PAKISTAN ALLIANCE FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD
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Volume 12| July-September, 2021 |
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As part of the ECD workforce development programme, Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood (PAFEC) designed an online course on ECD, tilted as Early Childhood Development – The Promise of Endless Opportunities. The course began on June 15, 2021 with an opening ceremony. Around 100 participants including students and faculty members from partner universities (Allama Iqbal Open University, Fatima Jinnah Women University, Federal College of Education, Shaheed Benazir Bhutto Women University, Peshawar, The University of Haripur, Sukkur IBA University) and some individual participants joined the course. The course focused on the areas such as importance of ECD, phases/stages of child development, significance of 1st 1000 days, factors affecting brain development, developmental domains, age-appropriate milestones, landscape of ECD in Pakistan, rationale for early investment and proposed ECD/ECCE programme for Pakistan. Out of the 100 participants who had joined the course initially, 75 participants completed the course, attending all the sessions and taking part in the group assignments. The rest were not able to attend all the sessions due to issues with internet connectivity and their busy schedules.
The course intended to develop foundational understanding of Early Childhood Development, and Early Childhood Care and Education focusing on the child’s holistic development (social, emotional, cognitive, language, physical development) learning, care, protection and well-being from zero to eight years of age amongst the students, teachers, parents, aspirants, caregivers, researchers, and entrepreneurs. The course encompassed early development, learning and care with a particular focus on discovering connections between theory, research, policy, and professional practice. The certificate course provided a foundational qualification to the participants to become a specialized ECD/ECCE teacher, child care practitioner, advocate, entrepreneur, researcher, and/or a well-informed parent. It also familiarized them with the Single National Curriculum Framework on Early Childhood Care & Education, Global best Practices, Sustainable Development Goals, with a focus on Goal 4.2, Nurturing Care Framework, UN Conventions on the Rights of the Children (with a focus on the four principles, i.e., best interest of a child, non-discrimination, survival and development, and participation) and health, nutrition standards for children between the ages of zero to eight.
The course consisted of 16 sessions; 3 sessions per week and each session lasting for 2 to 3 hours. It used a blended learning approach, consisting of the following four elements:
1. A 2-3-hour interactive online teaching and discussions three times a week (for 5 weeks)
2. Online self-study materials, such as presentations, case studies, readings and videos
3. Practical homework tasks to carry out in their own school/home and group assignments
4. Each group was asked to make a presentation at the end of the course which they did
The feedback received from the course participants at the end of the course showed that they had thoroughly enjoyed the sessions and learnt from the highly enriching content being used in the sessions as well as shared through reading materials.
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Glimpse of an online class |
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Department of Elementary and Teacher Education (DE&TE) in Collaboration with the Office of Research, Innovation and Communication (ORIC), Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) signed an MoU with Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood (PAFEC). The purpose of the MoU is to disseminate essential practices of Early Childhood Development and Education amongst practitioners, academia and all other related stakeholders. It aims to align the courses offered in Early Childhood Care & Education (ECCE) with the Single National Curriculum for ECCE and to bridge the gap between theory and practice. It also aims to build the capacity of LCWU faculty in reviewing and conducting ECCE courses using latest global research and pedagogical concepts. Furthermore, the partnership will enable the faculty members to improve and develop accredited certificate, diploma, MS, and PhD courses for ECD/ECCE.
The signing ceremony was attended by Prof. Dr. Bushra Mirza, Vice Chancellor of LCWU, Khadija Khan, Programme Director of Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood, Dr. Asma Shahid Kazi, CoD & Assistant Professor, DE&TE at LCWU, Dr. Aqsa Shabbir, Director ORIC, and other faculty members of LCWU.
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MoU Signing between LCWU and PAFEC |
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Federal College of Education, Islamabad a partner intuition of PAFEC organised a two-day virtual conference on ‘Global Academia During and Post COVID-19’ on September 29th & 30th, 2021. PAFEC was assigned the concurrent session on Early Childhood Care & Education during and post COVID-19. The session was conducted on Day-II of the conference. It included three paper presentations, two keynote speeches and a concluding session. Key topics covered: Who cares for the Caregiver? SDIR Parenting Intervention Model and Parenting Discipline Practices in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, Play and its Implications for Child Development: Caregivers’ Perspectives from ABC village in Upper Chitral, A study of Problems being faced by Education Mangers and Teachers in Implementation of ECCE Curriculum, Occupational Therapy as a Strategic for Foster Learning of Children with Mental Health Problems in Early Years at Karachi, Pakistan. For more details, please click on the following link:
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Glimpses of the two-day virtual conference on ‘Global Academia During and Post COVID-19’ |
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Ms. Khadija Khan, Programme Director, Pakistan Alliance for Early Childhood was invited to the School Launching Ceremony of Sunbeams School System, Golra-Branch, Islamabad. Sunbeams launched the school in collaboration with National Education Foundation and JICA. |
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Ms. Khadija Khan, participated in a talk orgainsed by the Daily Mountain Pass(web-television) on the role of parents in Early Childhood Development and issues related to ECD. Explaining the importance of ECD, she said that it provides the basis for the whole life, therefore, it is essential to ensure nurturing care and support even before the child is born. While talking about brain development, she said that it is a robust process: genes provide the blueprint while the environment, early experiences and the relationships in which children are exposed to, shape the quality of their brain development. The most rapid period of brain development, she said, occurs in the first three years of life during which the pathways for future health, learning and behaviour are established. She said, healthy brain development requires adequate nutrition to feed the brain, stimulation to spark learning and protection to buffer children against harm. Parents she said are the first caregivers, role models, influencers and teachers of the child. Therefore, it is absolutely essential for learn to learn about positive, responsive and proactive parenting.
