Teacher Training Distance Learning Diploma

“A good teacher is a good student first. By repeating his lessons, he acquires excellence.”

The world needs better teachers and more teachers.

There is also the need to raise the skills of the existing 60 million teachers. One of the ways of strengthening the teaching profession is to use distance education or open and distance learning.

Two questions arise here: about effectiveness and about relevance. If open and distance learning for teachers is effective, and working on a big enough scale to be actually or potentially significant, then it is worth going on to ask how it is managed. Therefore there is a need to establish the curriculum of open and distance learning initiatives, and the extent to which this matches that of other forms of teacher education and professional development. One has looked at the technologies, ranging from print to computers, and the relationship between work done through the technologies and work done face-to-face, including all-important issues about classroom practice.

Many countries still do not have enough teachers. In some, the expansion needed in the teaching force is far beyond the capacity of traditional colleges. The supply of teachers is also adversely affected in countries where retention rates are low for newly trained teachers or where in rural areas which have difficulties in recruiting and retaining teachers.

Teacher quality is an issue in most countries. Many teachers are untrained or under qualified or teaching subjects in which they are not qualified or trained. In addition, teachers face a widening range of demands and roles. In some countries teachers can expect one week’s in-service professional development once every five to ten years.

All of this creates new challenges for teacher education and continuing professional development: the need to find ways of using existing resources differently, of expanding access to learning opportunities at affordable cost, of providing alternative pathways to initial teacher training can open and distance learning respond to these challenges? The considerations outlined below offer some answers, in describing a range of uses of open and distance learning for both initial and continuing teacher education.

The cases have been categorized in four ways. Firstly, some countries have used distance education to provide a route to initial qualifications for significant numbers of teachers, both new entrants to teaching and experienced unqualified teachers. Secondly, initial teacher education is no longer seen as enough. Distance education is therefore also being used to raise the skills, deepen the understanding and extend the knowledge of teachers. Some programs are broadly focused while others are targeted at specialist groups.

Thirdly, distance education can have a role in programs of curriculum reform which aim to change either the content or the process of education. In South Africa, the Open Learning Systems Educational Trust is using radio to improve the teaching of English, and to support teachers in this work. Fourthly, distance education has been used for teachers’ career development. As they seek promotion, or aim for the next qualification level, or aspire to become a head teacher, or work in a teachers’ college, or become an inspector, teachers need to acquire new skills.

In general, distance education programs are developed with varied intentions: of widening access to teaching qualifications; of disseminating good practice; of strengthening the education system as a whole by reaching not only teachers but the wider community; in enabling school-based training and professional development and as a means of strengthening the links between theory and practice.

Distance education therefore has been defined as an educational process in which a significant proportion of the teaching is conducted by someone removed in space and/or time from the learner. Open learning, in turn, is an organized educational activity, based on the use of teaching materials, in which constraints on study are minimized in terms either of access, or of time and place, pace, method of study, or any combination of these. The term ‘open and distance learning’ is used as an umbrella term to cover educational approaches of this kind that reach teachers in their schools, provide learning resources for them, or enable them to qualify without attending college in person, or open up new opportunities for keeping up to date no matter where or when they want to study.


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Early Childhood Education

Early Childhood Education is designed to prepare students to enter a number of fields related to the social, emotional, physical, and intellectual care and guidance of children or to prepare them to continue their education in elementary or special education, physical or recreational therapy, social work, and paediatric nursing. Early childhood educators nurture youngsters whose parents are at work or cannot be with them for other reasons.

A child's needs at this period are different from those of older schoolchildren, because early childhood sees the greatest growth and development, when the brain develops most rapidly, almost at it’s fullest. It is a period when walking, talking, self-esteem, vision of the world and moral foundations are established. The early years of life are critical to the development of intelligence, personality and social behaviour. If these fundamental capabilities are not well established from the start, and especially if neurological damage occurs, a child's learning potential could be adversely affected.

For programming purposes, it has been decided to extend the concept of early childhood to about 8 years of age. This age range provides the opportunity to reinforce the view of the development as a continuum. It facilitates the interaction between the pre and initial school years. The concept of basic education calls for the inclusion of early childhood and the key "survival" grades, that is, the first two or three grades of primary education. Early childhood education often focuses on children learning through play.

According to UNESCO ECCE (Early Childhood Care and Education) Unit, Early childhood is defined as the period from birth to 8 years old. The terms preschool education kindergarten emphasize education around the ages of 3–6 years. The terms "early childhood learning," "early care," and "early education" are comparable with early childhood education. The terms Day care and Childcare do not embrace the educational aspects. Many childcare centres are now using more educational approaches. They are creating curricula and incorporating it into their daily routines to foster greater educational learning. The distinction between childcare centres being for care and kindergartens being for education, for example, has all but disappeared in countries that require staff in different early childhood facilities to have a teaching qualification.

