Use and Utility of Teacher Guides for Primary School Teachers in Punjab

This study is aimed at soliciting pubic primary school teachers’ viewpoints on use and utility of teacher guides, an initiative of government of the Punjab. Data were collected through focus group discussions of male and female teachers from District Sargodha. Teachers were asked to discuss need, importance and use of teacher guide and to suggest ways to improve. Focus group discussions were audio recorded, transcribed and analyzed for extracting themes. It was found that teachers acknowledged the need and importance of teacher guide for better teaching. It was noted from their discussion that teachers used Guides for lesson planning and activities but use of teacher guide was not optimal. Some of the teachers were using it in best possible way, while majority were using it occasionally. They highlighted difficulties and challenges like high workload, language of teacher guides and lack of learning material required for suggested activities. The y suggested revising guides for language, removing inconsistencies with respect to schedule of guide and academic calendar. They also suggested lower workload of teachers by recruiting new teachers, providing teachers with training to use guides and making monitoring and supervision more rigorous.