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PurposeWhereas the achievement of students has closely been linked with the quality of teachers and there is a bulk of literature supporting the need of teachers' preparation in enhancing their quality, professional development (PD) of teachers has been a central focus of reform initiatives in education across the globe. This paper aims at analysing the existing literature on PD of teachers to reflect on the models and characteristics of effective PD, and to highlight the importance of context in PD of teachers.Design/methodology/approachTo respond to the aim of the paper, a search in the field of pedagogy in Education Resource Information Centre (ERIC) was undertaken. The search strings used were “models of teachers' professional development”, “characteristics of teachers professional development” and “context in professional development” restricted to time period from 2000 to 2020.FindingsThe major argument this paper presents is that the models and characteristics of PD are relative and there is no uniform model to be implemented across contexts. Instead of debating the models and characteristics of effective PD, academics and practitioners have to be watchful to the context and the real needs of teachers in a particular context.Originality/valueThe paper critiques the generalisation of Western generated PD models to the developing world especially Pakistan which the existing research and literature is silent about.

PurposeIn the current period quality assurance (QA) and technical vocational education and training (TVET) are known as the two comprehensively examined ideas in schooling, dependent on exceptional abilities in this modern era of Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0. The incapability or need for QA of technology-oriented programs has been dissected by policy makers as a hindrance in accomplishing the TVET objectives. Consequently, the reason for this exploration paper was to contemplate over the impact and association of QA on TVET programs and level of preparedness of TVET teachers for the market of IR 4.0 in Pakistan.Design/methodology/approachIn this study a quantitative research method with survey-based research has been used whereas, two research questions and hypotheses were structured and explained to lead the study. The research sample was 475 TVET teachers having technical competence for Pakistan using the random sampling technique. The instrument was an adapted questionnaire using five Likert scales. Moreover, mean and standard deviation was utilized while one-way ANOVA and Pearson correlation was used to test the hypothesis.FindingsThe findings of this study uncovered that there is no significant impact of QA of TVET programs to fulfill the need of IR 4.0 in Pakistan. But there is strong and positive association between QA of TVET programs as per the demand of IR 4.0 and level of preparedness of teachers toward it. The study suggested that in order to meet the labor market's requirements according to IR 4.0, future employment demand could be met by assuring their TVET programmers' QA and putting them into practice in accordance with the indicators and the TVET framework suggested in literature and by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which is widely accepted. The findings will also help to detect current trends in teaching, providing important insights in terms of QA and the focus of digitalization in TVET education.Practical implicationsThe implication of this study is that in order to influence TVET's technological development, employment and national development, policy makers, TVET principals, coordinators and teachers must work on important aspects of their access that are very important on inclusion, financing and quality – the assurance of standards, as it meets the needs of the country according to the IR 4.0 labor market.Originality/valueThis is one of the unique studies of its nature which has focused on the QA on TVET programs for the digital employment market of IR 4.0 in Pakistan and South Asia.

This paper aims at exploring the usefulness of street theatre as critical pedagogy in teaching of social studies education. It gives a brief background of street-theatre and its linkages with critical pedagogy. In the light of theoretical underpinnings of this arts-based pedagogy, the paper deliberates upon the relevance and efficacy of street theatre in a social studies classroom. This paper uses a street theatre performance case to look at the techniques such as: body motion, body work, props, use of visual and audio aids, etc.; processes such as: conscientization and catharsis; and dialogical approach employed by street theatre to bring awareness about socio-political and cultural issues prevalent in a society. The analysis of this performance act shows that street theatre successfully encourages spectators or the oppressed masses to reflect, and triggers action in them to come out of socio-political oppression. When looked at from educational perspective, street theatre encourages the employment of multiple-intelligences of both students and teachers; and therefore, it can be one innovative strategy to make students aware of the issues infecting their society and also to empower students for action

