Copyright

Interview with Deena Boraie

Published On

2025-11-17

Page Range

pp. 113–132

Language

  • English

Print Length

20 pages

6. Rethinking Assessments for the Digital Age

Interview with Deena Boraie

  • Linda Herrera (author)
Chapter of: Education 2.0: Chronicles of Technological and Cultural Change in Egypt(pp. 113–132)
Deena Boraie, Senior Advisor for Assessment, Examinations, and Curriculum (2017-2022), worked with the Minister of Education Tarek Shawki to revise the system of assessments. They set out to mitigate the corrosive effects of high-stakes exams which contribute to a system of memorization in place of critical thinking and drive an unregulated market of private lessons. They introduced electronic exams, new problem-solving questions, and attempted to move towards a cumulative Grade Point Average (GPA) system for high school, but encountered roadblocks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they introduced research projects in lieu of exams, though that experiment became compromised as people bought and sold projects in large numbers. Finally, Boraie discusses digital transformation and how teachers must adjust to new realities.

Contributors

Linda Herrera

(author)
Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in the Global Studies in Education program at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Linda Herrera is Professor in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership in the Global Studies in Education program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She was director of the Education 2.0 Research and Documentation Project in Egypt and served as an international education advisor. A social anthropologist with expertise in the Middle East and North Africa, her research and teaching cover a range of areas including education and power, youth studies, citizenship education and critical democracy, technology and society, and international education development. Her books include, Educating Egypt: Civic Values and Ideological Struggles (American University in Cairo Press, 2022), Global Middle East: Into the Twenty-First Century (with A. Bayat, University of California Press, 2021), Revolution in the Age of Social Media (Verso, 2014), Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East (Routledge, 2014), Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (with A. Bayat, Oxford University Press, 2010), and Cultures of Arab Schooling: Critical Ethnographies from Egypt (with C. A. Torres, State University of New York Press, 2006).