|
 "The
mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher
explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The
great teacher inspires." - William Arthur Ward
Once Bihar, known then as Magadh, was famous as
a great centre of learning. It boasted one of
the largest universities in the world in Nalanda
District, housing more than 10,000 students and
over 2,000 teachers and attracted students from
such far away places as China and Mongolia. At
present, with 47.53 percent, Bihar has the
lowest literacy rate in the country. Today Bihar
has over 2.7 million children who do not go to
school. In Bihar, 60 percent of children drop
out of school at the primary level and around 75
percent at the middle level. The proportion is
higher for girls. In 2002, Bihar had more than
190,000 vacancies for school teachers. The state
has, on an average, 1 teacher per 84 pupils. The
national average is 1 teacher per 40 pupils. In
2002-2003, UNICEF worked with the government to
recruit and train 42,000 teachers. In 2005,
UNICEF urged the government to begin teacher’s
recruitment and training again. The government
of Bihar is going to recruit 2.35 lakh teachers
in the vacant seats in the schools of Bihar. It
will bring teacher-pupil ratio to the national
figure of 1:40. This would be the largest
exercise, ever undertaken, in terms of numbers,
and also a major breakthrough in regard to
decentralization and devolution of powers to the
Panchayati Raj institutions for management of
school education as envisaged under 73rd and
74th amendment of the Constitution.
This is high time when one should focus on
policies leading to quality teachers and
teaching. Largest source of variation in student
learning is attributable to differences in what
students bring to school – their abilities and
attitudes, and family and community background.
Of those variables which are potentially open to
policy influence, factors to do with teachers
and teaching are the most important influences
on student learning. It is difficult to predict
who is going to be a good teacher just by
considering the more measurable characteristics
of teachers (e.g. qualifications, teaching
experience, and indicators of academic ability
and subject-matter knowledge). There are many
important aspects of teacher quality that are
not captured by the more measurable
characteristics, such as:
• Ability
to convey ideas in clear and convincing
ways;
• To create effective learning environments
for different types of students;
• To foster productive teacher-student
relationships;
• To be enthusiastic and creative;
• To work effectively with colleagues and
parents.
Policies for
developing more effective teachers and teaching
have intensified in recent years due to the
profound economic and social changes underway
and the imperatives for schools to provide the
foundations for lifelong learning.
Some of the teacher and teaching related
policies are suggested as follows. These
policies have general relevance for teacher’s
urban areas but take on special significance in
rural and remote areas.
A. Teacher Recruitment
Improve selection into teacher education
•
Information and counselling
• Assessment
• Early school experience
• Incentives for high potentials
• Put basic teacher salaries in periphery at
parity with urban areas.
• Provide salary differentials and/or
hardship pay for teaching in difficult
areas.
• Develop programs to increase teachers’
social status and recognition
B.
Developing Teacher’s Knowledge and Skills
1. Developing teacher profiles
Clear and concise standards of what teachers are
expected to know and be able to do.
• reflect
broad range of competencies.
• provide framework to guide and integrate
initial
• teacher education, certification,
induction and on-going professional
development.
• should be evidence-based and reflect
student learning objectives.
• should be built on active involvement by
teaching profession.
2. Teacher
education:
Provide more flexible forms of initial teacher
education
• Modular,
part-time, distance education
• Alternate routes for mid-career changers
Strengthen
partnerships between teacher education
institutions and schools
• Overt and
deliberate partnerships
• Earlier and broader field experience
Subsidize
teacher enrollment in courses for
earning/upgrading credentials. Associate teacher
education with credentials, pay raises,
promotion, and job security. Empower and train
school principals as instructional leaders/
supervisors. Use distance/ extension education
programs so that teachers can upgrade
credentials without too much disruption to
family life.
3. Strengthening induction programmes
• Formalise
induction programmes
• Qualify mentor teachers
• Provide sufficient resources for induction
and reduced teaching obligation for mentors
and beginning teachers
• Link successful completion of induction to
certification
4.
Integrating professional development throughout
the teaching career
Provide incentives for lifelong learning of all
teachers
• Entitle
teachers to release time and/or financial
support for professional development
• Create incentives: e.g., link professional
development to teacher appraisal and career
advancement
• Link individual teacher development with
school improvement needs
5. Broaden
the range of different professional development
opportunities, e.g.
• Peer
review and action research
• Mutual school visits
• Teacher and school networks
6. Provide
more coherent framework for professional
development, develop teachers’ learning
communities
• Training,
practice and feedback
• Follow-up rather than “one shot events”
• Teacher portfolios
C. Teacher
Deployment
• Offer
extra credit toward promotion for teaching
in peripheral areas.
• Create organizational mechanisms to ensure
that teachers recruited and trained for work
in the periphery are indeed placed there.
• Provide special preparation for teaching
in the periphery prior to teachers taking up
assignments (including training in
multigrade teaching and working under
difficult conditions).
• Develop means of overcoming the image of
social isolation.
• Develop strategies to support deployment
of husband/wife teams.
• Offer subsidized housing as part of
teaching contract.
• Cover moving costs to remote locations.
D. Teacher
Retention
• Payment
of overtime for extra work/preparation.
