TAMAM Vision. 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 cultural fabric of the Arab region and that triggers innovative practices for sustainable school-based improvement. 

TAMAM started as a project in 2007 and has transformed itself into an educational movement that spans 8 Arab countries, serving more than 600 practitioners, in 69 schools with 32 researchers from 12 different universities, 32 coaches, and policymakers collaborating on designing and implementing impactful school-based improvement.
TAMAM was initiated to address four key concerns:  (1) the absence of a culturally-grounded research based body of educational knowledge that is in line with international best practices and capable of addressing the challenges of Arab educational practitioners; (2) the lack of agency and preparedness among school based practitioners to lead innovative school improvement; (3) the compromised quality of professional development programs offered to Arab educational practitioners; and (4) the lack of accountability and evidence-informed decision-making at all levels of the educational system.
TAMAM was fully 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. 

TAMAM Mission. 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 their community.  As action researchers, the 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, and training centers and to empower Arab educators to influence educational policy in their countries

Capacity Building Program

The “TAMAM Capacity Building Program” is the first research-based design that the TAMAM Steering Team generated and refined through iterative cycles of inquiry and action. 

The program aims at building leadership capacity among lead teams of practitioners at schools while setting the stage for building broad based leadership capacity encompassing students, parents, and partners from the larger community. Implementation of this program spans over 3-4 years and follows an evolving plan approach which facilitates customization of the program to the unique conditions and sociocultural context of educational institutions.

1. The TAMAM capacity building program design comprises:  
2. A set of guiding principles essential to lead sustainable school-based improvement: the eleven TAMAM Pillars.
3. Targeted outcomes at the individual, team, and institution levels.
4. Strategies to train and guide educators built around a job-embedded process on leading school-based improvement: the TAMAM School Improvement Journey.
5. Evaluation framework with criteria and tools to evaluate impact.

The TAMAM capacity building program is detailed and documented in the form of a Resource book that is designed to be shared to support TAMAM coaches while working with school teams in the different countries. 

Research Lab  

TAMAM promotes research methodologies based on collaboration with educational practitioners who are actively engaged in leading transformational change aimed towards social development in their schools.

TAMAM uses emancipatory collaborative action research to generate research-based designs while capturing the best practices at educational institutions, building on strengths and honoring the sociocultural context of the communities they serve. This methodology allows for continuous refinement of the generated designs through an iterative process of experimentation informed by international research and the experiences emerging from the practices of Arab educators. As such, the main contribution of TAMAM’s research goes beyond introducing internationally accepted practices to Arab schools and towards triggering a paradigm shift in how reform is conceived, implemented and researched in the Arab region.

With that, TAMAM aims at contributing to a contextually-grounded knowledge base on effective school improvement practices that can inform educational policies in the Arab region.

The progress and outcomes of TAMAM research are documented in a series of papers and technical reports some of which are published in regional and renowned international journals and/or on the TAMAM website.

In addition, TAMAM lead teams document their school-based improvement experiences in the form of reports that provide sequential narration of their improvement projects based on the TAMAM School Improvement Journey.

TAMAM research outcomes are also disseminated through participation in regional and international conferences.

Our Community

The TAMAM community includes participating public and private schools in eight Arab countries that lead sustainable school-based improvement in partnership with researchers and coaches from various collaborating universities: Al-Ahfad University for Women, American University of Beirut, American University of Cairo, Arab Open University in Jordan, Assyut University, Princess Noura Bint AbdulRahman University, Qatar University, Queen Rania’s Academy, Sultan Qaboos University, and The Lebanese University.

Three self-sustaining TAMAM country hubs are established in Lebanon, Jordan, and Oman. They are led in collaboration with the TAMAM Steering Team by Country Hub Coordinators.