primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

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Version 20 Oct 08, edited final The way forward cannot but involve thinking differently about how we prepare our young people to become teachers. This is a domain where a lot could be done, yet this is one area that has remained neglected. Breaking an insular approach to teacher education and forging close linkages to graduate and post-graduate courses on the one hand and rural and urban schools on the other is the natural starting point. 50
Version 20 Oct 08, edited final V Training! Training! In the heartland of India It was the summer of 2005 and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan was in its third year of implementation when a senior official of a north Indian state asked one of us to accompany him/her on a tour of summer training of teachers. We were to drive from the state capital and cover four districts over a 5-day period. The SSA directorate had prepared the module, which was available in printed form. It covered a range of subject-specific ‘hard spots’, material on child-centred learning (what the trainers called joyful learning) and tracking out of school children through household surveys. The District Collectors had been informed about the training programme and its importance in quality improvement. The SSA directorate had sent out detailed instructions including the schedule of training sessions, the sequence in which they should be conducted and, most importantly, that these training programmes were to be residential. DIET and BRC were involved in making arrangements, identifying resource persons and disbursing the funds. SCERT had perhaps been involved in the preparation of the module, but the decisions were clearly taken by the SSA directorate. Career civil servants were in charge and professional teacher educators were assisting the administrators. What we saw on the tour was an eye opener. The first stop was a high school where 200 teachers were supposed to come together in batches of 40 each for a 6-day refresher training programme. We walked in to find that there were three or maybe four batches of 25 to 30 teachers listening to lectures. We looked around and found that there were maybe 100 teachers of whom very few were women. As my companion got busy with administrative matters, I wandered off to talk to the teachers. All of them had a copy of the module. Apparently lectures were delivered from around 11 am to about 2.30 or 3 pm. Asked if there were any arrangements for overnight stay, one male teacher said that there were no facilities. Another teacher said: ‘Women cannot stay overnight with men, even Sita had to go through an agni pariksha (trial by fire) when she stayed in another man’s palace. The government has to be sensitive to the problems of women teachers.’ Modules are prepared at the state level without trying to find out what teachers need. A uniform module was being used across the state—across single-teacher, two-teacher and multi-teacher schools, for regular schools and for alternative schools. When asked what they thought of the training programme, the teachers said, ‘It is a formality that we have to go through. Its okay, some lectures are interesting but the truth is that we do not gain anything significant.’ Our next stop was a district which was reported to have a dynamic woman District Collector. The training was being held in a large school. There were six or seven batches of 30 to 40 teachers. Lectures were in progress, modules were available, there were blackboards, lunch and tea was served, and residential facilities were provided to all the male teachers. The women teachers were put up in a dharmshala nearby—the DC said 51
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