A COMPUTER ASSISTED ANALYSIS OF TEACHERS’ PERCEPTION ABOUT COURSE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Abstract

The paper aims to highlight the importance of teachers as curriculum developers. However, the significant issue in the education system in Pakistan is teachers’ inability to plan and implement a suitable curriculum. There is a significant dissatisfaction among parents, students, and teachers because of the poor performance of the Pakistani education system.  It is characterized by crises with a lack of teachers' involvement in curriculum planning, implementing, evaluating, managing, and administrating it in an educational program. The present study, therefore, investigates teachers’ perception on the concerned issue following Graves (2000) framework. The open-ended questionnaire was used as a tool to collect data. For this purpose, six lecturers were selected through a purposeful sampling technique from the Department of English, Foundation University School of Sciences & Technology, Rawalpindi. In this mixed method study, teachers’ willingness to share their part as curriculum developers was investigated through a questionnaire. The opened ended questionnaire was further examined to analyze constraints that teachers encounter as curriculum designers using QDA Miner. The findings concluded that all the teachers somehow were aware of the importance of curriculum design, learners' needs, and how it affects the entire teaching and learning process. The findings stated that sufficient training on curriculum design and assessing learners' needs are crucial to meeting the course objectives. Teachers need enough training, time, resources, and motivation through certain incentives. They are of the view that they are overburdened, it is, therefore, suggested that more teachers should be hired. The policymakers and curriculum designers can also go hand in hand and help each other to meet the challenges. It is recommended for future studies to involve principals, lecturers, and teachers who are interested in developing a curriculum. Moreover, future studies may use other research tools to have an in-depth analysis.