The Theory of Teacher Professional Development and the Reality of Practice within the Educational Context of India

Atiya Khan*

Ph D Research Scholar, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

ABSTRACT:

This paper maps the current situation of teacher professional development and policy reforms in India, the teacher quality concerns in Indian schools, and the trends and challenges in professional development of teachers in India. It seeks to review the emergence of new technologies for teacher professional learning in India and what (if any) professional learning solutions have been developed to improve the quality of professional development in India. It presents the current contexts affecting professional development of teachers in India and goes on to provide some examples of the emergent learning networks for teacher professional development in India. The paper suggests the need to explore the potential of learning networks to support teacher professional development and teacher quality in India.

KEY WORDS: Teacher Quality, Teacher Professional Development, Trends and Challenges, Learning Networks, Online Learning.

TEACHER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND POLICY REFORMS IN INDIA:

The Indian education system is broad and intricate. According to the statistics from the 8th All India Education Survey (AIES) released by the National Council of Education, Research and Training (NCERT) in 2009, there are over 1.3 million schools in India with a gross national enrolment of 227 million students taught by about 7.2 million teachers. This vast system is further more complex with by education being a ‘concurrent’ area of governance that is controlled by both central and state governments. For the primary and secondary education sectors, three national and over 20 state boards of education function autonomously, with thousands of schools affiliated to each of those. In teacher education, there are similarly central, state, deemed and private universities, along with thousands of affiliated, autonomous, state-run, state-funded, unaided and private colleges. These bodies work autonomously and generally in isolation from each other (Padwad and Dixit, 2014).

The National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE) is the highest agency which controls and supervises teacher education policy and programmes apart from also assigning general guidelines for regular professional activities such as in-service teacher education programmes.

The substantial planning and functioning of these in-service teacher education programmes is assigned to national and state teacher training agencies, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and State Councils for Educational Research and Training (SCERTs), with autonomy to some extent permitted to adjust them to their own requirements. There are national norms and standards of teacher qualifications, recruitment measures, service expectations and outcomes assessment, relevant to the educational institutions within the purview of the national regulatory bodies. Every state in India has its own norms and standards, largely following the national ones, with locally applicable adjustments. In general, to be a primary or secondary teacher in India one needs to obtain a bachelor’s degree and a two-year pre-service teacher education degree. The norms are more precisely adhered to in government-aided schools, while unaided and private schools in many cases are lenient about them. It is thus common to find insufficiently or inadequately qualified or untrained teachers in educational institutions of India. (Padwad and Dixit, 2014).

The concern for quality of education has been enunciated in vain from time to time in India. Numerous five years plans integrated education plans and policies based on periodic assessment of the progress of education by the Ministry of Education, Commissions and Committees appointed by the central and state governments. India’s National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986 and the revised NPE, 1992, echoed the necessity to address the quality shortcomings in school education on priority basis. Quality cannot improve by itself. It calls for multi-faceted, planned and productive measures in teacher professional learning; upgrades in the school facilities and infrastructure; teachers’ impetus; and a modification in classroom instruction to make it interesting for the students (Padwad and Dixit, 2014). Conversely, in actual pedagogical practice, there has always been a compromise between quality and quantity, in favour of the latter in many schools in India. The disparity between the planned and the realized goals of education prolongs to be so considerable that the foundation of educational planning implementation can be in many cases be disputed (British Council, 2014; Prince and Barrett, 2014). The essential educational planning standards have gone off the route both at the central as well in the states of India, and thus, bringing it back on track remains a crucial task for the current education policy makers in India (Chudgar, 2013).

Commercial teacher education institutions have grown rapidly in India as a ‘‘lucrative business proposition’’ (NCTE, 2009, p. 5). According to an estimate from higher education statistics, in academic year 2009, there were over 11,000 institutions of initial teacher education nationwide (NCTE, 2009). However ‘behind the veil of such promising statistics, the learning outcomes of India’s children show little progress’ (Knowledge@Wharton, 2013, n.p.). There is yet a considerable deficiency of in-service teacher professional learning in India. According to a survey conducted by DISE (District Information System for Education) in 2010–2011, close to only 30% of teachers nationally reported receiving any in-service teacher professional learning in the previous year (Mehta, 2012). Also, according to Mehta (2012), the findings were largely driven by government schools; the situation was worse in private schools where as low as only 1% or 2% of total teachers reported receiving any professional learning in the previous year. Although in-service teacher education programs were initiated as early as the 1960s in India, in most cases they are neither planned well nor cater to teachers’ needs; and therefore become a burden and ritual (Ramachandran, 2005, p. 2143). India’s Right to Education Act (RTE) may recommend several ways to equalize teacher education in theory and practice, but if a shift does not take place for trying new models of teacher professional learning, then it is possible that, at least in the short run, these well-intended policies may further magnify the gaps between teachers who do and do not have access to quality professional learning in India (Chudgar, 2013; Singh, 2013).

