The Changing teacher education programmes and Open Educational Resources (OER) integration

 Abstract

The teacher education programmes have come a long way and the drastic change has been seen, when teacher education regulations 2014 came into force. This has brought into newer areas in which student-teachers and their teacher-educators have to be trained. This training is possible by providing up-to-date information in the form of OER, where OER are openly available to all the stakeholders. The OER sources help teachers to create content, share the same among their peer group, add different multi-media aspects. Hence, new vistas and avenues are created in sharing of academic aspects. The extent of use of OER has been different in different parts of the globe, and as an example attempt could be made to compare the Asian Countries, where it is being used. All such good practices could be reflected in teacher education settings. The websites and digital resources have made such provisions simple and useful. The common OER are being accessed by the learner by using search engines on the world wide web to important content usage from agencies and firms supported by government and non-government organisations. This article looks into the changing teacher education programme and facilities and provision of OER to meet these changing demands.

Keywords: Teacher Education, OER, New Regulations 2014, Digital Resources, OER integration 

Teacher Educational Programmes in India

Prior to 2014 teacher education programmes were not available in uniform format in India, which is evident when we look into literature. Teacher Education was quite important but Upadhyay & Desai (2009) observed that there was no DIET in Daman, which presents a very grim state of teacher education affair. The complexity of teacher education institutes is visible when looked from management perspective as well,

Management of teacher education is a difficult task because of the fact that there are large numbers of variables in teacher education programmes including variations in the purpose for which persons join teacher training courses of various levels. There are four types of teacher education institutions: (a) government managed, (b) examining body managed, (c) government aided and privately managed and (d) self-financed and privately managed (Mohanty, 2008). 

In all the teacher education programmes in India reflect requirements of school education system of India. That is, there are teacher training programmes designed to suit different levels of school education and teachers are trained for different subjects that are being taught in schools. Thus, there are teacher education programmes for pre-primary, primary, higher primary, secondary and senior secondary levels. The teachers are trained in school subjects like Languages, Science, Mathematics, Social Science and in more particular subjects like History, Geography, Physics, Chemistry etc. In addition to this the teachers are being trained in Arts, Craft, Physical Education, Yoga, Music etc. Therefore, there are many types of programmes available for would be teachers across the nation. Hence, the NCTE had a broader look at all these programmes and laid down general guidelines, which formed the new regulations of teacher education and implemented it from 2014.

New Regulations of Teacher Education Programme

The NCTE under its new regulations of 2014 laid out clear guidelines for 15 teacher education programmes, which cater to the training needs of ‘would be teachers’ and/or ‘in-service teachers’ of preschool, primary school, secondary school, physical education, teacher education, arts education(NCTE, Name of the Programmes). These 15 programmes include 6 Diploma, 6 Bachelor and 3 Master’s Degree programmes. It is for the first time that integrated programmes like B.A.B.Ed./B.Sc.B.Ed. and B.Ed. M.Ed. are started in colleges and universities. The duration and contents of most of the programmes was reworked e.g. B.Ed./M.Ed. programme has a duration of two years each and integrated B.Ed. M.Ed. programme has a duration of three years. It has been categorically told that no first teacher training degree can be acquired through distance mode. However, out of 15 programmes available there is provision for conduct of 2 programme in Open and Distance Learning mode. Furthermore, it was also clearly indicated that the M.Ed. programme in distance mode will not be offered by the educational institutes/universities from 2015-16 batches. There are changes in duration of programmes, intake capacity, curriculum, eligibility conditions and other guidelines in each of the programme. The NCTE has also laid down instructions with regard to duration and working days; intake, eligibility, admission procedure and fees; curriculum, programme implementation and assessment; staff like academic faculty with their qualifications, administrative and professional support staff; facilities required such as infrastructure, equipments and materials, other amenities; and managing committees for all 15 programmes (NCTE, The Gazette of India : Extraordinary). Thus, there emerges requirement of new understanding of different programmes by the stakeholders.

New regulations (2014) and professional requirements

There has been continuous debates and sustained efforts by teacher educators indicating requirement of revamping of teacher education programmes. In this connection, Padmanabhan (2007), has suggested an Action Plan for the teacher education, which should have some of the following features like,

• Inclusion of concepts of constructivism and the constructivist ideas;

• Making computer education and educational technology subjects compulsory;

• Including ICT topics such as instructional design, programmed instruction, interactive multimedia, e-learning, etc.  at D. Ed., B.Ed. and M.Ed. levels; etc.

