District Institutes of Education and Training - Teacher Education

District Institutes of Education and Training: A Comparative Study in Three Indian States
cascade tiers. The previous year’s training approach comprised detailed planning
of only a few lessons. As a result, Master Trainers and Trainers had tended
to demonstrate only those lessons, leaving large parts of the book untouched.
In the Std. 2 training, planning of all the lessons was to be covered in the groups
of RPs, with demonstrations of a few. This year, no module was provided on
the grounds that a module was not necessary as everything is detailed in the
textbook.
As the quality of the video in the preceding year was not satisfactory, and trainers’
capacities to use video were not fully developed, the Government of Gujarat opted
not to use videos this year in the training programme. This was regretted by some
trainers. The research team suggested that the question of training by video might
be re-visited and the possibilities of using much shorter video excerpts to
demonstrate training points be considered along the lines of good practices
discussed above.
This time, personnel including DPEOs, inspectors, presidents of teachers’
associations etc. were also invited for the training programme to ensure that they
were familiar with the training intentions and new textbooks.
In the cascade tiers, 52 Resource Persons were trained by the textbook writers at
state level, and from those 52, two groups of 26 Resource Persons each were
formed. One was trained for mathematics and the other for language/EVS. From
both the groups, pairs were formed and each pair in turn trained groups of Master
Trainers. The training of the Resource Persons continued for four days by the
respective textbook writers (the research team observed one and a half days of
training).
The newly-trained Resource Persons gave training to around 1200 Master Trainers
from all over the state, and this continued for five days in the groups of 45-50
divided district wise. Unlike the Resource Persons who took one of the two
subjects, each Master Trainer was trained in both subjects. Master Trainers who
had been to the previous year’s programme found there was repetition of the
activities and were less enthusiastic this time. Some said ‘now we are not learning
anything new. It is just an understanding of textbook and nothing new beyond
that’:
Last year’s training programme was an initiation. It was necessary for teachers
to open up and to participate in activities without any hesitation because they
had never done such a thing before. But now you can see that they have
accepted the change and practising it. So now we have to move a step further.
Now we don’t need to repeat the same things again and again (KRP).
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