Arab Educational Information Network

Qatar is in the midst of a systemic education reform, Education For a New Era, steered by RAND's (a nonprofit research organization) analysis and report of Qatar's Educational system. Driven by a neoliberal agenda, the reform includes international curricula, curriculum standards, teacher licensure, and professional standards for school leaders and teachers produced by international educational consulting firms. These organizations offer policies and practices often limited to an instrumental discourse where technical rules control knowledge with the purpose of controlling the environment. Furthermore, the assessments on reform are limited to post hoc explanations of failure and success centering on test scores and other accountability measures eluding some of the more critical questions and issues important for reformers to consider. In this discussion, we draw upon several concepts from critical pedagogy to raise questions regarding Qatar's neoliberal educational reform and when appropriate, call upon our own experiences teaching and researching in Qatar. This dialogue is neither intended to provide solutions to problems of the Qatari Educational reform nor to point out successes or failures. Rather, it deliberately uses critical pedagogy concepts to raise questions that may have not been considered in order to provide reformers with insight and new knowledge that could prove useful for effective educational reform. (As provided)