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This study explores the experiences of religious minority teachers in Pakistani public and private schools, emphasising the complex interaction of identity, workplace dynamics, classroom interactions, and institutional policies. The literature review highlights how Pakistan's education system, shaped by national policies that stress Islamic values, uses textbooks to influence students' identities, often reflecting political compromises and potentially marginalising non-Muslims. Using a qualitative research approach and a case study method, this study concentrates on Christian teachers in five major cities in Pakistan. Data were gathered through focus group discussions, with participants divided into groups from government (state) and Christian schools. The results show that religious identity is vital for these teachers, who frequently face subtle and overt discrimination, especially in government schools where they encounter social exclusion, promotion obstacles, and pressure to adopt Islamic cultural expressions. In classrooms, teachers self-censor to avoid blasphemy accusations, which limits dialogue beyond Islamic topics and hampers students' critical thinking and social development. Institutional policies and societal fears of blasphemy add new restraints to their teaching freedom and lead to biased assessment practices that disadvantage non-Muslim students. The study suggests updating textbooks to include positive stories of minorities, providing anti-discrimination training for school staff, creating merit-based promotion systems, and offering legal protections against blasphemy accusations to build a more inclusive education system.

The textbook is an important and powerful tool used by the state to reproduce the social and cultural habits of a group, most often, of the majority group’s social and cultural imaginations. The habitus produces and instills the world-view about society, the social and cultural values that a state valorized and would like pupils to internalize and make it part of their world-view. This study analyzes the English textbook published by the state textbook boards (Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh) for the academic year 2018-2019 for pupils of classes four to eight. The textbook content was analyzed using the Qualitative Content Analysis method. The content of 15 textbooks was digitized (scanned and made readable) to electronically categorized the text into categories using Nvivo 12 Plus software. The analysis revealed that the content is focused on developing and promoting Islamic habitus through stories weaved around family, making it a core component of a Muslim country. The family members practiced Islamic values, social and cultural, not only through their everyday lives at home, in school, and at other public places but also within their community through the celebration of cultural and religious festivals. The textbooks presented the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and his family’s life as an ideal life to be lead by all, whether Muslims or non-Muslims. The textbook highlighted the ‘good,’ the ‘bad,’ valorizing the former and stigmatizing the latter to encourage pupils to develop an Islamic world-view. The textbooks fail to look into the micro-level national habitus, that is, portraying the habitus of its minorities, ethnic and religious, as the content did not integrate their habitus into the national habitus of Pakistan, making it the habitus of the majority. The current fast globalizing world needed to be presented to pupils a world-view, and this required, broadening the scope of textbook content to make it reflective of true Pakistani habitus aligned and rooted in the humane global world-view.

Pakistan has constantly been in the news since the September 9, 2001, attack in New York, USA, and its education system and curriculum have seen a lot of interest from academics, researchers, and civil society organizations, both locally and globally. These researchers explored many aspects such as the concept of Jihad and its connection with violence against religious minorities, the construction of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, the national, religious, and cultural identity but the development, promotion, and preservation of spiritual capital (SC) remained unexplored. This study was undertaken to take stock of the SC considered worthwhile to be preserved and promoted through language textbooks prepared for elementary school children by the Government of Pakistan. The study used a qualitative interpretive/constructivist research paradigm and chose qualitative content analysis as the data analysis method. The data for this study was taken from language textbooks (12 English and 12 Urdu) and semi-structured interview data, collected using a focus group discussion data collection strategy. This study found a very strong link between pupils’ SC and the stories presented to them in the language textbooks showing the rootedness of pupils' SC in Islam, its teachings, and history. The study also showed pupils struggling to modify and expand their SC by including the global SC perspective in their already constructed set of SC. This study recommends that the textbook authorities should make the language textbooks' content inclusive and add global stories emphasizing universal SC. Pakistan has constantly been in the news since the September 9, 2001, attack in New York, USA, and its education system and curriculum have seen a lot of interest from academics, researchers, and civil society organizations, both locally and globally. These researchers explored many aspects such as the concept of Jihad and its connection with violence against religious minorities, the construction of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, the national, religious, and cultural identity but the development, promotion, and preservation of spiritual capital (SC) remained unexplored. This study was undertaken to take stock of the SC considered worthwhile to be preserved and promoted through language textbooks prepared for elementary school children by the Government of Pakistan. The study used a qualitative interpretive/constructivist research paradigm and chose qualitative content analysis as the data analysis method. The data for this study was taken from language textbooks (12 English and 12 Urdu) and semi-structured interview data, collected using a focus group discussion data collection strategy. This study found a very strong link between pupils’ SC and the stories presented to them in the language textbooks showing the rootedness of pupils' SC in Islam, its teachings, and history. The study also showed pupils struggling to modify and expand their SC by including the global SC perspective in their already constructed set of SC. This study recommends that the textbook authorities should make the language textbooks' content inclusive and add global stories emphasizing universal SC.

