Marketing and Branding of Teacher Education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan: Teacher Education Providers’ Struggles for Prospective Entrants

Pakistan’s National Educational Policy 2009 delineates that quality of teacher certifications in primary and secondary tiers of education will progressively be made more rigorous by replacing the erstwhile Primary Teaching Certificate (PTC) and Certificate of Teaching (CT) programs. For this and similar policy provisions, in the last two decades, Pakistan has witnessed a rapid increase in the number of private and public Teacher Education Providers (TEPs) that provide alternate and supposedly more rigorous certifications such as the Bachelor of Education. As a result, struggles have ensued among the TEPs to bag their market share of the potential applicants to their teacher education programs. This study explores the struggles and battles of the TEPs in Khyber Pakhtunkwha (KP) province of Pakistan to attract potential applicants to their teacher education programs. Using an exploratory mixed method design, the study analyzes the educational and admission ads published in the three most circulated dailies in KP, namely Mashriq, Express, and Aaj. Findings show the private TEPs taking a lead in the battle against their public counterparts. Policy implications for quality, access to, and branding and marketing of teacher education have been explored and discussed

A Multinational Study of the Determinants of Student Achievement in Mathematics and Science: Policy Options for Pakistan

Enhancing quality of learning for students has remained a primary target of states and economies around the world. Education systems around the world consider student test scores as objective measures (though with limited explanatory power) to determine the “quality” of student learning. Various strategies are adopted to enhance this matric. One tool that schools use to improve student achievement in the form of test scores has been teacher evaluation. In recent decades, teacher evaluation has come into the spotlight around the world in the current policy debates, reforms, and policy analyses. Therefore, as a significant contribution to the current policy environment, this study explores determinants of student achievement by analyzing data on student background, school traits, teacher evaluation, and country traits. It employs a robust dataset using two surveys i.e., Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 and Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) 2008. Using Ordinary Least Squares as the analytic model, the study explores relationships between test scores in Mathematics and Science and determinants of student achievement at student, school, and country levels. The study finds mixed results for developmental and high-stakes approaches to teacher evaluation. Powerful associations between determinants of achievement at student, school, and country level suggest that it is important to explore implications of these factors on student achievement in schools

On the origin of the featureless soft X-ray excess emission from the Seyfert 1 galaxy ESO~198--G24

We present medium and high resolution X-ray spectral study of a Seyfert 1 galaxy ESO~198--G24 using a long (122 ks) XMM-Newton observation performed in February 2006. The source has a prominent featureless soft X-ray excess below 2\kev. This makes the source well suited to investigate the origin of the soft excess. Two physical models -- blurred reflection, and optically thick thermal Comptonization in a warm plasma, describe the soft-excess equally well resulting in similar fits in the 0.3-10\kev band. These models also yield similar fits to the broad-band UV (Optical Monitor) and X-ray data. XMM-Newton observations performed in 2000, 2001 and 2006 on this source show flux variability. From 2001 to 2006, the UV flux increased by $\sim23\%$ while the 2-10\kev X-ray flux as well as the soft-excess flux decreased by ~ 20. This observation can be described in the blurred reflection scenario by a truncated accretion disk whose inner-most radius had come closer to the blackhole. We find that the best-fit inner radius of the accretion disk decreases from R_{in}=4.93_{-1.10}^{+1.12}R_G to R_{in}<2.5R_G from 2001 to 2006. This leads to an increase in the UV flux and compressing the corona, leading to reduction of the powerlaw flux and therefore the soft-excess. The blurred reflection model seems to better describe the soft-excess for this source.Comment: Accepted for publication in the MNRA

Black Hole Mass of the Ultraluminous X-ray source M82 X-1

We report the first clear evidence for the simultaneous presence of a low frequency break and a QPO in the fluctuation power spectrum of a well known ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX) in M82 using long XMM-Newton observations. The break occurs at a frequency of 34.2_{-3}^{+6}mHz. The QPO has a centroid at 114.3\pm1.5mHz, a coherence Q~3.5 and an amplitude (rms) of 19% in the 2-10keV band. The power spectrum is approximately flat below the break frequency and then falls off above the break frequency as a power law with the QPO superimposed. This form of the power spectrum is characteristic of the Galactic X-ray binaries (XRBs) in their high or intermediate states. M82 X-1 was likely in an intermediate state during the observation. The EPIC PN spectrum is well described by a model comprising an absorbed power-law (Gamma~2) and an iron line at ~6.6keV with a width sigma~0.2keV and an equivalent width of ~180eV. Using the well established correlations between the power and energy spectral parameters for XRBs, we estimate a black hole mass for M82 X-1 in the range of 25-520Msun including systematic errors that arise due to the uncertainty in the calibration of the photon spectral index versus QPO frequency relation.Comment: Final version, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter