Instructional Practices of Public Sector Teacher Education Programs: Teacher and Student Perspective

1. Associate Professor, University of Education, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan 2. Lecturer, University of Education, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan 3. Ph. D Scholar, University of Education, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan PAPER INFO ABSTRACT Received: April 14, 2020 Accepted: June 15, 2020 Online: June 30, 2020 The bachelors of Education programs in the Pakistani public sector universities are promising for competent and skilled future teachers for schools. The current study designed in investigating the perception of teacher educators and prospective teachers regarding the instructional practices of Bachelor of Education program of public sector university. Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the opinion of teacher educators and prospective teachers, whereas median was calculated to find out level of subjects’ response. Teacher educators and prospective teachers have the same opinion on the instructional practices occurring in the classrooms of B.Ed. program. Teacher educators and prospective teachers had varying opinion on sharing of experiences by the teacher educators with prospective teachers with no significant difference. Lesson presentation was viewed effective by Teacher Educators and Prospective Teachers but existed significant existed difference between their opinions with small effect size


Introduction
Teacher education is an integral part of school education. It was started when public schools were opened to educate masses. At first, "Normal Schools" were established to produce teachers for public/common schools in Europe and United States of America. In the sub-continent (Pak-India) teacher education programs were launched not before the arrival of Europeans, especially the Britishers. Introduction of modern education system in the sub-continent required teachers, who can teach English as subject and other modern and scientific subjects. Normal schools, teacher training schools, and teacher training colleges were established to prepare school teachers. Teacher education institutions had the responsibility of not only providing qualified teachers to schools according to their demand but also to maintain quality of teachers.
Pakistan had to face the problem of shortage of qualified teachers since its birth.
It is echoed in the proceedings of "The Pakistan Educational Conference". The committee constituted to deliberate on primary and secondary education recognized the need of trained teachers to make primary education compulsory and free. The committee acknowledged that "a properly trained and reasonably well-paid teaching profession was essential to the building up of great state". The committee suggested free and compulsory primary education by observing that "the introduction of free and compulsory education would require an army of teachers". This state of affairs clearly indicates that the Pakistani leadership was well aware of not only the importance of education but also about the supply of qualified teachers in schools. The same concern is appeared to be seen in the later reports and policies of education.
The National Educational Policy 1998-2010 analyzed the situation of teacher education prevailing in Pakistan very skillfully. The expansion in education sector, demand and supply, and quality of teachers as stated in the policy is as: "With our recent focus on ensuring massive access to Education for All, the teacher education system has quantitatively expanded to keep a reasonable equilibrium in the demand and supply situation. On the contrary, the qualitative dimension of teacher education program has received only marginal attention resulting in mass production of teachers with shallow understanding of both the content and methodology of education."(p. 47) The lack of facilities is also among the factors deteriorating the quality of teacher education, teachers, and ultimately education. Public-sector university, Lahore was established with the purpose to offer quality programs in the field of teacher education and provide leadership to all the teacher education institutions to set new trends in the respective field. The establishment of this university was in pursuance of quality in teacher education and education aspired in the National Education this program was adapted and launched in 2010. The Division of Education, Public-sector university made every effort to design these program in such a way that they could achieve excellence in preparing teachers of high quality and become an example for other teacher education institutions. The effectiveness of B.Ed. programs is needed to be evaluated to determine the status of these programs. A little research is conducted in this area. On account of importance of this area, the researcher selected to evaluate the perception of teacher educators and prospective teachers regarding pedagogies employed in UE campuses to deliver the curricula of B.Ed. programs.

