Distance Teacher Educationtion in Pakistan

The Islamic republic of Pakistan emerged as an independent Muslim sovereign state on August 14, 1947. It comprises of four provinces: Punjab, Sindh, North West Frontier province (NWFP), and Balushistan, as well as Federal Territory, Federally Administered Tribal areas (FATA) and Northern Areas (FANA). The 1998 census put the population of Pakistan at 130-580 million. The rural population of the country was 67.5% (Government of Pakistan, 1998b, p. 3).

Statistics Division (Government of Pakistan, 1998b, p. 12) stipulated that according to the 1998 census, the literacy rate in Pakistan was 56.5% for male and 32.6% for female (overall 45%), and 65% of the population lived in urban areas. Literacy in Punjab was highest, at 47.4%, closely followed by Sindh with a literacy rate of 46.7%, and NWFP and Baluchistan had literacy rates of 37.3% and 26.6%, respectively. The literacy rate of Islamabad was 60%, which was much higher than the provinces. While the Punjab province had the highest urban male literacy rate, 73.4%, the female literacy rate in rural Sindh was 13.11%, and in rural Balushistan the female literacy touched the lowest mark of 8.8%.

Education is universally recognized to be the prime key to moral, cultural, political, and socioeconomic development of a nation. The emerging needs of Pakistan society require a revolution in the field of teacher education. Teachers occupy a pivotal position in the education system.

Teacher education is the knowledge, ability, and skill relevant to a teacher's life. Teachers are prepared, professionalized, and developed in colleges, universities, and teacher training institutions.

Education is comprised of teaching and learning specific skills and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgment, and welldeveloped wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental human rights the imparting of culture from generation to generation.

Distance education provides opportunities for adults to change careers later in life, to enhance their skills and qualification while retaining their jobs, to bring up a young family while continuing with their education to keep up with ever changing technologies to improve their social positions and status, and so on. These realities make distance education an important contributor to individual and personal satisfaction and to social mobility in industrialized countries. Distance education may serve the same roles in developing countries. Moore and Kearsley (2005) note that distance education enables learners and teachers to interact with each other by means of computers, artificial satellites, telephones, radio, or television broadcasting or other technologies. Distance education includes all the possible methods of teaching and learning in effective way to achieve the desired goals.

Distance education changes the learning relationship from the common, centralized school model to a more decentralized, flexible model. It also reverses social dynamics by bringing school to students, rather than students to school.

The Education Policy (1998-2010) of Pakistan envisaged for the specific role of Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU). It was planned “to start a three-month intensive orientation programme for providing basic skills of teaching through nonformal education under the umbrella of Allama Iqbal Open University which structure to provide necessary training to a number of nonformal education teachers every year” (Government of Pakistan, 1998a, p. 67).

There are different levels of teacher training in Pakistan. The details are presented in Table 1.

In Pakistan, AIOU is the pioneer in developing distance education programs. It was established in June 1974 under an act of parliament. This was the second Open University in the world and first in Asia. AIOU offers teacher training programs form primary teacher certification to PhD programs to males and females living in urban or rural areas.

The AIOU is one of the largest teacherproducing organizations in Pakistan. AIOU is a distance education institution that offers multidisciplinary education from basic to doctoral level. The Education Policy 1998-2010 declared some objectives of teacher education, including:

1. To create a matching relationship between demand and supply of teachers.

2. To upgrade the quality of preservice teacher training programs by institutionalizing parallel programs of longer duration at postsecondary and postdegree levels (Shah, 1997).

The Faculty of Education has to achieve the following objectives:

• Introducing innovations in teacher education through the distance teaching system of the country.

• Upgrading teacher education curricula in light of the latest research in the field.

• Designing and launching teacher training programs at different levels.

• Preparing study materials and courses for teacher education.

• Conducting research related to the field of pedagogy and child psychology.

AIOU offers programs from matriculation to PhD level in diverse disciplines. The university has established 1,200 study centers across the country where students are provided necessary guidance by their tutors.

The courses of teacher training offered by AIOU are recognized nationally as well as internationally. Following are the salient features of the AIOU distance teacher training course:

• Through introducing teachers training courses, the untrained teachers and other related people, till now deprived of all facilities, can be trained in their respective fields.

