Introduction
This is a unique book in a sense that it offers a review of teacher development and teacher education in developing countries through detailed insight into âbeco mingâ and âbei ngâ a teacher. These insights emerged from an analysis of narratives generated by in-service teachers who were course participants of the M.Ed. progra m at the Aga Khan University Institute for Educational Development (AKU-IED), in Karachi, Pakistan, whose aim is to improve the quality of education through teacher education in the developing world contexts. They were all experienced teachers, both male and female, mainly from diverse contexts within Pakistan and other developing countries such as Bangladesh, Central Asia, East Africa, Syria and Afghanistan. A total of 150 narratives were analyzed, broken down as follows:
- Pakistan: 110
- East Africa: 22
- Central Asia: 11
- Afgha nistan: 3
- Bang ladesh: 2
- Sy ria: 2
There are 85 narratives from urban contexts and 65 from rural contexts. There are 74 narratives by men and 76 by women.
The Developing World Context
Here it is important to briefly describe the developing world context. First, I will clarify how the term âdeveloping world contextâ is used in this book. Then I will briefly present short profiles of the regions of the developing world context in which the teachersâ narratives are situated. The developing world includes countries and regions which are underdeveloped; that is, they have less developed industrial bases, low Human Development Index (HDI) low life expectancy, no or little access to healthcare, a lot of political problems, corruption, inflation, illiteracy and poor quality of education in general and teacher education in particular, as compared to other countries which in this book are called the developed countries. The developing countries are in the global south where the social, cultural and political context of teachersâ lives as well as the education system is less developed than in countries of the global north where the bulk of the literature is concentrated.
Most of the narratives generated for this book are from Pakistan. Pakistan has a variety of landscapes ranging from plains to deserts, forests, hills and plateaus which cover the coastal areas of Arabian Sea in the south of the country to the mountainous regions of the Karakoram range in the north. Two of its provinces, namely Sindh and Punjab, lie on the northwestern corner of the Indian plate, while the other two provinces, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are located on the Eurasian plate. Gilgit Baltistan and Azad Kashmir are on the edge of the Indian plate. Pakistan is bordered by India on the east, Afghanistan on the west, Iran on the southwest, and China in the northeast. Pakistan is the 36th largest country by area, encompassing 760,096 square kilometers. Pakistan is one of the most populous developing countries with approximately 200 million inhabitants, and some 1.5 million teachers. Since its inception in 1947, Pakistan has been struggling to improve the quality of education. Unfortunately, the quality of education in public sector schools, colleges and universities has been poor because of the low level of teacher competencies, lack of classroom-based support for teachers, poor quality of textbooks and learning materials, lack of systems to assess student learning outcomes, uneven supervision, insufficient resources for critical teaching and learning materials, and weak sector governance and management (World Bank, âThird Punjab Educationâ, 2006). Like in many developing countries, the quality of education is not very encouraging. Memon (2007) states: âLow enrolment rates at the primary level, wide disparities between regions and gender, lack of trained teachers, deficiency of proper teaching materials and poor physical infrastructure of schools indicate the poor performance of this sectorâ (p. 47). Teacher education reforms have been in place but still the quality of teacher education, especially in public sector, is very poor. According to a research study by Memon (2007), the primary reason for the low level of education is the low level of qualifications of teachers, such as those who come into teaching after 10 years of schooling and are not trained to be teachers. Hence, students of teachers who have poor qualifications and no formal training cannot achieve much in schools. Another issue is the quality of teacher education programs, which do not have trained teacher educators and there is very little emphasis on teaching practice and very little support or monitoring for teachers. There is also an issue of teacher appointment in schools, in that they are mostly recruited through political influence (Memon, 2007). Recently, some private teacher education institutes have been established, which have well-qualified faculty and renewed curriculum. Such private institutions are very few and therefore cannot cater to the needs of the country, which has large number of untrained teachers. Pakistan does not have enough teachers and schools to meet the demand and mandate to reach universal access. Although it is a signatory to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs UN, 2017), the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with its attendant declaration and framework of Education for All (EFA) goals (UN, 2015) to provide free, compulsory basic education to all children, it has not been able to meet the goals well. It has taken many initiatives that acknowledge the centrality of teachers through external funding but still cannot meet the challenge of improving the quality of education and teacher education.
Other narratives that were generated are from East Africa. The in-service teachers whose narratives are included in the book were mostly from Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. East Africa is the easterly region of African continent. Owing to the colonial territories of the British East Africa Protectorate and German East Africa, the term âEast Africaâ is often used to specifically refer to three countries, namely Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. East Africa is known for its concentration of wild animals called the âBig Sixâ, which are elephant, buffalo, lion, black rhinoceros and mountain gorillas. East Africa is also known for its stunning scenic panorama. Due to global plate tectonic forces, the East African Rift was created. It includes the spectacular Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenyaâthe two tallest peaksâand also Victoria Lake, the worldâs second largest freshwater lake, and Lake Tanganyika, the worldâs deepest lake. It is located along the equator on the east coast of Africa. Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia are on the north side, Uganda to the west, and Tanzania to the south. Tanzania has several lakes, national parks and mountain ranges. Besides Mount Kilimanjaro, which is the highest peak in Africa, northeast Tanzania has other mountains such as Mount Meru, an active volcano, and the Usambara and Pare mountain ranges and lakes. The center of Tanzania has a large plateau, which is part of the East African Plateau. The southern half of this plateau is grassland within the Eastern Miombo woodlands ecoregion, the majority of which is covered by the huge Selous National Park. Towards the plateau is arable land and comprises the national capital, Dodoma. The population of Tanzania is 55.604 million. Uganda is located on the eastern side of Africa, west of Kenya, south of South Sudan. It is at the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and north of Rwanda and Tanzania. It is known as the region of Great Lakes, which includes Lake Edward and Lake Victoria. It is a country that is mostly plateau with a rim of mountains. The total population of Uganda as reported in 2016 is 41.5 million. Kenya consists of 47 counties following the enactment of the new constitution. Nairobi is Kenyaâs capital. The country covers an area of around 582,000 square kilometers. It has a population of around 41 million people. English and Kiswahili are Kenyaâs official languages. Since gaining independence from Great Britain in 1963, Kenya has been a parliamentary democracy and a presidential republic with a multi-party system. The education system is the responsibility of two ministries, namely the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology. These Ministries are responsible for various educational sectors, which include Early Childhood Development and Pre-Primary Education, Primary Education, Special Needs Education, Secondary Education and Teacher Education and University Education. English is the language of all education and primary education is compulsory.
In the East African region teacher education has been evolving over the years. A formal teacher education preparation program was introduced in Kenya in the mid-nineteenth century by European Christian missionaries. This program was designed on the Western European and Canadian established teacher education models of the early nineteenth century. It was developed hurriedly in order to fulfill the requirements of rapid expansion of the âmissionâ and âbushâ schools. There was also a need to produce schoolteachers to relieve missionaries who were required to concentrate on missionary/evangelization work. Mainly, these formal teacher education programs focused on primary education, since that was the present need. Mostly the teachers and their trainers were of low academic qualifications but at that time they were the most well-educated individuals. Later, because of the increasing demand for Afr...