Education In Tunisia Research Articles

Assessment of efficiency in basic and secondary education in Tunisia: A regional analysis

To determine the factors enhancing the efficiency of basic and secondary education in 24 governorates of Tunisia in 1999, 2003, 2006 and 2008, we apply a non-parametric approach, Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to multi-inputs and multi-outputs. Physical resources used in the study are: the number of classes per 100 students and the number of schools per million inhabitants. Human and financial resources are described by the number of teacher per 100 students and education spending per student respectively. The output measures include the success rate of baccalaureate exam and the rate of non-doubling in the 9th year. Our results show the absence of significant relationship between school resources and student performance. The output variable, non-doubling rate in the 9th year is the only factor able to influence the efficiency level of governorates in terms of 2nd cycle of basic education and secondary education. By regressing efficiency scores on non-discretionary variables, we find that inefficiency in education is strongly related to poverty within governorates.

Measuring the Impact of ICTs on Academic Performance: Evidence From Higher Education in Tunisia

Measuring the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a contemporary question of interest. Despite the general acceptance that ICTs are changing ways of learning, empirical research conducted to date does not consistently verify the efficacy of such changes. Several studies supporting positive impacts of ICTs on achievement relate mainly to developed countries. Focusing on tertiary education in Tunisia, this article attempts to highlight the gap in knowledge about the effects of ICT on education in developing countries by providing evidence from this region. Using survey data involving 377 college students and teachers, a multilevel analysis was conducted to measure the impact of ICT access and use with other student, university, and teacher attributes that may affect academic performance. The results provided evidence for a distinctive, though negative, effect of ICT on performance. These findings raise questions about the effectiveness of educational policies in Tunisia. The findings suggest also that overall university support is essential in increasing ICT learning impacts.

Conscientization and Third Space

This case study examines, Al Bawsala, a nongovernmental organization and a female cyber social activist, Amira Yahyaoui, in the aftermath of Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution through the lens of adult education. The theoretical frameworks of conscientization and third space are employed to describe Yahyaoui’s development of the watchdog political organization, Al Bawsala, for the purpose of democratic learning and popular education in Tunisia. Through interviews with Yahyaoui as well as content analysis of social media platforms used by Al Bawsala, the findings suggest popular education praxis of conscientization and third space are operative and central to Tunisia’s relatively nonviolent path toward democratization after the Arab Spring. The authors further suggest that Al Bawsala’s work is one approach for moving forward in a postrevolution context, and that adult education is central to that process.

Tunisia at its crossroad: The role of a local development contextualised entrepreneurship training at universities

Tunisia faces major problems of unemployment or precariously employed. As in many countries, entrepreneurship has also found its way into higher education in Tunisia. It is often said here as elsewhere that the universities have a crucial role as potential drivers for a locally inspired and contextualised promotion of entrepreneurship. Today, the graduate business start-up support arrangements within the universities or at the public promotion agencies are strongly focused on the early stages of business launch. They neglect later support to overcome critical thresholds during business development and growth that contribute to ensuring longer term survival and business development. Also, the relationship between these support services within the various regions and the respective business communities is not well established. The local economic context varies between economically strong coastal areas and poorly developed interior regions. The lesson is that Tunisian higher education institutions can play an essential role in creating jobs for graduates and building a dynamic base of growth-oriented businesses if they recognise entrepreneurship promotion as a strategic objective and develop appropriate activities in close relation with their local economic context.

Physical education in Tunisia: teachers' practical epistemology, students' positioning and gender issues

This paper explores gendered student learning in physical education (PE) viewed as a situated emerging process involving a triadic relationship between teacher, student(s) and forms of knowledge that are socioculturally bounded. It concerns gymnastic teaching and learning in Tunisia. It was conducted against the background of the Joint Action Studies in Didactics (JASD). Three Tunisian PE teachers having different expertise and experience and 12 male and female students with contrasted skill levels were observed within a gymnastics unit. Based on the video record of the lessons and on teachers' interviews, the findings stress the personal, institutional and cultural dimensions that shape the observed PE practices with special attention to the gendered content taught and learned. The use of the JASD framework highlights the intertwined processes during classroom interactions that influence the co-construction of gendered learning. It makes visible the interplay between the teacher's practical epistemology and the students' gender positioning and its consequence on inequalities in terms of students' learning and the maintenance of gender order in the gym.

