Knowledge
Effective teacher training makes all the difference to students’ learning outcomes
It is an acknowledged fact that no education system in the world has excelled without making a significant investment in building a cadre of quality teachers. Attention is shifting from quantity – ensuring all children are in school – to providing quality education.
The long-neglected realm of teacher training is finally getting the attention it deserves, even if partially motivated by the threat of termination. Come August 2019, all teachers who lack the minimum qualifications mandated under the Right To Education Act, 2009, will be barred from continuing in service. That’s as far as certification goes. The real relevance of teacher training goes much deeper. It is an acknowledged fact that no education system in the world has excelled without making a significant investment in building a cadre of quality teachers. Attention is shifting from quantity – ensuring all children are in school – to providing quality education. And it is this weak link in the Indian education system that needs to be improved, sooner rather than later.
With teacher training often considered important only for procuring a job, quality invariably suffers. If teacher training is to be an ongoing process – to improve the quality of teachers, and thus of students – on whom does the onus lie for the effective training of our teachers? And what are the resources best recommended by educators to effectively train teachers? Read on for an assessment by industry leaders…
Need of the Hour
Nisha Rana, Principal, BRCM Public School, Bhiwani
“Keeping in mind the modern pedagogy and responsibility of a teacher today, it is imperative that the teachers should have the requisite qualification to be a teacher,” says Nisha Rana, Principal, BRCM Public School, Bhiwani. “Teaching qualifications typically involve subject matter expertise, psychological awareness and classroom management. To provide teachers with the greatest chance of success, they need to have completed a teacher preparation program that provides them with knowledge, experience, and guidance. When this does not happen, we not only risk teachers leaving the profession quickly, but more importantly, we risk the education of entire classes of students. With the changing scenario, there is a lot of change in the curriculum and teaching techniques. The day-to-day innovation in technology has tremendously affected the teaching techniques and become the integral part of teaching. Students deserve the best we can offer them. We definitely want those with a natural aptitude to go into teaching, but that aptitude needs to be refined and developed through proper training. I feel the April 2019 deadline is a long-due corrective remedy and teacher training is finally getting its due.”
Shalini Nambiar, Vice President, GEMS Education
“The framing of the New Education Policy (NEP) provides us with an opportunity to review and redesign the current teacher education programmes,” affirms Shalini Nambiar, Vice President, GEMS Education. “Teachers need to be viewed as professionals who require multiple skills to do their job, and accordingly professional standards need to be built into all teacher education programmes. These programmes must focus both on building an essential knowledge base, as well as skill sets required for making a difference in the classroom. Importantly, they must locate the professional development of teachers within the larger socio-cultural, economic and political context of contemporary India. Teachers need to be made more accountable through enhanced involvement of the school management committees, recognizing the need for supportive supervision and incentives to ensure teacher performance and accountability.”
Seema Handa, Director, Eklavya School, Jalandhar
“Not just teacher training, most professions require on-going updation of knowledge and skill,” vouches Seema Handa, Director, Eklavya School, Jalandhar. “It is encouraging that finally attention is being focused on teacher training. Highly trained teachers with regular up-skilling will help the Indian education system to finally catch up with the rest of the world, somewhat like we have in the field of digital and internet technology.”
Harpreet Randhawa, Director, VInspire Training & Consultancy Pvt Ltd
Harpreet Randhawa, Director, VInspire Training & Consultancy Pvt Ltd adds, “Teachers who do not fulfil the minimum qualifications mandated are given the appropriate opportunity to undergo upgradation of qualification along with training and skills development. With the right approach, appropriate need analysis, and fixing of timelines, teacher training will get its overdue recognition.”
Deeper Relevance
Fatema Agarkar, Co-founder, KA EduAssociates
Beyond the need for certification, teacher training has a deeper relevance. As Fatema Agarkar, Co-founder, KA EduAssociates, one of the most sought after teacher training institutes for its skill-based and customised training to cater to 21st century learning, explains it, “As a nation, we need to recognise that schools are responsible for shaping our future as these children eventually take their place in the world and will be leading decisions that may affect us economically or politically. So those shaping their world today, simply need to be highly capable of managing children and their individual needs – get them to create and ideate more so that they can think of solutions for problems that exist today. Qualifications alone do not define this – qualifications give you a base, but there is a lot of skilling required thereafter and in a sustained manner to ensure that teachers cope with a changing world and its competitive demands. So in a way, this corrective step (and I won’t get drawn into a debate of late or early because I have more pressing concerns) is one way of looking at addressing the current situation that warrants better teaching learning processes.”