Poorly performing teachers and low-quality teacher professional development are symptoms of India’s weak school systems. Those systems are often characterized by low salaries, centralised management and hectic working conditions – conditions that serve to further suppress both teacher quality and effective teacher education systems (Ramachandran, 2005; Ramachandran, Pal, Jain, Shekar, and Sharma, 2005). Within weak systems, even the most successful practice of professional development is not a panacea. It cannot fully compensate for many school teachers in India who have no motivation to work with low wages, lack of self-efficacy as teachers, and burnout or are part of a dysfunctional system. But as research makes clear, effective professional learning is absolutely essential. It is essential for teachers in stable and wealthy countries. And it is even more essential for teachers from countries, such as India, with uneven systems, especially because many of those teachers have received insufficient or inadequate pre-service education, because many of those teachers have one of the greatest professional needs and because our country needs practical solutions in order to achieve the educational development goals.

TEACHER QUALITY CONCERNS IN INDIAN SCHOOLS:

Previous studies have reported that the central and state governments of India endured a fixation with quantitative development of the nation’s literacy rate. Not surprisingly, most of these governments had an obsession with targets concerning with student enrolment, attendance, retention, etc. (Ramachandran, 2005). Conversely, these attempts had not been complemented by constructive policies and programs for refining the quality of education at both primary and secondary schools. ‘There is a general observation that the foundation of primary and secondary schools has still to be established and nurtured’ (Thapar, 2009, p. 1). In recent years, there has been a cumulative emphasis on the quality of teaching in India, partly propelled by the realisation that the precipitous expansions in school enrolment and attendance are not rendering improvements in students’ cognitive skills, as measured by test scores of Indian students in reading, writing and math. These scores remain low compared to international standards. The PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) outcomes for 2009–10, placed India in 72nd position out of 73 countries that participated in student assessments in mathematics, reading and science. While several elements contribute to this situation, teachers certainly perform a quintessential role (Singh and Sarkar, 2012). Research has for long confirmed that teacher quality is strongly correlated with students’ academic achievement (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Hattie, 2009; Nye, Konstantopoulos, and Hedges, 2004; Rice, 2003; Rivken, Hanushek, and Kain, 2005). Student achievement is not merely influenced by new curricula and materials, or sophisticated infrastructure. Better student outcomes are the end result of better teaching skills (Bolitho and Padwad, 2012). Although, the new goal of India’s education reform is to improve student performance through changes in teaching practices, changes in teaching practices are likely to result only from changes in professional learning (Singh, 2013). One of the strategies for improving teacher quality focuses on improving the quality of in-service teachers through professional learning. As long as effective teacher professional learning is not achieved, enormous investments in many Indian schools will continue to be mostly ineffective (Singh, 2013).

Also, large scale employment of untrained teachers (i.e. without B. Ed. degree) in Indian schools is a major issue. However, the quality of prevailing teacher education in India leaves much to be desired. Alam (2015) conducted a survey of 170 secondary school teachers teaching Geography in Indian schools to examine the causes and implications of under-qualification of Geography teachers in India. The survey revealed that almost one fifth (19.40%) of teachers were without a B. Ed. degree. But, studies also have observed that teachers in India who received regular pre-service and in-service teacher professional development often performed no better than unqualified teachers (Kingdon and Siphaimalini-Rao, 2010). An investigation of five Indian states indicated that teachers themselves had struggled answering complex language and math questions, or explicating the means by which they ascertained the answer (Bhattacharjea, Wadhwa, and Banerji, 2011). George and Madan (2009) state: ‘Even the situation of trained teachers is not encouraging. In India, teacher training or college education do not sufficiently equip students (that is, teachers of the future) to assess children’s needs or imagine how a curriculum should be designed’ (p. 32).

