(2015). The Demand For, and Impact Of, Youth Internships: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Yemen. Policy Research Working Paper 7463. World Bank
This paper evaluates a youth internship program in the Republic of Yemen that provided firms with a 50 percent subsidy to hire recent graduates of universities and vocational schools. The first round of the program took place in 2014 and required both firms and youth to apply for the program. The paper examines the demand for such a program, and finds that in the context of an economy facing substantial political and economic uncertainty, it appears there is an oversupply of graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, and a relative undersupply of graduates in marketing and business. Conditional on the types of graduates firms were looking to hire as interns, applicants were then randomly chosen for the program. Receiving an internship resulted in an almost doubling of work experience in 2014, and a 73 percent increase in income during this period compared with the control group. A short-term follow-up survey conducted just as civil conflict was breaking out shows… [PDF]
(2013). Promoting Gender Parity in Basic Education: Lessons from a Technical Cooperation Project in Yemen. International Review of Education, v59 n1 p47-66 Jun
Many girls are not sent to school in Yemen, despite basic education being free as well as compulsory for all children aged 6-15. Aiming to improve girls' enrollment by increasing parental and community involvement, the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) offered a technical cooperation project in June 2005 called Broadening Regional Initiative for Developing Girls' Education (BRIDGE). Phase 1 of this project ran for three and a half years, piloting a participatory school management model supported by school grants in six districts of the Taiz Governorate in the Southwest of Yemen. To find out how successful this approach has been in a traditional society, the authors of this paper analysed the gender parity index (GPI) of the project's pilot schools. Based on data collected at three points in time (in the initial and final years of the project, and two years after the project's end), their findings suggest that interventions in school management which strongly emphasise… [Direct]
(2013). Dancing on the Heads of Snakes: An Intertextual Analysis of Political Metaphor in Yemen. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Oklahoma State University
This dissertation examines the use and linguistic behavior of the "al-raqs ala ru'oos al-tha'abeen" "dancing on the heads of snakes" metaphor and metaphors about unity in pro-government and anti-government discourse in Yemen. It adopts an intertextual, discourse-based approach that, following Oakley and Coulson (2008), integrates linguistic, cultural, and situational knowledge, along with the concept of "mental spaces," in the analysis of the metaphors. "Al-raqs ala ru'oos al-thabeen" metaphor has witnessed remarkable linguistic extensions in pro-government and anti-government discourse. These include the shifts from "raqs" "dancing" to "wuqoof" "standing," "sayr" "walking" and "kitabah" writing, and the recruitment of lexical items from the domain of dancing, such as "lahn" "melody," "tubool" "drums," masrah "stage," raqis,… [Direct]
(2016). Regime Changes and Uprisings in the Middle East and Parts of North Africa: Some Lessons to Be Learnt. Journal of Education and Practice, v7 n2 p107-117
The event leading to the death of Mohammed Bouzazi in Tunisia in 2009 brought to light the dehumanized conditions which an average Tunis had been subjected to at the hands of the Tunisian government. The death of Bouzazi lead to street protests and demonstrations by thousands of demonstrators, calling for political reforms, free speech, improved conditions of living, etc, in Tunisia. As a result of this, the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali came to an end. With this success, citizens of other neighbouring countries in North Africa that had similar problems went to the streets asking for reform changes in their countries. These countries include Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, etc. What later on followed is now history. Therefore, in this work, an overview of the events that led to the uprisings in the affected countries would be looked into. The aftermaths of these uprisings are no doubt what one should ponder upon. This is with a view to analysing the lessons to be learnt from… [PDF]
(2015). Investigating the Reading Practices of EFL Yemeni Students Using the Learning by Design Framework. TESOL Journal, v6 n3 p418-446 Sep
This article investigates the reading practices of 45 EFL Yemeni students using the "learning by design" framework. The framework organizes the teaching and learning of literacy into four processes: experiencing, conceptualising, analysing, and applying. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect data on a sample of students studying English as a foreign language at a university in Yemen. The researchers collected quantitative data through a questionnaire and gathered qualitative data using semistructured interviews guided by the research objectives. The findings reveal that the use of reading practices by this group of students was underdeveloped in all four processes. Findings also reveal that vocabulary difficulties, complex sentence structures, and inability to use reading strategies are some of the serious challenges faced by Yemeni students when reading in English. These findings suggest that the reading practices and reading abilities of Yemeni… [Direct]
(2016). Blended Learning Approach to Develop the Teachers' TPACK. Contemporary Educational Technology, v7 n3 p264-276
