ANNEXURE- B 
                                      
         Thrust Area: Teacher Education, Policies, Perspectives and Management 
         Introduction 
          
          Given  the  vast  and  diverse  landscape  of  the  Indian  education  system, 
         significant progress has been made towards the achievement of the goals laid 
         out in the Constitution and the National Policy on Education. These include 
         significantly higher levels of funding, access, enrollment, infrastructure and the 
         recently  legislated  Right  to  Education  (RTE)  Act.  In  spite  of  these 
         developments, critical challenges continue to remain in areas such as retention, 
         quality and equitable opportunities for all.  
          
         Recent  developments  like  the  Right  of  Children  to  Free  and  Compulsory 
         Education (RTE) Act, 2009, the National Curriculum Framework for Teacher 
         Education 2009 (NCFTE), and other contemporary developments in the field of 
         Teacher  Education  have  renewed  the  vigour  and  resolve  to  address  quality 
         issues  in  teacher  education  system  in  the  country.  Together  with  RTE  ,  the 
         recommendations of XII Five year Plan for teacher education has created a 
         positive pull and pressure to rejuvenate the teacher education system leading to 
         systemic and sustainable improvements. 
          
         In  this  context,  the  National  Curriculum  Framework  for  Teacher  Education 
         (2009) voices the need and importance of professionally trained teachers and 
         teacher educators. The quality of teacher educators is linchpin to the quality of 
         teacher  education  and  hence,  professional  preparation  of  teachers.  Further, 
         teachers  are  the  most  important  factor  that  determines  the  quality  of  school 
         education. Therefore, the content and pedagogical inputs provided by teacher 
         education necessitate, teacher educators, who are qualified and competent to 
         provide them. Hence, for sustainable systemic changes, effective management 
         of teacher education system calls for a deeper discourse. 
          
         India struggles with the search for teachers who can create appropriate learning 
         environments,  based  on  their  understanding  of  content  and  pedagogy,  and 
         equally  significant  their  dispositions,  as  a  teacher  needs  to  reconceptualise 
         citizenship education and also internalise the ethos of fundamental duties of 
         every  citizen.  Currently  we  are  faced  with  an  acute  shortage  of  teachers  in 
         government  and  other  schools,  and  the  ability  of  those  serving  to  facilitate 
         fulfilment  of  basic  objectives  of  learning,  leave  alone  fulfilling  national 
         expectations of facilitating social change. 
          
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       The concern becomes even more poignant considering that most discourses on 
       educational reform explicitly state the role of the teacher as paramount; to stress 
       the  point  further,  the  National  Curriculum  Framework  2005  states  that 
       educational  reforms  “fundamentally  need  the  overarching  reform  of  teacher 
       empowerment”. However, despite the myriad efforts to systematically prepare 
       and support teachers in the discharge of their responsibilities,  the impact on 
       practice  has  been  far  from  that  desired.  If  policy  regarding  preparation  and   
       support  of  teacher  over  the  past  is  examined,  there  appears  to  have  been  a 
       continuous effort to address quality issues through training and monitoring, but 
       the situation appears to be far from improving. 
        
       One thing, however, remains unchanged – the centrality of the teacher to all the 
       processes in the school and the challenges teachers face to fulfill this critical 
       role, as well as the lack of supporting structure. It is a sad commentary on the 
       will of this nation that instead of ameliorating the deficiencies in the system, 
       specifically,  pre-service  teacher  education,  we  proceed  to  dilute  criteria  for 
       recruitment  and  promotion  in  the  quest  for  catering  to  numbers,  thus 
       perpetuating the further decline of teacher quality and hence, learning. 
        
       The quality of teachers is also linked with the quality of those who have the 
       responsibility to prepare them. In this context the competence, capability and 
       scholarship  of  teacher  educators  become  very  critical.  The  quality  of 
       preparation of teacher educator has also remained a weak link in quality of pre-
       service  teacher  education  and  deserves  urgent  attention.  Quality  teacher 
       education, both pre-service and in-service, is a national priority. It is therefore 
       imperative to integrate the planning for teacher education institutions across the 
       country and prioritise and address issues in a manner to address shortage of 
       trained  teachers,  on-going  capacity  development  of  in-service  teachers, 
       infrastructure  up-gradation  of  teacher  education  institutions  and  functional 
       diversification and rationalization among them. 
        
