About TAMAM
TAMAM is an educational movement in the Arab region to bring about and support school-based initiatives for sustainable improvement with the aim of improving student learning. TAMAM presents a unique paradigm for school reform in the Arab region inviting educators to lead educational reform through combining research with development where they initiate improvement while generating knowledge to build a home-grown theoretical understanding of effective and sustainable school reform that is grounded in evidence and in the cultural context of the Arab region.
TAMAM was initiated in 2007 and is directed by Dr. Rima Karami since 2015 with a Steering Team of 11 researchers, designers, and consultants leading the research and development activities of TAMAM.
To get more information about TAMAM’ s vision, mission, strategic goals, and phases, press
TAMAM’s Vision Statement: TAMAM is an educational movement in the Arab world that promotes transforming schools into self-renewing institutions, with broad based leadership capacity for change working in a concerted effort through strong partnerships with research universities, policy makers and community members toward enhancing the transformative role of schools to graduate the next generation that leads innovation and change in their society. TAMAM educators are leaders of change enacting their collaborative expertise to generate knowledge that is grounded in the culture fabric of the Arab region and that triggers innovative practices for sustainable school-based improvement.
TAMAM’s Mission Statement: TAMAM operates as a research lab adopting emancipatory collaborative action research to produce practical knowledge that can inform and refine the process of leading sustainable school-based improvement towards schools that are proactively engaged in social development. As action researchers, TAMAM Steering Team develops research-based designs to build the leadership capacity of teams of educators to initiate, plan, monitor, implement and evaluate innovative initiatives while concurrently supporting them as they acquire competencies needed to lead sustainable school-based improvement. These research-based designs also encompass strategies to build partnerships with students, the school community, research institutions, ministries of education, donors, training centers, and to empower Arab educators to influence educational policy in their countries.
TAMAM’s strategic goals: There are six strategic goals for TAMAM.
TAMAM phases: The TAMAM project is in phase four now. It went through three phases that can be summarized as follows:
The FIRST phase: In its first four years, the TAMAM project included nine private schools from three Arab countries (Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia), in addition to three public schools from Lebanon.
The SECOND phase: Eleven new private schools joined (three from Oman, two from Qatar, three from Egypt, two from Jordan, and one from Lebanon), adding three new countries to the project.
After the fifth TAMAM Gathering held in May 2014, five new schools from Jordan joined the project. By the end of the year 2014, five public schools from Princess Noura University in Saudi Arabia joined the project. It is worth noting that half of the new schools that joined the project in its second phase are themselves covering the costs of participating in TAMAM Project.
The THIRD phase: Sudan joined the list of Arab countries participating in TAMAM. At the beginning of its 3rd phase, TAMAM established an official partnership with the Technical Office of the Ministry of Education in the Sultanate of Oman. More public schools in the Sultanate participated in TAMAM and its competencies and school-based improvement journey became officially part of the professional development training programs implemented by the Ministry to schools.
In 2015, TAMAM received a five-year grant from the Lore Foundation to provide the opportunity of building leadership skills in members of several public schools in Lebanon that enable them to lead school-based improvement within their schools. For this reason, TAMAM project established Lebanon Hub to support public schools in Lebanon.
In mid-2016, a long-term partnership contract was signed with the Educational Resource Center, which provides the educational resources and in-service training for the schools of Al-Makassed Islamic Charitable Society. TAMAM seeks to build other partnerships with teacher training centers in universities and companies that provide school consultancy and in-service training for teachers. In addition to building formal partnerships and permanent collaboration with ministries to impact teacher training programs that seek to improve student learning in schools.
The FOURTH phase: