Education in Pakistan: Perspective, Failures and Prospects

Education plays an important role in preparing children to embrace diversity in the society with particular reference to accepting people with physical disabilities as equal contributors to the growth and development of the society and a textbook is an effective tool to achieve this objective (Kivirauma & Laitinen, 2014). The main purpose of this research is to study the representation of people with disabilities in the textbooks (text and illustrations) published by provincial and selected private publishers. This study uses content analysis method to analyze the content of the selected textbooks used at primary school level. Analysis of 58 textbooks (English, Urdu, Sindhi) indicates that people with disabilities are overlooked. Their representation in these textbooks is not only minimal but they are portrayed as being dependent and unproductive members of the society. This study highlights the importance of including texts about people with different disabilities and their achievements in school textbooks. The students, teachers, teacher educators and parents will understand better disability and how able-bodied and differently-able people share a lot together.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Content Analysis of Language Textbooks (English, Urdu, Sindhi) for Inclusivity

Gulab¹,

Khokhar²

2018

“…Not only teacher's concern and attitude, but also that of heads of institutes are a very important factor. In Pakistan, the number of private schools is much larger than that of the government schools and the private schools have better facilities and freedom of taking decisions on admission policies, but these institutes are the ones that are negative towards inclusive education (Saad, 2016). On one hand, they do not want to use their facilities for specialneed students and on the other their teachers are also not very positive.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing Inclusive Education Approaches among Stakeholders in Pakistan

Kazimi¹,

Kazmi²

2018

Inclusive Education is defined as a learning environment that promotes the full personal, academic and professional development of all learners irrespective of race class, sexual preference, learning styles and language (NCSNET, 1997). Inclusive Education is a system, an approach, and a way of providing support to special need persons in achieving their life goals with their abilities and potentials. For some it is an ideal state, so implementation of these practices varies at all levels. Development and progress of inclusive education depend on answering many questions: what is the perception people have about it? Why do we need inclusive education? Who needs it? Whose responsibility is this and what to do to achieve the goals of Inclusive Education? Answering these questions needs research. Pasha (2012); Dua and Dua (2017) emphasized the role of stakeholders in promoting Inclusive Education. This study investigated only a fraction of it related to the question of who are the stakeholders in the process of Inclusive Education. They are special-need persons, their parents, general students and their parents, teachers, policy makers and the whole education system. Whether teachers are properly trained to have the right attitude is the key factor in this process (Engage, 2010;UNICEF, 2003). This research has been designed to investigate perception about Inclusive Education and development of Inclusive Education approaches among teachers, parents and administrators of schools through action research. Research was descriptive in nature. Sample of forty-five was purposely selected from teachers, parents and administrators of schools. Data was collected in two stages: initial and final (Pre Test and Post Test) through a structured questionnaire validated through expert opinion to analyze the change in awareness level, skills, and motivation of the sample after conducting a ten-day workshop. The material was selected and workshop was conducted by the field related experts. The findings of this research show a positive and significant change in observation, understanding, identification skills and approach towards special needs, inclusive education and inclusive environment.

Determinants of Household Investment in Education in Pakistan

Sarwar¹,

Sial²,

Muhammad³

2019

Research is getting enormously important to compete with rival institutes for ranking, financial funding, students enrollment. However, there still exist numerous gaps in our understanding of creating a knowledge generating environment that will produce superior quality research. With the initiation of web 2.0 technology, a model of social networking sites has become increasingly famous. With ever increasing popularity, these social media have been used by researchers and academicians as well to enrich the learning outcome and academic performance. However, OSNS have been a debatable topic in academia with its impact on the academic performance of the students. In this study, the impact of OSNS is investigated on the research performance of students in Pakistan. The survey questionnaire technique is used to gather the data from a sample of 212 research students. And to testify the hypothesis, factor analysis and regression analysis technique are used. The results showed a contradiction in the perception and behavior of the research students. Perceived usefulness of OSNS, information quality and media sharing via OSNS have proved to have a positive impact on the researcher's performance whereas collaboration has a negative impact; perceived behavior and facilitation support have an insignificant impact on researcher's performance. It is suggested to the researcher and supervisor both to consider the implication of OSNS in research work for better research output.