The Scottish Parliament has recently commended the University of Glasgow in Scotland and the Islamic University in Palestine for their successful collaboration on a joint pilot project aimed at improving language education. The final report of the joint project, titled “Welcoming Languages: Including a Refugee Language in Scottish Education,” was recently published and presented to the Scottish Parliament. The project has received praise for its innovative approach to language education and its impact on the Scottish education system.
The Scottish Parliament’s recognition of the project’s success comes after a joint delegation from the Palestinian and Scottish universities visited the Scottish Parliament last November during the visit of Dr. Nazmi A. Al-Masri to Scotland. The joint delegation included Professor Alison Phipps and Dr. Giovanna Fassetta from the University of Glasgow (project directors), Dr. Nazmi Al-Masri (project director in Palestine), as well as Eng. Amani Al-Maqadma, Head of the Department of External Relations at the Islamic University, and Ms. Sahar Al-Shobaki, a researcher and one of the teachers in the project.
Project activities
The joint project aimed to identify the key language needs of Scottish teachers and create an online curriculum for teaching Arabic as a foreign language. The project team, which included Youssef Diab, Lubna Alhajjar, Ola Lubbad, Sahar Al-Shobaki, and Jihad Abu Jazar, designed lessons and delivered online instruction to teachers and educators in four Scottish schools. The online instruction focused on conversational skills in Arabic that emphasized the use of welcoming and useful communication in the school environment.
The project’s success lies in its ability to enable Scottish education staff to communicate in Arabic with Arab children and parents, making them feel welcome and integrated into the school community with their classmates and the school as a whole. The project has been praised for its innovative approach to language education and its impact on the Scottish education system.
The project was discussed on the Scottish Parliament’s agenda and was officially welcomed as a recognition of the success of this experimental project. The hope is that the project’s scope of education can be expanded to as many schools in Scotland as possible in the near future. The project’s success and recognition by the Scottish Parliament have laid the groundwork for further collaboration between the University of Glasgow and the Islamic University in Palestine, providing a promising future for language education in Scotland.