Leadership for promoting quality in science teaching and learning: Reflections from the Science Association of Pakistan.
Pakistan, like other developing countries in the world is in continuous struggle to improve and uplift the quality of education and particularly science education. Many reforms and innovations to improve the quality of science teaching and learning have been introduced that have proven to be unsuccessful. One essential reason for it being unsuccessful is the quality of teaching and teachers reluctance to accept and implement such reforms. The reluctance of teachers to accept such reforms may be due to the non supportive and non sharing culture of our schools, the absence of a culture that could support and nurture professional development activities.
In addition to this the science teachers and teacher educators working in such environments have no platforms and avenues to share their experiences, learning and seek support from like minded colleagues. In order, to sustain the acquired practices of these teachers it is essential to have opportunities of sharing and learning from others who might be also experiencing or had experienced and addressed such situations in their practices. The need of a professional development platform for continuous professional development and learning was felt. A platform where all involved in this profession could regularly meet, share, discuss, resolve issues and learn from each other. Therefore graduates, along with faculty member of AKU-IED and the support of AKU-IED established the Science Association of Pakistan (SAP) in July -1998. The aim of the association is to provide a professional development forum to science teachers and educators for the improvement of the quality of science education in Pakistan. The forum was established to provide an avenue for sharing and learning from each other. Prior to its establishment there existed no such professional development association for science teachers of Pakistan.
Being the first in the field SAP continued to provide leadership for promoting science teaching and learning in Pakistan through its various activities. This paper explores the leadership of the platform in promoting science education in Pakistan through its various activities. The data for this paper is drawn from our observation notes and discussion, participants' comments, feedbacks, our reflections, meeting notes and reports.
One of the important activities of SAP are its workshops, the workshops aim to provide opportunities of exchanging ideas and learning from each other. It also provides opportunities of learning through hands on activities, interactions and exchange of ideas on active, innovative and contextually relevant teaching methods and approaches. Moreover, discussions during and after sessions, facilitates and motivates the teachers to implement and reflect on such practices. The findings indicated that these experiences developed both content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge of teachers. However, one main issue that we encountered is the unavailability of the culture to nurture and support the further development of the science teachers, developed through our activities. Hence, the promotion of science teaching and learning, in some cases, in a non supporting culture, is yet a challenging task that needs to be addressed to improve the quality of science teaching and learning at the grass root level.
Its annual events and activities such as symposium and seminars on science education issues, professional dialogues for setting standards for science teachers and Science Olympiad are yet another step towards leadership in improvement of the quality of science teaching and learning through dessimination and sharing of experiences.
The association has also provided leadership in science curriculum development for a private examination board in Pakistan and also provided support to different systems such as government, private and community based in their teacher, curriculum and programme development initiatives.
As a Leading professional development association, SAP also serves as role model for other science associations in Pakistan.
President of Science Association for Government school teachers stated that "We have never thought of converting our classrooms into learning rooms by using low cost material, our association just focuses on financial constraints and other administrative problems of science teachers now I feel that we should also include professional development activities beside that". SAP Symposium 2001
Being one of the association that provides quality science education in the country it has the opportunity to facilitate the promotion of science teaching and learning through teacher development, curriculum development, text book writing, material development, and dissemination activities. However, in a developing context like Pakistan with a low literacy rate and inadequate educational standards it has not been easy to take a lead in the promotion of science education in the country, where it is extremely difficult to acquire human resources with the ability to facilitate the development of science teaching and learning.
The paper will further discuss these experiences and the opportunities and challenges for provision of leadership by a professional association in a developing context.