The new regulations (2014) of NCTE were important interventions for Teacher Education Programme. In these new guidelines ICT has been included in all components of the teacher education programmes i.e. it has become integral component of curriculum. This has brought lot of changes in transaction of material in teacher education programmes. The syllabus has changed, there are only few resources in the form of reference books, few guidelines and resource material for teacher educators. There is a pedagogical shift of curriculum in schools i.e. from Subject-centred to Behaviourist to Constructivist Approach. The approach of NCTE is to make the education subject a discipline in itself and hence, there have been lot of modifications. This has resulted in development of some new papers and some old content is merged to other proposed paper. The nomenclature of papers proposed to be taught in teacher education programme also has new look. Hence, this has necessitated professional development of teacher i.e. teacher educators. Thereby, there is a need of training of thousands of teachers in shortest possible time. This is possible only through extension of Open Educational Resources (OERs) and teacher education.

Emergence of Open Educational Resources

The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was coined at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on Open Courseware and designates “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. Open licensing is built within the existing framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant international conventions and respects the authorship of the work”.

The teaching learning material can be provided to all in print format or more popularly in digital format. This is not only available in textual format, but graphic, audio and video formats are also used for sharing the material. The material once created in part of the world is available for Reuse by others, added to this it can be Revised or Remixed with other readily available or created material. This can then be Redistributed or Retained by the person who original created or supplemented to it. To make it easy for the learner to understand the material a common global logo has been adopted, which depicts common sharing of resources. 

Integration of best practices in OER 

The OER lets the stake holders (teachers and teacher educators) to create their material by combining text, picture, sound, files and video; that they can share with friends, colleagues and other educators from around the world. Thereby, this reduces geographical barriers, and teacher’s professional improvement can be made available to all the cross sections of teaching fraternity. In this process, OER is quite useful and it is interesting to note here that in OER the “Consumers themselves become producers of education” (Dhanarajan & Porter, Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective, 2013). Thus, the OER can help overcome training deficit and bring collaborative efforts and joint efforts for teacher education.

Some of the best practices from different countries are taken and discussed below, so that they can be adopted in the context of teacher education in India.

• The main China Open Resources for Education (CORE) projects include the translation, localisation and use of open resources that were developed overseas. It is proposed to take up such translation and localisation of material to Indian context as most of the schools education is in vernacular medium.

• The teacher education sector of India like tertiary education sector of Hong Kong is to be well equipped with a robust infrastructure and have easily accessible resources, and many institutions have to make significant investments to promote the adoption of electronic means to support, enrich or transform traditional teaching and learning.

• In India the idea of shared resources has been successfully mooted by initiatives such as the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), the Open Source Courseware Animations Repository (OSCAR), the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), the Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) and Indira Gandhi National Open University’s (IGNOU) FlexiLearn. The National Mission on ICT is also working to develop the facilities and material, which may benefit popularisation of OER in India. These schemes must work for integration of teacher education and school education across the nation.

• In Indonesia Open Educational Resources (OERs) have become a prominent tool for sharing and exchanging educational materials to enhance quality education. One such programme of Karnataka OER, experimented with teachers was a successful event. This must be extended to all India level.

• In Japan at the national level, the Japanese government has launched a series of top-down projects, such as the “digital textbook” project in elementary and secondary education, and “good practices” subsidies for universities and colleges. Most of the textbooks of different textbook departments of national NCERT and state SCERTs are being made accessible to public and are in public domain. In addition to this National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) has also made available its material for all stakeholders. In addition to this the NCERT has made its material available to all android mobile users.

• In Korea the educational network is provided to 374 universities and education-related institutions with Internet services when last reviewed in 2010. The E-education programme of India intends to reach to all the schools across the nation.

• Malaysia provides a prime example of new movement which is OER-based, self-directed open and distance learning course material developed by Wawasan Open University is available for use and reuse of OER. The OER digital material on eGyankosh has been removed, which is a cause of concern for educational circles in higher education.

• The provision of higher education in Pakistan faces familiar challenges of access and equity. - The Virtual University of Pakistan (VUP) was established by the government in 2002 to address the capacity and access issues by using technology to deliver high-quality education at affordable rates throughout the country. We need to set up a separate teacher education university to support and augment various new initiatives in teacher education through the interventions of ICT.

• As a consequence of Vietnam’s participation in the OER movement, faculty members now have more opportunities to freely access local and international sources of OCW/OER materials, and also to contribute to the Vietnamese OER repository by using appropriate OER software tools. This practice may be extended to teacher education institutes of India.

