Problematising teacher education practice in India: Developing a research agenda

* An earlier version of this paper is part of the Proceedings of epiSTEME 4 – International Conference to Review Research on Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, 2011, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai.

Abstract

This paper examines the intimate relationship between pedagogic practices and the education of teachers within the larger contemporary Indian context. The first part of the paper examines this relationship in the light of a neo-liberal economic and social engineering-oriented policy discourse which is centred on concerns of national competitiveness in a globalising world. This has gained momentum in India over the last decade with the increasing engagement of the corporate sector in education, leading to a superficial policy consensus. In practice, the tension between policy imperatives and the lived reality of school education continues. This is further accentuated by an entrenched teacher education discourse and practice that has wrapped itself in dualities, is circumscribed and resistant to meaningful interrogation and challenge. It is argued that classroom pedagogy is being shaped by the culture and social ethos of teacher education as much as the neo-liberal frame within which teachers' work and worth is being viewed and judged. The paper brings to light the tenuous epistemological frame that currently structures the experiences of those preparing to be teachers. It argues for the need to engage with more robust epistemological underpinnings in designing teacher education programmes.

Keywords:

• teacher education discourse
• classroom practice
• dualities
• neo-liberal context
• educational reform
• epistemology
• culture

Notes

* An earlier version of this paper is part of the Proceedings of epiSTEME 4 – International Conference to Review Research on Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, 2011, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai.