Panel 1: Emerging Trends in Indian Education

Panelists:

Mr. Subir Shukla, Independent Consultant; Ms. Amukta Mahapatra, Director, SchoolScape, Chennai; Prof. B. Phalachandra, Professor, Regional Institute of Education, Mysore; and Ms. Madhu Ranjan, USAID

Governments across the world are re-defining the professional development of their teachers (in-service and pre-service) in terms of a ‘continuous, cyclical, growth-based’ approach.

In India there is growing recognition that qualitative changes in teacher behavior and classroom practice are inextricably linked to the provision of a dynamic, ongoing training process – one that is needs-based, inclusive of formal and informal experiences and girded by rigorous assessment. Yet, for the most part, it has proven difficult to translate this understanding into scalable professional development
models.

Some trends in Indian education:

1. Increasing Student Diversity: Briefly, India, like many nations that have promoted universal access to education is facing the challenge of "super diversity." Children who normally did not go to school are now attending school because of SSA (Education for All) and India' Right to Education Act. Teachers are ill equipped, and sometimes unwilling, to teach children from different castes, creeds, tribes, gender and linguistic backgrounds.

2. Poor Teaching Effectiveness: Many of India's teachers face tremendous deficits in inputs (formation, grades in school, levels of qualification, poor teaching conditions, poor building conditions, poor pay, mismatches in deployment, etc.) that impact their overall effectiveness. Additionally, many Indian states lack consistent measures of teacher effectiveness.

3. An Increase in Systems Thinking: Increasingly, there's a recognition, based in part on SSA, that education must be systematized with harmonization among components and vertical linkages in terms of outcomes. There's a growing recognition that teachers are not treated as professionals and a teacher effectiveness framework is under development.

This focus on teacher effectiveness essentially focuses on 3 components: competence, performance and effectiveness. Competence + enabling conditions = performance. Performance + supportive conditions = effectiveness.

4. Building Linkages: Increasingly, within India, there is a larger understanding of quality (relationships, processes and outcomes) with increasing expectations that each teacher teach the right things in the right way in the right amount for each child.

5. Focus on Outcomes: there's an understanding of what teachers needs are and an increasing focus on teaching standards (National Curriculum for Teacher Education and ADEPTS). NCTE is a licensing body but has no stated quality benchmarks.

6. Quality v. Quantity "Schizophrenia:" Because of its sheer size (1.2 billion people and growing 2-3% per annum) and young population (over 50% under the age of 26), India faces challenges unseen in any other country. This need for quantity (of teachers) has often overwhelmed the desire for quality. Reaching out to teachers needs to be "positively differential." Teacher Training Colleges need to help prospective teachers do practice teaching, reflective inquiry and engage in peer learning as part of their formation.

7. Poor Teacher Educator Capacity: Like many countries, pre-service education is a small component of India's overall teacher education system. Many teacher educators in DIETS lack practical teaching experience or taught so long ago in now discredited ways that they are ill equipped to prepare teachers in new methods of instruction and assessment and dealing with a highly diverse student body.

There is a major effort afoot to launch CRCs and BRCs across the country. There's a 3-5 year professional development strategy that states will need to develop (and not be able to change with the installation of a new government). There's also an increasing recognition by the Indian Government that many NGO education programs are seriously wanting.