[ecrea] Conference: Change and Innovation in the MENA Teaching/Learning Settings: Resistance or Receptivity

status: CfP Call for papers
conference
Change and Innovation in the MENA Teaching/Learning Settings: Resistance 
or Receptivity
29.04.2016-30.04.2016
Faculty of human and social sciences, Tunis, Tunisia

Submission of abstracts: February, 28th, 2016
Notification of acceptance: March, 15th, 2016
Full paper submission: April, 17th, 2016
Proceedings publication:December2016

Call for Papers
Annual Conference of the Faculty of Humanities at Tunis in partnership 
with TESOL Arabia

Conference Theme:
Change and Innovation in the MENA Teaching/Learning Settings: Resistance 
or Receptivity

Dates and venue: 29-30 April 2016, Faculty of  Humanities, Tunis, Tunisia



Overview
Following a successful signature of a partnership agreement, the Faculty 
of Humanities at Tunis, Tunisia, and TESOL Arabia, the UAE, are 
organizing an international conference on Change and Innovation in the 
MENA Teaching/Learning Settings: Resistance or Receptivity. This 
international conference will bring together students, teachers, 
researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to discuss issues related 
to learning and teaching change and innovation in the Middle East and 
North Africa (MENA). The conference organizers invite you to take part 
in this interesting joint event and submit your contribution for 
presentation.

Call for papers
Several Arab teaching/learning settings are witnessing change and 
innovation in response to changes in teaching methods and learning 
theories. These changes are also imposed by the new education policies. 
It seems that the teaching of foreign languages has to respond to 
novelty at the linguistic and extralinguistic levels.  New theories are 
informing new teaching practices, and, by extension, assessment methods. 
It seems that new political and economic realities are putting pressure 
on linguistic policy decision-makers.
The tendency to make education more pragmatic, to connect the university 
 to the job market has had huge implications on the teaching settings. 
It seems that teachers are changing from instructors to trainers, 
universities are service providers more than sites of disseminating 
knowledge, and students are treated as clients with expectations, likes 
and dislikes. The teaching sector is adapting to new concepts and 
demands voiced by society or pressure groups.  How do these new 
realities impact on our mission and how do actors in the Arab teaching 
sector react to them ?
We are seeing signs of resistance as well as signs of receptivity. Two 
opposing attitudes are dividing the main actors in the teaching/learning 
settings, particularly in the MENA region. Internal as well as external 
factors may explain both attitudes. Rejection or adoption : first, there 
is the deeprooted tendency of orthodoxy to resist change, but on the 
other hand there is a  pressing need to respond  to the sweeping waves 
of change. How do professionals in the Arab world assess these attitudes 
in linguistic research, language policy, teaching conceptions and 
practices, course design, testing and evaluation, English for Specific 
Purposes, and classroom management?
More particularly, the conference will address the following questions:
•	The underlying reasons for change in the field of teaching languages
•	The implications of changes in socio-economic contexts on teaching 
languages
•	The degree of resistance to changes in the MENA teaching/learning settings
•	The degree of receptivity of changes in the MENA teaching/learning 
settings
•	Change and innovation as action: the case of textbook making
•	The teacher as educator vs. the teacher as trainer
•	Promises and challenges of teaching for the job market

Objectives of the conference
The conference aims to:
•	discuss the different educational problems and possibly call for remedies,
•	look for more insights into the different teaching and learning 
practices in the MENA context and
•	Establish research ties between students, teachers, researchers and 
educators in the MENA region,
•	strengthen the ties between the two conference organizers both in the 
short and long run.
The conference proceedings will be published by the Arab Journal of 
Applied Linguistics (www.tjaling.org). The proceedings will be edited 
by: Prof. Tahar Labassi, Dr Sahbi Hidri, Dr Christine Coombe, Dr Naziha 
Ali and Mohamed Azaza.
Important dates
All submissions, abstracts and full papers will be anonymously reviewed 
by at least two referees.
Submission of abstracts: February, 28th, 2016
Notification of acceptance: March, 15th, 2016
Full paper submission: April, 17th, 2016
Proceedings publication:December2016
All abstracts will be submitted to the AJAL. Please follow the 
submission guidelines at:
http://www.tjaling.org/jor/index.php/tjal/announcement/view/4

For further details and inquiries, please email us at: 
(change_innovation_elt /at/ yahoo.com)

 	http://changeinnovationelt.wix.com/changeinnovationelt

https://www.facebook.com/Resistance-and-Receptivity-to-Change-and-Innovation-in-Elt-and-Ell-763956370399311/timeline/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

 	https://www.linkedin.com/?trk=uno-choose-home&dl=no
 : https://twitter.com/change_ELT

Contact person: Mimoun Melliti
email: change_innovation_elt@.com

---------------
ECREA-Mailing list
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier and ECREA.
--
To subscribe, post or unsubscribe, please visit
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
--
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Chauss�de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------