Teacher Development through Teacher Education
View(s):Teachers play an important role in buildingthe nation by bringing out the best in every child.
Teacher Education is a continuing process as newly qualified and experienced teachers’ progress through their carriers and develops further expertise in teaching. Such learning situations of practising teachers are commonly referred as professional development of teachers and it is recognized as an ongoing process throughout their carrier lives.
In Sri Lanka mainly there are two types of teacher development institutions as pre-service and in-service teacher development centres. National Colleges of Education are considered as pre-service teacher development institutions while Teacher Centres and Teacher Training Colleges are considered as in-service teacher development institutions.
Presently there are 19 National Colleges of Education in all over the island. These colleges were established in 1985 as a concept of Prime Minister RanilWickramasinghe in order to establish a full time pre-service teacher training programme for teacher trainees to develop a quality education system in Sri Lanka.
In addition to that there are 111 Teacher Centres and 07 Teacher Training Colleges to shape-up the professionalism of teachers who are already in the school system. Above mentioned Teacher Education Institutions will further strengthen efforts to improve the teachers by providing opportunities in other way to deepen their skills, performance and expertise. Here the teachers can get actual learning opportunities which they engage mainly with subject content and pedagogy.
Considering professionalism for the teacher profession, professional development is an important factor. Learning throughout their career pathways to serve as excellent role models for lifelong learning process of their students is highly oriented. Teachers’ professional development can directly influence students’ learning.
So, continuous professional development programmes are conducted by Teacher Development Institutions in Sri Lanka by providing opportunities at every stage and in every way to deepen skills and expertise of teachers in the system. Through this, strengthen the culture of learning of the teachers is emphasized in order to offer a more powerful learning opportunities to the students and this type of thing can be achieved only by offering more powerful learning opportunities to the teachers.
Prospective teachers are trained under 27 subject streamsin 19 National Colleges of Education which are situated in all over the Island,. These teacher trainees are intended to gather more and more subject knowledge in teaching selected subject area in the school system. Here the specific subject knowledge added by teaching methodology is learnt by the teacher trainees in order to be a quality teacher in future.
After fulfilling 3 years in-house training programme annually about 4000 teachers are recruited in the school system as a result of the pre-service teacher development programme which functions in the National Colleges of Education.
In relation to the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in teacher education, School Based Professional Development programmes(SBPTD) are mainly conducted in Teacher Centres to achieve the professional development of the teachers who are already in the service.
In addition to that a special programme is going to introduce by establishing an online platform for the teacher development in Sri Lanka. Implementing the above said SBPTD programme through an online platform is the main target of this educational approach. Then the teachers are intended to engage in CPD programme in SMART way by minimizing all type of unnecessary and unlimited wastage that prevails presently in the system and will directly show the clear and easy pathways for effective and efficient development of teachers in the school system of Sri Lanka
Not like the majority of the other countries of the world, in
Sri Lanka there is not any licence system to recruit teachers to the teaching profession.
Therefore a lot of untrained teachers are working in the schools and by providing more and more training opportunities to make them qualified quickly to this noble profession is the major target of the Teacher Training Colleges.
Output of the untrained teacher is not much satisfied with the teaching learning process of the education system. It is proved that the capacity of the untrained teachers badly affect final production of the education process. Quality of the final production of the school mainly depend on the quality of the teachers in the system. So converting untrained teachers into trained teachers should be done without making further delay and teacher training colleges play the major role in achieving this target.
Teachers play a critical role by giving the best possible education to all children in order to uplift each and every individual in society to build up as a proud nation. Bringing out the best in each student is the final target of the quality teaching and making the future generation to fit into the requirement of the world of work is the final goal.
So by improving pre-service and in-service teacher training programmes, teacher development can be achieved. Therefore it is emphasized that teacher development can be achieved through teacher education and it is the systematic way
of achieving teaching expertise by improving teaching
professionalism.
It may lead for a lifelong quality education process which helps much for youngsters tobloom up as a proud nation.
B. G. I. KalaniHemalie
Deputy Director of Education
Ministry of Education