Television dramas are considered an important tool to construct and communicate a certain identity of a state or a group and this has been used by all states and groups irrespective of their geographical location and political, cultural, social, and religious affiliation. The use of TV content has proved an effective tool for all types of governance systems to construct and present states or a group's narrative and perspective. The TV dramas made in Turkey and China are also constructing a certain notion of Turkish and Chinese societies. This study analyzed the data collected in focus group discussions from undergraduate students after they have watched the chosen Turkish and Chinese TV dramas, one Turkish and one Chinese drama focusing on how female characters were constructed and presented in the dramas. The discussion revealed that students found the portrayal of female characters very different from the real-world stories of women in Turkey and China but at the same time they also thought that these dramas could prove a turning point in changing the male-dominated perspective of these societies.

The current research analysed the role of Indonesian Council of Ulama in halal certification after the enactment of Law No. 33 of 2014. The Indonesian Council of Ulama is Indonesia's peak clerical body with the authority to specify halal and Haram fatwas of a product. It plays a crucial role in helping the government to assure halal certification of the product before it is consumed. According to publicly available data, there are 85 percent of food, beverages, and cosmetic products with unidentified halal certification circulating in Indonesia. Moreover, there are foods and beverages that put halal label illegally without any halal testing on the products. This issue may cause concern for Indonesian people, as majority of them are Muslims. The current study applied library research method to retrieve secondary data on halal certification of food and beverages, which was in accordance with the Law No. 33 of 2014 on Halal Product Guarantee. The study determined that the involvement of the Indonesian Council of Ulama to establish legal certainty for halal and Haram food and beverage products after the enactment of Law No. 33 of 2014 for Guaranteed Halal Products (JPH) was critical. Even though, the halal certification procedure is handled by BPJPH, the Indonesian Council of Ulama has a role to play in halal certification by issuing a halal fatwa for a product. It also helps to accredit Halal Inspection Agency and certifying halal auditors.

 The present study explores factors that contribute to the making of career and study choices of female students enrolled in postgraduate programmes in Pakistan. This study collected data from students enrolled in Masters and MPhil programmes using a focus group discussion data collection strategy. The focus of data analysis was to unearth reasons given by the participants of their career choices and discover factors that influenced their career choice. The focus group discussions revealed that family and female representation in textbooks were the main reasons for their choices. Female role models that could inspire them to select a particular profession were missing in the textbooks. To address this gap and omission and to help female students in making better study and career choices, this study suggests that the textbook regime in Pakistan should make more space for female-centered content and present to pupils the life stories of successful women in different fields.

   The number of women joining the teaching profession has risen in general. In addition, the number of women academics in other faculties and departments in universities has gone up as Pakistan has opened new women-only universities, some having women Vice Chancellors. However, women are generally absent from higher-up and decision-making positions in higher education, and the current paper investigates this issue. Although several researchers have earlier explored this phenomenon, this study attempts to assess it from the students‘ perspective. Therefore, the question of women as managers in higher education was placed before sixty female students enrolled in postgraduate programmes of four private and two public sector universities. Each research participant was provided enough time to consider and answer the query ―why are there no women in higher leadership positions in universities in Pakistan in co-education set-ups?‖ Each of the in-depth discussion sessions, moderated by the researcher, resulted in creating rich data, which helps in comprehending why academically qualified women are not able to break the glass ceiling and move upward in their professional careers.

The textbook is an important and powerful tool used by the state to reproduce the social and cultural habits of a group, most often, of the majority group's social and cultural imaginations. The habitus produces and instills the world-view about society, the social and cultural values that a state valorized and would like pupils to internalize and make it part of their world-view. This study analyzes the English textbook published by the state textbook boards (Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh) for the academic year 20182019 for pupils of classes four to eight. The textbook content was analyzed using the Qualitative Content Analysis method. The content of 15 textbooks was digitized (scanned and made readable) to electronically categorized the text into categories using Nvivo 12 Plus software. The analysis revealed that the content is focused on developing and promoting Islamic habitus through stories weaved around family, making it a core component of a Muslim country. The family members practiced Islamic values, social and cultural, not only through their everyday lives at home, in school, and at other public places but also within their community through the celebration of cultural and religious festivals. The textbooks presented the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and his family's life as an ideal life to be lead by all, whether Muslims or non-Muslims. The textbook highlighted the 'good,' the 'bad,' valorizing the former and stigmatizing the latter to encourage pupils to develop an Islamic world-view. The textbooks fail to look into the micro-level national habitus, that is, portraying the habitus of its minorities, ethnic and religious, as the content did not integrate their habitus into the national habitus of Pakistan, making it the habitus of the majority. The current fast globalizing world needed to be presented to pupils a worldview, and this required, broadening the scope of textbook content to make it reflective of true Pakistani habitus aligned and rooted in the humane global world-view.

The use of Information and Communication technology (ICT) in schools in Pakistan has been increasing throughout the last ten years. This study explores the experiences of professionally qualified secondary school teachers regarding the integration of ICT in the classrooms for effective teaching and learning. A survey research design was adopted to conduct this study. The population consisted of teachers who have obtained their Bachelor and Master Degrees in Education from teacher education colleges during the last five years. A survey questionnaire was designed to collect data and SPSS 20 was used to analyze the data. The study discovered that most of the teachers lack the ability to integrate ICT in the classroom because they found themselves poorly prepared and not motivated to do so. The teachers who participated in this study presented solutions to the problems, such as investment in transforming schools into technologically friendly schools, professional development of teachers, improving support mechanism.