Major Shifts in the Teacher Education Programme:
• Understanding that the learner needs to be given priority. The learner is seen as an active participant rather than a passive recipient in the process of leaning, and his/her capabilities and potential are seen not as fixed but dynamic and capable of development through direct self-experience. The curriculum will be designed so as to provide opportunities to directly observe learners at play and work; assignments to help teachers understand learners' questions and observations about natural and social phenomena; insights into children's thinking and learning; and opportunities to listen to children with attention, humour and empathy.
• Learning should be appreciated as a participatory process that takes place in the shared social context of the learner's immediate peers as well as the wider social community or the nation as a whole. Ideas expressed by educational thinkers such as Gandhi, Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Gijubhai, J. Krishnamurty, Dewey and others are often studied in a piecemeal manner, without the necessary context and without concern about where these ideas emanated from. No wonder they are studied and memorised, but seldom applied, by the very same teacher educators who present these ideas to the trainee teachers. The participatory process is a self-experience-based process in which the learner constructs his/her knowledge in his/her own ways through absorption, interaction, observation and reflection.
• The major shift is in the teacher's role where he/she assumes a position centre stage as a source of knowledge, as custodian and manager of all teaching learning processes, and executor of educational and administrative mandates given through curricula or circulars. Now his/her role needs to be shifted from being a source of knowledge to being a facilitator, of transforming information into knowledge/ wisdom, as a supporter in enhancing learning through multiple exposures, encouraging the learner to continuously achieve his/her educational goals.
• Another significant shift is in the concept of knowldege, wherein knowledge is to be taken as a continuum, as generated from experiences in the actual field through observation, verification, and so on. The knowledge component in teacher education is derived from broader areas of the discipline of education, and it needs to be represented as such. It means that conscious efforts are needed to represent an explanation from the perspective of education rather than merely specifying theoretical ideas from related disciplines with "implications for education".
• Knowledge in teacher education is multidisciplinary in nature within the context of education. In other words, conceptual inputs in teacher education need to be articulated in such a manner that they describe and explain educational phenomena—actions, tasks, efforts, processes, concepts and events. • Such a teacher education programme would provide adequate scope for viewing a theoretical understanding and its practical aspects in a more integrated manner rather than as two separate components. It enables the student-teacher and the teacher in the class room to develop a critical sensitivity to field approaches. Thus, once tried out by self and others, it will lead to evolving one's own vision of an ideal setting for learning. Such teachers would be better equipped for creating a learning environment, would try to improve existing conditions rather than merely adjusting to them with the necessary technical knowhow and confidence.
Another major shift is in understanding the impact of the social context in educative processes.
• Learning is greatly influenced by the social environment/context from which learners and teachers emerge. The social climate of the school and the classroom exert a deep influence on the process of learning and education as a whole. Given this, there is a need to undertake a major shift away from an overwhelming emphasis on the psychological characterisics of the individual learner to his/ her social, cultural, economic and political context.
• Different contexts lead to differences in learning. Learning in school is influenced and enhanced by the wider social context outside the school.
• Teacher education progr ammes need to provide the space for engagement with issues and concerns of contemporary Indian society, its pluralistic nature, and issues of identity, gender, equity, livelihood and poverty. This can help teachers in contextualising education and evolving a deeper understanding of the purpose of education and its relationship with society.
• The shift in performance appraisal in the teacher education programme from an annual affair to a continuous feature needs to be recognised. The teacher-educator evaluates the student-teacher's ability to cooperate and collaborate, investigate and integrate, and also appraises written and oral skills, originality in approach and presentation, and so on.
• Several kinds of appraisals take place in the form of self-a ppraisal, peer appraisal, teacher's feedback, and formal evaluation at the end of the year. All appraisals aim at improvement, understanding one's own strengths and weaknesses, understanding what has to be strengthened, and identifing the next goals in the learning process.
• The appraisal mostly will not be given in marks (quantitative), but on a scale (qualitative), where the student's achievement is evaluated as a continuum and he/she is placed according to his/her performance in various activities.
• In brief, the new vision of teacher education will be more responsive to changes in the school system as it envisages a significant paradigm shift. The major shifts have been stated on the left.