• Traditional syllabus of teachers' training is being replaced by such modern courses only because they have conformity with the needs of the present era.

• The majority of women teachers are getting training for the first time through open and distance leaning systems of AIOU.

• Teachers training courses are entirely field based (AIOU, 2009).

The programs of teacher education at AIOU provide an opportunity for teachers, either full-time or part-time, to develop and polish their content knowledge and teaching skill. AIOU plays a central role in teaching leading adult educators. It is producing teachers with professional vision and updates their knowledge about new developments and trends in the field of teacher education. It helps them stay abreast of latest curricula teaching techniques, strategies, and methodologies. It provides knowledge about how to effectively use instructional technology in the classroom. Table 2 presents the teacher education programs of AIOU.

Distance learning offer a multiple benefits for providing education at one's doorstep, including convenience, effectiveness, flexibility, multisensory materials, and equity.

Distance learning can provide convenient locations for both students and instructors. Many of the technologies, such as the Internet, videotape, and telephone, are easily accessed at home.

Not only is distance learning convenient, it is also effective. Several research studies have found that distance learning is equally or more effective than traditional instruction when the method and technologies used are appropriate to the instructional tasks, when there is student-to-student interaction, and when there is timely teacher-to-student feedback

Many forms of distance learning provide students the option to participate whenever they wish, on an individualized basis. For example, some students may want to review a videotape in the middle of the night or read their e-mail during early morning hours.

One of the benefits of distance learning is that a wide variety of materials can meet each individual learning preference—at least part of the time. For example, some students learn from visual stimuli, such as video, and others learn best by listening or interacting with a computer program. If distance learning courses are well designed, they will likely offer learners a wide range of choices, thereby providing the optimal combinations of interaction and media.

Educational inequity is a major issue in the world. Rural schools often have less contact with educational trends, fewer qualified teachers, and more need for technology. Distance learning offers great potential for alleviating these issues.

Revolutionary innovations in the field of information and communication technology are making the system of distance teacher education in Pakistan even more effective. The university develops specialized textbook and reading material to enable the students to study on the basis of self-learning. To help them study at home, however, the university provides support of radio and television programs. The university's Institute of Educational Technology produces high-quality educational audio- and video-cassettes, which enable students to study at home more effectively. AIOU is putting its educational media material on Pakistan Television-2 (PTV-2), transmitting through satellite to more than 45 countries. Moreover, various regions of AIOU have already been linked for online education and online classes through teleconferencing have been started (AIOU, 2008).

In Pakistan, as in Asia, there is dearth of trained teachers. In Pakistan, federal as well as provincial governments take responsibility for the initial preparation, professional development, and appointment of teachers in their respective domain. There is a good number of educational institutions. Hence, there is a vast scope of job opportunities in teaching. Tables 3 and 4 show the number of institutions and teaching staff.

To address the need of trained teachers in Pakistan, in 2005-06, the AIOU leadership played a motivational role to reinvigorate a 4-year graduate level program. Allama Iqbal Open University has worked strenuously since May 2005 to develop a 4-year bachelor degree program having 2 years of common courses and the remaining 2 years of courses in the respective BS specialization in the faculty of science (Note: In Pakistan the bachelor degree program's duration has remained 2 years).The mode of instruction of the program was decided to be a blend of face to face and distance learning. The program aims to bring the education system of AIOU at par with the internationally accepted standards prevailing in developing countries. The various categories of courses outlined in each of the subjects comprising eight semesters are basic science courses, compulsory courses, specialization courses, and job orientation and responsibility skill courses. The faculty has included language, hands on experience in laboratory work, presentation and communication skills, project management, competence, responsibility through Islamic studies, sociology/economics, research methodology, and so on, to enhance job orientation and responsibility skills among the graduating students from AIOU.

AIOU offers the following specializations in the field of education:

• Early childhood education;

• Elementary education;

• Secondary education;

• Science education;

• Special education;

• Physical education;

• Distance and nonformal education;

• Educational planning and management; and

• Vocational and technical education.

Good quality education depends on the availability and effective use of: teaching methodologies designed to encourage independent thinking; capable, motivated, well-trained teachers; appropriate, well-designed curricula; effective learning materials including, but not limited to, textbooks; a suitable, well-maintained learning environment; and a valid and reliable examination system.

