Preparing Saudi women educators for teacher leader roles in accord with societal expectations of Islamic leadership

Amani Khalaf H. Alghamdi
Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia
Wai Si El-Hassan
Guildford College of Further and Higher Education, Surrey, UK
Mashail Alattiq
Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia

This paper concerns preparing Saudi Arabian female educators, who may assume teacher leader roles, in alignment with the Islamic leadership concept. Women have been recognised as a 'great asset' for national development, and interest in their educational attainment is growing. After explaining this development in conjunction with the teacher leader concept, and after explaining Islamic leadership, the discussion turns to how Saudi female preservice teacher education programs can be retooled to offer a teacher leader curriculum that contains leadership knowledge, skills, and dispositions pursuant to female educators contributing to the achievement of Vision 2030. "Teachers as leaders" in a knowledge society is a key part of Saudi Arabia's future.
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Authors: Amani Khalaf H. Alghamdi PhD SFHEA is Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy, College of Education, at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. She is an award-winning scholar with more than 40 Scopus-indexed publications globally in the field of education. Dr Amani has over 26 years of national and international teaching experience. She is the founder and first vice dean of the female section at the Faculty of Education at her university in Saudi Arabia. ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8500-0266 Email: akhalghamdi@iau.edu.sa, amani.k.hamdan@gmail.com Wai Si El-Hassan MA BA(Hons) is Lead Job Coach, SEND, Guildford College of Further and Higher Education, Surrey, UK. She has been a co-author with Dr Amani for six years. Wai Si has international teaching experience in teaching English and her research encompasses sustainability education, language teaching, special education and higher education. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5920-6076 Email: welhassan@activatelearning.ac.uk, waisielhassan@gmail.com Mashail J. Alattiq EdD is a faculty member in the Educational Leadership Department at Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University in Saudi Arabia. Her research interests are centred around women's leadership in higher education as it relates to gender equity, academic freedom, and empowerment. Email: mjalateeg@iau.edu.sa Please cite as: Alghamdi, A. K. H., El-Hassan, W. S. & Alattiq, M. J. (2022). Preparing Saudi women educators for teacher leader roles in accord with societal expectations of Islamic leadership. Issues in Educational Research, 32(1), 1-15. http://www.iier.org.au/iier32/alghamdi.pdf