A Shift in Pedagogy

After nearly a decade, the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has a teacher educator as its Chairperson, and with the appointment of Professor Pankaj Arora, a senior teacher educator, we can witness research-based decisions being taken. Better late than never. This is perhaps not going well with some academics of yesteryears who feel their bastion is being challenged.

Some teacher educators from abroad have perhaps written to the Minister for Education, Government of India, about the Bachelor of Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.) programme of Delhi University, which is erroneously being considered withdrawn. The new Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) is a development of B.El.Ed. The news of this letter is widely circulated in the media, and this has enthused me. We are all aware of the politics in education and the international clique that works to scratch each other’s backs. Some teachers catapult themselves to the ‘expert’ position through this mutual back-scratching. As and when one is challenged in one’s own country, she/he takes recourse to mustering support from friends and colleagues abroad to strengthen their position in the home country. The expression ‘international community’ sells globally.

This process of shouting from across the globe for each other must stop, and I believe the Government of India and the Minister for Education should not buckle to any pressure, especially when the NCTE, which was in bad shape, is doing good work and taking the much-awaited, rather delayed, progressive steps about teacher education in India. Every academic Chairperson of NCTE has been pressurised and forced to quit through such tactics, but we must not let this happen again.

The B.El.Ed. programme is said to have started three decades back, and it is said to have run very successfully, but I am, surprisingly, yet to see any expert from anywhere who has written in support of this programme, adopted or adapted it for their university/country—forget about Indian universities, which have been watching this programme, and not a single university has adopted B.El.Ed. as one of the programmes for teacher education. Academics support the idea of experiments in education, but experiments which become innovation must be replicated by others. The B.El.Ed. programme is not recognised by many employing agencies, and those who obtained the B.El.Ed. have to run from pillar to post to get a job.

The case in point would be the Four-Year Degree Programme (FYUP) introduced by Delhi University in 2012, and for some reason, it was withdrawn in 2015. However, in 2020, when the Government of India came up with its new National Education Policy (NEP 2020), the experimental FYUP of Delhi University was taken in toto by the NEP 2020. If the B.El.Ed. programme was such an innovative programme, then it was expected that institutions from India and abroad would adopt it for their universities—which has not happened.

All the letters said to have come from across the globe are from friends of those in India who want to succeed or want to remain in currency because they have a global network. This ‘hua hua culture’ of academics who make groups across the globe and support each other has worked for many decades. I guess there is a government in India now which is strong enough to sustain all such pressure and not tinker with the ITEP, which was introduced two years back.

The experience of the last two years proves it is a step ahead. The ITEP has a very well-thought-out structure. We may have differences of opinion about the structure and content of some of the courses, but this is just the beginning, and we have to wait to see how the NCTE designs its programmes and courses, which would be relevant for the nation and for those who want to serve the international community of children. The B.El.Ed. pass-outs had poor subject knowledge relevant to handling children aged 6 to 14 years, and now, with the three extra years added to schooling, teachers will require much different content as well as pedagogic experience to manage children at the Foundation level, as suggested by NEP 2020.

It was always believed that those who came to teacher education took it as their third or fourth choice. However, the data of applicants and their profiles have already proved that the best from the country are opting for ITEP after their Class 12. Moreover, it is now seen from experience that female candidates are outperforming males in the admission test for the ITEP, which is a concern of the present-day Government of India—to provide fair opportunity to the deserving, especially deserving female candidates.

There is absolutely no doubt about the good experiment Delhi University did in starting the B.El.Ed., but to put pressure to continue with it will be counter-productive. Teacher educators have learned some lessons from the B.El.Ed. programme, and I believe the NCTE is going to improve and progress based on the lessons learnt from the B.El.Ed. programme to make ITEP a more relevant programme for the present times. The Bachelor of Elementary Education programme has outlived its innovative element, and it’s time we wind it up. NCTE must go ahead with its decision to discontinue the B.El.Ed. and offer ITEP (Foundation), and not make it BA/B.Ed.; BSc/B.Ed.; or BCom/B.Ed. Foundation.

The ITEP Foundation must be designed on the vision the Prime Minister expressed on August 7, 2020, in his address to the teaching community. The PM had expressed serious concern about the importance of good and relevantly trained teachers for the Foundation stage, and he had also shown concern about the meagre salary that teachers of Foundation education receive. He had also given a roadmap for teacher education in his Foundation Day address to the Indian Institute of Teacher Education (IITE) in Gandhinagar many years back. Our ITEP Foundation must be designed on the vision of our Prime Minister.

The writer is a Professor of Education (Retd.) and former Chairman of National Institute of Open Schooling. Views expressed are personal