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Aysha Adil Shah and Dr. Lubna Saghir established NigranCare in Islamabad as a child care and support service for working women in 2014. A social development professional working in the realm of women’s rights and economic empowerment within International Aid Agencies, Aysha recognised this as being a fundamental area of support needed by women in order to pursue work and personal-growth aspirations. Together with her friend from university in the UK – Lubna, a British-born Kashmiri and Family GP – Nigran was birthed with an aspiration to provide a transparent and accountable guardianship to children in their parents’ absence.
Over the years, having worked with innumerable families and raised children from infancy to school going ages and beyond, Nigran evolved from a workingwomen’s service provider to becoming an integral part of the families lives – the proverbial ‘village that raises children’. Catering to the care, upbringing, learning and development of children aged 3 months to 12 years, Nigran transitioned into a community that is founded on relationships of trust and mutual wellbeing between carers, parents, families and early childhood specialists to ensure an enabling and fulfilled childhood for the collectives children.
A fundamental shift that Nigran has enabled within its community is the recognition and respect for the Caregivers role. By training women that come from disadvantaged backgrounds into an able, dignified and trusted Care workforce, Nigran’s success is interlinked with the raising of its Child Minders status and removing parent’s negative entitlement and bias against what they hitherto referred to as ‘Ayas’.
Where the Caregiver role thrived, the most unexpected challenge faced by Nigran was a lack of inspired and adequately trained teachers in the Early Years realm! An absence of both skill and passion, a boxed one-size-fits-all approach, and lack of commitment to the young lives in their charge, bore witness to the massive lacuna in this critically important profession.
It is this gap that birthed KHUDI, piloted this summer 2021. Conceived by the team at Nigran, together with Dr. Robert Sampson, a British Educationist, Mahpara Ghori and Amra Mubashir, both Human Resource Development specialists, KHUDI is based on Allama Iqbal’s philosophy of Self- Actualization and is envisioned to lead to nurturing a new generation of motivated, creative and self-directed early years teachers – that in turn nurture and enable Pakistan’s young.
With a team of likeminded early childhood specialists and enthusiasts coming on board, KHUDI piloted as an internship programme this summer (June 14th to August 6th 2021), capitalising on the unique opportunity presented by a standardised framework available under the SNC – a critical development towards safeguarding an equitable education for all of Pakistan’s children. Not just it’s most elite! Under the guidance of its Program Director, Dr. Robert Sampson, and the Lead Trainer, Margreet Jasper, six interns were selected from the applicants ranging from experienced teachers to a 19 year old yet to finish her university education! Through the 7-week programme, the interns were guided to employ a practical approach to translating the Curriculum – devising creative, engaging and developmentally appropriate activities under its seven Competency Areas – and implement it with 4- & 5-year-olds. Mentored by Rob, Margreet and a panel of committed Trainers, the interns were enabled on two fronts:
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Inner: the Being and personal workings of a great early years teacher; ones intent and motivation; the pursuit of mindfulness and its consequent impact on children; shedding prejudices and biases; becoming the child’s safe space
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Outer: unlearning didactic teaching methods to acquire skills that convert curricula into learning outcomes for young children through methods that create connections, are play based, holistic and integrated; encouraging curiosity, imagination, analytic capacities; inculcating tangible skills
Specialist resource persons introduced the interns to wide ranging insights – from the expected, i.e. practical approaches to effective teaching to hitherto unexplored areas such as mindfulness and intent, creating inclusive classrooms, play-based therapies, tools for removing gender and other prejudices from ones teaching, learning through reinforcement, writing and narrating stories effectively, etc. Both the practical skills and the aspirational sessions provided deep and insightful learning for our 6 enablers.
At the end of the 7 weeks the interns felt they’ve come out of the process a changed person, with innumerable takeaways on account of the programmes hands-on method. Being left at the deep end (in a roomful of children!) where they struggled in grasping the children’s attention, this also aided them to think out of the box and design better activities that deliver both learning outcomes and are engaging for the target age group. For this, they had to learn to develop a rapport with the children, understanding each one, assessing what their individual needs were and how these would be met in a collective classroom!
