Portal:Teacher Education

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Teacher Education

Children are self-directed learners and their learning extends beyond schools. If the teacher is not able to continuously develop her own capabilities, she will become a limiting rather than facilitating factor in the child's learning. Further, teachers must be able to access resources for their own learning as well as create resource rich environments for learning for their classrooms. This paradigm applies both in schools and teacher training institutions. In fact, availability of good quality curricular resources and lack of adequate professional development of the teachers and teacher educators have been identified as major determinants of the quality of education in India. Read more

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Selected Article

Articles by educators

Stories they tell about languages

Prof Ramakant Agnihotri
This is article on languages and impact on teaching-learning in today's Hindu. The article discusses the "purity" of language and dangers in making assumptions about parent language, preserving and teaching a "standard" pure language. Of particular interest is the discussion on the role of Sanskrit. The article also makes recommendations about how to structure learning processes that can build linguistic sense in children, during the initial years of schooling (many others have written about the absorbent mind for language in the early years of a child's life).The article can be accessed here.

Prof Ramakant Agnihotri also headed the NCF curriculum committee on teaching of Indian languages.

The Parrot's Training

Rabindranath Tagore
This short story written by the great poet talks about how a king tried to school a parrot. Stuffed with teachings and in a cage, the parrot dies. The parallels can be drawn to an education system where education has become equated with facts and children are made to learn and memorize facts that are out of context here. To read the entire article click [here].

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Selected Educator

Eleanor Duckworth is a constructivist educator and a cognitive psychologist. Her main ideas of teaching learning include the ideas that the child brings in her own knowledge and experience as well as the need for a sufficiently challenging environment for the learning to happen. The teacher takes on the role of a facilitator for the learning as well the role of a researcher inquiring into the learning process. In a powerful article, she argues that the having of wonderful ideas and the asking of good questions is the key to intellectual development.

Please see the following additional links.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Duckworth Wikipedia on her.

2. http://www.criticalexplorers.org/investigations/ This is a compilation of ongoing investigative approaches to specific topics in History.

3. http://www.criticalexplorers.org/blog/categories/classroom-teaching/ - The blog linked to the above web site.

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Book Review

Tracing the trajectory of sociology of education

Sociology of Education in India - Changing Contours and Emerging Concerns
Edited by Geetha B. Nambissan, S. Srinivasa Rao;
Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110001.

Book Review by Vidya K. S.
( Vidya is a research scholar at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, JNU )

The discipline and practice of education has largely been circumscribed within discussions privileging its role and importance in the growth and development of a country’s social and economic status. Few studies have sought to examine its evolution and inter-disciplinary nature that finds its theoretical underpinnings in philosophy, sociology, economics, history and psychology. This book is a novel attempt to trace the trajectory of the sociology of education in post-independent India.

[Read More]

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Glossary

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Topics

1. Karnataka Teacher Educator Forum / Community of Practice
2. Teacher speak
3. Useful links teacher education
4. Teacher Eligibility Test (TET)