Teacher Education in Transition: What Are We Preparing Teachers For?
In this blogpost, Aisha Naz Ansari examines revisions in Pakistan’s teacher education curriculum, querying the balance between teacher preparation that is aimed at developing education professionals or professional teachers.
After more than a decade, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has revised Pakistan’s teacher education curriculum, with a summary released in April 2025. The revisions reflect a concerted effort to modernise teacher education and bring it into closer alignment with international trends. On paper, the reforms are ambitious, wide-ranging, and conceptually robust. At the same time, collectively, they prompt an important question: do these changes primarily strengthen preparation for classroom teaching, or do they gradually reorient teacher education towards a broader education studies framework with a more diffuse professional focus?
The revised framework introduces several notable structural changes. Previously distinct B.Ed. (Hons.) programmes for elementary and secondary teachers have been merged into a single four-year degree intended to serve all school levels. Similarly, earlier distinctions between pre-service and in-service pathways, particularly within the Associate Degree in Education (ADE) and B.Ed. (in-service), have been reconfigured. The reintroduction of shorter-duration in-service B.Ed. (1.5) programme under the revised teacher education roadmap also introduces additional pathways for practising teachers.
Perhaps the most consequential feature of the new curriculum is the introduction of specialisation within teacher education. Prospective teachers are now required to select six courses from one of 29 specialisation areas, ranging from Early Childhood Education, Mathematics Education, Teacher Professional Development, and Educational Assessment to Artificial Intelligence in Education, Educational Entrepreneurship, and multiple strands of Special Education. These areas reflect contemporary priorities and emerging global discourses in education. As fields of knowledge, they are relevant and increasingly prominent in international education systems.
The issue, therefore, is not the inclusion of specialisations per se, but the professional orientations they are designed to support. A closer reading of the revised curricula suggests that many of these areas align closely with the preparation of education professionals such as researchers, trainers, planners, policy analysts, quality assurance specialists, or education technologists. These roles play an important part within education systems. However, they require a different configuration of knowledge and skills from those demanded by sustained classroom teaching.
A related pattern is visible in the introduction of interdisciplinary courses. While interdisciplinary perspectives are widely recognised as pedagogically valuable, offerings such as Economics of Education, Power and Politics, and Media Education frame education primarily as an academic field embedded within the social sciences. What appears less fully articulated is an integrated model of teacher preparation that systematically links subject knowledge, pedagogy, classroom practice, and student learning.
Professional education courses continue to occupy a significant proportion of programme credit hours, which is a positive feature of the revised design. However, subject content specialisation, historically a defining component of teacher education, has largely been subsumed within the broader specialisation structure. Mathematics Education and STEM Education, for instance, exist as separate strands in specialisation choices. Courses within Mathematics Education tend to focus primarily on disciplinary content, while STEM Education courses emphasise integration, instructional scaffolding, and curriculum design. While these orientations are individually valuable, the overall number of subject-specific content courses remains limited. Students typically select a small number of general courses from the natural sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities, often without sustained engagement with subject-specific pedagogy. In addition, pedagogical coursework is unevenly distributed across programmes, allowing some prospective teachers to graduate with relatively limited exposure to how particular subjects are taught in classroom contexts.
Teaching practice, the core of any teacher education programme, also varies considerably across pathways. Requirements for school observation, teaching practicum, and internships differ by programme duration, with limited explanation for these differences. Although the introduction of a six- to eight-week internship represents a positive development, the absence of clear guidance regarding its placement within classroom settings potentially limits its effectiveness.
Despite clearly articulated programme intentions, the revised curricula allocate relatively limited space for the systematic practice of learned knowledge in relation to the breadth of conceptual and disciplinary content introduced. While candidates engage with educational theory, research, ethics, and emerging areas within education, opportunities to consistently apply this knowledge in real classrooms remain constrained. Teaching practice and practicum experiences are neither sufficiently extended nor uniformly structured to support the translation of theory into instructional expertise. As a result, effective teaching which is understood as the ability to plan, enact, assess, and adapt instruction in response to learners, appears to receive less curricular emphasis than other disciplinary orientations within education. This configuration positions teaching as one among several professional applications of education, rather than as the central organising purpose of teacher preparation.
