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The purpose of the study was to identify the factors of parent’s dissatisfaction over public sector schools. The population comprised of the parents whose children were attending a school. The study was delimited to Sargodha and Khushab Districts. A structured interview was conducted of 66 parents of children of government schools selected through convenience sampling. The conceptual framework for the study was based on five factors: communication from school; teachers and their methodologies; learning environment of the school; availability and utilization of physical facilities; and the parents’ expectations from schools. On the basis of the responses of the parents, it was found that they were less satisfied with the communication made by the school, and utilization of available physical facilities. They were more satisfied with the teachers and their teaching methodologies, and environment of the school but did not have high expectations from government schools.

Keywords: parents’ dissatisfaction, public sector schools

The global community recognizes the real capital of India to be its age old democratic social order. Democracy here is not only a form of government but also a way of life. Education in this context plays a very important role in nurturing a democratic order among future generations of the country. But, somehow due to increased weightage on cognitive dimension based competition in society the schools are lagging behind in their task of developing citizenship qualities, thus, a status check is seriously needed. In such premise present study was undertaken on a randomly selected sample of 504 teachers of 68 higher secondary schools of Varanasi district of Uttar Pradesh, India. The findings reveal a dismal state of citizenship education particularly in state government schools. Further, private schools and urban schools were found better in providing citizenship education in Indian context. It is recommended on the basis of the study that serious effort from all educational stakeholders is seriously needed to make education a viable tool for developing an ideal citizenry for the country.

Keywords: Citizenship Education, Civic Education, Citizenship Qualities, School

effectiveness, Quality schools

Learning is the prime characteristic for organizational development. If university is considered as hub of promoting and generating knowledge then focus on the supportive culture is imminent in order to analyze the related practices in the universities which shape them as learning organization.  Most of the studies address business organizations; however, this study encompasses the universities. The study so designed was descriptive, quantitative in nature, non contrived and adopted a survey approach for collecting data. From the population of university teachers, sample was drawn from 17 departments of the university. Tool for the study was adapted from the work of Britton (1998) for data collection and both descriptive and inferential statistics such as percentages, chi square and Pearson correlation were applied to analyze the data. The perception of substantial proportion of university teachers reflected the weak supportive culture in the departments and teaching faculties. There is need to create web of sharing knowledge and information among university teachers for the building university as a learning organization.

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Supportive Culture, University, Learning Organization

The study was conducted to analyze comportments of teachers towards practices in inclusive environments of model schools in Pakistan. Under Federal Directorate of Education, 16 model schools have been functioning as inclusive schools since 2007 in Islamabad. These public model schools were transformed into inclusive schools with collaboration of International Development Partners, Norway. Population of the study was teachers teaching in the inclusive schools. Purposive and convenience sampling was used to collect data from the teachers. To identify significant differences among teachers’ comportments based on demographics, quantitative techniques were used. The questionnaire was rated on five point Likert scale. The instrument reliability was 0.83. Quantitative data were collected from 196 teachers. One-way ANOVA was used for comparison on the basis of teachers’ demographics. It was found that age, academic qualification and inclusive schools’ experience of teachers have no impact on teachers’ comportments towards involvements of students, inclusive outcomes, parents’ involvement with children, teacher training, students’ assessment and available classroom facilities. On the other hand, professional qualification and total experience of teachers have impact on students’ involvement and inclusive outcomes respectively.

Keywords: Teachers’ comportments, practices, classrooms

In the present study the researchers conducted a survey of universities of Lahore to study the type of services and facilities available to the students with special needs. A sample of 60 students with special needs was selected through snowball sampling technique from seven universities of Lahore City. Three self developed and validated questionnaires were used to elicit responses of students with special needs (hearing impaired, visually impaired and physically handicapped).The reliability of questionnaire developed for students with hearing impairment was .725 (Cronbach alpha).The questionnaire for students with visual impairment contained reliability of .845 (Cronbach alpha).The questionnaire for students with physical disabilities had reliability of .762 (Cronbach alpha).  The respondents were asked to respond on three point criteria. Frequencies of responses along with percentages were calculated. The results indicated that  majority of the universities were providing facilities and services such as  free transportation, hostel and total exemption of fee charges, talking computer labs, scholarships and computer education to all students with special needs.

Keywords: Facilities, services, students with special needs, talking computer labs

In this age of vast spread of education, there is a demand from the society to higher education institutions to produce labour force with applicable knowledge for the requirements of the knowledge economy. Marketable skills are expected from university graduates round the globe.  Pakistan is lacking both in competence based higher education curriculum and a relevance of higher education with labour market. Feeling the need to fill the gap, there appeared to be an inevitable need to create awareness among university students through measuring their existing level of generic competences in a public sector university in Pakistan. For the study, a selected list of competences was adapted. Four null hypotheses were tested by applying 2-sample tests and K-sample tests. Results indicated that students were well aware of their generic competences. The only need is to document those competences and make them a part of learning outcomes.

Keywords:  Generic competencies, University students

This article evaluates the lesson presentation skills of graduates of pre-service teacher education program. The study was aimed at evaluating the quality of pre-service teacher education program with regard to lesson presentation skills of graduates. The skills were evaluated through a series of observations in the real classroom situation. The accessible population of the study comprises the graduates of B.Ed. program of nine GCETs, functioning throughout in the Punjab. The convenient sampling technique was used to select 86 graduates for observation. These observations were made by a pair of observers in six different subjects from 2^nd to 9^th grade. Five lesson presentation skills were focused in the study: content, language, technique, structure, and general. The structured observation schedule was used to evaluate the lesson presentation skills of graduates. The results revealed that there is need to re-structure pre-service teacher education to make it compatible with real classroom situation. Further research may be conducted considering additional skills of graduates in regard to lesson planning. However it is important to point out the limitations of this study, especially the use of a purposeful sample may raise concerns about the validity of data and the representation of the larger population from which the sample was taken. It is also recommended that the teacher education institutions may give special focus on lesson presentation skills of prospective teachers with regard to time management, use of audio visual aids, and selection of appropriate teaching method/technique according to requirement of the content of lesson.

Keywords: Lesson Presentation Skills, Pre-service Teacher Education, Punjab

This research was conducted to study the impact of District Teacher Educators Mentoring Support upon Primary School Teachers’ professional progress. It was methodologically related to both descriptive and survey type research. Structured Interview was used as instrument in this study. During the analysis of data, chi- square test was applied to find out the significance of mentoring programme and the difference among the opinions of the respondents. The sample consisted of the Heads of  40 CTSCs of Mandi Baha-ud-Din district. They were the respondents of the study for ascertaining the overall impact of Mentoral Programme in this district. The objective of the study was to assess the impact of DTEs mentoral support upon the professional progress of PSTs in light of CTSC Heads satisfaction, perception and opinion reflection. Major findings of the study indicated that CTSC Heads were satisfied about one identified responsible factor for the impact, i.e., the overall standard of DSD’s mentoral programme development. But they were not satisfied about the eligibility criteria of DTEs qualification, DTEs mentoral methodology, the effectiveness of mentoral programme of PSTs professional development through mentoral support programme and the DTEs professional performance. Conclusions of the study indicated that CTSC Heads were not satisfied about the impact of DTEs mentoring support programme.

Keywords: District Teacher Educator, Primary School Teacher, Teacher Education, Continuous Professional Development, Mentoring, Professional Progress