Teacher Education and Sustainable Change: where lies the problem?

Abstract

Education is considered as a powerful means to bring major change, emancipation, and development at both individual and regional levels. Though education policies and curriculum documents since 1947 are plenty in Pakistan, yet it falls short of achieving these objectives (Siddiqui, 2021). We have significant
literature available on change at societal level brought through education in general and teacher education in particular. The central question, however, is that why teacher education programmes in Pakistan have not been able to bring about a sustainable educational change. This paper aims to respond to this important question and suggest some doable ways to make teacher education programmes more effective to lead to sustainable change. The paper identifies reasons behind unsustainability of professional development of teachers which are lack of understanding of educational reforms, deficient re entry preparation on teacher education programme, insufficient support from colleagues and head teachers, absence of follow up mechanism to track teachers’ performance and their professional development (both content and pedagogical knowledge) of the trainees. This paper focuses on sustainable development from the perspective of teacher education in Pakistan and suggests a mechanism to sustain the educational change initiated by a teacher education programme.