ARE TEACHERS READY TO TEACH GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP? INSIGHTS FROM PAKISTANI PRESERVICE TEACHERS ABOUT TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAMS

Abstract

Citizenship education is, arguably, an important part of all education. It is important that the teacher trainees be aware of the concepts involved and be ready to teach them. This study explored how a Masters in Education course prepared trainee teachers to teach citizenship. Perceptions of thirteen trainee teachers enrolled in a Master in Education course were taken through an open-ended questionnaire at the beginning and end of their one year course. The study reveals that the participants’ conception of the purpose of education in general broadened over time and they reported to have grown intellectually and psychologically as teachers. However, the respondents were unable to properly define citizenship education and global citizens even after 11 months in the course. On the basis of the findings, we argue that teacher education courses are not well-equipped to prepare trainee teachers to teach global citizenship. It is therefore, recommended that further research be carried out in other contexts to check the generalisability of this study.