On April 20^th, An-Najah University President, Prof. Rami Hamdallah, inaugurated the Language Arts Pre-service Teacher Education Development Project (for 5-10 year old graders) which is implemented in cooperation with Al-Quds University, Hebron University and the Canterbury Christ Church University in Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom.

An-Najah University has already been funded by the Quality Improvement Fund of the World Bank. The project aims to build the competency of the faculty staff who teaches English and Arabic at the faculties of education in Palestine. It also seeks to develop the study plans and curriculum used in teaching so as to create a generation of qualified teachers who teach English and Arabic according to international standards.

In his speech, Prof. Hamdallah said An-Najah has been providing the Palestinian society with various kinds of support for many years and has gone through numerous developmental stages; thousands of students graduated who specialize in various study fields and joined the work market inside and outside Palestine. He added that the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University is one of the pioneering faculties that were operated when An-Najah was first transformed into a fully fledged university in 1977.

Since then, the Faculty has offered a variety of specializations to connect the University with the local society and cooperated with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to develop the competency of teachers through holding training courses and conferences. The new project is also a development-oriented one as it aims to develop and prepare the new generation of teachers and to provide the students with more specializations in the field of teaching methods including: Methods of Teaching English, Arabic Teaching Methods, Science Teaching Methods, Mathematics Teaching Methods, Social Sciences Teaching Methods and Technology Teaching Methods.

Prof. Hamdallah also pointed out that An-Najah offers five scholarships for top students who obtain 90% GPAs every year since the University is concerned with producing qualified teachers in accordance with the teacher development strategy that the Ministry of Education and Higher Education has adopted in 2008. Also, the languages project which aims to meet the needs of the Palestinian schools with respect to qualified teachers.

The President also explained that the Ministry of Education has recently developed a national strategy to prepare and develop teachers for the purpose of improving the quality of education in Palestine.  The project is launched through a funding by the World Bank which focuses on the necessity to prepare and develop teachers in the field of teaching languages. Through such development, teachers will have the experience and skills to benefit their students and society alike.

Prof. Hamdallah added: “This project comes as part of cooperation between An-Najah University, Al-Quds University, Hebron University and the Canterbury Christ Church University in England which is internationally recognized as one of the best universities in the field of teaching English. Missions will be adopted based on the international standards in the field of building the competency of the teaching staff at the faculties of education in Palestine in addition to restructuring the English language teaching programs in terms of number and content.”

Attendees to the inauguration included: Dr. Ali Zaidan, Chairman of the, Dr. Ashraf Al-Mimi, Director of the Quality Improvement Fund, Professor Muhammad Al-Subu’, President of Accreditation and Quality Assurance Commission at the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education, in addition to deans of the faculties of education at Al-Quds and Hebron universities and members of the teaching staff at the departments of English at the participating universities.

Dr. Fayez Aqel, Director of the project and Head of the English Department at An-Najah, spoke about the project, its importance, goals, and the anticipated outcomes.

The deans of the faculties of education at Al-Quds and Hebron universities spoke about the partnership between their universities and An-Najah and expressed their pleasure to be part of this promising project.

The Canterbury University’s delegation, meanwhile, spoke about improving the teacher development programs at the Palestinian universities including An-Najah. They also emphasized their desire to continue cooperation with Palestinian universities and described the restructuring of the university –based curricula and the building of the competency of the teaching staff who teach languages (mainly English and Arabic) at the different faculties of education in Palestine.