District Institutes of Education and Training - Teacher Education

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District Institutes of Education and Training: A Comparative Study in Three Indian States Box 9.2: Good practices by MTs in Surat • MTs themselves were clear about concepts, the content and what they should focus on at what point. • MTs had a vision of the questions likely to be raised and answered satisfactorily. The MTs involved teachers in questioning and reflecting back to the classroom situation and encouraged teachers to think of likely problems that could be faced in reality. This gave teachers a more flexible approach than simply modelling an ‘ideal’ textbook lesson that might not work in practice. • Explanations of the textbooks were given with relevant examples in form of stories, quotes, statements etc. This made training interesting and lively. We noticed that if a concept was made clear to the trainees, for example through a value-based story, it seemed to be more easily acceptable; trainees also showed better concentration when such instances were narrated. • Extra materials were used, and MTs shared new and interesting things which they might have read, or obtained from discussions with others. This made the training more comprehensive and rounded than merely concentrating on a narrow range of given materials. • Trainers stressed children’s achievement of competencies, and how to develop and extend children’s thinking processes. • MTs made an effort to find out about trainees’ existing understandings, and then to extend them. For example, if a teacher asked a question, the MT would invite other teachers to answer, to see what they would do in such a situation. From their responses he could see what they thought and what understanding they had, and then he could supplement their answers with further explanations or suggestions. This helped to build on what teachers already knew, to develop them in less familiar areas, and boost confidence and motivation. • Administrative arrangements for the programme were well organised and so time was not wasted. • MTs were well prepared for all their sessions, and began each one knowing what they would try to cover that day, how much they could manage, and how they were going to take the sessions. As one MT said: Every day we have to come with prior preparation. Only then can we conduct the training in the desired way. After each day’s training programme I need to go through what happened today, what questions were raised and based on that I have to prepare for the next day’s training programme. I sit till one in the night, go through the lessons and mark the important points, which competencies are to be focused. Then I give thought to how these competencies could be achieved with what activities. (MT, Surat) DFID 183
District Institutes of Education and Training: A Comparative Study in Three Indian States In these classes, the major emphases were competencies, skills development and thinking processes, and it was stressed that the textbooks are not an end in themselves, but the means of achieving these aims. This is the key message of the whole training programme. While this was perhaps less prominently put forth in the Palitana tiers, Master Trainers observed here were able to augment the ‘model lesson’ approach by working to improve teachers’ grasp of concepts and offering them different activities, strategies and ideas of what to do in their classrooms. While at higher levels there had been slippage, with the pedagogical aspects being subsumed by content concerns, this was arrested at this tier and a more appropriate balance between the two was reached. This demonstrates that the quality of the training does not necessarily reflect the hierarchy assumed in the cascade model. Another noteworthy aspect in Surat was that teachers had high expectations of the training: while elsewhere in-service teachers express negative sentiments about inservice training (‘just another training’), here they were saying ‘through this training we will definitely learn something new’. In this District, the DIET has a good reputation and its work for quality in the District is known. 9.6 Improving cascade effectiveness 9.6.1 Learning needs in the cascade tiers In the cascade model, the information flow goes from the top downwards, because greatest expertise is believed to be concentrated at the top of the pyramid. The model does not differentiate between the types of expertise that exist at different points in the cascade. It is not good at encouraging an upwards flow of information from school teachers (who have practical classroom experience and theories about the ways things work – which training may need to try and change) to persons at the top (who may have greater technical or subject expertise and usually also a broader horizon but typically little practical classroom experience). Typically also, the cascade model is not very sensitive to variations in local context (at the school level, or among teachers) which may influence whether teachers perceive its training messages to be relevant. The effectiveness of the cascade could be improved by more accurate, tier-wise specification of trainer’s learning needs. The pedagogical focus is in general overshadowed by the content focus. The most neglected aspect of all is developing trainers’ knowledge, skills and understandings of how best to teach adults. One way of finding out more about learning needs in the cascade tiers is for the trainers to get a sense of how those whom they trained managed when they went to train others. If a Key Resource Person observes training given by the Resource 184 DFID
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District Institutes of Education and Training - Teacher Education

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