Bhubaneswar, state capital of Odisha is a canvas where tradition breaths with modernity at ease, was the host of one of the big exercise in deliberating on teacher training. Presence of International agencies in the event, joining with persons and agencies in India gave the event a dimension of size that befits the importance of the issue. Implementing right to education with right earnest in a populous country with wide diversity like India has to assume a reasonable size of dimension. Format of the deliberation and the deliberations itself befitting the concern appeared to have been in sync with conventional approach of Indian education policy which is the traditional content of the conference at Bhubaneswar addressing the modernity of implementing Right to education.
In academics or Government policy document, not only for school education, the issue of educational planning had regularly considered the teacher as the primary unit. The policy in this regard formulated in the past or at present was based on such foundation of idealization in consideration of the teacher as embodiment of education more as an individual person than a professional. Such idealization finds a teacher teaching more out of her moral-ethical standard that is very personal of him. This sub-continent celebrates that person as a teacher. The deliberations of the Indian counterpart in the conference, flowing out of such idealization up-scaled did not lost its focus in putting the teacher at the centre; the policy framework never lost this centricity and the formulation always found the teacher with primary attention. The deliberations singularly were to track down the teacher who otherwise is a person as anybody in the street outside classrooms.
The focus of the international agency on the other hand focused on professionalizing the person who is a teacher through meticulously laid design of training with objective target. Arguably targeting human resource development is a debatable issue especially when the precise knowledge/information on the need is not fully understood; the conference itself was most interesting in exploring the need that expands from linguistic diversity to socio-economic differentials. Again it need to be recognized that here is a system of school, the architecture of which has in the past prepared students who is occupying best chairs all over the World—in academic sphere or as corporate boss. That puts international experience rather simplistic on such differentials and the strength of the existing system for the very simple reason—reducing the entire so called under developed countries as a homogeneous state of situation. However even such proposition do not leaves the singular focus, the centrality remains with the person only who is a teacher.
Sitting behind the deliberating excitements, somewhere the missing element of the institution was felt, around which education of this country has always evolved. At the outset, a person like any other person in the street transforms into a teacher within the institutional framework physically and professionally. A teacher after all is contextual with the ‘school’ where she is located. It is the school that transforms the person as a professional complete with his obligations. Beyond one’s personal moral-ethical attributes, what matters is her competence to deliver as a teacher and that is overarched by the institutional standards. Institutional standards reflected as professional ethical value opens up a discourse that is least explored while formulating educational policy. Nonetheless, enumerating its functional role is not fully explored either since the role of school in shaping up a professional out of a teacher is least understood.
Another area of understanding that has been least explored in such exercises in countries joining ‘education for all’ regime is ‘School as functional/structural organizational component of the system’. School as an organization is recently been exposed to sociological scrutiny exploring contents of recognizing a teacher as a functional component of the institution, with defined responsibilities and role operating within the structural framework of the institution. Interestingly, school as a ‘set’ not only locates the teacher within the framework but absorbs individual differentials too in both the senses. A better practice being emulated, a not so better act was condemned within the group. Supported by structural attributes such functional idealization of the school as institution again turns out as ‘learning situation’ for individual teacher’s development enforcing institutional standards—such an idealization can well redefine the approach to the formulation of In-service training of teacher. The modules proposed in the conference on In-service training generally opted for a considerable period of in-school activities interspersed with short contact programmes. Such proposition again brings the context of the school. Connecting the learning experience in the contact programme with the in-school activities reasonably requires a degree of institutional capacity in the schools to make the programme yield any result. An institutional structure there in the school again locates the teacher with the context. The individual teacher as the unit of educational planning otherwise seems to be in limbo, without any bearing of her coordinates. As a matter of fact, degree/diploma course formulated by NCTE coupled with the In-service modules puts the school importantly on the fore and we just cannot ignore the context for ‘it’ occurs there, a teacher in reality do not exist otherwise!
Considering a school a ‘set’ redeems an interesting angle in locating a parallel from the discourse of economic development. Conceptualization of the state of the economy that is put into developmental regime is an exercise in analyzing the contributing factors that needs attention. The development plan framed out of such conceptual understanding taken separately put to further use for the economically differentiated areas within a progressive list of higher and lower achievement is a common practice.
A similar approach is followed in locating provinces and/or districts of the country as sets measured using a list of defined development indicators. The thought that tickled sitting behind is to consider the schools within such sets measured by a list of indicators what describes a school as it is expected and/or projected. That has been regularly done to record physical facilities alone, may be what it needs there is to add academic, curriculum-management and organizational components too. An idle exercise of argument may be but this is to examine the status quo of locating a teacher as a basis for planning of human resource in education. What this argumentation emphasizing is, development of teacher’s competence within an institutional framework does not involve the teacher-trainee only there are other organizational issues too. Again the trained teachers performance in her work station obviously depends upon the facilities/ambience [I am consciously avoiding the word—infrastructure] that shelters the teacher who intends to cause a change in the system. [Cases of ‘de-skilling’ of teachers in hostile/insensitive organizational situations have been studied in the recent years.] Such sheltering/encouraging ambience after all is the indicators of school that is projected as target [and conventionally that is expected of only of the teachers]. Surely there is a lag there, this massive exercise did stated the position of the superstructures responsible for In-service or Pre-service training again focused the teacher only, and this is my area of interest. How does, making an aprior statement of the structural organizations reflects the problem is a concern and this somewhere raises a question—if such an exercise is an act of shifting responsibility?
Education as state responsibility in a top-up design obviously flows from the policy framework that flows down through a number of institutional/organizational structures till it reaches the person in the classroom, the teacher. There armed with her wit she is to celebrate the success of the policy. Failure of the policy projection regularly involves the person who is a teacher while in a different situation the person is not always celebrated. Celebrating a teacher treating her as an individual however not always locates contribution of the institution in which she is functioning. This brings back my argument of not considering structural failures and/or dysfunctioning of the system and putting entire responsibility on the functional attributes of the teacher involved in the system. Remarkably, this argumentation/perception forms the basis of ‘In-service teacher development’.
I am surely not contesting but raising an issue theoretically on whether the system requires structural or functional reinforcement. Surely, in raising the issue I am not including a teacher in ‘In-service training’ as a structural component of the system but as a ‘functional attribute of the system’. And I am surely curious to learn about the capacity of the structural/organizational components of the system to cause a change; I won’t mind exploring the possibility of In-service development of the capacity of such structures, if required.
My position is not in discord with the objective of the conference but intended to open up another option only. Somewhere I guess, this idea of opening up a third option was provoked by the innovated hospitality offered during Bhubaneswar conference. My gastronomic experience with such conference at National level always was within the binary of northern and southern cuisine. It was always a choice between Idli or Byriani. Here in Bhubaneswar there was a third option, a variety of delicious Odishi dishes! Locating the context, the ground where it occurred. Education after all occurs within the structural ground of the institution—locating the centrality of educational endeavour albeit is a different proposition, may be a third proposition.
11 Nov 2010
