I have just published my new book – Leadership for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): A Case Study from Postcolonial Pakistan – with Brill.

 

 

The book emerges from my background growing up in a remote village in Chitral, Pakistan, and my extensive professional experience and expertise developed during my more than two decades working with the Aga Khan Education Service Pakistan (AKESP).

Drawing on postcolonial theories and theories of educational leadership, the research that informed the book examined the ways in which organisational and community contexts, gender relations, and educational globalisation shape the possibilities of delivering on the promise for inclusive and equitable quality education – an agenda shared equally by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and the AKESP. My association with AKESP has facilitated the conduct of this research project in many ways, leading to the writing of this book. 

The book explores the colonial legacies and lingering neocolonial influences on postcolonial Pakistan’s development and education. Situated in a close analysis of Aga Khan Schools in Chitral District in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, it analyses the key challenges and opportunities educational leaders face in realising the promise of quality education for all.

My engagement with postcolonial theory provided me with a lens through which to productively critique the overemphasis of the AKESP’s schools on Western models of teaching, teacher education and educational leadership under the influence of increasing neoliberal models of schooling, which has implications for equitable access to quality education in Pakistan, and in other postcolonial contexts.

I argue that we need to find ways to make the ‘local’ a central reference point in developing educational discourses and curricula, emphasising a two-way process that integrates both local-to-global and global-to-local perspectives. Such a move could provide a counter to one-sided approaches to ESD by producing a more pluralist discourse involving local and global interlocutors in shaping and guiding policies and curriculums in postcolonial Pakistan.