Samina Malik

Higher education and women’s empowerment in Pakistan

This paper summarises the findings of a 2005 doctoral study by Malik which explored to what extent participation in higher education offers empowerment to women in Pakistan. A survey instrument was used to question female faculty members and female students from 10 public universities in Pakistan; 1290 students and 290 faculty members responded. Subsequently, semi‐structured interviews were held with 10 faculty members and 10 students. Respondents highlighted economic independence and an increased standing within family and society as the main benefits of higher education participation. A major finding is that participation in higher education enables women to impact on a number of discriminatory practices simultaneously and thereby effect change for the better. The main recommendation is that future educational strategies be developed with the aim of further promoting gender equality in all areas of education in Pakistan, but particularly with the aim of increasing female students’ participation in higher education.

Promoting Teachers’ Leadership Through Autonomy and Accountability

Teachers are considered a cornerstone in a school setup. Therefore, teachers’ quality and competency is the central point for the improvement of whole school. When teachers handle their classrooms alone, recognize their abilities that can influence every student’s learning and select and organize their curricula by themselves, then the teacher leadership is an imperative instead of an option. Standards for the teacher leaders consist of seven domains that describe various dimensions of teacher leaderships, which could help them in finding various opportunities within the teaching profession. Certain conditions facilitate the promotion of teacher leaderships in schools such as safe environment, supportive administrator, and absence of “tall poppy syndrome.” Teacher autonomy is teachers’ capacity to engage in self-directed teaching, which may include general professional autonomy, collegial professional autonomy, and individual autonomy. To accomplish instructional goals and encouraging conducive learning environment, teachers need to have freedom for decision-making and providing best opportunities for students’ complete development. Teacher accountability concentrates on both the procedures and results of teaching. Both the terms autonomy and accountability are interrelated as when teachers may be given autonomy to work in their own way, yet being accountable and strive for the teacher leadership on the whole.

Deconstructive pedagogy and ideological demystification in post-colonial Pakistan

ABSTRACT With post-colonial Pakistan inheriting the British colonial ideological and governmental apparatus, the English literature curriculum implemented at the university level in Pakistan carried the interpellatory baggage of its colonial past. Our interdisciplinary exploration focuses on using deconstructive pedagogy to demystify and subvert the ideological conditioning of Pakistani students that is done through the English literary syllabi taught at the Masters level in Pakistani universities. These pedagogical practices involve genealogical and deconstructive readings of selected English literary texts taught to students pursuing a Master of English degree at the International Islamic University, Islamabad. These practices involve an activation of deconstructive readings through class discussions to unveil the different hegemonic processes involved in the constitution of docile political subjects. They challenge any authoritative interpretation of canonical texts, creating new meanings by activating the play of trace and differénce in the re-readings of these texts within post-colonial Pakistan. The class discussions have been transcribed to show how the English literary texts introduced in the colonial era have been extracted out of a Western epistemological closure. In addition, their role in the constitution of colonial and post-colonial subjectivities has been discussed. These discussions raise questions regarding the opaque processes of self-constitution, yet do not aim at re-interpellating the students. They simply revisit the closure within which the students’ thoughts and subjectivities are confined, and open up the progression of thought processes so that the functionality of different viewpoints within different communities may be constantly re-visited to defy ideological colonization.

Student Support in Higher Education: Lessons Learnt and Challenges Ahead

Today every country is striving to enhance higher education qualitatively and quantitatively, because the economy of any country is directly influenced by the “intellectual capital†of that country. An important factor affecting the quality and quantity of higher education is the support that an institution provides to its students. The present study is an attempt to find the achievements of as well as challenges to the student support services in higher education institutions [HEIs] of developing countries with particular example of those in Pakistan. Employing the Delphi technique, the study explored the (a) achievements, (b) the problems and issues, and (c) means to address problems and issues in the student support services in HEIs of Pakistan. It was found that the HEIs in Pakistan were facing many challenges as the achievements were less than the requirement. Allocation of proper resources and restructuring the system of support are the most important means to address the challenges.