Listening to Unheard Voices: Professional Development Reforms for Pakistani Tertiary Teachers

Abstract

Fragmented, unfocused, and top down approaches to professional development are unrealistic, ineffective and do not promise anything significant to teachers and their contexts. This paper questions professional development for tertiary teachers in Pakistan. It does so from the perspectives of Pakistani tertiary teachers gained through a qualitative, ethnographic case study. The analysis of these previously unheard voices revealed themes that expand our understanding of the problematic nature of professional development. The results of this study indicate the need to reform professional development and to assist in these reforms, the study suggests that teachers need to gain a wide repertoire of teaching to become better practitioners. To do so, a school-based provision of professional development with social learning as the pedagogy is preferred as a design.