Resources, Working Environment and Style of Collaboration among Science Education Teaching Faculty at Lebanese Universities

This study aims at describing the style of collaboration among science education teaching faculty, the types of resources they use and their working environment. It has been conducted using a descriptive quantitative approach utilizing a questionnaire filled by thirty-eight out of forty-four full timers at the eight Lebanese universities with the highest percentage of students (60 %). Even though teachers prefer to work collaboratively, results show little collaboration among them being restricted to exchanging resources once per month with their heads of department. Collaboration has been shown to increase when teachers are younger and when it is done within the same department. In addition, teachers mostly use online resources and perceive their working environment as one that fosters growth, however, they consider this growth dependent on human nature and on educational policies. These results imply that if enough support and incentives are given to teaching faculty from their university administration and from the education policy makers, they may be enthusiastic to work collaboratively to professionally develop leading to exemplary science teaching and quality in the Higher Education sector.