Chapter Four

THE METHODS AND MEANS OF WOMEN EDUCATION

Introduction

Chapters Two and Three presented the inputs to women education and its bases. This chapter will discuss the practical ways for implementing the women education program. These are a set of methods which the trainer can use to put into operation the women education program in the best possible way. Chapter Four is divided up into two main axes:

Axis One: It contains the following contents:

- The desired goals and objectives of women education and which constitute a frame of reference that will enable the researcher to set the goals on the following levels:

• Long term objectives.

• Institutional intentions and targets.

• General goals that describe the specifications and results of learning.

• Procedural objectives that describe tangible behaviors.

• Contents derived from the aforementioned objectives and which are categorized according to the needs examined in Chapter 1.

Axis Two: Pedagogical methods for implementing women education. They include the following:

• Methods and training activities, such as reading, writing, and the teaching of concepts and values.

• Educational aids that help in the teaching of the subject matter or in organizing the relationship between the trainer and the women targeted by the training.

The following is a detailed description of the contents of these two axes. The contents are organized according to three components which are:

•  Component One: objectives and contents.

•  Component Two: training methods.

•  Component Three: tools and educational aids.

Component One: Objectives and contents
(Frame of reference of the objectives of women education)

Having presented the most important inputs and bases that contribute to women education, we will suggest in the following paragraphs a general conception of the means and methods of this education through the objectives and the contents that may be adopted.

1. The frame of reference of the training objectives

r Adopting positive attitudes towards gaining profound knowledge of Islam. The objective is to instill Islamic values in the minds of the women targeted by the teaching and learning operation.

r Being aware of their civil rights and principles of citizenship.  Women education should aim to teach them their rights and how to keep those rights, in addition to providing them with the basic information that will enable them to carry out their civil duties when they cast their votes, and to contribute to the democratic political life in their communities.

r Learning the reading and writing skills. The aim is to learn how to read and write so that every beneficiary can write paragraphs and read them.

r Learning how to count and do mathematical operations. The aim is to acquire the skills involved in sorting out a mathematical operation and to use abstract thinking that will enable them to solve problems in life.

r Acquiring positive attitudes towards the demographic milieu. The aim is to sensitize them towards the issues in their demographic milieu, such as family planning, contributing to household economy and maintaining family balance.

r Acquiring positive attitudes towards the environment. The aim is to adopt balanced behaviors towards the environment, through protecting it and refraining from destroying it.

r Acquiring health awareness. One way of teaching women the principles of reproductive health, the importance of cleanliness and good behaviors in taking good care of the infant in terms of health and nutrition is to give women a sound health education. These behaviors will undoubtedly contribute to the prevention of a number of diseases.

r Acquiring vocational skills. Women education should aim at equipping the women with the necessary skills that will enable them to practise a vocational profession, and thus contribute to the economy of the family and the community.

2. The contents of women education

The inputs and referential objectives mentioned earlier constitute a set of criteria for determining the nature of the contents that can be used in women education. In the field of curriculum and content design, researchers have not lost sight of the present needs of the learning women, or of the goals of their education. One such researcher is Dr. Abdulwahid Abdullah Youssef whose study summarizes the most important axes of the program set up by UNESCO for the education of girls and women (1976-1980) in the fields of culture, vocational training, health and nutrition. This program is known as the “functional program”(1).

Moreover, the two researchers Dr. Ibrahim al-Kinani and Dr. Mohammed Ilyas have limited the common contents of women education to the following domains:(2)

- Family domains: the relationship between the spouses, family affairs.
- Home economics: saving, family savings, sewing, household tasks.
- Child raising: pregnancy, delivery, suckling, weaning, and so on.
- Learning a vocation: agriculture, and other manual trades.
- Health: nutrition and cleanliness.
- Patriotism: national and patriotic orientations.
- Religion: learning the basics of religion.
- Society: the relationship between individuals and customs.
- Spare time: recreation and leisure.

