Al-Amn Magazine

marked the Gulf educational landscape,” said Adul- Jabbar. “This process problematised Arab Gulf identity as it disrupted traditional educational practices and values. This was followed by reterritorialisation, characterised by the proliferation of American and Western institutions in the Arab Gulf countries. “Reterritorialisation represents the establishment of new cultural and educational structures, influenced by Western models. “The study observed the resulting epistemic and identity crises that arose from the dominance of the ‘study abroad’ model in Gulf higher education,” Adul- Jabbar said. He added that policy makers must develop strategies to balance the push towards international education with maintaining a sense of tradition and culture in higher education. Dr Annalisa Pavan, long-time academician and currently an independent researcher on higher education in Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states, told University World News: “The study gave me food for thought. “Although the theoretical framework of the study is interesting and potentially to the point, the discussion about scholarship programmes has some major weaknesses,” said Pavan who is the author of a 2020 study titled “Higher Education Abroad in the New Millennium: GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] Scholarship Programs as GCC culture and identities boosters. Saudi Arabia in the spotlight”. Pavan said it should be noted that there are “different approaches among GCC countries towards the study abroad vs study at home models”. The importance of bilingualism In agreement with with Pavan, Rizwan Ahmad, professor of linguistics at the College of Arts and Sciences at Qatar University, told University World News there was no “concrete evidence” of an identity crisis; “it is more of an anxiety than a real crisis”, he said. “It goes without saying that the Arab identity and its strongest symbol, the Arabic language, are critical to the identity of the Arab Gulf countries. “The internationalisation of education and the presence of a large number of non-nationals in the Arab Gulf states have together made English an important language for communication in the Gulf,” Ahmad said. “In order to make sure that the Arab kids growing up in the Gulf do not lose Arabic – in both the standard and dialect forms – the school education from K-12 must adopt rigorous, innovative, and interesting methods of teaching Arabic so that by the time they graduate and join university, their Arabic is already in place and they have a functional knowledge of English,” Ahmad said. Ahmad said bilingualism should be accepted “as a fact of life for the Gulf nationals” – in the same way as many Indians, Canadian Quebecois, and the Swiss are bilingual, without losing their language and identity. He said the biggest challenge is “outdated methods” of Arabic teaching. “Unless a revolution in Arabic teaching is brought about, kids will run away from Arabic and find English more attractive. An ideological change is also necessary, which is not to associate English with modernity, progress, and advancement. Isomorphism and neo-colonialism Nigel Healey, professor of international higher education and vice-president for global and community relations at the University of Limerick in Ireland, set out “two broad challenges” posed to the Arab region by the dominant position of Western academic culture. “The first is isomorphism, a phenomenon driven by world university rankings and international accreditation systems, which forces Arab universities to align their missions and activities on Western ‘norms’ to be seen as internationally competitive. “This includes using English as the medium for research publications to maximise citations and impact and teaching in English to attract international students and faculty,” Healey said. “The second challenge is more insidious and associated with isomorphism, but accelerated by the export of Western branch campuses and this is a form of ‘neo-colonialism’, where Western values, theories and literatures crowd out indigenous scholarship. universityworldnews.com