Teachers play a critical role in the holistic development of a student. So, their own career progress and skill development have a direct impact on their pupils’ learning, says Abhishek Kumar
Teachers are the ones who shape the future of their pupils. They teach, engage, collaborate, and inspire. They do these in more than one way and every year without fail. In the words of Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, “One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.” Rightly so, the role that a teacher plays in a larger transformation is enormous. It’s another thing that it mostly goes overlooked.
There is another aspect of a teacher’s professional journey that also goes overlooked at large. It is the teacher’s professional development. The only learning that teachers normally receive is the one that they get while they are in the staff room, having discussions with their peers. Occasionally, they receive workshops. However, these workshops are rarely personalised to meet the teacher’s precise demands.
Well, this is precisely where CPD (Continuing Professional Development) comes into the picture. A lot of schools have started following it as well, and now is the time to digitise these CPD programmes. Doing so will not only unlock a teacher’s true growth potential, it will simultaneously benefit students. Let us try and find out how.
What is Continuing Professional Development? It’s a process of tracking and recording the skills, knowledge and experience that a teacher has gained both formally and informally. This learning is beyond any teacher’s initial training within an institution. It keeps the track of what a teacher experiences, learns, and also how he or she applies them. Conventionally, it refers to the physical file or folder that contains the information about the development of an educator. Some organisations use the term while referring to a training or development plan, which some might argue is not accurate.
What usually happens is that the professional development of a teacher remains in the paper trail. Further, the teachers tend to use their rapport to show CPD improvement to receive promotions. However, since there has been no progress in terms of skills, there is no enhancement in their student training as well. So, there is no effective improvement in classroom learning as well. This is what needs to change.
Thanks to our advances in digital technology, this can be done without any hassle. Today, using video analytics on video, 360-degree video devices have empowered us to automate regular processes with immaculate precision. Video-analytics-based systems can be deployed within classrooms to reflect on the the performance of a teacher. It can analyse everything from the body language to specific details about a section of class to the overall classroom engagement. Further, it can help teachers identify what are the precise shortfalls and help him or her to improve them.
It paves the way for live and on-demand, of the class when needed. It enables the designated mentor to easily add flags, comments, and events to a video and assist teachers in searching and navigating the content. It further comes equipped with novel Align Methodology which has proven to enable effective self-reflection and mentorship for teachers increasing their motivation on one hand while also increasing the student outcomes on the other.
Such advanced solutions are the need of the hour. It goes without saying that teachers play a critical role in the holistic development of a student. So, their own career progress and skill development have a direct impact on their pupils’ learning. Thankfully, we have these tech-driven solutions as the next logical step towards teacher training and continuos development.
(The writer is the Regional Director, ONVU Learning, Onvu Technologies.)