Open AccessTop-Down English Policy and Bottom-Up Teacher Take: An Interview-Based Insight from the Balochistan Province of Pakistan
Author(s) -
Liaquat Ali Channa,
Sania Gul Panezai
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the qualitative report
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.335
H-Index - 35
ISSN - 2160-3715
DOI - 10.46743/2160-3715/2019.3841
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , subject (documents) , pedagogy , mathematics education , sociology , political science , psychology , medical education , medicine , library science , philosophy , linguistics , computer science
Provinces in Pakistan have initiated teaching English as a compulsory subject in Grade 1 onwards in their government schools by following the latest National Education Policy (NEP) of 2009. The policy states that the measure shall develop the students’ English proficiency that would later help them compete. In this study we intended to understand whether the policy was implemented successfully in the province of Balochistan. By drawing upon the language planning framework proposed by Kaplan, Baldauf, and Kamwangamalu (2011) and applying convenient sampling technique, the researchers conducted thirty-one semi-structured interviews with urban and rural male and female teachers who teach in Grades 1 to 5. We found that issues such as limited teaching time for the English subject, lack of qualified teachers, inappropriate English textbooks, teachers’ customary teaching methodology, paucity of resources, and gap between policymakers and practitioners impacted the policy. The study offers recommendations that could help the Pakistani policymakers to align the policy with practice, research, and the teachers’ voices in order to achieve the desired outcomes.