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Teachers As Professionals-Accountable and Autonomous-Review of The Report of The Justice Verma Commission On Teacher Education PDF
Teachers As Professionals-Accountable and Autonomous-Review of The Report of The Justice Verma Commission On Teacher Education PDF
Indira Vijaysimha
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294 Indira Vijaysimha
1966 discussed this subject. Between 1995 and 2000, the number of
teacher education institutes in India increased seven-fold, and much of
this expansion occurred in the private sector. This has led to a sharp
decline in the quality of teacher education programmes, and the recent
report of the high-powered commission on teacher education, constituted
by the Supreme Court, is timely and its recommendations need to be
taken seriously. The members of the commission included eminent edu-
cationists like Goverdhan Mehta, M. Anandakrishnan, R. Govinda,
Mrinal Miri, A.K.S. Sharma and Poonam Batra. The long and consistent
stand on teacher education taken by the members is clearly seen in the
report.
The commission, chaired by Justice J.S. Verma, tabled its report in
August 2012. Subsequently, the Central Advisory Board on Education
(CABE), the highest advisory body to advise the central and state gov-
ernments in the field of education, at its 60th meeting, approved the
recommendations made by the commission. Acknowledging that
teacher education is a subject of great national importance, the com-
mission has underlined the need to establish a national-level academic
body that can continually review teacher education programmes and
look into the development of resources, both human and material,
required to run these programmes. Signing off the report, Justice Verma
writes:
I do hope this report will get the attention due to it because of the Supreme
Court’s intervention in a long overdue exercise of great importance to the
nation’s future: and let me hope, it will not meet the fate of the earlier unim-
plemented Report on Fundamental Duties (1999), which too was at the behest
of the Supreme Court. (Vol. 1, Preface, p. viii)
Amen to that!
The terms of reference for the commission included a consideration
of whether in the context of the provisions of the Right to Education Act,
2009, the procedures and norms laid down by the National Council for
Teacher Education (NCTE) for various teacher education courses are
adequate or in need of review. The commission also considered the need
for reforms in teacher education, reviewed the adequacy of enforcement
of existing norms for teacher education, and assessed the existing prac-
tice of appointment of members of the NCTE. Further, the mandate for
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Teachers as Professionals 295
the commission also included evolving standards and norms for evaluat-
ing teacher performance. Finally, it reviewed whether the 291 institu-
tions in the western region qualify to be recognised as teacher training
institutions.
The chapters of the report thus deal with the quality of pre-service and
in-service teacher education, teacher performance and teacher audit, the
need for strengthening the regulatory functions of the NCTE, and the
outcome of the review of 291 D.Ed institutions in Maharashtra. Overall,
the report analyses the state of institutional provisions for teacher educa-
tion, the quality of instruction provided in these institutions and the regu-
latory role and function of the NCTE. It has come out with a wide-ranging
set of recommendations, which, if implemented in the intended spirit,
has the potential to have a positive impact on the state of school educa-
tion in the country.
In terms of the institutional structure for teacher education, the report
points out that while the secondary teacher education programmes are
affiliated to universities, the programmes that prepare teachers for ele-
mentary schools and early childhood education are not considered to fall
under the purview of higher education and are organised separately. It is
also the case that the institutions for teacher education are typically iso-
lated from the departments of higher education within the university sys-
tem. The quality of entrants into these institutions, the quality of the
curriculum content, the quality of the teacher educators, and the quality
of the teacher preparation mode are all matters of concern, and have duly
been raised by the Justice Verma Commission report. Further, the report
points to the lack of adequate institutional capacity for the preparation of
teacher educators. There are two aspects to this problem: first, a paucity
of institutions that offer postgraduate programmes in education; and sec-
ond, the inadequacy of the one-year M.Ed programme that is currently
the most common programme for the preparation of teacher educators.
The National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE),
2009 has already highlighted some of the concerns around the M.Ed pro-
gramme, such as its generalist nature and its short duration, and has rec-
ommended that a much more comprehensive, two-year programme be
made the norm. The NCFTE recommends that the two-year M.Ed pro-
gramme provide training and education for specialised streams. The
Justice Verma Commission report reiterates these recommendations. In
order to attract a wide range of talent to the field of teacher education, the
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References
C. Day (2007). School reform and transitions in teacher professionalism and
identity. In T. Townsend & R.J. Bates (Eds), Handbook of teacher education:
Globalization, standards and professionalism in times of change (pp. 597–
612). Dordrecht: Springer.
Khora, Sthabir (2011). Education and teacher professionalism: Study of teachers
and classroom processes. Jaipur.
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