The Islamic University- Gaza Deanery of Higher Education Faculty of ...

levels of achievements. Thus, a recent dominant trend, today, attempts to measure theprogramme quality in terms of increased students' achievements, and learning gains. This lastcategory reviews seven studies within this trend. Most of these evaluative studies adopted anexperimental or quasi experimental design to compare pre- and the post levels of students‟achievements.An example of these experimental studies is the one conducted in Egypt by Nasralla(2007). The main objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of 60 hour standard-basedINSET programme on students' language achievements, language learning strategies andattitudes. The study adopted an empirical design; an experimental group of 63 participantswas compared to a control one of 33 of English teacher along with their classes.Findings showed significant differences between students in the experimental group -whoseteachers were involved in the training programme-and their counterparts in the control group.Improvements were cited in students listening skills, language learning strategies and theiroverall attitudes towards English language learning. These improvements occurred mainly asa result of teacher's positive involvement in the training programme. The researcher endedwith discussing a set of the programmes related contextual factors that would increase theopportunity for teacher improvement, the transfer of training to classrooms and consequentlypositive impacts on students' achievements.Adopting similar experimental methodology, Jager et al., (2002) reported beneficialoutcomes in second evaluative study. The study aimed at identifying the effects of an INSETprogramme for primary teachers in Netherlands. The programmed trained teachers on usingnew instructional behaviour entitled "Cognitive Apprenticeship in Teaching ReadingComprehension”. The study sample consisted of an experimental group of 78 teachers whowere trained to use the new instructional method along with their classes, and a control groupof 7 teachers who taught the same curriculum of reading comprehension texts but received no- 75 -