ABSTRACT
This organization of expatriate Pakistanis is not the only organization working in Pakistan that connects child-centered pedagogy to the quality of education. The international development agencies in Pakistan view the “traditional” methods as one of the main reasons for the low academic achievement and high drop out rates of the students. Child-centered
education is presented as the central component of “quality education.” However, I argue that these educational policies have Western notions of individual, difference and inclusion/exclusion embedded in them. For instance, the construction of “difference” defi nes the core of the policies to support inclusive education in the West. These constructions are embedded in the educational policies internationalized by the international development agencies and may not capture the local realities in contexts like Pakistan. For example, “Education for All,”1 supported by the World Bank and UNESCO to support education for marginalized children in the “Third World countries,” refl ects specifi c notions of inclusive education. I examine how these international education policies interact and overlap with local beliefs to create hybrid processes of teaching and learning.
