Lagging student performance in the Sultanate of Oman has, in recent years, led the Ministry of Education to target teachers’ professional learning as a key strategic pillar in its efforts to reform the education system. While international evidence finds principal leadership can make a meaningful difference in teacher engagement in professional learning, this has yet to be studied in Arab societies. The current study collected data from 887 teachers in 78 Omani middle schools with the aim of understanding if and how their principals’ learning-centered leadership influences teacher agency, teacher trust and teacher professional learning. Factor analysis, structural equation modelling, and bootstrapping were used to explore both partial and full mediation models of these relationships. Results validated a partial mediation model in which learning-centered leadership had moderate direct and indirect effects on teacher professional learning. The validated model also highlights the important role that principals can play in creating a climate of trust where teachers believe that investing their time and effort in professional learning will be beneficial for themselves and their schools. The results from Oman are compared with findings from other Asian societies and implications discussed.

Global citizenship has recently attracted significant attention from nations for its importance in sustainable development. This study explores the extent of the adoption of global citizenship concepts and principles in Omani education by analyzing the reality of including global citizenship concepts in national policies in Oman. Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA) was used in order to establish the support force in achieving the main requirements of GCED in three Omani national policies: Education Philosophy, the Basic Law of the State, and Oman Vision 2040. The results reveal that the Education Philosophy is one of the most comprehensive documents on concepts, principles, and requirements. Additionally, sustainable development issues are among the key principles contained in the analyzed national documents. These are followed by principles of ecological balance, scientific thinking, and technology, with significant interest in other principles as well.

In a climate of increasing multiculturalism in education, classrooms have become more diverse, offering educators and institutions both opportunities and challenges. In response to changing advancements and trends in education, school administrators claim that classroom diversity can develop students’ learning potential when properly harnessed and matched with inclusive pedagogy. This research reflects how diversity within the Omani education system can be enhanced by comparing the beliefs and experiences of students in diverse classrooms. This information provides a better understanding of students’ learning needs based on their perception of diversity. A descriptive study was performed with a quantitative approach, whereby a sample of 283 students completed a survey. The results indicate that female students rated more highly on the teaching method scale in comparison to male students. Additional post hoc tests on simple effects confirmed that non-Arab students tend to rate their teachers comparatively more highly in terms of teaching methods, curriculum design, assessment techniques, and practical skills than Omani and Arab pupils across the different subjects. This study offers valuable insights and practical strategies for cultivating diversity and inclusion in diverse settings in Omani schools.

The paper theorises fragility of regional solidarities in light of the emerging ways in which two Arabian Gulf states, Bahrain and Oman, are undertaking their transition to a knowledge economy. The paper shows ways in which regional symbolic solidarity goals of common economic and educational development in the Gulf region are challenged by locally focussed priorities at the level of each nation state. These findings carry important theoretical implications as the time of transition to a knowledge economy seems to drive readjustments in thinking about what the ‘Gulf-wide unity is for’, prompting its repositioning from an alliance established to protect and facilitate regional development to a means supporting local ends. The paper therefore challenges the spatial focus in some theoretical frameworks used in analyses of the sociology of regional solidarities and calls for the need of temporal lenses in such analyses.

This paper investigates the existence of GCED principles in Omani Basic Education schools’ visions and missions. A qualitative exploratory collective case study research design was used by analysing 50 schools’ vision and mission statements for the existence of five GCED principles: peace and conflict, human rights, identity and diversity, environment concerns, commitment to social justice, democracy and equity. The results revealed the varying existence of GCED principles, with commitment to social justice, democracy and equity principle being the most evident principles and the environment concerns principle the least evident in the dataset. For enabling schools to produce global citizens, schools need a revision of their visions and missions for better inclusion of GCED principles.

This study outlines the perceptions and views of Jordanian students regarding global citizenship at university in terms of their knowledge of global citizenship education (GCED), curricula and instruction processes. The data were collected using semi-structured interviews with fifteen English as a foreign language (EFL) university students studying in the 2022–23 academic year. The findings reveal that students had a basic understanding of GCED, which was often confused with national citizenship. Universities delivered courses that touched on GCED-related topics without focusing on the subject and academic staff required more empowerment in designing curricula or addressing GCED, as students reported that educators often presented GCED topics directly, with limited emphasis on learner-centred approaches. The study concludes by proposing recommendations for the sustainable integration of GCED into universities, encompassing documents used throughout universities and classroom pedagogical practices. These suggestions have international implications.