Pedagogical higher education is substantially charged with the mission of preparing cadres qualified to lead the Kingdom’s processes of broad development. Pedagogical education provides students with the necessary scientific knowledge, technical expertise, human interaction skills, and analytical abilities, to enable them handle materialistic instruments in a manner that explores their avenues, capabilities, and energies that affect technological, social, and cultural development processes.
This study shall evaluate the experience of pedagogical education in the Kingdom. This evaluation shall include the contents, approaches, and the expected results in order to develop the compliance level of pedagogical education to meet the requirements of both the educational and pedagogical processes; and to formulate an appropriate mechanism for the preparation of qualified graduates that satisfy job market and development process demands.
This study –in general- aims at developing applicable scientific methodologies for preparing pedagogical education outputs as stipulated by the stakeholders of the field of education and pedagogy that satisfy the levels required by human development within the context of the Kingdom’s comprehensive development process. In addition, this study should achieve a number of additional objectives, represented in the following:
1. Evaluating the existing position of pedagogical education in the establishments of higher education in order to identify the pertaining factors, strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and issues.
2. Evaluating real market demands of pedagogical education specialties, knowledge levels, and proficiency standings.
3. Establishing an adequate mechanism that synchronizes the outputs of pedagogical education to generate specialists fulfilling the requirements of the pedagogy job market; and developing another mechanism that guarantees the promotion of these specialists to the levels demanded by the comprehensive development process.
4. Identify the specific development needs of pedagogical education professionals for the coming 25 years.
The scope of this study and its aspects comprise the following:
1. Defining the mission, vision, and short-term and strategic objectives of pedagogical education.
2. Evaluating the effectiveness of the vocational specialized pedagogical education from aspects dealing with its involvement in education and pedagogic areas as well as providing the students with high levels of communication skills.
3. Forecasting job market demands of male and female teachers and educators, levels of demand and supply both now and in the future, and quantitative and qualitative requirements.
4. Investigating labor marker characteristics; defining its skills, professional, and training requirements; exploring local and international trends; estimating numbers for job opportunities; and discussing job marketing opportunities.
5. Studying and evaluating pedagogical education academic programs and determining their adequacy, feasibility, and satisfaction of profession practicing standards in connection to the quantitative and qualitative skills required by the job market.
6. Conducting studies for developing standards and criteria to evaluate the compliance of pedagogical higher education institutes to the required levels of professionalism from the following aspects: quality, versatility, adaptability to the advances in the engineering field and meeting market expectations, professional level of graduates, and compliance to the ever-developing trends of practicing the profession both now and in the future.
7. Conducting studies for selecting appropriate guidelines and standardized criteria for utilization in evaluating the internal efficiency of existing and planned pedagogical higher education institutes and units, including: admission capacity, admission policies considering student levels and job market demands, financing, curriculum and academic programs, majors planning and developing, academic advising, effectiveness of educational processes, educational technologies, quality of tutoring methods, training programs, engineering education graduate studies, engineering scientific research, management systems, organizational hierarchy, auditing, scientific and technical environment, infrastructure and support services, compensation and salary scales, currently applied incentive rates and the required levels of compensation, morale of human resources, and productivity of employees.
8. Evaluating the systems adopted by faculties and management teams for training and professional development, and the means to broaden resources for institutes and units under the pedagogical higher education.
9. Investigating opportunities for the application of information technology in management processes and databases linking among all fronts of pedagogical higher education organizations; developing a relevant relationship between these organizations and other establishments of the higher education system.
10. Conducting a study to seclude challenges and negativity of pedagogical higher education and defining their causes, in addition to determining the gap between internal efficiency and the compliance with job market needs, and the means to eliminate it.
11. Reviewing and analyzing international experiences in the field of pedagogical higher studies to extract the conclusions and determine what is applicable for the Kingdom’s case.
12. Evaluating success levels achieved by the application of business incubators, science parks, and professional guidance in the areas of promoting pedagogical education and satisfying requirements of development processes.
The study requires making available data and information pertaining to the existing pedagogical higher education system showing weaknesses, strengths and challenges that face this discipline of education and affect its quantitative and qualitative development.
