Teachers' and administrators' perceptions of using collaborative learning as a professional development method in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Every nation faces the challenge of the continuous professional development of its teachers and educational administrators through structured in-service workshops and follow-up monitoring of promising teaching practices. The Saudi Arabia educational system in its elementary, middle and secondary schools, both public and private, has organized to assist educators in effectively responding to constantly changing workforce demands in an increasingly diverse and technological world. Classroom teaching practices that involve collaborative learning are an important innovation. Yet collaborative learning approaches can also play an important role in the very process of delivering and following up on professional development workshops. Data for this mixed-methods explanatory study were collected and analyzed in two phases. An initial survey was given to 62 educators and 24 administrators in both public and private elementary, middle and secondary schools, and the results were analyzed using Qualtrics web-based analysis tools. The results of this survey influenced the design of the second phase: structured interviews with three educators and three administrators from both public and private schools. These interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed, and then coded and analyzed with Dedoose web-based qualitative data analysis software. The findings of the quantitative phase focused on four major areas of concern: working in isolation, barriers to participation and collaboration in professional development, encouragement, and educational supervisors’ support. As a result, the second research phase, structured qualitative interviews, were centered around four themes: collaborative learning, working in groups, support and encouragement, and the supervision system. Cross-tabulation of the quantitative findings revealed large differences between male and female educators in terms of how often they visited other colleagues’ classroom, as well as the time available to engage in collaborative practices, with males observing colleagues more often and usually collaborating in scheduled meetings. Public and private school educators reported distinct patterns of how time was utilized, with private school participants collaborating in scheduled meetings, and public school participants engaging in brief collaborations between classes. Cross-tabulating the results of the qualitative interviews showed that in many identified themes and subthemes teachers differed dramatically from administrators in their perceptions, and that educators with more years of experience differed from participants in the early stages of their careers in the schools of Saudi Arabia.