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Why Teacher Beliefs and Identities Matter More Than Policy
How much of what happens in the classroom is shaped by what teachers believe, about themselves, their students, and the purpose of schooling? Attitudes, emotions, and identity are often under-examined, yet they heavily influence teacher responsiveness to innovation, AI integration, or pedagogical reforms. Today’s reforms crumble without attention to beliefs. How can we surface them and transform them?
Teacher beliefs include perceptions about how students learn, what counts as valuable knowledge, and their own role. Professional identity shapes how teachers respond to reform pressures, while attitudes like confidence or anxiety determine readiness to experiment.
This aligns with scholarly insights that teacher growth must be adaptive, reflective, and context-driven, positioning educators as co-learners in a dynamic ecosystem (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017; Voogt and Pareja Roblin, 2021). This shift also reflects Jabeen’s finding that static, delayed approaches to teacher preparation widen the gap between what teachers need now and what training modules still offer.
Pakistan’s NPST (2009) defines competencies but neglects emotional labour and identity. Teacher educators report misalignment with real classroom contexts (Shaukat & Chowdhury, 2020). Jabeen (2025) highlights that reforms like SNC and English curriculum changes often arrive years late, by which time teachers are already entrenched in older habits. This time-lag dilemma undermines belief formation: teachers see reforms as external impositions rather than integral to their professional growth.
Research also shows that rote learning persists, reinforced by exam systems, parental expectations, and resource-poor school environments (Exploring the Challenges…, 2025). Without deliberate interventions to shape beliefs and professional identity, reforms will keep “falling on barren soil.”
AI can either intensify anxiety or become a tool for reflection and collaboration. When paired with reflective mentorship and identity work, AI can help teachers reimagine themselves as facilitators of inquiry rather than dispensers of content.
If you are a policymaker, school leader, or teacher educator in Pakistan, ask yourself: Are our reforms nurturing teachers’ identities—or eroding them? The hidden curriculum of beliefs will determine whether AI, SNC, and NPST succeed or fail. Partner with NGI Consulting to design programs that cultivate growth mindsets, strengthen teacher identities, and bridge the damaging time-lag in reform implementation. Because building schools of the future starts with believing in and supporting the teachers of today.
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