Teacher leadership and teacher identity in turbulent times in Iraq

Abstract

This article addresses the professional challenges faced by teacher leaders in Iraq. The country is beginning to emerge from a period of political unrest and violent threats to personal safety. This has seriously affected the educational provision; nowhere more so than in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city. The article examines three issues: how teacher-leaders describe and understand their empowerment to build inclusive education systems in the post-conflict city; how professional learning communities can support inclusive practices to optimise students’ learning and build community cohesion; and what role digital skills can play in the modernisation of an inclusive Iraqi curriculum. The naturalistic enquiry approach draws on interview data from two teachers, two headteachers and two inspectors; the latter work directly with the Iraqi Ministry of Education and local communities. The findings show that, as teacher leaders reframe their understanding of the role of educational leaders in the changing context of Iraq, they become better empowered to build sustainable learning communities. Digital skills are crucial in supporting learning within and beyond the school curriculum.

Keywords

digital skills identity Iraq learning communities Mosul teacher leaders leadership

Introduction

The condition of teacher leaders in Iraq has always been subject to professional challenges due to the continuous external and internal conflicts that the country has been through in the last five decades. Those conflicts hindered the smooth development of the education sector in general and the education leadership provision in particular because the consecutive governments prioritised other sectors such as national security and defence. Almost five decades of dictatorship and wars on all fronts followed by the invasion of the United States-led coalition in 2003 pushed the country to a state of dystopia and made the education sector lurch between catastrophe and chaos. The period from 2003 until the present date brought unprecedented challenges to the whole of the education system including the teacher leadership provision. The Coalition Provisional Authority formed by the United States-led coalition and was led by the American Diplomat Paul Bremer decided to dissolve the Ministry of Education in Baghdad and form a new one. The aim was to sever ties with anything linked to the previous political regime and bring in a system for what was dubbed at the time the ‘new democratic’ Iraq. Also, the motives behind the invasion were not merely linked to establishing democracy in Iraq. “It is hard to believe that US leaders would contemplate such an extreme act without very powerful motives—and the pursuit of oil has long constituted the most commanding motive for US military action in the region” (Klare, 2003: 102). Therefore, the consequences of the war on Iraq proved that the invaders did not care about any other civil institutions in the country (including education), rather their main motives appeared to be “controlling Iraq's oil reserves and excluding rivals in a tightening oil market” which was “a key driver of the war” (Hinnebusch, 2007:212).

The period that followed the invasion was the most unsettled in the history of the education sector in the country. It was marred by many hasty decisions and many different U-turns not to mention the political instability that had had its disastrous impact on education and schools. The United Nations estimates that 84% of the educational institutions in the country were “burnt, looted or destroyed” (Sutherland, 2018). The educational chaos and the poor planning since 2003 were soldered with the damage brought by the so-called Islamic State when their militants swept across the city of Mosul in the north in 2014. Consequently, two-thirds of the school children along with their teachers missed three years of formal schooling as a result of the fall of Mosul, with damaging repercussions for schools in years to come. This article tackles the deteriorated state of the teacher leadership in Iraq since 2003 and the further decline that happened in 2014. The article presents the current turbulent situation of the Iraqi teacher leadership provision by providing historical outlines of the social and political changes in the country within the last five decades and highlighting the main inadequacies that are hindering any progress in this field. The article contributes to the research literature in the international field by presenting real on the ground findings of the teacher leadership process in an unstable context and in places undergoing educational change. The article would benefit international audiences by filling a gap in the understanding of struggles that teacher leaders undergo on daily basis in many parts of the world.

Political turbulence and social harmony in Iraq to 2014

Several ethnic, cultural and social groups have lived in harmony in Iraq for thousands of years (Dogan et al., 2017), and Iraqi cities were: ‘vibrant, cosmopolitan places displaying an eclectic mix of communities living more or less in harmony’ (Stansfield, 2016: 123). Iraqis continued to live in peace during six military coups between 1936 and 1941 (Dodge, 2006). Throughout that time, military coups were associated with political differences and aspirations to power, rather than being motivated by differences of faith or ethnicity. That continued after the military coup in 1958 that ended the Kingdom of Iraq and resulted in the execution of the King, members of the royal family and the Prime Minister (Dodge, 2006). Ten years later, Saddam Hussain emerged as the sole ‘strong man’ who went on to rule Iraq and shape its future for the next three decades. Saddam's project of rebuilding the state created a feeling of nationalism for the Iraqis, and united ethnic, cultural and social groups within the population (Musallam, 1996).

