Globalization’s Grotesque Face: The Economic Oppression of Women Agriculture Workers in Pakistan

Pakistan’s economy is firmly linked to agriculture and food production. Since the inception of the country, no real land reforms have been undertaken, and the rural elite remains a major force in controlling agricultural land. At the same time, since the 1990s the country has also followed a neoliberal agenda, through the International Monetary Fund led structural adjustment programs, and then later after Pakistan’s entrance in the World Trade Organisation in1995. The trade liberalisation agenda of the advanced capitalist countries, especially the United States, have been consistently implemented in the country. In this context, it is clear that at least two different levels of political and economic forces are present in the rural economy. There is also no doubt that Pakistan also has a strong patriarchal society, which governs the social and economic norms of society.

Restructuring of Pre-Service Teacher Education Programs Based on Stakeholders Perceptions

Thesis Title: Restructuring of Pre-Service Teacher Education Programs Based on Stakeholders’ Perceptions This study was aimed at restructuring of pre-service teacher education programs based on stakeholders’ perceptions. It was based on descriptive research design. Objectives of the study were to assess the existing quality of teachers education programs (B.Ed. & B.Ed. Honours), to determine the problems that seems hindrances in the way of quality assurance in teacher education, to identify indicators that must be given utmost importance to ensure quality, to assert the satisfaction of prospective teachers, teacher educators and heads of teacher education institutes and to acquire the perception of school heads about the performance of trained teachers in order to assess the operative worth of prevalent teacher education programs so that better insight can be attained in order to develop model for restructuring of pre service teacher education programs. In order to achieve these objectives nine research questions were made. Population of the study was comprised on all teacher education institutions of Punjab and ICT (Islamabad Capital Territory), including Government Colleges for Elementary Teachers (GCETs), Colleges of Education (GCEs), University Departments of Education and Federal Colleges of Teacher Education. Through stratified random sampling technique 900 prospective teachers, 300 teacher educators of teacher education institutions and 30 heads of teacher education institutions were selected. Convenient sampling technique was adopted to select 30 heads of secondary schools of district Rawalpindi. After pilot study four different questionnaires were administered to each sample group in order to secure relevant data. Findings of the study indicated that there were many domains of teacher education programs including curriculum, teaching strategies, time duration of program, institutional environment, practical work, assessment techniques, admission criteria etc. that need to be focused and improvements are inevitably required to make teacher education programs more effective. Study proposed a model for restructuring of preservice teacher education programs, hypothesized that it would contribute to raise the capacity building of program and would facilitate pre-service education of prospective teachers on more professional lines. On the basis of extracted data it is recommended that changes in existing teacher education programs in the light of proposed model would be appreciative and would help to improve pre-service teacher education programs in province Punjab, Pakistan.