The Twofold Ontological “Subsoil” of Interexistentiality; El doble “subsuelo” ontologico de la interexistencialidad

Soft skills are crucial for achieving professional success and fostering effective social interactions in society. These competencies are in high demand by employers seeking to hire recent graduates. This study aims to explore faculty members' perspectives on integrating soft skills into the Moroccan higher education curriculum. It emphasizes the importance of balancing the integration of soft skills with technical expertise to maximize effectiveness. A structured questionnaire was developed as the primary data collection tool and distributed via social media to university professors across various Moroccan institutions, including the Faculty of Sciences, the Higher School of Technology (EST), the National School of Applied Sciences (ENSAM), and the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at Moulay Ismail University, as well as the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences and the National School of Applied Sciences at Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah University in Fez, and the Superior School of Education and Training (ESEF) at Ibn Tofail University in Kenitra. Out of fifty distributed questionnaires, a 50% response rate was achieved. The findings of the study indicate that Moroccan university professors maintain a favorable view of the importance of soft skills, recognizing that the integration of these abilities not only bolsters academic performance but also enhances students' social and academic integration, as well as their career prospects.

In recent decades, Morocco has witnessed a significant expansion in women's access to higher education. However, women in Moroccan universities remain disproportionately underrepresented in faculty leadership and decision-making roles. This study examines the structural, cultural, and institutional barriers that hinder the professional development of female faculty members. This study utilized a mixed-methods approach. Data were collected through a questionnaire administered to 100 academic members from three faculties at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University: The Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, the Faculty of Laws, Economic and Social Sciences, and the Faculty of Science, all located at Dhar El Mahraz. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 senior faculty members and current and former leaders within the same institution. Thematic analysis revealed three primary obstacles: exclusion from the decision-making process -45%-, conflict between family and professional obligations -35%-, and 20% expressed a lack of desire for leadership roles, often stemming from systemic discouragement. The findings show how gendered cultural expectations and opaque institutional structures constrain women’s career trajectories. The findings suggest multiple solutions, such as prioritizing leadership training, implementing gender sensitive policies, and awareness campaigns. The study concludes that achieving gender equity in Moroccan higher education requires systemic improvements in addition to cultural shifts in attitudes and in gender views.

This paper is part of a larger project which examines the teaching of English to non-English majors at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Rabat. Starting from the official objectives set on Law 01.00, the implementation of these objectives at the level of the Cahier des Normes Pédagogiques Nationales (Book of Pedagogical Guidelines), to the teachers’ practices in the classroom, the teaching of English to non-English majors suffers of many shortcomings: definition of clear objectives, content and teaching methodology, human resources, logistics, and the degree of readiness and motivation of the students themselves. This paper deals with the human resources aspect of the problem, namely the teachers themselves, the way they conceive of their mission, how prepared they are to accomplish it, and their perceptions of the challenges before them. Current teachers of English to non-English majors have been asked to fill in a questionnaire devised to this end. Results show that while the surveyed teachers’ attitude towards their teaching of English is in general moderately positive, they see the students’ readiness and behavior as major obstacles to an effective teaching. Their opinion of the content is evenly split between positive and negative.

Proper soft skills occupy a key role in realizing a prosperous career as well as during social collaborations in society. These skills are also extremely required by employers hiring new alumni. The central target of this survey is to explore students’ insights on the importance of soft skills for their education and employment. A questionnaire will be designed as the major data collection procedure and will be administered to university students at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences as well as the faculty of Sciences at Moulay Ismail University in order to elicit as much feedback as possible. Besides, the major hypothesis of this study is to find out whether soft skills are useful for social integration and career advancement and whether they contribute considerably to students’ academic performance. In addition to this, this paper will be suggesting certain measures for improving the soft skills of students, which may also help improve their employment perspectives.

As Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria won independence from France in the 1950s and 1960s, new leaders turned to universities to prepare their nations for the future. Universities, officials and politicians agreed, would train the experts, engineers, and functionaries needed to build the countries’ infrastructure and bureaucracy, as well as researchers and instructors to articulate and propagate the very idea of the nation. However, officials confronted colonial legacies within their inherited higher education systems and navigated ongoing French influence in the form of ‘cooperation’: a French programme to maintain close ties with former colonies by sending French personnel to serve as teachers, administrators, and other experts. This article examines cooperation in North African universities’ faculties of letters and human sciences, which were central to the development and implementation of national education curricula. In doing so, it makes two arguments. First, that French cooperation in national letters faculties was characterised by both previously unacknowledged tensions and unexpected alliances, blurring the lines between ‘colonial’, ‘national’, and ‘neocolonial’ projects during the early independence period. Second, by comparing Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, this article highlights the significant constraints Maghrebi leaders faced as they sought to build national universities, and the nation itself.

