Post – Click – Fail: the rise and pause of a digital teacher transfer policy in Pakistan

• In Event: Digital interventions in Pakistan: what do Global South teachers need for a 21st-century experience?

Proposal

In this paper, I explore a state teacher allocation/distribution policy through an institutional ethnographic snapshot of the e-Transfer mechanism introduced in March 2020 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In my analysis, I document and investigate gaps between the realms of the ‘official’ (policy and intention) and the ‘frontline’ (lived experiences at the forefront of service delivery). This helps trace a systemic politics mediating teacher movement across public schools, and its regulation by the state.

The end goal is to develop a 3-pronged map of the landscape within which this digital technology was rolled out by looking at multiple stakeholder points and their interactive dynamics. I ask whether 3 important characteristics are met through this reform attempt, and what they reveal about the prospects and pitfalls of a universal technological intervention in education policy. These characteristics include whether and how the reform intervention was required (by the circumstances); desired (by intermediary and end users); and intended (by planners, policymakers, researchers, etc.). In contrast to the conventional discourse of comparing policy with practice, this approach brings up the everyday realities that mediate this journey, offering insight to how cultural political economy of the Global South can be designed into more meaningful and sustainable reform implementation.

Author

• Soufia Siddiqi, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)