A critical analysis of education policy in turbulent times: A comparative study

This study is a qualitative investigation of education policies and decision making during COVID-19 pandemic in five Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) countries: Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Qatar. It aims at scrutinizing how these countries responded to the education disruption...

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Autores principales: Arar, Khalid, Zohri, Abdel-Aziz, Alhouti, Ibrahim, Chaaban, Youmen, Sawalhi, Rania, Salha, Soheil
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10113911/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/17577438231168965
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author Arar, Khalid
Zohri, Abdel-Aziz
Zohri, Abdel-Aziz
Alhouti, Ibrahim
Chaaban, Youmen
Sawalhi, Rania
Salha, Soheil
author_facet Arar, Khalid
Zohri, Abdel-Aziz
Zohri, Abdel-Aziz
Alhouti, Ibrahim
Chaaban, Youmen
Sawalhi, Rania
Salha, Soheil
author_sort Arar, Khalid
collection PubMed
description This study is a qualitative investigation of education policies and decision making during COVID-19 pandemic in five Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) countries: Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Qatar. It aims at scrutinizing how these countries responded to the education disruption caused by the pandemic between February 2020 and July 2021 and how they managed the resulting turbulence. We also investigate the extent to which these decisions were equitable and innovative. Data were collected from Ministerial notes, media content, and international organizations reports about the situation of education in the region. Walt and Gilson’s (1994) policy analysis triangle and the Cynefin framework (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003) guided the objectives and the analysis of the data. Findings revealed that these countries muddled through the education policy at the beginning of the pandemic, centralized decision making, and faced difficulties to implement online and distance learning. In the second phase, most of these countries tried to save education, but were halted by structural challenges. Some differences were witnessed among these countries in how they have dealt with the evolving crisis. However, some similarities have also been noticed at the levels of context, process and actors. The decisions taken often lacked innovation and led to less equitable outcomes. The discussion of the findings has some implications for education policy and education management in turbulent times in the MENA region.
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spelling pubmed-101139112023-04-24 A critical analysis of education policy in turbulent times: A comparative study Arar, Khalid Zohri, Abdel-Aziz Zohri, Abdel-Aziz Alhouti, Ibrahim Chaaban, Youmen Sawalhi, Rania Salha, Soheil Power and Education Original Article This study is a qualitative investigation of education policies and decision making during COVID-19 pandemic in five Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA) countries: Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Qatar. It aims at scrutinizing how these countries responded to the education disruption caused by the pandemic between February 2020 and July 2021 and how they managed the resulting turbulence. We also investigate the extent to which these decisions were equitable and innovative. Data were collected from Ministerial notes, media content, and international organizations reports about the situation of education in the region. Walt and Gilson’s (1994) policy analysis triangle and the Cynefin framework (Kurtz & Snowden, 2003) guided the objectives and the analysis of the data. Findings revealed that these countries muddled through the education policy at the beginning of the pandemic, centralized decision making, and faced difficulties to implement online and distance learning. In the second phase, most of these countries tried to save education, but were halted by structural challenges. Some differences were witnessed among these countries in how they have dealt with the evolving crisis. However, some similarities have also been noticed at the levels of context, process and actors. The decisions taken often lacked innovation and led to less equitable outcomes. The discussion of the findings has some implications for education policy and education management in turbulent times in the MENA region. SAGE Publications 2023-04-18 /pmc/articles/PMC10113911/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/17577438231168965 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Original Article
Arar, Khalid
Zohri, Abdel-Aziz
Zohri, Abdel-Aziz
Alhouti, Ibrahim
Chaaban, Youmen
Sawalhi, Rania
Salha, Soheil
A critical analysis of education policy in turbulent times: A comparative study
title A critical analysis of education policy in turbulent times: A comparative study
title_full A critical analysis of education policy in turbulent times: A comparative study
title_fullStr A critical analysis of education policy in turbulent times: A comparative study
title_full_unstemmed A critical analysis of education policy in turbulent times: A comparative study
title_short A critical analysis of education policy in turbulent times: A comparative study
title_sort critical analysis of education policy in turbulent times: a comparative study
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10113911/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/17577438231168965
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