These requirements should include:
1. Specifying in order of importance all the variables and parameters related to the pedagogical higher education; and characterizing job market professional skills requirements as well as academic programs and the generated outputs.
2. Collecting the required information from the primary and secondary sources.
3. Processing and analyzing the collected data to appraise the behavior and effect of the variables on pedagogical higher education; along with resulting projections of interest of this study.
4. Developing the means required the internal efficiency of the pedagogical higher education system.
5. Modeling the links between job market demands and the quality of pedagogical higher education; and defining the required parameters for planning and designing the appropriate programs and curricula.
6. Reviewing and evaluating admission policies, financing, curriculum and academic programs, majors planning and developing, academic advising, effectiveness of educational processes, educational technologies, quality of tutoring methods, training programs, management systems, etc.
7. Reviewing the various effective parameters affecting the current situation of pedagogical higher education to isolate causes for challenges, phenomena, directions, and compliance with development needs both for now and in the future.
8. Conducting evaluative analysis for the education process to realize the level of interaction with the requirements of the job market in light of standardized criteria and according to established guidelines in the field. That should also address weaknesses, strengths, challenges, opportunities, issues, and the Kingdom’s available strategic options and their applicability and feasibility.
9. Forecasting trends of pedagogical education indices for the future in connection to job market and development needs, with a survey of successful experiences in this field in other nations.
10. Proposing mechanisms and evaluation procedures that guarantee close coordination between demand and supply factors from both quantitative and qualitative points of view in addition to the features of academic and training programs, and to guarantee satisfying demands of the job market and the development processes.
11. Investigating the opportunities of private sector involvement in investing in the field of pedagogical vocational education through establishing specialized institutes; and exploring the means for supporting these institutes and their accreditation conditions.
12. Evaluating means and disciplines for scientific research in the pedagogical higher education fields; and enhancing its role in developing engineering education.
13. Studying the opportunities of benefiting from broadening the role of training in developing the human resources working in the fields of pedagogy; and proposing the most appropriate to enhance the role of pedagogical higher education in developing the human resources working in the field.
14. Defining evaluation criteria with reference to total quality standards for human and financial resources, management, policies, students, curricula, majors, training, incentives system, academic advising, and professional accreditation.
15. Proposing the organizational hierarchy and infrastructure necessary to guarantee the effectiveness of pedagogical higher education system.
16. Adapting a mechanism for evaluation, professional accreditation, and academic supervision.
17. Extracting scientific and subjective conclusions; presenting applicable recommendations, and presenting the report.
This study should present a comprehensive report that includes the following:
1. An executive summary of the study.
2. A documentation of all reference information included in the study.
3. The conclusions of studies and analyses concerning the current position o f pedagogical higher education, the local-international comparative studies, current and future developments, forecasts, and the relationship between pedagogical education from one side and development planning and community problems from the other.
4. Specifying the obstacles and difficulties that hinder the processes of pedagogical education.
5. Specifying job market quantitative and qualitative requirements of specialties from pedagogical education for both the short and long terms.
6. Proposing the mechanisms and plans necessary to synchronize the outputs of pedagogical education to the requirements of job market; and to promote the quality levels of these outputs to the levels required.
7. A comprehensive analysis of the results of the study for the purpose of figuring out the conclusions and the most appropriate options for the category of pedagogical education within the higher education system.
8. Means to upgrade the internal and external efficacy of the engineering higher education system and its compliance to development needs.
9. Proposals of various scenarios required to develop pedagogical higher education establishments in the Kingdom with specific reviews of important issues for discussion according to levels of importance.
10. Strategic alternatives designed to achieve the objectives and purposes of the long-term higher education plan, their feasibility, and their applicability in connection to pedagogical higher education.
11. Mechanisms for comprehensive development of pedagogical higher education systems and proposing means for enhancing the level and quality for pedagogical higher education as well as for other objectives of this study.
12. Determining the needed methods of execution, budgets, temporal plan, execution responsibilities, training requirements, changing demands, and other technical parameters that affect the performance of the admission and capacity operation.
13. Specifying a system for monitoring, control, benchmarking, and standardized indices.
