تحسين نتائج طلبة الأردن في الاختبارات الدولية: دراسة تحليلية لمدى فعالية برامج تدريب المشرفين التربويين التي تقدمها وزارة التربية والتعليم
This study aimed at investigating the impact of the training programs that Jordan’s Ministry of Education offers to science supervisors to train science teachers before participating in the international tests such as (TIMSS). The purposes of participating in these tests are to raise teachers’ awareness of the significance of participating in such tests, learning about Jordan’s previous experiences in participating in these tests, learning about Jordanian students results on these tests and providing teachers an idea about the nature of the questions provided in the tests and the procedure of writing these questions in order to enable teachers to write similar questions for their students. These questions are characterized by requiring students to use higher thinking skills to answer them such as asking students to analyze statistical charts and figures to answer a set of questions. These types of questions are characterized by being different than those regularly offered to Jordanian students. In addition to that, the training programs aim at exposing teachers to the most recent instructional approaches in teaching science and especially those that involve students in their learning and push them to use their higher thinking skills (i.e., analysis and application) such as inquiry science teaching and learning strategies. To carry out this study, the researcher prepared suitable data collection instruments such as participants’ interviews with teachers and educational supervisors who participated in the training programs, document analysis of the training modules that were used to train educational supervisors and teachers. Eleven 11 male and female teachers and 9 educational supervisors participated in the study. The researcher solely relied on qualitative approach of research to guide the overall conduct of the study for its suitability to the nature of the study’s questions. Results showed the positive impacts of participating in such training programs which contribute to alter teachers’ attitudes towards science teaching approaches that are offered in the relevant educational literature, enhancing teachers’ skills to write questions that are similar to those provided in the international tests which contribute to enhancing students’ results on these tests. The study suggested continuing offering such training programs to teachers and supervisors and makes them more inclusive to include all science teachers in the field and encouraging the department of curriculum at the MoE to integrate similar questions in the national science curricula. (Author’s abstract)