Message from the Dean

Warm greetings from the faculty, students, and staff of the Kathmandu University School of Education (KUSOED). We are delighted that you have shown interest in our school and its vision.

We live in a time of rapid and complex changes that affect every aspect of our lives. Higher education is no exception. In fact, education is the key to understanding and facilitating these changes in a positive and meaningful way. Therefore, we need educational systems, processes, and outcomes that are not only effective and efficient, but also meaningful, authentic, and inclusive. These are the values that guide our work at KUSOED to accomplish the mission of transforming education and society through educational excellence. 

KUSOED students are expected to be curious, creative, critical, life-long and compassionate learners. They are prepared to be leaders who are responsible, respectful, resilient, and resourceful. They are facilitated to be change agents who are innovative, collaborative, communicative, and reflective.

KUSOED faculty and staff are experienced and qualified educators who are knowledgeable, skilled, experienced, and passionate. They are designated to be mentors who are supportive, inspiring, caring, and empowering. They are enabled to be researchers who are rigorous, ethical, relevant, and impactful.

KUSOED community works are initiatives that are responsive, participatory, transformative, and sustainable. They are partnerships that are mutually beneficial, respectful, trusting, and empowering. We work with the communities for meaningful, authentic, inclusive, and excellent outcomes.

At KUSOED, we have been working with this vision since our inception twenty-six years ago. We believe that communities are the primary sites where educational change can be initiated and demonstrated. Our mission is to provide quality education for leadership that can transform society for the better. This mission is aligned with the founding vision of Kathmandu University, which was established three decades ago with the same spirit.

To achieve this mission, we have a dedicated team of faculty and students who are actively engaged in research and learning. Our academic programs offer a wide range of research options (epistemologically) that are driven by students’ informed choice. We draw from multiple epistemological traditions that reflect both local and global practices and perspectives.

KUSOED has four departments: Department of Development Studies, Department of Education Leadership, Department of Language Education, and Department of STEAM Education. We also have three functional centers: Continuing Education and Professional Center (CPEC), Research and Innovation Center (RIC) and Writing and Communication Center (WCC). These departments and centers offer various academic programs and services at undergraduate (B Tech Ed/B Ed), postgraduate (PGD/Master), MPhil, and PhD levels as well as to the relevant communities. They also conduct research projects on various topics related to education and development. Our Departments and Centers have been able to expand our academic programs and services in the relevant communities resulting in over 800 students and 100 community-sponsored educational intervention projects. 

We also promote participatory pedagogies that foster experiential, reflective, and critical learning. These pedagogies enable our faculty and students to reflect on their own practices, critique existing assumptions and structures, and envision new possibilities for educational change. We use various methods such as case studies, action research, problem-based learning, project-based learning, collaborative learning etc., to create participatory learning spaces and horizons.

We have also adapted to the challenges and opportunities posed by the pandemic and continue excelling in blended pedagogy with flipped classroom approach, community-driven pedagogy, and multimodality. We developed our expertise in remote teaching-learning (thanks to the support of NORAD through its NORHED scheme), which has ensured the continuity of our educational activities beyond pandemic with rigour and excellence. We aspire to further enhance our multimodal pedagogy to help our faculty and students make the best use (with critical awareness of limitations) of ICT tools that are suitable for participatory learning spaces for our students.

At KUSOED we constantly strive to develop our academic programs to meet the needs of the community. We take into account the local, regional, international instruments, frameworks, policies, and practices while developing our programs. We also incorporate insights, findings and wisdom of ongoing research studies from scholarly communities into our programs.

Our academic programs cover various areas of education, such as Sustainable Development, Technical and Vocational Education and Training, STEAM Education, Educational Leadership, Language Education, Indigenous Education, etc. These programs have been built on collective experience of faculty, graduates and students who are committed to improve their workplaces, communities, beyond.

We also collaborate with various universities, research organizations, funding agencies of international repute to enhance our academic quality and potential impacts. We offer partial fee waiver scheme, research fellowship, fieldwork supports, research assistantship for meritorious and needy local and international students who wish to pursue their Bachelor’s degree, Postgraduate Diploma, Master’s degree, MPhil degree , and  Doctoral degree at KUSOED. Normally, the admission call will be published in May (Bachelor, Postgraduate Diploma, Master Programs) and November (MPhil and Doctoral  Programs) every year but students who want to seek advice about their studies can contact relevant Head of Departments in advance. You can find their profiles on our website.

KUSOED is striving to become a center of excellence in at least five areas: Sustainable Development, Educational Leadership, STEAM Education and English Language Education, Technical and Vocational Education and Training by conducting semester-wide academic audits and publishing timely research. The academic audits help us to monitor and evaluate the quality and impact of our teaching and learning practices. We are also mindful that research studies create discourses on the disempowering forces that hinder education from being meaningful, authentic, and inclusive by challenging various forms of status quo. They also offer solutions that can transform education for the betterment of society.

Our engagement in policies is facilitated by our involvement in the UNESCO Chair in Teacher Education and the networking provisions available through GPE KIX 2.0. The UNESCO Chair in Teacher Education is a platform that aims to improve the quality and relevance of teacher education in Nepal and beyond. The Chair network facilitates research, innovation, capacity building, and advocacy towards developing the agenda of empowering teacher education programs. The GPE KIX 2.0 is a global partnership that supports knowledge exchange and innovation for educational development via research-based scalable solutions. It provides networking and learning opportunities for educational stakeholders within and beyond the country. The Dean of KUSOED is the national coordinator of GPE KIX in Nepal. He also represents KUSOED in other policy forums along with other faculty members.

Despite some of these accomplishments, we remain humble at the core, because we believe that lifelong learning is the driving force behind our growth, excellence, and meaningfulness. We warmly welcome your feedback and suggestions on our ongoing activities in person or by writing to soed_dean@ku.edu.np

Professor Bal Chandra Luitel, PhD 
Dean