Education Faculty Perspectives on a Borrowed Teacher Education Initiative in Northern Pakistan: A Call for Engaging the Discourses of Policy Borrowing and Decolonization

Indiana University Press. 601 North Morton Street, Bloomington, IN 47404. Tel: 800-842-6796; Tel: 812-855-8817; Fax: 812-855-7931; e-mail: iuporder@indiana.edu; Web site: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/jems/

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28

Decolonization; Educational Change; Higher Education; Foreign Countries; College Faculty; Teacher Education Programs; Teacher Attitudes; Technology Transfer; Preservice Teacher Education; Colonialism; Developing Nations; Developed Nations; Cultural Context; Financial Support; International Relations; Educational Development; International Organizations; Best Practices

2641-0044
2641-0052

This qualitative case study examines the Education Faculty Perspectives (EFPs) of the Karakoram Public International University in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, on teachers' experiences of a recently introduced education reform (an Honor's Bachelor of Education program [B. Ed Hons] mandated by Pakistan's Higher Education Commission (HEC) in 2010. The B. Ed Hons has replaced the existing pre-service programs nationwide. Our analysis identified several paradoxical themes about borrowing of the B. Ed Hons: at the "talk"/rhetoric level, the program was welcomed as a transformative shift in teacher education; at the "walk"/implementation level, its practicality and sustainability became complicated; at the decolonisation level, the discourses on the colonial nature of knowledge and North-South dependency were muted. Implications for moving from borrowing external "best practices" to producing local solutions are highlighted. The analysis suggests the contextual realities and challenges should be addressed, individual and structural capacities developed, and an incremental, critical-constructive approach to both external and local ideas be pursued, and decolonization discourse included.

As Provided

2024

EJ1424837