The truth of the matter is that the contents of women education emanate from their needs and preoccupations. Basically, these contents are functional and practical contents that are related to the immediate interests in life. Therefore, the most suitable organization of these contents are the axis curricula that are based on the module system and centers of interest. These are:

- Religious education
- Civil rights
- Reading and writing
- Mathematical operations
- Demographic education
- Environmental education
- Health education
- Vocational skills

The axes of these modules are listed below:

THE AXES OF THE CONTENTS OF WOMEN EDUCATION

* Religious education

- Memorizing the Holy Book
- Performing religious duties
- Learning religious values

* Civil rights

- Citizenship and its rights
- The citizen and the administration: administrative services
- The practice of democracy
- The rights of the citizen and the rights of the woman.

* Reading and writing (on a gradual basis)

- Learning the alphabets (enunciation and representation)
- Writing and reading paragraphs
- Reading and writing various types of letters
- Communication through language: reception and transmission

* Mathematical operations

- Numbers
- The four operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
- Telling time
- Measures
- Geometry
- Bookkeeping
- Solving mathematical problems

* Demographic education

- Migration issues
- Family balance
- Family planning
- Home economics
- Family values

* Environmental education

- Use of natural resources
- Pollution problems
- Environment equilibrium
- Positive environmental behaviors
- Rationalization of water consumption
- Treatment of domestic solid waste

* Health education

- The health of teenage girls
- The health of the pregnant woman and of the infant, tests and vaccinations
- Pregnancy hazards
- The health of the infant: cleanliness, vaccination, health care, nutrition
- Sexually transmitted diseases and the ways to prevent them
- Nutrition: balanced diet, cooking, types of foods, ways of preserving foodstuffs

* Vocational education

- Home economics
- Domestic handicrafts (goods produced at home: carpets, rugs, utensils, jewelry, etc.)
- Cultivation (tillage)
- Practicing various trades
- Cooperatives

Component Two: Teaching methods

1. Learning reading and writing:

Learning reading and writing is one way of fighting “abecedarian illiteracy” and discovering and observing the world of writing. This is why learning reading and writing is viewed as a pivot in women education, it being a means and an objective at the same time. It is a means because it constitutes the ground that will pave the way for learning other educational and vocational aspects; it is a goal because it is the weapon to be used for eradicating women illiteracy.

If television and the radio have played their part in tackling this issue, formal education is still required to achieve the goals of reading and writing. The first principle of this teaching is “the elimination of those childish exercises which still exist in some literacy textbooks used by adults. For the adult’s social life (including women’s, of course) could, or must, be the source of the materials used in setting up literacy programs"(1).

* The methodology of teaching reading:

Reading is a series of steps that provide the instructor with the possibility of dealing with the written discourse in its various dimensions in terms of understanding, analyzing and producing it.

In women education, the methodology of reading moves gradually from spelling and enunciation to reading and understanding texts; accordingly, the methodology of reading varies according to its gradual levels on the basis of the following sequence:

Designation: the letters are written on the slate or in the class book, then the instructor enunciates the letter, drills the students in it and pronounces its name. The letters are read as follows:

- The letter is read in isolation.
- The letter is read within a word.
- The letter is read with the diacritical marks: Dhamma, fatha and Kasra.

Tahjiyya, or spelling, consists in pronouncing the syllables of a word according to the diacritical marks they carry, or according to the long vowels to which they are connected.

The inclusive method: In this method, used in women education, the characters are introduced as part of words, or in sentences supported by pictures, which will enable the learning woman to learn the letter within the word. If she cannot read the word, she can pronounce it, along with the letter, having recognized its meaning with the help of the visual aid, such as a picture.

2. Communication:

Interaction, which is a relationship between individuals or between one individual and a group of people, is based on mutual communication, initiatives, interventions, answers, acts, and reactions, all of which breathe life into the group, makes it grow in number and become active. Because the class is a group of people, and because there is a great deal of interaction within every group, there are limits and frameworks that set apart the interaction of this or that group. To understand some of the constants and variables of interaction, we can work on the group of students that constitute the class, in much the same way we work on tribes or communities or any other organized groups : hence the good reason to make use of some ethnological models which studies group interaction, making it a basis for organizing communicational situations (Holliday Hymes).

Within the context of women education, oral expression and the speaking activity play a major part in improving the learner’s communicative competence. This expression rests on the functional understanding of language as a means of communication; this is why it is of paramount importance to link speaking with the social context of the learning women.