Children at KHUDI learnt best when the interns reverted to them. Unlearning the usual method of didactic teaching, a form of dumping information that assumes the child is an empty box that the teacher must fill with facts and knowledge, was key. Instead, the childrens curiosities were engaged and imaginations widened by the teacher reverting the questions back to them – introducing a topic, material, situation and asking them: what, why, how, when, where, who. This was a game-changer for both the interns and the children! We observed children thinking, imagining, drawing, using materials available in the class room to create. Role playing and modeling was another tested technique that had brilliant results. Increasing inquisitiveness and excitement in the children about what was to come next! Used for a range of topics (from counting to body safety!) it stimulated children’s interest and kept them fully engaged in the act till the end. The children responded to questions eagerly and in some sessions, they repeated after the teachers.
The planned daily outdoor activities included two field visits to the forest and natural history museum - which brought up a whole other aspect of the children’s learning possibilities, demonstrating to the interns that their little minds are just as interested in rocks as they are in dinosaurs! This expanded the intern’s vision to consider taking learning outside of the classrooms and into the real world. Their plans to introduce special topics like ‘life under water’, geology and archeology in the museum resulted from this new insight. Learning through outdoor activities on premises included making volcanoes after the museum trip, counting all the circles in the natural environment, sowing seeds and nurturing their respective plants, holistically developing motor skills as well as their cognitive and social/emotional abilities.
The small learning corners developed by the interns provided the children with an opportunity to revisit their day and weeks learnings that were on display. Transferring learning through story telling was another successful technique. By making puppets out of old socks with the children, the stories these characters told were seen to be effectively engaging of their attention.
The core takeaway of the programme was the encouragement KHUDI provided the interns to find their individual rhythms as a teacher. Starting with knowing their own strengths and struggles, the teachers were encouraged to inculcate a routine for themselves and their children, setting the tone for their classrooms, the collective values to be adhered to, opening and closing the day, were all techniques that helped them find their inner voice as a teacher. Every morning ‘circle time’ was a great start where the children established their routine of daily dua and national song, as well as finding out what to expect through the day. Some days became even more inspiring when children took the lead to share what they wanted to do and KHUDI interns would either swiftly alter their plans or would promise the children ‘activities of their choice’ the following day. The trust and bond that developed between the children and the KHUDI interns in a span of weeks was heartening to observe.
The programme methodology included hands-on implementation by the interns (as detailed above), and aligned with it mentorship through observations, feedback and collective reflections at day end. The daily reflections session provided an opportunity for the interns to discuss each other’s activities and approaches, their success or failure, and to get observations and feedback from the KHUDI faculty. The critical and constructive thinking that this approach allowed was particularly useful for the wonderfully planned activities (on paper) that failed to engage children in practice! This enabled deeper reflection on the intern’s behalf: what went wrong, and how the approach may be changed to have a different result. This habit of self-reflection, inculcated through KHUDI, has enabled a fundamental shift of perspective in the interns. A journey of unlearning, letting go of the ego, and becoming mindful, responsive and proactive with the children in their custody.
While KHUDIs journey has just begun with this summers Pilot, its birth and triumph lies in the intent of its collaborators: conceived and implemented by a panel of experienced trainers and hosted by NigranCare, all working in an entirely volunteer capacity. Motivated solely by their belief in the collective ideology: Iqbals idea of Self Actualization. KHUDI and its interns are indebted to the time and contributions made to its learning journey by our committed faculty: Margreet Jasper (Dutch Educationist and Early Years Specialist), Amna Hafeez (Professor of Gender Studies in QAU), Dr. Shaugufta Jabeen (Paediatrician and specialist in Play Therapy for children with autism) and Afia Mansoor (Personal Transformation Consultant).
Our intention to nurture self-fulfillment in our trainee teachers, that in turn enables self-fulfillment in the children in their fundamental years, continues for the coming year. 2 out of the 6 interns (Yumna Imran and Andleeb Khalid) have been selected for further training and mentorship for the 2021-2022 academic year, whereby they will implement the Pre I Curriculum for the children at NigranCare.
Alongside this, Yumna and Andleeb will be mentored to design and develop innovative resources that build the SNC intention. KHUDI has initiated this already: developed by Yumna and Rob, under ‘Qaida bara Faida’ childrens first introduction to Urdu is made through a rearranging of the traditional sequence of its alphabet. The letter sounds are introduced in order of their frequency of usage in the Urdu vocabulary: the common and most repeated ones taught first, and the rare ones that are used least, taught last. This resequencing enables the child to be able to read words after recognising and learning only a handful of sounds! Empowering them with confidence and developing a love for the language, early on.
In the coming year, further training cycles will be opened up under KHUDI, taking in new interns – the programme encompassing an increased duration of 3 months per internship. The vision for KHUDI is to take its mentorship to areas where its most needed, to nurture a whole new generation of teachers equipped to implement the SNC with the intent that it has been developed: all of Pakistan’s children gaining a fair and equal opportunity to receive quality care and education in their early years.
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NigranCare Team with Ms. Khadija Khan, Progamme Director , PAFEC |
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Children are involved in Play |
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PAKISTAN ALLIANCE FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD (PAFEC) |
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