Welcome – Selamat Datang – Ahlanwasahlan
It is my great pleasure to share with you some background information about our Kulliyyah, which is celebrating its Silver Jubilee (25th years of its establishment) this year. We have grown and developed tremendously from our humble beginning in 1987 as a teacher training institution offering a post graduate diploma in education, to a postgraduate school of education, producing teacher-educators, educational leaders and educational research, Alhamdulillah.
Almost all our academic staff are PhD holders obtaining their degrees from both Eastern and Western universities. At least ten percent of our staff are from the international community i.e. they are non-Malaysians. Our academic staff are currently engaged in numerous academic research and publication activities, as well as community service. Our professors have created their own niche areas being sought after experts in: Islamic education – curriculum and instruction; Islamic educational thought, Islamisation of acquired knowledge, integrated education, Islamic guidance and counseling, Teaching English Language as a Second Language, Teaching of Arabic Language for non-Arabic Speakers, Statistical Equation Modeling (SEM), Rasch model and the Hikmah pedagogy of philosophical inquiry.
Our Kulliyyah welcomes students from different parts of the world and presently, we have students from Southeast Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans, Africa and the Indian sub-continent most of whom are post-graduate students. This blend of cultures has made the learning environment at KOED rich and stimulating. Moreover, our alumni have spread throughout the developing world and are now building their own reputations, as well as the reputation of the Kulliyyah, as fine university lecturers and educational managers.
At KOED, we aim to provide students with excellent teaching and learning facilities as well as encouraging them to develop their own potential – by engaging in academic and co-curricular activities that are organised through a variety of student bodies. In this way, we hope to ensure that our students will have the necessary soft skills, leadership skills, creative, critical and ethical thinking to face the challenges of their careers and life in the modern world.
As a world class educational institution, we welcome collaboration with both local and overseas institutions. To date our staff have been invited as visiting professors to universities in Japan, the USA, Syria, and the UK, with some of them obtaining research fellowships from the Japanese Foundation and the Fulbright Grant. A few have been part of the ISESCO team in Morocco, helping to coordinate social and educational programmes for the Muslim countries. In addition, we have received visiting professors and post-graduate students from the USA, Iran, Indonesia, UNESCO and Japan and look forward to cooperating and collaborating more with international staff and students through projects and exchange programmes in the future, insha’Allah.
Thank you.
Prof. Dr. Noor Lide Abd Kassim