A theoretical framework has emerged recently to guide research in the teachers' use of ICT and it is the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). Early research indicates that Blended learning is increasingly being adopted at all levels of educational system. It is considered as a way to foster engaging in interactive learning experiences. The purpose of this article was to determine the levels of ICT knowledge on e-course design through blended learning approach among science teachers of secondary schools in Yemen. The study was conducted on the sample of 60 science teacher trainees in Ibb city. The ICT knowledge scale was used based on TPACK. To analyze the data t-test was used. The findings in this study indicated that TPACK has provided a valuable tool for assessing teacher knowledge in the area of technology integration, the teachers' ICT knowledge was above average in two groups, and there is significant difference between experimental and control groups on ICT… [PDF]
(2012). Level of Students' Achievement in Mathematics at the End of Elementary Education in Yemen. Online Submission, US-China Education Review A 6 p588-593
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the level of student's achievement in mathematics in Yemen. This study use a sample of 200 male students and 200 female students, chosen from eight government schools on the basis of diversified sampling techniques. A mathematics test which composed of seventy five items that covered geometrical arithmetical concepts, (national, integers and rational) numbers groups, and it is four basic arithmetical operations as well as the equations, and inequalities that were administered to the selected students. The result showed that 35% of the students answered correctly 50% or more items of the test, while 80% of the students made errors in the arithmetic problems, inequalities, equations solutions, division and addition of decimal fractions and Pythagorean Theorem applications. Result also showed that females tend to achieve better results in mathematics than males do. The most common errors made by the students were found to be the basic… [PDF]
(2015). Curriculum Design Practices of a Vocational Community College in a Developing Context: Challenges and Needs. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, v39 n12 p1137-1152
Aligning vocational curricula with the labor market needs is a common reported challenge in developing countries. Little is known, however, about how vocational community colleges in such contexts regularly review and redesign their curricula to ensure the quality and relevance of their programs. From a curriculum design (CD) perspective, this case study investigated how the management and teachers at a community college in Yemen approached CD both as a blueprint and as a process. It also explored the CD challenges and needs of the study departments. Participants were 199 students, 46 alumni, 45 teachers, and 13 administrators. Data were collected via interviews, questionnaires, and curriculum documents. The curriculum blueprints (e.g., program and course descriptions) were found to be either missing or lacking detail and clarity, and the CD process was mostly content-driven, intuitive, highly individual, and centered around course modifications. Lack of resources, teacher… [Direct]
(2017). Places of Civic Belonging among Transnational Youth. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University
This dissertation study investigated how immigrant youth attending two different high schools for late-arrival immigrants in New York City constructed civic belonging by attending to their everyday enactments of citizenship across the contexts of school, neighborhood and home. Civic belonging refers to the embodied social practices by which immigrant youth cultivate social trust and construct an emotional connection to particular communities and places. In conducting this research, I utilized a critical visual research methodology, as well as interviews and focus groups. Data was collected from 10 immigrant youth from Guinea, the Gambia, Senegal, Yemen, Bangladesh and the Dominican Republic. My findings were that participants constructed civic belonging in school by creating social trust that bridged cultural, religious, linguistic, and ethnic differences. In their neighborhoods, their civic belonging was restricted by a politics of belonging that created distrust and misrecognition… [Direct]
(2015). EFL Arab Learners' Peer Revision of Writing in a Facebook Group: Contributions to Written Texts and Sense of Online Community. English Language Teaching, v8 n12 p11-26
This qualitative study investigated peer writing revision among English as foreign language (EFL) Arab students in a Facebook group. Specifically, it aimed to identify the text revisions made by the learners and to determine their contributions to the learners' written texts and sense of online community outside the college classroom context. Being framed within the situated learning approach (Wenger, 1998), the current study was carried out among 14 EFL Arab university learners from Yemen, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, Sudan and Egypt. A purposeful sampling was performed to achieve a heterogeneous group of EFL learners. A qualitative content analysis of the learners' written paragraphs (original and revised drafts), online interactional exchanges and responses to the post-revision reflection discussions was employed in this study. The findings showed that addition, substitution, deletion, permutation, consolidation, and distribution were identified as the main revision operations made by… [PDF]