The distance education system is a multimedia system. It comprises the following components:

1. Printed course books or prescribed books;

2. Tutorials;

3. Use of multimedia;

4. Assignments (term paper);

5. Workshops/practicals;

6. Internship where required; and

7. Final examination.

The students who enroll with the AIOU are provided with course books specially prepared by the university on self-instructional principles. However, at the postgraduate level, reprints of foreign books are also provided to the students to accompany a study guide. The study guide is meant to help the students to go through the reading materials according to learning sequence and course outlines.

Thus, these books comprise all the material that a student needs to cover within the semester. Moreover, there one can find the complete elaboration of each and every thing that is desired as far as subject is concerned.

Tutor, tutorial, and the study center are a triangle of face-to-face contact and two-way communication. Tutorial, according to Sharma and Chandra (2003, p. 4) is a subpart of the class in which a teacher tries to solve the problems of the small groups of pupils. The tutor of distance education can do much to diagnose and help the learner to change the behavior of the learner. AIOU has a strong system of tutorials. A tutor is supposed to be available at the study centre for students to seek help on their course.

Moreover, in order to guide the students during the semester, part-time tutors are appointed throughout the country out of the roster of qualified experts in each field available within the concerned region. Thus, a group of 30 students is assigned to a teacher/expert (tutor) who in weekly meetings remains in the designated study centre for 1 to 2 hours for face-to-face guidance. Otherwise, a student may seek continuous guidance either through correspondence or by personal visits for face-to-face group coaching during the tutorials. The tutorials are arranged at a study centre established in institutions of formal education or in the regional offices.

A variety of media can be used to further promote the learning of students through distance education. As Rashid (1998) noted,

Assignments, Sharma and Chandra (2003) note, are tasks done by pupils at home. Through home assignments the acquired knowledge is made permanent. However, in order to ensure that the students study the reading materials, they are required to write two or four assignments (term papers) for each course during a semester. These assignments are evaluated by the tutors and form a part of student's performance record.

For Rashid (1998) this exercise of evaluation of assignments and sending this back with tutor comments acts as a very important component of distance education system. It helps the student reflect on his work and evaluate record of his or her strengths and weaknesses. If the tutor does not write appropriate and encouraging comments, it may lead the students quit their studies.

Practical training for some courses is arranged at the study centers to develop necessary skills. Students in certain subjects are required to attend workshops at the end of the course and thus students have an opportunity not only to interact with their peer groups but also experts. The students are also required to make presentations during the workshops.

Worships provide a forum to distance education students as discussion groups designed to stimulate the problems and circumstances of the subject being discussed under the supervision of a resource person. The coordinators explain the purpose of workshops. At the end of each semester there is a compulsory workshop for each course.

Students who pass the assignments and workshops are eligible to sit in the final examination. The overall performance of a student in a course is based on the combination of the assignments, workshop, and final examination.

Students are evaluated through both formative (assignments) and summative (final examination) evaluation. The weighting for course assignments and final examinations is 30:70 respectively, and the minimum required marks to pass the assignments and final examination are 40% (AIOU, 2004, pp. 1-10). In the distance learning system student and tutor are separated by time and space. The interaction between student and tutor is important for effective time learning. There are many kinds of technologies through which the distance learners interact with each other and with their tutors. They include radio, television, computer, teleconferencing, video disc, e-mail, and audio- and video-cassettes. All these technologies are used by distance institutions throughout the world. In teacher training, all type of available media are used.

It is now understood that the quality of the public sector teachers is not up to the mark, despite serious efforts of the government in addition to many foreign-aided projects intended for improving the teacher education sector. In this regard the current National Education Policy 2009 (Government of Pakistan, 2009) mentions the commitment of the Government of Pakistan to improve the quality of school teachers through changes in teacher training. It says:

Distance education is valued because of effective instructional material and its mode of delivery. AIOU is the topmost teacher training organization in Pakistan and has been working very efficiently. The components of delivery at AIOU are well designed and provide ample chances of interaction in between learner and tutor. In order to keep pace with other distance education organizations and systems, AIOU needs to bring its system to at par with them by using modern technologies.