District Institutes of Education and Training - Teacher Education

District Institutes of Education and Training: A Comparative Study in Three Indian States
Chapter 5 In-service Education for Teachers
5.1 Introduction
The preceding chapters have illustrated that teaching and pre-service training are
dominated by a transmission model of teacher education that is outmoded in the
face of recent change initiatives in elementary education. This chapter reviews
DIETs’ approaches to in-service teacher refreshment, by providing illustrations of
programmes observed by the research team. It demonstrates that there is variation
in approaches across the DIETs, and some significant movement towards
participatory work with teachers that if sustained, can over time come to challenge
more ‘traditional’ approaches.
5.2 In-service training programmes
5.2.1 Programme format: tensions in decentralisation
DIETs organised their training programmes around an annual calendar that sets
out what they intend to offer during the year. Their calendar is a modified version
of the calendar developed by the SCERT. For reasons related to DIET staffing and
skills, and perceptions of the nature of decentralisation, sample DIETs (except
Surat) had rarely developed their own training programme in response to felt
needs in the District. They functioned primarily as sites of delivery of programmes
developed and funded either at the national level, or at the State level, or by an
external intervention such as DPEP or Lok Jumbish.
These programmes come as packages, with a centrally pre-defined length and
content, and target of numbers of teachers to be covered. The substance of those
programmes tends to be related to informing teachers about new ‘packages’, or a
textbook, or upgrading subject content knowledge. DIET staff themselves were
critical of this centralised approach:
TT1 Till you involve a primary teacher, there is no meaning in whichever
package you bring, because he has to teach. Whatever difficulties are there
he has to face them, not the person who is sitting in DIET. You have made
a module sitting in Bhopal and sent it here saying teach this.
TT2 Situations are different everywhere. The situation of A is different from B
(MP/DHA/29.3.00).
In this mode of programme design, teachers are also not consulted – and this is to
ignore the contribution that teachers might make through their local knowledge.
As a teacher in Dhar District pointed out:
Instead of this, what a teacher wishes should become the basis of all preparation,
because we are the people who are in touch with them, not you. So if our
situation, our problem, our curriculum is brought to the forefront their [tribal
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