The diverse Iraqi religious and ethnic groups continued to co-exist peacefully; there was ‘unity between Sunni and Shi’i, Muslims and non-Muslims in Iraq's natural harmony’ (Davis, 2005: 48). This harmony was fractured in 2003, when Iraq was invaded by the United States-led coalition on the pretext of destroying the Iraqi arsenal of mass-destruction weapons, removing Saddam from power and installing democracy. During and after the invasion, the social cohesion of Iraq was badly damaged and the country entered one of the most chaotic periods of its history. The destruction of key infrastructure and the ongoing civil unrest greatly weakened the ability of the central government to meet the needs of the Iraqi people: ‘Communities that once lived in peaceful harmony, according to the historical literature on Iraqi society, (were) now subjecting each other to ever-increasing levels of brutality and indiscriminate violence’ (Stansfield, 2016: 126). This enabled the revival of the so-called Islamic State (IS) militia groups in the Iraqi communities and then their seizure of power in Iraq's third-largest city, Mosul, in 2014.

2014–2017: IS directing the school curriculum and teacher conduct

Prior to IS control of Mosul, new school curriculum had already been introduced by the Iraqi MoE. The new curriculum, represented by introducing new English textbooks, was radically different from its predecessor, with innovative teaching methods and unprecedented reliance on new technologies. The new curriculum entailed that teachers deliver their lessons using technology tools (assigned to each lesson) that range from PowerPoint presentations to many software applications such as video streaming and online feedback and homework submission methods. The transition from the old curriculum to the new was abrupt, thus education leaders found themselves confronted by completely new challenges because the new “books had some complications in the way they were received by English teachers” (Altae, 2020: 9). Mosul, then fell to the ‘Jihadis’ of IS who also brought in their curriculum and detached the Directorate General of Education (DGE) in Mosul from the central government.

As IS strengthened its grip, the city of Mosul sank further into chaos. Any opposition was brutally suppressed. IS developed its own radicalised curriculum and replaced the DEG in Mosul with their so called ‘Diwan of Education’, an office attached to the ‘Wali’ or the governor of Mosul. The ‘Diwan of Education’ also deleted many subjects such as literature, history, geography, arts and music, and replaced them with two main subjects; Sharia Education (a distorted version of Islamic jurisdiction), which was aimed at brainwashing the young minds, and Military Training (training on the usage of live ammunition, weapons and street fighting) aimed at preparing the children to be ‘Jihadis’ to defend their city. The IS curriculum was taught by the same teachers who were on the Ministry of Education payroll before the fall of Mosul. They were forced to teach and those who refused were punished in public squares. The curriculum was introduced in every area that IS-controlled (Arvisais and Guidère, 2020). The English language curriculum, for example, was full of ‘Jihadi’ themes (see illustrations 1, 2 and 3).

Hence, the teacher leaders were unable to put any plans for their teachers or guide them in any way. What exacerbated the situation even more was the strange instructions brought by the IS ‘Diwan of Education’ such as the ban on using colours pencils or any forms of colourful visual teaching aids. IS even changed the globally known plus signs ( + ) used for adding numbers in mathematics with the letter (z) because it looks like the cross, which is a symbol of Christianity.

Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news

Illustration (1): a page from a primary school English Language textbook brought by IS. The dialogue shows two children wearing IS uniform:

Child 1: What is this?

Child 2: This is the flag of the Islamic State.

Child 1: What colour is it?

Child 2: It's black and white.

Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news

Illustration (2): English language textbook showing how to tell time by when a bomb is detonated.

Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news

Illustration (3): A dialogue between an IS militant and his son.

Following that period of violence, chaos and backward educational practices, the City of Mosul was eventually liberated by the Iraqi army in 2017 and it returned to the control of the central government. However, the local teacher leaders faced new challenges of restoring an education system that had been detached from the national system for four years, while at the same time catching up with the radical curriculum changes that the rest of Iraq had already adopted in that period. Within the schools, “this has resulted in anxious and unsettled teachers” (Altae, 2019: 63) and it was necessary to update teachers’ skills by reinstating the training programmes to address the new curriculum requirements such as the use of technology.

