Idealism as an educational philosophy of mathematics teachers in Al Ain City Schools of the United Arab Emirates

PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Idealism as an educational philosophy of mathematics teachers in Al Ain City Schools of the United Arab Emirates Omar M. Khasawneh1☯, Adeeb M. Jarrah ID2☯, Mohammad S. Bani Hani ID1☯, Shashidhar Belbase ID3☯* a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 1 College of Education, Yarmouk University-Irbid, Irbid, Jordan, 2 Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Emirates College for Advanced Education, Khalifa City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), 3 Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates (UAE) ☯ These authors contributed equally to this work. * Abstract OPEN ACCESS Citation: Khasawneh OM, Jarrah AM, Bani Hani MS, Belbase S (2023) Idealism as an educational philosophy of mathematics teachers in Al Ain City Schools of the United Arab Emirates. PLoS ONE 18(2): e0279576. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0279576 Editor: Pedro Ribeiro Mucharreira, University of Lisbon: Universidade de Lisboa, PORTUGAL Received: January 22, 2022 Accepted: December 9, 2022 Published: February 21, 2023 Copyright: © 2023 Khasawneh et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Educational philosophy, in general, is at the heart of the growth of education. It outlines the institution’s goals, subject matters, teaching methods, roles of teachers as well as the role of students, assessment methods, and teaching/learning experiences. The study aimed to identify the educational philosophical implications of idealism in schools in Al Ain city of the United Arab Emirates from the perspectives of mathematics teachers. The researchers used a questionnaire with thirty-two Likert-type items as a quantitative method for data collection. The instrument was administered to a randomly selected sample of 82 (46 male and 36 female) mathematics teachers in Al Ain city. The data were analyzed in IBM SPSS version 28 for one sample t-tests and independent samples t-tests to compare teachers’ perceptions of curriculum, education values, school functions, roles of teachers, and teaching methods with gender and school type. Further analyses included a one-way ANOVA for teaching experiences and teaching cycles, bivariate correlations between the variables, and a generalized linear model to identify the significant predictors of the teaching method. The findings of the study showed that mathematics teachers in Al Ain city embrace an idealistic philosophy of curriculum, educational values, the role of schools and teachers, and teaching methods in general. The teachers’ perceptions of the curriculum and school functions were found to be significant predictors of their teaching methods. These findings have both pedagogical and curricular implications. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. However, the article processing charge (APC) has been supported by College of Education and Office of Research, United Arab Emirates University. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Introduction There is a dominance of a specific educational philosophy in any industrialized nation in the logic of governing and leading over its present and future dogmatic sociology [1]. Thus, the purpose of this study is to determine the educational philosophical implications of Idealism throughout schools in Al Ain city in the United Arab Emirates from the perspectives of PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0279576 February 21, 2023 1 / 28 PLOS ONE Idealism as an educational philosophy teachers. A particular philosophy, such as idealism for teaching, may help mathematics teachers enrich or improve teaching and implementing school curricula [2]. Idealism is an educational philosophy that focuses on the idea that ". . .pupil lives in an idea-centered mathematical world, but not an objective real world" [2] (p. 1). Idealism, as an ancient philosophy known to humankind, has influenced the minds of men and women in the past and in contemporary times, even though societies at present times may not be motivated to follow any dogmatic beliefs or theories [3]. Nevertheless, Idealism has influenced many educators with self-reflection on consciousness and the inner dynamic phenomenon of the mind [4]. The influence of Idealism on education has gone a long way towards limiting some radical philosophies and creating the value of everlasting ideals and morals of existence [5–7]. As the first known school of philosophy, Idealism teaches that an idealist is a thinker who admires the mental state of human beings and has no concerns about the physical principles of life [8, 9]. Philosophically speaking, Idealism is derived from the term—the ideal, which stands for the completed practice of an idea or ideas [10, 11], and something created by mind or minddependent entity [12]. However, an idea means true and affirmed awareness [13]. Idealism is a method that stresses the pre-eminent importance of spirit, soul, or mind [10, 11, 14, 15]. The spirit, soul, or mind is the primary source of human understanding and the most important human organ [14]. The school curriculum must focus on the ideals that form the ultimate goal in education and life [10]. The school curriculum taught to pupils must provide subject matters that should be kept constant for all [16]. The school views facts perceived by the human mind through reasoning as more accurate than direct sensual experience [11]. However, the senses are no less important than the mind in terms of understanding [11]. The role of a school is to transfer knowledge from one generation to another [17]. The school views knowledge as an independent entity far from sensual experience and views subject matter as the core curriculum that must be the teachers’ focus [17]. A teacher, according to idealism, ought to focus on curricular activities that are part of the school curriculum. The teacher is the central core of the educational process [3]. The school maintains popular culture through teaching [18]. Educational objectives concentrate on exercising the human mind while ignoring physical entities, promoting idealistic thinking of the metaphysical world [16], and the intellectual growth of an individual [19]. The teacher focuses on brainstorming to extract ideas and meanings from students’ minds through discussions and dialogue [18]. The teacher is the ideal role model for his/her students, mentally as well as morally, to construct knowledge of the mathematical world as mind-dependent [18– 21]. School motivates learners to become cooperative, obedient, and respectful of others [20]. The school works on imple (...truncated)