Do research experience programs promote capacity building in Qatar: Investigating the trend and participation differences.

Research Experience programs (REPs) inspire students to pursue advanced degrees and shape their research career paths. Government and commercial organizations sponsor REPs to promote the capacity building of the country. In Qatar, the national youth is reported to show concerning participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines at the K-12 level. However, none of the studies investigate these participation trends at the undergraduate level, especially in scientific research, which is deemed necessary for building a knowledge-based economy in Qatar. Therefore, to bridge this gap, the current study uses a quantitative approach to analyze the REP in Qatar through the participation data of 2455 undergraduate students. For this, statistical measures, including descriptive analysis, independent samples t-test, and Pearson's correlation analysis were used. Results indicated concerning trends in national student participation rate, implying underlying issues restricting their representation in undergraduate research activities. Also, statistically significant differences were found in student participation rates among students' gender and ethnic distributions. While female students demonstrated higher participation rates than males, national students showed lower participation than the non-nationals. Moreover, this low participation of national students suffered more drastically in STEM disciplines. Therefore, these findings determine the outlook for stakeholders and academic institutions in making meaningful educational decisions and envision synchronizing REPs at the university level, gauging measures to bolster the adjacent funding agencies and government organizations. Furthermore, being the first research addressing REPs in the Middle East region, this study has the potential to support educators in neighboring and other developing nations where STEM education is especially significant for human capacity building.

High school students' STEM interests and career aspirations in Qatar: An exploratory study.

This study sought to explore high school students' interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related disciplines and careers in the context of Qatar. Quantitative data was collected using a survey of 1492 high school students in grades 11-12. The normality tests (Shapiro-Wilk test and Kolmogorov Smirnov test) revealed the non-normal distribution of data, leading to employing non-parametric analyses, including Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis H, and logistic regression. Results indicated that whereas students' interest in mathematics and science subjects was aligned with their likelihood to pursue STEM careers, however, their interest in engineering and technology doesn't line up with their STEM career aspirations. The findings also revealed the variability of students' STEM interests across gender and nationality. In general, female students exhibited higher STEM interests than their male counterparts, while specially expatriates were more inclined toward STEM than Qatari nationals. Overall, these findings postulate the need to improve the exposure of males in general and Qatari nationals specifically to STEM fields of study, particularly the subjects of engineering and technology, to meet the goals of Qatar's National Vision 2030.

Challenges facing teacher education in Qatar: Q methodology research.

This study aims to identify the challenges facing teacher education in Qatar. Through Q methodology, it examines the ways in which schoolteachers, preservice teachers, teacher education faculty, and Ministry of Education and Higher Education personnel identify what they see as significant challenges faced by teacher education in the country. The overall aim is to provide an overview of teacher education in Qatar and the challenges of improving programs and processes. Results show that the participants' perspectives fall on a continuum of diverse views in which minimal consensus exists. Still, four consensus points were found across the emerged perspectives: schoolteachers' workload, responsibilities and roles of educational stakeholders, the exasperation towards college-based teacher education, and the impact of culture on teacher education. Based on the results of this study, we argue that these consensus points represent the main challenges facing teacher education in Qatar.