Schools and school leadership in Iraq

Structurally, Iraq follows a strict top-down approach (Figure 1). The leadership process starts from the Ministry of Education and works down through local directorates of education in the provinces to the school inspectors and headteachers. Within individual schools, assistant heads and teachers have little autonomy and may feel that they simply have to do as they are told. The structure of leadership responsibilities is fixed across all stages of education with no regard to children's changing needs.

Figure 1.

Primary, intermediate and secondary school leadership.

The role of inspectors is powerful though. Subject inspectors are responsible for implementing the national curriculum and monitoring teachers’ performance. School inspectors ensure that students are ready for national examinations and that schools are performing to the standards set up by the Ministry of Education. They report to the local directorate of education and then to the Ministry of Education. School headteachers receive reports highlighting the areas of progress needed regarding their teachers’ performance and a timescale to address any concern. This means that the headteacher's role is limited to daily operation, with no say in policy aspects. The role of the teacher is to teach the curriculum as specified. This raises the question of how teacher leadership is perceived in Iraq, which is addressed in the next section.

Understanding teacher leadership

The definition of teacher leadership has been subject to different interpretations in the previous literature. While Wenner and Campbell (2017) describe teacher leadership as the responsibilities of leadership that teachers carry out outside the classroom, Nguyen et al. (2019: 61) adopt a broader stance stating that teacher leadership “can happen within and beyond the classroom, and that teaching and leadership are integrated”. Furthermore, there are many claims in the literature (Bush, 2007; Muijs and Harris, 2006; Sfakianaki et al., 2018) that the quality of leadership makes a significant difference to the school and student outcomes. For this study, teacher leadership (TL) is a process that comprises:

the formal leadership roles that teachers undertake that have both management and pedagogical responsibilities, i.e. head of department, subject co-ordinator, key stage co-ordinator; and the informal leadership roles that include coaching, leading a new team and setting up action research groups. Teacher leadership is conceptualised as a set of behaviours and practices that are undertaken collectively (Mujis and Harris, 2006: 962).

The teacher-leader's practice links different stakeholders within the school community and is based on promoting collaboration among professionals to achieve a mutual outcome that can contribute to school improvement (Gronn, 2000; Harris and Lambert, 2003 ). This is a collective vision that is democratic and that includes all stakeholders in the process because “leadership is present in the flow of activities in which a set of organisation members find themselves enmeshed” (Gronn, 2000: 331).

There is no such thing as teacher leader in Iraq. Inspectors play such a teacher leadership role because it is part of their responsibilities to energise teachers to fulfil their potentials in supporting the schools’ performance. Also, the inspectors’ role in mobilising available resources to support teachers does not only represent their role as a boss but because they are experienced professionals who can persuade and lead teachers effectively. Therefore, inspectors are equipped with some important characteristics to perform the role of teacher leaders. Subject inspectors taking the responsibilities of teacher leaders in contexts lacking such positions, like the Iraqi context, is not uncommon. Although such inspectors’ role, i.e. being teacher leaders might not have been thoroughly investigated by the previous literature, it has been happening in practices on the ground. Inspection is a management task that follows the teachers’ performances and corrects them or implements innovative methods to improve them. Hence, inspection “requires an inspector to perform his / her duties as administrator, leader, guide, instructor and researcher” (Usta, 2018: 10). Inspectors, indeed, provide guidance and support to teachers to increase their efficiency level. Among the duties of inspectors are to coordinate between schools and the MoE to ensure that the teaching and learning process is being implemented per the curriculum objectives. Also, training programmes for teachers change constantly, therefore, it is expected those subject inspectors have the required information about such changes so they can provide satisfactory guidance to the teachers, i.e., the required leadership. The subject inspectors, consequently, perform the duties of teacher leaders because the inspection process shapes the practice and thinking of the teachers and creates an inspection legacy that gives management and leadership a prominence role in the teaching and learning process (Wood and Evans, 1997). Besides, Ofsted highlights the importance of the leading role of the inspectors and requires them to “evaluate the teaching of the subject in the school, use this analysis to identify effective practice and areas for improvement, and take action to improve further the quality of teaching”. (Ofsted, 1997: 9).

