Documentos de Académico
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Pergamon
0738-0593(95)00040-2
INTRODUCTION
In the 1990s improving the quality of basic education in the developing countries seems to be
at the forefront of the international education
agenda, as evidenced by several conferences
already held in various parts of the world. ~
It was the theme at the conference of the
Ministers of Education of the Commonwealth
held in Barbados in 1990 and continues to be a
focus of concern for many leading international
educationists.
What exactly constitutes a 'good quality' basic education remains an area of disagreement
because, as it has emerged in policy planning
and educational discourse and practice, the
concept is multidimensional, with a range of
definitions and interpretations based on how
the term is conceptualized by the different
stakeholders in policy planning and the educational process.
In the developing world, views of 'good
quality' basic education have ranged from
an instrumentalist conceptualization of education, which urges schools to raise the academic performance of students in their various
school subjects, to increasing the rate of school
enrollment in order to provide educational opportunity for every child, to providing children
with the skills necessary to meet their essential
learning needs for survival, security and growth
(Coombs et al., 1973).
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these constraining circumstances. For developing countries like Pakistan, such constraints
include the gross lack of educational resources
in many schools, the lack of equity in educational opportunities and a fatalistic disposition
towards life in the vast majority of the population, which makes them see whatever lives
they live as predestined and the will of Allah,
which cannot be changed. The teachers in the
I.E.D. programme are encouraged to channel
their critical thoughts to focus on both their
classroom teaching and the wider contexts
of teaching in which the constraining conditions occur. This is done in order to create
the awareness in them that teaching is not
a neutral act from which students emerge
unaffected and that teaching takes place in
broader social, economic, political and cultural
contexts that extend to, and have implications
for, their classrooms. For this purpose the first
three weeks of seminars at the I.E.D. include
reflective sessions during which the programme
participants reflect on their values and beliefs
about teaching (their teaching philosophies) to
find out if these are in consonance with their
teaching practices. If discrepanciesare found
to exist between beliefs about teaching and
practice, the participants are encouraged to
examine the sources of the discrepancies and
see how they can bring about change in more
desirable directions for themselves.
Critical reflection is also actively drawn upon
in the programme as a vehicle for embarking
upon alternative practices for the improvement
of education. The programme participants are
encouraged to visit different school systems in
Karachi for an extended period of time and
observe the school, paying particular attention
to the following areas: the overt curriculum
(content, teaching methodologies and assessment processes); the hidden curriculum and
the types of messages contained in it; the
relations among the commonplaces of education (the teachers, students, school subjects
and the general milieu in which the schools
operate); the administrative structure of the
schools and how these enhance or constrain
teaching; the community links that the school
has; and structures that erihance and inhibit
change. The intention guiding this exercise is
for the programme participants to reflect critically on their observations and think of viable
alternatives to those practices they find to be
in dissonance with their espoused philosophies
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