In practical terms, this means that a prospective teacher should have clear intention to prior to joining teaching as a profession to go with their required specialisation and, if that is not clear at the time of selecting specialisation, the teacher will not fit within classroom teaching. With such as revision, hypothetically, the increase in specialist in other domains will happen. Yet the professional demands of teachers’ roles substantially emphasise upon classroom teaching that requires subject knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, an understanding of how learners acquire specific concepts, and the capacity to diagnose and respond to students’ misconceptions in real time, competencies reflected in national professional standards for teachers. By contrast, policy- or systems-oriented specialisations prioritise analytical, administrative, and macro-level skills that are largely removed from everyday classroom instruction.
This curricular revision gradually shifts teacher education towards a broader ‘education specialist’ profile. Graduates may develop conceptual familiarity with contemporary education debates but may have more limited grounding in the science of teaching specific subjects to specific learners. Over time, this risks diluting teachers’ professional identity as subject specialists and skilled pedagogues, framing teaching as a general application of educational knowledge rather than as a distinct professional practice.
These considerations are particularly salient in the context of Pakistan’s ongoing learning crisis. On the one hand, national and international assessments consistently indicate that a substantial proportion of students struggle with foundational literacy and numeracy well into the primary and lower secondary years (TIMSS, 2019; Bhutta et al., 2025; PIE, 2023). On the other hand, classroom practices in many settings remain largely unidirectional, with teachers primarily delivering content and students having limited opportunities for active participation in the learning process (Bhutta & Rizvi, 2022). While questions are sometimes raised about the necessity of active student engagement, both the national curriculum and a growing body of empirical evidence highlight the central role of teaching quality and student engagement in improving learning outcomes (Bhutta & Rizvi, 2022; GoP, 2025). These learning gaps are closely linked to classroom-level processes, including instructional quality, pacing, differentiation, and feedback. Addressing them requires teachers equipped with specialised expertise, such as diagnosing learning levels, teaching foundational skills, managing diverse classrooms, and supporting students who are already behind curricular expectations.
Such demands call for teachers who combine theoretical understanding with strong pedagogical content knowledge and well-developed instructional skills. Competencies such as teaching reading to early or struggling readers, building number sense, and adapting lessons for diverse learners require sustained practice and focused preparation. When teacher education programmes prioritise breadth across education-related domains over depth in teaching practice, they risk leaving graduates underprepared for the realities of classrooms.
In this context, the evolving balance within teacher education curricula raises questions about alignment with system-level needs. At a time when curricula, assessments, and classrooms require teachers with sharper instructional expertise and stronger integration of subject knowledge and pedagogy, teacher education appears to be moving towards greater abstraction and professional diversification. Without recalibrating this balance, reforms intended to strengthen the sector may unintentionally widen the gap between teacher preparation and classroom realities.
In summary, the revised curricula signal a subtle but significant reorientation of teacher education. They increasingly resemble programmes designed to develop a broad range of education professionals, rather than programmes centred primarily on classroom teaching and student learning. This distinction matters. Pakistan’s education system continues to face persistent challenges related to learning outcomes and teaching quality. In this context, teacher education must sustain a clear and focused commitment to teaching.
This is not an argument against specialisation or interdisciplinary engagement. Rather, it is a call for clarity of purpose. Teacher education can, and should, engage with education as a discipline, while remaining firmly anchored in teaching as a profession. As universities begin implementing these revisions, their long-term impact will be reflected not only in course titles, but in the professional identities graduates develop, whether primarily as education specialists or as classroom teachers. The implications of this choice will ultimately be felt where they matter most, in classrooms and in student learning.
About the Author
Aisha Naz Ansari is a PhD Education Student and NINE DTP ESRC Scholar at Durham University, UK. Her research interests include teacher education, systematic reviews, educational technology, educational psychology, public-private partnerships, and teaching and learning in classrooms.