The Role of Master Program in Educational Administration offered by Palestinian Universities in Developing Educational Planning Skills of Graduates, and Its Relationship to the Degree of Practicing these Skills

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the role of Master Program in Educational Administration, offered by Palestinian universities, in developing the educational planning skills of graduates, as well as its relationship to the degree of their practicing to these skills. To achieve the study goals, the researcher uses the qualitative and quantitative approaches, employing two tools to collect data; a questionnaire which consists of two measurements: one for the role of Master program of Educational Administration in developing educational planning skills, and the other for the degree of practicing these skills by graduates; the questionnaire includes (73) paragraphs, distributed in five fields pertaining the role of the Program in developing and practicing educational planning skills, represented in five skills (prediction and future study, alternatives identification, reality analysis and determination of needs, decision making, follow up and evaluation). The study population comprises of (178) male and female graduates of the Program during the period (2019-2021), from Palestinian universities in the northern governorates. Upon measuring the validity and reliability of the tools, they were applied to stratified random sample of (122) graduates of the program at each of Al-Najah University, Al-Quds University, Al-Quds Open University, and Hebron University. The study results show that the role of the program in developing educational planning skills for graduates is high, with an average of (3.73), and a percentage of (74.6%). The Program goals' field has got the highest average by (3.80), while the methods of evaluation got the lowest average by (3.65); the results also show that the degree of practicing educational planning skills by graduates of the Program are high in all the fields, with an average of (3.96) and a percentage س of (79.2%), with the highest average for practicing prediction and future studying skill by (4.02), and the lowest for the skill of making and taking decisions with an an average of (3.83). Furthermore, the results indicates that there is no statistically significant differences at the level of the statistical significance (α<.05) among the averages of the role of the Master program of Educational Administration program in Palestinian universities in developing the educational planning skills of its graduates, that might be ascribed to the variables of gender, university name, practical or administrative experience, Job title, residence location and year of graduation. Nor there is a positive direct correlation between the program role in developing planning skills and the degree of practicing these skills by graduates. Moreover, there is a statically significant effect for the fields of the program role in developing educational planning skills of its graduates in respect of predicting their level of practice to the educational planning skills in the educational field by (50.5%). In light of above results, the researcher stresses the necessity to conducting further studies on the role of the master program, offered in Palestinian universities, in developing other skills for graduates, such as administrative and problem-solving skills.