The social context consists of a set of social behaviors determined by situations and roles that make the individual opt for an appropriate behavior for every situation. It is thanks to these situations that the signs of every behavior are delineated, and then coded into linguistic forms and styles.

We note therefore the existence of the referential context as a fundamental component in realizing the communicative ability of the learner. It is related to variables that influence speech structures and forms. These variables are:

- Time and place: They constitute the space or the framework within which the communication act takes place (at home in the evening, workplace, a family gathering in the morning, etc.)

- The relationships between individuals or speakers and addressees: It is in the light of these relationships that the nature of the communication takes shape (customer, shopkeeper, father, son, teacher, student). The relationship could be one of friendship, business, or parenthood, etc.

- Affective attitudes: They are expressed in the conversation (violence, admonition, blame, etc).

- Communicative intentions: The speaker’s intentions or speech acts which could be threats, requests, hopes, apologies, gentle reproof, or greetings. Each communicative situation allows for the acquisition of values or the expression of attitudes that can be examined in the light of acted-out situations.

Role-play is one of the most important activities in realizing communication and exchange among individuals, for it teaches organization, encourages cooperation, and enables the learners to understand various phenomena.

Role-play is extemporaneous; in it the learner acts out a particular character so that s/he can appreciate the attitudes pertaining to that situation. This is why role-play and personification are an educational activity that seeks to enable the learning women to understand some situations around them, to feel their own problems, and to examine the ways of solving them with a view to enabling them to integrate in life and to take the right decisions with regard to the problems facing them. These role-plays are performed according to the following requirements:

The purpose of this activity is to achieve these goals:

- to create interactive situations among the learning women in the classroom that serve social purposes.

- to enable the learning women to use language within the context of this situation.

- to enable the learning women to live real experiences, and to express their views on them.

- to evaluate the learning women’s linguistic, expressive and intellectual output.

- to motivate and encourage learning and participation.

This activity involves roles acted out as scenes from a play emanating from real life and which the learning women are required to assume in life and in the community.

How to organize this activity?

• The preparation phase: The instructor prepares the situations to be imitated in the following manner:

- the instructor’s objective: the instructor defines the objective of the activity which ought to be linked to the topic of the activity, such as environment, health, population, civil rights, etc.

- the learning woman’s objective: the instructor changes his objective to another objective that is of interest to the learning women and that motivates them to play the roles.

- defining the roles and preparing the tools necessary for the activity (documents, pictures, texts).

- Controlling the topic for linguistic exploitation in addition to other cognitive aspects.

- defining the phases of the implementation of the activity.

•  The implementation phase: It rests on the following steps:

- informing the learning women of the topic and the rules of performance.

- assigning roles to them and introducing each role.

- acting out the roles, taping and writing them out.

- evaluating the experience in terms of language, attitudes and opinions expressed thereon.

3. Acquisition of concepts:

Concepts are a fundamental component of women education, because this education involves concepts that are related to such fields as the environment, health, population, and rights, among others. Therefore, learning these concepts is the key to the women’s acquisition of this knowledge and commitment to its values.

Teaching concepts to students requires cognitive and methodological expertise and skills that are at the same time related to the meanings of these concepts within the context of the targeted social experiences.

3.1. General meaning of the concept

Generally speaking, a concept is a general idea that refers to the element (or elements) involving things and behaviors; it takes on the form of a linguistic sign that is used in various domains of human activity, be it intellectual or material.(1)

“Family balance” is a concept referring to a number of elements common to family budget, birth spacing, adequate housing, and family expenditure. “Freedom” is a concept that refers to a psychological and materialistic state which the individual experiences in his or her life.

The concept of “Human Rights” covers other sub-concepts, such as the right to expression, the right to property, the right to movement, the right to work, and the right to citizenship, etc.

Whether it is an environmental, demographic, or a health concept, or any concept, it is possible to distinguish a set of characteristics that constitute elements common to various concepts, of which we will mention the following:

* The concept categorizes all the topics to which it refers (things, beings, behaviors, ideas and attitudes) and all the characteristics that set them apart from the rest.

The concept of “woman”, for example, distinguishes a group of individuals who participate in the teaching-learning operation from others by means of a number of characteristics, among which is the fact that they all seek knowledge which they receive within an organized structure.

