Improving the quality of education system is a priority for Governments and international agencies. The system is only as good as its teachers and enhancing the teacher quality at all stages is a key factor in improving the quality of learning that the students receive. With this aim, the British Council recently launched a new approach to teacher education and development — Teaching for Success — and underpinned Continuing Professional Development (CPD) frameworks for teacher educators and teachers.
The CPD is at the heart of the teaching for success approach as well as for teacher educators. These frameworks represent the understanding of and global expertise in, teaching and teacher development. The services and resources for the teaching of English language and other school subjects are all mapped to the CPD frameworks to provide clear pathways for development. The aim is to build local continuing professional development systems and the human resource to maintain them, meet identified teacher needs and government priorities, have a positive and lasting impact on quality in the classroom, manage the factors across the whole education system that impact on achieving the goals for teacher development and quality in the classroom, embed equality, diversity and inclusion at every level and make the most effective use of technology for learning that is available today.
The goal is to have quality in the classroom where teachers are competent, knowledgeable, highly motivated, committed to their profession and are able to innovate and achieve the best for their learners. The professional practices include planning lessons and courses, understanding learners, managing resources, integrating ICT and using inclusive practices.
For this, there is need for continuing professional development for teachers. This according to the panelists should include standards for teacher performance, standards for trainer performance, State specific versions of standards, tools for assessing current performance against the standards, there should be inputs towards improved planning for quality improvement, need to involve leadership and key stakeholders at various levels in engaging with the outcomes achieved till now.
Alison Barrett, who is the head of English for Education Systems for the British Council globally and at present based at the British Council in New Delhi, said that competence is not the same as performance and hence there is need to define it. “It is equally important to understand what learning consists of and how it is enabled in terms of whether it understands children and relates with them, understands curriculum, generates effective learning experiences, uses materials effectively, communicates effectively, creates conducive learning environment/relates with children and undertakes assessment and evaluation, and uses outcomes to improve learning,” Barett said.
There is also a need to look at the system as a whole and not just teacher-student manifestation. Creating role models, need to negotiate and mediate, create a space for teachers to think out of the box, need for technology development for teachers and a system for self-assessment for teachers of their skills and knowledge is the need of the hours as is a proper incentive.
But these incentives may not always be monetary. “It has been found that it is not always money that will work. There is need to raise the status of the teachers in the society by involving the people through students,” Subir Shukla, principal coordinator of IGNUS-ERG opined.