Kashif Ali Sabiri

Although the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools is a relatively recent phenomenon in the context of Higher Education (HE) practice, little research exists on the faculty in the Arab Gulf Region perceptions and application of AI tools. This study investigates the use of AI tools by academics in the foundation programmes at a Higher Education Institution (HEI) in Oman, the perceived value of AI in education and learning, challenges faced by these academics, and the professional development needs. A questionnaire with 40 questions was used for the quantitative, descriptive cross sectional survey from June to September 2026. Forty-four responses were received, of which eight (18.2%) were excluded because they were careless in their responses; the remaining 36 responses were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as thematic analysis. Adoption of AI was widespread and commonplace, with 83.3% using AI tools at least weekly, with ChatGPT by far the most commonly used tool (91.7%), and the majority of users focusing on lesson planning (80.6%), teaching materials (77.8%) or the design of assessments (69.4%). Perceptions of pedagogical impact were rated as moderate (M = 2.97 on a scale of 5), and were bimodal, with barriers, primarily academic integrity (M = 3.06), there being around 50% at each end. Pedagogical impact was perceived at a moderate level (M = 2.97 of 5) and was bimodal, with academic integrity (M = 3.06) being the most common barrier endorsed by about 50% of the sample, followed by trustworthiness of content and cost. Younger, early career faculty reported significantly greater positive perceptions and much greater need for development (p < .001). The study reveals that there exists a practice-conviction gap between faculty use of AI and their confidence in the potential of AI as a pedagogical tool. Professional development, policy and assessment redesign, subsidized access, and connectivity and support are recommended to address the needs of individuals across the career stages.

This quantitative research explores gender variations in perceptions, preferred mobileassisted language learning (MALL)-based techniques, and lexical competence learning of undergraduate ESL students in Pakistan’s province of Punjab using MALL. The set of 140 (70 male, 70 female) undergraduate ESL learners was purposively selected from universities in Punjab. The study used a 40-item, validated Likert-scale questionnaire asking about perceptions of MALL, preferences for MALL-based techniques, and lexical competence development via MALL. The questionnaire had good internal reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha of .968 for males and .943 for females. We analysed gender differences between male and female learners using the Mann-Whitney U test since the data collected through a Likert scale are ordinal. There was no difference in the attitudes of male and female learners to using MALL for vocabulary learning (U = 2578.000, p = .594), which suggests they both deem MALL a useful educational tool. Both males and females expressed positive dispositions toward game-based apps, multimedia, online dictionaries and virtual co-collaborative lives. However, descriptive analysis highlighted differences in the techniques of learning, with females endorsing audiovisual material and wordlist-based learning relatively heavily but males engaging more with independent learning tasks. The reported findings are critically analysed with reference to Social Constructivism, Krashen’s Monitor Model, Connectivism and technology acceptance model (TAM).

This research examined gender representation in the Portal to English Workbook for Grade 10 (Semester 1) school textbook, undertaken through a quantitative content analysis of seven categories: gender firstness, images, names, pronouns, adjectives, jobs and occupations, and the overall gender balance of the textbook. The study demonstrated a clear male bias across all categories. This bias was particularly pronounced for pronouns, images, and names. Furthermore, the Chi-Square test confirmed that this was a statistical reality, χ^2 (5) =31.27, p<.001. In other words, the Chi-Square test indicated difference between males and females in the school textbook. The findings suggest that similar to previous studies of Arabic textbooks and other studies beyond the Arab region, the textbook does not present a balanced gender representation but rather reproduces a male-centered pattern. The researchers of the study suggest that the textbooks must be revised in a gender-sensitive manner to ensure more equitable audio-visual and linguistic representation of males and females.

Textbooks are cultural objects that not only reflect student identities but also teach them about others. Cultural content in textbooks takes on salience in multilingual, demographically diverse learning environments in terms of equity, inclusion, and intercultural ability. This research offers a content analysis of cultural representation in Portal 11A (Qatari Edition, 2021-2022), an official English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbook for Grade 11 in Qatar. Using four research questions related to the representation of cultural groups in terms of their frequency, roles, framing, and demographic representativeness, the analysis is undertaken using four categories of analysis: names and origins, geographic presence, jobs and power, and visual depictions. The analysis shows that Western (primarily Anglo-Saxon) cultural content occupies the textbook's positions of narrative authority, professional aspiration, and geographic reference, with 64% of named characters and 48% of geographic references. Although the Qatari edition positively includes national cultural content through Culture Pages and exercise examples, this addition constitutes an appending add-on to a Western-normative curriculum. More importantly, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and other African cultures are completely unrepresented, representing a significant demographic blind spot in a country in which expatriate populations make up most of the population. By combining a four-category coding framework with explicit attention to the demographic composition of the host society, this study contributes a replicable methodological model for textbook analysis in expatriate-majority contexts and extends the additive-versus-structural distinction in multicultural curriculum theory to an empirical Gulf case largely absent from the existing literature. The research concludes that cultural equity in Qatari EFL materials can be achieved only through structural (as opposed to additive) curriculum reform, and offers specific recommendations for textbook publishers, curriculum designers, and policymakers.