In light of what preceded and although not explicitly defined, the role of the subject inspectors indeed falls within the remit of the teacher leadership definition. York-Barr and Duke define teacher leadership as: ‘the process by which teachers, individually or collectively, influence their colleagues, principals, and other members of school communities to improve teaching and learning practices with the aim of increased student learning and achievement’ (2004, 287–288). Hence, the teacher leaders are those teachers who take on administrative roles outside of their classrooms to support the functions of the wider school structure. The teacher leaders’ role might include allocating of resources within the school, improve learning outcomes and managing teaching practices. The subject inspectors “look at how leaders use performance management to promote effective practice across the school … evaluate how effectively leaders improve staff practice, teaching, learning and assessment through ‘rigorous’ performance management and appropriate professional development” (NASUAT, 2019, 13). This argument, however, applies to the Iraqi educational contexts where the subject inspectors perform the teacher leaders’ roles due to the underdeveloped teacher leaders’ role in the country. Inspectors’ role in improving schools’ performance is well documented and in schools, “such a person is typically looked upon for advice for good practice and management within a given subject area” (Griggs and Randall, 2019: 664).

Although there is a plethora of previous literature about school leadership, there is quite little about middle leadership. Grootenboer (2018) argues that the focus in the middle leadership process has to be on the practices rather than the theories of leadership. The practice-based work of the middle leaders offers us a better understanding of how the work is being implemented on the ground. Indeed, in the Iraqi context this role form an ontological perspective extends outside the school boundaries because of the absence of a clear position of middle leaders in the school hierarchy. The practice of middle leaders outside the school setting has been seen in various educational contexts across the world. In New Zealand, for example, middle leaders have been performing a complex and varied role, which includes responsibility for “liaising with a wide range of stakeholders; developing collegial relationships and managing faculties or departments” (Bassett, 2016: 99).

Middle leaders work collaboratively within schools (Harris and Jones, 2010) and between schools (Hargreaves and Ainscow, 2015) to secure better outcomes for students. Their role is crucial to system reform and to positively influencing school performance by supporting senior leaders to address systemic gaps (Leask and Terell, 2014). Within this model, the role of senior leaders is to establish the core values of the organisation. There is a wealth of literature claiming that senior leaders have a greater influence on students when leadership is widely distributed (Mulford, 2003; Caldwell, 2005); where leadership is exercised not at the apex of the organisational pyramid but the centre of the web of human relationships (Murphy, 2004). Schools are too complex for heads to run by themselves, hence, collaboration is necessary, not just to get the job done, but to involve a range of abilities and dispositions.

It is important to believe in the power of teacher leadership to influence colleagues to change in ways that they would not otherwise consider. This view of leadership informs this study, as it focuses on the process of leading that takes place inside an educational organisation, and not on the work of individual leaders. The study tackles the teacher leadership concept from the middle leadership angel. The leadership for this study happens in contexts where teacher leaders are situated in their capacity as practitioners. The contribution of this study is, therefore, to investigate teacher leadership in a context where:

‘middle leadership’, which is a familiar term in much of the school-effectiveness literature published in western countries, is virtually unknown;

the centrally-determined, top-down structure of policy implementation greatly reduces the ability of individual teachers to exercise agency over approaches to teaching and learning;

an even greater challenge than that of school improvement is to regain the trust of communities and families in the public-education service;

the many external and internal conflicts that Iraq has witnessed in the last two decades have hindered all research activities; there have been no recent studies of leadership-in-action in the Iraqi context.

Methodology

The research reported in this article adopted a naturalistic inquiry approach in an interpretive paradigm, intending to explore, understand and explain. It sought to see and hear teacher leaders’ perceptions of the challenge of building inclusive education systems in Iraq and to understand how and why they were determined to do so in Mosul, without the assistance of the Iraqi Ministry of Education. My approach entailed multiple social interactions, where data were generated through qualitative methods in a natural setting. Semi-structured, one-on-one interviews with the participants were adopted. The research design enabled me to clarify the thoughts and feelings of study participants, and to interpret participants’ experiences of the phenomena of interest, to find explanations for human behaviour in a given context’ (Austin and Sutton, 2014: 436). The interview data were analysed using an interpretational analysis system to answer the following questions: –

How do teacher leaders describe and understand ways they are empowered to build inclusive education systems?

