The events of the 1st phase of blended professional development program for the science and math teachers “Tamkeen” was launched the day before yesterday in a number of regions across the Kingdom. The events are being held in partnership with the Ministry of Education where they will be implemented by the directorates of education in a number of regions and governorates. The program aims to develop the teaching skills of the science and math teachers where the learner is the center of the teaching and learning process to improve the learning outcomes and enable the student to understand math and science in-depth. The program consists of 33 training toolkits with a total of 2,640 hours of professional development in line with the blended trend.
The implementation of this program comes in line with the royal directives to start implementing the National Transformation program (NTP)2020 which includes the Ministry of Education strategic goals such as “ improving the ways of attracting, qualifying and training teachers” through implementing a range of programs and projects like “ Tamkeen” project.
T4edu has revealed that each training toolkit includes 80 training hours developed in collaboration with Pearson, the international education company, to include (direct training, e training, self-study, class application projects). The toolkits were divided to include professional development for the science and math teachers who teach grades (1-3), grades (4-6), grades (7-9) and grades (10-12). The science toolkits of grades 10-12 will be divided into specialized toolkits for the teachers of biology, chemistry, physics and geology. The program is presented in three levels: foundational, intermediate and advanced. It also implements the flipped learning concept and observes the traits of adults in addition to the features of the on-job effective professional development.
It is noteworthy that the Blended Professional Development Program for the science and math teachers consists of three levels: foundational, intermediate and advanced where each is presented over 6 weeks including 10 days of direct training. It also includes two projects of class application through the 3rd and 5th week of the project in addition to 10-15 online educational modules that focus on the teaching learning methods or on the content topics.
The Blended Professional Development Program aims to support teachers in terms of building learner-centered environments along with providing teachers with effective teaching strategies for teaching the Saudi curriculum in a more effective way and utilizing available resources and teachers’ guides.
The importance of this program is apparent through promoting the areas of teaching math and science where it goes in line with the Saudi Vision 2030.
The program blends the direct (face-to-face) training with the e- learning which makes it a realistic example of blended learning in addition to the educational flexibility of the program design.
Tamkeen program website can be accessed for more details and for more educational videos, e-educational modules and further queries through this link: http://tamkeen.t4edu.com
It is noteworthy that the goal of the program is to improve the general level of teaching science and math across the Kingdom in a noticeable manner. It also aims to promote the students’ performance as part of the STEM initiative which is meant to develop teaching science, technology, engineering and math as one of the programs and projects of the national strategy to develop public education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which was achieved by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Public Education Development Project, being currently implemented by Tatweer Company for Educational Services in collaboration with the Ministry of Education.
