Latifa Belfakir

Work place: Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences Dhar El Mahraz, Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University, USMBA, 30000, Fes, Morocco

E-mail: Latifa.belfakir@usmba.ac.ma

Website: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9513-8683

Research Interests: Computational Social Science, Social Computing, Social Information Systems

Biography

Latifa Belfakir Dr. Belfakir, Ph.D., has been working as a university professor for 19 years. Her major fields of interests, as a researcher, are technology and language teaching and Leadership studies. With Pr. Moubtassime, she is the co-writer of English grammar made simpler and research methodology for the novice researcher. in addition, she has lately written and published a number of papers on millennials and digital learning, namely “teaching writing revisited : the advantages of computer-assisted writing “, “the reform and distance education”, “the use of social networking in education: the ethical and legal aspects,” “is mobile learning just a fad?”, “coming to grips with mobile learning”, among others.

Author Articles
The Effectiveness of the TaRL Approach on Moroccan Pupils’ Mathematics, Arabic, and French Reading Competencies

By Abdessamad Binaoui Mohammed Moubtassime Latifa Belfakir

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijeme.2023.03.01, Pub. Date: 8 Jun. 2023

Teaching at the Right Level (henceforth, TaRL) is a new trending remedial educational approach being piloted in many countries. It basically matches pedagogical content to pupils’ educational needs through various adapted activities after segmentation of pupils’ depending on their actual difficulties and needs. In this respect, Morocco has been piloting this relatively new approach during the beginning of the school year 2022-23. Therefore, this study aimed at measuring the effectiveness of the TaRL approach on Moroccan pupils’ mathematics, Arabic, and French reading competencies. An experimental study took place involving 106 pupils from 4th grade to 6th grade during a one-month remedial course (half an hour per day, one subject per day) based on TaRL guidelines. After carefully examining the data through the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test by comparing the baseline and endline results in all three subjects. The results showed statistically high improvements with large effect sizes in the levels of the three subjects suggesting that TaRL was effective in raising the levels of numeracy and literacy and may be, safely, further adopted throughout Moroccan primary schools.

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The Impact and Effectiveness of the Syllable-based Reading Approach on Moroccan Pupils’ Reading Competency

By Abdessamad Binaoui Mohammed Moubtassime Latifa Belfakir

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2023.02.03, Pub. Date: 8 Apr. 2023

Morocco has recently introduced the syllable-based reading approach (SbA) in Arabic and French Curricula. Thus, this study aimed at measuring the impact and effectiveness of said approach on Moroccan pupils’ Arabic reading competency as well as how teachers approach it based on the hermeneutic phenomenology theoretical framework. A quantitative survey questionnaire was distributed to 227 1st and 2nd grade teachers from all twelve regions of Morocco. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze data through descriptive statistics and statistical hypothesis testing. The results showed that most Moroccan teachers advocate the use of the SbA as it positively impacts Arabic reading competency. They have, also, pointed out that time and demanding lesson planning are some of the SbA’s drawbacks. Also, it was found that there are no differences in SbA’s teaching practices and perceptions between female and male teachers except for the practice of assigning reading homework as female teachers tend to assign more reading homework. The results of the study are of significant importance to the MENA region as it evaluates field work regarding SbA.

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The Effectiveness and Impact of Teaching Coding through Scratch on Moroccan Pupils’ Competencies

By Abdessamad Binaoui Mohammed Moubtassime Latifa Belfakir

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5815/ijmecs.2022.05.05, Pub. Date: 8 Oct. 2022

Coding for pupils has become a new trend in information communication technology (ICT) education as it is a gateway to the new digital era for future generations where computers are one of the backbones of modern society. In this respect, the present study aimed at investigating the usefulness and impact of teaching coding through “Scratch” (i.e., a coding software for pupils) on Moroccan pupils, measuring their capacity to learn coding and finally exploring Moroccan teachers’ perceptions about it. Therefore, a pre-test post-test experimental course study took place targeting 38 pupils of the 6th grade in a rural area school. The control group (19 participants) was not taught the basics of Scratch coding while the experimental group (19 participants) was taught through practical Scratch coding initiation lessons based on the theory-based model for computer programming teaching. Furthermore, a quantitative survey questionnaire was used to gather 5th and 6th grade teachers (202 participants) perceptions about Scratch. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences was used to analyze the data. The results of the quantitative questionnaire showed that Moroccan teachers endorse Scratch teaching for its potential benefits while the experimental study results proved that computer coding can be easily be integrated in Moroccan schools. The software is suitable for the students since they demonstrated significant interest in coding and have experienced positive impacts on various competencies.

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