The educational scenario in India is rapidly changing under the impact of liberalization, privatization and globalization. The expectations of the school system from a teacher change from time to time, responding to the broader social, economic and political changes taking place in the society. The role of teachers has undergone tremendous change accordingly. Seeing the teacher as a dispenser of information and the child as the storehouse of information is unacceptable in today’s perspective. The teacher can no longer continue to transfer the accumulated information through lectures or reading from the textbooks. Now, the role of teacher is to facilitate the process of learning by skillful resource management, mutual active involvement and testing the status of learning at every stage.
In the context of rapid changes, it is imperative that teachers must update their knowledge and skills and be conversant with the latest development in the field. A teacher needs to be prepared in relation to the needs and demands arising in the school context, to engage with questions of school knowledge, the learner and the learning process.
Teaching as a Profession
It is said that teaching as a profession makes other profession. Teachers play a unique role of preparing students to become worthy members of all professions of the world.
They therefore shoulder a responsibility and opportunity to mould future generations. Preparing one for a profession is an arduous task and it involves action from multiple fronts and perspectives. A profession is characterized by a sufficiently long period of academic training, an organized body of knowledge on which the undertaking is based, an appropriate duration of formal and rigorous professional training in tandem with practical experience in the field and a code of professional ethics that binds its members into a fraternity (NCFTE,2010). As a result it becomes necessary for teachers to acquire “knowledge”, “skills “and “competence"; in order to excel in their profession.
NPE (1986) and the revised POA (1992) stressed that to meet the challenges of the 21st century, the quality of education will have to be enhanced which would only be possible through continuous professional development of working teachers at school and higher education levels.
Teacher education as facilitator of professional practices
With globalization we see an emerging ‘global society’ driven by technology and communication developments. This ‘global society’ is shaping the students as ‘global citizens’ and intelligent persons with multi-skills and knowledge to apply to the competitive and information-based society. Teachers today find themselves in an education system in which they are no longer the sole ‘fountain of information’ but the facilitators and pointers towards information. (Francis,2000) in view of these changing facts, we need teachers who can survive moreover excel in the present times.
Professional education of teachers plays an important role in quality of education. The Education commission (1964-66) has remarked; “a sound programme of professional education of teachers is essential for the qualitative improvement of education.” The present teacher education programme is inadequate to meet the challenges of diverse Indian socio-cultural contexts and the paradigm shift envisaged in the NCF 2005. We still find teacher education programmes, which continue to prescribe traditional approach of psychological, philosophical and sociological basis of education instead of focusing on the approach of how the knowledge of these cognate disciplines can be related to understanding ‘how children grow and learn’.
Need of the hour is to develop Reflective teachers with the ability to comprehend the applied nature of education, and utilize the knowledge gained through teacher preparation courses in actual classrooms, thereby bridging the gap between the unrelated ness of actual classroom realities and theoretical discourses of a training institution. Due to change in the role of teacher in our knowledge based society it has become the need of an hour to reform teacher education and infuse professional ethics in our pupil teachers so that they can take up their new role and meet the challenges and expectations raised from our education reforms.
Reforming teacher education to facilitate professional practices
Flexible curriculum: Over the past 100 years from when teacher preparation is viewed as one of the essential features of education system a lot of changes took place in Science & Technology, Society, Social living, Study of human and child development etc. and all these have to be addressed by teacher education system. Therefore, there is a need to remove deadwood from the existing curricula, and making the curriculum components contextually relevant, practical and based on the present need of times The curricula should give enough space to student teachers to develop logical reasoning, critical thinking, problem solving and meaning making.
Pedagogical rejuvenation of teacher education: The contexts, concerns and visions of teacher education should be to prepare teachers for learning society, empowering them in learning to learn, and making teacher education liberal, humanistic and responsive to the to the demands of our society. It should incorporate the topics which are related to the changing school contexts such as inclusive education , recently implemented Right to Education Act (RTE,2009), diversities among children and society, experiential learning and Life skills (NCFTE,2009)
More real teaching then theoretical knowledge: The practicum aspect should form the major part of the curriculum. Enough time should be allotted to translate the knowledge gained through theory into practice. Pupil teachers should be given chance to face the real problems of classroom so that they themselves invent the ways of overcoming it.
Understanding the dynamic role: The role of the teacher was previously confined to teaching and to be more precise to completion of prescribed syllabus but now it is multifaceted as a facilitator, care taker, community leader, guidance counselor, researcher, etc.
Coordination of teacher education and school education: There should be coordination between teacher and school education because it is the teachers who are going to teach in schools.
Experiential learning: teacher preparation is a dynamic activity which operates in a self learning environment through participatory mode in the context of changing learner and social needs. It should emphasize experiential and constructivist approach in learning. Practice teaching should be viewed as a continuum of filed experiences beginning with observation.
Use of ICT: Integration of ICT and e-learning in the curriculum of teacher education is the thrust area of NCF 2005. Teacher education curricula should include the usage of ICT as we need teachers who are technology savvy, they are able to access latest information in their content areas and organize multimedia –based classroom for teaching-learning process.
Strengthening pre-service and in-service teacher training programme: pre-service teacher education is necessary to develop teaching competence and skills in the young generation for taking up the job of teaching. Pre-service curricula should be flexible, dynamic and need to be based on the guidelines contained in the NCTE framework. In-service teacher education is meant for serving teachers as it consists of all those courses and activities in which they get the training so as to brush-up and refresh their professional knowledge and skills. In-service refresher courses should be made mandatory for all teachers and their career advancement should be linked to such courses. The system should allow teachers to pursue courses of their choice that help in their professional development
Ensuring professional quality control: Teacher education institutions should be properly equipped and staffed so that they have the necessary orientation to and commitment for preparing teachers for various levels of school education.
Need of the hour
Teachers with competencies and commitment encompassed by professional ethics are the need of the hour. The greatest challenge is resistance to new ideas, experimentation, transparency and accountability. The sense of pluralism needs to be recognized and incorporated in the teacher education. The challenges are ever lasting and never ending. Thus both teacher education and teacher educator requires a regular and systematic review of their benchmarks followed by a serious planning and consideration about restructuring and resetting teacher education. This can bring about drastic changes in teachers and improve the quality of teachers at all levels of education. Professionalism needs to be instilled in each and every phase of teacher preparation starting from conceptualization to evaluation and appraisal to improve the quality of education and prepare professionals
