Cervellopages

Kothari Commission begins its report with this remark 'The destiny of India is being shaped in its classroom', no doubt a sound programme of education plays a significant role in naturals development and the quality of education programme is greatly determined by the quality of teacher.

Quality Development in Higher Education is needed due to growing thirst for knowledge, giving importance to knowledge and sharing knowledge ion global aspects. As Teacher Education is a part of Higher Education and related to prepare quality teachers for the welfare of the students, importance must be given in this regard. A quality teacher can produce a quality student and a quality student can change the epitome of the nation qualitatively. The purpose is to provide prosperity, welfare, security of people and prepare human beings capable, competent and wise to meet the challenges of life. Due to creation of work force, good quality of Teacher Education is must because Teacher Education becomes a tradable commodity like Higher Education so quality cannot be avoided as per GATS (General Agreement of Trade Service). Therefore, it is imperative to focus on the quality of Teacher Education.

Hence, in order to improve the quality of education, it is necessary to have a sound programme of Professional Education of Teachers. Because quality assurance is before and during the process of education. It is proactive and anticipatory. Standards and procedures are clearly defined in advance and the workers are trained to be able to meet them. Its concern is to prevent faults occurring in the first place. Quality is designed in to the process to attempt to ensure that the product is produced to a predetermined specification. In a simple way, it is the systematic review of educational programme to ensure that acceptable standard of education, scholarships and infrastructure are being maintained. Quality standards are maintained by following the procedures laid down in the quality assurance system (QAS).

In higher education including teacher education, it means to lay down the:
• Curriculum of high quality
• Faculty for quality teaching
• Laboratories, Libraries and other facilities for quality research
• Administrative set up for quality support
• Managerial system for providing quality culture
• Physical infrastructure of high standards for effective functioning of academic process.

For this purpose, Universities and colleges are expected to set-up Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC) for continuous quality assessment and academic audit.

Quality and excellence in the education sector is one of the major initiative of the Government of India in its plans. To achieve the outcome of enhanced quality at all levels of education, Govt. of India has been focusing its attention on quality and excellence in higher education and teacher education. Teacher quality has produced voluminous studies that line many a research library. Discussion on what it is, how it is developed, and its connection to student achievement have become the feature of educational slang ion the 21stcentury. These seek to look at teacher quality in a way in which it brings: as a means to review how the terms excellence and quality is cultivated in teachers. Within this scope. This articles provides an overview of teacher education and evaluation in India and lastly we discus about issues and challenges in teacher education. Several studies related to classroom environment and teacher behaviour in selected subjects are referenced. The results from different papers and articles and some interview with teachers from different schools and colleges indicated that some items may be irrelevant in the Indian context (e.g, physical characteristics), while more items may be needed to reflect good teachings in India (e.g., questionings skills). In addition, the potential use of teacher profiles to drive staff developments and academic improvement is explored.

The present teacher education programme is inadequate to meet the challenges of divers Indian socio-cultural contexts. The pedagogic reform this perspective need to invest on building on teachers capacity to act as autonomous reflective groups of professionals who are sensitive to their social mandate and to the professional ethics and to the needs of heterogeneous groups of learners. The National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (2009) promises to translate the vision into reality and prepare humanistic and reflective teachers that has the potential to develop more professional teachers and improve the quality of education. A number of countries have developed standards for various levels of school teachers which provide the basis for the formulation of the courses of studies. In India, development of teacher education curriculum framework is mostly an academic exercise due to the absence of such notified standard for school teachers.

Teachers education is a programme that is related to the development of teacher proficiency and competence that would enable and empower the teacher to meet the requirements of the profession and face the challenges therein. According to Goods Dictionary of Education Teacher education means- all the formal and non-formal activities and experiences that help to qualify a person to assume responsibilities of a member of the educational profession or to discharge his responsibilities more effectively.

Today we are living in the world of information revolution where the mass media plays a vital role in creating an atmosphere of awareness among masses. The growth of instructional technology has occurred because of direct needs, problems and goals from society. Application of IT in planning instruction first developed in the United States with the Department of Defense during World War ii. The purpose was to meet immediate concerns for effective training of larger number of military personnel. Form that beginning IT has rapidly expanded into applications in industrial and executive training. Vocational training, classroom learning and professional education. Recent trends and emerging communication technologies posed certain challenges before teacher education. A product of this is E-learning.

