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C.2 |
The Future ofIED and Education inAKU |
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The problems of achieving better quality in education are
complex and subtle. They pose both intellectual and pedagogical
challenges worthy of a university's competencies. Some of them
are cultural and diffuse in character. We have noted, for example,
how recent gains in understanding the consequences of women's
education, may have broad implications for Muslim countries.
Some are closely related to actual conditions and practice in
the schools, such as IED is currently addressing. The possible
forms of an AKU contribution to education in the developing
and Muslim worlds can thus be very diverse. Since IED is presently
funded only for a six and a quarter year period, the prospect
that education might not be a permanent subject for AKU has
been a logical possibility. But we find the foregoing arguments
compelling for the conclusion that AKU should have a
continuing mission in the educational needs and problems of
the developing and Muslim worlds. We have sought to
envisage in what form this mission might best be pursued a quarter
century from now. |
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Three possible futures in education have been
discussed by the Commission : |
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-a continued development and expansion of IED; |
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- the establishment of a School or Faculty of Education, offering
various degrees; |
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- an institute with a primary focus on research, linked or
perhaps at some point merged with the Institute of Human Development.
[proposed in Section VII c.4 below] |
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2.4 |
The Institute for Educational Development
is making a strong start in response to deeply felt needs in
Pakistan. Its performance will inevitably exercise a strong
influence on AKU's future in education. IED's initial strategy
of educational improvement through raising teachers' status
and competence is already being expanded to embrace other elements
of AKF's School Improvement Programmes. Pressures for further
expansion of IED's agenda rose immediately with the appointment
of the first director, and before its first classes began; curricular
revisions and enrichment, examination practices, etc., have
been proposed as further undertakings for it. In addition to
what IED undertakes itself, there are indications that its director
and staff will be increasingly called upon for consultation
on educational practices and policy. |
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Whatever extension of its functions IED undertakes, its initial
strategy involves the building of Professional Development Centres.
If this strategy is to lead to widespread effects, these centres
must multiply, inside Pakistan and in other developing countries,
either through AKU's own efforts or those of others whom it
may inspire to a ction. IED must, of course, be an exemplary
project to achieve these widening consequences. But we hope
and expect it will be so. |
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2.5 |
We thus conceive that IED may grow vigorously over the
coming decades in the basic pattern in which it has started
whether or not it adds curricular and examinations functions
to the teacher training functions that have been its initial
core. A large and promising future of this sort can be envisaged,
given the abundance of educational problems and the paucity
of appealing models and professional resources in the Muslim
and other developing countries. We do not think IED could successfully
grow in this way without strong research programmes to guide
it; the pursuit of such research would assure that in education,
as in its other fields of activity, AKU does not neglect research. |
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2.6 |
A growth of IED to a scale where it could be an important
influence on educational policy and practice not only in Pakistan
but more widely in Asia and Africa implies needs for substantial
resources. Adding to the numbers of Professional Development
Centres will bring one set of needs, and new functions will
require further resources. Some of these may come from interested
aid agencies as they have for IED's initial funding. Some may
come from contract or consulting income. Taking on responsibilities
for curriculum development or examination building (and for
the headaches inevitably associated therewith !)would only be
sensible if AKU were directly and adequately rewarded for doing
so. The successes of organisations like the Academy for Educational
Development and the Educational Testing Service in the United
States show that in rich countries there is an effective demand
for services such as a future IED might supply to Pakistan and
other developing countries. It remains to be tested whether
or not IED could flourish in this pattern, but we believe it
is possible. In any such development, some claims - perhaps
quite large ones -would be made on general AKU resources that
might be used for other purposes. Hence a vigorous development
of IED would compete with the growth of other components in
the future AKU . Its justification for competing would be strengthened
by what it does in instruction and research. |
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IED was established under educational doctrines that opposed
the establishment of a School or Faculty of Education in AKU.
The 1991 proposal to the BOT said : |
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"There are particular and notorious difficulties in associating
the tasks of teacher preparation and educational development
with a research university. The School or Department so created
is divided in its sympathy and policies. . Schools of Education
tend to be large, and even imperialist, growing rapidly and
uncomfortably lit a University which (almost by definition)
prefers quality to quantity. These considerations have particularforce
when the University in view [like AKU] is relatively young and
properly jealous of its growing reputation." |
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Hence the placing of teacher training in Professional Development
Centres away from the University proper in "real" schools. These
educational doctrines have been based on experience that has
been learnedly surveyed by Harry Judge, one of the architects
of IED. ["Schools of Education and Teacher Education", pp.37-55,
in Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, V.I. (1991).
] He showed an evolution in Britain, France and the U.S. toward
more university education for prospective teachers but with
continued separation of professional training from the universities
in Britain and France, while in the United States, where Schools
of Education have persisted in the universities they have been
much criticised and ill-regarded. |
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Should the doctrine against a School or Faculty of Education
in AKU be taken as a shortrun or permanent injunction ?Should
we envisage IED growing into a School of Education or perhaps
being incorporated into one at some time ? The issue, as the
Commission has seen it, turns on the roles of degree programmes
and research in AKU's future work in this field. The architects
of IED did want it linked to the University, which would offer
Master's degrees to some trainees, and certificates to others.
Proposals are already appearing for new degree programmes at
both Bachelor's and Master's levels. It is conceivable that
IED might by steady accretion grow to be more like a campus-based
School of Education rather than the scattered, school-based
set of training and improvement activities it set out to be.
Should this sort of evolution be resisted ? We find it difficult
to take a categorical position. The in-service education for
basically qualified professionals that IED is now offering fits
a pattern which we can foresee AKU following to advantage in
several fields. We should think it ought to be maintained, but
it is not clear that this work need be significantly affected
if IED evolved into a school or faculty. We can readily conceive
that there will be selected degree programmes that AKU could
execute well and that would be a good use of its distinctive
assets. But we find serious reasons to resist either inadvertent
or deliberate growth of AKU into a large-scale educator of teachers.
The status of teachers in developing countries will unfortunately
not be easy to raise significantly in the foreseeable future.
Remuneration will remain unattractive with the adverse effects
on the quality of aspirants for the teaching profession that
have been lamentably familiar in recent decades. If there
is to be a School of Education in AKU it should not have a large
student body, and should prohably avoid first degrees. |