But : L’examen de l’influence de la perception de l’échec sur la motivation scolaire des étudiants est l’objectif que se donne cet article.
 Méthodologie : Pour atteindre celui-ci, les données de l’enquête de terrain auprès de 84 étudiants issus de la deuxième année en Faculté de Lettres et des Sciences Humaines (FLSH) à l’Université de Douala en situation d’échec sont soumises à des analyses descriptives et inférentielles.
 Résultats : Les résultats du rhô de Spearman obtenus de l’analyse du questionnaire d’autoévaluation et du « motivomètre » relèvent que le niveau de motivation scolaire est très bas chez ces étudiants et cela semble dû à une mauvaise perception qu’ils ont construite autour de leur échec précédent. En effet, les analyses ont montré un effet positif et significatif des représentations sociales de l’échec, des clichés du nombre d’échec et des croyances autour de l’échec sur la motivation scolaire chez ces étudiants. Dès lors, il semble nécessaire pour l’Etat et les Universités en place de décider de rendre l’accès de ces étudiants plus facile aux cellules d’écoute et d’accompagnement psychopédagogique.
 Contributeur Unique A La Théorie Politiques, Aux Et A La Pratique : Ceci par les moyens de la sensibilisation permanente et médiatisée sur l’importance de rencontrer régulièrement un conseiller d’orientation et/ou un psychologue scolaire. Et aussi la nécessité d’impliquer les familles afin d’influencer les cognitions sociales qui entourent l’échec scolaire et par la même occasion de réduire la déperdition scolaire.

Self-Assessment of Critical Thinking Skills in EFL Writing Courses at the University Level: Reconsideration of the Critical Thinking Construct

Moroccan higher education has recently gone through several reforms to improve the quality of instruction.Among these reforms, the "ESRI 2030 Pact" calls for the learning of foreign languages in an attempt to train competent graduates who can pursue further studies and meet the changing demands of the job market and other socio-economic challenges.Within such a favourable educational context, the present article aims to investigate the factors determining the motivation of university students to adopt the foreign language learning platform: Rosetta Stone.This motivation is according to the expectancy-value theory (EVT) determined by two factors: expectancies of success and value.For one thing, expectancies of success are related to the student's sense of competence.For another thing, value consists of the usefulness of the taught content, the interests of the learners, the psychological and physical costs of the platforms, and the importance that the student attaches to learning foreign languages (Eccles and Wigfield, 2002).This research is based on data collected from a sample of students from the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences (FLSHO), at Mohammed I University, via an online questionnaire that aims to inform researchers in the field of education about the factors influencing motivation to learn languages using e-learning platforms.The survey found that although students believed in their abilities and appreciated the advantages of using the Rosetta Stone platform to study languages, they were hesitant to invest the additional time and energy required to succeed.

The present study is an attempt to investigate students’ attitudes about the social status of Moroccan woman and the variables that may influence the cause of woman liberation. These variables may include feminism, female activism and international human rights on one hand. On the other hand, factors such as religion, patriarchy and marriage legislation could stand against the cause of female emancipation. The paper uses a theoretical and practical part. The review of literature is broad and inclusive that it trespasses the national intellectual framework on the issue of woman liberation to referring to western major feministic movements for woman emancipation worldwide such as liberal feminism. The field work is conducted through distributing a representative number of questionnaires, 350 questionnaires. Briefly, the findings proved that the majority of respondents, 55% hold the view that religion stands as a primary factor behind conservative gender perception, whereas, 49% of the respondents believe that education is the factor behind such perceptions. Furthermore, 40% believed that the patriarchal system is the element behind traditional treatment of gender. Concerning marriage legislation, 55% agree with the reforms in Al Mudawana in 2004. For female activism, 72% believe that women highly contributed in bringing about the changes in Al Mudawana reforms of 2004. This helped to generate an increasing female participation in politics as proved by 58% of the respondents. Finally, 65% hold the view that woman social status nowadays is semi-liberal and improving.

This qualitative case study explores how Master's students at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University construct academic legitimacy for their own fields while positioning others as less legitimate. Academic legitimacy—the perceived validity and value of academic work—significantly impacts students' educational experiences, yet remains understudied in non-Western contexts. Drawing on Bourdieu's Field Theory and Social Identity Theory, this research investigates student perceptions of the competitive strategies employed to establish legitimacy for their disciplines while simultaneously devaluing others. Through interviews with 40 Master's students across five humanities programs (Applied Language Studies and Research in Higher Education, Language, Communication & Society, Moroccan Cultural Studies, Translation and Cross-Cultural Communication, and Gender Studies), data analysis revealed four main themes: perceptions of academic hierarchies, strategies for constructing legitimacy while positioning others as less legitimate, navigation of interdisciplinary spaces, and disciplinary knowledge domains. Findings demonstrate that students actively construct legitimacy through capital accumulation, boundary work, and discursive strategies that simultaneously elevate their disciplines while diminishing others. The study contributes to understanding academic identity formation and legitimacy construction in humanities disciplines within Moroccan higher education, revealing how students navigate competitive academic environments through sophisticated positioning strategies that reproduce and sometimes challenge existing disciplinary hierarchies.

