to open-mindedness, responsibility (whether personal or social), and a sense of collective are all important to address as part of a larger curriculum addressing the human development aspects of students’ lives whether in secondary or higher education. Each group with its constructs gives further support for the need to intentionally emphasize competencies such as problem-solving, self-regulation, and gratitude, to name a few. The study results also suggest that forgiveness education should be taught and modeled even more in the curriculum in secondary and higher education settings as it does not come intuitively. Of special interest here is the result on the individualistic versus collectivistic measure examined among all target groups. The results suggest (and after factor analysis) that the participants in all groups and all countries tended toward collective rather than individualistic orientations, with the secondary students and teachers having slightly higher scores than the university students and instructors. This confirms the assumption that non-western societies (at least in our sample) are more collective. Further research is needed to understand this cultural construct and ways it may be expressed or promoted as a collaborative model of a collective. The study also has limitations because the sampling of the groups was not random in most of the locations, meaning that researchers targeted Muslim-majority schools and universities and focused on locations where access was granted. The study also is not weighted, and the samples were not equal in all locations. For example, 15% of the data came from India, followed by 11%, Bosnia, and the smallest sample was from the United States, at 1% of the sample. It is also apparent that despite the rigor used in the translation of the surveys to more than 10 languages and multiple rounds of back translations, a few did not perform well. Finally, most countries were able to wrap up the data collection in March 2020 before the initial lockdowns due to the pandemic. Only a few locations such as the United States and Malaysia carried through data collection in May and June. Whether the pandemic impacted the results and participants' views on these life-related skills Is yet to be discovered. A follow-up study investigating that question and others stemming from the results is needed. (Publisher's Abstract)