Literature Review
The last decade has brought multiple opportunities and benefits for the UAE. The main factor contributing to the growth of the state’s economy was the oil price that has facilitated some rapid increase in assets available for the development of the country. At the same time, the strong dependency on the oil prices is not a positive characteristic of the UAE economy. The active tendency towards diversification has been initiated by the country leaders.
Its main objective is to develop other sources of domestic income for the UAE by means of building up diverse industries. The improvement in the national education system is the major driver of the economic diversification in the state. That is why strengthening and upgrading the current approaches to teaching is an issue of extreme importance in the UAE. In order to elaborate on the role of education in the economic diversification in the country, the approaches to the education improvement, and the trend of building a stronger domestic educational system, five credible sources were chosen.
This paper presents the review of the selected body of literature that is organized in a prismatic manner moving from the sources covering the issue in a more global reference to those that focus on its particular subjects and aspects.
Namely, the article by Knight will represent the review of the bigger picture and the education improvement in the Gulf Region; further, the book by Spraggon and Bodolica focuses on the problems faced individually by the UAE, and the article by Raven will overview the situation within the UAE’s workforce that is extremely fragmented due to the high rates of work-related migration. Finally, the two sources focusing on the improvements in the particular aspects of education in the UAE will be reviewed – the article by Al-Darmaki, Hassane, Ahammed, and Abdullah that addressed the education counseling improvement, and the work by Britto, Yoshikawa, and Boller, who discuss the early childhood education in the UAE.
In his article, Knight (2011) explores the distractions that currently persist in the field of education in the Middle East. In particular, how the domestic education improvement strategies are slowed down and frustrated by such influences as the global branding and competitiveness. Due to the distractions posed by the need to compete facilitated by the process of globalization, many countries begin to disregard their unique challenges and problems and instead start to target needless issues that create a more attractive yet shallow façade for their countries images (Knight, 2011).
The author explores a broad perspective comparing the approach to the education improvement and the creation of what is called “education hubs” in six different countries (Knight, 2011). The six education hubs overviewed by the author include Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE, each of whom are at different stages of development of their hubs. Knight also points out that strategic interests that drive the creation of the educational hubs; they are the recruitment of the foreign high-performing educators, researchers, and students.
Due to the economic, political, social, and cultural peculiarities, their models of education hubs, however, effective and practical, are very individual and difficult to replicate in the other regions and countries. According to Knight (2011), the main issue faced by the UAE in its hopes of becoming an education hub is the fragmented approach practiced differently in each emirate and the lack of a common plan.
The author concludes that becoming an education hub can be more than a brand. However, there is still a challenge of coordination of the knowledge-based economy with the industry and the introduction of innovation into the cycle as both a resource and an outcome for a purpose of building a viable and competitive economy.
The Areas of Focus for the UAE
The book by Spraggon and Bodolica (2014) presents a detailed review of all the areas in the UAE that require development in order to diversify the country’s economy and make it stronger and more competitive on the local, regional, and global levels. The authors point out that over the last decade the UAE has become much more active as an international player and has successfully integrated into the globalization. At the same time, the globalization has produced its own powerful impact on the country making it more compatible and encouraging the UAE to pursue closer interactions with the other countries for a purpose of economic and policies partnership. In the globalizing world, the collaboration and the exchange of resources are the key factors driving the progress.
Besides, the fact that all of the spheres of life in a modern country are tightly intertwined makes education a key element of the future progress in such spheres as health, business, economy, science, to name a few. That way, the development of education represents a way to perform an upstream approach to multiple potential challenges of the future and the contemporary issues. The practicality of the source is in its reliance on the actual scenarios from the past experiences of the country and its successful and unsuccessful attempts to develop various areas.
Emiratization of the Education Sector in the UAE
In his article, Raven (2011) focuses on one of the most well-known issues in the UAE – the workforce imbalance that is recognized as a logical outcome of the rapid development of the country and the need for additional resources as it has become one of the most influential economies in the world within a very short period of time. Due to the high level of fragmentation in the workforce, the operations lose a part of their efficiency. The author states that currently, the local population is a minority in almost any workplace in the country (Raven, 2011). The author seeks an answer to the question how the domestic tertiary education system could be seen as a contributor to this tendency (Raven, 2011).
