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Teacher Education

Notes The B.El.Ed. course attempts to develop the individuality of the student based on the assumption
that it is the individual transformation that leads to social transformation. The course structure
gives students the space to engage intensely with issues of understanding themselves and others.
There is a special emphasis on understanding the nature of the child, the adult-child relationship
and its dynamics within the classroom. The students engage with issues of politics of education
within the classroom as they reflect on the best way of facilitating children’s learning. This
course is also designed to develop an understanding of contemporary Indian realities through a
study of key historical, political, social cultural and economic issues. Students observe and analyse
gender inequities in the process of schooling and develop intervention strategies.
The B.El.Ed. curriculum is cyclic in nature whereby the same issues are dealt with at different
levels of complexity and within different contexts over the four years. The longer duration of the
programme offers students critical psychological space to explore and define their own approaches
to educational issues as they are in regular contact with the school setting over the four years.
There is a sustained 17 weeks school internship programme in the fourth year where students
attempt to translate their thoughts into action and critically reflect on this process. Students also
visit institutions engaged in innovative practice in elementary education, in order to broaden
their horizons. Students undertake research projects with an aim to further develop the process of
reflective enquiry through classroom-based research. Through specially designed colloquia students
learn specific professional skills like using theatre, art, crafts, story telling and music in education
and creating a resource centre in schools.
29.7 National Curriculum Frameworks for Teacher Education (2009)

A major effort to rejuvenate school education as well as teacher education towards modernisation,
contextualisation and professionalization has been made in 2005 and 2009 through the National
Curriculum Framework for School Education (2005), and National Curriculum Framework for
Teacher Education (2009) respectively. During recent years the epistemology of learning has
undergone a major change; i.e. learning does not involve discovering the reality, but constructing
the reality. Knowledge and cognitions are to be constructed and affects are to be felt. Learning is
no more passive absorption of knowledge and ideas, but the construction of ideas developed on
one’s personal experiences. Emphasis has, now, shifted towards constructivist approach of learning.
Learning is also perceived as an integral part of learner’s physical, social, and cultural contexts.
This concept has come to be known as situated cognition and is the guiding principle of the
National curriculum Framework for School Education (2005) developed by NCERT. The NCF
2005 expects a teacher to be the facilitator of students’ learning in a manner that helps them to
construct knowledge and meaning utilising their individual experiences. The whole pedagogical
approach of teacher education programme, therefore, needs to be reoriented from traditional
behaviourist to constructivist discourses. The National Curriculum Framework for Teacher
Education (2009) developed by NCTE tries to ensure that teacher education courses are reoriented
to align with the epistemological shift envisaged in the NCF 2005 and develop teachers as
facilitators of learning. It includes the contexts, concerns and visions of teacher education which
calls for preparing teachers for learning society, empowering teachers in learning to learn, and
making teacher education liberal, humanistic and responsive to the to the demands of inclusive
education. It has tried to incorporate the changing school contexts and demands in the light of
recently implemented Right to Education Act ( RTE 2009), issue of academic burden of students,
and universalisation of secondary education that have implication for teacher education. The
major concerns addressed by this framework include inclusive education, ensuring equitable and
sustainable development, utilising community knowledge in education, and integration of ICT
and e-learning in the curriculum of teacher education which is in tune with the thrust of NCF
2005 and the needs of contemporary Indian society.
Therefore, the traditional approach to teacher preparation based on philosophical, sociological
and psychological orientation of courses has given way to ‘carefully crafted curriculum design
that draws upon theoretical and empirical knowledge as well as student teachers’ ‘experiential

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