primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
institutions offering training, nor even the possibility of planning training
workshops ahead of time. In the case of IASEs, although some workshops were held
during the last financial year, funds had yet to be released by MHRD during the
current year for this activity.
Teacher educators at D.Ed colleges, themselves often poorly equipped and working
in institutions with inadequate infrastructure and facilities are thus left to struggle
with a host of problems, both academic and administrative.
On the academic side, the implications of the new curriculum relate to new content
on the one hand and excessive activities and demands on the other. With regard to
content, D.Ed faculty complain that using the ‘content-cum-methodology’ approach
to teaching subject papers is a major problem. Given the limited time available and
the fact that students (and, sometimes, teachers) have inadequate content knowledge
to begin with, the higher-order analyses required to implement this approach
appears to ignore the ground realities of both teachers and students in D.Ed
institutions: ‘They should teach this in B.Ed, not in D.Ed’ is a common opinion.
Additionally, the new emphasis on practical work both within coursework and
during the internship requires additional time, infrastructure and planning that leads
to a heavy burden on D.Ed faculty. For example, in addition to teaching the theory
components of the programme, D.Ed faculty have to provide individual guidance for
about 200 practice lessons per year; organise 20 practical sessions per student which
require individual checking and orchestrate an ‘annual lesson’ for each student each
year, which is required to be observed by two external observers. From the point of
view of the students, many of the practicum components of the new curriculum—the
practicals, practice teaching, internship—require a lot of extra expense (travel, TLM,
etc.).
On the administrative side, the new curriculum has generated a host of problems
that are difficult to resolve. To give just one example, the logistics involved in
implementing the new ‘annual lesson’ requirement are staggering. In Pune district
alone, for example, about 3,500 final lessons have to be scheduled each year, which
in turn requires finding and scheduling 3,500 classrooms and 7,000 qualified external
observers. A potentially powerful mechanism for connecting theory and practice
thus becomes yet another requirement to be completed.
But the area of by far the most intense conflict over the new curriculum relates to the
new six-month internship requirement for obtaining the D.Ed. Four distinct areas of
discord can be identified with respect to this issue:
• First, faculty at DIETs, aided and private teacher-training institutions say that a
six-month internship ‘is not necessary’. They feel that the D.Ed coursework
includes more than enough practice teaching; therefore the internship serves only
to teach students school ‘routine’. All faculty members interviewed agreed that
‘two years is more than sufficient—we don’t want students to work extra time’.
• Second, the internship requirement leads to new avenues of corruption. For
example, school authorities ask for money before signing paperwork.
• Third, interns placed in schools are often not allowed to teach, but are instead
made to do all sorts of other administrative and clerical tasks, thus defeating the
purpose of the internship.
• Fourth, the 6-month extension to the D.Ed programme creates a huge problem
with regard to hostel facilities for students. Because hostels are geared to
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