[Kerala University English Teacher
Educator’s Forum - KUETEF]
During
the combined meeting of the BOS, the
Advisory Committee and Core Committee members,
a number of observations were made.
Many present dwelt at large on
the need for inclusion of a new content
and new practices.
Need
for new content
What is
important is that trainees should acquire the
essence of Educational Sociology,
Educational Philosophy and Educational Psychology. There is no guarantee that
teaching all these will bring about a change in trainees. The trainees should grasp the principles of
each. Broad structural changes are essential. There should be a focus on
competency –based education.
Constructivist
practices are now being followed in schools. But we employ Behaviourist
practices- Lecture method for teacher training.
If we do not make trainees employ
knowledge generation strategies there is
no point in asking the trainee to go the school and teach, following
Constructivist practices.
It
seems the time has come to introduce Art Education and Community Living Camps.
The latter can help nurture societal values. The new Curriculum should
address the changes happening in technology and include knowledge gained from brain-based
learning.
An
orientation in e-learning and e-content
development is the need of the hour. Educational entrepreneurship is a
concept that need to be considered.
Further, trainees need to be taught how to handle learners with disability.
There is also a need for
introducing new areas for Micro Teaching, such as engaging classes in Problem-solving.
Need
for new practices
Changes
in the international scene should
be addressed in the
Curriculum now being designed. We need to present new practices to new entrants
in the field of teacher education in a convincing way. An effective
training ought to be imparted
before implementing the new Curriculum.
It
would be a good idea to video record the performance of trainees in the classroom
and this should be followed by a
critique. Then the trainee should re-teach another set of students incorporating the suggestions and criticisms.
Models
of teaching is found to be difficult for the trainees. If the current BEd
syllabus is transacted by the teacher educator using different Models of
teaching, trainees will gain a better understanding of the same. That is to say
that the teacher educator should be capable of demonstrating new Models of Teaching.
Usually teacher educators confine themselves to the teaching of theory and the practice part of Models of
Teaching is ignored. This should change.
Teacher
educators should be directed to offer their comments in writing.
Professionalism should start with the teacher educators. They should rise
themselves to the status of being able to deliver the last word in Education.
The
change in school curricular practices
(Product to Process) should find a place in the BEd curriculum too.
The
tendency of borrowing the same
strategy employed for English for
subjects like Malayalam, Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil etc. should be changed.
It is
worth recalling the fact that in a recent study it was found that
un-trained teachers perform better than trained
teachers! The trained teachers may perhaps know the terms related to
educational practices but may not know how to effectively use it.
Ideally,
all the classes engaged by trainees need
to be observed. Even the services of
MEd students may be sought. Immediately after teaching, the trainee
should be given a proper feed back and
should not be asked to meet in college
during week end.
We need
to provide opportunity to trainees to teach
in other streams including ICSE. Even the practice of using mentors
need be attempted. Further, there should definitely be a scope for
introduction of innovative, experimental and reflective practices.
The
challenges of integration of teacher
education programmes with the
school education programme need to be
squarely addressed. For instance, two levels have now been identified and the Secondary level now includes Standard
9 to 12. Our teacher training programmes
should also be geared to address the change.
In
American schools for instance, subject-based performance indicators have been introduced. There is also a Mentor
Performance Indicator and a Mentee Performance Indicator. These could be
introduced in our Curriculum too. But, all said and done, the humane aspect of teacher – student relationship
should not be over looked. Our Curriculum should properly address the rigour,
relevance and relationship between the teacher educator and the trainee
during the training programme.
Exit remarks
There is scope for revising the curriculum every year instead of revising it every ten years as it is done in
several Universities in India. A Curriculum Committee Foundation is the need of
the hour. It is high time that we employed the course designing principles in
the BEd. curriculum too-viz; identifying specifically the Objectives,
Competence to be achieved and the activities to
be given during the course.
While framing the
Curriculum, do realize that
not a single Indian University
comes within the first one hundred
Universities in the world. You yourself
studied in one such and your children too
are doomed to attend one such University!!
Join this discussion and be a part of
our curricular reforms…
Dr. C. Praveen
Secretary, KUETEF
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