* A concept is characterized by generality and inclusiveness; that is, it cannot be applied to only one single case. Its scope widens to include many various cases that have one or many characteristics.

* A concept is a symbol; when we use it, we refer to one or many specific characteristics specific to the topic to which it refers. 

Methodologically speaking, we can differentiate between a large number of concepts, according to the property that is associated with them (quantitative, abstract, empirical, comparative, classifying concept). However, for procedural reasons, we keep the distinction between two basic types of concepts. They are:

- Abstract concepts: they include all the ideas that the individual acquires in the form of symbols or generalities of immaterial abstractions.

- Material concepts: they cover all things that can be perceived through the senses.

3.2 Methodology for teaching concepts

The teaching of concepts means all the structured educational activities performed by the instructor which aim, through the use of appropriate teaching methods, at enabling the learning women to acquire and learn concepts.

Learning or acquiring a concept benefits the ability of the learning woman to provide the same answer to the subjects of learning to which she is exposed, and which share one or many characteristics, their variety notwithstanding.

Therefore, learning a concept means practically giving the learning woman the ability to produce the same answer whenever she is exposed to ideas or principles or behaviors or different values that share one or more characteristics. When teaching concepts, the instructor can use different methods, of which we can distinguish two: the inductive method and the deductive method.

- The inductive method :

This method consists of making the learning woman interact with some phenomena or realities or ideas or partial observations pertaining to a specific concept, so that she can, through her own scrutiny and examination of their shared characteristics, arrive at the general concept.

This method requires from the learning woman that she have the ability to make associations between elements and occurrences, and to generalize the inferences so as to get to the general idea or concept.

When using this method, the instructor should make a good choice of the partial situations (in the form of an example if possible) from which he can begin, so as to really arrive at the concept. During the teaching phase, the instructor should also take the learning women gradually through the steps of inductive reasoning and help them to perform the mental operations required by the learning of the concept, such as observation, association, discrimination, generalization and deduction.

- The deductive method :

This method consists in making the learning woman deal with rules and general ideas through which she can learn about some situations or phenomena or occurrences or partial ideas included in them, and understand their shared features.

Therefore, the reasoning which this method adopts is the reverse of that adopted by the inductive method. For in the latter, to learn the concept, the learning woman starts from the example (partial situation) to arrive at the concept; whereas in the deductive method, she starts from the general idea (concept) to get to the example (the partial situation).

The deductive method requires from the learning woman the ability to analyze the general idea and to recognize its characteristics and, from there, to know the partial situations that might be included in them. When using this method, the instructor should introduce the general idea (principle, rule, general definition), from which he starts, to the learning women, which could be considered as a definition of the concept to be taught. Then he will ask them to find examples that reflect one or more features covered by the stated general idea.

4. The value curriculum 

Values are a fundamental component of women education, because this component strives to equip the learning women with moral criteria and virtues that will mark their behavior and trim off their affective character, such as the values of good health and exemplary education of children, and economic values based on good budgeting and striking a balance between income and expenditure. To teach these values to the learning women, the instructor may seek guidance in the following data:

4.1 The concept of value:

In general, a value is a quality that is attributed to a subject; it is this quality that makes the subject either desirable or undesirable. It is a criterion and a touchstone by whose virtue we pass value judgments on subjects and discriminate between what is wanted and preferred within the range of choices offered to us. We may prefer a particular subject from among many, because it is a good one. In our relationships with others and ourselves, we may, for instance, behave in a particular manner to safeguard friendship and to be trustworthy, or to have a tendency for group life, or for serving others, or to be successful in one’s work, etc.

We do all that because we believe that what we are doing is good, healthy and beautiful. Therefore, value is all the criteria that influence the individual’s behavior, guide him towards a particular course, and defines the type of relationship between him and his human, natural, economic and health environment, through the choices and preferences that are based on it.

Most often, an individual’s values are embodied in his or her behaviors, feelings, tendencies, interests and the various activities s/he undertakes and the manner in which these activities are carried out.