–

How do these teacher leaders build professional learning communities to support inclusive practices to optimise students’ learning and build community cohesion?

–

What role do teacher leaders believe that language and digital skills play in this modernisation of the Iraqi curriculum?

My participants were two school teachers, two headteachers and two subject inspectors. They were chosen based on their active involvement in the modernisation of the Iraqi education system, their status as leaders within the definition used in this research, their location in Mosul City and their years of experience during the recent period of political and social turbulence in Iraq (Table 1 below). Each interview lasted approximately one hour and was followed by respondent checking to clarify any points of uncertainty.

Table 1.

Participants’ information.

Participants	Years of experience	Work place	Roles (in terms of contribution to modernising the system)	Status as leaders
Teacher 1	28	School in Mosul	Member of local Education Reforms Committee	Active in influencing colleagues to change
Teacher 2	23	School in Mosul	Member of local Education Reforms Committee	Active in influencing colleagues to change
Headteacher 1	25	School in Mosul	Leadership responsibilities as part of job description	Leadership responsibilities as part of job description
Headteacher 2	18	School in Mosul	Leadership responsibilities as part of job description	Leadership responsibilities as part of job description
Inspector 1	31	Mosul DGE	Leadership responsibilities as part of job description	Leadership responsibilities as part of job description
Inspector 2	24	Mosul DGE	Leadership responsibilities as part of job description	Leadership responsibilities as part of cjob description

Findings

The data revealed that teacher leaders do not fully comprehend the importance of their contribution to the education reform in Iraq. Their thinking is still shaped by the extraordinary, traumatic experience of the period when IS controlled the city of Mosul and detached whole communities form their local environment and their global context, as stated by a prominent teacher leader in Mosul:

“ … I am not convinced that we [the teacher leaders] can change anything in our roles at the moment … I saw that when IS were in the city and I can see this now, it is a chaotic educational setting and it is beyond our capabilities to sort it out, I believe”

(A quote by a teacher leader with 28 years of experience - translated from Arabic)

Teacher leaders do not believe that they have the necessary knowledge or skills to fulfil the role of empowering other education stakeholders. This appears to be linked to their lack of recent training and the absence of policy documents from the Iraqi MoE in support of teacher training. The prominent teacher leader above added:

“We need to be shown the way … we need the required knowledge in order to be able to make a difference … they [MoE] think that we can do whatever wanted from us without adequate support or resources”

(A quote by a teacher leader with 28 years of experience - translated from Arabic)

Nevertheless, the data reveal a strong desire on the part of teacher leaders to build a professional learning community that models inclusive processes and practices to optimise students’ learning. They aspire to create cohesion that can restore community confidence and resources to where they were before the period of IS dominance and the chaos that followed. As well as enabling students to thrive in schools and progress to higher levels of education, this would also benefit the job market by equipping young people with skills in English language and digital literacy.

“We need to regain our teachers’ confidence, the trauma that IS left in all of us is horrible, … we need to rehabilitate the teachers, to encourage them to be who they were before IS and we need to bring technology to our schools to help our teachers … those young minds need to be proficient in English language and in using technology because that what they need for their future”

(A quote by one of the teacher leaders interviewed for this study - translated from Arabic)

The data also revealed that the inspectors who are the leaders in practice appeared to be no different from the headteachers. The inspectors also expressed their frustration towards the chaotic system and mentioned that they have been urging the Directorate General of Education to provide more clarity about resuming the teaching process in the post-IS era. However, their calls and attempts seemed to be fallen on deaf ears. It is believed that the local Directorate General of Education has no say in what is happening in Mosul because it simply receives instructions from the MoE and when the MoE is not in a position to guide the whole process, the Directorate General of Education is practically in an idle situation as described by one of the inspectors:

“we [the inspectors] are supposed to be the leaders and the source of support for the teachers … we are not at the moment because we are not getting any guidelines … to be honest, I believe the Directorate General of Education should do something … they [DGE] blame the MoE for lack of clarity but they do not think about taking any initiative themselves”

(Inspector at the Mosul DGE with 15 years of experience)

The data indeed revealed that teacher leaders represented by the headteachers and the inspectors were also struggling to find a consistent system that could help them address the teachers’ problems in Mosul and also rebuilding the system to meet the future demands.