The method of data collection used by the author is the review of the literature (secondary research articles namely) that explores the issues of employment in the UAE, hiring and selection policies, and the factors that make the employers prefer the expatriate workers and migrant labor to the services of the local population. In turn, the presence of a large number of foreigners on the territory of the country and in all of its workplaces makes the local culture accept and adjust to the multicultural influences.
As a result, this tendency leads to the modernization of the domestic education system and its alteration for a purpose to address the challenges and needs of a multinational society. The author discusses an opinion that the weaknesses in the domestic education slow down the country’s economic development, hence, the need for Emiratization.
Apart from cultural considerations, the UEA modernized education is starting to adopt a learner-centered approach that concentrates on the links between the classroom and real life experiences and connecting the theoretical knowledge gained in schools to the skills and abilities that the graduates would be valued for when they begin to pursue employment. That way, the main challenge of making the provided education relevant and demanded is resolved.
The Spheres in the UAE Education that Require Change and Innovation
The article by Al-Darmaki, Hassane, Ahammed, and Abdullah (2012) presents an example of one of the spheres in the education of the UEA that requires modernization and improvement. Counseling education is a relatively new sphere of education in the country (it only began to be practiced in 2005), and thus it is quite weak and lacks a substantial body of literature, research, and experience that would be applicable to the cultural and societal settings of the Emirates.
The authors emphasize that one of the key differences between the Western approach to mental health and counseling and that appropriate in the UAE is the role of religion and the traditional lifestyle that is extremely meaningful in the Middle East (Al-Darmaki et al., 2012).
As a result, attempting to strengthen this sphere of knowledge, the researcher of the country are to collect their own culturally-relevant data instead of relying on the Western practices that are no aligned with the Middle Easters way of life and worldview. The author shows that the problem has a complex nature as not only the research and academic and practical knowledge are insufficient but also, there is a lack of the social awareness of counseling as a profession and a service.
The example of the relatively new and heavily Westernized spheres of knowledge demonstrates the need for authentic and modern approaches which requires innovative strategies and creative solutions.
The article by Britto, Yoshikawa, and Boller (2011) explore the innovations in another sphere of education – early childhood development (ECD). The authors mention that the importance of this sphere, in particular, is in its cross-disciplinary impact as it often involves the knowledge coming from the spheres of education, healthcare, psychology, and child welfare to name a few (Britto et al., 2011).
As a result, the innovation and modernization in the early childhood education are closely related to the changes in all the other sectors with which it interacts. That way, the solutions to this issue are complicated and finding them may be rather time-consuming.
The authors conclude that there is a need for policy in the UAE in order to facilitate the deployment of innovation and change in the early childhood education. While some of its spheres can be changed locally by the educators alone, the change of the field in general, requires that in the other related spheres of knowledge.
Conclusion
The reviewed sources have revealed a substantial body of information concerning multiple areas of education and innovation in the UAE. The authors of all sources have demonstrated an unbiased approach to the needs of their rapidly growing state and the ways to fulfill them. The challenges were expressed and analyzed clearly – the UAE is pursuing economic independence which requires its becoming an education hub and accumulating its own culturally-appropriate body of knowledge in all the spheres. Both older and newer fields require innovation and recent research. Besides, the modernization of the traditional culture of the UEA that occurred due to the influence of globalization requires the improvement in education at every level.
References
Al-Darmaki, F. R., Hassane, S., Ahammed, S., & Abdullah, A. S. (2012). Developing counselor education identity in the United Arab Emirates: Evaluation of an undergraduate program. Journal for International Counselor Education, 4, 1-28. Web.
Britto, P., Yoshikawa, H., & Boller, K. (2011). Quality of Early Childhood Development Programs in Global Contexts: Rationale for Investment, Conceptual Framework and Implications for Equity. Society for Research In Child Development, 25(2), 2-30.
Knight, J. (2011). Education Hubs: A Fad, a Brand, an Innovation? Journal of Studies in International Education, 15(3), 221-240.
Raven, J. (2011). Emiratizing the education sector in the UAE: contextualization and challenges. Education, Business and Society: Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues, 4(2), 134 – 141.
Spraggon, M., & Bodolica, V. (2014). Future Developmental Prospects of the UAE. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.