An individual may feel sympathy towards another who is going through a crisis; he commiserates with him and tries to help him out (the value of serving others). The learning woman may be serious about her work during the training because she is convinced of the importance of literacy; she may adhere to an association that supports women’s rights because she believes in the value of human rights. The following is a set of values given as an example:

From these examples, it becomes clear that values cover various aspects of the human being’s life and effectiveness. In the context of values, we can, by way of example, distinguish between:

 If we turn to our religion, Islam, we will find in it positive values that constitute a basis for women education and for instilling in them nobility of character and descent behavior. Of these tolerant Islamic values, we mention the following:

It is clear that these values cover the various fields of human activity, and that they belong to the various fields of life.

4.2 How values come to be acquired:

It is essential that instructors be familiar of the ways that prove that the learning women do actually learn and acquire values. These ways are a description of the changes that become apparent in their behaviors and thinking. According to D’Hainaut’s classification of the affective goals, these ways are:(1)

* Developing a conception of the desired values

The learning women develop conceptions of the desired values if they can do the following:

- Explain behaviors through specific criteria.
- Expect what might happen if a person fails to adhere to these criteria.
- Express one’s feelings through assuming responsibility vis-à-vis issues.

* Implementing the conception of values

The learning women show a desire for implementing the conception of values if they exhibit the following behaviors:

- Displaying behaviors that are compatible with any of the religious values.
- Proper behavior toward a specific situation.

* Choices and judgments

The acquisition of values becomes manifest in the learning women’s choices and judgments, such as:

- Choosing something from among the various alternatives available to them.
- Pronouncing a judgment on a specific behavior or conduct.
- Expressing preference of one behavior over another.

* Relationships and interactions:

Women’s acquisition of values revolves around the following relationships:

- Their relationship with the self: body, health, interests, intellectual personality, knowledge.
- Their relationship with others: people, groups, social institutions.
- Their relationship with the milieu: nature, city.
- Their relationship with time : the past, the present and the future.

4.3 The curriculum of value acquisition

When teaching values, the instructor is requested to look for different ways and methods of teaching them, other than those used in the teaching of subject matters. The teaching of values requires specific competences that will enable the instructor to stir in the learning women the desire to learn a value and give up another. The best methods are perhaps those that engage the learning women in discussion and interaction and gives them ample freedom to weigh the attitudes and take decisions. Examples of such methods are problem solving, group discussions, accomplishing tasks, and undertaking group activities, etc. Of the methods of teaching values we have:

- Preparation: the instructor introduces to the learning women the main stages he will follow when dealing with a value.

- Assimilation: at this stage the learning women work on the value they are to learn.

- Relational phase: in which the learning women try to understand the relationship between the concepts of the subject that has been suggested to them.

- Evaluative phase: in which the learning women express, through their own statements, their preference of one value over another.

- Examination phase: in which the learning women examine the previous phases through answering questions relevant to the topic.

It is possible to adopt the problem solving method, the basis of which is to confront the learning women with a moral problem or other, and to urge them, through a set of procedures, to choose, evaluate and confirm one of the alternatives available to them.

This method is realized through practical steps which are:

At this stage, the instructor suggests to the learning women a moral problem or other, either in the form of a written or narrated story, or as video film. They read the story, listen to it, or watch it. Then the instructor suggests a set of choices and alternatives that may constitute solutions that differ in terms of their value.

After the discussion, the learning women examine again the alternatives suggested to them and choose among them; the choice must be justified and based on a preconception of the results that may ensue. These procedures should also guarantee the arrival at a decision that is meaningful to them.

It is a stage for appraising the solution or the alternative which every learning woman chooses. This appraisal is manifest in her satisfaction with the alternative she has opted for; she must also get her used to adopting a standard for her behavior and to displaying willingness to adhere to it.

  Component Three: Tools and educational aids

Using educational aids in women education is a basic and necessary procedure, because the nature of this education compels the instructor to use adequate tools that will help the learning women to understand concepts, values and knowledge of abstract nature.

The instructor can use most types of educational aids if available, such as pictures, etc. However, this use must, for reasons of effectiveness, be governed by methodological requirements (educational, didactic, etc.). The aim sought is to contribute to helping the learning women to achieve the educational goals.

