Dr Nasir Mahmood did a Masters in Science Education (MScEd) and another in Administrative Sciences (MAS) from the University of the Punjab before proceeding for a PhD from Tokyo Gakugei University on a Japanese government (Monbukagakusho) scholarship.

“I completed my PhD in Educational Psychology in 2004. Later, in 2007, I was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Leeds and worked at the University of Melbourne on the Australian Government’s Endeavour Executive Award in 2009,” says Dr Mahmood, who has also supervised eight PhD students till now. One of his 25 research papers has been awarded the Best Research Paper Award by Higher Education Commission (2010) and he has been on the editorial board of various national and international research journals. Currently, he is serving as an associate professor and chairman of the Department of Research and Evaluation at the Institute of Education and Research, University of the Punjab, Lahore.

While talking about quality education in Pakistan, Dr Mahmood says that the general public in Pakistan is quite dissatisfied with the state of public education in the country. “They are sending their children to government schools as a last resort. We are yet to enroll all school-going children in schools, which is a basic indicator of the government’s seriousness towards education in Pakistan. Even after six decades of independence we are yet to evolve a uniform education system for everyone in the country and the issue of the medium of instruction is still a debate. In presence of these fundamental issues, access and equity seem far beyond reach,” he points out.

“Pakistan is not a part of any international assessment exercise till now, therefore we can just speculate about the quality of education here as compared to the rest of the world. We should participate in international assessment studies such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study [TIMSS], Programme for International Student Assessment [PISA] or at least initiate any similar regional forum under the umbrella of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation [SAARC] for assessing our students’ competencies in comparison to students in neighboring countries and the rest of the world. A reasonable expansion in higher education has been seen during the last 15 years due to the efforts of the Higher Education Commission in Pakistan. The quality of faculty in universities, quality of research work in social sciences, relevance of courses offered at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and scholarship of the work produced needs to be addressed for reaping the fruit of investment incurred by Higher Education Commission on higher education.”

About his own university, the University of the Punjab, the professor says, “It is quite exciting to be a part of one of the best universities of the country and it is equally challenging at the same time. The university attracts students of relatively high merit and offers them a competitive environment in terms of academic standards, ideas to work on and exposure to professional organisation. When I joined, my department was a non-teaching research department and now it is a teaching department offering Masters in Educational Research and Assessment, a two-year degree programme. The programme specifically prepares trained manpower to carry out research on educational issues or work for governmental and non-governmental research organisations to systematically address the problems facing us today. We are also working closely with the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education [BISE] for improvement of quality of assessment in this country for improved measure of our students’ performance at terminal stages like grades five, eight, 10 and 12. The department is planning to start an MPhil programme in Educational Research and Assessment as well.”

Psychology is not normally encouraged much so his interest in the subject seems strange. “I am particularly interested in the learning processes. Educational Psychology helps us in understanding the way we learn. I started getting interested in this subject during my Masters. Effective teaching is a blend of teacher’s content expertise, pedagogical skills, and knowledge of students’ behaviours. It is not possible to help students in their process of learning without understanding their ways of learning. Educational Psychology helps teachers know ways of motivating and grooming the personality of students, identifying aptitudes of students and developing attitudes towards education. A teacher cannot be effective without knowing educational psychology,” he explains.

On the government’s approach towards the issue of education and research in today’s scenario, the professor says, “It is true that education is not a priority of the government in Pakistan and we spend two per cent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on average on education. Higher education received reasonable funds since the inception of Higher Education Commission, especially between 2002 and 2009. HEC has shown a keen interest in developing research culture in universities and have stared programmes leading towards improved research practices in university faculty and university culture. The effectiveness, worth and allocation by discipline can be debated but attention was paid to development of research in higher education. I personally feel that at times money was available for research but the system did not have the capacity to utilise that fund.”

Speaking about the improvements that can be bought into the education system, Dr Mahmood articulates, “We have pursued expansion in higher education since 2002 and have reasonably increased the number of higher education institutions in the country. The enrollment of students has also increased a lot. Now, it is time for us to look at the quality of our programmes, quality of graduates and see ourselves in comparison to other countries in the region and the world. In terms of research output we are still in the bottom group of countries. HEC has formed a quality enhancement cell [QEC] in almost all public sector universities but it is yet to ensure change in quality of the output. The indicators of quality used by QECs mostly measures procedural work and quantifies the activities in university departments rather than look into what these activities are all about. We need to have more contextually relevant, clearly stated and measurable indicators of quality of education.”

He adds, “We should shift our focus from research for the sake of research to research for addressing our living issues in universities. Student and faculty research must go beyond fulfilling the requirements for earning degrees and publishing for promotion.