Name- Himanshi Pathak Class- M.

Ed (2012) RGVT College,Gwalior Seminar on Current Innovation of Teacher Education in India

Abstract: The success of educational reforms cannot be achieved without teachers efforts. Teacher education has enjoyed an increasingly important status in the strategic planning and development of our country. Teacher education, which is in itself a kind of vocational education, should satisfy the needs of teachers professional progress and career development, and help establish a new system for teacher training and development. Higher Education Institutions, normal universities in particular, should bear the responsibility to reform the mechanism and training patterns of teacher education, promote teachers professional development, improve the quality of teaching faculty, and construct an integrated teach training system in India. As a top normal university in India's teacher education system, which involves the curriculum reform, and the upgrading of admission system, teaching practice management, in-service training and teacher training for suburban areas. The effectiveness of any educational reform is ultimately achieved through teachers. With teachers roles and behaviors being increasingly emphasized, the reform and innovation of teacher education has attracted widespread focus throughout the whole world. Teacher education and development has become an essential part in improving the quality of education. Actually it has been widely accepted that innovations of teacher education and teacher development have taken top priority in the circle of education. I. The innovation of teacher education satisfies the needs to build up an innovative nation. In current India, more intelligence and technological support is needed to build up a well-off society in an all-around way. And the quality of intelligence and technology largely depends on the reform of teacher education.These teachers will have to be equipped with more knowledge and skills if they are to teach their students more effectively and help them achieve more success in learning, such as to cultivate the ability to collect and analyze information, to discover questions, to invent new ideas and learn both individually and cooperatively. But our current pattern of teacher education cannot satisfy such a need for teacher development and its disadvantages are listed below: (1) The dilemma of time allotment between knowledge and practice. (2) The disconnection between the content of curriculum and the real

situations in primary and secondary schools. (3) The disconnection between teacher training patterns in universities and educational reforms in primary and secondary schools. (1)Less professional courses. Since teacher education is in close association with the science of education, psychology, the study of education have become the basis of traditional curriculum design. But such and other similar educational courses are too theoretical and abstract and cannot offer practical training programs. As a result, the sustainable development of teaching profession cannot be guaranteed in this system. Hence the innovation of teacher education should first be achieved through the innovation of the system, that is, a teacher education system based on vocational training and career development. (2)Less contextual training. In India, trainings for teacher development mainly entail training during the probation period, training related to a specific job position, training of teaching basics, and training for core teachers. Of the four training patterns, only the first takes place in primary and secondary schools with new teachers leaning from experienced teachers in the form of apprenticeship. The other three models, which are also called top-down models, are held and organized by local educational training agencies and normal universities. The focus of such top-down training models has been on the theoretical conceptions of classroom teaching and educational disciplines. These theories may offer rigid teaching procedures and activities. And by following the theories, the teacher may understand what to do and what not to do in class. But the disadvantage of such trainings is that teachers understanding of the theory is isolated from the specific teaching situation, as a result of which they cannot creatively apply theory into practice. Therefore such teachers will inevitably feel bewildered when unexpected problems occur in class or when they have to deal with students from different backgrounds because they can not find a theory to follow in new situations. (3)Over utilitarian motivations. As teacher education has become the focus of public attention since the second half of the 20th century, teacher education has been greatly influenced by utilitarianism. The internal value of educational ideals and teacher education has been ignored and people have become more short-sighted. Being an indispensable part of modern life and civilization, education offers us the 4 way to understand the significance of life and the world. By passing on such knowledge to our students, we teachers help our next generation understand the world better. It is in this sense that education should focus on ones personal development and be student centered. The value of teacher education is realized through the innovation and reshaping of teachers ability to develop themselves, to reunderstand the value and mission of teacher education. Only when the teachers developmental and innovative abilities are emphasized, can students abilities be developed and improved. To sum up, in the teacher education system the cultivation of top-quality teachers is a major concern both at home and abroad. Faced with the challenge of

