Teaching who they are: How the personal learning experiences and cognitions of Pakistani teachers influence their reading instruction in the classroom

• In Event: From policy to practice: Trust, risk, inclusion, and teacher agency in education

Proposal

We now live in a world marked by division and find ourselves at a critical juncture where we need to re-examine education and the promises it had held out. One such promise was its potential to promote social equality--to break cycles of poverty, empower marginalized groups and provide equal opportunity to all. And yet, 77 percent of children in Pakistan remain unable to read with proficiency and comprehension at the late primary stage (World Bank, 2022). This doctoral study, motivated by this staggeringly high learning poverty in Pakistan, aims to understand why this is happening by taking an in-depth look, from the teachers' perspectives, at the reading instruction taking place inside the country's early-grade classrooms. Instruction being a crucial factor influencing student reading outcomes, it explores what teachers are doing in the classroom and why. It is thus a nod to the conference aim of analyzing how education can mitigate divisions and promote social cohesion insofar as it explores a key factor contributing to social disparity: the literacy divide. It stands firm by the belief that until we tackle the glaring disparities in learning outcomes and literacies, social cohesion--and peace--will remain distant goals.

In this study, I looked specifically at how teachers' own learning experiences and cognitions influenced their practice in the classroom. Socio-cultural theory, the perspective that individuals are products of their socio-cultural contexts, provided the theoretical framework. I used a qualitative research design because this “allows researchers to get at the inner experience of participants, to determine how meanings are formed through and in culture” (Corbin & Strauss, 2008, p.12). I also adopted Borg's (2003, 2006) conceptualization of teacher cognition which encompasses all aspects of teachers' mental lives, including their beliefs, practical knowledge and attitudes.

I collected data for this multiple case study from eight primary-level teachers at three government schools and two low-cost private schools in the Punjab province through five rounds of semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and journal entries. This was supplemented by data collected through a focus group session with a secondary sample of eleven teachers.

Adopting Borg's (2006) teacher cognition framework, I traced, using thematic analysis, how teachers' personal and professional learning experiences as well as their cognitions (also informed by these learning experiences) influenced their instructional practice. I found that teachers' prior learning experiences influenced their personal practical knowledge (Golombek, 2012) in two specific ways. First, their own English learning experiences affected their proficiency in the language, a core component of a language teacher's personal practical knowledge, which shaped, in turn, how they used language in the classroom. Specifically, teachers were using English for the regulative aspects (requiring low-order proficiency in English) of teaching, and Urdu for the instructional aspects (requiring higher-order proficiency). Second, the teachers were drawing only selectively on their apprenticeship of observation (Lortie, 1975) for both their language instruction methods as well as teaching models. For the former, they created 'hybrid patchwork' (Olsen, 2008) practices instead, comprising elements drawn from their apprenticeships as well as other competing models and enacted under the influence of contextual variables. In the case of teaching models, the influence of both their apprenticeship of observation as well as the anti-apprenticeship of observation (Moodie, 2016) was apparent as they selectively adopted and rejected the practices of their own teachers. By being selective in this way, these teachers were not simply passive products of their past experiences. Rather, they enacted their personal practical knowledge by actively choosing and negotiating between competing models and influences, and in so doing, disrupted the apprenticeship of observation.

In tracing the influence of teachers' cognitions on their classroom practice, I found this influence to be non-linear and bi-directional and taking form on a case-by-case basis under the mediating influence of contextual factors. The teachers revealed cognitions about learning and teaching more broadly, and about language learning and reading specifically. Examples include the belief that children learn through repeated exposure to material; instrumentalist and pragmatist beliefs about mother tongue-based instruction and the relative value of learning different languages in the Pakistani context, where language was perceived as currency; belief in the early introduction of English language learning as children were 'blank slates'; and mixed understandings of what reading was, ranging from reading as correct decoding to encompassing both decoding and comprehension. Teachers also expressed beliefs about the role of student motivation in reading, the development of oral language and the importance of reading. For these and other cognitions, I found either a direct alignment with classroom practice, divergence between cognition and practice, or no apparent relationship. In cases of divergence, contextual factors played a mediating role. I also found that it was the core beliefs (formed earlier through experience and more resistant to change) that tended to align more closely with practice, and the peripheral beliefs which were more susceptible to the mediating influence of contextual factors.

In exploring these relationships between the teachers' prior learning experiences, their cognitions, their context and their classroom practices, I show the complexity of teachers' work. I show how their classroom decisions were the product of multiple concurrent and, at times, conflicting, influences, and that teachers tried to take as much active control of these as they were able. I argue that we need to move away from a 'blame the teacher' mindset and instead, strive to understand who they are, what life experiences, beliefs, values and perspectives they bring to their classrooms, so we can understand why they teach the way they do (Hargreaves, 1991; Niyozov, 2008). This understanding is a crucial first step in designing curricula and policies which are attuned to teachers and the contexts within which they work, because only then are they likely to be sustainable and effective, and allow us to imagine a world where every child can read.

Author

• Izza Tahir, OISE, University of Toronto