8. Requirements for Implementation, Follow-up and Evaluation

8.1. Requirements for Implementation and Follow-up :

This Guide is more of a reference book than a guided and restricted teaching material. The educational approach, which it has adopted to tackle the issues and concepts proposed for teaching, is characterized by a certain degree of flexibility which gives curriculum designers and teachers some leeway in adapting the contents of the subjects and the concepts mentioned in the Guide to the characteristics of the educational system and the teaching practice, without failing to stress the Islamic constants and Sharia goals, rulings and tenets which constitute a fundamental reference and a basis for analyzing and tackling the issues of reproductive health, adolescent health education and social gender.

8.1.1. Requisites for Implementation :

8.1.1.1. The Bases of the Educational Approach to Incorporating Concepts in the Teaching-learning Process(28) :

The characteristics of the Islamic Education curriculum and its teaching methodology require that the teacher adopt an educational approach that can find suitable ways and means to link the contents of Islamic Education subjects to the issues of reproductive health issues, social gender, the empowerment of women, the elucidation of the Islamic dimension in the concepts under study, Islam’s stand on them, and the directives issued on them in the Holy Qur’an or in the Prophetic tradition.

To achieve this goal, the following steps would have to be taken as guiding principles :

- Adopting the principle of a flexible incorporation of concepts, one that is based on underscoring Islamic dimensions and values without any insertion or abuse that may harm the organization of the Islamic Education contents, which would facilitate the educational progress of the lesson and enable the student to assimilate it, and prevent any feeling of a forced effort on his part to link the incorporated concepts to the content of the subject matter.

- Adopting the principle of progression in introducing and tackling concepts according to the logic of an upward expansion spiral;  horizontally : from one subject or unit to another ; vertically : from a teaching level to another to help the learner acquire a rational and conscious grasp of the comprehensive concepts in their multi-dimensional scope.

- Creating intersection and complementary conduits between reproductive health concepts, those of social gender, and the empowerment of women, on the one hand, and the contents of Islamic Education, on the other, through any thing that can contribute to forming a comprehensive and coordinated view of concepts within an Islamic perspective.

- Ensuring, whenever possible, a variety of issues and contents in a way that would respond to the interests of the targeted group of learners, helps them to enhance their experience and knowledge, and enables them to open up to wider cognitive horizons.

- Adopting teaching and learning strategies that make the learning activities which are based on participation and self-teaching their fundamental base so as to make the learner the real actor in the learning process and the instructor a mere animator and moderator.

- Highlighting the Islamic dimensions and elucidating their meanings and significance from the perspective of Sharia rulings while avoiding restricting their analysis to a narrow, one-sided view. It would be better to link them to the living realities of the learner, to his immediate environment, and to the social, health and environmental issues and their impact on the quality of life of the individual, the family and society.

- Attaching great importance to the emotional competencies ; that is, orientations, behaviors and values, and ensuring their readjustment and enhancement so that they could become for the learner an everyday activity and a life style characterized by the spirit of Islam, its noble teachings, and civilizational values.

- Reassessing the content of the programs and lessons of the Islamic Education subject ; that is, the structure of their contents, not only to strengthen and enrich them with the new concepts mentioned in the Matrix of Concepts, but to examine them thoroughly with a view to elucidating their dimensions, which would contribute to giving substance to the educational discourse that is based on the goals of Islamic Sharia and the issues of the age. It is certain that this job requires a new restructuring of the subject matter and a pedagogical training of the supervising technicians and teachers in the form of qualitative training sessions in building the curricula of Islamic Education from the perspective of priorities, new cognitive developments (issues of the age), and modern educational approaches (Introduction to “Teaching through Competencies and the Strategies of Self-teaching and Learning”).

8.1.1.2. The Methods and the Means :

The incorporation of the issues and the new and modern cognitive developments in the subject of Islamic Education requires a reexamination of its teaching methods and approaches, the main features of which are lecturing, memorizing and reciting, a method that is most suitable to the doctrinal topics included in the subject’s courses.

