Learning Relevance & Learning Outcomes : At what cost?

1. Learning Relevance & Learning Outcomes: At what cost? Paper presented at a conference on Quality – Inequality Quandary Transacting Learning Relevance & Teacher Education in South Asia Lahore April 4-5, 2012 By Aziz Kabani

2. Why Education? • What is the purpose/aim of education? • Individual’s perspective • Society's perspective

3. Why Education? • Individual’s perspective • May vary from person to person • Passion, financial stability, social status, character building etc.

4. Why Education? • Society’s perspective • Broader, progressive and enlightened vision of society realized through education (for example) • Socrates • Plato • Aristotle • Whitehead • Russell • Dewey • NEP

5. Why Education? • Broader – not confined to a single discourse • Progressive – knowledge should be continuously expanded and refined through systematic enquiry (reason) applied on human experiences • Enlightened – based on justice and equality achieved through adherence to certain ethical principles

6. Why Education? • Today’s society • Entirely ordered by a single mode of exchange’ (Slater and Tonkiss 2001 p. 199) – a market society if you like. • Education has become a ‘commodity’ both in the individual’s perspective as well as in the society’s perspective • Quality of life • Skilled labor force

7. Why Education? • Industrialization coupled with capitalism has resulted in the commodification of education • After the disintegration of communist bloc, the world became unipolar and capitalism/neo-liberalism became a universal phenomenon

8. Scenario Dilemma • Neo-liberal influence in education has become a global reality • The local educational context is dominated by ‘marketphobic’ discourses

9. Scenario Dilemma • Education has been confined to quantifiable/measureable learning outcomes with sole pursuit of preparing people for the market driven economy • This means that we do not prepare our children for a ‘better society’ but we rather prepare them for a ‘competitive/ruthless market’ where test results become ultimate outcome of the entire educational experience • What is valued is a set of skills and competencies

10. Scenario Dilemma • Learning outcome becomes the ultimate indicator of quality • Why this approach is problematic? • Pauline Lipman (2009) – Paradoxes of Teaching in Neo-liberal Times: Education ‘reform’ in Chicago

11. Scenario Dilemma • Contract and Charter schools • Centralized accountability, regulation of teaching and narrowing the curriculum • ‘Ethical retooling’ • Paradoxes and moral dilemmas

12. SEF Projects • Two mega projects under public-private partnership portfolio: • Integrated Education Learning Program (IELP) • Promoting Private Schooling in Rural Sindh (PPRS) Project • Bowe, Ball and Gold (1992) • Context of influence • Context of policy text production • Context of practice

13. SEF Projects • Neo-liberal influence • The World Bank • Education seen with the lens of economics • Involvement of private entrepreneur instead of community based organizations • Per child-subsidy method of financing education with the provision of ‘profit’ • Continuity of funding on the basis of students’ test results or learning outcomes

14. Responses • Communicating a broader vision of education to all the stakeholders particularly entrepreneurs and teachers • The social, humanistic, ethical and democratic purpose of education should constitute the core values of teaching/learning • ‘Scientific’ knowledge should be promoted while conventional wisdom should be preserved and benefitted from

15. Responses • Children’s holistic development becomes core of the intervention • Child-friendly pedagogy should replace examination based teaching • Students assessment should be replaced by school assessment

16. Responses • Teachers professional autonomy should be valued • Teachers’ should be provided enough space/freedom to teach • Teachers should assume more and more control of the curriculum

17. Thank you