Professional Development of Teachers

Hello and welcome in this session on professional development of teachers. I am Dr. Gaurav Singh, your course instructor for the course learning and teaching. And today I am going to talk about the concept of professional development, why professional development is required for teachers and what are the ways which can be explored for professional development by teachers. In any profession, no one can imagine or no one can guarantee that what once you learnt during your training remains useful for throughout your career. Things are changing at a faster pace, new technologies are emerging, new socio-psychological situations are affecting the classroom situations. In this scenario, a teacher also requires to develop his or her skills continuously and to discuss about all these dimensions, today we will deal with the topic professional development of teachers. What do you mean by professional development? Day 1999 defined that professional development is the process by which teachers review, renew and extend their commitment as change agents and by which they acquire and develop critically the knowledge, skills, planning and practice through each phase of their teaching lives. This definition is basically hinting towards a continuous professional development because throughout your teaching life, you need to learn, you need to unlearn, you need to relearn and according to the situation which you are facing at that time, you acquire the skills which are required to deal that particular situation or that particular time. Similarly, OECD in 2010 given the definition of professional development as teachers professional development is the body of systematic activities to prepare teachers for their job including initial training, induction courses, in-service training and continuous professional development within the school settings. So, if you go by this definition, this definition basically highlighting what is covered under professional development, what comes under professional development. So, this definition includes the initial training, induction, in-service training and the activities which you complete or in which you participate as continuous professional development activities all comes and all contribute for your professional development. Now the question is that why professional development is required for teachers? You know in every subject, in every discipline, new things are emerging, old things are being replaced by new concepts, new theories, new facts, new models, new ideas. So, the knowledge domain of any subject is expanding every day. When you have learnt about that subject during your schooling or during your college days and the content which you are teaching these days in your classroom is entirely different. So, due to this expanding knowledge domain, you need to learn which new things have been added in your discipline, what older things have been replaced by something in your discipline. So, for this you need professional development. Not only this, the pedagogy, the way of teaching learning, the methodologies, these are also changing with the new content, with the new technology, with the new models, with the new researches on learners understanding and learning. New pedagogies are emerging to adopt your teaching learning, with that new pedagogy you require professional development. Nowadays, media is playing a very important role in all teaching learning activities. Whether it is a print media or it is electronic media, whether it is the traditional television based media or modern digital media, all has increased its penetration in the classroom, in the life, in the society. So, when media has increased its involvement, the flow of information has also increased, due to which you need to learn how to tackle a situation where a learner sometimes is more informed than you. Sometimes more informed but the information which the learner has may be more in quantum but not in quality to decide what will be the quality information for everything you need professional development. You need to learn new ICT skills, you need to learn how to deal with the learners in online environment, whether it is synchronous or asynchronous, so you need professional development. New schemes are coming, new policies are coming, in 2020 we have seen new national education policy. This new national education policy is focusing on many transformational changes, not only in curriculum but also it will be in the text books, it will be in the pedagogy, it will be in the assessment. So, for the enactment of the policies and different schemes to understand them and to implement them in true sense, you need professional development. Society and nation demand something from you, something which society feels or nation feels that these values, these skills are required in the future citizens of the country, so to meet those demands, to develop those skills, you need professional development. So, you can say that professional development of teachers is not an event rather it is a continuous process, why? Because it is not something which will happen once in a 5 year, once in a 10 year, there is nothing like periodicity in the professional development because things are changing at a rapid pace. You need to learn new things, you need to unlearn older things, you need to relearn few things which you have learned earlier but now you need them again to use somewhere, so professional development is a continuous process. Now, when we talk about professional development, we take professional development for teachers as an opportunity to learn a new concept or to adopt a new teaching method. However, professional development also helps in developing the competencies to deal with the changing scenario in teaching learning process. Professional development helps teachers to adopt the best practices for the benefit of learners, it changes the teacher's approach, attitude and understanding as well as practices for enhancing levels of learning. Let us try to examine that what has been suggested in different policies or commissions about the professional development. Let me start with secondary education commission which is commonly known as Madalier commission 1952-53. In this commission's report at one place it has been written that only initial teacher training will not work and it is not sufficient. Increased efficiency will come through experience, critically analyzed and through individual and group efforts of improvement. So here, secondary education commission is focusing on gaining new experiences, analyzing the situations not only as individually but also as a group. So if you read the report of secondary education commission, it