Fatema affirms that she has interacted with several teachers as part of various NGO volunteering programs, who are perhaps more inspiring than qualified and experienced teachers simply because their passion to make it simpler and decode the subject is far greater than the need to deliver facts or simply test children. “They are looking for that spark in the child and working towards it. So personally, I believe that skilling a teacher, sustained teacher training is what I am more excited about and this is with or without qualifications.”
Quality Improvement
“At the crux of the education system is the most important person – the ‘Teacher’, who is also the most neglected person in our system,” points out Shalini Nambiar. “People are spending crores to build a great school, with fancy building but the amount of funds allocated to teachers is peanuts. First and foremost to attract good quality teachers one needs to pay them well; after all, if we pay peanuts we will only get monkeys. The framing of the New Education Policy (NEP) provides us with an opportunity to review and redesign the current teacher education programmes. Teachers need to be viewed as professionals who require multiple skills to do their job, and accordingly professional standards need to be built into all teacher education programmes. These programmes must focus both on building an essential knowledge base, as well as skill sets required for making a difference in the classroom. Importantly, they must locate the professional development of teachers within the larger socio-cultural, economic and political context of contemporary India.” She believes teachers need to be made more accountable through enhanced involvement of the school management committees, recognizing the need for supportive supervision and incentives to ensure teacher performance and accountability.
Savita Venkat, Chief Development Officer, Bombay Cambridge International School
Savita Venkat, Chief Development Officer, Bombay Cambridge International School, Andheri (W), adds, “Teacher training, teacher upgradation programmes, and teacher credibility is to be tested and done periodically. We need to establish a clear cut recruitment policy with competency matrix, have an almanac for teacher training. The area of training is confirmed at the time of yearly appraisal where gap and growth can be identified and the institution organizes training and upgradation in these programmes. Having a monitoring and supervision plan in place will surely help in gathering quality teachers.”
An Ongoing Process
R K Ranavat, Principal, Oxford International School, Rajkot
According to R K Ranavat, Principal, Oxford International School, Rajkot, the government’s NEP makes it critical to focus on teachers and teacher education to ensure quality education. “Teachers need to be made more accountable through enhanced involvement of the school management committees, recognising the need for supportive supervision and incentives to ensure teacher performance and accountability, as well as use of technology to monitor teacher attendance and curb absenteeism. New teachers have many challenges that they face each day. Teacher training helps prepare new teachers for these challenges. While teacher training and student teaching won't completely prepare new teachers for every issue they will face, it can help them feel more confident about many common problems that arise for teachers each day. Without this background, teachers might feel like failures and eventually give up,” he opines.
Anuradha Govind, Principal, J M International School, Dwarka
“It’s a teacher who builds the nation. It’s the cadre of transformational teachers who have the power to change the outlook, thought process and character of an entire generation of our young citizens and therefore it’s not just our responsibility but an inevitable necessity for us to invest in building innovative teachers, productive teaching, holistic curricula and child-centered schools,” avers Anuradha Govind, Principal, J M International School, Dwarka. “The education system of our country needs loads of accountability and tons of integrity with the vision for nurturing 21st century skills in our children. For that we need to break free of conventions and think afresh. No education system in the world has excelled without making a significant investment in building a cadre of quality teachers, is a fact. But before investing, we also need to first ensure what we understand by ‘Quality’. We must begin with understanding our aims for our children. What kind of citizens do we want to produce? To make this possible what kind of knowledge and skills should our children possess? For such 21st century knowledge and skills, what kind of curricula, learning resources and teaching-learning methods will be required? What kind of wisdom, proficiency, ability, skills, talents, personality, value-systems, and knowledge base do we need in a teacher who could be able to make all our children happily acquire all of that? We need to keep in mind our goals and redesign our vision, education system, curricula, learning resources, learning environment, methods of teaching and assessment with a shift from ‘teaching’ to ‘learning’, from ‘marks’ to ‘excellence’, from ‘degree’ to ‘ability’, in order to ‘rectify’ this ‘weak link’ in education and develop some awesome teachers who would develop an amazingly skilled sensitive, responsible and dignified generation of 21st century global citizens.”