Literature Review
Taylor (2014) defined teacher education programs "any of the formal programs that have been established for the preparation of teachers at the elementary-and secondary-school levels". Preparation of teachers means to provide such knowledge; skills and attitudes to the candidates of teaching profession that enable them to accomplish teaching tasks effectively in the classroom, the school and the community. In regard to make the term "Teacher education" understandable, Aggarwal (2004, p. 414) cites Good (1973), who defines it as "all formal and informal activities and experiences that help to qualify a person to assume the responsibility as a member of the educational profession or to discharge his responsibility most effectively". Brickman (2008) views teacher education as" it facilitates individuals to develop as qualified teachers". Aggarwal (2008) sees teacher education as that knowledge, skill and ability, which are relevant to the teachers for discharge of his professional duties. He further describes that it should look for restructuring the attitudes and refashioning the habits of prospective teachers to reconstitute the whole personality of the teacher. Loughran (2006) considers teacher education synonymous with pre-service teacher preparation. According to Bullough and Gitlin (2001) in teacher education programs, prospective teachers strive for developing knowledge and skills required for teaching and learn the ways of applying this knowledge and skills in their practice.
The effectiveness of teacher education is being questioned and its critiques contend that teacher education is a feeble intervention in preparation of teachers and hardly brings a change in their ideas and behaviors developed during their studentship at schools Contenders of teachers' professionalization think that the notion of an effective teacher education program contains contradiction in itself (Ballou and Podgursky, 1999). Regarding the cumbersome curricular and procedural requirements for traditional certification of teachers, Rod Paige, The US Secretary of Education, took position that "burdensome requirements for education coursework that make up the bulk of current teacher certification regimes should be removed from teacher certification standards" (U.S. Department of Education, 2002, p. 8). He further maintained that "certification should emphasize tests of verbal ability and content knowledge while making most education coursework and student teaching optional" In spite of strong criticism on teacher education, there is ample evidence that teacher education has impact on effectiveness of teachers. Research displays that teacher preparation has a positive impact on teachers' competence (Borko&t Putnam 1995). On the basis of an empirical study  analyzed link between teacher qualification and student achievement. She found that teachers' knowledge and teaching skills have been positively related with students' achievement. Wilson, Floden & Ferrini-Mundy (2003) reviewed 57 empirical research studies found the evidence of a positive relationship between preparation of teachers in subject matter and the performance of their students. It also demonstrates that teacher education has affirmative effect on teacher practice and student outcome instructional preparation.Other studies (Wenglinsky, 2002;Gustafsson, 2003;Wayne & Youngs, 2003;Clotfelte, Ladd, &Vigdor, 2008;and Körkkö, Kyrö-Ämmälä, & Turunen, 2016) have also reached this conclusion.
The 21 st century world is characterized with globalization, diversity, complexity, and media-saturated (Kneller, 2002).Marvelous Technological advancements have brought revolutionary changes in all spheres of life. Electronic media and internet made knowledge accessible to all persons. Knowledge is changing rapidly due to scientific inquiries due to which world is changing. In this changing world old knowledge, skills, and jobs become irrelevant. The 21 st century world demands such people, who are capable of learning, developing and adjusting unceasingly and insistently in accordance with needs of the hour. Schleicher (2012) kept this situation in his view to comment as: "……………..Today, where individuals can access content on Google, where routine cognitive skills are being digitized or outsourced, and where jobs are changing rapidly, education systems need to place much greater emphasis on enabling individuals to become lifelong learners, to manage complex ways of thinking and complex ways of working that computers cannot take over easily. Students need to be capable not only of constantly adapting but also of constantly learning and growing, of positioning themselves and repositioning themselves in a fast-changing world." (p. 11) It is worth mentioning that students need to learn skills that are termed as survival skills by Wagner (2008) to successfully face the challenges of 21 st century. These skills are "critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration across networks and leading by influence, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurialism, effective oral and written communication, accessing and analyzing information, and curiosity and imagination". These skills prepare students for college and adult life.
Traditional teaching is rooted in behaviourism and objectivism. It is characterized with teacher centeredness. Delivery of content is mostly through lectures and demonstrations. One-way communication is dominated. Students are passive receivers of information delivered by the teacher.Traditional models of teacher education remained unsuccessful to produce teachers, who can respond the changing needs of students and the time and reflect upon their own practices. It also failed to enable teachers to develop survival skills in their students (Schleicher, 2012). This failure of teacher education leads to a shift from behaviouristic/objectivistic paradigm to a constructivist paradigm. According to Schunk (2000), constructivism has philosophical as well as psychological underpinning and is founded on social cognitivism that assumes that there is a reciprocal interaction among persons, behaviors and environments. Constructivism is a policy that emphasizes the importance of contexts in learning and asserts that learners construct their own knowledge by interpreting their experiences in situation (Schunk, 2000). Jonassen, Peck, & Wilson (1999) opine that constructivists believe that students give their own meaning to their experiences. Through active engagement in the classroom they construct their own meaning that leads to the construction of their own knowledge. Jonassen (2000) states that interaction between student and the classroom environment results in creation of students' interpretation of the world in which they live instead of just receiving information passively transmitted by the teacher.In a constructivist classroom the teacher presents the topic or case with a clear emphasis on certain concept.
Constructive perspective of learning is considered be an active learning process. It is a social activity and contextual. In this perspective knowledge is constructed by the learner from his/her own experiences. Constructivists claim that "development of meaning is more important than acquiring a large set of concepts or skills. They also have confidence in essentiality of motivation for learning" (Cholewinski, 2009;Darling-Hammond, 2017;Gorain& Pradhan, 2020). Akhras and Self (2000) recognizes four aspects of constructivist learning theories (i.e. Context, activity, cognitive structures, and time extension)that coexist holistically.