       Another critical thread is the quality of the entrants to the profession of teaching 
       and  related  issues  which  has  serious  implications  not  only  on  teacher 
       preparation  but  also  teacher  performance.  Performance  management  is  not 
       limited  to  appraisal  and  incentives  (which  may  be  in  the  form  of  increased 
       remuneration or promotion) – it goes beyond to optimizing the strengths of the 
       teacher  to  facilitate  development  of  not  just  her  learners  but  contribute  to 
       institution  building, improvement of the community and development of her 
       peers and newer teachers. 
        
       Issues pertaining to duration, curriculum, stage specificity , pedagogy vis-a –vis 
       andragogy, evaluation and others like integrated planning, ,  linkages across 
       institutions, availability of resources, and professional development are to be 
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       dealt  with  proactively  to  provide  systemic  enablers.  Demand  for  qualified 
       teachers over the next few years would be substantial especially in the context 
       of  RTE  Act.  It  becomes  extremely  critical  for  States  to  expand  the  current 
       institutional  capacities,  not  only  of  infrastructure  but  also  of  qualified  and 
       trained faculty. 
        
       Even  after  decades  of  reform  initiatives  the  progress  and  effectiveness  of 
       Teacher Education remains questionable. There is an urgent need to facilitate 
       teacher education system  to ensure that the resulting plan is meaningful and 
       manageable and yield desired results for which open system approach needs to 
       be adopted rather than the piecemeal approach. To manage quality aspects all 
       the components need to be aligned  , intra-district academic coordination in the 
       district,  academic  assessment  monitoring,  research  and  action  research,  ICT 
       interventions,  innovative  practices  and  academic  planning  in  the  district 
       professional  development  of  teachers  aligning  pre-service  and  in-service 
       education systems. 
        
       The teaching community today finds itself exposed to severe public criticism 
       and  fast  diminishing  professional  prestige.  The  professional  competence, 
       commitment and motivation to the profession is all the time questioned.  There 
       are  demands  to  hold  the  teaching  professionals  accountable  towards  their 
       professional obligations and lapses. Any effort to enforce accountability is to be 
       preceded by clear articulation of what is expected of them, robust professional 
       preparation  program  and  continued  support,  well  laid  out  and  functional 
       systemic  enablers  and  systematic  assessment  of  their  performance.  The 
       measures of teacher accountability need to be tied to institutional provisions that 
       enable teachers to work. 
        
       A pragmatic solution lies in  holistic approach to teacher education system and 
       creating convergent and integrated system of teacher education management, 
       overseeing  the  quality  of  teacher/  teacher  educators  preparation  and  school 
       education to support equity and encourage community involvement, to develop 
       and put in place a mechanism to monitor the implementation of the policies on 
       various  physical  and  financial  parameters  with  pre-defined  outcomes  for 
       improving  the  overall  quality  of  various  activities  of  the  teacher  education 
       institutions. There is an urgent need to create better institutional mechanisms 
       and systemic enablers to achieve excellence in the profession. 
        
       Thus, the Department proposes to make a humble intervention in the area of 
       Teacher Education with financial support from UGC  to carve a niche in prime  
       areas of teacher Education  in both  pre-service/ in-service teacher education 
       and proposes the following objectives  to be achieved in the next five years 
        
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       Objectives 
              To  provide  all  sorts  of  research  support  including  reference 
              material, technical support for data analysis etc.  to the Research 
              Scholars, Teachers, Teacher Educators etc.  
               To  engage  in  newer,  current  and  relevant  areas  of  educational 
              research related to teacher education (e.g. policy research, quality 
              issues in teacher education , developmental research) 
              To  disseminate  of  research  findings  to  stakeholders  (schools/ 
              teachers/policy makers)  
              To facilitate  the  linkages  and  alignment  of  challenges  /issues  at 
              ground level and policies. 
              To promote development of  curricula, pedagogy,  techniques  of 
              evaluation and  teaching –learning material . 
           To critically  examine  the  existing teacher education curriculum  to 
          gauge  the gaps between the role of teacher in the school system , teacher 
          preparation and education of teacher educators . 
           To  develop  Training  Management  System  (  TMS)  and  Professional 
          Development Record at District level  to be used to consolidate and track 
          various professional development activities across the cluster, block and 
          district and even state and national levels.  
               
           Dissemination  of    Curriculum  Frameworks  and    Policy  documents  in 
          interpretable  form  to  stakeholders  to  facilitate  and  support  their 
          implementation  at  ground  level  by  the  administrators  ,  teachers  and 
          teacher educators. (e.g. NCFTE,09 , CCE,  RTE) 
           
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