Teacher Educators’ Beliefs regarding Elementary School Curriculum in Pakistan
Abstract
The study aimedat exploring teacher educators’ beliefs about elementary school curriculum in Pakistan as teacher educators’ beliefstowards curriculum may influence teachers’ beliefs towards curriculum. The study was done qualitatively. Sixteen teacher educators were interviewed through semi-structured interview (fourteen from twelve public sector institutions and two from private institutions) conveniently. All the participants were those who had either taught a course on curriculum or member of curriculum review committee(s) or had some other role related to curriculum development. Moreover, the feedback given by the respondents to the student teachers, after observing their lessons during teaching practice, was also analysed to cross-validate the findings from interviews. The data highlight that the elementary school curriculum is generally perceived as a set of written documents by the teacher educators. School subjects are considered disintegrated and specialized in nature which may be taught by subject specialists only. Teacher’s role is largely viewed as to impart subject knowledge and maintain classroom discipline. These findings indicate that teacher educators’ beliefs on elementary school curriculum are clearly inclined towards the ‘Scholarly Academic’ and the ‘Social Efficiency’ Ideologies of curriculum.
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