Teaching teachers

School education is our most powerful lever for national strength and needs reimagining teacher training

Covid shows that India rises to challenges, but she needs to be stronger. The most powerful lever for national strength is school education; it builds individuals, society, economy and democracy. A post-Covid agenda for Indian education needs replacing our industrial revolution-catalysed model of one-size-fits-all with 25 years of learning, 25 years of earning, and 25 years of retirement, with lifelong learning that is self-directed, differentiated, fluid and collaborative. A changing world and changing India need changing teacher training and empowering teachers.

School education in a digital and connected world should be based on the evolving frontiers of brain research. We now better understand differently wired brains, interventions that rewire the brain, how unlimited pathways extend. How people access data, think and learn, what information they access, and also what they need to learn for this has changed. Our learners need contextual learning, solving problems by working together, accessing current information beyond textbooks, and affirming visions of identity. Learning needs skills of research, inquiry, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication. Growth of new nerve cells, especially beyond the first eight years of life, needs triggers like experiential learning and physical, hands-on activity. In a world where Google knows everything, knowing matters less than making connections and using knowledge. Learners need self-awareness to help them imagine their future, set goals, reflect and make choices.

Piaget, Maria Montessori, Tagore, Vivekananda and Krishnamurthy had rhyming visions of education; connecting with the self, connecting with the world, and building knowledge. Harvard Professor Tony Wagner suggests that education needs five transitions: from consumption to creating more, from being risk-averse to becoming risk-taking, from being specialists to being transdisciplinary, from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation, and from celebrating individual achievement to valuing teamwork. These visions demand moving beyond the binary mindset of either/or — either Academics or Creativity, Science or Humanities, Thinking or Discipline — to the both/and mindset— both Scores and Thinking, Math and Arts, Discipline and Freedom, Global outlook and Identity. Putting children at the centre of their learning, allowing them to set their own pace and giving them choices, instils accountability and decision-making capabilities, building motivation. NEP 2020 emphasizes 21st-century skills, working towards ‘how to think’ instead of ‘what to think’, interdisciplinary learning and the importance of identity. The most important lever for realising this change is teachers.

Our current teacher training is fragmented, with inadequate content in short courses and outdated content in long courses, producing teachers with little technical understanding and skill; this is remedied through a few high-stress years in the workplace, often at the cost of learners. There is a shortage of trainers who understand high-quality teaching practice and can inspire skill growth in trainee teachers. The effect of this dysfunction on people choosing to build teaching as a professional career is compounded by increasing domestic demand for talent outside education. Rising global demand for our best teachers prices them out of reach of all but a few elite schools. We need a large force of highly skilled and caring teachers to effect change in education across strata.

We need to personalise the learning of our teachers, develop their identities, and nurture their dreams. Training must offer global best practices at affordable prices, set higher standards for entry and exit, and have multiple on and off-ramps. It must meet the needs of teachers across elite urban schools (who can afford many choices), low-cost private schools (who offer moderate compensation but deep hands-on learning), and government schools (where teachers struggle with resources, flawed governance, and motivation).

Training must include short-burst, skills-focussed courses in language and literacy teaching, inquiry, classroom management, responsible technology use, differentiation by process, product and ability, observation and assessment, and experiential and contextual learning to bring the world into the classroom. Educators need abilities beyond content knowledge -- understanding how children learn, planning for impactful teaching, assessing for continuous growth, building self-esteem, nurturing relationships, and using technology as a lever.

Reimagining excellence starts with education reform. Covid has demonstrated that the traditional strategy of the middle class buying its way to the front of the line in healthcare and education is not viable, desirable, or sustainable. India is a world leader in knowledge industries like IT, services and pharmaceuticals, but many Indians will not ride the cars they clean, read the newspapers they deliver or send their children to the schools they build. Our shared constitutional and cultural vision of an India that is democratic, equal and excellent needs changing school education by asking new questions around teacher training.

How can teachers nurture thinking? What kind of work should teachers get children to do at school and home? How should teachers provoke inquiry, create room for reflecting, and grow lifelong learners? How should teachers create an environment to develop our children’s identity and diversity, and nurture passions? How can teachers bring the world into their classrooms to build the cognitive, ethical and social domains of learning? How can we teach our teachers to transform teaching? Let the quest begin.

(The writer is Head of School, Neev Academy)