An Investigation on the Perspectives of Parents on the Impact of the Western Teachers’ Values and Cultures on Developing their Children’s Character and Morality

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of the Western teachers’ values and cultures on the Emirati students’ character and morality in the international schools that implement the British curriculum from the Emirati parents’ point of view. As this study followed a mixed method approach, a total of forty nine parents answered the questionnaire of the study in the quantitative part. While in the qualitative section, ten Emirati parents were interviewed in semi structured interviews to get deeper insights. Quantitative data suggested that the majority of parents believed that parents are the best teachers of character (mean of 1.55) and social skills are more important for their children than academic skills (mean of 1.73).The qualitative data revealed that the UAE national students are influenced by the values and the cultures of their Western teachers in various ways. According to the Emirati parents, Western teachers who act as role models for their children have influenced their children positively as well as negatively. The results also demonstrated that there is an immense gap in the Western teachers’ knowledge about the UAE culture as their Western values and cultures are different from those in the UAE; therefore, this situation needs to be underlined to ensure that the Western teachers’ teaching and practices do not contradict what the Emirati students are expected to learn.