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Gender representation in textbooks is of core importance in the classroom as textbooks are at the centre of the classroom in public sector schools in Sindh, Pakistan. This paper investigates teachers’ perceptions regarding the representation of gender in the textbooks. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 10 secondary school teachers in Sindh, Pakistan. The results show that most of the teachers conformed to the traditional roles of men and women. Moreover, they emphasised the need to revise textbooks as they thought textbooks had a greater influence on students. It is argued that teachers, other than a few exceptions, appear to be unaware of the influence they have on learners’ perceptions. It is recommended that teacher training need to focus on the role of the teachers with reference to the use of textbooks.

Researchers into Literature and Education from Norway, Pakistan and the United Kingdom used William Golding's Lord of the Flies to explore the potential of a literary text to encourage intercultural dialogue, employing an innovative teaching method, Google Circles, to provide a platform for asynchronous online discussion among three cohorts of students in higher education. The authors present here the ethical and moral responses to the novel. The authors' analysis of the data explores the students' thoughts about human nature and law and order, as well as responses made by the students to moral turning points in Golding's novel. The authors report that -although the novel provided a space for students from three national contexts to debate major existential questions using the affordances of the asynchronous digital platform -the students found it difficult to distinguish between the writer, the implied author and the narrative voice.

This study investigates university students’ perceptions of identity, rights and duties. The context of the study is an English department at a public-sector university in Sindh, Pakistan. The main research question that guides this study is ‘What perceptions of identity, rights and duties are held by a sample of undergraduate students in Pakistan?’ Semi-structured interviews were used as the research instruments. Cogan’s model of citizenship was used as theoretical frameworks guiding this study. Data were collected from twenty students of final-year undergraduate class. The key arguments based on findings of this study are that participants’ perceptions of identity, rights and duties included types and examples of citizenship themes discussed by Cogan as well as the themes particularly relevant to the participants’ context such as religion, morality and caste issues. Asian understanding of citizenship advocates importance of morality and religion or spirituality for Asian citizens. However, the literature reviewed did not exhibit any reference to the importance of caste in a citizen’s sense of identity. I make recommendations for further research to explore the role of context in learners’ citizenship interpretations along with other recommendations for research and professional practice.

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The current study has investigated students’ preferences to literary texts in an undergraduate literature course at a public sector university in Pakistan. Guided by reader-response theory, this study’s data was supplied by 52 participants. Firstly, anonymous and voluntary feedback was collected from 52 undergraduate students of English Literature. Secondly, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 participants. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The findings reveal that students’ personal life experiences play a significant role in determining their preference for novels in their curriculum. Most students based their preference of novels on their own moral code so much so that they disliked novels that did not fit their moral standards suggesting that they should be removed from the curriculum. These results are important for curriculum designers and researchers of literature.