Ever since the Kothari Commission Report, 1966 talked about taking a holistic approach to teacher development, every policy document, recommendation of committees and programs have suggested “training” as a panacea to all of teacher and children problems. The situation has reached a level where the teachers as well as administration have become indifferent to the entire process and any infusion of innovation in training is viewed with skepticism and hopelessness.
There is ample literature available on the subject of training of teachers and many study reports exist as evaluations of different schemes, programs and pilots. The evaluations also range from serious criticism to high praise depending upon the authors and the audience.
Government, NGOs and private sector have left no stone unturned to try out pilots – small & big to ensure that teachers deliver quality education. Training experiments and innovations have become fashion statements in the education industry. We have seen brilliant pilots in teacher development - fail, unable to scale or fade away with time. Sooner or later, the system gets back to the same predictable routine.
So where do we go wrong?
Firstly, it is important to realize that we as human beings love to “prove ourselves". Unfortunately it is the quest to establish our identity as an expert, demonstrate ideas, convince a select privileged or powerful group with the hope that it would over-haul the system . Many experiments of the past like Nali-Kali, MLL, Shikshak Samakhya, HSTP, ILIP etc. have either faded away or not been able to scale up.
Secondly, the business compulsions do not give the administrators the flexibility to attempt change. For example, to access central funds, the state has to meet its training targets and so, conducting the training takes precedence over the needs of the teachers. Therefore the attempt becomes to dovetail all the relevant concepts like “teacher needs”; “hard spots in curriculum”; “joyful learning” etc. with the standard training program thereby bringing only cosmetic changes.
Thirdly, the resources which are used are not really resourceful. World class trainers and educators come at an unaffordable price and therefore the compulsion is to use in-house people, trained as trainers and subsequently given the task to train their colleagues. Though there is an advantage of healthy sharing and discussing real life situations at the peer level, but the training agenda and the hurry to complete a pre-decided content takes precedence over peer-learning and renders the entire training program ineffective.
Fourthly, disconnect between training, monitoring and evaluation is a key driver for failures. Over and over again it has been observed that the training content, the monitoring methodology and the evaluation criteria are in complete dissonance with each other. It makes the teacher indifferent during the training programs as she knows that it would have no implication on her supervision and would have no impact on her performance and evaluation.
Finally, some of the assumptions and presumptions about children, their homogeneity, their learning pace etc. are very archaic and therefore need a new logic. Modern science is breaking myths in education, revealing knowledge which was not part of our learning; the modern child (irrespective of class & backgrounds) needs new tools to learn, needs newer dimensions of learning and a teacher who is able to appreciate the modern times.
Some principles are important to consider while planning, designing and implementing teacher development programs -
The administration should align with the actual practitioners (teachers) and blend their knowledge with actual practice to come out with effective training solutions.
Education logic has to take precedence over administrative logic. Training needs to be understood as a need to develop and adapt to changing environment. It should be a prerogative of the teacher and consensus amongst the educators to arrange for the same.
Resources should become resourceful. It is important to develop a cadre of highly resourceful people within the system. The selection, training and development of this group should be of high quality even if there is a high price attached to it. Quality comes from competency and competency comes from effective talent management.
New Alignments - There has to be realignment between training, monitoring and evaluation. Training in isolation has no meaning. A robust follow-up mechanism through monitoring has to be built in, to be able to try and test training content and provide feedback to teacher educators. The evaluation and incentives should be linked to training outcomes and overall impact. All three have to resonate together to be able to make any training a success.
Barriers to modern education, child and human psychology has to be broken to be able to develop content for children and teachers which are in consonance with the newer truths being revealed by science. A conscious effort has to be taken by the leaders, administrators and educators to unlearn and relearn the newer dimensions of learning.
Change neither happens through a formula nor through any regime – it happens when there is a conscious realization of shortcomings, acknowledgement of basic flaws in the approach and systematic effort to change the approach, otherwise, all remains business as usual.
There is ample literature available on the subject of training of teachers and many study reports exist as evaluations of different schemes, programs and pilots. The evaluations also range from serious criticism to high praise depending upon the authors and the audience.
Government, NGOs and private sector have left no stone unturned to try out pilots – small & big to ensure that teachers deliver quality education. Training experiments and innovations have become fashion statements in the education industry. We have seen brilliant pilots in teacher development - fail, unable to scale or fade away with time. Sooner or later, the system gets back to the same predictable routine.
So where do we go wrong?
Firstly, it is important to realize that we as human beings love to “prove ourselves". Unfortunately it is the quest to establish our identity as an expert, demonstrate ideas, convince a select privileged or powerful group with the hope that it would over-haul the system . Many experiments of the past like Nali-Kali, MLL, Shikshak Samakhya, HSTP, ILIP etc. have either faded away or not been able to scale up.
Secondly, the business compulsions do not give the administrators the flexibility to attempt change. For example, to access central funds, the state has to meet its training targets and so, conducting the training takes precedence over the needs of the teachers. Therefore the attempt becomes to dovetail all the relevant concepts like “teacher needs”; “hard spots in curriculum”; “joyful learning” etc. with the standard training program thereby bringing only cosmetic changes.
Thirdly, the resources which are used are not really resourceful. World class trainers and educators come at an unaffordable price and therefore the compulsion is to use in-house people, trained as trainers and subsequently given the task to train their colleagues. Though there is an advantage of healthy sharing and discussing real life situations at the peer level, but the training agenda and the hurry to complete a pre-decided content takes precedence over peer-learning and renders the entire training program ineffective.
Fourthly, disconnect between training, monitoring and evaluation is a key driver for failures. Over and over again it has been observed that the training content, the monitoring methodology and the evaluation criteria are in complete dissonance with each other. It makes the teacher indifferent during the training programs as she knows that it would have no implication on her supervision and would have no impact on her performance and evaluation.
Finally, some of the assumptions and presumptions about children, their homogeneity, their learning pace etc. are very archaic and therefore need a new logic. Modern science is breaking myths in education, revealing knowledge which was not part of our learning; the modern child (irrespective of class & backgrounds) needs new tools to learn, needs newer dimensions of learning and a teacher who is able to appreciate the modern times.
Some principles are important to consider while planning, designing and implementing teacher development programs -
The administration should align with the actual practitioners (teachers) and blend their knowledge with actual practice to come out with effective training solutions.
Education logic has to take precedence over administrative logic. Training needs to be understood as a need to develop and adapt to changing environment. It should be a prerogative of the teacher and consensus amongst the educators to arrange for the same.
Resources should become resourceful. It is important to develop a cadre of highly resourceful people within the system. The selection, training and development of this group should be of high quality even if there is a high price attached to it. Quality comes from competency and competency comes from effective talent management.
New Alignments - There has to be realignment between training, monitoring and evaluation. Training in isolation has no meaning. A robust follow-up mechanism through monitoring has to be built in, to be able to try and test training content and provide feedback to teacher educators. The evaluation and incentives should be linked to training outcomes and overall impact. All three have to resonate together to be able to make any training a success.
Barriers to modern education, child and human psychology has to be broken to be able to develop content for children and teachers which are in consonance with the newer truths being revealed by science. A conscious effort has to be taken by the leaders, administrators and educators to unlearn and relearn the newer dimensions of learning.
Change neither happens through a formula nor through any regime – it happens when there is a conscious realization of shortcomings, acknowledgement of basic flaws in the approach and systematic effort to change the approach, otherwise, all remains business as usual.
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