Comparative Study of Physical Education Students Teachers Style Interventions Teaching Styles Skill

The first classroom experiences are essential to learn how to teach. Anxiety and doubts related to their abilities to teach are the main characteristics that define the novice teachers (Scott, 1995). The aim of the research is to study the educational intervention of the physical education student teachers (PEST) and their evolution in the period of the preparation training for the professional life from the perspective of teaching styles that they used. Participants who had accepted to participate in this study were physical education students registered at high institute of sports and physical education in Tunisia (ISSEP). All were young males (21 ± 1 years old) enrolled in an introductory course to professional life, what we call in Tunisia introductory course to practice pedagogy (introductory practicum applied to pedagogy), where share of the curriculum was of the last year of the fundamental of physical education license. This professional learning activity was held in three high schools with mixed age classes (12 - 14 years old pupils) of a rural area in Tunis. The activity lasted two semesters, four hours per week on Tuesday or Thursday for a cumulative total time of 116 hours of teaching. A macro analysis of the results showed that the preferred styles by PEST were command style, practical style and reciprocal style (Table 1). The micro analysis of each of these styles indicated that ten sessions (62.5%) had been conducted with the command style of teaching, four (25%) with the practical teaching style, and only two (12.5%) with the reciprocal teaching style. Finally, this study shows that the plurality teachers prefer teaching with the style of command that represents the lower limit of individualization; autonomy and creativity as the teacher centers his intervention on its own activities and not on the activity of the student.

Student Teachers’ Reactions Responding to Students’ Disruptive Behaviors: A Case Study in High School Education in Tunisia

This article sets to study the reactions of student teachers towards students’ disruptive behaviors in high school. A delayed video-scopic analysis has been performed using the “Disciplinary Incidents Analysis System” (Brunelle, Brunelle, Gagnon, Goyette, Martel, Marzouk, & Spallanzani, 1993). A total of 1379 reactions to disruptive behaviors have been recorded in Tunisian student teachers enrolled in the last year of their teacher education in the License-Masters-Doctorate (LMD) system. The results show a clearly low level of student teachers’ intervention since they frequently opt for ignorance of disruptive behavior. In fact, a high predominance of the reaction “ignore” (56.9%) qualifies these interventions, while interactive reactions are seldom used (17.4%). Following these results, a readjustment is probably required in both the practical and theoretical parts of teacher education of Tunisian student teachers. This may occur by making teaching disruptive behaviors’ management at school part of the curriculum

Trust and Institutional Corruption: The Case of Education in Tunisia

Tunisia, the focus of this paper and a country of new beginnings since the overthrow of the Ben Ali regime in 2011, was quick to identify public sector corruption as a major impediment to progress. Education, traditionally treated as one of the most important and highest stake sectors in the public domain in Tunisia, appears to be particularly affected. The integrity scan of Tunisian education presented in the Working Paper applies a proprietary methodology to identify shortcomings in areas of key importance for effective institutional operation and stakeholder trust, such as staff and resource management, quality of education, and access to education. It then provides evidence that can guide the closure of integrity gaps. The results of the scan suggest that public schools are experiencing difficulties in providing quality education in an effective way, which in turn nurtures distrust in the schools’ ability to fulfil their mission and fuels need for and widespread acceptance of private tutoring. Low accountability of schools and teachers and problems with student assessment allow for low effectiveness of learning during regular classes, facilitate these practices, and prevent the authorities from establishing the extent to which they represent a threat of corruption. Integrity challenges are confronting the tertiary sector as well. The paper lists options for follow up to restore trust in the system, and suggests a wide public discussion on steps to be undertaken with the goal of making a pact among all concerned for a strong and fair Tunisian education system.

Triggers of Burnout among Tunisian Teachers at Higher Institutes of Sport and Physical Education

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of socio-professional triggers on the development of burnout syndrome among the institute’s teachers of sports and physical education in Tunisia. The socio-professional triggers such as age, sex, teacher’s grade, job seniority and the marital status of professors and the workplace to promote significantly the development of burnout syndrome among teachers at the institutes of sports and physical education in Tunisia. 269 teachers of the high institutes of sport and physical education male and female with mean ages (43, 21 ± 7,704), answered the questionnaire of Maslach et al (1996). Our results of the regression analysis of the three components of burnout syndrome namely: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and the loss of personal accomplishment are showed that the three models are significant at the same level of probability (Pr ≤ 0.001). Also the R 2 , which provide information on the share of contribution of predictors in the total variance components related, are respectively 0.67, 0.59 and 0.45.