The purpose of this section is to acquaint the instructor with some of these educational aids which s/he can use, and to familiarize them with the requirements of their uses.

1. Printed teaching materials

Due to their availability, easy use and ability to help learning women develop their reading skills and broaden their intellectual horizons, printed teaching materials are the most widely used educational aids. There are many types of printed teaching materials, such as books, general reference books which enrich the learner’s cultural knowledge, and various documents. This is in addition to textbooks and the instructor’s guide.(1)

An instructor may not be able to do his job properly in the absence of the necessary teaching materials likely to provide him with essential information and knowledge as required by his training and profession. The textbook is the easiest tool for teaching women, due to its cheap price, and on account of its being the vessel that contains the teaching material which is supposed to be the means – or one of the means – capable of enabling the learning women to achieve the goals set by the curriculum.(2)  It is an essential reference from which the learning woman gets information more than from any other source, in addition to its being a fundamental source on which the instructor draws in preparing his lessons. 

The following are some of the characteristics of a textbook:

- It covers, in an organized manner and in accordance with a specific teaching and learning conception, the materials, the contents and the teaching method; in addition to pictures, drawings, graphs, tables and statistics, all of which are necessary for understanding the subject matter.

- It stays with the learning woman throughout her schooling period, because it is a fundamental source of knowledge and information.

- It tells instructors what and how to teach the learning women.

2. Contact with the environmental milieu

Women education relies on written and audio-visual sources. It might however rely more upon the immediate environmental and human milieu. It is for this reason that “contact with the environmental milieu” is seen as a fundamental source to be used in women education.

The environmental milieu is made up of all the social, natural and cultural structures with which the learning women are in permanent contact, and which shapes their thinking, defines their orientations and attitudes, and manages their behavior, such as family, health, natural environment and cultural and moral values, etc.

The environmental milieu consists of the social environment, the cultural environment and the natural environment, which makes it an important source for women education, because it provides the learning women with social, cultural and natural data, in addition to its being a fundamental source of education. Instructors resort to it continuously to cull from it examples that will clarify ideas and concepts, and give them a concrete touch that will make them intelligible to the learning women.

On this basis, the instructor is committed in the classroom activities to use the components and constituents of this milieu to make the contents of the subject matter comprehensible to the learning women and to enable them to appreciate the values that ought to guide their behavior.

The instructor can use the environmental milieu as a teaching method and as a source for learning. This use can take many forms to achieve various goals and objectives. Examples of this use include:

- Consolidating environmental, health and demographic values and principles in the woman’s behavior through urging her to discover these values in her own milieu and to apply them in her interaction with others. 

-  Highlighting the distinctive cultural values of the community to which the learning women belong, which will prompt the instructor to invest the many cultural aspects that embody these values. When dealing with health or environmental problems, he can call upon the learning women to observe the various aspects of these problems in their immediate environment.

3.  Using the picture as a backup tool in women education

The picture occupies an important place in teaching. The instructor may find it difficult to convey the content of the subject matter if he does not use the picture as a backup.

The picture is either a colorful or black and white representation of a phenomenon (natural or human) or of something. It reflects, with a certain degree of accuracy and clarity, the features and characteristics of the topic.

In the educational field, the picture is a vital teaching tool which instructors use as a backup aid to convey the contents of the lesson to the learning women. They use it in various situations to carry out a number of functions, such as presentation, description, explanation, analysis, demonstration, etc.

Some educational motionless pictures are easy to get and to use in the lesson; others are hard to get and difficult to use. Examples of the still pictures are:

- Photographs: they are widely used and are usually found in textbooks, newspapers and magazines.

- Visual aids: these are drawings by hand that reflect reality.

- Relief pictures: they are a representation of real and natural sceneries and are shown by means of a slide projector.

- Unanimated films: they are a sequence of either colorful or black and white pictures on a film, and they deal with a general topic.

The instructor cannot use any picture as a teaching tool, for pictures must meet a number of general specifications and characteristics, such as:

- Clarity of purpose, inclusiveness of all the components of the topic.

- Limited information.

- Relevance to the topic.

- Relevance to the milieu of the learning women.

- Proper size to ensure good and easy viewing.

