Women’s role in nation building: socialising Saudi female preservice teachers into leadership roles

ABSTRACT

This paper is about socialising Saudi female preservice teachers (PSTs) while they are attending university into the role of educational leadership. This leadership role should be broadened to include nation building per the tenets of Saudi Arabia’s national development plan, Vision 2030. After discussing nation building and profiling the Saudi educational context (including educational reform initiatives), and after explaining Islamic understandings of educational leadership (values and traditions), an overview of the intentionally planned professional socialisation process is presented. The paper culminates in ideas around what an aligned curriculum might contain so Saudi female PSTs are exposed to educational leadership for nation building while at university. With intentional socialisation into this role, upon graduation, they should be more inclined to assume a role in nation building by (a) influencing the educational sector, players, and policies to benefit the nation and (b) convincing other sectors of the value of women and the education sector in ensuring an ambitious nation. Insights apply to other nations engaged in nation building including Arab nations.

KEYWORDS:

• Nation building
• educational leadership
• professional socialisation process
• teacher education curriculum
• Saudi female preservice teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sue L. T. McGregor

Sue L. T. McGregor (PhD, IPHE, Professor Emerita MSVU, Canada) is an active independent researcher and scholar in home economics education, leadership, and philosophy; consumer education, studies, and policy; transdisciplinarity; and research paradigms and methodologies. She is Docent in Home Economics at the University of Helsinki (lifetime appointment recognising international reputation). She is a transdisciplinary ATLAS Fellow, a Karpatkin International Consumer Fellow, and she received the TOPACE International Award (Berlin) for distinguished international consumer educator and scholar. She has published six books, over 200 peer-refereed papers, 35 book chapters, 15 self-published monographs and has delivered 32 keynotes in 14 countries. Most of her scholarship is available at her professional website: www.consultmcgregor.com. Dr. McGregor recently published the acclaimed Understanding and Evaluating Research (SAGE 2018).

Amani K. Hamdan Alghamdi

Amani K. Hamdan Alghamdi is Full Professor at Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University (IAU) in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. Dr. Alghamdi is the founder and first Vice Dean of the female section at IAU’s Faculty of Education, and she is a Higher Education Academy (HEA) Senior Fellow. Her multifaceted education-focused research interests include Saudi education and curricula, KSA higher education including teacher preparation education, infusing analytical and critical thinking into teaching, critical multicultural education, online education and cultural manifestation, financial literacy education in Saudi Arabia, and narrative research. With over 26 years of national and international teaching experience, she is well known in the field of education in Saudi Arabia and abroad. Dr. Alghamdi is also an award-winning scholar (Arabic and English) and widely published with more than 40 Scopus publications including papers in American, Canadian, Saudi, and Australian high impact factor journals. She has presented papers at nearly 10 different international conference venues and edited several book collections.