Staff Development Needs in Pakistan Higher Education

Staff development is very significant for the achievement of overall goals of higher education in Pakistan. The success of innovations depends largely upon the skills of instructors; but in Pakistan, the people with a simple masters degree (without any pedagogical training) are inducted as teaching staff at the university level, so it is time to explore whether or not the inducted teachers feel the need for training. Further to be explored are areas in which they are interested in being trained. Therefore, the objectives of study were 1) to explore the training needs for university teaching staff, 2) to identify the areas in which development is needed by the teaching staff of the universities in Pakistan, and 3) formulation of recommendations for staff development in Pakistan to improve education at the higher level. The sample comprised of 20% randomly-selected teaching staff of ten selected universities, degree-awarding institutions from the public sector, and 40% teaching staff of ten selected universities from the private sector. A self-developed questionnaire, consisting of 41 items to be responded to on a five-point Likert scale and two open-ended questions, was used to collect data. The principal researcher approached all the respondents personally by repeated visits and got the completed questionnaires, so this questionnaire also served the purpose of an interview. The analysis of data revealed that the university teachers need training in the following areas: philosophy of education, Islamic philosophy of education, educational psychology, research techniques, professional trends, professional competencies, professional attitude, professional ethics ,global innovations in teaching strategies, classroom management, counselling and guidance, student discipline, communication skills, learning theories, and supervision. Therefore, it is recommended that they may be included in the training curriculum of university teachers. (Contains 6 tables.)