District Institutes of Education and Training - Teacher Education

District Institutes of Education and Training: A Comparative Study in Three Indian States
incorporated. Where this does not happen, the burden later falls on in-service
training to bring even newly graduated teachers up to date.
• The majority of pre-service trainers treat training teachers as if it were secondary
schooling, with a strong focus on content and a weak focus on pedagogical and
community-related issues. DIET staff show different levels of skills and
competence in modelling the approaches they discuss in the course. There is a
need for all DIET staff to receive differentiated training and support to upgrade
their skills as pre-service educators who are able to work convincingly and
effectively with children and convey to student teachers how they do so.
• The model of pre-service training assumes rests on the idea that teachers are
technicians who implement the ideas of others and do not have knowledge,
skills, values and attitudes of their own. This model of training is not preparing
teachers to engage with children’s learning and their own roles as active and
reflective facilitators of that learning in heterogeneous contexts.
10.2.5 In-service education for teachers
Chapter Five found that in-service programmes tend to be designed and funded
from the State or national level. They are not preceded by needs analysis, and so
do not base further training on where teachers are now or knowledge of teachers’
needs or aspirations. In contrast to policy expectations of them, DIETs function as
sites of delivery of pre-packaged programmes whose relevance to local teachers’
needs is not assured. Staff are aware of this but may not have the technical
expertise, insight about teachers’ needs, or perception of their own autonomy to
make the necessary adaptations. DIETs had a heavy training load which led to a
sense of ‘busyness’ in delivery that often precluded monitoring and evaluation of
impact at the school level. Training outcomes tend to be defined by the timetable,
rather for a programme; where they are found, they are generally teaching rather
than learning aims. Without this framework, there is nothing against which
achievement of outcomes can be evaluated. Weak evaluative practices across DIETs
meant that the feedback loop between DIET and teachers – essential for formative
feedback to promote quality improvement - remained incomplete, except in Surat
and Masuda where it was developing. Surat had also undertaken its own study of
achievements against which teachers’ developmental needs could be reviewed.
Two main approaches to pedagogical processes were observed: a ‘traditional’
lecture approach and a participatory approach. Some DIET lecturers dictate
materials contained in a book teachers will later receive. In the more participatory
/ activity-based approaches to training, efforts were made to involve teachers
actively in problem-solving and to some extent in critical reflection. This
movement towards generating a professional discourse with teachers is highly
positive, but to be sustained it requires that teacher educators refine their skills in
DFID 195