ACHIEVABILITY OF GRADE NINE QATARI ENGLISH KEY CURRICULUM STANDARDS: TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate ESL teachers’ perspectives regarding Grade Nine English curriculum standards. In addition, participant’ demographics and factors influencing the achievability of standards were studied. Demographics included gender, school location, teacher qualification and experienced in context of Grade Nine, SBE and Independent Qatari schools. The required data were gathered during the fall term of 2017 through a researcher-made questionnaire from responses of a representative sample of 311 ESL teachers in practice at Independent schools in Qatar. The instrument was first piloted before it was administered and it showed the reliability of 0.985 alpha coefficient value for the whole survey. The findings were analyzed using Descriptive and inferential like frequency, percentage, average and mean. SPSS software (version 23) was used to run t-tests, ANOVA and correlations to analyze the closed items of the questionnaire. The findings revealed that ESL had general agreement that English curriculum key standards were achievable in low level. In addition, results found that school location and teachers’ prior SBE experience significantly influence on the achievability of certain standards strand.