Saudi Female Students’ Perceptions of their Democratic Empowerment in the Classroom at King Saud University

Abstract

The purpose of this quantitative study is to describe female graduate students’ perceptions about their democratic empowerment in the classroom at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. Their perceptions are compared based on female students' tracks. It also investigates the obstacles for democratic empowerment that female students face in the classroom. The theoretical framework depends on Dewey, Freire, and Shor’s perspective on critical pedagogy and Islamic teachings that help to create a democratic (Shura) classroom. Both approaches require freedom, dialogue, collaborative learning, equality, and critique concepts. These five concepts seek to create a critical thinking classroom that also encourages students to be empowered and active learners. However, classrooms that use traditional teaching methods that do not exercise the elements of democratic (Shura) empowerment lead to disempowered students by practicing silence, marginalization, and dependence. The data is collected through a questionnaire survey method, and the participants are female graduate students who study at the College of Education in the Department of Educational Policies. The statistical analysis that is used to answer the research questions are descriptive analysis including means, and standard deviation, one-way ANOVA, and Scheffé Post-Hoc Comparisons. The main results of this study are that Graduate female students practiced and showed the importance of the five elements of democratic empowerment in their classrooms. Also, the results show that there was no statistically significant differences at (α = 0.05) among female students' perceptions about their practices in dialogue, collaborative learning, and equality, in a classroom based on their study tracks. However, there was statistically significant differences at (α = 0.05) among female students' perceptions about their practices in freedom, critique, and the total of practices in a classroom based on their study tracks. The direction of the differences was a benefit for Adult Education track. About the obstacles for democratic empowerment that female students face in the classroom, two themes emerged: pedagogical methods of teaching and obstacle courses. One of the key recommendations is that the critical Islamic pedagogy that is theorized in this study should be applied in the university classrooms in Saudi Arabia, especially for graduate students.