السياسات التعليمية الضابطة لبرامج التدريب المهني عن بعد للمعلمين والمعلمات بمدارس التعليم العام المقدمة من الجامعات بالمملكة العربية السعودية
This descriptive research provides a comprehensive conception of the educational policies governing public schools’ teachers online professional development programs provided by public universities in Saudi Arabia. Despite the existence of an official set of bylaws related to distance education and its rules of implementation, they were designed exclusively to govern online higher education programs, that lately has witnessed a greatly growing on both supply and demand. This paper did a comprehensive review of international experiences and found that almost all countries have designed their own set of standards covering some main key areas, and most of these set of regulations assigned to an independent governing body to assure its implementation and maintain it sustainability. In the light of these findings, seven areas have been identified with twelve standards, of which needs to be covered in any future efforts to revise the current official bylaws to extend the bylaws coverage to a wider levels and types of online programs, including teachers’ professional development programs. The research also provides some recommendations that emphasize the need for an execution plan with clear set of procedures that will lead to a more complete framework for a successful national online program. (Published abstract)