On being a teacher: teacher development and education in Punjab, Pakistan

• In Event: Professionalization and accreditation for quality education: issues in South Asia

Proposal

This empirical study employs teacher voices to evaluate pre-service and in-service teacher policies in government schools across the province of Punjab, Pakistan. With over 52,000 schools spread across 36 districts, Punjab is home to the largest provincial education system in the country. Despite having a workforce of over 400,000 teachers, however, the system is fraught with teacher shortages and high attrition. 17% of the teaching force in Punjab was hired in the past year alone. Such rapid deployment of teachers, combined with existing challenges such as high attrition, raises questions regarding the effectiveness of pre-service and in-service processes that are meant to augment teacher performance. Moreover, despite the confluence of external frameworks to help understand and raise teacher effectiveness, the voice of the key stakeholder – the teacher – remains missing from the discourse around teacher recruitment in the Punjab government school system. This work, therefore, stems from a bottom-up approach (Chettiparamb, 2009; Lejano & Shankar, 2013; Yoshida & van der Walt, 2018) to integrate the voices of teachers in evaluating the systems and processes in place for primary school teachers in Punjab.

The paper focuses on two questions, namely:
1. How is teacher induction for primary school teachers mediated by other factors such as school assignments and regional contexts to impact teacher effectiveness, and;
2. How do processes of teacher education or in-service professional development for primary school teachers (including criteria for selection for training and its role in career progression) affect teacher effectiveness and motivation in the classroom

Employing a sequential mixed methods research strategy, the authors have teased apart the differences between system needs and teacher capabilities in the study. While quantitative data was used to arrive at a sample of teachers given variation in location and school contexts, the qualitative scaffolding helped flesh out teachers’ experiences, their opportunities and motivation at each step of their inclusion into the government teaching system.

Preliminary investigations reveal a significant disconnect between the paradigms of teacher education and teacher expectations at the primary education level. Domestically, this realization is developing across all education tiers (see Chaudary & Imran (2012) for tertiary education, and Choudhury, Gujjar & Iqbal (2011) for secondary education). There is agreement on the integration of promising practices (Darling-Hammond, 2017) such as supportive induction model and profession-wide capacity building as aspirational models. But, as Yoshida & van der Walt concluded in 2017, education in most developing contexts is couched within a top-down approach focusing on broader outcomes (for example, student academic outcomes) and failing to recognize the importance of quality of implementation of education service delivery.

The achievement of this study, then, lies in mapping such gaps between policy and practice settings in which teachers thrive, as seen through the eyes of public administrators and teachers themselves. The study concludes with coda for integration of the findings – focused on both policy and implementation – that support the ultimate objective of this research, a thriving teacher force and better student outcomes.

Words: 489 (excluding title and references)

Authors

• Amna Ansari, PMIU-PESRP, Government of the Punjab, Pakistan. University of Cambridge, UK.

• Mahjabeen Raza, New York University

• Faryal Shahid, PMIU-PESRP, Government of the Punjab, Pakistan