Injecting vigor into the teaching methods and rendering them flexible requires first and foremost the adoption of energetic and applicable methods that best reflect the learner’s realities and rest on the following :

a) Horizontal and vertical dialog : adopting the dialog method in its vertical and horizontal forms as a mechanism for creating class interaction and for establishing an appropriate atmosphere between the teacher and the learners, as well as among them, and for developing inquisitive thinking and intellectual curiosity to stimulate the students into a permanent search for the Islamic concept in its intellectual and traditional sources. This method also helps the learner to acquire not only the skills of dialog and communication but also the methodology of disseminating Islamic discourse and its religious values to the family and to the social and cultural milieu of local environment.

b) Relating learning activities to the everyday reality of the learner and his environment.

c) Linking the lesson’s learning activities to the everyday reality of the learners as individuals or groups ; for the teacher should not, while teaching health and social concepts, focus only on the theoretical analysis in acquiring knowledge, but also on turning this knowledge, which the learner acquires through his dealing with texts, into everyday behavior and practice. To achieve this, the teacher will have to relate the content of the Islamic Education lesson to the learner’s needs and interests and to the prevailing phenomena, and invest all this in the classroom through examples, texts, pictures and the various educational documents.

d) Independence in education (self-education) : train learners on how to be independent in self-education, in such a way as to make the lesson a basis for education, but not the whole education. The educational process begins in the classroom but does not end in it. Social phenomena are real practical phenomena. They are acquired through daily practice, understood, analyzed and interacted with only through adopting several learning methods one of which takes place in the classroom. This learning method requires that the Islamic Education teacher know the various learning methods, whether in or outside the classroom. It also requires that learners acquire skills that would enable them to apply these methods through individual or group reading, or to use computers and multimedia devices and audio-visuals, or to learn through group activities or such other means, as we shall see in detail in the section on media and activities. 

e) Habituate the learner to positive modesty : to train the learner on positive modesty (There is no modesty in religion !) in dealing with the issues of reproductive health, of social gender, of the empowerment of women and of negative social phenomena, while eschewing negative modesty which prevents the learner from acquiring knowledge and from knowing lofty Islamic orientations in talking these issues. In the absence of any Islamic guidance, the learner may pick up a negative tendency and thus become introvert ; his stock of values may thin down, which could have dire consequences for him as a result of his actions and irresponsible behaviors that are incompatible with Islamic morals and values.

Positive modesty can be bolstered in dealing with the issues of reproductive health issues, of social gender and of the negative social phenomena through cooperation between the education institution and the educational institutions in society through two things :

- Providing the necessary information related to reproductive health in appropriate doses and at the right time, and through a scientific method without embarrassment or sensitivity. This can be done through discussing topics related to the subject, such as the story of life, the wisdom behind the creation of the male and the female to illustrate the Greatness of the Creator, or talking about Sharia rulings on puberty, such as wet dreams, menstruation and other matters when dealing with Ghasl (the full ritual washing of the body with water to be pure for the prayer) and Tahara (cleanliness), or discussing the sexually transmitted diseases and homosexuality, and their impact on the physical and mental health of both the individual and the community, the consequences attending them in this world and the Hereafter, and the lawful ways to insure their prevention in lessons of morals and transactions.

-  Teaching the learners the rules of lawful mixing between the two sexes through participation in learning activities, discussions, and dialogues organized in such a way as to break all the psychological obstacles between the two sexes and to preserve virtue and the value of each sex in the other’s view on the basis of piety, abstinence as a basis for transactions through the following Islamic directives :

- Forbidding Khulwa, 

- Enjoining what is right,

- Being committed to wearing Islamic dress.

All this would, of course, require a great deal of effort on the part of educational institutions to rethink the interaction between the two sexes according to this orientation whose aim is to realize a great degree of human dignity and to motivate the human being to be creative, unlike the educational orientations which call for absolute freedom and whose main consequence is to view the woman from a purely sexual angle.

The onus is on the teachers of Islamic Education to rebuild this relationship in light of Islamic orientations through discussions of issues that are of interest to the two sexes in a way that would include many of the judgments of the Holy Qur’an and the Sunnah in tackling these issues. Examples that illustrate this abound both in the Holy Book and the Sunnah.

F) Variety and complementarity of the teaching methods : This variety and complementarity of the teaching methods and teaching activities will give the learner greater opportunities to participate in and interact with the content of the lesson. In addition to the methods of teaching Islamic Education subject and the educational aspects in which the already mentioned methods can be exploited to motivate learners to assimilate the content of the issues and concepts, to enable them to interact positively with them, to confront individual differences in learning, and to insure equal opportunity for all learners, what is required of the teacher is not to use only one method, but a variety of methods and animation techniques which he notices that they are not so widely used or which are almost not used in Islamic Education lessons in spite of the fact that they may be more useful in teaching Islamic concepts and rulings. Of such methods we can mention by way of example the following :

- The recitation method,

- The Socratic method,

- The deductive and discovery method,

- The problem solving method,

- The value illustrative method,

- The role play technique (imitation),

- The case study technique,

- The group technique.

