According to my observations and current data, schools/faculties/institutes of education in developing countries receive harsh criticism for their poor performance. Therefore, dynamic modifications must be undertaken to respond to the criticism, especially in the provision of postgraduate and research programs where markets are highly diverse. The scope of the undergraduate programs also needs to be updated to address the ongoing issues, even though they are currently unable to change from their limited focus on teacher education.

The Undergraduate programs

In many developing nations, schools, faculties of education and teacher training colleges primarily produce teachers, along with a limited number of counsellors, particularly in the field of psychology through both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. While these institutes produce teachers, the segments that they cover are mainly STEM, language (in which TESOL is involved), humanities and some degree of psychology to give an idea of the role of an education counsellor. These were primarily designed with teacher education in mind, mainly for secondary provision and partly for primary provision.

These days, the developing nations are also moving toward early childhood education; it is debated whether early childhood would be part of education at all or should only concentrate on psychic and physical development and maturity of children without the burden of education. Such psychic and physical development would eventually influence education outcomes later.

In short, schools of education in developing nations concentrate mainly on trades (such as STEM, language, humanities, TVET). They also try to segment through sub-sectors (primary, secondary or adult). Common issues such as policy and planning, curriculum and instruction, and technology in education are also covered sporadically. Here, there is a need to synchronise both trade and sector as well as common issues so that teachers have wider skills to play different roles as multi-taskers when needed. This would eventually contribute to their job scope and opportunity to become wider, through which they can thereby target better for movement in future if needed. Currently, skills of teachers doesn’t allow them to make further progressive movement. However, this progressive movement should not cost a specialisation and major area of expertise. Hence, at the same time, a specialisation and major area need to be confirmed at the final stage, which can be through research, practicum, project or internship.

However, what is currently missing in the undergraduate program at the school of education is: learning of marketing and commercial challenges in education, student and school portal management, logistics management, human resources management and business management of education, capital and enrollment management in education, and technology management in education. These are the dynamic changes that have happened during the last three decades in education, especially in developing nations, and graduates from other schools have taken these places in education. This has created tension between academic staff/teaching staff and administrators, and many passionate teaching staff have become upset by being ruled by non-teaching staff. Hence, three issues are important for undergraduate programs:

• Synchronisation of trade, sector, and common area in education to produce multi-tasking graduates in order to provide a wider job scope but not at the cost of specialisation.
• Adding new components to tackle the challenges so that graduates of schools of education become relevant by competing with other schools.
• Need to remove or reshape some of the older components and need to develop partnership learning with some other important schools (business, engineering, computing, and IT) if a school of education cannot fulfil the gap by itself.

Taught postgraduate program

While teacher education by adjusting to the new dynamic may be the core focus for undergraduate programs, postgraduate taught programs should not just focus on producing teachers but should focus on producing education administrators, managers, planners, and academics. Hence, the new market for postgraduate teaching programs is to be LEA (Local Education Authority), ministry, university, NGOs and research firms. Globally, institutes of higher education have expanded dramatically, but there is no exclusive program to develop managers or administrators for the university or institute of higher education.

It became surprisingly apparent that being a supreme body, universities don’t care much about formal knowledge in education for their own administrators and managers. Lately, some Western universities have introduced an MBA in Higher Education, mainly for business purposes to attract international students, while developing countries become the market for it. However, a master's in education with a different major needs to be introduced in the school of education, especially in developing countries. A postgraduate diploma certificate can focus on further strengthening teacher education, but the master's program should not focus on this but rather target a new market.

Research postgraduate programs

At the moment, many schools of education in developing nations only supervise research students who are conducting research in the field of education (education as a trade), but sectoral research in education or issues in education research are being conducted by different schools, such as economics, business, engineering, physics, computer science, medical school, etc. Schools of education in developing nations don't cover a wider range of research in education. Hence, many other schools are doing research on the education sector and issues in education. This is a very dangerous call because those researchers may compromise the fundamental philosophy of education, as those schools are not oriented toward educational philosophy by training.

It is evident that the schools of education in developing nations merely adopt those research studies done by different schools, such as economics, business, engineering, physics, computer, and medical schools and so on, without challenging them. It is fully understandable that schools of education are an ignored place in developing nations, so it is difficult for them to challenge research done by other superior schools. Under this climate, schools of education in developing nations should at least collaborate with the research done by other schools in the area of the education sector or on the issues in education. Without being an important stakeholder in research in the education sector or on issues in education, schools of education are not doing justice to themselves or to the nation. Hence, it should be fundamental for the schools of education to be the stakeholders for the research that focuses on the education sector or issues in education. In doing so, research centres in education need to be established under the guidance of schools of education, where all research in education (trade, sector, or issues in education) should be parked. The earlier the school of education understands these needs, the better it contributes to the needs of the nation.

Dr Gazi Mahabubul Alam: Professor, School of Education, Taylor’s University, Malaysia.

[The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the position of The Daily Bonik Barta or the organisation they work for.]