Bonus for regular attendance. Bonus for
student achievement.
• Improved management of automatic promotion
systems (eliminate paperwork bottlenecks).
• Community contributions toward teacher
welfare/earnings.
• Organize school clusters and/or working
groups for peer support and group problem
solving.
• Empower teachers as co-developers of
school curriculum and in service education
programs.
• Solicit community for teacher aids and
guest instructors.
• Promote special recognition of teachers by
community.
• Use decentralized systems of resource
(e.g., textbooks) provision and
distribution.
• Provide access to teacher education/
teacher upgrading courses (through distance
or extension education).
• Make in-service teacher education relevant
to teacher needs in the periphery.
• Involve teachers/teacher groups in the
planning and implementation of their own
in-service education.
• Maintain housing subsidies.
• Cover costs of occasional “home visits”
for those not originating in school
vicinity.
• Provide assistance for health care and
education of family members.
• Scholarships for children and free books.
E. Providing
Schools with More Responsibility for Teacher
Personnel Development
Schools need to have more responsibility and
accountability for working conditions, and
development.
Pre-requisites:
•
Developing school leaders’ skills in
personnel management;
• Providing disadvantaged schools with
greater resources;
• Monitoring the outcomes of a more
decentralised approach;
• Creating independent appeals procedures to
ensure fairness and protect teachers’
rights.
F.
Evaluating and Rewarding Effective Teaching
There needs to be a stronger emphasis on teacher
evaluation for improvement purposes. Opportunity
for teachers’ work to be recognised and
celebrated and help both teachers and schools to
identify developmental needs.
Pre-requisites:
• Teacher
appraisal to occur within a framework
provided by profession-wide agreed
statements of standards of professional
performance;
• Evaluators need to be trained and
evaluated themselves;
• Evaluation frameworks and tools need to be
provided.
G. Providing
More Opportunities for Career Diversification
Teaching would benefit from a career ladder
based on skills, responsibilities and
performance. There needs to be more
opportunities for career diversity and mobility
(between schools, between roles, and between
teaching and other careers).
H. Teaching Needs to Become a Knowledge-rich
Profession
Teaching needs to become a knowledge-rich
profession in which individuals continually
develop, and have the incentives and
opportunities to do so, research is integrated
into practice, and schools become professional
learning communities that encourage and draw on
teachers’ development.
I. Improving Leadership and School Climate
A range of initiatives should be taken to
strengthen leadership in schools:
• Improve
training, selection and evaluation processes
for school principals;
• Establish leadership teams in schools;
• School leaders to be trained and supported
in conducting evaluations and linking them
to school planning.
J. Improving
Working Conditions
• School
facilities
• Classroom facilities
• Number of students
• Age range of students
• Collegiality
There needs to
be an explicit recognition of the wide variety
of tasks that teaching actually entails. Well
trained support and administrative staff can
help to reduce the burden on teachers and free
them to concentrate on the tasks of teaching and
learning Better facilities at school for staff
preparation and planning would help in building
collegiality and in programme provision.
K. Redefining Management Roles
To raise the quality of teachers, teaching and
learning at the school level, new school level
management roles are evolving, and low-cost
alternatives to current practice are need to be
explored. The traditional role of head teachers
focuses on routine administrative tasks. New
functions may include instructional leadership;
community liaison and mobilization; stimulating
and monitoring innovations (e.g., multigrade
classrooms, teacher assistants); generating,
understanding, and utilizing information on
interventions in progress; and responding to the
emergence of new priorities.
L. Monitoring and Sustaining Quality
Improvement
To help monitor and sustain continual
improvements, there is need at all levels but
particularly at the local level for both
practical technology and, within contexts of
decentralization, for participatory decision
processes. Head teachers, in order to provide
leadership and mobilize community support,
should be able to assess the quality of their
schools and utilize such information in local
strategic planning.
Working toward the Future
To ensure a highly qualified supply of special
education teachers in the future, policymakers
should consider the following strategies:
1. Create
programs to encourage experienced teachers
to stay on beyond retirement, perhaps as
part-time teachers or mentors;
2. Promote the use of less traditional
methods of recruitment, such as the use of
web sites or professional recruiters;
3. Examine State and local policies that
affect paperwork burden to see if some
requirements can be reduced, making the jobs
of special education teachers more
manageable;
4. Work with school districts and teacher’s
preparation programs to provide more
training in areas in which teachers feel
their skills are weakest, that is, using
technology in education, interpreting
results of standardized tests, accommodating
diverse students, learning needs, and using
literature to address problems; and
5. Help school districts tailor continuing
professional development to the needs of
special education teachers and ensure that
those programs use best practices, including
time for teachers to implement what they
have learned.
Bihar’s future
depends on how well we educate our children. To
provide every child with a class education we
need to start sooner, set standards higher and
provide opportunities to all. We need excellent
teacher and teaching methodology. We need to
restructure the school day and the school year.
Money alone won’t solve the problems facing our
schools, but a policy of reforms without
resources mocks the scope of our challenge.
Good Teachers are Costly, but Bad Teachers Cost
More
The author is a research scholar at IIT
Madras and can be contacted by clickinghere
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