Taking Onus
Anuradha Govind likens it to a bitter pill to swallow, when she maintains that most of the teacher training courses like and B.Ed, NTT and many of the institutions which offer them, are not being able to play a role bigger than offering a certification for a job. “Sadly, there is hardly any vision for anything other than some redundant text to be crammed and writing a set of stereotypical exam, which is nowhere about any kind of ‘productive’ learning, excellence or ability to be the teacher who will produce a generation of thinkers and problem solvers with all round personalities.” The truth, she says, is that most of the ‘eligible’ degree holders do not enter the education arena with an ability, intent and passion to make a difference. “Let’s admit the fact that the outlook mostly is towards ‘a job of convenience’; nowhere close to a ‘mission to transform lives’. The onus for this lies on our entire system and everyone who is a part of this machinery,” she avers. “We have been so far failing to attract the right kind of talent towards a career in teaching. We have not been able to give the teaching profession a sought after and desirable status in the minds of our people like that of engineering, medicine and many others. We, on an urgent basis, need to restructure our teacher training programmes and the constant learning, ongoing training, brain-storming, and motivation are as vital to the quality of education as is oxygen for living.” Now that is an indication of the passion needed to take onus and take it forward dynamically!
Dr Swati Popat Vats, President – Podar Education Network
Dr Swati Popat Vats, President – Podar Education Network believes it is the schools that should take on the responsibility for conducting refresher courses for teachers. “There is so much changing in global education trends that schools must ensure that their teachers are up to date with latest research and practices. In IB board accreditation process they check what trainings the staff has undergone in the last few years, similarly the other boards should make it a mandatory point in their accreditation process.”
Seema Handa avers that with the tech revolution already in place, cost and availability of tech is no longer the major issue. “India’s challenge remains its huge numbers! Pockets of excellence exist but to scale up in a vast country like India with its geographical and demographical diversity, requires both government and individual endeavor,” she points out. “Schools-Teachers-Parents are engaged in the same enterprise; that of educating young children. This triangle is duly supported by the government, non-government, public and private enterprises. So the onus lies on all of us – the government, society at large, the schools, and most importantly on the parents. As long as the parents remain focused on premium brands or infrastructure, the quality of teachers and the quality of education will continue to suffer. As soon as the focus shifts to the quality of education being imparted in a school, we shall see a major upswing in the quality of teachers and hence their teaching,” she states, adding, “At the same time, the government and policy makers need to give direction to the change being sought.”
“As a decision maker in school, it is critical to take stock of the situation and know your strengths and challenges and create a road map ahead for what the priorities are,” maintains Fatema Agarkar. She believes that the responsibility cannot rest solely on the shoulders of the management. “Teachers must take responsibilities independently to upskill and upgrade themselves which shows commitment to your passion too. This partnership of organisation and self may get quicker results that a one sided approach and ultimately, whether you part of the management or a teacher, there is an unwritten rule in the education code of the conduct – and that is we owe it to that unassuming child to deliver content is the best and most effective way possible. Hence, it is everyone's responsibility.”
The Way Forward
Fatema Agarkar recommends “a combination of online and face to face sessions, hands-on case study discussions, exposure to an alternative industry or industries as grounds for learning how to manage time etc.” She adds, “Social media makes it so easy to partner other educators via closed and open books to get help in case you are stuck with a problem etc. Time spent in research and how to research effectively will be an important resource tool. Teachers need to be trained by experienced trainers who combine best practices and research, hands-on, implementable strategies and their own personal expertise of being in a classroom. The quality and flexibility of the trainer makes all the difference as teachers need to know how to apply the knowledge amassed in the context of their classrooms.”
As Dr Swati Popat Vats puts it, “Teachers require a minimum qualification that prepares them to teach their subject matter, prepares them about understanding children and also supports them to understand lesson and curriculum planning and implementation with different types of learners in the classroom. Also we do include special education but are our teachers really equipped to deal with all kinds of learning delays and difficulties and gifted and talented children in the class? It is time we really respected our teachers and it can be done with the following-
1. Revamp the present B.Ed. program so that globally relevant practices like brain research, dealing with challenging behavior, life skills are all included.