Common Digital Resources and Locating of such Resources

The world wide web has been a great source of educational material for a common man. The search engines like Google, Yahoo form the tools through which learners reach these resources. The email of experts, peers and associations bring information from such sources which can be considered authentic. The academic associations and bodies like Indian Association of Teacher Education (IATE), All India Association of Educational Research (AIAER) etc. provide some information which are relevant in the field of teacher education. The social media sites like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter etc., where in the individual can be in touch with experts and learn some authentic information. The international bodies like Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), Commonwealth of Learning (COL) etc. are also working for provision of OER material. Wikipedia, WikiEducator are digital encyclopaedias, which are followed by learners of different backgrounds and ages.

Benefits of accessing and using OER 

The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement allows more people to receive education by offering a wide variety of freely available educational resources. OER provide greater educational opportunities for learners and enables schools to offer quality educational content. The Perceived benefits of accessing and using OER as found by (Dhanarajan & Abeywardena, Higher Education and Open Educational Resources in Asia:An Overview, 2013) includes, Gaining access to the best possible Resources, Promoting scientific research and education as publicly open activities, Bringing down costs for students, Bringing down costs of course development for institutions, Providing outreach to disadvantaged Communities, Assisting developing countries, Becoming independent of publishers, Creating more flexible materials, Conducting research and Development, Building sustainable partnerships. 

In addition to this there are individual and institutional benefits for the users, the individuals feel that the publication of the material enhances university reputation, enhances personal reputation and enhances current practices, where as the institutions are of the opinion similar to individuals and express that publication enhances university reputations, enhances users’ knowledge of the course and subject(Yawan & Ying, 2013). Those who were interested in OER appreciated the potential benefits for institutional and personal reputation, enhancing users’ knowledge, sharing best practices and improving students’ access to learning resources(Yuen & Wong, 2013). The perceived benefits of publishing OER includes Enhance Personal reputation, Enhanced user’s knowledge of course, Share best practices, Develop Communities and build connections, Support developing nations in equal and strong manner (Harishankar, Balaji, & Ganapuram, 2013).

Conclusion

Thus, it is clear from the above discussions that the teacher education programme change is inevitable. Now, the stakeholders to adopt to changing patterns and requirements. It is the time to share learning experience and best practices. Hence, there is an urgent need to look into various components and facilities of Open Education Resource and integrate these facilities to teacher education programmes.

References:

Dhanarajan, G., & Abeywardena, I. S. (2013). Higher Education and Open Educational Resources in Asia:An Overview. In G. Dhanarajan, & D. Porter (Eds.), Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective (pp. 3-18). Vancouver: Commonwealth of Learning, OER Asia.

Dhanarajan, G., & Porter, D. (2013). Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective. New Delhi: Commonwealth of Learning and OER Asia.

Harishankar, B. V., Balaji, V., & Ganapuram, S. (2013). An Assessment of Individual and Institutional Readiness to Embrace Open Educational Resources in India. In G. Dhanarajan, & D. Porter (Eds.), Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective (pp. 53-72).

Mohanty, S. B. (2008). Management of Teacher Education. (S. B. Mohanty, Ed.) E-journal of All India Association for Educational Research (EJAIAER), 20(1 & 2). Retrieved December 15, 2015, from http://www.aiaer.net/ejournal/ARCHIVES2008.htm

NCTE. (n.d.). Name of the Programmes. Retrieved March 04, 2015, from NCTE: http://www.ncte-india.org/curriculum.asp

NCTE. (n.d.). The Gazette of India : Extraordinary. Retrieved March 01, 2015, from NCTE: http://www.ncte-india.org/regulation2014/english/appendix1.pdf

Padmanabhan, V. (2007). An Action Plan to Overhaul the Teacher Education Curriculum. E-journal of All India Association for Educational Research (EJAIAER), 19(1 & 2). Retrieved December 15, 2015, from http://www.aiaer.net/ejournal/ARCHIVES2007.htm

Upadhyay, A. I., & Desai, P. M. (2009, June). Teacher Education in Union Territory of Daman & Diu. E-journal of All India Association for Educational Research (EJAIAER), 21(1). Retrieved December 15, 2015, from http://www.aiaer.net/ejournal/ARCHIVES2009.htm

WikiEducator. (2014, November 13). Welcome to WikiEducator. Retrieved March 02, 2015, from http://wikieducator.org/Main_Page

Yawan, L., & Ying, L. (2013). A Study on the Use of Open Educational Resources in China. In G. Dhanarajan, & D. Porter (Eds.), Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective (pp. 21-39). Vancouver: Commonwealth of Leaning, OER Asia.

Yuen, K.-s., & Wong, A. J.-w. (2013). Open Educational Resources in Hong Kong. In G. Dhanarajan, & D. Porter (Eds.), Open Educational Resources: An Asian Perspective (pp. 41-51). Vancouver: Commonwealth of Leaning, OER Asia.