primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
the demands of real-life teaching, few questioned it. This situation is seen as
‘normal’; the way the system works.
Over the last ten years there has been endless debate on pedagogy that is childcentric
and activity-based. Yet, the students we met told us that the dominant mode
was lectures. Their knowledge was tested mainly through periodic examinations.
There was no group work and the teacher trainees had little to do with children or
schools—except for a few practice lessons, which were designed in standard formats
far removed from the reality of the school and not followed up by reflection.
Concepts like ‘child-centred learning’, ‘knowledge construction’ or even the most
misused of all terminologies ‘activity-based learning’ were studied and their
definitions sometimes learnt by heart—but beyond that the constructivist pedagogy
was never applied, either by their own teachers or in the practice lessons. It was just
another set of facts to be received. The teacher-training curriculum provided few
opportunities to draw linkages between subject knowledge and pedagogy: the two
were distinct compartments.
In most teacher-training institutions, government as well as private, students said
that their first choice of future jobs was in government schools. But teacher education
programmes made little effort to address the conditions under which a majority of
these schools operate—single-teacher and two-teacher schools, mother tongue
education and the problems faced by children from communities that do not speak
the dominant language.
The students themselves did not see the programme as a ‘professional’ course. It was
just something that would help them get a job.
What we heard reinforces the observation made in the National Focus Group on
Teacher Education (NCF 2005):
It is assumed that repeated ‘practice’ in the ‘teaching of isolated lessons’ (of a required number) is
a sufficient condition for professional training to be a teacher. It is also assumed that links between
theories of child development and learning, instructional models and methods of teaching specific
subjects are automatically formed in the understanding developed by teacher-trainees (student
teachers). Both national and international experience challenges these contentions. Teacher
education programmes must therefore make a conscious effort to design courses to provide greater
‘space’ to generate a deeper understanding of such linkages.
Why choose to be a teacher?
Discussions with teachers and existing research suggest that teachers do not, by and
large, enter the profession because of their love of teaching or of children. Rather,
appointment to a teaching post is seen as a relatively easy opportunity to gain secure
lifetime employment as a government servant. Given the low entry qualifications
required of elementary school teachers and the relatively high demand for teachers,
the option of teaching at the elementary level is accessible to students whose school
leaving marks fail to qualify them to study to become doctors and engineers, yet who
seek to obtain relatively comfortable working conditions in terms of salary, benefits,
and job security. As the PROBE report (1999) summarises, ‘Few teachers see their work
as a vocation. In rural areas, teaching posts tend to be seen as plum jobs, with good salaries,
secure employment and plenty of time for other activities. Anyone with the required formal
qualifications may be tempted to apply, including persons who have no intrinsic attraction to
the job, no sympathy for children, or no commitment to the spread of education.’
38