When improving learning becomes a priority, great progress is possible.
(Mehr Parwar, Rawalpindi)
Key players in education rarely
determine learning outcomes of the classroom teaching. Education research and
studies represent low interest and lack of focus towards students learning
outcomes as their priority. Various factors and consequences can be seen
regarding the issue; First and essential priority is the personal interest which
divert individuals attention and focus from classroom effectiveness and students
learning as many education actors have different interests beyond learning.
Observations of public schools explore that, the representatives of education
department try to preserve their positions and powers. Administrators may focus
more on keeping politicians and teachers happy than on promoting students
learning may simply try to protect their own positions. Similarly private
suppliers of education such as building contractors, textbooks providers and
others struggle to get more profit on delivery thus putting students’ interests
and needs far away from what actually facilitates in learning. These individual
interests and choices of a particular policy hardly determined by whether it
improves learning or not. The findings of World Development Report 2018 explore
that many countries are suffering from same issues such as; stakeholders lack of
attention in classroom learning outcomes, unavailing opportunity and various
barriers at administrative and ground level.
Poor management and governance of school leaders often undermine schooling
quality. It is an absolute fact that effective school leadership tend to raise
students learning indirectly by improving teaching quality and ensuring
effective use of resources. Unluckily most of the schools systems in Pakistan,
the role of the head teacher tilted towards more on administrative chores
despite of pedagogy. As Memon, 1998 states that the head teachers in Pakistan
tend to play more administrative roles rather than pedagogic leaders. They spend
an ample amount of time in maintaining discipline and keeping orders rather than
providing technical support to teachers in classroom. Mostly principals in
public schools have been observed controlling roles and paying morning rounds of
the classrooms just to make sure whether teachers are present in their classes
and whether students are sitting quietly without any noise and disturbance.
Their personal interest and preference is more likely to sit in their offices,
chatting and calculating salary packages, increments and bonus as they annually
to receive from their department. Consequently, they are not actively involved
in helping teachers solve problems, do not provide instructional advice, and do
not set goals that prioritize learning.
Teaching and learning practices demand classroom level regular interactions
among teachers and students to bring more productive and effective learning.
Regrettably in our education system teachers spend instruction time either
outside of the classroom or keeping themselves busy in filling registers just
wasting actual instruction time in working non-teaching activities. They have
their own priorities and concerns beyond classroom learning outcomes may
enjoying themselves in chatting on favorite food, dresses and waste actual
teaching time in unnecessary discussions. Teachers either leave the students
doing nothing or simply making them busy in coping lessons from textbooks to
notebooks for memorizing subjects. Students at younger grades have less power
where they can raise a question or showing any sentiment. Parents have no voice
on how little their children learning in classroom until they start looking for
work.
Many factors within and outside schools and classrooms help to shape teachers‘
sense of professional learning community. School and classroom conditions,
teachers’ professional communities, and student/family background conditions are
directly responsible for the learning of students.
Education department and political stakeholders must ensure delivery of service
in actual place without any interference and political influence. Here the
interest and attention of education department is crucial to monitor the service
and provision of resources to real beneficiaries. School principals and head
teachers must prioritize their interest and attention to shape school conditions
and classroom practices. They must provide support to bring innovations and
modifications in classroom instructions, improve physical conditions of
classrooms with the provision of resources and provide guidance to the teachers
in pedagogy.
Teachers must prove themselves to be interested in brining learning outcomes in
their classroom. They must act as active and energetic facilitators in class by
keeping students busy in activities that foster knowledge, skills and attitudes
in young minds. Strategies such as engaging students in productive discussions
in small groups, sharing ideas, reading and telling stories, doing mental math
problems, hand-on experiments, brainstorming topics, writing, drawing and
playing games etc. Along with these strategies teachers must implement various
assessment approaches by providing individual support and guidance with
corrections, feedback and encouragements as necessary step to strengthen the
foundations of classroom learning outcomes.
To bring this idea into action all stakeholders should focus their attention and
interest to gain actionable information in order to execute context-appropriate
responses at system level and school.