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The study examined how teacher agency is manifested in Egyptian schools, how action research is perceived, and to what extent school contextual factors support or restrict teachers' agency to become action researchers. Interviews with 40 teachers from schools in northern and southern Egypt were conducted and analysed using the thematic analysis approach. Data were coded to build theoretical themes that describe Egyptian teachers' agency for action research. The study uses the ecological framework for teacher agency and the context of professional learning as conceptual tools to gain insight into teacher agency for action research. Results showed that teacher agency is defined in terms of teacher activeness rather than teacher critical discourse; teachers exercise agency as either internalizing or externalizing; teachers have a restricted agency for action research, action research is dependent on the teacher's identity commitment; teachers exercise adaptive agency in a dispirited school context; and, finally, that schools lack the collective agency for action research.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate a mediated-effects model of organizational support and citizenship behaviour. The model proposes organizational support as an antecedent of citizenship behaviour and commitment to change (CTC) as a mediator in the organizational support-citizenship behaviour relationship. Design/methodology/approach: Cross-sectional survey data were collected from university faculty ("n" = 221) and analyzed using structural equation modelling. Findings: The findings showed that organizational support significantly contributes to increased citizenship behaviour and commitment of university faculty to program accreditation as an enterprise change process. The authors conclude that university-level organizational support shapes faculty's CTC both directly and indirectly. The findings have significant practical implications for higher education institutions (HEIs) where new practices that aim at improving institutional effectiveness are embraced. Research limitations/implications: The study is cross-sectional (i.e. one-time data collection), which restricts the ability to make generable inferences about cause-and-effect relationships. Although the authors tested a model, longitudinal research is needed to unpack the processes of organizational support, commitment and citizenship behaviour. During enterprise change management, organizations work tirelessly to build and maintain citizenship behaviour. Therefore, considering citizenship behaviour in relation to other processes over time is important. However, relying on one source of data may represent another limitation, which increases concerns about common method bias in the current investigation. Practical implications: The study findings offer a number of implications to HEIs in contexts where accreditation is perceived as an enterprise change process. Universities, similar to any other organizations, rely consistently on methods and mechanism through which employees' professional performance, engagement and involvement can be enhanced. Accreditation has always been examined by exploring externally focused variables such as global reputation, organizational prestige and international prominence. The present study, however, draws attention to how perceived organizational support (POS) may be an equally important lever that needs to be considered before accreditation is introduced in HEIs. University chancellors, deans and other university leaders can directly influence organizational support by creating a system that weighs the extra work needed, the human resources and the incentives, and developing a plausible action plan. Social implications: It is unlikely that all faculty members will maintain quality relationship with the university leadership and immediate leaders such as department chairpersons or the college dean. This unlikelihood increases during crisis and change time. The study findings showed that POS contributes significantly to organizational citizenship behaviour. Therefore, it could be argued that the resistance to change that tends to be associated with accreditation can be mitigated by showing employees that support is accessible and attainable from up-line and immediate leaders. The findings suggest that commitment serves as an integral mediating mechanism between organizational support and citizenship behaviour. Indeed, commitment can be fully examined in practice from the perspective of its three-pronged structure (i.e. affective, continuance and normative). The findings provide credence to the notion that accreditation as an enterprise change process cannot be achieved without employee commitment and organizational support. Originality/value: As a result of adopting globalized techniques, HEIs in Arab nations have undergone significant changes. In the Arab context, the adoption of academic program accreditation in HEIs has been seen as an enterprise change process with both supporters and detractors. In other words, implementing new systems or procedures results in changes that might upend personnel at any given organization. Therefore, it is contended that how well an organization responds to resistance to change will likely depend on the interaction of organizational, contextual and individual-related characteristics.

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Inclusive School Climate Scale (ISCS) in order to assess how schools in Oman are building capacity for inclusive education successful practices. The 23-item ISCS was developed and administered to 287 teachers from schools in Oman. The results showed three main factors that reflected the ability of schools to build capacity for inclusive practices and create an inclusive climate for students. Reliability and validity analysis of the ISCS suggested that the scale provides a reliable measure. Implications for cross-cultural examination of the ISCS are discussed.

