A Reflexive Thematic Analysis of Teachers' Experiences of Interpreting and Implementing the National Curriculum of Pakistan 2022-23 in Public Middle Schools of Quetta

Abstract

Various Pakistani curriculum reforms have been carried out over the past decades: the National Curriculum 2006, the Single National Curriculum 2020, and now the latest National Curriculum of Pakistan (NCP) 2022-23. These reforms have been primarily assessed through surveys of stakeholder perceptions, leaving the experience of interpreting and implementing these reforms comparatively little studied, especially in Balochistan. This study aims to investigate the experience of middle-school teachers in Quetta, Balochistan, in terms of interpreting and implementing the NCP 2022-23 in comparison with previous curricular regimes. Reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2019, 2021) was conducted on twenty in-depth, semi-structured interviews with nineteen classroom teachers of nine subjects and one head teacher/curriculum coordinator in Quetta, Balochistan, purposively sampled for variation in subject, gender, career stage and urban-periphery location. A focused-coding stage from constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006) was applied between initial coding and thematic analysis to test the initial codes.Three themes have been constructed. "Alignment as Professional Relief" captures the overwhelmingly career-long narrative of how the NCP 2022-23 finally eliminates the curriculum-textbook gap of all the previous curricula, releasing professional freedom for teaching. "A Well-Designed Curriculum, an Under-Equipped System to Implement It" describes the same teachers' perception of the lack of ongoing training and resources to implement that well-designed curriculum. "Uneven Terrain" demonstrates how this relief and this stress are not universal experiences but vary by teachers' posting, subject status, and national-content localization. The main bottleneck of the NCP 2022-23 implementation has thus shifted from curriculum design to training, resourcing, and equity. Curriculum policy, teachers' professional development and future research implications are discussed.