An Analysis of Written Grammatical Errors of Tunisian Learners of English in EFL Context

This study investigated grammatical errors in a corpus of 18 essays written by 18 participants. The participants were third-year Tunisian students who were studying business English at the ISEAH Institute of Kef in Tunisia. They had experienced approximately the same number of years of education through primary, secondary and university education in Tunisia. All of the participants came from non-English speaking backgrounds and seldom communicated in English outside the school. The instrument used for this study was participants’ written essays. All of the grammatical errors in the essays were identified and classified into various categorizations. The results of the study show that the most pervasive errors committed by the participants were tenses, morphology, prepositions, articles, verbs, and relative pronouns. This study has shed light on the process through which students internalize the grammatical rules of English as a target language. Such a study of language learning difficulties is useful to teachers because it tells about frequent “trouble-spots” in language learning which can be employed in the preparation of efficient teaching materials. Keywords: Error analysis, grammar, English, Arabic, interference, acquisition.

Assessing Productivity Performance of Basic and Secondary Education in Tunisia: A Malmquist Analysis

We analyze the productivity changes in basic and secondary education for 24 governorates in Tunisia over the period 2004-2008. In methodological term, we employ the Malmquist index, to estimate changes in total factor productivity which can be decomposed into two main components namely, technological change and technical efficiency change. We use four input variables (number of teacher per students, number of classes per students, number of schools per inhabitants, and expenditure in education per student) and two output variables measuring success rate of baccalaureate exam and rate of non-doubling in the 9th year. Our results show that on average, changes in TFP growth during the period 2004-2008 has been more linked to the changes in technology. The managerial efficiency does not have an important effect on the variation of TFP change. Generally, productivity is associated with technological innovations.

Assessment of Efficiency in Basic and Secondary Education in Tunisia: A Regional Analysis

We evaluate the efficiency of basic and secondary education in 24 governorates of Tunisia during the period 1999-2008 using a non-parametric approach, DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis). We use four inputs: number of teacher per 100 students, number of classes per 100 students, number of schools per million inhabitants and education spending per student, while the output measures include the success rate of baccalaureate exam and the rate of non-doubling in the 9th year. Our results show that there is a positive relationship between school resources and student achievement and performance. Moreover, there was an increase in output efficiency scores in most governorates through the period from 1999 to 2008.

Scope, relevance and challenges of financing higher education: The case of Tunisia

Like other developing countries, Tunisia has allocated increasing levels of resources to education, particularly higher education, over the past few decades, mainly through public funding. From 2005 to 2008, public expenditure on education amounted to around 7.4% of GDP, with 2% allocated to higher education. Recently, however, budgetary constraints have increased, student enrollment is increasing rapidly, and the country needs to improve its higher education so that graduates are more employable. In this context, to enhance access and equity, public policy is required to define orientations and programmes to improve quality and efficiency while reducing costs. This article first assesses public expenditure on higher education in Tunisia, with respect to its adequacy, efficiency, and equity, and then explores the challenges posed to financing by demographic changes, the need for higher quality of education, and private provision. It also examines some strategies for reinforcing financing, and analyzes measures to increase private funding.

GATS and the Education Service Industry: The Politics of Scale and Global Reterritorialization

One consequence of the hype around globalization and education and debates on global political actors such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO—is that there has not been sufficient attention paid by education theorists to the development of a rigorous set of analytic categories that might enable us to make sense of the profound changes which now characterize education in the new millennium. 1 This is not a problema confined to education. Writing in the New Left Review, Fredric Jameson observes that debates on globalization have tended to be shaped by “…ideological appropriations— discussions not of the process itself, but of its effects, good or bad: judgements, in other words, totalizing in nature; while functional descriptions tend to isolate particular elements without relating them to each other.” In this paper we start from the position that little or nothing can be explained in terms of the causal powers of globalization; rather we shall be suggesting that globalization is the outcome of processes that involve real actors—economic and political—with real interests. Following Martin Shaw, we also take the view that globalization does not undermine the state but includes the transformation of state forms; “…it is both predicated on and produces such transformations.”3 Examining how these processes of transformation work, however, requires systematic investigation into the organization and strategies of particular actors whose horizons or effects might be described as global.

The Role of the Press in the Reform of Higher Education in Tunisia (August 1975‐March 1976)

(1987). The Role of the Press in the Reform of Higher Education in Tunisia (August 1975‐March 1976) Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education: Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 61-77.

Library education in Tunisia and Jordan: A comparative study

Library education in Tunisia and Jordan: A comparative study