ABOUT US
Kathmandu University is an autonomous, not-for-profit, self-funding public institution dedicated to maintaining high standards of academic excellence. Established in 1991, it is committed to developing leaders in classical and professional areas through quality education. Within a period of 29 years, it has built a track record of academic excellence. At present, it offers various undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate programs through its seven different schools: School of Arts, School of Education, School of Engineering, School of Management, School of Science, and School of Medical Sciences.
Kathmandu University, School of Education (KUSOED) was established in 1997 with the aim of contributing to enhance the quality of education in the country. The School carried out its first activity in raising the quality of the public schools in Dhulikhel (Dhulikhel is a small town, 30 km east of Kathmandu where the main campus of the university is located) mainly through in-service teacher training and other programs. Its first academic programs were initiated in 1998 with M Phil and PhD in Educational Leadership. In the coming years the School expanded its academic activities by adding new programs, thereby, escalating its scope. KUSOED today aspires to empower educators with an aim of creating a generation of engaged and socially responsible citizens.
KUSOED has been an innovative educational institution since its inception in 1997. It has been recognised as an educational innovator, policy influencer, and driver in the country. To take a lead role in the educational activities in the country, KUSOED has established its vision as Transforming Society through Educational Excellence. All its programs are directed towards achieving its vision. Realising the fact that education is the foundation for social transformation, it has been designing its educational programs to contribute to the learning needs of individuals in the changing national and international contexts.
People
Key KUSOED faculty members are actively involved in the UNESCO Chair program. Professor Mahesh Nath Parajuli (Dean of the School of Education and General Secretary of the Comparative Education Society of Nepal) is leading the activities under the UNESCO Chair program in KUSOED. Professor, Laxman Gnawali (Associate Dean) of the School of Education and Professor, Bal Chandra Luitel are also active members from KUSOED and Nepal. Prof Parajuli and Prof. Gnawali and Prof. Luitel have extensive experience in training and directing qualitative educational research related to adult education, transformative education, gender, and social transformation, including ongoing research with UNESCO. In addition, several younger faculty members and PhD students are conducting research in these areas. The School has been working closely with the Government, particularly the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, development partners, and NGOs.
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Professor Mahesh Nath Parajuli
Professor Mahesh Nath Parajuli is former Dean of the School of Education, Kathmandu University, Nepal. He has over 30 years of experience of working in education and development, mainly in the government ministry and in the academia. As the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Journal of Education and Research, a publication of Kathmandu University, School of Education, he has earned an international reputation for educational research. He has published several articles in national and international journals and book chapters on different aspects of education and development. Areas of his expertise include education sociology, development studies, gender studies and feminism, policy and planning, and research methods. One of his foremost interest areas is studying education processes in relation to several other processes of the society. Specifically, his interest is in understanding how education interplays with other social processes like politics, economy, culture, etc. and how during such interplaying education contributes to or influences those processes and how education, in turn, is influenced by those processes. These understandings, he believes, very much contributes to social transformation process. He sees strong needs for reengineering the structure and design of the present form of schooling. This is mainly because schooling in many parts of the world, mainly in developing countries, has remained an external and standardized process. As a result, schooling across the world is basically the same, while societies and people are highly diverse. This is also because the present day schooling has ignored the Knowledge Heritage – locally developed system and practices of knowing and educating. Hence, there is a need to align schooling more with the local sociocultural context, make it more flexible and open, and make the learning process directly related to livelihood and other human needs of individual learner and of the society. -
Professor Laxman Gnawali
Professor Laxman Gnawali is Head of Department of Language Education and Associate Dean of Kathmandu University School of Education. An alumnus of Kathmandu University, Nepal, University of Exeter, England, and Hornby Trust, he taught English language at primary, secondary and tertiary levels before coming to the field of EFL teacher education and training. He now leads degree and short-term EFL teacher education and trainers training programmes. He has co-authored EFL textbooks for school students and special education learners, and designed English language development courses for teachers as well. His national and international contributions include articles and book chapters on ELT methodology and materials, action research, and teacher networking and professional development. Dr Gnawali has contributed to the second ELT Survey of Nepal, Examination Reform Project, English Language Course Development for Primary English Teachers in South and East Asia and several other ELT related projects. He is actively involved in the ELT community in Nepal and he currently serves NELTA as its Senior Vice President. A Hornby alumnus as well as a SUSI alumnus, he currently serves NELTA as its Senior Vice President. His interests include EAP, teacher professional development, classroom pedagogy and differentiated instruction among others. He travels in and outside Nepal delivering sessions at teacher/teacher educator conferences facilitating teachers for professional development through publications, conference participations and network building. -
Professor Bal Chandra Luitel
Professor Bal Chandra Luitel is a professor at Kathmandu University and Dean of the School of Education. Educated in Nepal and Australia and having worked in Nepal, Australia and Portugal, Bal Chandra’s expertise as a transformative education researcher lies in employing multi-paradigmatic research design for portraying the problem of culturally decontextualised mathematics and science education, a protracted problem that poses a serious challenge towards an inclusive and life-affirming mathematics and science education in Nepal (a country that hosts more than 92 language groups and different cultural traditions arising from Vedic, Buddhist and Animist belief systems). Bal Chandra has been working with a number of Nepali teachers and teacher educators who examine their lived experiences as students, teachers and teacher educators, thereby developing visions for fostering experiences of meaningful mathematical learning among their students. In this process, Bal Chandra´s research programme enables education researchers to engage with a host of research paradigms together with new analytics arising from dialectical, metaphorical, poetic and narrative logics and genres as a means for conceiving, expressing and implementing visions of an inclusive and life-affirming mathematics and science education in Nepal. -
Dr Suresh Gautam
Dr Gautam is an Assistant Professor at Department of Development Education in Kathmandu University. He has more than a decade’s working experience in the higher education institutions of Nepal as a teacher, teacher educator, trainer and researcher. His areas of research interest are transformative educational research, youth and adult education and inclusive education. He conducted the arts- based narrative research of urban youth in the metropolitan city, Kahtmandu in his PhD and literacy and adult education among Tharu women in Nepal as his M. Phil study. Dr Gautam has authored and co-authored articles, book chapters and co-edited book. He also involved in inhouse research and publication of Kathmandu University vis. Journal of Education and Research and Journal of Transformative Praxis. He was also awarded with International Visitor Leadership Program from the State Department of United State and COMPARE fellowship from British Association of International and Comparative Education. These awards help him to understand the global scenario of higher education in the USA and the UK. He has been engaging in the development research in education and development. -
Lina Gurung
Lina Gurung has two master’s degrees in sociology and in Population, Gender, and Development as well as MPhil in Development Studies. Currently, she is a PhD fellow in Kathmandu University, School of Education (KUSOED). Her PhD is concentrated on Gender and ICT exploring the digital literacy and competency of online graduate students. She worked as a teaching faculty in KUSOED for four years and now is engaged as Gender Coordinator for online master degree programs under QUANTICT Norhed Project which aims at enhancing access and quality of teacher training using ICTs and distance delivery modes. Proficient both in qualitative and quantitative research methods, she has conducted several researches focusing mainly on ICT, education, and gender. She has shared her ideas, experiences and researches in various national and international seminars on girls’ education, teachers’ empowerment, and female literacy. Her areas of concern on female literacy include aspects like general literacy and adult learning, digital literacy, and media literacy.