Teachers’ Evaluation of the Distance Teaching and Learning System in General Education Schools in the State of Kuwait During the Pandemic

Safar, Ammar; Agha, Nasser; Al-Sulaili, Refai

doi:10.12816/ijches.2024.291497.1026

Teachers’ Evaluation of the Distance Teaching and Learning System in General Education Schools in the State of Kuwait During the Pandemic

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Kuwait University, College of Education, Department of Curriculum and Teaching Methods.

² Ministry of Education, General Administration of Hawalli Educational Zone, Technical Guidance for Science Postal address: P.O. B. 51260, Al-Raqqa, postal code 53304, State of Kuwait

³ Ministry of Education, General Administration of Jahra Educational Zone, Technical Guidance for the Arabic Language Postal address: P.O. B. 51260, Al-Raqqa, postal code 53304, State of Kuwait

10.12816/ijches.2024.291497.1026

Abstract

The study aimed to measure the teachers’ evaluation towards the experience of using the distance/remote teaching and learning system (electronic, web-based, mobile, and virtual) in general education schools in the State of Kuwait during the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic—this included their degree of acceptance, agreement, and satisfaction with it. In addition to revealing the impact of some independent variables (i.e., gender, school type, specialization, ICT qualification, nationality, years of professional experience, and educational stage on the level of the teachers’ overall evaluation (i.e., their acceptance, agreement, and satisfaction) of this new system. This study utilized the quantitative, descriptive, survey, analytical, and evaluative research design/methodology to achieve its research objectives. Data were collected through an online questionnaire distributed to a stratified sample of 2,529 male and female teachers. Participants were randomly selected electronically during the first and second semesters of 2021/2022 academic year. The findings of the study revealed that the overall evaluation degree of the teachers in Kuwait’s general education schools towards distance/remote education practice during the pandemic was generally “high” (M = 3.49, SD = 0.48, RII = 0.70). Teachers’ responses indicated that their acceptance, agreement, and general satisfaction with the new alternative emergency educational system (distance/remote teaching and learning) ranged from “moderate to very high” across all of the study’s domains. The results also showed that statistically significant differences at the significance level of 0.01 (α ≤ 0.01) were found among the means of the teachers’ responses. These differences were attributed to several variables, such as: gender (favoring females), school type (favoring private general education schools), ICT qualification (favoring those without international ICT certifications), nationality (favoring Kuwaiti citizens), years of professional experience (favoring those with less than 10 years), and educational stage (favoring elementary and secondary stages). However, specialization variable did not show statistically significant differences in participants’ responses. The study concluded with several recommendations.

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