A Study On The Teacher Education In India

As for the modern teacher education, the developing countries had a late start, but developed fast in a large scale. Especially after the World War Ⅱ, with the appearance of the emerging nation, teacher education had been paid unprecedented attention, and became an important part of educational reform and development in developing countries. Considering the history and the world situation, the majority of developing countries followed the evolutional way in the Western developed countries. Meanwhile, teacher education in many developing countries gradually explored a development path with its own independent characteristics for they were very different from western countries in historical backgrounds and conditions. India, as a outstanding representative of the developing countries, its political, economic, social and cultural progress gain more and more attention from the world. Indian Educational Committee believes that "ucation determines the fate of a nation". and argues that this kind of education is achieved by loyal and dedicated teachers. And the teachers should be trained in teachers’educational institution, which should assure the quality themselves so as to ensure that trainees entering education industry are excellent.Teacher education in India stemmed from early cultural tradition of respecting teachers and ancient tutorial system, which was later subjected to British colonial rules. The teacher training system was gradually developed and shaped on the British model. Introduced in the1880s,"Wood Educational Express" and the "Hunter committee’s reporf" are important milestones in India’s normal education, which have a far-reaching influence on later Indian to form a relatively complete system of teacher education. After India’s independence in1947, teachers’education is finally starting a big development in a real sense. India has taken some teachers’ educational reforms and experiments, which started from1950s, and then developed under the condition that there were no clear national educational idea as well as goals. And after that, India reconstructed teachers’educational programs in the70s and made them more mature. The Indian government also has set up a diversity of teachers’educational institutions so that teachers the number of the teachers got a large-scale expansion. After the independence of India, it had walked a66-year-long way of continuous efforts and development. It has now formed a multi-level, multi-type of primary and secondary school teachers’educational system.After independence, seen from the perspective of theoretical analysis, the development of teachers’ education was influenced by its philosophical, economic, social and cultural background. Indian teachers’educational philosophy is rooted in Indian philosophy. In the process of teachers’educational development in India, it was found that people should think about the development of education from the perspective of analytical philosophy. And then they could begin to find association between teachers’education and philosophy and focus on the influence factors of teachers’ educational value, trying to strengthen training to teachers’ life and philosophy. Indian teachers’ role, status and function as well as teachers’ training etc. are closely connected with Indian social factors.Teachers of early India enjoyed a higher social status, which has changed now. teachers still faced with tremendous pressure, serious phenomenon about the isolation between teacher education and social life, however, the changing role of women in Indian society also lead to incline of policies on teacher education to female normal school students and female teachers; From the perspective of Economics Analysis, rational thinking could be provided for the development of teacher education in India, whether it is from the point of view of macroeconomics or microeconomics, we can reach the conclusion that the entire Indian teachers education system and individual teachers are swamped in the input-output efficiency as well as the problem of the waste of resources, underemployment, surplus teachers, vocational wasting etc. These phenomenons imply that the Indian government should take some actions to balance the supply and demand of teachers; multiculturalism is one of India’s prominent features, thus multicultural education inevitably requires a wide range of teacher education. The Government of India adopts the attitude of combination toward traditional culture and modern Indian culture. The traditional Indian caste system for vulnerable groups with reserving the quota policy has played a promoting role in reservation of multiculturalism; on the other hand, it also highlights the contradictions of educational equity and quality.The implementation of the teacher education in a country mainly focuses on the pre-service training and in-service training. The pre-service training for teachers in India not only sets clear academic requirements and employment standards for the primary and secondary school teachers, strict access standards for teacher education, teaching competency standards, but also develops a standard and detailed teacher education curriculum, which is the focus and core of the reform for teacher education development.As for the pre-service teacher training models in India, two main models are currently implemented:the consecutive model and the integrated model. As for in-service teacher training, in addition to providing the teachers with some of the conventional face-to-face trainings, the more prominent method is assisted with the long-distance education training mode generated by the advanced software development techniques and computer technologies, and pays a special focus on the in-class practice. With the gradual improvement of the teacher education system in India, the Indian government is strengthening its management and evaluation of the quality of teacher education, thus a large teacher education and training management system ranging from the central level to the local level is established, and through the institutionalized assessment system the Indian government identifies and assesses various types of teacher education institutions.After independence, India carries out a series of reforms on teacher education through different measures, namely, understanding its roles and goals, broadening its institutional function, reforming its curriculum system, enriching its training means, meeting the demands of special groups like women, and implementing its local reformative projects. These reforms are the concentrations of characteristics as well as precious experience during its developing process. Moreover, they bring us some important thoughts and enlightenment. It is undeniable that India, like many other developing countries, still has some problems such as economical and social developing lag, diversity among different districts, and the contradiction between teacher’s quantity and quality as well as their virtual status and expected objectives. These problems will lead to the developing dilemma which Indian teacher education would still face:the natural inadequate economics makes the teacher training still remain at a relatively low starting point and foundation; the extreme political system prohibits teacher education’s freedom and innovation; regional differences give rise to overt distinctions on teacher training, etc. On its future path of development, the Indian governments and related organizations will think careful about new reforms and developing directions on the aspects of professional teacher development concepts, rational teacher training plans, effective on-service training programs, and emphasis on empirical theory study.