The current study examined the mediating role of teacher commitment (TC) on the relationship between workplace spirituality (WS) and organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) in Bahraini public schools. A cross-sectional survey design was used to examine a proposed conceptual model. Data were collected from 349 teachers in Bahraini public schools, and were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The study found that workplace spirituality contributes to the teachers' OCB both directly and indirectly by shaping teachers' affective commitment. The study findings provide a framework that can assist policymakers and school principals in the enhancement of WS in schools in order to build and nurture a culture of OCB and ensure commitment, thereby improving school effectiveness.

Purpose: The accreditation process of academic programs is being used more to recognize program quality and identify areas for improvement based on rigorous standards. This study aims to use the standards of the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) as a theoretical and analytical framework to examine the effectiveness and areas for improvement of the teacher education program at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman. Design/methodology/approach: A multiple case-study design is used to investigate the cases of 16 novice program completers. Data is collected using nonparticipant observation and semistructured interviews with 48 key stakeholders: program completers, their educational supervisors and school principals. Findings: Results show that, overall, the program is effective in preparing future teachers to enter the teaching profession, especially in the subject and pedagogical content knowledge, and that stakeholders are generally satisfied with the program. However, about a third believe the program lacks relevance to the responsibilities teachers face on the job and some "technical" skills needed in practice. Research limitations/implications: First, the findings are limited by the small number of completers' cases from one teacher education program. Therefore, the authors recommend that future studies should include larger samples of novice teachers graduating from different teacher education programs. Second, the study is limited by focusing only on stakeholders' perspectives, and teacher observation through CAEP informed categories related to standards 1, 4 and 5. So future research can tell more to the story by uncovering other CAEP standards to provide a more comprehensive view. Practical implications: The findings of this study are expected to contribute to the existing pool of knowledge on the utility of using international accreditation frameworks, not only as a means to measure the effectiveness of teacher education programs but also to develop such programs according to an internationally recognized set of quality standards. The results may also contribute to the discourse on whether the Madonlization of CAEP standards is a useless business for Arabic-speaking countries. Social implications: As elsewhere in the Arab region, education has been placed at the core of the Oman 2040 vision, which prioritizes the improvement of educational outcomes as Oman's gateway to becoming a developed country. Therefore, it has become clear that teacher education programs need to be subject to scrutiny to ensure that they produce highly qualified teachers. While reform initiatives have raised concerns about the quality of teacher performance in Omani schools, little attention has been given to the effectiveness of teacher education programs in the country. Originality/value: These results are discussed through three main themes related to the role of teacher preparation programs in the Arab region from a standards-based perspective--they need to be viewed as a rite of passage for all teachers to provide them with only the threshold competence to commence the professional teaching performance, there is a need for more authentic and safe learning experiences in these programs, and finally, there is a need for continuous adjustment of courses in these programs to perfect the "potion" that makes them more effective and relevant.

