Muhammad Imran Ahmad

The revolutionary pace of technological advancements of present day offer a silver lining for bringing about much needed and desired change in education systems in developing countries to bring them at par with the requirements of the 21st century. STEM education promises the necessary impetus to catapult the orthodox education systems to modernity in an accelerated manner. In this chapter, we discuss the challenges and opportunities of STEM integration in the context of resource-constrained environments, offer our insights and present novel approaches developed based on our experiences from STEM implementation in urban and rural areas of Pakistan. From setting up purpose-built STEM labs to conducting STEM sessions in tight spaces or open areas, development of STEM curriculum based on relevance, authenticity and affordability, from robotics to do-it-yourself (DIY) projects with low cost electronics or recyclable and reusable materials, a range of possibilities are extensively covered. Teacher training and program sustainability are also discussed for STEM integration in resource-constrained environments of developing countries.

Incentive Based (IB) and Command and Control (CAC) instruments are identified in various legislative Acts and Policy documents based on the criteria of environmental economics. Despite the advantages of IB strategies the world of policy making is somewhat locked into the path of traditional approaches such as CAC and pose inertia to move forward in environmental policy making. An ethical shift is inevitable anywhere where there is a market failure and increased social costs and inefficiencies in government interventions to regulate the market. Regulations are discrete steps to address feedbacks in a complex system. Policy evaluation and testing criteria is used to evaluate and test the policies regulating marble extraction and processing in Pakistan. A set of policy and regulatory instruments are selected to be critiqued. The coexisting policy approaches found in the study shall be tested on system dynamics model for developing insights and long-term implications.

Every individual is unique and may serve a unique purpose in this life. Education is widely accepted to be the means of transformation of individuals so that they may achieve their unique success or create their own lives. However, not every individual seems to be realizing their true potential. This paper explores the concept of entropy in education system as a force that is usually imagined to oppose realization of potential of an individual during life in this phenomenal world. Alternatively, the same may provide an impetus that is necessary to bring in organization in oneself to realize the hidden potential. A one group Pretest-Posttest quasi-experimental design was used to draw the conclusions on data obtained from participants of workshops in three different modes, viz. face-to-face Pre COVID-19, face-to-face in COVID-19 with SOPs, and online in COVID-19. Realization of an individual’s potential was represented as a dependent variable, i.e. transformation in cognition, skills, and attitude while the independent variables taken into account were the meaningful interactions of an individual with peers and advanced learners in a designed environment. It was inferred from the results that transformation in learners’ cognition (6-30 %), skills (0-20 %), and attitude (5-32 %) occurred through human discourse, in a community of inquiry.

This paper aims to analyze national policies of Pakistan taking into account the complexity of electric power generation, growth, and complying with multilateral agreements. Systems thinking has been applied to understand the complexity of energy scenario of Pakistan by representing it with a causal loop diagram (CLD) which displays the interconnectedness and feedbacks of the system. Analysis is based on systems archetypes to diagnose the system behavior, i.e., falling into the vicious cycle of coal. A stock-and-flow model was employed to capture dynamics of energy generation quantitatively, indicating that a 5% GDP growth rate could be sustained based on current planning to increase electric power generation in Pakistan. Thus, in order to achieve a 7% GDP growth rate, as targeted in Vision 2025 of Pakistan, energy generation targets would need to be revised in the view of the sensitivity of increase in energy demand associated with GDP growth rate, while ensuring compliance with multilateral agreements.