The road ahead
A. SUBRAHMANYAM
|
Technology-enhanced learning will take the country’s educational sector to the next level
|
— Photo: Murali Kumar K.
Eternal quest: Teacher-student interaction is crucial for knowledge dissemination.
At the recently conducted G-8 UNESCO World Forum on “Education, Research and Innovation: New partnership for sustainable development” (at ICTP, Trieste, May 10-12, 2007), the main message was that the three critical factors — Education, Research and Innovation — need to be operated jointly.
The fundamental requirement for global standards of education is emergence of trained graduates at the hands of professionally competent teachers. As it looks today, in the Indian context, where there is an explosion of education enterprise, there is a great demand for good, committed teachers.
Teaching is now a profession rather than a passion and thus there is a paradigm shift in the perception of teachers. The crux of the issue is: to meet the demand with necessary quality and commitment to the profession.
The balancing act
The recent times have seen a spurt in the number of educational institutes, mainly catering to the professional courses (the cry is louder now for the basic sciences which could not attract students). Education, as a responsibility of the State, has become an enterprise. Private partnership has increased enormously. Still, there seems to be a need for more institutes. This growth has given an urgency to reforms which are being addressed at the Ministerial level by a number of excellent and eminent academicians.
Role of teachers
Whatever be the advancement in technology, the teacher is not replaceable. The teacher used to exercise (till mid-1970s) full authority and autonomy on teaching methods. However, there is considerable change in recent times. There is erosion in the values, responsibilities, and commitments of the teaching profession.
This erosion is a result of the complex structure of the society, socio-economic growth, the enterprising nature of education (we can buy seats now) and the pressure of work (in the institutes of higher learning, the teacher has to show his visible research outputs), the quantification of deliverables by the teacher and many more factors.
Today’s teacher is as busy and as pressured as a software professional. The expanding education enterprise, the global benchmarks, and the transformation of higher secondary education have brought in considerable changes and challenges in college education, but still more is to be done.
Challenges
Some of the present challenges are: teacher-student ratio; coping with expanding opportunities in specific need-based sectors such as Information Technology, nano and biotechnology, and advanced materials; dearth or development of proper/more efficient educational tools; and basic infrastructure in terms of laboratories, libraries, etc.
The salaries and emoluments of teachers, though given a priority in the government thinking, lack the societal demands; so the profession does not seem to attract the right talent. Further, the selection mechanism of teachers (for higher positions) seems to depend, in higher educational institutions, mainly on the research credentials rather than on the teaching skills.
The teacher-student ratio becoming high (approximately stands at 1:9 and is anticipated to reach 1:14 in higher educational institutes), there is a need to re-think the teaching methodology (adopting modern tools) and evaluation mechanism.
Talent hunt
The selection methods in almost all universities and some institutes of higher learning need to be redesigned to discover the teaching skills and the commitment along with research capabilities. Also, the society should recognise that teaching is a serious profession and that it demands considerable time and effort.
The teaching talent must be identified as early as possible and fostered. Special recognition needs to be given to teachers for which evaluation yardsticks have to be evolved.
It is to be realised that anybody and everybody cannot be a teacher. Also, it is to be noted that there are no set procedures and benchmarks to evaluate the teaching methods.
One possible solution is to redefine the responsibilities of the teacher. For example, in the earlier times (may be a decade ago), the teacher was responsible for collating information and imparting knowledge; he/she was also responsible for evoking the interest of the pupil in the subject.
One possible solution to meet the demand of imparting knowledge is to employ modern technology: web-based education such as National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL).
The author is Professor, Department of Physics, IIT-Madras.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Education Plus
Karnataka
Chennai
Coimbatore
Hyderabad
Madurai
Tiruchirapalli
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