Seal authentication is an important task for verifying the authenticity of stamped seals used in various domains to protect legal documents from tampering and counterfeiting. Stamped seal inspection is commonly audited manually to ensure document authenticity. However, manual assessment of seal images is tedious and labor-intensive due to human errors, inconsistent placement, and completeness of the seal. Traditional image recognition systems are inadequate enough to identify seal types accurately, necessitating a neural network-based method for seal image recognition. However, neural network-based classification algorithms, such as Residual Networks (ResNet) and Visual Geometry Group with 16 layers (VGG16) yield suboptimal recognition rates on stamp datasets. Additionally, the fixed training data categories make handling new categories to be a challenging task. This paper proposes a multi-stage seal recognition algorithm based on Siamese network to overcome these limitations. Firstly, the seal image is pre-processed by applying an image rotation correction module based on Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG). Secondly, the similarity between input seal image pairs is measured by utilizing a similarity comparison module based on the Siamese network. Finally, we compare the results with the pre-stored standard seal template images in the database to obtain the seal type. To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we further create a new seal image dataset that contains two subsets with 210,000 valid labeled pairs in total. The proposed work has a practical significance in industries where automatic seal authentication is essential as in legal, financial, and governmental sectors, where automatic seal recognition can enhance document security and streamline validation processes. Furthermore, the experimental results show that the proposed multi-stage method for seal image recognition outperforms state-of-the-art methods on the two established datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expository writing (EW) is crucial for the literacy development of students with intellectual disabilities (ID) in inclusive classrooms. Students with ID, however, struggle with EW due to problems with generating, organizing, and producing text. Similarly, teachers of students with ID face challenges with employing the appropriate instructional method to teach EW to students with ID. The current study, therefore, investigated the effectiveness of combining two instructional methods, namely the Four-Square Writing Method and Sentence Frames, in teaching EW skills to students with ID. Using a single group pretest posttest quasi experimental design, 8 students with mild ID who received their education in inclusive classroom in one of the suburban schools in Egypt participated in the study. Participants were aged between 11 and 12 and were enrolled in grades 5 and 6. An intervention instructional program was implemented to teach EW to participants. Prior to and following the intervention participants' EW was evaluated with regard to paragraph length, structure and coherence. Results showed that the use of both strategies had a positive effect on students' EW. Additionally, students retained their intervention gains after a follow up duration of eight weeks. Implications are discussed in relation to the context of teaching literacy skills to students with ID in Egypt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erosion wear presents a significant challenge in the operation of hydrodynamic systems, particularly in centrifugal pumps. To address this issue, this study employs the coarse-grained Discrete Element Method (CGDEM) coupled with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to predict erosion wear areas and elucidate particle behavior dynamics. The simulation considers spherical solid particles (brown corundum) with diameters ranging from 0.3 mm to 1 mm and volume fractions of 15% and 5%. The flow field is calculated using the Navier-Stokes equations and the shear-stress-transport (SST) k-ω model. Particle movement is tracked using Newton's second law, considering drag and gravitational forces. Results indicate that the highest turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) occurs at a flow rate of Q = 15 m3/h. Moreover, the pressure reduces slightly when the flow rate increases, although flow velocity might increase with volumetric discharge. Additionally, increased particle diameter leads to greater erosion wear, particularly on blade leading edges, the volute tongue area, and the volute casing belly region. As particle mass concentration intensifies, wear rates on the volute wall and inner hub edge also increase. The study's robustness is demonstrated through alignment between experimental and numerical data. This investigation offers valuable insights into erosion dynamics in centrifugal pumps, crucial for enhancing operational efficiency and mitigating erosion-induced challenges in these critical systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students at risk for learning disabilities (LD) are overidentified in elementary schools in Oman due to the absence of adequate instruments which teachers can use in validating their observations. Teachers need valid instruments so that their judgment of students' behaviours can help in making academic and non-academic decision. The Learning Disabilities Diagnostic Inventory (LDDI) is widely used to examine manifestations of LD as an intrinsic processing disorder. This study aimed to verify the six-factor structure with confirmatory factor analysis, and test its measurement invariance across child gender. Teachers completed the Arabic version of the LDDI for an Omani sample of 1564 children aged 7 to 11. Overall, the six-factor model showed an acceptable fit after performing some post-hoc modifications that were justified on a theoretical ground. Results indicated metric invariance across gender. Zero-order correlations, however, were highly significant, which reflected that the Arabic version of the LDDI showed poor discriminant validity compared to the original LDDI. The Arabic version of the LDDI, however, can be a handy tool to screen for the LD manifestations and help in responding to teachers' academic concerns about students in Key stages 1 and 2 in Oman.