It is discerned that sometimes also qualified teachers in India reduce into an ineffectual teacher over time owing to dearth of constructive prospects within and beyond their schools to upgrade his/her learning and competences. This could be because all their initial teacher education may not remain useful and applicable to the current frequency of change in the subject matter and pedagogy in both the national and global scenario (National Curriculum Framework for School Education, 2000). The disquieting condition of many teacher education institutions in our country is revealed more so in recent years, as the majority of graduate teachers that have appeared for the central Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) have failed to exhibit even the most basic knowledge basis supposed from a teacher (Singh and Sarkar, 2012). In spite of having obtained a teacher qualification such as a Dip.Ed or a B.Ed, out of an overall of 785, 227 qualified teachers who took the test in 2011, merely 55, 422, or a miniscule 7 per cent, cleared the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET). This is substantiated by studies that have underscored that B.Ed programmes are overly theoretical and lecture-based (Yadav, 2011).

Considerations on the quality of education have unvaryingly led to the question of what more the Government of India could do to ensure that teachers actually teach children effectively (Ramachandran, Pal, Jain, Shekhar and Sharma, 2005). Singh and Sarkar (2012) investigated the enablers of better-quality teaching in private schools. By means of data from the Young Lives longitudinal study in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, they made a comprehensive comparison of 227 government and private schools attended by the children in the sample. A key finding was that it is what the teacher ‘believes and does’ in the classroom that has the greatest effect on student achievement (Singh and Sarkar, 2012). Development in the quality, effectiveness, and equity of education, to a considerable point, is determined by the interconnectedness of teaching and professional learning (Pandey, 2006) Consequently, professional development needs substantial changes if quality teachers in India are to become available (Bedadur, 2012; Chattopadhyay, 2013; Menon, 2012; Mohanraj, 2009). In this framework, Thapar (2009, p. 1) discerned that:

There is a need to put much more into training teachers. In today’s world, a teacher has to be technically proficient in the subject. Gone are the days when broad based liberal significant sufficed. Subjects have become specialised. Teachers have to know how to handle this new knowledge.

Even though a time-and-again emphasis on providing education to all children has been made by the Government of India, the problems continue with teacher professional learning and teacher quality. Bandyopadhyay, Umabati and Zeitlyn (2011) provided an analysis of teachers and teaching learning processes in 88 schools from two states of India. Findings revealed that albeit teachers had high levels of academic qualification, very large numbers were untrained. Inadequate subject competency of teachers also was a major concern, with considerable proportions of very well qualified teachers reported difficulty teaching any subject. This was a serious issue especially when pondered together with high levels of teacher absenteeism, poor attainment and poor retention which were all substantial in the participating schools of the study. Bandyopadhyay, Umabati and Zeitlyn (2011) suggest that improved teacher management systems are needed in Indian schools with more transparent processes of recruitment and teacher professional learning.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHERS IN INDIA - TRENDS AND CHALLENGES:

The limited vision of current practices of teacher professional development in India misses a crucial purpose – the call for teachers to take charge of their own learning and the connected function of teachers’ intervention and collaboration within this. The National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education NCFTE (2010) identifies universities, affiliated teacher education colleges and state centres for teacher training as the sites accepted for professional development. Most of the professional development offered by the central and state government offers large-scale formal training solutions (Prince and Barrett, 2014). Morevover, most schools officially recognise and support only those professional development activities which are under the approval, control and management of the central and state government, whereas professional learning activities or programmes related to teachers own interests and initiatives are neither recognised nor supported by most schools in India (Padwad and Dixit, 2014). The effectiveness of large-scale in-service training programmes is based on the extent they mostly allow teachers to render common prescriptions into individually pertinent insights and practice. ‘’The planning, decision-making and implementation of CPD activities are usually the prerogative of ‘high-powered’ committees consisting of a few senior academic experts and educational bureaucrats, who usually stick to the policy guidelines already in place’’ (Padwad and Dixit, 2014, p. 251).

