Alice Wakefield, Associate Professor, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA
Lecturing: Elementary Education
Host: Ministry of Education, Doha, Qatar
September 2002-July 2003

Alice Wakefield had only one assignment from the Ministry of Education when she got to Qatar: make suggestions for improving the country's teaching methods. Little did she know that she would continually need to change her strategy to accomplish the assignment.

Wakefield, a professor of early childhood education and early math education at Old Dominion University in Virginia, traveled to two model schools in the capital city of Doha while on her Fulbright grant. She eagerly began her nine-month award by holding a series of staff development workshops for teaching math, science and language arts. "The workshops were met with a very positive response," she says, "but the teachers did not incorporate the ideas into their classroom work." She decided to do classroom observations then give written feedback and discuss her suggestions with each teacher. Once again, the teachers were very amenable but made few changes.

By December, Wakefield was certain the teachers were not changing their traditional direct-teaching method, so she began working on a proposal. Her plan would bring six Qatari teachers to an award-winning school in Virginia annually, where they would participate in studentcentered team-teaching. She also proposed transmitting a master's degree program in education via satellite to Qatar from those same Virginia classrooms. The Ministry backed the proposal until the war in Iraq broke out. The plan was then put on hold.

Enlisting the help of the math coordinators and teachers, Wakefield tested third graders in math so appropriate fourth-grade curriculum could be written. "The educators were amazed that oftentimes students solved the problems in a different way than they had been taught," she says. "Those who watch the testing are more likely to understand and value the power of student thinking in understanding math relationships," notes Wakefield.

Near the end of her visit, Wakefield did some team-teaching in math, then taught word problems while the teachers observed. "Watching their students respond to me, I think, prompted them to actually imagine using that method," she says. "I wish I had done this earlier."

Based on her observations, Wakefield wrote collections of activities for math and language arts, conducted hands-on workshops and produced three staff development workshops for newly hired math teachers.

Although the hard work taxed her, Wakefield says there were many wonderful instances of friendship and hospitality that she will never forget. One teacher took her to the tailor and helped her order traditional jalabiyas (robes), which she wears when talking about her experience in Qatar. She and her husband, who accompanied her to Qatar, were invited to join a number of excursions into the desert, and one teacher took the couple to a camel farm.

Wakefield is working with her home university to keep her spring semester open so she can do more projects with Arabic countries. She has signed up to study Arabic and plans to work with the math supervisor on an Arabic text. "There were frustrations," Wakefield says, "but nothing that kept me from thoroughly enjoying every single day of my time in Doha."

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