LAHORE, Oct 29: The University of Education will hold its first international conference on ‘Quality teacher education: promises and practices’ at a hotel on Nov 5-6, the vice-chancellor said here on Monday.

Speaking at a news conference at his office, Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Munawar S Mirza said the conference was aimed at bringing expert educationists from the East and the West to present their research papers on teacher education.

She said more than 200 delegates, including six from abroad, were expected to participate in the two-day conference, which would provide young teachers and researchers an opportunity to meet veteran educationists and get inspiration from them.

She said young and graduate teachers would also present their research papers at the conference.

Ms Mirza said the conference secretariat had received more than 100 abstracts, but about 40 of them had been selected for presentation. She said the university had launched its Journal of Research and Reflections in Education.

Answering a question about the duration of newly introduced BA/BEd and MA/MEd concurrent programmes, Ms Mirza said the courses would be of seven semesters having 96 credit hours and they would be completed in two years and three months.

During the course, she said, there would no summer, winter and spring vacation. She said the university had revised its courses in consultation with its stakeholders.

She said the university was developing linkages at the international level. She said the National Testing Service needed to improve its question papers a lot.

She said there was no need to depend heavily on MCQs and objective type questions.