Teacher training challenges in Pakistan

In student life, getting knocked on the lumps on a chilly morning because you did not form a letter correctly was a routine practice of the teachers at the school which I attended. The teacher entered the room, expecting the students to copy pages of notes from the chalkboard. The student who copied these without missing a single punctuation mark, spelling mistake and perfect handwriting got full marks.

In the past forty years not much has changed in the practices of teaching & learning in Pakistan. The tendency to teach by the method of Repetition - Conditioning - stimulus-response Pavlov Ian and operant conditioning & shaping behavior Skinner - the leading proponents of the Behaviorist styles of teaching continue.

Education of art (Art refers to a diverse range of human activities and artifacts )or science an effort to discover, understand, or to understand better, how the physical world work. Teaching generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction, also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies) along with lack of any serious study of theories and practices in education around the world and virtual absence of teacher professional development programs are some of the causes of the decline in teaching & learning in the schools in Pakistan.

Introduction the Montessori methods of education in the late 70s in Pakistan, and the world clamoring about Piaget Stage Theory, a slight shift in teaching and learning started occurring in the classrooms in the private schools.

It was thought that an environment where teaching and learning revolved around a combination of teacher directed use of Montessori equipment and structure along with teacher directed music and art activities for the students would free the students from rote learning methods and improve their conceptual understanding of subjects. This practice at the kindergarten and primary level extended to similar applications of teaching & learning at the middle and high school levels as well.

The philosophy of education therefore in the private schools came to stacking the teacher with a curriculum, schemes of studies, textbooks, teacher planners and a list of teaching strategies. The teachers proceed to plan out their teaching & learning objectives around “what do I want my students to know, do and understand of my teaching.