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In Search Of Relevance And Sustainability Of Educational Change : An International Conference At Aga Khan University Institute For Educational Development, Aga Khan University, Institute For Educational Development

Books

No abstract provided.

Teachers’ Accounts Of Their Perceptions And Practices Of Providing Written Feedback To Nursing Students On Their Assignments, Sajid Iqbal, Raisa Gul, Arusa Lakhani, Nusrat Fatima Rizvi

School of Nursing & Midwifery

Written feedback can facilitates students’ learning in several ways. However, the teachers’ practice of written feedback may be affected by various factors. This study aimed to explore the nurse teachers’ accounts of their perceptions and practices of providing written feedback.

A descriptive exploratory design was employed in the study. A purposive sample of 12 teachers from nursing institutions in Karachi, Pakistan, participated in the study. Using a semi-structured guide, in-depth interviews were conducted with the participants, between January-September, 2013. The interviews were tape recorded and transcribed verbatim and were manually content analyzed.

The analysis of findings led to three sections: …

A Take On Social Wellbeing Attributes By First Year Medical Students, Rehana Rehman, Maria Habib, Syeda Sadia Fatima

Department of Biological & Biomedical Sciences

Objective: To compare awareness about concept of social wellness in male and female first year medical students.

Methods: It was a cross sectional, questionnaire based study conducted from February till December 2010. Responses on aspects of social wellness were rated never, sometimes, mostly and always from lowest to highest (1-4); evaluated as frequency, proportion and percentages by PASW (Predictive analysis software) version 18. Chisquare test was applied for comparison of social wellness in both genders; results to be declared significant with pvalue <0.05.

Results: Overall score for social well being of females (20.24±4.50) was higher than male medical students (18.66±4.76; p …

Teachers Of English In Pakistan : Profile And Recommendations, Ayesha Bashiruddin, Rabail Qayyum

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

This paper answers a pertinent question: Who are the teachers of English in Pakistan? By answering this question, the current profile of teachers of English is highlighted. We were inclined to do this study because there was no data available in Pakistan. Data for this paper was generated through a survey questionnaire, which was filled out by 100 teachers of English over three years. Out of these 100 teachers, 53 teachers were from public sector schools, 29 teachers from communitybased English‐medium schools, and 18 teachers from private Englishmedium schools. These teachers belonged to various regions of Pakistan, which included Sindh, …

Navigating With Trust: A Proposal For Transforming Public Sector Schools Towards Learning Organizations In Pakistan, Zubeda Bana

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

While working with teachers, teacher educators, educational leaders and principals of schools and teacher education colleges throughout the country, I am informed that the most significant factor for transforming public sector schools is winning the trust of teachers. Teachers, no matter how they are recruited and what their current competencies are, have become part of the work-force in public sector schools. It is observed that the school administrators have exhausted their trust and treat all kinds of teachers including good and committed teachers, with the same administrative approach which places them in odd situations, wherein they start losing their own …

Graduate Students’ Perceptions Of Written Feedback At A Private University In Pakistan, Lubna Ghazal, Raisa B. Gul, Mehnaz Hanzala, Tansy Jessop, Ambreen Tharani

School of Nursing & Midwifery

Excellence in academic performance at the graduate level requires good command of writing skills. Teachers’ written feedback can help students to develop their writing skills. However, several personal and contextual factors may influence feedback processes and its utilization by students. Therefore, understanding these factors is essential to improve the practice of written feedback. This study aimed to appraise the quality of written feedback in the graduate programmes and to ascertain students’ perceptions about it at a private university in Pakistan. A purposive sample of 15 participants comprised the study. The data were collected through in-depth students’ interviews and the teachers’ …

Enhancing Educators’ Skills For Promoting Critical Thinking In Their Classroom Discourses: A Randomized Control Trial, Raisa Gul, Shehla Khan, Azra Ahmad, Shanaz Hussein Cassum, Tanveer Saeed, Yasmin Parpio, Joanne Profetto- Mcgrath, Donald Schopflocher

School of Nursing & Midwifery

The literature reveals that educators find it challenging to foster critical thinking (CT) in their students if they have not learned how to use CT in their educational system or training. This paper reports findings from a national research project that was undertaken to enhance the educators’ ability to promote CT in their teaching practices. Using a randomized control trial design with a pre- and post-test, 91 educators from 14 of the 17 schools of nursing in Pakistan consented to enroll in the study and 72 completed the study. The intervention included 40 hours of learning experience during two workshops …

Outliers In Educational Achievement Data: Their Potential For The Improvement Of Performance, Tooba Farooqui, Isba Mustafa, Thomas Christie

Examination Board

Statistical outliers (Barnett and Lewis, 1994) have customarily been identified as either potential threats to data integrity (Cook, 1977) or as potential distortions of estimates of central tendency (Strutz, 2010). In both circumstances outliers are treated as having nuisance value. On the other hand, Gladwell (2008) views outliers as success stories. The study adopts the latter approach to reach to classrooms and teachers which add value in student’s academic capabilities. Scores of 86207 students from 423 government schools in 2010 middle school (Grade VI to VIII) promotion examinations are analysed to explore the possibility of identifying gifted teachers.
The study …

The Continuing Evolution Of The Research Doctorate, Bianca L. Bernstein, Barbara Evans, Jeannette Fyffe, Nelofer Halai, Fred L. Hall, Mukobe Siggaard Jensen, Kazim Papeiva, Suzanne Ortega

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.