has recommended the programs like refresher courses, short intensive courses for special subjects, practice training, workshops, seminar and professional conferences and also the commission recommends that institutions should facilitate and encourage the staff means the faculty to serve as consultants to a school or a group of schools for conducting some programs of improvement. So if you see the recommendations of secondary education commission which was basically focusing on a school education, it has been suggested that the school teachers should continuously be involved in the refresher courses. If not the long duration refresher courses then short term intensive courses in different subjects specifically the pedagogical subjects. Training institutions and organizations can organize some practical trainings in the pedagogy in form of workshops. They may be encouraged to share their new experiences, their best practices through seminars and professional conferences and they should be encouraged to act as consultant wherever possible. After this in 1964 or 66, we have seen the report of the education commission which is commonly known as Kothari commission. So Kothari commission conceptualized the concept of school complex means a consortium of schools with a nodal school that school will shoulder the responsibility for continuous professional development of teachers who are working in the school and it should be established. Then in 1983-85 there was a report of national commission of teachers which is called national commission of teachers 1 and in that report there was a very effective or you can say very important recommendation that every teacher must attend in-service training of minimum 3 weeks duration once in a block of 5 years and it should be linked with the carrier promotion. This recommendation was specifically with respect to school education and teachers. After this many institutions were established especially centrally sponsored scheme you all know. There were CTEs college teacher education, there were diets district institutes of educational training and there were IASCs institute of advanced studies and education. All such institutions were established at the university level, at the district level as well as at the college level. But how these institutions have contributed in the training and in-service teacher training and the professional development. A committee was established in NCRT to examine its functioning and on the basis of the reports of the committee MHRD in 2012 issued the guidelines for restructuring and reorganization of centrally sponsored scheme on teacher education. And if you read the report of this committee as well as the guidelines they have focused that there is a need of shift not only in the perspective of teaching training but also in the practices of in-service teacher training. So what they have suggested? They have suggested that the traditional teacher training and the classroom practices are teacher directed and they are following a fixed design. But now there is a need to shift from teacher directed and fixed design to learner centric and flexible processes. Most of the places, at most of the places the focus is more on learners receptivity whereas now there is a need to shift a focus towards learners as an agency of learning and their participation in the learning process. In the traditional practices knowledge is considered as the given knowledge and it is fixed. But in present practices knowledge is constructed in the classroom, beyond the classroom, outside the classroom. So knowledge is not fixed it is evolving. So again there is a need of shift. In traditional practices learning is an individual act but here learning is a collaborative and social process. So here again we need a shift. The focus was more on disciplinary knowledge earlier. Now focus has been shifted from disciplinary knowledge to multidisciplinary knowledge. Focus has been shifted from content to the process and the skills. Even the assessment if you see in the traditional practices, the assessment was judgmental. It was mainly through competitive tests and exams and ranking which sometimes leads towards trauma and anxiety among the learners. So these guidelines have suggested in 2012 that the focus should be shifted towards assessment for learning, self-assessment to enhance the motivation through continuous and non-threatening processes to record the progress over time. So if this is the shift in the teaching learning, if this is the shift in the perspective of the teacher training and the practices of the teaching learning, then definitely there is a requirement or urgent requirement for a shift in all continuous professional development programs which are being offered through many institutions like CTEs, like ISEs, like diets and other universities and colleges. Now the recent addition to this is the National Education Policy 2020. And National Education Policy 2020 if you read specifically with respect to the professional development of school teachers, it is focusing that each teacher will be expected to participate in at least 50 hours of continuous professional development opportunities every year for their own professional development. So they are talking about some modular courses, modular programs can be offered in face-to-face mode, can be offered in ODL mode, can be offered in online mode for the professional development of each and every teacher of a school education. So now the professional development and continuous professional development has taken a very important place in the whole teacher training process. If you read the recommendations of National Education Policy 2020, you will find that it has been written there that the all continuous professional development program for the school teachers will systematically cover the latest pedagogies regarding foundation literacy and numeracy, formative and adaptive assessment for learning outcomes, competency-based learning and pedagogies such as experiential learning, art-integrated learning, sports integration, storytelling-based approach. So all these new things are to be adopted in the pedagogy. So if you focus on this recommendation, it means the policy is going to change the pedagogy, the objectives and the assessment everything in the school education. So teacher needs to learn, however he or she will learn, they will learn through continuous professional development programs which will be developed by central organizations like NCRT, IGNOU or SCRTs or they will be offered at the diet level or they can be offered in online mode also. And the same document of National Education Policy 2020 is also recommending that not only the school