The instructor must realize that the picture can perform several educational functions that will lead to the realization of several objectives; these functions are:

• The picture can depict minute details and characteristics of the phenomenon to be studied.

• The picture can catch the attention of the learning women and influence them.

• The picture can ensure a better understanding of the phenomenon.

With the help of these functions and others, the instructor can realize, through the picture, various educational objectives, namely:

- Helping the learning women to examine a given topic in detail.

- Rectifying wrong concepts.

- The picture can constitute a basis for discussing a particular topic or making judgments.

- The picture can prompt the learning women to raise questions.

- The picture can deepen understanding and enhance comparison.

4. Using visual-aids in women education

Visual-aids are a basic means in women education. In addition to the great possibilities which they offer on the level of putting the learning women in direct contact with phenomena and manifestations that constitute a basis for teaching or a means for evaluation, visual-aids give them the opportunity to develop their intellectual skills and enrich their knowledge. Likewise, interaction with visual-aids will make them more receptive to the requirements of the age: technology and informatics.

Visual aids are all the tools and pieces of equipment that help the instructor to convey educational contents and achieve the desired educational goals. There are several types of visual aids, such as:

- Visual means: they include all the machines used to project motionless pictures, such as the episcope.

- Audio means: they include all the pieces of equipment that register only sound, such as sound tapes.

- Visual aids: they include the equipment and the tools used to combine sound with the image, such as the videotape.

The importance of visual aids is manifest in their ability to give a lively and accurate representation of the topic that is being taught (things, social and cultural events and phenomena, natural phenomena), and to put the topics across dependably. No doubt the instructor appreciates the importance of the use of these tools in teaching the contents of the subject matter in a concrete and direct manner to the learning women, without too much effort on their part in visualizing and understanding its purport, or in memorizing and retrieving it.

Visual aids are used to achieve several objectives, such as:

- Enabling the learning women to establish contact with the environmental and human milieu, through videotapes that depict some behaviors that are so predominant in their social milieu and to discuss them.

- Providing information on specific phenomena, such as using a slide projector to introduce some social characteristics and other things.

- Introducing texts that are read and seen on tapes, such as making the learning women listen to Koranic verses being read and asking them to intone these texts so as to imitate the recitation and the intonation.

- Developing many skills through watching how they are practiced.

5. The role of television in women education

Television is a basic tool in women education, be it a closed circuit which uses a VCR, or a circuit that is open to the public at large. Researcher Ihssan Mohammed al-Hassan believes that television provides the following possibilities:(1)

- Contribution to the activities of the centers for literacy.

- Repetitions of programs and activities over a long period of time.

- Compatibility of TV programs with learners’ needs.

- The programs’ ability to attract the attention of visitors.    

Al-Hassan also mentions other possibilities, namely plays, movies, documentaries and others. Television can also instill in the minds of the learners positive cultural attitudes and values that can make them receptive to education and learning and appreciative of their benefits. Moreover, television can, according to a study by Dr. Sabir Muhieddine, play a role in acquiring good social values pertaining to citizenship, rights and equality between the sexes and other things. Not only does television teach these values, it also acts them out and links them with social reality.(1) Dr. Aouda Mohammed maintains that television can teach the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, impart information and knowledge to the learners, and tackle economic, social, health and cultural issues.  

The instructor’s awareness with regard to the objectives of the use of audio-visual materials will enable him to use it educationally and in an effective and appropriate manner, to achieve the educational goals which he has set for his lessons. When using audio-visual materials, it is important that he take into consideration the requirements of the teaching context, the nature of the contents to be taught, the level of the learning women targeted by the training and other factors.

Therefore, the use of audio-visual materials takes place according to specific rules that ensure their effectiveness in various teaching situations.

6. A good investment of education

This type of education does not require that all the conditions be met so that the party in charge can announce its commencement. The will and belief in its usefulness in developing society is the basis for its success. Political parties, non-governmental organizations, trade unions, and others play a fundamental role in realizing functional projects in the field of women education. In this context, the parties in charge of this education can use clubs, reception halls, mosques, restaurants, public squares, theaters, warehouses, educational institutions, factories, stadiums, seasonal celebrations held especially in the countryside and such other places to pass on messages that have specific and purposeful goals which meet the basic educational needs of women.