MECACS Welcomes Visiting Research Fellow Dr. Nasser Tolba
Dr Nasser Tolba is a Visiting Researcher with MECACS who began his fellowship on the 5th January 2022. MECACS intern Vittoria Gattini conducted an introductory interview with him.
1. Firstly, congratulations and welcome to MECACS! Could you please introduce yourself?
Thank you so much Vittoria, I’m Nasser Shaaban Ali Tolba. I’m a lecturer at the Foundations of Education Department, Faculty of Education, Fayoum University, Egypt. I graduated from the Faculty of Education, Department of Geography in 2005, with Honours. I started my academic career as an academic teacher (demonstrator) in the Foundations of Education Department in 2006. I completed my master’s thesis about the evaluation of schools-attached kindergartens in the Governorate of Fayoum. It is a study of the educational policy of public kindergartens in Fayoum. I received a scholarship from the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education to pursue my doctoral studies in Germany. I completed my doctoral degree at the Institute of Education and Culture, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany Summa Cum laude. I have decided to do habilitation in religious education and politics in order to enrich my prospective career as a multidisciplinary scholar interested in social and religious education in general and Coptic thought and politics in particular. I have solid research experience in qualitative and quantitative methods. Also, I have been part of many research projects in Egypt and outside.
2. What drew you to fellowship programme at MECACS?
To be honest, I have contacted Professor McCallum Guiney who has intensive expertise in Christian communities and politics in the Middle East. Her work and expertise are influential in the area of Coptic politics. Moreover, an international research stay at the University of St Andrews will provide global perspectives as I will expose to new ideas, teaching styles, and develop my own research profile. I believe my skills, knowledge, and experience will flourish in the research team at the (MECACS) since it is a place where I will be challenged by well-known scholars and experts whose work in their respective fields and disciplines provide a great learning opportunity.
3. Which areas of education studies you are most passionate about?
I’m doing research in educational policy analysis, history of education, youth studies, cultural and religious studies, political sociology of higher education and international higher education. I am passionate about doing research and teaching students at the university level. I cannot imagine a day without thinking about education research. It really grabs my interest and would like in the future to do transnational research in the area of education and politics.
4. Why do you think that education studies are important for Egypt and for the Middle East more in general?
From my point of view, education is crucial for all countries in the Middle East, especially Egypt because it is considered a cornerstone of comprehensive development and a major instrument in social and economic growth. Day after day, the role of education in shaping society and tomorrow’s leaders is becoming recognized. Thus, we need advanced educational research and studies to implement scientific approaches to find solutions to major difficulties in educational institutions in addition to improving teaching and learning methods by empowering teachers with data. Educational studies and research is also important to the advancement of educational knowledge and practices.
The majority of educational systems in Middle Eastern countries are facing profound problems with both quantity and quality. Without active and strategic research studies, no education system can serve its nation.
5. Do you think that there are some areas of education that can benefit from advances in the field such as the de-colonisation of knowledge and do you think that there can be an input from Middle Eastern scholars?
As a matter of fact, the majority of education systems in third-world countries were copied from imperial countries. For example, the French-influenced educational systems in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and most African countries still follow the french system. There have been many attempts to refuse this cultural and educational dependence by education scientists. The Brazilian educator Paolo Ferrari the Founder of the theoretical model of critical education is among those scientists in third-world countries. He has a unique educational theory that is completely different from the western neoliberal concept of education. In the Middle East, Malek Bennabi and Edward Said rejected reliance on western knowledge and theories that imposed certain interpretations for local cultural and educational affairs.
6. During the pandemic we have seen the importance of access to education and policies have been put in place to respond to the emergency in all the countries. Could you tell me more about how Egypt has deal with it?
In fact, the Egyptian state has tried as much as possible to provide education to all students at all school and university levels during the pandemic. It was crucial to implement remote and online learning however, the worn infrastructure was a major obstacle in doing so. Legislators and education policymakers were a bit disturbed by the new situation. Therefore, the educational policy responded to this situation too late and slowly. The curricula have been reviewed and improved to be in line with the new situation of e-learning and distance education, which educational institutions have begun to expand in their use as temporary and rapid responses to the repercussions of the coronavirus on the educational process. In the latter stage, new techniques of evaluation of students’ performance were used to be in line with online and remote learning.
7. Which were the main successes and shortcoming that you observed in your university?
This is a difficult question indeed; Fayoum University is a medium size university in central Egypt that serves the surrounding areas of Fayoum. It has great strengths and several achievements in providing education and health care for the poor people of Fayoum in its university hospital. It also directed its research profile to solve the problems of the local people in Fayoum. In research, an increasing number of articles in top-ranked journals in all disciplines is observed. Fayoum University has joined international research projects with universities in Germany, the USA, Russia, and Spain.
8. Which are the main repercussions that you think the pandemic had regarding education policy?
Throughout human history, many diseases and epidemics influenced societies and halted all aspects of life. SARS COV-2 hit all societies and severely affected educational systems. Among the elements affected is the education policy. Educational policies in all countries around the globe stopped dealing with the crisis to just minimize its negative effects on the educational system. This can be understood due to the suddenness of the pandemic which expanded very quickly. In the undeveloped countries of South America and Africa, educational policies have poorly adopted procedures and plans based on a weak basis of information. The major challenge for education policy at that time is to provide education to all while children were in homes. It has been very difficult to create synergised responses in poor regions in order to achieve better impacts for both government and education communities to provide a high-quality education for students.