The current study investigated teachers' efficacy for inclusive practices (TEIP) in public schools in the Sultanate of Oman, exploring the effect of teacher gender and years of experience. The TEIP scale was administered to teachers in Oman. Participants included 287 basic school teachers selected from schools identified as embracing and implementing inclusive practices in the capital and largest city of Oman. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-factor model of the Arabic version of the TEIP scale. Omani teachers showed high levels on TEIP three dimensions and general construct. Gender differences were found in TEIP general factor, efficacy in using inclusive instruction (EII), and efficacy in collaboration favoring female teachers, whereas no gender differences were found in efficacy in managing behavior. Novice and experienced teachers reported higher TEIP in efficacy in collaboration compared to teachers with moderate experience, whereas experienced teachers and teachers with moderate teaching experience reported higher TEIP compared to novice teachers. Implications of the study results are discussed in relation to the development of inclusive practices in Oman.

Author(s): Mahmoud Mohamed Emam [sup.1] [sup.2] , Nasser Said Gomaa Abdelrasheed [sup.3] [sup.4] , Ehab Omara [sup.1] [sup.5] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.412846.d, 0000 0001 0726 9430, Department of Psychology - [...], Knowledge on Omani adolescents' vulnerability to depression is very limited. The current study examines the associations between Omani adolescents' depressive symptoms (DS) and three central constructs: negative cognition (NC), as reflected by the individual's view of self (VoS), view of the world (VoW) and view of the future (VoF), emotional and behavioral difficulties (EBDs), and negative life events (NLE). The Symptom Check List (SCL-90R), Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), Cognitive Triad Inventory for Children (CTI-C), and Negative Life Events Checklist (NLEC) were administered to a sample of 486 students aged between 13 and 16 from high schools in the southern region of Oman. A path analysis tested the effects of NC, EBDs, and NLE on Omani adolescents' DS. Findings revealed that EBDs and NLE have direct effects on Omani adolescents' DS. Similarly, the hypothesis that NC has direct effects on DS was partially supported. Our hypothesis, that EBDs and NLE may confer vulnerability to DS among Omani adolescents through NC, received partial support. The cognitive vulnerability hypothesis of depression is partially supported in an Arab sample. It could be argued that the hypothesis is culturally bound.

In Oman and elsewhere in Arab countries school professionals rely on measures that were developed in Western countries. Measures that assess adaptive behaviour (AB) that have been developed in Western cultures are argued to be culturally bound. Nevertheless, these measures are used elsewhere despite a paucity of data that examine their cross-national transportability. The theme of test adaptation and transportability of psychological measures is an important issue for school/educational psychologists, clinicians and educational professionals. The present study describes the adaptation process of the U.S.-developed Adaptive Behaviour Assessment System, Third Edition Teacher Form (ABAS-3-TF) for ages 5 to 14 in the Sultanate of Oman, one of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Procedures implemented to help ensure a valid translation and cultural adaptation process are described. Data on 410 children with intellectual disability are examined using the Arabic version of ABAS-3-TF, focusing on testing its factor structure and gender invariance. Data from the Arabic version of ABAS-3-TF provide evidence for the adequacy of a one general factor model. Scale reliability is high for the Arabic version. The finding of invariance across males and females indicate that the scale's factor structure is similar for the two groups. The Arabic version of ABAS-3-TF is adequate for use by clinicians, school psychologists and educational professionals in Oman.

In the Arab region, several assessments are available to evaluate student skills in mathematical computations. However, none of them uses formative evaluation to guide universal screening of struggling learners or students with learning disability (LD). The current study aimed to develop mathematical computation curriculum-based measurement (MC-CBM) for Arab speaking fourth grade students, examine its psychometric properties, test its adequacy for use in an Arab context, namely Oman, determine an adequate time for its administration, and develop performance benchmarks. MC-CBM were administered to 528 fourth grade students. Results indicated that the developed measures were adequate for use in the Arab context. Received operation characteristic (ROC) curve indicated good specificity and sensitivity estimates for the MC-CBM. Performance benchmarks were obtained using the 25th and 75th percentiles. Implications are discussed from a contextual perspective.