Teacher Education in India During and After the Pandemic: Lessons Learned

• In Event: Teacher Education in the BRICS Countries During and After the Pandemic: Linking Theory and Practice

Abstract

"The present research is focused on how the link between theory and practice was established in Indian teacher education under situations forced by COVID 19 and to identify the challenges that came while adopting technology by both teacher educators and student teachers.
Teacher education is truly vital in creating a team of school teachers who shape the next generation. Apart from conceptual and pedagogical aspects, existing teacher education programmes require multidisciplinary perspectives and knowledge, the formation of dispositions as well as values and development of practice under the best mentors. A landmark decision taken by National Council for Teacher Education -a regulatory body, was “to make Information and Communication Technology (ICT) literacy a compulsory part of B.Ed. course” (NCTE, 2009). However, pupil teachers in India are not provided with sufficient knowledge to use technological devices in teaching pedagogies and ICT skill development is not incorporated adequately in the curriculum mainly due to lack of sufficient infrastructure. There is little or no interaction with technology during their pre-service training, thus producing technologically teachers with low competence and leading to resistance towards the integration of technology in classrooms.
Thus, this research is focused on how institutions and stakeholders adapted to the new scenario, training strategies and how they experience the challenges of innovations. For this study, a qualitative approach has been employed and data was collected through semi-structured interviews of 15 teacher educators, 15 student teachers and 5 heads of teacher training institutes from the Punjab state of India. All the conversations were classified according to the respective groups and the recorded narrations were analysed.
The research revealed that teacher education institutions played a significant role in lending proper and timely support to adopt a complete online teaching mode, and that to do so new ways and means to train the teachers were developed and adopted immediately. During the shutdown period, a totally virtual form of theory and practice including internship was followed. Owing to the benefits of technology based teaching and learning, for theory and perspectives, a virtual method was adopted and as the restrictions eased, a blended mode was preferred, especially for skill development and school teaching practice. Post pandemic, a new pedagogy of online teaching has been developed and accepted by the implementing authority, students and society which is presumed to continue in the long COVID period.
With continuous motivation and effective leadership from the administrators, teachers decided to come forward, with self-motivation they learned to take virtual classes successfully on digital platforms. Surviving the crisis with different approaches and digitizing of education led to the need to create a database of study material. Through the efforts of teachers, in collaboration with institutes, offline content was divided into sub-units to prepare digital modules. Some of the broadly identified challenges were: lack of teachers’ preparedness; accessibility and affordability of digital appliances, flexibility; language barriers; substantial issues with reliable internet connection and digital divide. Teacher educators were provided with crash courses organised by government to effectively use online applications and other digital modules
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Authors

• Balwant Singh, Partap Collegeof Education, Ludhiana

• Manpreet Kaur Bagga, Partap College of Education