Subjects
The whole population was selected as subject for this study. The population of this study was comprised of all the teacher educators, who were teaching and prospective teachers enrolled in any of the B.Ed. Elementary, B.Ed. Secondary, and B.Ed. Honors programs.

Instruments of Data Collection
A questionnaire/opinionnaire was developed to get opinion of teacher educators and prospective teachers regarding instructional practices of B.Ed.programs being run at UE campuses.

Data Collection
Questionnaires were distributed among the subjects (teacher educators and prospective teachers) in the University campuses situated in Lahore city and collected duly filled questionnaires by the researcher himself, whereas questionnaires were posted to the subjects relating to the UE campuses situated out of Lahore city and collected by post.

Data Analysis
Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the opinion of teacher educators and prospective teachers, whereas median was calculated to find out level of subjects' response. The instructional practices included sharing of learning experiences and resources, and resources, lesson presentations, interaction between TEs and PTs,, quality of TEs' questioning, development of critical thinking, group work, and differential teaching.       Table 4 shows that: 1. TEs (Md=1, n=99) were of the opinion that they always asked questioned during their presentation, whereas, PTs (Md=2, n=1152) said that TEs often asked questioned during their presentation. A Mann-Whitney U Test revealed a significant difference in opinion of TEs and PTs (U=49918.5, z=-2.233, p=0.026<0.05) with a small effect size (r=-0.063).
3. TEs (Md=1, n=99) responded that their questions had always clarity, whereas PTs (Md=2, n=1148) were of the opinion that their TEs' questions had often clarity. A Mann-Whitney U Test revealed a significant difference in opinion of TEs and PTs (U=46514.0, z=-3.23, p=0.001<0.05) with a small effect size (r=-0.092).
4. TEs (Md=1, n=99) were of the opinion that their questions were always briefed, whereas PTs (Md=2, n=1152) response was that TEs' questions were often brief. A Mann-Whitney U Test revealed a significant difference in opinion of TEs and PTs (U=48974.0, z=-2.475, p=0.013<0.05) with a small effect size (r=-0.070).

Teacher Educators and Prospective
Teachers, both, perceived that sharing learning happened in the class rooms. There was no significant difference between their opinions except sharing of academic problems with Teacher Educators by Prospective Teachers, where significant difference existed with a small effect size.

Lesson presentation was viewed effective by Teacher Educators and
Prospective Teachers but existed significant existed difference between their opinions with small effect size.

Both Teacher Educators and Prospective Teachers opined that Teacher
Educators' communication skills were effective but significant difference existed between their opinions with small effect size.

Both Teacher Educators and Prospective
Teachers opined that quality of Teacher Educators' questioning was effective but significant difference existed between their opinions with small effect size.

Both Teacher Educators and Prospective Teachers opined that Teacher
Educators made efforts to develop critical thinking in Prospective Teachers but significant difference existed between their opinions with small effect size.

Both Teacher Educators and Prospective Teachers opined that Teacher
Educators encourage group work in the class but significant difference existed between their opinions with small effect size.
7. Both Teacher Educators and Prospective Teachers opined that Teacher Educators employed methods of teaching keeping view Prospective Teachers' abilities and nature of content area. No significant difference existed between their perceptions.