Understanding Pre-Service Teacher Education

Pre-service teacher education (PSTE) is critical for continuous teacher professional development.

Several commissions and curricular frameworks in India in the past have emphasised the need to strengthen the Pre-Service Teacher Education process, even as actual practice has remained weak with obsolete syllabi, minimal opportunities for independent thinking, inadequate preparation time for examinations and dependence on prescribed knowledge. 

Recent policies such as the Justice Varma Commission Report and NCTE regulations of 2014 have called for a reimagination of the process of teacher education. In this course, you will understand the initial phases of PSTE and a basic conceptual overview of teaching, teacher learning and teacher education. 

It is necessary that you have completed one of two courses — Teachers and Teaching or Education of Teachers: Policies and Practices. This course will focus on linkages between curricular, pedagogical and assessment aspects of PSTE programmes. You will analyse syllabi of D.Ed and B.Ed programmes in the light of National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE, 2009), and learn how to design course work and school internships.