Literature Textbooks series:Focussing “learning in context” [Archives:2006/998/Education]
Dr Frank R. Adams M.Ed., Dip. Ed., DPE, ILTM
former Associate Dean, Moray House School of Education, University of Edinburgh
In May 2006 the Department of English of Sana'a University submitted its B.Ed. degree programme in English for review as part of a United Nations Development Programme project* (April 29 to May 3, 2006). I was a member of the review team** which met staff and students in the English Department and looked at examples of the resources used for teaching. The review team was extremely impressed by the teaching resources, the LTS Literature Textbook Series, produced by Dr Ayid Sharyan to support students as they read and analysed key texts in English literature as part of their academic studies. The review team was impressed not only by the extent of this series, which runs to more than 30 titles, but also by its quality verified by the work produced by students.
I came to the series not as a specialist in the teaching of English but as an educationist and one with a love of English literature. What has impressed me about the LTS series as an educationist is Dr Ayid's emphasis on the importance of learning within a context. The links between and among the various ways in which we understand and learn about the world are, I believe, extremely important and this view of learning is fundamental to the LTS series;
' obody can ever have command over any language unless he/she has studied at least some of the literary masterpieces in the language concerned. There was a time when even students of medicine had to study philosophy and divinity/theology along with mathematics and the natural sciences. In this age of specializations some of us tend to think that the different subjects can be divided into watertight compartments while the fact remains that things are more interrelated than ever in this age and time' (Sharyan (2004) Foreword to Introduction to Literary Forms (II))
Specialists may argue about the selection of the prose and literature that have been chosen but I believe that the series does what it claims to do – it provides a rich and exciting context in which the students can develop not only their skills of analysis but their appreciation of literature as entertainment, escape, a source of moral/spiritual values, and aesthetic pleasure.
About the series
Literature TExtbook Series (LTS) presented by Dr. Ayid Sharyan (M.A., Ph.D) of Department of English, Faculty of Education, Sana'a University, covers a critical review of a wide range of textbooks in English and American literature prescribed in the Universities of Yemen.
* The project entitled “Enhancement of Quality Assurance and Institutional Planning at Arab Universities”, is sponsored, and supervised by the Regional Bureau of Arab States of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP/ RBAS). It was launched in January 2002 and it completed till now two phases that are executed by The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). Dr Ayid Sharyan was acting as a UNOPS consultant and as the Subject Representative for a project to organize external review mission to his department.
** Dr Robert Schofield (Review Coordinator) and Dr Frank Adams, UK quality assurance experts, Dr. Meziane Mohamad (Director, Scientific Council, Faculty of Social Sciences, Universite' d'Oran Es-Senia, Oran – Algeria), and Dr. Ali Ahmed Ali Madkour (Dean, Institute of Education, Cairo University)
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