Job Discussion Forums

[zaylahis]

One question I was asked at an interview was how to get male and female students to interact with each other? A major problem in Oman as the males sit in front and the females at the back.(According to the interviewer) Muslims in Malaysia do not have problems...so religion can't be the reason. Is it a cultural phenomena that teachers have to deal with? Would changing the seating arrangement be a good start?

[SandyMan]

Several of us teachers tried to change the seating arrangement at the beginning of the first semester last year by asking male and female students to sit to the right and the left in the classroom (instead of at the back and at the front). My experience was that many of the female students found that very difficult and after a while I got the feeling that I was forcing the girls to do something they absolutely did not want to do, with the result that they felt tense. As tension is not conducive to a good learning environment, I just dropped it and let the students sit where they wanted.

With about 12 guys and 12 girls in a class on average, I've never had problems doing pair work or group work single sex.

[zaylahis]

How about group work with boys and girls? Don't girls talk to boys at all?

[SandyMan]

To have both male and female students in the same classroom is pretty new to the students here. Just being in the same room with members of the opposite sex that are not relatives is strange for them. Here in Nizwa, I haven't heard of any teacher who has tried to mix guys and girls in groups/pairs in the classroom. Nor have I seen guys and girls talk to each other on campus that I can remember. They basically move in two separate worlds, where most classrooms have separate corridors and separate entrances for the girls (so guys and girls enter the classroom from two opposite directions).

What sometimes happens is that at the end of class, you've got a guy and a girl having a ''conversation" across the classroom. They might stand about 5 metres from each other and discuss something loudly in Arabic - but that is usually admin stuff, like the girls passing on a message from another teacher to the guys - though with the Arabic, I'm not always sure.

Also, I've had classes where suddenly all students were absent, both guys and girls, which means that they must have communicated with each other in some way (mobiles?). But more often, all the guys or all the girls are suddenly absent from a lesson, which means that they haven't told the other half of the class of their plans.

When I went to SQU for a conference last spring, I remember seeing male and female students chatting to each other and I remember thinking that was pretty unusual but maybe more common in Muscat (Nizwa is pretty conservative).

[zaylahis]

Thanks Sandyman for the informative posts

[veiledsentiments]

From my experience, it is best for the teacher to stay completely out of the process of mixing the sexes. Let the students decide. I would never have assigned mixed pair work.

At SQU in the early days, it was so obvious that both sexes were scared to death about the fact that the opposite sex was there. The first semester, many students spend half of the semester with their eyes glued to their desktop. By the second semester, most groups have worked things out and there is a great variance. I had medical English classes - in other words the best and brightest - and the girls declared that they were sitting to one side... NOT the back. So they did.

Communication between the normal front and back grouping is facilitated by the fact that there are often relatives. If a male first cousin or even better uncle is there, he will be the go-between.

In a later year when I was working with first year English majors - which is a much smaller department - of predominantly females, the second semester group solved the problem of the boys being very marginalized by declaring them to be 'brothers.' They helped to bring the shy boys into the discussions in a way that I never could have done from my position as Female Western Teacher.

If you teach in one of the smaller private colleges in Muscat, it is very different. Many, if not most, of the students are from mixed secondary schooling and thus the atmosphere is more relaxed and they will work in mixed groups, but I personally still avoided mixed pair work... though many would have done it with no problem. (but there were a few conservative students who would have been upset)

The smaller the village one is teaching in, the more this is an issue for first year students.

BTW, the 'problem' is religion. (if one considers this a problem for your teaching...) Omanis are mostly Ibadhi Muslims which is a very conservative sect although quite accepting of foreigners and their foibles. But, this sect teaches a very strict rule that unrelated people of the opposite sex are not supposed to even look at each other. When these kids from the villages reach university level with its mixed classes, it is very likely that they have never spoken or even been in the same room with an unrelated female - not their mother, sister, aunt, or cousin. It is very obviously traumatic for them the first semester.

VS

[zaylahis]

Did either of you observe if Muslim teachers had problems mixing the sexes? Or would they not even bother?

[SandyMan]

I've never heard of (or observed) any teacher, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, attempting to mix the sexes in the classroom here in Oman. Others might have.

[zaylahis]

Sorry I think I meant local teachers

[SandyMan]

We've got four Omani teachers at the English Department and as far as I know, none of them has ever tried to mix the sexes. I have no personal experience of teaching primary or secondary school, so I don't know what Omani teachers do when teaching other age groups.

[veiledsentiments]

Actually it was my fellow Muslim teachers and Omanis that I knew that were the ones that confirmed that the procedure I used was the best approach.

No one wanted to put too much pressure on students who were often also away from home for the first time and living in hostels.

Why force the issue? By their second year and after, they begin to interact more comfortably and naturally.

VS

[zaylahis]

Thanks again VS and Sandyman. I guess as everywhere in the world, the young will usually sort out their problems if we give them time to do so. .I wonder if the same applies to the kids outside Muscat...will they eventually interact in the second year..or third?? Oman is a place which encourages women to work..so how would they deal with men in the workplace if they do not interact at college?

[veiledsentiments]

That is exactly why the decision was made by the Sultan and the Ministry to have tertiary education be mixed. The thing is that in EFL, we normally get them only for their first couple semesters, and this is most difficult time for them... especially for the kids outside of Muscat for whom it really is a first time experience. At least now, most of them have had older brothers and sisters who have been through the process at SQU.

I have never really observed what happens in the classrooms beyond the first 2-3 semesters. My guess is that things still stay very formal and nominally separate outside of majors like medicine.

VS

[Tarka_littleotter]

I teach mixed classes and I mix them up. The university encourages us to because at the end of the day, they're there to get a degree to enable them to get a job...and the jobs are not single sex, so they've got to get used to it sooner or later! My students have never fussed too much about it and after the first few times they're fine. Some are shy and don't want to ....... it's up to you to know you're students and know who you can pair people up with. By the middle of the first semester we're running along smoothly as an integrated, mixed class.
I'm not much of a formal teacher though and I think being light hearted about it helps them to feel that it's ok. But that's my humble-been-teaching-for-4-years-don't-know-anything attitude!

In the 2 years that I've taught in Oman my students have never entered the class room with one sex seated at the back and the other at the front. Ours always sit girls on one side and boys on the other.

Outside the classroom they mix with each other (and if any of them tell you they don't follow them....they do!) so why shouldn't they in class where it doesn't matter if people see you because your teacher has told you to do it.
It's a cultural thing. I think sometimes it's very difficult to separate tradition and religion. They don't mix publicly because of what other people will say about them. Once someone has seen you and said something bad it gives your family a bad name and you less chance of marrying someone "good". That's essentially what it boils down to.

It is hard. Most of the girls have never sat in a room with a boy unless he's their brother or father. But lets be honest, girls like boys and boys like girls and the majority of Omanis are no different!

[zaylahis]

Thanks Tarka. I did ask if the problem was religious or cultural and I suspect it is a little bit of both because in other Muslim countries, co-education and mixing of sexes is not a problem (except of course in prayers).