Search

Economic diversification is vital in achieving sustainable economic development. This diversification is chiefly important for countries relying on natural resources for their economy, such as Qatar. Private enterprises, mainly through small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs), have been recognized as crucial and effective means for healthy economic diversification, stimulating economic development, and ensuring equal sharing and distribution of wealth. Recognizing the vulnerabilities within the current economic model has motivated Qatar to relentlessly diversify away from its heavy reliance on natural gas exports. Such diversified and sustainable development cannot be achieved without the contribution of women, who make up a significant percentage of the educated and talented population in this country. However, despite the conspicuous support the state has been providing them with in an aim to promote for their active economic participation as part of Qatar National Vision 2030, women's full potential to contribute both socially and economically is either hindered or not fully acknowledged due to several socio-economic factors. There is a dearth of studies reporting on the perceived status, challenges, and access to needed resources by women entrepreneurs in Qatar. To address such scarcity, this study builds, in a first step, on a systematic literature review (SLR) to unlock themes related to women and entrepreneurship by analyzing 23 peer-reviewed articles concentrating on the cases of Qatar and the MENA region. Subsequently, a qualitative approach is followed to investigate and examine current successes and obstacles by interviewing 25 actual and aspiring women entrepreneurs in Qatar as well as 5 incubators and government representatives. In a final stage, and based on a design thinking approach and applying the gender-aware framework (known as the 5Ms framework), the paper proposes a preliminary conceptual framework to address the pertaining barriers and pave the way for more progressive policies to cater to the needs of women entrepreneurs and to further promote for sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The interaction avenues, levels, and impacts between parents, schools and teachers have changed drastically due to the ever-increasing responsibilities, frequent and rapid changes in the curriculum, the invasive dominance of the internet and digital media in the lives of all stakeholders, and the digitization of learning materials, to name a few. This pilot study follows a design-thinking approach to investigate the current practices, needs, and challenges of parental involvement in public schools in Qatar to improve student achievements towards sustainable living and habits by identifying problems, developing solutions, and improving student achievement in conjunction with all local and relevant stakeholders. To this end, building on extensive and comparative studies on theories, models, and best practices within and outside the selected domain, a qualitative study is conducted to obtain insight from local teachers and parents in preparatory public schools. The grounded theory method is employed to analyze the data via the qualitative coding technique. The results indicate that parental involvement practices in Qatar public schools occur in different forms, including home-based and school-based learning. Furthermore, while almost all parents recognize the significance of parental involvement and show a high level of interest in being on the 'Board of Trustees', in reality, very few participate or volunteer in school activities, and they rarely visit classrooms or interact with teachers or schools, mainly due to their increasing job-related commitments. In addition, the majority of parents indicate the need for additional flexibility in communication with the school to increase their involvement. Meanwhile, the teachers highlight the significant lack of parental involvement in understanding, overcoming and improving student achievement in both academic subjects and sustainable living habits and actions. The study outlines a few key suggestions to overcome these challenges and improve the parent-teacher-school (PTS) partnership, including offering mandatory parenting classes, developing and implementing effective communication mechanisms to facilitate parent-school interactions, and involving parents in decision-making process relating to their children and other school-related activities. Despite the sampling limitation, this study's findings represent a starting point for understanding the needs of PTS partnerships, current practices of parental involvement, and mechanisms to improve their contribution to Qatar's schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Questions determine our fate as individuals and societies. Asking the right questions at the right time and in the right amount makes our choices and decisions meaningful. As human beings we all experience this from an early age. In education, in order to evaluate, learn and inform the growth of students, the professional development of teachers and the overall efficiency of the system, questions become an integral element of the complex, non-linear and social system at different levels. The purpose of this article is to investigate how performance assessment strategies play a role in the education system, and to understand how progressive performance assessments can be set up with sustainable thinking and designed in alignment with the United Nation's (UN) Development Goals (SGDs) for a given context. To aid Qatar's pursuit in transitioning from a resource-based economy to a knowledge-based one, this study aims to design and develop a proper performance assessment (PA) framework that is aligned with the SDGs and education goals (EGs) to help achieve social and human development as envisioned in Qatar's national vision. This article: (i) presents a theoretical and qualitative analysis of PA practices in the Qatar Education System (QES); (ii) provides a comparative analysis among the best PA practices at the global level; and (iii) examines the methodology, conditions, and findings based on learning from: (a) the successful experiences of other countries, (b) documented analyses of local past experiences, (c) local stakeholders (through a qualitative investigation) in order to understand the needs, develop recommendations and design a tailored PA strategy. The results indicate that there are misalignments between the core educational components such as EGs and the assessment methods used to evaluate them. The analysis and findings reveal that the QES urgently needs to develop a PA strategy that is appropriate for its stakeholders to meet the EGs and enhance their sustainability competencies. Finally, this study proposes a PA framework for the QES to align its core elements with SDGs and EGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) has numerous advantages as well as some disadvantages. To safely integrate DERs into a given distribution network and to maximize their benefits, it is important to thoroughly analyze the impact of DERs on that particular network. The maximum amount of DERs that a given distribution network can accommodate without causing technical problems or without requiring infrastructure modifications is defined as the hosting capacity (HC). In this work, a review of the recent literature regarding the HC is presented. The major limiting factors of HC are found to be voltage deviation, phase unbalance, thermal overload, power losses, power quality, installation location and protection devices' miscoordination. The studies are found to employ one of four different methods for HC calculation: (i) deterministic, (ii) stochastic, (iii) optimization-based and (iv) streamlined. Commercially available tools for HC calculation are also presented. The review concludes that the choice of tools and methods for HC calculation depends on the data available and the type of study that is to be performed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The smart grid with its two-way communication and bi-directional power layers is a cornerstone in the combat against global warming. It allows for the large-scale adoption of distributed (individually-owned) renewable energy resources such as solar photovoltaic systems. Their intermittency poses a threat to the stability of the grid, which can be addressed by the introduction of energy storage systems. Determining the optimal capacity of a battery has been an active area of research in recent years. In this research, an in-depth analysis of the relation between optimal capacity and demand and generation patterns is performed for households taking part in a community-wide demand-side management scheme. The scheme is based on a non-cooperative dynamic game approach in which participants compete for the lowest electricity bill by scheduling their energy storage systems. The results are evaluated based on self-consumption, the peak-to-average ratio of the aggregated load and potential cost reductions. Furthermore, the difference between individually-owned batteries and a centralised community energy storage system serving the whole community is investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]