Impacts of British Council’s Core Skills Activities on Students-Teachers’ Performance and Whole School Environment in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Abstract

A good teacher can bring more positive changes in the behavior of students, the teacher’s knowledge and skills are important to achieve the required targets of the institution. The researcher aimed to explore the effectiveness and benefits of British Council’s trainings programs, a professionally skillful teacher may impart knowledge and skills to the students. The main objective of the study is to know the impacts of British Council’s Core Skills Activities on the student-teachers’ performance and whole school environment in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It was a descriptive and survey type research. The population of the study was 480 governments male-female primary, middle and high schools and 960 teachers trained by British Council for connecting classrooms Core Skills Activities. The sampling of the study was 200 teachers of 100 randomly selected schools of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The six core skills are Critical Thinking & Problem Solving, Communication & Collaboration, Creativity & Imagination, Citizenship, Digital Literacy, and Student Leadership & Personal Development. The selected data was properly analyzed, tabulated, explained and interpreted through some statistical tools and a chi square test was used. The major findings showed that British Council is an international organization which works positively for the professional development of teachers and uplift of students. The findings depicted that majority the teachers greed with the statement that British Council Connecting Classrooms activities i.e. Core Skills also called Twenty First Century Skills improved the overall performance of students-teachers and whole school environment. The traditional teaching methodology of teaching was changed to activity and conceptual based teaching. The most important fact was found that critical thinking and problem solving skills was the need of the day, it really develops the thinking approach of the students and teachers. Communication, computer and leadership skills of students were also developed by adapting core skills activities in and outside the class. On the basis of findings some recommendations were made that the Core Skills activities may be embedded by the teachers in school curriculum. Such training session may be provided to all teachers and head teachers by the Elementary & Secondary Education Department Khyber Pakhtunkhwa under the supervision of British Council experienced and skillful team.