Higher education is characterized by high enrolment rates, which are driven by students' desire for both academic and professional development. Students used to pursue their studies through traditional interactions or in-person classes. However, during the Covid19 pandemic, the education field was forced to rapidly transition from face-to-face classes to online instruction, presenting university students with unprecedented challenges. Several issues have emerged as a result of online learning, including limited access to reliable internet and digital devices, which creates disparities in learning opportunities. In an unstructured environment, many students struggled with time management and self-control. The lack of face-to-face interaction caused feelings of isolation and decreased motivation. Moreover, the learning process was further hindered by technical difficulties and unfamiliarity with digital platforms.

In any teaching context, two significant variables to examine are students’ intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and their sense of belonging (SOB). Despite the many research attempts that have tackled these two variables separately, they have rarely been combined in one single study, especially in the Moroccan context. Following this aim, the current study investigated the relationship between the two previous variables among the students of two master programs: Applied Language Studies (ALS) running at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Meknes, and Religious Diplomacy (RD) at the faculty of Chariaa in Fez. To collect data, two different tests were adopted: the first test assessed the participants’ intercultural communicative competence, while the second measured their Moroccan sense of belonging. To compare the two groups of respondents, the scores obtained from the two tests were analyzed using, in addition to a mean comparison t-test, Pearson’s test of correlation. The results revealed an average level of ICC and SOB, along with a significant correlation between the two key variables for both the ALS and RD cohorts.

This study aims to explore the intricate relationships between receptive knowledge of collocations, vocabulary size, and writing ability among English department students The research also evaluates the effectiveness of the lexical approach in equipping language learners with a robust vocabulary foundation, which is critical for the composition of English texts. To investigate these relationships, a sample of 200 Moroccan university students enrolled in the English department in the faculty of letters and human sciences in Cady Ayad university participated in three assessments. These included a receptive collocation knowledge test designed to measure students’ understanding of word combinations commonly used in English, a vocabulary size test to assess the breadth of their lexical knowledge, and a writing test. The results of the study revealed a significant correlation between receptive collocation competence and writing ability, suggesting that proficiency in recognizing and understanding collocations may enhance overall writing skills. Additionally, there was a positive relationship between vocabulary size and receptive collocation knowledge, indicating that a larger vocabulary may facilitate better understanding of collocations. These findings underscore the importance of focusing on collocations in language instruction, as they may play a crucial role in improving writing and overall language proficiency.

The present study is an attempt to investigate students’ attitudes towards the social status of Moroccan women and the variables that may influence the cause of women’s liberation. These variables may include feminism, female activism and international human rights on the one hand. On the other hand, factors such as religion, patriarchy and marriage legislation could stand against the cause of female emancipation. The paper uses a theoretical and practical part. The review of literature is broad and inclusive that it trespasses the national intellectual framework on the issue of women’s liberation to referring to western major feministic movements for women’s emancipation worldwide such as liberal feminism. The field work is conducted through distributing a representative number of questionnaires, 350 questionnaires. Briefly, the findings proved that the majority of respondents, 55% hold the view that religion stands as a primary factor behind conservative gender perception, whereas 49% of the respondents believe that education is the factor behind such perceptions. Furthermore, 40% believed that the patriarchal system is the element behind traditional treatment of gender. Concerning marriage legislation, 55% agree with the reforms in Al Mudawana in 2004. For female activism, 72% believe that women largely contributed in bringing about the changes in the Al Mudawana reforms of 2004. This helped to generate an increasing female participation in politics as proved by 58% of the respondents. Finally, 65% hold the view that women’s social status nowadays is semi-liberal and improving.

The present paper aims to uncover the socio-economic and legal situation of women involved within the domestic services sector. It draws on parts of the findings brought about by a research paper I conducted in the fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctorate at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences in Fez, Morocco. Being more essentially based on ethnography, the study was carried out through the use of observation, focus group and structured/semi-structured interviews which were conducted and analyzed in the light of the established theoretical framework of this exploratory investigation. What is new in this article is the fact that the investigation’s findings will be analysed and discussed through a critical rereading of the Moroccan Labour Law on domestic workers to gauge the extent to which it complies with the International Labour Standards set by the Domestic Workers Convention. As a result of structural adjustment, a considerable number of unemployed workers are urged to invade the informal sector. This study reveals that women involved in the domestic services sector as an informal and feminized sector are not only economically and socially marginalized, but they are also marginalized at the legislative level. All this indicates the importance of recognizing the unremunerated and the under-remunerated contributions of women to the domestic services sector and to all aspects of development. It also suggests the urgent need to amend the labour law on domestic workers and bring it in line with the International Labour Organization Standards to improve domestic workers’ conditions.