To sum up, the findings revealed that the way teacher leaders currently understand the process of building an inclusive education system is vague and they believe that they do not have the required knowledge to play this role effectively. Hence, they call for more training programmes to be introduced to prepare and rehabilitate them to play an influential role in leadership. Regarding the role of teacher leaders to build professional learning communities to support students’ learning and restore community cohesion, the data showed that there is a great desire on the part of the participants to play such a role and they believe that retaining community confidence in the education process and making teachers the real change agents are the ways forward to achieve the lost community identity. The calls for acquiring the necessary digital skills were accompanied by calls to acquire the necessary language skills as well. The data show that teacher leaders believe that such skills are vital in making their mission to build an inclusive and modern education system accomplishable because they will open the doors for them to the outside world.

Discussion

Iraq has no history of giving teacher leaders a voice or role in structuring and shaping education. Policymaking has been directed from Baghdad and implemented through the top-down process set out in Figure 1. As Iraq emerges from the very recent period of turbulence, including the fall of Mosul to IS in 2014, teacher leaders are now, for the first time, in a position to take on the responsibility of restoring public education and empowering teachers to create comprehensive and inclusive school provision that can unite the community to face future challenges. Children will enrol in their local schools, regardless of faith, race or ethnicity. The coordinating role of the Iraqi Ministry of Education remains crucially important, but effective leadership at the local level, for example in Mosul, is more than ever necessary in this process of restoration and reform. Teacher leaders, in a role akin to that outlined by Fullan (2015), are in a position to co-ordinate the various components of society to the benefit of children and young people. This will necessitate extra mentoring and training of teacher leaders and, above all, fundamental changes in the understanding of school leadership, to support a comprehensive process of rehabilitation in the education system.

The findings of this study have implications for decision-making at the national level, where Iraqi education policy should recognise that the country's main assets in the global markets are its people. Being economically competitive means developing a highly-skilled workforce. Since digital literacy and language skills are so essential in the modern world, these must be prioritised in the training of teachers, so that they can then support their students and enhance their employment prospects. Consequently, the way students learn in schools should familiarise them with the numerous changes in the real world outside schools and prepare them to adapt to such a world. Digital literacy in the classroom should continue outside the classroom through professional communities of practice that support the development of processes to optimise students’ learning and help in the community cohesion that is necessary to revive a city that has gone through the trauma of losing its identity, if not its spirit. Digital literacy can equip both students and their teachers with the skills, language proficiency and self-confidence that will enable them to play an active role in a more outward-looking society.

Conclusion

This paper has reported on a research project that gives a voice to teachers in a society where they have had to be silent; that offers a way of increasing teachers’ ability to lead improvements in teaching and learning in a country that may not yet be truly ‘post-conflict’; that advocates an urgent programme of digital literacy for both teachers and students; and that demands equitable and inclusive access to education for all young people of school age. I urge the global research community to contribute their knowledge and expertise in addressing these important issues with similar research projects.

Footnotes

Notes on contributor

Dr Mayamin Altae has been in the field of education for more than 20 years as a school teacher and university lecturer in the United Kingdom and in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region working alongside fellow teachers and teacher leaders to support learning in a range of pre-service and in-service contexts. Dr Mayamin holds a QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) from the University of Bradford, a Master degree in Educational Technology & TESOL form the University of Manchester and a PhD in Education form The University of Leicester. Dr Mayamin currently works at Qatar University, Department of Educational Science where she facilitates the teacher education provision. Dr Mayamin's research interest is in the field of educational technology & TESOL, teacher education and educational leadership mainly in contexts undergoing educational changes.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Mayamin Altae

Author biography

Dr Mayamin Altae has been in the field of education for more than 20 years as a school teacher and university lecturer in the United Kingdom and in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) working alongside fellow teachers and teacher leaders to support learning in a range of pre-service and in-service contexts. Dr Mayamin holds a QTS (Qualified Teacher Status) from the University of Bradford, UK, a Master degree in Educational Technology & TESOL form the University of Manchester, UK and a PhD in Education from The University of Leicester, UK. Dr Mayamin currently works at Qatar University, College of Education, Department of Educational Sciences. Her research interests include educational technology, teacher education, and educational leadership mainly in contexts undergoing educational change. She is available on Twitter at @mayamin.

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