(2022). Illusions of Improvement: Aspirations and Realities of Quality Assurance and Accreditation Policy in Afghanistan Higher Education. Higher Education Research and Development, v41 n3 p952-966. To enhance the quality of higher education in Afghanistan, the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) adapted quality assurance and accreditation (QAA) policies developed in other countries to the Afghan context. Perspectives on the effectiveness of the new QAA policy have been mixed. On the one hand, the MoHE believes the QAA policy has transformed the Afghan higher education system. On the other hand, the faculty and administrators charged with implementation have expressed concerns about government inspection and control, lack of resources to improvements, and worries that the policy is an impartation of Western countries. This study explored the gap between QAA policy reform efforts by the MoHE and implementing these efforts at Afghan universities. The findings highlight conflicting views of whether QAA policy was an authentically Afghan-led process, practical issues with Afghan universities' capacity to implement QAA policy, and whether the reality of the QAA policy met… [Direct]
(2018). Learning in the Chaos: A Political Economy Analysis of Education in Afghanistan. Research in Comparative and International Education, v13 n2 p239-258 Jun. Afghanistan is often characterised as a 'failed' or 'fragile' state in terms of state 'functionality', lacking in capacity to provide security and wellbeing to its citizens and failing to prevent violent conflict and terrorism. Since 2001, education has become a major victim of Afghanistan's protracted crisis that involves international military interventions, fragile democracy and growing radicalisation. Drawing upon qualitative interviews with educational officials and practitioners in Afghanistan and critically examining the literature in education and conflict, we argue that Afghanistan's education is caught in the nexus between deteriorating security conditions, weak governance and widespread corruption, resulting in rebel capture of educational spaces for radicalisation and violent extremism. More broadly, we contend that education faces the risk of capture for radicalisation in contexts where state fragility and fundamentalism intersect. Finally, we highlight some critical… [Direct]
(2023). The Fall of the Republic Government in Afghanistan and the Current Taliban Rule: A Survey of Public Attitudes. Research in Social Sciences and Technology, v8 n4 p172-195. This paper represents one of the most recent and pertinent studies conducted in Afghanistan, aiming to address the societal imperative of comprehending the factors behind the fall of the Republic government and the subsequent rise of the Taliban to power. Furthermore, the paper seeks to analyse public attitudes towards the current situation. Employing a quantitative approach, the research utilizes a descriptive-analytical method through questionnaires and the participants include social media activist, students and universities professors, the data collected by online survey according WhatsApp, Facebook messengers, telegram, email and other social media groups from different ethnic groups. The findings of this research have identified several pivotal factors contributing to the ascent of the Taliban to power, including the US-Taliban agreement in Doha, Qatar; political disparities; administrative and financial corruption within the Republic's administration; Pakistan's support for… [PDF]
(2019). The Policy Reassembly of Afghanistan's Higher Education System. Globalisation, Societies and Education, v17 n1 p44-60. This paper explores how a national higher education sector can be assembled upon a relatively narrow ideological foundation during and in the aftermath of violent conflict. It analyses the case of Afghanistan's higher education system, and argues that the violent disintegration of this system during the 1980s and 1990s created the conditions for a neoliberal reassembly and subsequent expansion of higher education from 2001. This paper draws on data gathered from document analysis, and semi-structured interviews with key policy actors. It identifies an ideological grounding in neoliberalism within higher education policies which are responsible for directing the sector's growth since 2010. I argue that this neoliberal agenda, largely driven by globalised influences, has exploited Afghanistan's conflict-affected context to position higher education primarily as a driver of economic growth, thus limiting policy emphasis on higher education's non-economic dividends. The paper concludes… [Direct]
(2022). Sexual Harassment of Higher Education Female Students in Afghanistan: A Case Study. Issues in Educational Research, v32 n2 p659-680. This study investigates what behaviours female students considered harassing and to what extent they experienced them. It also explores perpetrators and locations of harassment, effects on students, coping strategies, and reasons for not reporting harassment. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 317 female students at Takhar University. The findings showed that female students experienced a wide range of harassing acts to varying extent. A stranger, taxi driver and students other than classmates were reported to be the most frequent harassers. Female students were frequently harassed on online platforms, corridors, walkways and on the way to and from university. Harassment had a variety of effects on female students, and they used passive and self-centred strategies (e.g., intentionally wearing dresses thought to draw less attention of perpetrators) to deal with harassment. Moreover, they did not report their harassment experiences for various reasons. The study suggests… [PDF]
