Science Education Research and Practice in Lebanon: Current Status, Challenges, and Future Prospects

Abstract

Lebanon is a country that lies on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Its location rendered it a crossroad for many civilizations—a fact that is reflected in its constitution and consequently in its educational system. The Lebanese constitution guarantees the freedom of education according to public law and regulations, which resulted in a pre-college private school education system that is diverse, energetic, and competitive and that serves almost 60 % of K–12 students in Lebanon. It is diverse in terms of the languages taught in schools, which include Arabic as the first language and English and French as the second and third languages. In addition to private schooling, Lebanon has a well-established public education system. Even though science has attracted increasing attention in the most recent educational reform, science education is still facing a variety of challenges regarding science teacher preparation, science curriculum, integration of science and technology, results of international comparisons, and the role of research in improving practice. This chapter describes and analyzes the current situation related to the aforementioned challenges and discusses future prospects in light of the Lebanese National Education Strategy 2010–2015 (http://www.opentech.me/~laes/upload/editor_upload/file/Vision%20Document%20%20English.pdf) for improving the quality of education in general and science education more specifically.