Train teachers to raise the bar

THE National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 envisions a holistic education for learners at all levels, from schools to universities, to prepare them to face the challenges of the 21st century. The question is: are the teachers, who are supposed to take this mission forward, equipped to do this?Most universities (from top to bottom in ranking) primarily rely on lectures for teaching. Although ample research in education shows that a pluralistic pedagogical approach is necessary to achieve various learning outcomes, educators’ adaptation to this need remains largely inadequate.NEP 2020 targets the achievement of its goals by 2030-40; however, unless teachers move beyond traditional lecture-based teaching, realising these goals will remain unlikely.Why are teachers reluctant to change? From the information collected through faculty development programmes conducted by TLC (Teaching Learning Centre), IIT Madras, the major challenges have been identified as follows:(a) Ambitious syllabi for courses: The curriculum of every educational programme is packed with too much information for a semester-based system to deal with. In such a situation, teachers find their comfort zone in lectures to cover the huge syllabus since the “lecture” is a unilateral process, and one can tweak it regardless of the consent from the receiving end!(b) Students’ apathy: Teachers feel demotivated when they see that students are not interested in listening to them. Most of the teachers have raised the concern in teaching workshops that typically two-thirds of their classroom population is least bothered about learning the subject. This eventually leads to a situation where teaching and learning are delinked.(c) Additional workload: Another major concern of the faculty in universities is that they have been asked to do a lot of administrative work, and the focus is shifted from teaching-learning to data collection and record-keeping. Practising new pedagogical approaches requires teachers to invest time, especially in the beginning, which they often find hard to do due to the additional workload.(d) Large class: Teachers generally believe that the lecture is the best way to communicate in a large class. The common courses in undergraduate programmes are usually held in a single group, with class sizes reaching 100-200 students, and sometimes even more. Teachers are hesitant to try anything new in such large classrooms.It is high time teachers came out of the syllabus-centric teaching process. In our country, outcome-based teaching has been practised for more than a decade; however, the focus has not shifted from syllabus to outcomes.Educational research suggests focusing more on the ‘content processing part’ than the ‘content exposure part’ so that deep thinking ability can be generated among learners. With the advent of artificial intelligence and other amenities, using classroom time for content exposure is not advisable. The syllabus can be replaced by four or five skill sets for the final assessment. This is, in fact, what is envisaged by outcome-based education.Student apathy can be addressed, to a large extent, through innovative teaching methods. Carefully designed thought experiments can attract many young minds if they are presented as a challenge. Either through a gamification method or a problem-based learning method, if the teacher allows students to explore and find out the answers to challenging problems — and if they are life-related — students will find some purpose in learning.Currently, teachers of national institutes and universities are supposed to teach, advise students, conduct research, carry out consultations and handle administrative tasks. To excel in any of these areas, deliberate and focused efforts are essential. Working across multiple domains generally leads to average results. Policymakers can propose a career plan for university teachers that offers options to prioritise teaching, research administration, allowing them to dedicate more time to their preferred area. When passion aligns with skills, excelling in that field becomes a natural outcome!Most of the teaching pedagogies can remain the same for small and large classrooms, except that one may want to think about how to scale them up in large classrooms. The speculated teacher-student ratio in India is 1:15 to 1:20. We definitely need more teachers so that smaller discussion classrooms can be designed where responsible learners can be guided through proper pedagogical approaches.Teacher training programmes in the higher education sector can be more cohesive. Various TLCs at national institutes are conducting teaching workshops in different formats. The need of the hour is to unify them by identifying and adapting more research-based effective strategies for training teachers to (a) design appropriate course outcomes, (b) choose an effective pedagogy to help students achieve course outcomes, and (c) conduct a series of formative assessments to ensure that the majority of the students are prepared to meet the outcomes through rigorous practice sessions. In parallel, attracting young minds to the teaching profession with a carefully designed training programme can result in a set of skilled teachers who can bring about a transformative change, as envisaged by NEP 2020.

Train teachers to raise the bar

It is high time teachers gave up syllabus-centric teaching process

Edamana Prasad

Train teachers to raise the bar

It is high time teachers gave up syllabus-centric teaching process

Edamana Prasad

Unlock Premium Insights in This Article