(2022). Overview of Research Project: Assistive Technology in Humanitarian Settings. UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti There are 240 million children with disabilities in the world; half of them are out of school. Many are invisible, stigmatized, hidden by their families and abandoned by their governments. Children with disabilities, especially in humanitarian settings, are among the poorest members of the population and one of the most marginalized and excluded groups in society. With only an estimated 1 in 10 children with a need for assistive devices having access, UNICEF's Office of Research — Innocenti undertook a study to better understand the nature and drivers of Assistive Technology (AT) access in humanitarian settings. This document provides a synthesis of the project's various reports and papers: (1) a thematic literature review summarizes the academic evidence base regarding the provision of AT in humanitarian settings, including the nature and scale of provision and barriers and facilitators of access and provision; and (2) three case studies of countries affected by crisis to… [PDF]
(2022). Grammarly Deployment (In)Efficacy within EFL Academic Writing Classrooms: An Attitudinal Report from Afghanistan. Cogent Education, v9 n1 Article 2142446. Automated writing evaluation (AWE) programs have been widely utilized in writing classrooms and have been increasing gradually, yet teachers' and students' attitudes in relation to AWE, Grammarly, have still remained uncharted in Afghanistan. The current study explored teachers' and students' attitudes toward the efficacy and/or inefficacy of Grammarly deployment in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) academic writing classrooms. This study employed mixed methods, sending a questionnaire to 66 students and interviewing five Afghan English language (EL) teachers and four students from private language schools (PLSs) and public universities (PUs). Also, the ABC model of attitudes has been used to measure teachers' and students' attitudes in this study. Statistical analysis showed that students' attitudes were quite favorable toward Grammarly deployment in writing classrooms. Besides, inferential statistics uncovered that no significant difference exists between students' attitudes… [Direct]
(2022). "Quality-Less" Higher Education: Relationship and Neocolonialism in International Development in Afghanistan. ProQuest LLC, Ph.D. Dissertation, Old Dominion University. This study aimed to explore the internal quality assurance and accreditation (QAA) policy at University X in Afghanistan. A single case study and document review methods were chosen to examine the policy implementation process and its perceived effectiveness at a single university. This case study also explored faculty members' perceptions toward QAA, the policy's impact on teaching and learning, and the opportunities and challenges it might offer. The findings of the study produced unexpected and expected results. The expected findings were tailored around social relationships, labor division, the hierarchy of labor, incompatibility of the policy, and their impact on the implementation process. The common findings tapped more directly into the research questions: the policy's perceived effectiveness on teaching and learning, the faculty members' capacity to implement it, and the future of the policy. Many participants did not believe that the approach had enhanced teaching and… [Direct]
(2021). Investigating Challenges Facing Afghan University Students during COVID-19 Outbreak. Shanlax International Journal of Education, v9 n4 p341-351 Sep. This study aimed to examine the challenges students experienced during the lockdowns imposed by the government to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus outbreak in Afghanistan. A qualitative study with a phenomenological research design was employed in this study. Eight university students, including five males and three females, enrolled at different universities participated in the study. Six of them studied at Afghan universities, and two studied abroad but perused their education from Afghanistan due to lockdowns. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed using a thematic analysis method. The interview data showed that Afghan university students experienced many challenges and hardships in their education process when all educational institutions were closed once the coronavirus began spreading in the country and the world. Students expressed dissatisfaction due to many technical and practical issues that minimised the effectiveness of online… [PDF]
(2021). Challenges of Second Language Teachers' Professional Identity Construction: Voices from Afghanistan. TESOL Journal, v12 n3 e587 Sep. Afghanistan has recently witnessed the redefinition of its educational policies, particularly those related to language teaching. However, little is known about Afghan second language (L2) teachers and the challenges they might face in their professional identity construction. This study investigated the challenges of professional identity construction of Afghan L2 teachers. Scenario prompts and semistructured interviews were used to explore how the teachers responded to challenging situations and narrated their professional challenges. Data analyses indicated that the teachers responded to the scenario prompts in accordance with perspectives mirroring criticality in educational functioning by promoting learners' awareness of sociocultural anomalies, resisting institutional inequalities, and gearing instruction to learners' needs. Additionally, analysis of the teachers' semistructured interviews revealed sociocultural, institutional, and pedagogical challenges, particularly the… [Direct]
