The document discusses quality concerns in teacher education in India, highlighting issues such as outdated curriculum, inadequate practical training, and the commercialization of teacher education. It offers several suggestions for improvement, including increasing internship duration, better integration of theory and practice, and establishing uniform course structures across the country. The reform proposals aim to create a more robust teacher education system that emphasizes both academic knowledge and hands-on experience.

1. Quality Concerns in Teacher
Education
R K Mohalik
RIE, Bhubaneswar

2. Importance of Teacher
• The Kothari Commission (1964-66) pointed
out, “Investment in teacher education can
yield rich dividends because the financial
resources required are small when measured
against the resulting improvements in the
education of millions”.

3. • Teacher is the principal means for implementing
all educational programmes and of the
organization of education. It further elaborated
that the principal role of teacher will always be
teaching and providing guidance to their pupils,
not only through classroom instruction and
tutorials but also by personal contact and
numerous other ways through which teachers
have always tried to build up the inner
potentialities of the pupils. NPE, 1986

4. • Programme of Action (1992) observed,
“Teachers performance is the most crucial
input in the field of education. Whatever
policy may be laid down, in the ultimate
analysis these have to be interpreted and
implemented by teachers as much through
their personal example as through teaching
learning process”.

5. Concerns in Teacher Education
• Diversity in course structure
• Theory loaded and less practice
• Lack of integration of content and pedagogy
• Lack of integration of ICT
• Traditional approach in transacting curriculum
• Least focus on affective development of
trainees

6. Continued……
• Short duration of internship in comparison to
other professional courses
• Ill equipped teacher educators
• Poor infrastructure facility like ICT, Lab, Library
• Privatization without monitoring by NCTE
• Teacher education as profitable business
• Research inputs are not included in syllabus
and training

7. Continued……
• Lack of instructional leadership of Principals
• Faulty way of Admission
• Absent of experiment school
• De-motivated trainees

8. Suggestions for Quality Improvement
• Development of pedagogical content
knowledge
• Development of technological content
knowledge
• Development of Professional attitudes
• Integrating educational theory and practice
• Linking school and teacher education institute

9. Continued……
• Long duration of internship and field work
with community
• Orientation for teacher educators in latest
pedagogy and technology
• Wide use of ICT in training
• Changing admission system (first work then
get training)

10. Suggestions for Quality Improvement
• Field Work with Community should be introduced
as it provides rich, real life and hands- on
experience to the prospective teachers regarding
education in rural area. It helps trainees to
develop social skills necessary for successful
adjustment in rural area.
• Privatization and Commercialization of teacher
education should be stopped which leads to large
scale mushrooming of teacher education.

11. • There should be uniformity in the course structure and
running the B.Ed Course across the Country. The NCTE
may take necessary steps to ensure uniformity of B.Ed
curriculum in the country.
• Teacher education must engage with theory along with
field experiences to help trainees to view knowledge
not as external to the learner but as something that is
actively constructed during learning. Teacher education
should integrate academic knowledge and professional
learning into a meaningful whole.

12. • Entrance Test should be made mandatory in
all the teacher training college/ institute
where we can really find out the interest,
attitude and aptitude in teaching and get
teachers by choice and not by chance.

13. • It is desirable that the existing one-year B.Ed. degree
programme is structurally transformed to a two year,
with deeper and more engagement with school-based
experience, reflective and critical engagement with
theory or in short, meaningful/ greater emphasis on
school internship and school experience. It is perhaps
high time that we pay heed to the specific suggestion
of increasing the duration of initial teacher education,
recommended by the two most significant policy
Commissions of post-independence India, namely the
Kothari Commission (1964-66) and the Chattopadhaya
Commission (1983-85).

14. • Teacher education should provide opportunity to
student-teachers for reflection and independent
study without packing the training schedule with
teacher-directed activities alone. The teacher
educators should change their style and strategy
of teaching in B.Ed classes to act as Model before
the trainees. The lecture method should be
replaced with Group approaches like cooperative
learning/peer learning/group discussion/field
visits etc.

15. • Vertical linkages for post-graduate studies in
education, including research programmes for
students from a variety of science and social
science disciplines need to be provided.

16. • Teacher Learning Centers (TLCs) may be established as a
structural space located within a teacher education
institution for providing student teachers with hands-on
experience with learning materials, engagement with
learners and opportunities for self-reflection. This can act
as a forum for interaction and sharing, a platform for
classroom-based research, a structural space for self-
directed activities, a platform for developing a repertoire of
skills, a structural space for the personal and psychological
development of teachers and a structural space for forging
links between pre-service and in-service teacher education
as the NPE 1986 maintained that pre-service and in-service
teacher education are inseparable for the development of
teachers..

17. • Integrated models of teacher education of four or five
years’ duration could comprise of core components that
would be common to all teacher education programmes
(pre-primary, elementary, secondary and senior secondary)
followed by specialization of professional development,
specific to the stage of education.
• Proposals for the comprehensive reform of teacher
education include integrated programmes of teacher
education as the way forward; forging critical links between
school education and universities; providing for
diversification of specializations at the post-graduate level
and providing for diverse routes for undergraduate
students to pursue higher studies in education.

18. • Reform of teacher education to move forward on
a sound footing demands dedicated research in
the area of foundations of education in the Indian
context by universities, preferably in
independently established departments. The
research in such departments would help
develop the teacher education programmes on a
more sound theoretical basis. The existing
departments of education have hardly been able
to engage themselves in this long-pending need
for their pre-occupation in conducting routine
teacher training and research programmes.