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

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This panel examines the socio-cultural implementational challenges and opportunities experienced by educators and policymakers through a set of digital interventions affecting public school teacher policy in Pakistan. Our papers showcase different parts of a teacher’s career journey using cases embedded in 4 administrative units of the country. Through the thoughtful incorporation and restraint in the use of technology in the education of pre-service teachers in Sindh province, a teacher allocation mechanism in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a self-paced training model to launch a virtual teacher licensing platform in Islamabad Capital Territory, and a blended training and observational approach to teacher professional development in the Punjab, this panel discusses the promise and pitfalls of transitioning Pakistan’s public schoolteachers into a 21st century educational environment.

The panel is built on primarily qualitative approaches. Although numerical data features in our analyses, it is used to support the contextual framing of systems and processes within which these teacher-specific interventions are attempted and will continue to evolve. We recognise that ‘big data’ gives us a sense of a problem at scale. It also lends itself to a useful compartmentalisation that facilitates pilots, trials and evaluation of value addition. Its generation allows us to track trends, diversity and patterns. Digital technology can facilitate all of this. The two together offer an irresistible prospect for changing implementation science.

Yet questions about why multi-million dollar data and monitoring regimes across Pakistan have failed to move the needle on learning outcomes still yield very few credible answers. Such questions demand attention to a socio-cultural micropolitics of context within which reform is attempted. This aspect is typically associated with qualitative study, which sits at a tense intersection of depth and breadth. Everyday frictions and power dynamics of government spaces still don’t feature enough in the wider discourse around ‘what works’ for educational outcomes and implementation. They must, if we are ever to insulate large-scale reform against iterative failure – like we see in Pakistan. This can happen by drawing on questions, assumptions, interventions, contingencies and anticipated sets of possible outcomes that are as deeply rooted in context as possible. Theoretical attention must be paid – increasingly so in a digital age where borders, identities, narratives, policies have gained rapid fluidity - to the everyday: this ether through which the very ‘stuff’ of reform must pass - navigate, and constantly negotiate change – as it attempts to transform the universe and lives therein of people for whom reform is ‘designed’.
Three of our papers (Punjab; Islamabad; Sindh) incorporate a mixed methods approach to their analysis with an emphasis on the nuanced discussion that emerges from qualitative analysis. The paper from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa uses an institutional ethnographic lens to contrast policy with practice within the everyday politics of governance. All 4 components to our panel provide a rare implementational comparison to teacher-specific policy reform efforts in a resource-constrained developmental context – Pakistan - that is lesser known in the wider world of education.

Justification and importance
Pakistan has one of the youngest demographics in the world, with 1/3rd of the country at a foundational skills level (10 years or less). Half the country is a teenager or younger (51% is 19 years of age or less). In absolute terms, these numbers are truly large: 122.68 mn Pakistanis need to be in some kind of school/ vocational learning setting and more than half of this total is at the primary school age. Yet most Pakistani children/ youth who are lucky enough to be enrolled at school are not recipients of quality education, struggling with foundational skills even at their own grade levels.
Down at the provincial tier, these numbers become even more complex. Some provincial education systems, such as in the Punjab, can be as large as 50mn+ enrolments across a mixture of public and largely low-cost private schools. In other parts of the country, such as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, decades of conflict have significantly affected quality learning opportunity, even when there has been demonstrable political will. Sindh, Pakistan’s second-most populous province, struggles with decades of education policy naivete, which slows down student and teacher performance even when there is strongly demonstrated community will to educate children. In all 3 provinces, there is growing realisation that policy as usual is not working. With the kinds of population numbers facing policymakers, coupled with a strong demand from citizens (parents) for their children’s better education, there is a slow, but steady attempt to address Pakistan’s learning crisis at scale. Digital experiments are the preferred policy route for this. Crucially, for the first time in nearly 40 years, Pakistan is witnessing dedicated attempts to deliver education reform through improved teaching quality. Documenting and sharing these interventions at CIES 2025 allows us to debate and seek feedback on innovative attempts for teacher professional growth in a context where millions of children can directly benefit from the presence of well-prepared and well-facilitated teachers and classrooms.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

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

Individual Presentations

• Conceptualizations of Effective Teaching in Punjab Primary Schools - Jessica Albrent, Lahore University of Management Sciences

• To use, or not to use tech, that is the question. - Salma Alam

• Improving In-Service Teacher Learning: Technology Solving the Big Piece in the Puzzle? - Farah Nadeem; Gulab Khan, LUMS

• Post – Click – Fail: the rise and pause of a digital teacher transfer policy in Pakistan - Soufia Siddiqi, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)