Student Behavior Management : School Leader’S Role In The Eyes Of The Teachers And Students, Shirin Nooruddin, Sharifullah Baig

Professional Development Centre, Gilgit

This study explored the perspectives and viewpoints of the teachers and students in relation to the influence of the head teacher and senior leadership team on students’ behavior management in the form of policies, procedures and support mechanisms in a secondary school in Karachi Pakistan. Two surveys were developed and employed, one for the entire teaching staff (N=43) and one for a sample of students (n=120). The majority of teachers (97%) and students (83%) reported that school leadership influences students’ behavior management through policies and procedures. A large number of the teachers are of the view that sharing of personal …

Beyond The Content And Pedagogy : A Step Forward Towards Value Based Teacher’S Professional Development, Sharifullah Baig

Professional Development Centre, Gilgit

This paper reviews the contemporary literature of human values and valuation processes, and proposes a re-conceptualized model of a teacher’s professional development. This paper suggests a thorough analysis of the teacher’s personality and devises alternative, well thought-out strategies and approaches to alter self-knowledge, values, valuation processes, and beliefs to imbed the desired impact on their teaching practices. This paper supports the use of deliberate attempts to alter the basic motivation level of teachers and to deliberately expose them to available knowledge to modify their values, attitudes, and actions in their respective professions, organizations, and formal associations. Hence, such professional development …

Weather And Climate Information Needs Of Small-Scale Farming And Fishing Communities In Western Kenya For Enhanced Adaptive Potential To Climate Change, Esther Onyango, Silas Ochieng, Alex Awiti

East Africa Institute

Hydro-climatic variability owing to climate change is a major driver of vulnerability among subsistence rural farmers in Kenya. Vulnerability is exacerbated by a lack of reliable weather and climate information necessary to support adaptation to more resilient farming practices. In the form that it is currently delivered, weather and climate information does not support the operational decisions that farmers and fishers make such as timing of land preparation, planting time, type of seed or likelihood of severe weather. This paper presents the results of an approach for eliciting perspectives from farmers and fishers on the weather and climate information products …

Students’ Attitude Towards Science In Lower Secondary Classes : Comparison Across Regions, Nahid Parween Anwar, Sadia Muzaffar Bhutta

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

Science education is an area of interest for long and has gained a lot of attention from science educators. Keeping this in view, the current study explored the attitude of grade VI-VIII students towards science in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. This research study was conducted as part of a 5-year project titled ‘USAID-LINKS to learning: Education Support to Pakistan’ (USAID-EDLINKS). A 5-point rating scale, Science Attitude Scale (SAS) was adapted from previous research. SAS has 32 items arranged under five constructs: learning science in school, self-concept in science, science outside of school, future participation in science and importance …

Education Policy And Social Justice: Exploring Possibilities Within Education Policy Context Of Pakistan, Sajid Ali

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

One of the major purposes of education policy is to ensure social justice in a society. The social justice needs to be thought of not only in conventional sense of ‘distributional’ justice, but also in the sense of ‘relational’ justice. Looking from this perspective the policies in Pakistan have historically focused only on distributional justice, albeit with dismal progress on this front. However, they have completely ignored the attainment of ‘relational’ justice as a policy objective. As a result power differentials not only exist but worsened through educational policies such as undermining of public schooling while encouraging privatization of education …

Spaces Of Nature: Producing Gilgit-Baltistan As The Eco-Body Of The Nation, Nosheen Ali

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

A while ago, when I was studying in Grade 8 at an English-medium school in Lahore, our class was divided up in four groups for a Geography project on Pakistan. The group of which I was a part had to make a sculptural map of Pakistan, demonstrating the diverse physical and social qualities of its landscape. And so we had set about carving our country with materials like styro-foam, cotton, cloth, and cardboard. In the final map that we made, the region of Gilgit-Baltistan - then the “Northern Areas” – had remained unlabeled and unpeopled, marked only with mountains made …

Creating A Link Between School And Home Literacy Practices: The Case Of Rural Primary Schools In Kisii Central District, Kisii County, Kenya, George Andima

Institute for Human Development

There is overwhelming evidence about the important role that parents play in enhancing their children’s reading development. Despite, this growing evidence, parental involvement in developing the reading skills of primary school-going children in Kenya has not been given appropriate attention. This paper presents findings of a study that sought to establish whether Standard 4 teachers of English language and school Heads involve parents in developing pupils’ reading skills. The study sought to answer the question on how parents were involved in the development of learners’ reading skills. The study is built on Bernhardt’s 1986 Constructivist Model of Second Language Reading …