quality education and information technology, we shall reach a universal understanding of teacher education: teacher education calls for actions. II. An innovative mechanism should be established for teacher education. Our innovation and practice of teacher education should conform to the policy of constructing an innovative nation. In order to build up an open, supportive, and high-level teacher education system that can meet the needs of the 21st century, innovations should be encouraged on various levels. 1. Teacher education is in itself a type of professional education. Its a misunderstanding to regard teacher education as the learning of psychology or the study of educational disciplines. Undeniably, teacher education is based on such academic studies, but teachers development and personal growth has its own patterns. In universities and colleges, teacher education is a relatively independent field, and has its own academic standards and professional ethics. In this sense, teacher education is never inferior to any academic fields or professions. 2. Teacher education should have its professional standards and evaluation system. The development of teacher education calls for a set of interrelated standards: (1) standards of teacher professional development; (2) standards of evaluating new teachers; (3) professional standards for teachers with various academic backgrounds; (4) standards for the development of specialties; (5) professional standards for teacher educator; (6) qualification standards for teacher education agencies; (7) standards of quality assessment for teacher education agencies; (8) standards for teacher education curricula, etc. These standards will define the teaching ability of teachers and specify effective teaching target. Such practice will improve the effectiveness of teaching, control the delivery of certificates, overcome sluggishness among teachers and help them cultivate a stronger sense of responsibility. 3. Teacher education should have an integrated training system. The restructuring of teacher education system involves systematic innovation, process innovation and technological innovation. Different types of universities and agencies on different levels should cooperate in an integrated system of teacher education. Such an integrated system is not a single form, but an alternative,6 multi-level, and life-long training pattern which incorporates students enrollment, curriculum development, in-service training and post-service training, etc. With a view to establishing an integrated teacher education system, various universities and agencies should expand their training scale by recruiting more students on different levels of degrees. Such levels of degrees should include doctors and masters degrees of education, and bachelors degree of education as second major. 4. The reform of teacher education should penetrate into curriculum development and classroom teaching. The curriculum design has been the weakness of teacher education for a long

time. On the one hand, there lacks a balance between the academic knowledge of the course and the educational knowledge of teaching the course; on the other hand, theory is divorced from practice. Therefore the focus of teacher education reform is not on degree education for it cannot completely change the current problems in teachers pre-service and in-service education. Instead, we need more reforms in curriculum system and curriculum content which can help students grasp the teaching principles of quality education and understand educational development in the future. There should be a fundamental change in the training pattern of pre-service teacher education if we are to cultivate qualified teachers with rich knowledge and experience in both educational theory and teaching practice. Our curriculum reform should include all notions and methods that our students are expected to understand.

5. The application of information technology to teacher education should be directed at a higher level. In the age of information, teacher education faces both challenges and developmental opportunities. On the one hand, the reform of teacher education becomes feasible due to the construction of information infrastructure and information resource bank, as well as the integrated patterns of teacher education with information management; on the other hand, informatization calls for teachers with higher capabilities, which poses a great challenge for all teachers. In the age of information, information technology and the ability to integrate various courses have become the basic components of ones teaching abilities. 6. Teacher education calls for more international exchange and cooperation. Teacher education agencies in India should establish long-term relations with educational research and training organizations abroad. In the recent years, more and more local educational agencies have collaborated with international educational organizations to cultivate teachers with both international vision and local awareness. Moreover, inter-disciplinary international cooperation should be encouraged to promote the reform of training abroad so that our teachers and researchers may have more opportunities to participate in the classroom teaching of other countries. Such practice will promote their teaching in both theory and practice. At the same time, normal universities should take the responsibility to promote international cooperation and research, encourage training and the exchange of teachers and scholars, organize international conferences, and get involved in teacher education and other educational programs sponsored by the UNESCO, the UN Childrens Foundation, and the World Bank, etc. In some fields, normal universities may become the leader and promoter, and they should also export top-quality teaching resources to developing countries.