8.1.1.3. Teaching Materials

The teaching materials must be varied and closely related to the concepts being studied. They must also be user-friendly and more effective in getting the message across to the learner. They should include the Holy Qur’an and the Prophetic tradition, as well as the goals of Islamic Sharia as is explained in the appendix of this Guide. Worth mentioning is the fact that textbooks and all reference Islamic books should keep their place in facilitating the teaching and learning processes. If the appropriate educational space and the modern educational technology are available, the following multimedia ought to be used as a support :

- Tapes ;

- Transparencies ;

- Slides ;

- Historical and scientific documentaries that deal with important topics (the stages of embryo formation, conjugal disputes, family disintegration, the harmful effects of alcohol and drugs) ;

- Videotapes and taped TV programs (Symposia and Islamic programs) ;

- Educational CDs (such as those used in reciting the Holy Qur’an and Hadiths, and those that contain analyses of the texts of Islamic heritage) ;

- Internet sites, such as data banks which the instructor can use in quest for Islamic information which he may need to prepare his Islamic Education lesson, and which can help the learner to enrich his cognitive stock and broaden his knowledge. In this context, it is worth pointing out the important role the Internet plays in shaping the culture of the coming generations, namely in the field of sexual behavior. The qualitative results of the studies conducted on the degree of the impact of the means of communication on adolescent behavior have shown that the number of the pornographic internet sites continues to rise unabated in comparison to the cultural, scientific and health sites. To face this serious danger, the instructor must make greater efforts to meet the needs of adolescents in the field of culture and sexual counseling and to supply them with the correct religious information which would shield them against delinquency and debauchery, and remind them of the human being’s real role in life, the purpose for which the male and the female were created, the lawful ways of draining off sexual energy, and the measures that need to be taken to preserve physical health and the reproductive system from harm.

It is extremely useful to pay special attention to the educational activities and to combine the activities suggested in the classroom with those which learners are asked to carry out outside the classroom due to their duel advantage. On the one hand, these activities contribute to strengthening the concepts and Islamic values being examined in the learner’s mind and give him the possibility to use the cognitive stock and the skills he has acquired within his own community through practice ; on the other, it affords the learner with the possibility of transmitting religious discourse and the spiritual values to his peers, to the members of his family, and to the surrounding immediate environment. To achieve this goal, the teacher must be a role model in terms of his behavior and daily life, and in his dealings with his students in the classroom and in the school.

8.2. Evaluation and Continuous Assessment Requirements  :

8.2.1. Evaluation of Learning Activities :

Evaluation is both educational and diagnostic ; its aim is to find out the strong and weak points in the educational context of the lesson and to enable the teacher to take serious and harmonious decisions that would activate the learner’s abilities, develop his skills and competencies, and consolidate the experiences he has acquired. Evaluation is a means not a goal in itself. It is also one of the main components of the learning strategy and is part and a parcel of the lesson; it aims, on the basis of learning outputs and feedback results, to achieve the following : 

- Evaluating the learner’s educational abilities and competencies (knowledge, skills, orientations, behaviors and values), the purpose of which is not just to submit a qualitative and quantitative representation of these abilities, but also to know whether the students’ learning goals and the level of realization of their competencies has been achieved as required, and whether or not the teaching methods and the means adopted are really favorable to achieving the planned objectives.

- Finding out the source of the learning difficulties and obstacles that stand in the way of the learners’ teaching-learning process.

- Rectifying the mistakes, readjusting the practices, orientations and inclinations, and acclimatizing them to the teaching situations so as to help the learner to progress fast in his learning and to improve his pace according to a sound educational method.

- Consolidating the correct learning practices, strengthening positive attitudes, and encouraging the desired orientations and values.