(2020). In the Wake of War: Prospects for American-Modeled Higher Education in Iraq and Afghanistan. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, v52 n4 p19-23. 2020 promises to be a watershed year for American foreign policy. In February, the United States struck a deal with the Taliban that would withdraw troops from Afghanistan, ending America's longest and most expensive war. A month earlier, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel American soldiers from the country. With the potential departure of U.S. forces from these countries, it is important to ask about the American legacy. How will the United States be remembered in the Middle East: as a destructive interloper or, as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo suggested in a speech at the American University in Cairo in 2019, "a force for good"? We know that Afghanistan and Iraq have experienced American hard power, but how receptive are they to American soft power? A review of the countries' national higher education contexts, international exchanges, and American universities provides insights into the power of attraction in these post-conflict settings…. [Direct]
(2023). Self-Regulated Learning and Motivational Beliefs: Findings from a Survey of EFL Undergraduates in Afghanistan. Issues in Educational Research, v33 n2 p781-797. The concept of self-regulated learning in the field of educational psychology has been developed to comprehend how students learn autonomously. Motivation is a pivotal factor in learners' academic outcomes, and its connection with self-regulated learning is extensive. While self-regulated learning and motivational beliefs are both believed to play important roles in EFL learning, very little is known about their interplay in the Afghan context, and research on the relationship among these variables seems scarce. Therefore, to contribute to this knowledge gap, the overarching aim of the present survey was to investigate the phenomenon of self-regulated learning and motivational beliefs among EFL learners in higher education. Quantitative research was carried out on a sample size of 123 EFL learners. The data was collected through a survey questionnaire and analysed using SPSS v24 where both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics such as one-way ANOVA, correlation, and… [PDF]
(2019). Attitudes and Challenges toward the Use of ICT Skills: An Assessment of ICT Skills among University Lecturers and Students in Afghanistan. Online Submission, International Journal of Recent Technology and Engineering v8 n1C2 p314-321 May. Information and communication technology (ICT) play a vital role in the sustainable development and economic growth of a country, as well as it supports the learning and teaching process approaches effectively. In Afghanistan, the level of student and lecturers' understanding of the ICT skills tools is almost at its preliminary stages. In addition, enough studies have not been conducted in the field of information and communication technologies. The purpose of the current descriptive study is to find out students' ICT skills and the challenges which students and lecturers encounter toward integrating ICT in education at public universities of Afghanistan. and the lecturers, as well. The data regarding the usage of ICT skills in learning practices have been collected through two distinct questionnaires which involved 317 students and 84 lecturers from the four public universities in the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul. The data analysis was performed with SPSS software to describe and… [PDF]
(2022). Evaluating Afghanistan University Students' Writing Anxiety in English Class: An Empirical Research. Cogent Education, v9 n1 Article 2040697. Writing anxiety leads to poor writing performance among learners as it hinders their writing. This study investigated the level, types, and causes of writing anxiety among Afghan EFL students. A total of 133 undergraduates was selected as the respondents. The study used a quantitative research method and the data was collected using a questionnaire derived from Second Language Writing Anxiety Inventory and Cause of Writing Anxiety Inventory. Both descriptive and inferential statistics of SPSS were used to analyze the data. The findings of the study indicated a moderate level of writing anxiety, with cognitive anxiety as the dominant type of writing anxiety. In addition, the inferential analysis showed no significant differences in the level of writing anxiety across gender and their years of study. However, a statistically significant difference was found among students from different backgrounds who possessed different English proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate,… [Direct]
(2021). How GPE Drives Gender Equality. Global Partnership for Education Education drives gender equality which is key to creating a more peaceful, prosperous, healthy and sustainable world. But for education to fulfill its potential, both girls and boys must equally benefit from it. This brief provides information on the gender equality challenge, the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) approach, why gender equality in education matters, and closing the gender gap in Afghanistan…. [PDF]