PREPARING FUTURE TEACHERS THROUGH DISTANCE LEARNING: An Empirical Study on Students’ Perception of Teacher Education Program Provided by AIOU Pakistan

The purpose of the current study was to analyse the pre service teachers training programs for the distance learners of Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) Islamabad, Pakistan. This kind of training is provided to the future teachers enrolled to acquire pre service training to become a teacher in a Government educational institution in Pakistan. The data was collected by administering a 45 items agree disagree four points Likert type scale to the subjects mainly through the scheduled meetings during the workshops. The independent sample t-test, and one way ANOVA along with mean difference was worked out for the data set. A group of 490 student teachers were randomly selected from the regions of Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar, Rahimyarkhan, Multan, and D.G. Khan Districts (Southern Punjab). The planning for training is made timely but lacking physical facilities remains dominant in trainings. Although training plays an important role in students learning yet it is considered just a routine activity which made it a useless exercise. Similarly, findings reveal that co-curricular activities and child psychology are those aspects which ignored in the training. Future studies may be aimed at comparing the training system of teachers with teacher training through other channels of formal system of governments.