2. Ensure that teachers undergo a refresher course every two years.
3. Keep a minimum wage benchmark for both government and private schools.
4. Teachers should not be allowed to take tuitions unless mandated for a child by a special educator. It is commercialization of teaching that has brought down the standards in the classroom and the respect value in parents and society for teachers.
5. Teachers to be not used for other government related work like elections etc.
6. Teachers to be given minimum facilities like free travel, free medical and access to computers and internet and library for their research and curriculum planning
Harpreet Randhawa advocates a four-pronged approach – “Teachers active in the profession should undergo face to face soft skills and behavioural skills training as we do in other professions. B.Ed/ M.Ed also needs to be upgraded, and aptitude tests and assessments made mandatory. Teacher training institutes by the government should be instituted and the right people be selected to run and implement the courses. Finally, academicians should be involved to ensure the quality is maintained more than the promoters. I do understand it is the number game and a business model without doubt, but like health sector, education sector needs to be secured by the government for coming generation to produce teachers. Else we shall have robots programmed to teach and who knows an applied version of e-schooling would be developed wherein you need no school, no teacher and institutions are run remotely!”
“Access to technology can be a great equalizer,” believes Seema Handa. “With government support, linked with private enterprise, pedagogy and best practices from around the world can be adapted and implemented in the Indian context. Identifying the ground-breaking work already being done in certain pockets of India and bringing it mainstream will be another resource which can be tapped. We must tap into India’s huge reservoir of traditional wisdom and value-based education system, and reinvent the present education system, making it relevant in the 21st century.”
According to Shalini Nambiar, a “well-developed PD programme with internal and external resources is key. Each teacher must observe at least two of her co-workers classes per week. Internal trainings are most effective as the school knows its needs and can plan individualized programmes to effectively train the teachers.”
Key resources, according to Savita Venkat, would be the Cambridge teaching and learning diploma for teachers, HUB trainers for education, subject specific training by authors and subject experts, IBDP teacher training, teacher training conducted by NCERT and ICSE boards as well as enrichment programmes by the British Council.
Dr Ranavat recommends approaching the challenge of poor quality education and growing shortage of teachers by connecting qualified teachers to develop their own teaching practice to inspire and empower communities of teachers around the world. “Our teacher training should lead teachers through cycles of workshops, observations and coaching to enable them to become self-reflectors and continuously improve their own teaching and encourage colleagues to do the same.”
Teaching and learning go hand in hand, which makes it necessary for the schools to have teacher training modules which are well knit in the curriculum and should cater to the demands of teaching fraternity which may arise during the teaching learning process, opines Nisha Rana. “A good teacher training program should be like a support for teachers to sharpen their tools as and when required. It is important that schools recognize the importance of well-structured teacher development programs which are in tandem with the teaching learning requirements of the schools. Teacher development programs should be given their due importance in the curriculum as they have a great role to play in the students’ performance and development. There is also great need to understand and research various models for the same and simultaneously let them voice out their requirements to enable better teaching learning practices.” Among the measures she recommends are web based resources, regular training sessions to hone computer skills, frequent in-house motivational workshops to be conducted by head and senior teachers, regular counselling sessions by motivational experts and subject experts, proper annual assessment of all teachers, and provision of opportunity given to teachers for their self-improvement.
Dr Swati also recommends that teachers invest in their own training. “Teachers should read books written by educators like Alfie Kohn, John Holt; become members of teacher discussion groups and forums; connect with educators on LinkedIn and Facebook; read essential blogs by educators; invest in magazines like ScooNews, Education World, and Brain feed etc. and stay updated; and attend workshops, seminars, and conferences both online and face to face.
As Rana summarises, “Remember; every teacher who is not learning and growing will result in students who are not learning and growing at some level. Poor and ineffective professional development hurts teachers. It hurts their students. It hurts their community and, since quality education is so highly correlated with economic growth, it hurts their nation.”
…Still think too much of a fuss is made of teacher training?
This was the cover story in our November 2017 issue.