(2014). Digital Spring? New Media and New Politics on the Campus. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, v35 n2 p249-265
Whilst the dynamics informing processes have taken time to become clear, civic resistance initiated by young people using new media began in Egypt in 2010 against the Mubarak regime, soon widened to Tunisia, Yemen and Libya. Known as the "Arab Spring", this phenomenon re-ignited discussion about the political role of digital space and its democratic potential. While parallels between authoritarian regimes and universities and educational institutions might seem overdrawn to some readers, I suggest there is value in considering the "Digital Spring" (apropos the "Arab Spring") as a metaphor to suggest the possibility that similar processes are taking place in schools and universities. This invites discussion about the political significance of digital space and its democratic potential in those institutions. To assess how some young people engage in digitally mediated politics within schools and universities, I identify five propositions which amalgamate… [Direct]
(2012). Differential Predictive Validity of High School GPA and College Entrance Test Scores for University Students in Yemen. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh
High school grade point average and college entrance test scores are two admission criteria that are currently used by most colleges in Yemen to select their prospective students. Given their widespread use, it is important to investigate their predictive validity to ensure the accuracy of the admission decisions in these institutions. This study was conducted to investigate the predictive validity of both high school GPA and college entrance test scores used as predictors in the admission process to Yemeni colleges. In addition, the differential predictive validity of high school GPA and college entrance test scores was examined across gender and high school location. The relationship between students' persistence in the four years of college and the predictor variables, high school GPA and college entrance test scores, was studied as well. College entrance test scores were examined for their reliability in order to evaluate any potential influence of measurement error on the… [Direct]
(2016). Teacher Perceptions towards ICT Integration: Professional Development through Blended Learning. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, v15 p561-575
Integrating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) into teaching and learning is a growing area that has attracted many educators' attention in recent years. Teachers need to be involved in collaborative projects and development of intervention change strategies, which include teaching partnerships with ICT as a tool. Teacher perceptions are a major predictor of the use of new technologies in instructional settings. Early studies have indicated that blended learning can be as successful as either online or face-to-face instruction, particularly in teacher preparation programs. Blended learning can lead to improved training, increased access and flexibility, and better cost-effectiveness. The objective of this paper is to analyse in-service science teacher perceptions towards integrating ICT in instructional design by training them using the blended learning approach. The present study is quasi-experimental in nature wherein a pre-test/post-test design was employed. The study… [PDF]
(2013). Improving the Quality of Basic Education for the Future Youth of Yemen Post Arab Spring. Global Economy & Development. Working Paper 59. Brookings Institution
This paper looks at the issue of the quality of education in Yemen. It uses micro-data from TIMSS and from surveys conducted in underserved rural areas, as well as macro-level policy information from the System Assessment for Better Education Results (SABER) database. The analysis indicates that the availability of teachers and resources at schools, the monitoring and supervision of schools and parental involvement in schooling are important factors for better learning outcomes and avoiding trade-offs between expansion of enrollment and quality of learning. The paper suggests three types of reforms that can be carried out in the short run. First, it is necessary to systematically monitor teachers' actual deployment and attendance in order to link the information with salary management and incentives. Second, there is a need to refine and scale up the existing implementation and monitoring mechanism for school grants to reward schools and communities that improve access for… [Direct]
(2011). Child Protection Assessment in Humanitarian Emergencies: Case Studies from Georgia, Gaza, Haiti and Yemen. Child Abuse & Neglect: The International Journal, v35 n12 p1045-1052 Dec
Objectives: The paper reviews the experiences of conducting child protection assessments across four humanitarian emergencies where violence and insecurity, directly or indirectly, posed a major threat to children. We seek to identify common themes emerging from these experiences and propose ways to guide the planning and implementation of assessments that effectively identify, and suggest means of response to, threats to children's rights and well-being in emergency settings. Methods: In the context of a field evaluation of an inter-agency resource kit, crisis settings where an inter-agency assessment of child protection had been considered in the period August 2008 to July 2010 were identified. Email correspondence, telephone-based structured interviews and documentary review collated information from child protection coordinating agencies from a total of twenty sites, the minority of which had proceeded to complete an assessment. This paper presents case studies of the experience… [Direct]