Million Plus

Teams from the Faculty of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University have been awarded almost £900,000 (€890,000 and US$300,000) in funding to lead two high profile projects to develop, strengthen and sustain the teaching quality and teaching community in Palestine.

Improving teaching quality in Palestine has been a focus for many organisations across the world for nearly a decade, but despite significant improvements, the performance level of Palestinian school children remains below the international average.

The first project, Raising the Quality of Teacher Education Programmes in Palestine through Technology Enhanced Learning Teaching and Assessment , will be undertaken over the next three years. It aims to develop innovative primary education degree programmes in three Palestinian universities that allow students to follow specialist pathways in teaching, including: diversity, inclusion and special education needs or technology enhanced learning teaching and assessment.

It will also focus on nurturing skills in higher education teaching methods and developing practice-based research for academic staff in the Palestinian universities.
Canterbury Christ Church University is the lead partner for this project working with Faculties of Education at Al-Azhar University Gaza, Birzeit University, Hebron University in Palestine, Fontys University, Netherlands and University of Eastern Finland, Finland.

The second project, which has received US$300,000 of funding from the World Bank, is for the expansion of the previous Teacher Education Improvement Projects (TEIP) undertaken in Palestine between 2012 and 2015. The initial projects aimed to enhance the teaching practice of undergraduate degree programmes through staff development and develop training modules to upgrade the teaching competences of practicing teachers. The success of the project, and the impact it has had over the past three years, has led to the project being expanded nationally with three additional universities involved in teacher education.

TEIP will continue to enhance the quality of both pre-service and in-service teacher training through wide-ranging programmes of curriculum renewal and skills development and mentor training to transform the quality and effectiveness of the entire teacher education system in Palestine.