شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

The purpose of this report and the supporting research is to examine the status of professional development priorities, policies, and practices in Ras Al Khaimah higher education institutions and to identify areas of strength and improvement. Three different institutions participated in the project, and 100 academic faculty and administrative staff were interviewed. The purpose of the interviews was to determine staff’s professional development needs and understanding of policies and practices and to raise their awareness of the nature of continuous learning for an academic professional. The three top training priorities as identified by academic faculty were 1) research, 2) teaching and learning, and 3) subject specialization followed by career development, leadership skills, and language training. Worth noting is that there was a difference among top priorities of faculty at the three institutions. For the administrative staff, there was also a slight difference regarding professional development priorities. Overall, the three chief priorities of administrative staff were 1) specific job related training, 2) leadership skills, and 3) career development-followed by higher education management and language training. An analysis of the existing professional development policies and practices reveals that, while Ras Al Khaimah institutions believe in the importance of supporting further training among both academic and administrative staff, their policies are, in general, underdeveloped and underperforming. Furthermore, there is no emirate-level governmental or non-governmental body that addresses these institutions’ professional development needs. There are specific professional training areas that can be customized according to disciplinary focus (i.e., health, engineering, business, architecture), but there are also important generic areas such as teaching/learning processes, leadership skills, research design, and research analysis in which Ras Al Khaimah institutions could collaborate in a mutually beneficial and cost-effective manner. Ras Al Khaimah’s higher education institutions need to explore opportunities for sharing good practices in professional development and to cooperate on providing some generic professional training for staff of all institutions. The benefits of exchanging ideas, sharing external professional development training experts, and establishing networks for ongoing training and policy development have not been realized in Ras Al Khaimah. (Published abstract)