School managers tend to be reluctant and/or powerless (sometimes due to the restrictions of central/state regulations) to encourage any undertaking of teacher learning outside those directed by the centre/state (Bolitho and Padwad, 2012). Teacher professional development in India is also controlled by the school management in the meaning that schools have a strong influence in what learning activities teachers may be permitted (and supported) to take on. In many cases, teachers are led to accept by their schools that they are incompetent of learning on their own initiative and/or intervention. Generally, ‘schools in India operate within an ‘expert culture’ in the sense that teachers are expected to follow the advice of experts and authorities and not to rely on their own knowledge and skills’ (Bolitho and Padwad, 2012, p. 12). In other words, teachers work in unfavourable conditions of very limited autonomy and agency. The unyielding solutions by ‘experts’ through formal training often de-motivates teachers to a great degree. While teachers’ involvement is seldom taken into consideration in the planning and implementation of such programmes, follow-up and modification are also regarded unnecessary as the training is deemed to be complete in itself.

In short, in-service teacher education in India mostly appears to endure a twin problem – on the one hand, schools managers, administrators and the policy makers do not seem to promote and support professional learning activities beyond teacher participation in the mandated training programmes, while on the other, teachers seem to not be receiving any professional development at all (Bolitho and Padwad, 2012). Possibly under the impact of this long established narrow and uneven system, teacher education may turn out to be insufficient or irrelevant to teachers’ needs and interests (Padwad and Dixit, 2012). There are other numerous challenges in the professional development of teachers in India. Some of the notable challenges are; ‘i) Large number of teachers do not have access to training; ii) Limited prospects for professional development opportunities iii) Shortage of teachers; iv) Inadequate infrastructure in meeting the training demands, and v) Bias still exist to adopt the new technology’ (Khambayat, 2015, p. 2).

EMERGENCE OF LEARNING NETWORKS FOR TEACHER PROFESSIOANL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA:

The education system of India is extremely complex with the dilemma of scale. Over 200,000 new teachers qualify each year in India, and 7.2 million in-service teachers are in need of professional development. Enabling newly qualified teachers with an improved competency, or developing the capacity of in-service teachers, is no ordinary task in India. The methods followed for the professional development of English teachers in India are still, by and large, based on formal, large-scale, and theoretical professional learning traditions (Vihirkar, 2013; Stannard and Matharu, 2014), most of which are dominated by crash courses and one-off workshops (Bolitho and Padwad, 2012). Investigations have claimed that teachers seldom transmit the knowledge and skills they learn in professional development, characterised by formal and large-scale workshop-based training sessions, to effective classroom teaching practices (Bolitho and Padwad, 2012).

The National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE, 2010), a milestone document in India's teacher training by National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has started to promote teacher professional learning models that are self-guided, paced toward oneself, peer-learning-based, guided, followed-up and persistent. The National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE, 2010) foregrounds five principles of teacher education that should inform the enterprise: ‘’the integrative and eclectic nature of teacher education; its liberal, humanistic and non-didactic underpinnings; its multicultural and context-sensitive facets; the necessity for it to be transacted in a diversity of learning spaces and curriculum sites apart from the classroom; and, most importantly, reflective practice to be its chief aim’’ (Pickering and Gunashekar, 2014, pp 9-10). The National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE, 2010) also advocated peer learning and feedback, as a networked support system for teacher development. The National Council of Teacher Education (NCTE), a regulated and authorised body of the Government of India, has made certain recommendations about in-service teacher education (2009). One of the aims of professional development programmes as stated in the 2009 document is for teachers to ‘break out of intellectual isolation and share experiences and insights with others in the field, both teachers and academics’ (p. 65). For this, the need to create, develop and sustain ‘spaces for sharing of experiences of communities of teachers’ (p. 66) is highlighted.

Portals and networks for teacher networking are being developed in India where they freely collaborate to impart ideas. According to a report by InfoDev (2010), the development of peer learning networks is now beginning to be considered as crucial in India to improve training and continuing professional learning. The development of Open Educational Resources is being slowly recognised in India as a flexible and accessible way to meet teachers' needs and interests. The Government of India’s Sakshat portal gives teachers a web-based prospect to connect with each other and share experiences. The Azim Premji Foundation and the National Knowledge Commission of India has worked with teacher networks across six Indian states by developing an online portal called The Teachers of India. The portal, involving a few thousand teachers, was initiated with the purpose of providing an environment for teachers to easily network across languages, and access updates resources and new trends in education from all over the world in all Indian languages (InfoDev, 2010). Another project launched in Kerala state of India enabled around 100 trainee teachers to participate in a study of the benefits of the use of social networks. The project was embraced by the trainee teachers, who were able to develop regular interaction with their online peers as part of their professional learning (Nayar, 2012). Several global projects, such as The Open University in the UK's TESSIndia project and MOOCS and the Connection Classrooms Programme by the British Council, are enabling large numbers of teachers to access high-quality online learning for free, including interaction with large numbers of other professionals from around the world (British Council, 2015).

