PROFESSOINAL AWARENESS AMONG TEACHERS
Teachers are known by various dictums – cultural messengers, character builders, social engineers etc. Both the ordinary and efficient teachers conceptualize their role as that of a bridge between traditional culture and contemporary civilization, and between masterminds and immature pupils; and they regard their task as the one which commences and culminates with pouring potted information from books about the past and present into the minds of the pupils. Indeed this is nothing but a narrow conception of the task of a teacher, and it has undermined education to a great deal.
Teaching is a profession with its own code of ethics regarding among others, the teachers’ commitment to the quality of output (pupils), the process of production (matter and method of education), and the management. Accordingly, in terms of the tasks of a teacher, the profession is composite in nature; and it has three major components. They are,
1. Teaching
2. Quality control and
3. Professional leadership.
Among the three, no doubt, teaching is the primary component; but it is not everything, and the other two have equal importance as components of profession.
Teaching
To a layman, teaching means imparting information; to a psychologist, it means a process which results in learning the imparted knowledge, values, positive attitudes and proper adjustments; and to a sociologists, teaching means the process of socialization for the ulterior objective of a silent social and economic revolution, and for a new social order built on democracy, equality, justice, and secularism. However, in reality, teaching means all the three together. Therefore, as a fundamental requirement, the teacher should equip his professional armoury with the latest information in his subjects of specialization, the skills for imparting the same, the psychology of the learners and the sociology of the community to which pupils belong. Further for success, in his task, the teacher should innovate adequate educational facilities as well as create a congenial ‘climate’ both in the classroom and school.
In these days of knowledge explosion, the boundaries of knowledge expand incessantly; and for a mere survival, the pupil of the contemporary school should learn certainly more than what his counterparts might have done in the last generation. Further, on account of easy accessibility to a variety of media of mass communication, before coming to the classroom, many a time, pupils acquire what the teacher might have desired to teach. These conditions present impervious barriers for effective teaching for two reasons. The first, contrary to the past, today a teacher cannot contend himself by imparting knowledge which he assumes to be unknown to his pupils. On the other hand, he should identify what pupils know, and what they ought to know and on this basis, he should complement and supplement the pupil’s stock of knowledge. The second, the interaction with the local community and the society at large enables each pupil to learn knowledge, values and attitudes, both right and wrong; and hence, while inculcating right knowledge, values and attitudes which form the bulk of the professional tasks, the teacher should enable pupils to unlearn their wrong knowledge, values and attitudes. Although these tasks may appear to be simple, in reality, these are indeed, formidable task among various professional tasks.
An ordinary class is heterogeneous in nature. Heterogeneity is implicit in the pupils’ psychological characteristics of motivation, learning capacities and learning problems, adjustments, attitudes etc. It is also implicit in the composition of the class; namely, pupils belong to different levels of socio-economic status. These conditions reduce the impact of ordinary instruction on pupil, and demand more learning experience, classroom interaction, diagnostic evaluation, and remedial teaching.
Quality Control
Pupils are both the input and output of education. In relation to age, when they are ‘immature’ in cognitive, conative and affective behaviors, they enroll themselves in educational institutions, which they leave after undergoing the process of education, and acquiring academic and vocational efficiency essential to face the challenges and eventualities in their individual and social life. As regards academic efficiency, pupils should possess adequate knowledge in their subjects of specialization, along with mental powers fully developed to acquire new knowledge as and when situation warrant. As regards vocational efficiency, they should possess knowledge and skills pertaining to a future vocation of their choice, along with potentialities to improve upon them by modifying the acquired skills and adding new skills. Do products of the existing system possess these qualities? Of late this question has been repeatedly and emphatically asked by educated elites for two reasons; the first, there is a widespread feeling that educational standard have deteriorated. The second, both universities and employers as customers respectively of the products of secondary schools and universities, are highly discriminative and they select only quality products to meet their respective requirements. Therefore, quality control has become an important responsibility in education as in industries.
