ARE THE TEACHERS ON TRACK?AN EVALUATION OF SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS’ SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE COMPETENCY

Abstract

The study was aimed to evaluate secondary school teachers’ subject knowledge competency. The main focus of this study was to develop teacher evaluation mechanism for secondary schools’ teachers. Objectives of the study were (a) to review the importance of standard (rubrics) to appraise the teachers’ performance level in Pakistan; (b) to assess the secondary school teachers’ subject knowledge competency based on national professional standard in Pakistan and (c) to propose recommendations for further improvement of the existing standards of teachers’ performance. The population of the study consisted on all the secondary school teachers of government sector including boys and girls situated at urban and rural areas of the province of Punjab. To conduct the observational survey of this research, a sample of 453 participants (teachers) from six districts of Punjab was selected to observe the teachers in field directly. An observational checklist was developed on the basis of prescribed levels of teacher accreditation by Policy and Planning wing of Ministry of Education, Pakistan. The collected data wereanalysed with the help of software SPSS version 16 by using statistical formulas of Chi-Square, simple mean and percentage. The analysis indicates that majority of the teachers are generally unaware of national curriculum framework. This analysis concluded that no teacher was found at the competent level (level 4) of understanding regarding national curriculum framework. Majority of them were not aware of any such document. A small number of teachers heard about curriculum frame work but did not go through document.