Abu Dhabi: National identity will be embedded in the teaching curriculum of schools across the emirate of Abu Dhabi as the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) announced the launch of My Identity Programme as part of its five-year strategic plan to deepen national identity among students.
The programme will aim at instilling a deep sense of national identity among Emirati students across public and private schools, while increasing appreciation and respect towards the nation among expatriate students.
Introducing a holistic approach, the programme meets the needs of diverse school systems in order to contribute to the formation of a cohesive society bonded to its identity.
The content within the programme provides school administrators and teachers with a curriculum framework to reinforce a deep sense of identity, achieve sustainability over time within schools, enhance transformation, and foster tangible change among students over time.
Dr Amal Al Qubaisi, director-general of Adec, explained that national identity is essential to preserve the unity of the UAE community and evaluate citizenship and affiliation/statehood of the UAE.
“The programme was launched in schools after a detailed situational analysis was conducted to identify the key challenges that face national identity in the UAE. There has been a need to equip schools with a relevant and flexible framework that guides schools on a robust implementation of national identity,” said Dr Amal.
Dr Amal directed all schools to give the programme high priority throughout the academic year, implement its objectives, enhance national identity concepts through various curricula, extra-curricular programmes and activities, while incorporating them in the curriculum via an enriched educational programme. “Adec will support and enhance the implementation of the programme in schools, while providing schools with necessary implementation tools,” she said.
The pilot phase of the programme will be implemented in the emirate of Abu Dhabi during the current 2015-2016 school year initially across 38 private schools from different age groups. Workshops in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain will be conducted to train school leaders and teachers on the implementation procedures, incorporating it into the curriculum to achieve the required outcomes.
Dr Mariam, School Development Division Manager at Private Schools and Quality Assurance Sector, explained that the My Identity Curriculum Framework has been designed to equip schools with a relevant and flexible framework that guides schools on a robust detailed situational analysis conducted by the PSQA sector between May — July 2014 about teaching national identity in Abu Dhabi’s K-12 schools.
The objective was to understand how and to what extent national identity is fostered across both public and private schools.
“The programme will kick off this school year as a pilot project, during which the PSQA sector will launch awareness sessions to introduce ways to implement and assess the Identity Program,” said Dr Mariam.
Dr Mariam pointed out that the programme will address six themes including my values are my identity, my language is my identity, my community is my identity, my culture is my identity, my citizenship is my identity and my history is my identity.
The programme focuses on four deliverables such as curriculum framework, administrator manual, teacher manual and implementation plan that contains pilot phase strategy, teacher and administrator training strategy and full roll-out time, she added.
The programme implementation should be led by an Emirati team who understands and embodies national identity, assessment tools and protocol at three distinct levels — assessment of student learning, assessment of programme implementation at a classroom/teacher level, and assessment of programme at a school-wide/administrator implementation level — and incorporate the My Identity Programme into the Adec School Inspection Framework to ensure effective and consistent implementation.