E-learning is process of learning at a computer which is usually connected to a network, giving the opportunity to learn the required from any where at any time. In present age it is recongnizedas one of the methods of learning and some of the courses are offered based on e-learning. E-learning is an experience with new communication technologies hence, needs mastery of new knowledge and skills.

E-learning deals with time both past and present, places ion immediate vicinity as well as in different corners of the world, people nearby as well as in different parts of the world, mere chalking and taking will not help to make all these realistic and vivid before the pupils. Audio and visual aids will have to be harnessed to make the teaching lively and interesting. To give a welcome relief from normal routine a variety of aids should be drawn into the course.

The idea of improving teaching quality may, at first sight, seem a seductively simple one. However, a few second's thought suggests that it is not nearly as simple as it may have appeared. When little longer time is spent in considering it and it becomes evident that the issue is fraught with difficulties. Lecturers do not function on their own, teaching whatever happens to appeal to them at the time each one, in conjunction with colleagues has part of an agreed curriculum do deliver. Many would argue that the curriculum is central to good teaching.

They suggest that in the absence of a well thought-out curriculum, the teaching that students experience lacks coherence, falls into a series of fragmented lectures and can ultimately become meaningless. However, the curriculum is not everything. Lecturers are dependent upon support services the library, computer services, staff with pastoral responsibilities, technicians, secretarial, clerical and administrative staff, porters, to ensure that the equipment required is in the right place, cleaners to maintain pleasant conditions for lecturers and students to work in etc. The list rapidly expands to include everyone in the university. All have to perform their parts efficiently if the lecturer is to perform effectively.

There is also the matter of developing instruments to measure improvement. If teaching quality is to be improved, logic suggests that a measurement of existing quality has to be made to act as a baseline against which improvement can be established. Regrettably, no such unified instrument exists, because of the complexity of processes involved and the variations in the student populations, within, as well as between universities. Nor is such an instrument ever likely to be created. However, this does not mean that nothing can be done. What it does mean is that a range of strategies has to be developed and applied to give reasonable assurance of teaching quality and to encourage its improvement.

The purpose of teaching is to provide students with knowledge, competencies and skills. The quality of the teaching can be assessed ion relation to the degree to which students achieve that knowledge, those competencies, those skills, but that assessment can only be made within the framework supplied by the course objectives. It is a measure of the professionalism, the competence of the lecturer, that those agreed objective remain at the forefront of his or her teaching.

To map our quality improvement programme in Teacher Education in not easy task. In fact, it is observed that most of the universities of India are facing problems related to access, equity, number relevance, quality and resource crunch. Quality Education is the all time factor which can overcome the constraints from teacher education. From the educational stand point of view, improvement of quality of Teacher Education depends on resources, up to date curriculum and evaluation.

Ensuring quality of Teacher Education, some regulatory bodies such as NCTE, NCERT, SCERT and NAAC have been set up for quality maintenance and accreditation of the institutions of Teacher Education on the following aspects such as-

(i) Curriculum aspects,
(ii) Teaching-Learning and Evaluation,
(iii) Research consultancy and Extension,
(iv) Infrastructure and Learning Resources,
(v) Student support and Progression,
(vi) Organization and Management and
(vii) Healthy Practices.

References:-

1. Mangal S.K. and MangalUma(2010), Essential of Educational Technology,PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi.
2. Singh R.P.;2010;Dialogue with Teacher Educators;Teaching Content, Modes nad ItsNature;pp78-79;Shipra Publications, Delhi.
3. Department of Education and Science(1987)Higher Education : Meeting the Challenge, London, HMSO.
4. McLure,S.(1989)Education Reformed, London, Hodder& Stoughton.
5. Tooly, J &Darby,D.S.(1998) Educational Research : A Critique, London, Office for Standards in Education.
6. Routledge(2007) : Technology Pedagogy and Education(2007) Journal of the Association of Information Technology in Teacher Education(IITE) Vol.-6, No.-3.