Addressing a function the other day, Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha Sunday stressed the need for ‘knowledge revolution’ for leading India into a developed nation and to sustain all-round growth in different sectors of the economy and emphasised the role of teachers in realising inherent potential of students and ensuring that core competencies of J&K UT are synergized for a brighter future. He stressed that learning should not be centered around tests and assessment and rightly advocated developing a productive teaching-learning ecosystem where teachers are not restricted to curriculum only and are free to share their experiences and wisdom with the students.
It goes without saying that if the government really wants to do something for the people, education is the area where it needs to focus its energies. Though training of teachers – their capacity building is an ongoing feature which has been going on all along, but obviously this has not yielded desired results so far, as is evident from not so performance of the government schools. So if the government really wants to improve the performance of its schools, it will have to start with the teachers. It is the teachers who need to change and this is because they are “the super-engines of change”.
The dynamics and settings of both schools and classrooms have changed a great deal. During the yesteryears, it was more or less a one-way communication, top-down model that would be followed inside schools and classrooms with teacher at the apex and students in the bottom. But today the same has been replaced with two-way linear models of communication wherein teacher is at the best only a participant observer in class-room activity. He/she is a friend and a facilitator in a teaching-learning process which has to be mutually enthusing, enriching, interesting and fulfilling for both – the teacher as well as the students.
There is nothing wrong in emulating any concept or model, irrespective of its origin, if it is thought worthy of copying for the larger interests and benefit of the society, much like the way we copy modern medical and diagnostic techniques of the West to help the ailing people in this part of the world. So if we have to bring in better and scientific pedagogical concepts into our school system and in our class-rooms, it is the teachers who will have to be willing to change and adapt to the newer concepts first. They will have to give up the ‘my way or the highway’ rigidity of a traditional teacher and be flexible to changes that hold big promise for the society and the nation.
The capacity-building of teachers will have to start off from exposing them to new concepts of pedagogy, wherein focus is – as much as on what teacher says in the classroom, also on how he or she says it, and mediates and moderates interactions within the classroom. The teachers need to be exposed to, and made to think beyond the traditional lectures and ‘dictating notes’. They need to be taught about other techniques like simulations and role-plays, use of teaching aids and other techniques as would ensure active communication and participation of the students.
