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The purpose of this study is to expound the dilemma that, in spite of the huge wealth of Saudi Arabia, its drive for development and modernization is stumbling. This situation is due to a large extent to the country's severe administrative limitations.

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Thesis advisor: Kathleen Bailey / For decades, realism reigned as the predominant paradigm for understanding international relations. In recent years, however, competing theories of international relations have emerged. This paper engages with one of these recent theories, constructivism, and argues that it better explains Saudi foreign policy than the balance-of-power theory that has come to dominate realist scholarship. By analyzing critical foreign policy decisions by Saudi Arabia throughout its history and leveraging ideas like “omnibalancing,” this paper argues that Saudi foreign policy is consistently ideological and concerned with domestic policy.

This qualitative study explores Saudi female teachers' experience of technology use in their practice and life. The aim is to present the voices of these female teachers living in the context of Saudi Arabia, and to document how personal characteristics, society and technology come to influence one another. The field work was done in Saudi Arabia, with female teachers from three public-sector primary schools. The data generation included individual, semi-structured interviews with four Saudi female teachers - one from each of two schools and two from the third school - and focus groups sessions with five to six teachers - one session in each of the three schools. The focus group methodology used Ketso, which is a collaborative mind-mapping tool developed at the University of Manchester. The interview and focus group sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed and then analysed using broad principles of thematic analysis. The data suggests that technology use affected the teachers' classroom practices, communication with others and their professional development. The teachers were active agents in this technology use, including taking responsibility for the technology use in their schools, and improvising solutions and ways of using available resources in their practice. This active role of the teachers seemed to contribute to localised use of technology, enabled the teachers to resist some of their social positions as females and teachers, and occasionally included a determination to create new positions for themselves. Overall, technology use appeared to enhance the Saudi female teachers' sense of agency, and crucially, seemed to enhance their awareness of their lived experience. The above insights might benefit Saudi educational policy makers, other Saudi teachers as a way of sharing experiences and practices, and researchers who are interested in studying the intersection between technology and society. In addition, the study exemplifies the novel use of the Ketso collaborative mind-mapping tool as a tool for qualitative research.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the current requirements of teacher evaluation at Saudi Arabian universities and to develop a teacher evaluation program that would fit the current need and support Saudi social and religious values. The site of the study was Ring Abdulaziz University (R.A.U.) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Population of the study included a random sample of senior students and faculty from the Women's Section of the university. Of 350 surveyed students, 224 responded, and 55 out of 150 surveyed faculty responded. The Dean and the Vice Deans of the Colleges of Science, Medicine, Arts and Literature, and Economics and Administration in the Women's Section were interviewed. The study involved two phases. The first phase was the assessment, for which interviews and surveys were employed. Interviews of top administrators at R.A.U.'s Women's section had two aims: to get top administrators' views of the current requirements of teacher evaluation at K.A.U., and to define the need for employing a formal system of teacher evaluation. The faculty survey sought faculty members' views on the methods of instructor evaluation currently employed and their preferences regarding a wide range of instructional evaluation techniques. The student survey sought to ascertain students' wishes to improve the process of learning by participating in teacher evaluation. Development of a proposed teacher evaluation program followed an analysis of the interviews and surveys. The second phase of the study was the field review. The proposed teacher evaluation program was reviewed by a selected sample of 13 top administrators at K.A.U. in both the Men's and Women's sections and by two top administrators in both King Saud University and King Faisal University. Field reviewers were asked about program clarity and the feasibility of its employment. Findings from phase one, the assessment, indicated the need for a formal evaluation system to replace the currently employed practice of teacher evaluation. This finding led to the development of a teacher evaluation program that takes into account the felt need of students to participate in the evaluation process without fear of any kind of reprisal from faculty and the desire of faculty not to have their status within the university system compromised by such a process. Findings of phase two, the field review of the program, resulted in a revised and final version of the program. The final teacher evaluation program contains three major components: (1) campus orientation, designed to acquaint faculty and students with the program and help them to understand its purpose and adjust to its employment; (2) students' rating, which includes a questionnaire to be used by students to evaluate instruction, along with various options for administering the questionnaire; and (3) data analysis, interpretation and improvement strategies.

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