However, it is necessary to distinguish between nurturance and locomotive learning. One implies the development of vestigial implements of characterized babies; the other refers to hand-eye co-ordination.

Researchers in the field and early childhood educators both view the parents as an integral part of the early childhood education process. Often educators refer to parents as the child's first and best teacher. Early childhood education takes many forms depending on the beliefs of the educator or parent.

Much of the first two years of life are spent in the creation of a child's first "sense of self" or the building of a first identity. This is a crucial part of children's makeup—how they first see themselves, how they think they should function, how they expect others to function in relation to them. For this reason, early care must ensure that in addition to employing carefully selected and trained caretakers, program policy must emphasize links with family, home culture, and home language. Care should support families rather than be a substitute for them.

If a young child does not receive sufficient nurturing, nutrition, parental interaction, and stimulus during this crucial period, the child may be left with a developmental deficit that hampers his or her success in preschool, kindergarten, and beyond. These are the underlying facts taught in primary teacher courses.

While in developed nations today such scenarios are fortunately rare there is a danger of a false belief that more hours of formal education for the very young child yields greater benefits for the child than a balance between formal education and time spent with family. A systematic review of the international evidence suggests that the benefits of early childhood education come from the experience itself of participation and that more than 2.5 hours a day does not greatly add to child development outcome especially if this means the young child is missing out on other experiences and family contact.

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Teacher Training Course

The question of what knowledge, attitudes, behaviours and skills teachers should possess is the subject of much debate in many cultures, like India. Generally, Diploma in Teacher Training curricula can be broken down into these blocks:

• Foundational knowledge and skills—usually this area is about education-related aspects of philosophy of education, history of education, educational psychology, and sociology of education.

• Content-area and methods knowledge—often also includes ways of teaching and assessing a specific subject, in which case this area may overlap with the first ("foundational") area. There is increasing debate about this aspect; because it is no longer possible to know in advance what kind of knowledge and skill pupils will need when they enter adult life, it becomes harder to know what kinds of knowledge and skill teachers should have. Increasingly, emphasis is placed upon 'transversal' or 'horizontal' skills (such as 'learning to learn' or 'social competences', which cut across traditional subject boundaries, and therefore call into question traditional ways of designing the Teacher Education curriculum (and traditional school curricula and ways of working in the classroom).

• Practice at classroom teaching or at some other form of educational practice. Practice can take the form of field observations, student teaching, or an internship

Supervised Field Experiences

Field observations—include observation and limited participation within a classroom under the supervision of the classroom teacher

Student teaching—includes a number of weeks teaching in an assigned classroom under the supervision of the classroom teacher and a supervisor (e.g. from the university)

Internship-teaching candidate is supervised within his or her own classroom

This conventional organization has sometimes also been criticized, however, as artificial and unrepresentative of how teachers actually experience their work. Problems of practice frequently (perhaps usually) concern foundational issues, curriculum, and practical knowledge simultaneously, and separating them during teacher education may therefore not be helpful.

Teaching involves the use of a wide body of knowledge about the subject being taught, and another set of knowledge about the most effective ways to teach that subject to different kinds of learner; it therefore requires teachers to undertake a complex set of tasks every minute. Many teachers experience their first years in the profession as stressful. The proportion of teachers who either do not enter the profession after completing initial training, or who leave the profession after their first teaching post, is high.

A distinction is sometimes made between inducting a teacher into a new school (explaining the school's vision, procedures etc.), and inducting a new teacher into the teaching profession (providing the support necessary to help the beginning teacher develop a professional identity, and to further develop the basic competences that were acquired in college.)

A number of countries and states have put in place comprehensive systems of support to help beginning teachers during their first years in the profession.

Elements of such a program can include:

Mentoring: the allocation to each beginning teacher of an experienced teacher, specifically trained as a mentor.

A peer network: for mutual support but also for peer learning.

Input from educational experts (e.g. to help the beginning teacher relate what she learned in college with classroom reality). Support for the process of self-reflection that all teachers engage in (e.g. through the keeping of a journal).

No initial course of teacher education can be sufficient to prepare a teacher for a career of 30 or 40 years. Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is the process by which teachers (like other professionals) reflect upon their competences, maintain them up to date, and develop them further.

The extent to which education authorities support this process varies, as does the effectiveness of the different approaches. A growing research base suggests that to be most effective, CPD activities should:

• Be spread over time
• Be collaborative
• Use active learning
• Be delivered to groups of teachers
• Include periods of practice, coaching, and follow-up
• Promote reflective practice
• Encourage experimentation, and
• Respond to teachers’ needs.

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