Role of National Academe of Higher Education in Teachers Professional Development

The importance of teachers training at university level can not be under estimated. The better a teacher trained, the better he or she can educate tomorrow generation of the country.

Higher education commission brought revolutionary changes in the quality of education at higher level around the county by running different innovative projects/programs.

Before the HEC revolutionary steps towards the higher education quality improvement, there was nothing as such convincible regarding teachers professional development.

HEC running different projects in the field of teacher’s education, professional development for higher studies to students and teachers, which ultimately result in high quality of education in the country to meet the global challenges.

The importance of teacher training and capacity building convinced the competent authority, who established Learning Innovation Department in 2003 under HEC that laid the foundation towards producing high quality of teachers in the county to fill the gap.

Unfortunately in Pakistan there are no such pre-requisites for university teachers, like school teachers. They will have to qualify PTC and CT teachers training courses before entering to the field of teaching, but at higher level there are no such pre-requisites, to teach at university level.

To bring the quality of higher education to international standers pre-requisites in the form of teacher professional development courses made as compulsory before entering to professional career in teaching at higher level.

LID took bold steps to bring the higher education level at par with international standards by polishing university teachers through conducting different professional competency enhancement programs.

LID conducting different types of professional development programs ranging from long duration to short duration programs.

These programs include seminars, workshops and lectures in specific subject area. These programs are delivered by experienced subject’s specialists.

Long term programs run under ID are 45 days to 3 months duration. During ling term professional development program teachers come from different universities of the country to HEC and 30-35 teachers batch trained in one long term program. Seminars and workshops are arranged at any university door step on the basis of the need of that specific university.

There are more than 16000 university teachers in Pakistan in different universities; National Academy of Higher Education trained 3564 teachers in the first phase of the project, which shows that only 22% of teachers are trained till now, ultimately keeping in view the financial position of the country and the time availability, the overall result is convincible.

Pakistan being a development country we are far away from the real target to meet the global challenges. We are still in dire need to take revolutionary steps for the professional development of teachers.

Keeping in view the importance and need of professional development of teacher’s, national academy of higher education start phase II of the project, in this phase total 2100 teachers will be trained through professional competency enhancement program and 400 teachers will be trained through information and communication technologies.

ICT have the potential to enhance the quality and effectiveness in the education, which can transform the nature of education and can change the way students learn.

The core aim of these professional development programs is to improve the pedagogical, communication and technological skills of the teachers.