This critical ethnographic project is based on one year of field-work carried out in an urban high school in the context of Karachi. The research seeks to critically explore the local-global dynamic as it manifests in the school’s official curriculum and the students’ lived-world experiences, especially with reference to their interaction with the media-scape, which in turn bears implications on dissolution and re-construction of students’ identities. Theoretically, the research draws upon discourses of critical sociology, especially the notions of structuration (Giddens, 1993), to analyze the local-global dynamic, and structural, which conceives agency as an innovative and intuitive self (Bourdieu, 1989), as well as post-colonial perspectives to illuminate historical and political contexts that have shaped the locality within which the agency in question is situated (Rizvi, 2004). Subsequently, the research employs an ethnographic research method. In this respect, monological and dialogical data were generated through participant observation, focus group discussions, semi-structured and open-ended interviews, participant-made visuals, document/textbook analysis, observation and analysis of the school’s material culture, and home-visits. The data analysis was informed by Carspecken’s (1996) methodological guide. The research finds the schooling and media as globalizing and localizing sites for the youth. The official curriculum, especially the Pakistan Studies textbook, constructs a sense of narrow political nationalism that seems to inform the students’ sense of national identity. The local/national reference is constituted by three complex interrelated discourses: religious/ideological (reference of Islam); linguistic nationalism (Urdu language); and territorial (juridical-legal bounded-space). Furthermore, the official text constructs the local as national (political) and ethnic as (sub-national) references, whereby the national identity overrides the sub-national/ethnic identities. With reference to the global, the official text constructs the global as trans-national/supra-national, as religious/social reference to Ummah (Muslim collectivity), and as international. Whilst the school text mainly provides a nation-state-centric view of the world and the other, the media-scape in particular and the lived-world in general open up multiple references of belonging, identifications, and differences for the students. Beyond schooling, high school youth are actively interacting with the global through the media-scape (Appadurai, 1996). Agency’s interaction with the media-scape in particular and dis-embedding mechanisms in general is found to be generating de/territorialization (Inda & Rosaldo, 2002) which is bringing both anxiety as well as opportunity for the self. The students’ interaction with the global, especially through Bollywood and Hollywood media, at times produces a sense of disjuncture for students, between the mediated global values, attitudes, and life-styles and the normatively acceptable local values and life styles. Furthermore, students confront a sense of colonial difference (Mignolo, 2000), especially in the realm of knowledge, which leads them to feel a cultural gap between the West and the East, and the global and the local. As a reaction, the students are found to be exercising nostalgia as a counter-discourse to the hegemony of Euro-centric modernity/knowledge. This experience of disjuncture and colonial difference generates frustration as well as a state of ambivalence for students. My research finds that student agency is strategically and innovatively responding to disjuncture and experienced ambivalence through the politics of identity. In this regard, one of the ways students respond is by using hybrid language and dressing; that is, hybridization is a strategy to gain global social capital, as well as a way to step in and out of modernity and tradition (Rosaldo, 1995). In some cases, student agency makes reference to Ummah (Muslim collectivity) and the new media (Eickelman & Anderson, 2003) to re-filliate with their local moorings; it thus engages in a process of what I refer to as solidifying their identities. For this purpose, they are paradoxically using the very globalizing technologies against the forces of cultural globalization, to re-localize their identities. At the same time, some students are found as agents who are engaging in acts of re-interpretation of both modernity and tradition, with a view to reinventing their identities beyond the modernity/tradition, West/East, global/local dichotomies. These agents are striving in a nutshell to re-create an identity beyond difference. In doing so they are found as trying to reconcile two competing impulses within the self; that is, being rooted in the particular/local and feeling coherence with the global (Aga Khan, 2008).

This critical ethnographic project is based on one year of field-work carried out in an urban high school in the context of Karachi. The research seeks to critically explore the local-global dynamic as it manifests in the school’s official curriculum and the students’ lived-world experiences, especially with reference to their interaction with the media-scape, which in turn bears implications on dissolution and re-construction of students’ identities.Theoretically, the research draws upon discourses of critical sociology, especially the notions of structuration (Giddens, 1993), to analyze the localglobal dynamic, and structural, which conceives agency as an innovative and intuitive self (Bourdieu, 1989), as well as post-colonial perspectives to illuminate historical and political contexts that have shaped the locality within which the agency in question is situated (Rizvi, 2004). Subsequently, the research employs an ethnographic research method. In this respect, monological and dialogical data were generated through participant observation, focus group discussions, semistructured and open-ended interviews, participant-made visuals,document/textbook analysis, observation and analysis of the school’s material culture, and home-visits. The data analysis was informed by Carspecken’s (1996) methodological guide.The research finds the schooling and media as globalizing and localizing sites for the youth. The official curriculum, especially the Pakistan Studies textbook, constructs a sense of narrow political nationalism that seems to inform the students’ sense of national identity. The local/national reference is constituted by three complex interrelated discourses: religious/ideological (reference of Islam); linguistic nationalism (Urdu language); and territorial (juridical-legal bounded-space). Furthermore, the official text constructs the local as national (political) and ethnic as (sub-national) references, whereby the national identity overrides the sub-national/ethnic identities.With reference to the global, the official text constructs the global as transnational/supra-national, as religious/social reference to Ummah (Muslim collectivity), and as international. Whilst the school text mainly provides a nationstate-centric view of the world and the other, the media-scape in particular and the lived-world in general open up multiple references of belonging, identifications, and differences for the students. Beyond schooling, high school youth are actively interacting with the global through the media-scape (Appadurai, 1996). Agency’s interaction with the media-scape in particular and dis-embedding mechanisms in general is found to be generating de/territorialization (Inda & Rosaldo, 2002) which is bringing both anxiety as well as opportunity for the self.The students’ interaction with the global, especially through Bollywood and Hollywood media, at times produces a sense of disjuncture for students, between the mediated global values, attitudes, and life-styles and the normatively acceptable local values and life styles. Furthermore, students confront a sense of colonial difference (Mignolo, 2000), especially in the realm of knowledge, which leads them to feel a cultural gap between the West and the East, and the global and the local. As a reaction, the students are found to be exercising nostalgia as a counter-discourse to the hegemony of Euro-centric modernity/knowledge. This experience of disjuncture and colonial difference generates frustration as well as a state of ambivalence for students.