Teachers' access to local and global portals for professional learning is emerging in India, but research has shown that there is inappropriate investment in technology tools supplied for teachers' use and inadequate training to ensure that they are able to use them to maximum relevance (British Council, 2015; Chowdhary, Yadav, and Garg, 2011). Projects in India, such as the Microsoft's Project Shiksha in India, have delivered ICT training to teachers through collaborations between ICT companies and national and state level governments, but it is fair to say that high quality and practical ‘training for teachers on how best to exploit technology either for their own professional development or for use in the classroom is still rare – particularly for teachers working in the government or low-fee private school sectors in India’ (British Council, 2015, p.29). Light (2009) suggest that mere introduction of a new tool, new practice or new policy in the classroom is not enough. In findings from case studies of the introduction of the Intel Teach Essentials Course—a professional development program focused on integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into project-based learning—into six schools in India, Chile, and Turkey, Light (2009) further claims that change is essential and possible only ‘by deeply reshaping life in the classrooms—from educators’ beliefs about learning to the relationships that make up the school community’ (p. 12). Another survey conducted by the Central Square Foundation (2015) on early adoption of educational technology by 1110 school teachers, across rural and urban areas of India, to determine its availability, use, enablers and constraints among the teacher community reveals that most teacher training programmes in India have focused more on the technical and operational aspects of teacher professional learning of technology—rather than on pedagogical applications. The report claims that technological infrastructure and professional learning must complement to enhance the pedagogic approaches of teachers so that they could use it to improve teaching-learning process, therefore ‘creating a personalised training framework would enable teachers to receive training based on what they already know and what they need to know’ (p. 25). Central Square Foundation (2015) suggest that along with becoming proficient in the use of technology, teachers must also be provided professional development with respect to the pedagogical application of such skills.

Recent research in India, on innovative professional learning of teachers, is starting to yield a consensus concerning the social characteristics of learning (Gupta, 2014). Teacher interaction is what drives real learning and change in the teacher professional development of teachers in India (Mahajan, 2009). Bedadur (2012), researching on the use of mobile phones by rural teachers of English in Karnataka, for their professional learning, describes that ‘the pedagogical design of a professional development plan has to be collaborative to succeed. Moreover, it has to be an initiative driven by the participants’ (p. 94). Khan (2015) investigated the use of blog-based online learning environments for the professional development of English teachers in Mumbai region of India. The teachers in Khan’s (2015) study had positive attitudes towards being part of the online professional learning community and they were interested in collaborative blog-based learning. Teachers believed that collaborative learning could raise their morale, enthusiasm, receptiveness to new ideas and all this could help them transform their teaching practices. Khan (2015) suggests that online professional learning of teachers in India is achievable in the long run with consistent time, school support, change in attitudes, and collective participation of teachers. Dutta, Geiger and Lanvin (2015) consider a lack collaborative professional learning using new technologies in India as one of the crucial challenges which must be dealt with if India is to capitalise on the potential of technology for improved education.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION:

This review indicates that innovative professional development of teachers in India is crucial for improvement in their teaching practices. In recent years, there has been a cumulative emphasis on the quality of teaching in India, partly driven by the realisation that the precipitous expansions in school enrolment and attendance are not rendering improvements in students’ learning outcomes and achievements. Education in India faces several drawbacks related to teacher professional learning. Current practices of teacher professional development in India mostly do not enable teachers to take charge of their own learning through teacher intervention and collaboration. The application of innovative technologies and online environments in particular, can play a very important role in supporting teachers towards better professional development practices. Professional learning networks within and beyond schools, where teachers learn together and from each other, can enable extensive opportunities for professional development. Teacher professional development by means of learning networks therefore can be used to capitalise its potential for improving the quality of education in India.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST:

The author declares no conflict of interest.

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Received on 01.12.2016

Modified on 04.01.2017

Accepted on 29.01.2017

Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 8(1): January - March, 2017, 13-20.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2017.00002.X