CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES – A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO

TEACHER EMPOWERMENT

Mrs. V. Nagalakshmi1 Mr. Jeeva Sundar2

1. Life Skills Educator, Curriculum Consultant, Founder, Thyai Foundation,

Salem, Tamil Nadu 636004
2. Ph.D. Scholar in Career Guidance, Dept of Extension and Career and Guidance,
Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu 641046

Abstract

The changing nature of work needs of industry 4.0 have changed the goal of educational
ecosystem in all aspects from pedagogical methods to strategies. The objective of education
now is to groom a self-directed proactive lifelong learner to be ready for an unpredictable
future. Being the objectives of education clear, the teacher’s internal effectiveness plays a key
role. The major tasks the educators work for are to equip children with emerging knowledge
requirements in this rapidly changing technology world, to cater the social and emotional needs
of 21st century learners who are bumped with information, to differentiate instruction for
students with diverse needs and to reduce the skill gap in the nation building. For educators to
accomplish these tasks they need to get themselves empowered with a balanced combination
of professional fitness and personal well-being. For an educator to create an engaging and
empowering learning classroom, their physical and social presence (personal well-being) are
required along with content knowledge and skills. The teacher can embrace teaching learning
process change by changing their perception on self-efficacy through anchoring to self-care
collective practices rather than only updates. The collective contemporary practices bring in
teachers as experts in habits of mind and transform teachers from survivor’s mindset to
believer’s mindset. It is our hope that this paper will shade light on the importance of
contemporary practices for empowerment of teachers and their wellbeing as holistic
development and thus the enhancement of teaching learning process.

Keywords: Teacher empowerment, Personal well-being, Professional development,

Contemporary practices
Introduction

The focus of the present educational ecosystem is on the classrooms that are child centric with
more adaptive pedagogical approaches that includes digital assistants for learning. This in turn
demands a paradigm shift in teachers’ role to extend teaching beyond the classroom. A teacher
with only cognitive learning and imparting knowledge is to be replaced by a teacher who
integrates cognitive and affective learning to impart intelligence.

Analysing the professional knowledge of the teachers, it is understood that teacher’s knowledge
base about teaching-learning process is built by the accumulation of effective and ineffective
teaching practices they had experienced during course of their education. From there they carry
the working concepts, which turns into their beliefs and apply those beliefs in all their efforts
with their co-workers, with the management and extends with their family and friends. The
teachers tend to be in teaching mode the whole day and whole life. This devalues the teaching-
learning process even with all pedagogical changes and professional development programs on
teaching.

One more area of concern is nowadays the teachers in most of the schools do the teaching tasks
clearly in detail planned by some other person who is not a part of the organization. The
teachers lose the connectedness due to lack of sense of worth or efficacy. This shows that there
is a need of certain contemporary practices for the teachers’ professional fitness and personal
wellbeing.

Professional Fitness

Many professional development programs targeting from understanding a child’s behaviour to

methods of teaching the content are provided to teachers from time to time. A teacher is
remembered through the value addition given by them and not with only marks scored in the
respective subjects. The teacher plays a key role in shaping the future of student’s career. The
digital world carries all the relevant information. Teachers are needed to communicate beyond
information and impart intelligence. A teacher can only preach with the information. On the
other hand, intelligence can be imparted through adding personal experience along with
information sharing. Inter professional communication programs to share all their industrial
expertise instead of ‘apprenticeship of observation’ will change teachers view of their
knowledge management. Regular engagement with professional learning networks through
digital world and across local community facilitates global learning through international and
intercultural relationships. Periodical practices of engaging in inter professional
communication programs and connected with professional learning networks keeps a teacher
professional fit in the constantly changing teaching-learning process.

Personal Wellbeing

The most important aspect of every human being is the affective domain. Well-being is more
than absence of illness like stress, burnout etc. It is holistic development or prosperity in diverse
situations. A teacher well-being is directly impacting students’ social emotional needs that in
turn to the academic skills and overall school growth. The three domains that need well-being
practices are personal, interpersonal and social. The details of the influential factors of these
domains and the practices for the well-being are listed in table1.

Domain Influential Factors Practices needed

Personal Self-thought Self-compassion
Self-belief Self-awareness
Self-feeling Self confidence
Empathy
Decision making
Interpersonal Students Coping skills
Co-workers
Management
Parents
Family
Social Attitude towards outside Attitude enrichment
world Leadership
Image building

Spiral Practices Model

Instead of workshops or training programs with narrow specific topics, the spiral practices
model widens the scope of change. It starts from the assessment of the strengths and needs
using narratives to bring in the awareness moving on to sustained empowerment. The spiral
practices help in continuously revisiting the intentions and start practices from the challenging
and changing needs of the moment and thus develop a better understanding and reinforces
change as a community based sustained development. Creative processes involved in the
practices enhances connectedness and thus the change practices. The diagram 1 shows the
spiral practices model.

Conclusion

Teachers are the centric of educational ecosystem supporting the social, emotional and
academic needs of the students. Teacher empowerment is more a journey than an event.
Introducing contemporary practices like professional journaling that tracks their thoughts and
observations, psychological safety, practices integrating intention and action, co-learning
communities helps in teacher’s holistic empowerment. The outbound training programs,
external experts training (in house) are more constructive approach in this journey.

References