Quality of output mainly depends upon the quality of the production process and its management. Therefore, the various aspects of the process of education comprising teaching and evaluation as well as the curriculum, textbook, and other instructional materials should possess a very high quality. It is contended that the teacher is the flywheel of education; and he is the fulcrum on which the entire system moves. Therefore, he should be responsible for the quality of the syllabi he teaches, methods of teaching and techniques of evaluation which he follows, and the procedure of class management which he adopts. He should shoulder the total responsibility for planning curriculum, teaching and evaluation; production of quality syllabus, textbooks, and other instructional materials such as film strips, film, and video tapes and finally, the quality control in respect of all these. This has a number of implications: Teachers should know the needs and aspirations of pupils, as well as the needs of the society. He should be well acquainted with the latest developments in respect of his subjects, instructional strategies, techniques of communication, models of class management and school organization, principles and practices of curriculum development etc.
The existing system provides little responsibility for teachers for quality control of both the product and process of education: because, the entire process of education is centralized. The authorities of the government prescribe the syllabus, and scheme of all evaluation; and the rules and regulations of the government as well as traditions and conventions regulate and control teching and educational management. As a result, teachers have very little opportunities for involvement in curriculum development and total evaluation of pupils, and for making deviations from dogmatism in teaching and conventionalism in management. All these taken together stand as stumbling blocks for quality control awareness among teachers.
Professional Leaders
Since the beginning of modern education, for over two centuries, the existing practice of the government prescribing the curriculum, evaluation, textbooks etc. for the adoption of teachers as directed by the rules and regulations, and of the conventions and traditions regulating and controlling teacher behaviour, has been in vogue. As a result, by nature, teachers desire to defer all ventures involving risks in decision-making and action, and prefer the ‘path of least resistance’ to experimentation and innovation. By the same token, pupils learn bookish materials and rote memorization, and also become easily satisfied with the minimum requirements for a pass in examinations. Further, they rarely get opportunities for independent thinking and creative work, and for developing higher aspirations in life. All these have very implication in a society which is in the threshold of scientific and technological advancement, and social and economic revolution. All these amount to mean that teachers should undertake leadership in all educational endeavors, and in particular develop their own course-contents, learning materials, instructional strategies, evaluation system, class management, etc. of course all within the limits of the broad requirements of the system. They should find solution to problems of poor enrolment, wastage and stagnation, inadequate facilities and finance, community relationships, etc. The teacher is an agent of social change; and in this capacity, he should act as the laison between the school and the society. He should take leadership not only in academic and organizational aspect of education but also in economic development through educational activities.
Is there an awareness of the above tasks among teachers today? The answer is in the affirmative. But for such teachers, the contribution of education to the scientific and technological advancement, and to the moulding of renowned scientists, technologists and professionals would have been well nigh impossible. But such teachers constitute a microscopic minority. If hundreds of teachers of schools and colleges develop professional awareness, the contribution of renascent India to contemporary civilization would have been marvelous, and perhaps would have no parallel in any part of the world. Therefore, the entire problem reduces to this: What measures should be undertaken to create a professional awareness among teachers?
Creating Professional Awareness
Awareness is a mental state consequent upon the possession of knowledge, practical experience and attitudes. Effective programmes of teacher education, both pre-service and in-service training, as well as group conferences should contribute to the development of this mental state. The programme of pre-service training should go beyond the narrow limits of routine courses and monotonous practice in teaching; and it should provide a variety of activities and practical experiences with a strong professional slant. The trainee should be given the direct experience to plan and frame courses in his subjects of specialization, and to experiment the same for assessing their appropriateness, adequacy and feasibility, and also to formulate instructional strategies and evaluation techniques, and to experiment the same for evaluating their effectiveness and adaptability, etc. The programme of in-service training and group conferences should supplement the variety of experiences in professional tasks all gained during pre-service training; and further enable teachers to make a critical evaluation of the various tasks. Knowledge and understanding contribute to attitude development and at the same time, the individual learns positive attitudes by imitation and emulation. Therefore, the teachers of an institution, irrespective of the level of education with which they are concerned, should develop a professional awareness for their own sake as well as for the purpose of adoption by the entire teaching community by a process of educational osmosis.