teachers, but the school principals and school complex leaders will have to do the modular leadership and management workshops. Online development opportunities and platforms they need to explore for continuous improvement of their own leadership and management skill and for them also the 50 hours continuous professional development for every year has been recommended in National Education Policy. Now if these are the recommendations of different policies or different commissions reports and different other documents, then how professional development programs of teachers are being organized? If you see the nature of professional development programs which are being offered for teachers across the country, you will find some short term programs are there like workshops, 3 days workshop, 5 day workshop, 7 day workshop, 15 day workshop. There are some localized training programs at CRC level, at DRC level. Then there are opportunities of residential in-service teacher training programs for professional development which are called dedicated programs at dedicated centers like DIETS are their district institute of educational training. In organizations like Kendriya Vidyalaya, there are ZITs, Zonal Institute of Educational Training. Navodaya Vidyalaya have their own system of institutional mechanism of professional development. So at such institutions, residential programs can be organized. Then for larger scale, dedicated ODL programs, certificate programs and diploma programs are being developed for school teachers which they can do. Even now the online programs are also there which teachers can explore for their professional development activities. Let us see some example. When I am talking about short term courses, it can be pedagogy specific workshop. For example, if constructivism has taken a place in the teaching learning, for science teachers how constructivism can play its role, what kind of planning should be there, what kind of assessment strategies should be there, how learner should be engaged, on all these things some pedagogy specific workshops can be organized and they are being organized. Then there can be some short term courses for ICT skill development because now online teaching learning has become the part and parcel of the classroom teaching learning or the traditional teaching learning. So to facilitate that, ICT based skills are required which you can develop through short term courses. Then classroom management, you need to deal with the class, different types of class, you need to act through some preventive measures, some corrective measures, all these things you need to learn. You need to learn how you can facilitate the learning by using some material that is called teaching learning material, how you can develop it on your own by using the resources which are available around you, how you can develop different types of assessment tools for continuous assessment, how you can use them. So there are many dimensions on which short term courses can be developed or workshops can be organized. Then in localized training programs at CRC and BRCs, the best benefit of such programs is opportunities of peer learning. If a primary teacher at a particular school is doing something great, he or she can facilitate the fellow teachers of schools of the nearby area under the programs organized at CRC and BRC and even other teachers can visit their school. So teachers can share their best practices in these training programs. Then contextualization of the knowledge is very important in teaching learning. Something has been written in the textbook can be applicable to a particular context or particular situation. So how that knowledge, that information can be contextualized keeping in mind the local requirement and the resources which are locally available, that is also possible through localized training programs at CRC, BRCs. And resource mobilization means if resources are at one school, how these resources can be used by the nearby schools, that is also an important concept. Then the residential programs, there are many organizations like DIETS for Kendriya Vidyalaya, there are ZITs, then for Nabodha Vidyalaya, they have their own system where they organize short term refresher programs, orientation programs of 15 to 21 days sometimes, 7 to 10 days training workshops or some short term programs can be organized where teachers from different schools, different areas come together, they stay there, they learn, they share, they learn from each other, they learn from experts and they devise the strategies to implement what they are learning. Then in recent past, we have seen some dedicated ODL programs of certificate and diploma type like for Kendriya Vidyalaya primary teachers, Indira Gandhi National Open University has organized a 6 month intensive in-service teacher training program in the name of continuous certificate program for professional development of primary teachers. And more than 12,000 teachers of all Kendriya Vidyalayas were trained through this certificate program of 6 month. Similarly for Himachal Pradesh teachers, school teachers, National Institute of Open Schooling has offered a professional development program for primary teachers. So many such programs of 3 month duration, 6 month duration can be designed, can be implemented by using the infrastructure and the resources available at ODL system and online programs are there nowadays, webinars are being organized, e-conferences are there, e-workshops are there. Now the focus is on modular MOOC courses. If you see the recommendations of the National Education Policy 2020, it is also talking about modular MOOC BICS programs of 1 credit or 2 credit duration. Then there can be some dedicated short term online courses or programs of 3 month, 6 month duration. There can be experiments like complete teacher training program as National Institute of Open Schooling has trained more than 14 lakh teachers by using its diploma in elementary education in online mode for about 18 months. Then there can be some pedagogy specific courses, for example course for science teachers, course for social science teachers, IGNOO has already experimented with a course in pedagogy of science. So there are many opportunities for professional development. Only the point is that we need to find that which opportunity we should explore from where we can learn better so that we can facilitate our students in a better way. I hope that this discussion will help you in understanding the concept of professional development for teachers as well as the opportunities available for professional development of teachers and you will avail the facilities and opportunities available around you. Thank you very much.