The nature of population education as an educational response is multi-disciplinary and is integrated in the structure of the contents of the carrier units. It makes evaluation a fundamental process that requires the use of certain tools which are concerned with the emotional and social aspect, in addition to the cognitive and skill aspects, because of its close relationship with the methodology and goals of Islamic Education. That is, tools that gauge the change in orientations and attitudes, the degree of adaptability, the acceptance of Islamic values, and the behavioral orientation which the learner is expected to adopt in life in the future vis-à-vis population, health and development issues.

For the evaluation process to succeed in realizing the expected educational goals, the teacher should use various evaluation tools that are compatible with the contents being taught. They should also be simple, accurate and easy to use, as well as able to measure learning outputs and to monitor how much learning has taken place in the learner’s knowledge acquisition in terms of information, reactions, responses and attitudes towards issues and Islamic concepts being studied in the classroom or outside it. This is also an opportunity to remind the teachers of Islamic Education that using traditional evaluation methods which are based on question and answer tests in all their forms are not enough and cannot be relied upon in knowing how much of the planned goals have been achieved.

If the concepts which this Guide seeks to incorporate in the curricula of Islamic Education are practical and applicable, they still need innovation in the evaluation methods and types. Regarding the types of evaluation, diagnostic evaluation, whose aim is to identify the learner’s acquirements and past experiences and to define his interests in the subject, may be adopted. This type of evaluation helps the teacher to save time and effort through concentrating on these needs which have top priority. Another type of evaluation that may also be used is phase (Structural) evaluation which permeates the stages of the lesson and enables the learners to participate in the gradual building of information and concepts, to form conceptions, readjust orientations, and rectify or strengthen values. Final (General) evaluation at the end of the lesson aims to gauge the extent to which the planned qualitative goals have been realized and to review and amend the teaching and learning strategy and the proposed activities in light of the results of the feedback and the learning outcome.

Among the means of evaluation which the instructor can use, we may mention :

- Essay tests,

- Multiple choice tests,

- Fill-in-the-space tests,

- Open-ended and closed questions,

- Complement test,

- Gradation standard,

- Lecrete Standard.

8.2.2. Backup Teaching Activities

The evaluation process, which accompanies the lesson, often reveals the existence of learning difficulties and obstacles that stand in the way of the learners’ total assimilation of some concepts or issues. To overcome this educational problem and to strengthen the learner’s skills, there are some diverse complementary backup activities which can fill his cognitive or emotional gap and which include the following (the list of examples given below is by no means exhaustive) : 

- Asking students to collect information on a given topic from the various books and references or CDs, or from Internet sites ; and to give short talks in the classroom that would either consolidate the information learned in the previous sessions or to exploit it in building the learning activities of the next lesson.

- Keeping files on particular issues through collecting documents and pictures, or producing support educational materials, such as charts, slides, audiotapes, films, etc., to train students on how to do research, to compile documentation, and to use these files not only in the lesson and the accompanying activities, but also in enriching the lesson.

- Organizing field trips and visits to the institutions that are associated with the field of social work and health, such as hospitals, family planning centers, centers for mother and child healthcare, centers for orphans, foundlings, the homeless and people with special needs, literacy and adult education centers, and other institutions, and asking students to prepare inquiries and questions they would like to address to the officials in charge of these institutions and which they would discuss in the classroom according to the defined goals of every visit.

- Urging students to take part in voluntary charity, social and health work organized by government institutions, the private sector, and civil society institutions, and to join the scout groups.

-  Using the students’ energies and potentialities and creative works in the preparation of articles on social and health awareness, and helping them to publish these articles in the institution’s magazine or in the local media - audio or visual.

- Setting up voluntary workshops in the institute in the fields of cleanliness and tree-planting and holding joint training sessions on first-aid and prevention from the sexually transmitted diseases, through coordination with teachers of other subject matters (natural sciences, physical education).

- Organizing meetings and symposia attended by experts in the various educational, health, social and economic fields, as well as by students’ parents, to discuss issues related to woman, the family, reproductive health, safe adolescent sexual behavior, social gender, the empowerment of woman and other topics that might contribute to disseminating awareness and rationalizing individual and group conduct.

- Taking government-supported initiative to sign a partnership and cooperation agreement in the field of sensitization, health and social awareness among educational institutions, and the governmental or private institutions that are interested in the field, so long as the educational mission is not limited to the discourses that the school promotes ; for it is a societal mission to which all sectors contribute and whose objective is to realize a balanced development that combines the materialistic aspects with the spiritual and the value-based aspects.