ion Some Quality Issues in Teacher Education - K. Gopalan Teachers are the kingpins of any educational system. It is said that teachers affect eternity; nobody can tell where their influence stops. Our new National Policy on Education (NPE) 1986/1992 says that no nation can rise above the level of its teachers. Therefore, teacher education to produce teachers of high quality is of utmost importance. Detailed and in-depth studies undertaken in recent years have shown that the quality of pre-service and in-service teacher education programs in our country is deteriorating and that the professional commitment and overall competence of teachers leave much to be desired. Therefore, everything necessary has to be done to ensure that our teacher education institutions produce teachers of high quality and calibre. Conscious initiatives are necessary to influence the quality of teacher education at various levels. New methods and materials of teaching-learning Education today has become more complex due to the vast societal changes and the new insights in the field of pedagogy. There is an explosion of knowledge in every field. New knowledge is generated in every field in every country of the world. There have been tremendous advances in science and technology, and more so in information and communication technology (ICT). All these developments have brought about substantial changes in the methods and materials of teaching and learning. Unfortunately, our teacher education institutions have not been able to keep pace with these developments. Researches on classroom processes and present practices of teaching indicate that teaching in our schools remains didactic and that emphasis is still on memorisation of facts, and assessment of these through achievement tests. ICT literacy 28 Today our classroom processes are mostly based on chalk and talk. Thishas to change. All teachers have to be made ICT literate. All pre-service and in-service teacher education programs should include intensive training in the use of modern tools of ICT including off-line and on-line electronic resources such as CD-ROMs, multi-media, Internet and world-wide-web (WWW). Stage-specific teacher education programs It is known that children must be talked to at their level of understanding and provided learning experiences they can process, respond to and make meaning of. There exist significant qualitative differences at various stages of school education, ie. pre-primary, primary, upper primary and secondary, because learning abilities and learning capacities of children at these stages are different. In the context that children change as they grow from one stage of development to another, the corresponding professional competencies needed by teachers to teach at various stages of schooling considerably differ qualitatively, and quite a few of these are unique to a particular stage. Thus teacher education programs have to be stage-specific to be useful and effective. This is not happening in our country. For example, teacher education for middle classes (VI to VIII) is neither covered by BEd nor by primary level teacher training. Stage-specific pre-service teacher education (PSTE) programs should be launched without any further delay. After stage-specific PSTE programs such as MEd (Pre-school), MEd (Elementary) and MEd (Secondary) are launched for teacher educators, the norms and standards in respect of teacher educators should be revised and made stage-specific. For example, MEd (Elementary) should be prescribed as the essential professional qualification for elementary level teacher educators. Learner-centred pedagogy We have been talking about child-centred or learner-centred pedagogy for the past well over 16 years; but even today our classroom practices mostly remain what they were 25 years ago. Large over-crowded classes, ill-trained and untrained teachers, poorly equipped classrooms, single teacher schools, and multi-grade teaching are some of the stark realities that severely restrict the use of learner-centred pedagogy. It is high time that we switch over from teacher- centred education to learner-centred teaching and learning. Teachers need to be trained and facilitated to handle learner-centred pedagogy.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 03:43:13 +0000
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