Enhancing Teaching Effectiveness: The Significance of Subject Matter Proficiency in Alignment with Pakistan’s National Professional Standards for Teachers
Keywords:
Subject Matter Knowledge, Content Knowledge, National Professional StandardsAbstract
For the purpose of raising the standard of education across the country, Pakistan has instituted the STEP program to augment teacher training. Funded by USAID and developed with assistance from UNESCO, this program is being carried out by the Policy and Planning Wing of the Ministry of Education. Strengthening Teacher Education in Pakistan (STEP) aims to raise the bar for all educators in the country. Along with collaborators from every province in Pakistan, it developed and implemented the Professional Standards for Teachers (PST). It is possible to adapt and expand the requirements of these professional standards to include in-service teachers and educator programs, even though they were originally developed for pre-service teachers. For educators, there is a set of ten educational standards. Priority one among these is expertise in the relevant field, such as Subject Matter Proficiency. Examining how well educators understand their subjects was the primary goal of this research. The national professional standards served as the basis for the development of an observational checklist for this study, which included nineteen items. Teachers instructing biology classes in Hyderabad district secondary schools made up the study’s population. Statistics tools like percentage, mean, and frequency were used to analyze the data. Most educators recognize the significance of subject-matter expertise in light of national professional standards for educators, according to the study results.
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