Collaborative learning tools are found to have high pedagogical innovativeness and engagements of students (Jonassen, 1999). However, little is known about the perception of such tools among the teachers, particularly in the case of the private higher education institutions (HEIs) in Pakistan. The qualitative study is a research on the perceptions of teacher educators toward their use of collaborative learning technologies (e.g. online discussion forums, group projects, digital platforms) in a private Pakistani HEI (Akram et al., 2021). The study follows the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) model (Mishra and Koehler, 2006) in exploring how teachers perceive the integration of such tools and the resulting implications on teaching and the interaction with the students. The interviews with semi-structured questions were performed with 25 teacher educators, and the results provide the information that demonstrates the rather positive attitude towards these tools. Faculty indicated that the technologies make student participation, critical thought, and communication as well as digital literacy easier. However, barriers including the lack of technological infrastructure, change behavior, and professional development are limiting its adoption (Asad et al., 2020). The current research gives a subtle, situational explanation of the obstacles and facilitators linked to collaborative learning tool adoption in developing higher education institutions of the countries. The results produce practical suggestions to instructors and policymakers interested in supporting successful integration in similar environments, thus adding to the current discussion on the use of technology in pedagogy and shaping possible uses of AI and XR.

YouTube has become a significant but largely unstudied forum for public intellectual two-way conversations on AI in education as video has become a ubiquitous medium for communicating ideas. In a world dominated by video as a communication medium, YouTube has become a prominent location for two-way ideas exchanges about artificial intelligence (AI) in education that is not yet well studied as a site of discursive production. These conversations have the potential to influence and shape access to AI in education on an even larger scale than the scholarly publications they would enable, and these influences are evident in the policy, practice, and teacher identity for which these images of the future of education are constructed. The three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) model by Fairclough (1992, 2003) is applied to a Corpus consisting of 20 (171,676 words) high-reach and purposively selected panel discussions (8) on YouTube from 2020 to 2026 with Nobel Prize winners, panelists of the WEF, researchers at the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute and panelists of the UNESCO chair. The six dominant discourse themes found through a process of analysis across 26 deductive and inductive codes, managed by NVivo 15, the student’s were: the discourse of inevitability, the teacher identity crisis, ethics in-depth arising from the question of governance, the equity paradox, the human exceptionalism, and the corporate authority. The results indicate that these themes support the educational future of AI in three systematic discursive processes: inevitability normalization, institutional authority concentration and equity instrumentalization. The findings recognize that the lack of practitioner educators outlined in each of 20 panels is in itself a form of discursive power, as absence rather than content. The study is intended to demonstrate that talking about AI in education is not only a reflection of educational futures, it is an act to creating them. As educators, policymakers, or communities aim to understand and embrace AI adoption as a democratic process, it is crucial that their discursive mechanisms are made visible. Recommendations are made for policy makers, schools, teacher educators, curriculum planners and researchers.

Although current discussion in the world of higher education leans toward Web 3.0 and Generative AI, Global South institutions still face systemic digital precarity. We carried out a qualitative study to understand internal pedagogical rationale of 25 English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher educators in one of the private universities in Pakistan in order to find out how they negotiated the extreme tension between institutional Digital Ambition (institutional mandated, heavy-server Learning Management Systems) and infrastructural Digital Reality (rolling power interruptions and student data poverty). With the help of Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA), we have been able to find that educators are neither adopting nor shunning technology but are instead acting as resilient orchestrators. Out of student equity, the participants performed a Pedagogical Pivot and resorted to subversive compliance to circumvent multi-million-rupee official platforms with low-bandwidth mobile messaging applications, which here are considered the Shadow LMS. In an attempt to overcome the theoretical weaknesses of the current technology-centric models, this paper officially introduces TPACK-ES (Environmental Support) model. The study separates internal Contextual Knowledge (XK) and external material reality, putting Environmental Support as the fourth pillar of the TPACK framework. With this new model we make a conclusive forecast of the future of an impending AI Divide and provide strategic policy suggestions to justify infrastructural resilience in global higher education.

This study measured the impact of 3D hologram technology on the learning of English punctuation and on students' levels of motivation. Under a quasi-experimental approach, 70 Omani English learners were assigned to a control group (in-class training) and an experimental group (3D hologram group), with 35 students in each group. Researcher-designed punctuation tests were used for measurement purposes. The MUSIC Model of Motivation Questionnaire was used to investigate motivation. The findings of the punctuation tests revealed that, in the posttest and delayed posttest, the experimental group outperformed the control group. Additionally, the analysis of the motivation questionnaire within the experimental group showed a significant increase in students' motivation after exposure to the hologram device. Based on the findings, it appears that holographic technology could become a tool for punctuation training by features such as visual interactivity, which would promote students' attention and interest, and would also foster their knowledge and usage of punctuation marks. On the other hand, holograms can be a resource for teachers and schools to engage students in active learning though the effectiveness of it would be guided by the learning design and the learners' reactions.

This study aims to perform a quantitative analysis of the portrayal of gender in the nursing textbook used at the University of Buraimi in Oman. The study sought to examine gender-related categories, such as images, names, pronouns, words of address, and jobs, through the use of quantitative content analysis. The study findings suggest that, to some extent the nursing textbook exhibits a state of gender equilibrium and parity. The textbook displayed females as more visible than males in images and job categories. In contrast, males were more prominent in domains related to names, pronouns, and forms of address. In general, the school textbook exhibited a fair and impartial representation of both genders to a certain degree. The findings of this current research article are anticipated to assist authors in developing instructional materials that demonstrate a more balanced portrayal of genders within the curriculum.