Exploring leadership practices in rural context of a developing country

The success or failure of any institution has closely been linked with the leadership practices exercised in the institution. Whereas the number of private schools is rapidly increasing in the rural context of Pakistan, the leadership practices of these institutions are interesting and timely questions to ponder upon. Drawing upon the data of a qualitative case study, this paper discusses the leadership practices in a private school in rural Pakistan. It is found that the school leaders in this context have still traditional approach to leadership with little possibilities of shared or distributed leadership. Since the private schools are owned by the individuals and the teachers are hardly involved in decision making processes, they show less motivation towards school activities and thus, there remains a gap between the expectations of the principal and the performance of the teachers. It is suggested that the leadership of these private institutions should have maximum exposure to updated management and leadership theories and practices if they have to successfully run their schools in this challenging and competitive era

The informal learning approaches of teachers in a secondary school in Pakistan

The advocates of informal learning believe that learning is not always necessarily planned rather it could also happen informally in the workplace. Does informal learning equally happen in every context and setting? Using a qualitative approach, this study explores the nature of teachers’ informal learning in a secondary school in rural Pakistan. Data were generated through interviews and observations. The study finds that though limited in nature, there are some informal learning activities which the teachers are engaged in. Most of the informal learning happens through observations of the practices of senior colleagues. Moreover, the teachers also learn from the experimentation through implementing externally acquired ideas and strategies in their classroom. Similarly, media has also been a source of informal learning for teachers in this context. The study concludes that the school has to enhance its links with external sources to create internal informal learning opportunities for teachers

Profesionalitas Aparatur Birokrasi Kecamatan Palu Barat Kota Palu Dalam Menjalankan Tugas Dan Fungsinya

This research aims at getting the deep understanding and answer of the facts toward problems releated to the professionalism of bureaucrat staffs of West Palu Sub-district. This was a qualitative research. The informants of this research were the chief of West Palu Sub-district, Secretary of West Palu Sub-district, the section head of the sub-district, and public user of the service. The informants were determined by using purposive sampling technique. Data were collected through observation, interview, and documentation. The technique of data analysis was done through data reduction, data display, and conclusion or verification. The conclusion was obtained from some of the whole configurative activities. The conclusion was also verified during the research. In order to analyze the data, the researcher adopted the Siagian's theory with the indicators: creativity, innovation, and responsiviness. The research result showed that the professionalism of bureaucrat staffs of West Palu Sub-district, Palu City, was not optimal yet in administering their jobs and functions, because all indicators analyzed did not have yet good result. In addition, some of the public participation improvement programs were not done, because of the limited budget and of the insufficient infrastructures to support the administration of their jobs and functions. The responses of bureaucrat staffs toward public claims were not done yet well

Is it the way to teach language the way we teach language? English language teaching in rural Pakistan

With the growing importance and need of English language in the global context, efforts are being made in the developing context to improve the quality of teaching English with the assumption that teaching of English facilitates the acquisition of English Language. What is Pakistani teachers approach to the teaching of English language and does the way they teach English facilitate the language acquisition? The current study explores this question at secondary level in the context of Chitral, a remote district of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province Pakistan. The researcher visited the randomly selected secondary schools and consulted English teachers interviewing them and observing the teaching and learning processes. The study reveals that in the context of Chitral, teaching of English is not different from teaching of other subjects such as social studies, history etc. Translation method is the dominant way to teach English and learners hardly get any opportunity to practice language skills in the classrooms. The reasons behind this approach to the teaching of English are; lack of purposefully trained teachers, non-availability of in-service courses for secondary level English teachers, memory driven exam system, overcrowded classrooms, teachers’ work load, shortage of resources and lack of ongoing support system. The study suggests that English teachers should be trained separately focusing teaching English as a language unlike other subjects

The possibilities and challenges of multigrade teaching in rural Pakistan

In rural Pakistan instruction frequently occurs in multigrade settings where, due to lack of teachers and space, two to three teachers teach six classes. Manyteachers lack the knowledge and skills to manage multigrade classes effectively as they have been trained for single-grade teaching. Thisqualitative study was conducted to explore the possibilities and challenges of implementing multigrade course strategies in four project schools. Based on the findings of the study, this paper argues that multigrade courses have positive impact upon the teaching learning practices of schools. However, government has to play a key role in sustaining the implementation and impact of multigrade course strategies

UPPC - Urdu Paraphrase Plagiarism Corpus

Paraphrase plagiarism is a significant and widespread problem and research shows that it is hard to detect. Several methods and automatic systems have been proposed to deal with it. However, evaluation and comparison of such solutions is not possible because of the unavailability of benchmark corpora with manual examples of paraphrase plagiarism. To deal with this issue, we present the novel development of a paraphrase plagiarism corpus containing simulated (manually created) examples in the Urdu language - a language widely spoken around the world. This resource is the first of its kind developed for the Urdu language and we believe that it will be a valuable contribution to the evaluation of paraphrase plagiarism detection systems