Today's Edition
Khaled Al Khawaldeh (Abu Dhabi)
The Emirates College for Advance Education (ECAE) released its refreshed strategy for teacher training with the aim of promoting a more practical and innovative approach that better prepares them to guide their pupils through the ever more rapidly changing world.
The event was held at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre on Thursday, and was attended by His Highness Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Her Excellency Sarah bint Yousef Al Amiri, UAE Minister of State for Public Education and Advanced Technology, along with faculty and staff.
Several stakeholders from the college, educational institutions and select students from around the Emirates also attended the event, which took the audience through pillars of the strategy.
“Education is conjoined with the importance of our country… Education is a full chapter,” Her Excellency Al Amiri told the room.
“We must invest in our youth; they are the hope of the future and the first investment.”
Al Amiri said the release of the strategy is a key event, as the UAE looks forward to a 131% increase in the number of students in the coming years.
During the event, several awards were presented to educational institutions from around the UAE that displayed excellence in education.
Following the event, Dr. May Laith Al Taee, Vice Chancellor of ECAE gave Aletihad some insight into the new strategy, released under the theme “A Future-Ready College of Education”.
“The idea of this strategy is to have a holistic experience in the learning process. So, we have a competency framework that is supplemented by academic programmes linked to career pathways, this strategy looks at three different areas,” Al Taee told Aletihad.
“The first area is academic excellence and lifelong learning, second is research and innovation, and third is really about partnerships and local footprint, the idea of strategies to enable the educators of the future.”
The strategy was formulated through the consultation of hundreds of stakeholders, a process that Al Taee said was crucial in ensuring that the strategy was pragmatic and prepared for implementation.
“We had several human-centric workshops, we were involved with the first edition of this education first event, we got 180 policymakers, teachers, principals, parents, students to co-create with us the future of education. We took all these insights close to heart and they actually informed our new strategy from 2020 to 2026 for the college,” she said.
Al Taee said that ultimately, the new strategy was designed to ensure teachers, which form the cornerstone of the educational system, had fulfilling career prospects and were given proper opportunities to refine their craft.
“I want them to build. I want every educator to have experience, to have access to programmes, whether they are short courses, micro credentials, or academic programmes,” she said.
“We want to see a holistic system that is linked between career progression, competencies, values, knowledge and skills, and programmes, and we’d like to have an immersive experience for the practical elements. That why our programmes are 60% practice-based, and 40% theory-based. The more immersive the experience, the more that knowledge stays.”
