primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
knowledge) yet to be designed. Despite the huge emphasis on in-service training in
recent years under SSA, it comes as no surprise to find that teachers for the most part
view these courses as formalities that have to be completed, rather than as important
resources to help them do their job better. Nor is it a surprise to learn that student
learning outcomes appear to be not much affected by whether the teacher is ‘trained’
or not.
A key component of the distance between intentions and practice with respect to
teacher-training relates to the suitability of those responsible for designing and
imparting this training. The valoration of advanced degrees over practical experience
is an issue that comes up constantly not only with regard to teacher-training, but
when we look at the primary education sub-sector as a whole. We will return to this
issue a little later.
Academic supervision and support
If a teacher cannot turn to a supervisor or a BRC or CRC resource person for
curricular support, to whom can she turn? Despite the fact that the BRCs and CRCs
were set up with this precise objective in mind, in practice these personnel fulfil
routine administrative functions. The primary school teacher has no source of
academic support whatsoever. Given that training programmes provide little help in
this regard, she is left to muddle through as best she can—obviously, at the expense
of her students’ learning.
Earlier in this booklet we described the role played by supervision and support staff
within the education system. Supervisory staff are primarily responsible for
monitoring routine administrative aspects of school functioning and for collecting
data during inspection visits; indeed, they have neither the training nor the
experience to provide academic supervision or support to teachers. On the contrary,
examples abound of supervisors actively blocking teachers’ attempts to utilise locally
developed innovations to make curriculum or teaching methods more relevant to the
needs of their students on the grounds that these go beyond the content or activities
prescribed by textbooks.
In many states, initiatives on decentralised governance envisage an active role for
local community institutions in school supervision. The question seems to be less
whether communities can play such a role but how this role is constructed: what areas
of school functioning they can monitor, who within communities is involved and how
monitoring is to be done. This, in turn, requires that communities be aware of the
role that they are expected to play in school functioning, as well as a careful
demarcation of areas that require academic or pedagogical supervision and those
that are within the ability of the community to monitor, such as teacher attendance.
Incentives
The formal or informal incentives provided by the educational system can be
important influences on how much effort teachers dedicate to teaching activities.
Incentives can be monetary (for example, salary increments related to student
performance on standardised tests), or may take other forms (for example, options
for professional development or career advancement related to some measure of
teacher effectiveness). In India, because salaries are related exclusively to seniority
and training, teachers have little to gain by putting more effort into teaching
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