Building Teacher Quality in India: Examining Policy Frameworks and Implementation Outcomes: Volume 41

Since the spread of mass education around the world in the mid- to late-twentieth century, teacher quality has been heralded as the key factor to improve education quality nationwide. National education systems worldwide are also engaged in ongoing and often high stakes cross-national comparisons. As a result, policy-makers and educators in most national education systems are looking at and implementing new ways to improve education overall by raising teacher quality levels, and India is no exception. In India, teacher quality is publicly blamed for both perceived low education quality and demonstrated low average student performance, especially following Indian students’ performance on the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment. Indian education policy-makers are, therefore, looking at teacher quality as a key factor to improve student performance. Little is known about the impact or implementation of Indian policy frameworks on teacher quality and associated student outcomes in India. This introductory chapter identifies and analyzes various measures of teacher quality and how teacher quality varies in India both in response to and in spite of national policies related to teacher quality. It begins by providing evidence regarding the global importance of teacher quality on student outcomes and then addresses the ambiguity of the term “teacher quality.” This chapter then briefly discussed national education policy in India and the role teacher quality has played in these national policies, especially in the early twenty-first century, including NCF 2005, NCFTE 2009, Draft NPE 2016, Draft NPE 2019, and NPE 2020.

With the implementation of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education since April 2010, the responsibility and role of the teachers in Indian school has been changed. Once again, the teacher quality in Indian schools has taken a center stage in nation-wide debate. The discussion on teacher quality has reappeared in submitted report as Draft National Education Policy (DNEP) on May 31, 2019, that gets endorsement in cabinet approved NEP 2020. The evaluation, as a process and system, starts with the very moment when a teacher assumes its duties in K-12 schools. This chapter addresses the main research questions as: what is the status of teacher evaluation in Indian schools as mentioned in various Commission reports, policies, and draft regulations? How does teacher evaluation could be reframed for local setting based on global standards laid in international and multinational context? This chapter employs qualitative research through review of policies, draft regulations, research, articles, and government documents as data analysis and frames hypotheses through comparative analysis. The objectives of this chapter are to frame hypotheses regarding policies and recommendations for: teacher quality; teacher appraisal process; teacher appraisal in local, regional, and national settings; and teacher appraisal in multinational context.

The role and performance of a teacher is central to the teaching and learning process in any educational system, but they are often misinterpreted in the context of educational monitoring and quality assurance. Although efforts to relate teacher quality to educational quality are rarely challenged, establishing linkages between teacher quality and student performance have proven to be complex and inconclusive. This holds true especially in the Indian context wherein teachers experience diverse working conditions that may make traditional measures of teacher quality seem impractical and speculative. Teacher roles and performance, apart from being subjected to contrasting realities in schooling systems, are influenced by cultural capital, systemic forces, and teacher education programs. This chapter attempts to unravel the complexities of an Indian school teacher and highlight some of the issues that teachers are likely to face and grapple within their work situations. Nevertheless, the role of a professional and humane teacher will stand paramount in building the future of India.

At the heart of educational work is the teacher; and, everybody in the society from parents to the federal government, school administrators, industry, policy-makers, teacher educators, and not-for-profit organizations carry certain notions about the practice of teaching and work of teachers. Each constituency desires to have able, committed, and qualified teachers to care for the young ones of their society. Developing quality teachers is intricately linked to the quality of teacher education. Teacher educator professionalism is central to the improvement of teacher education and therefore school learning, and needs greater emphasis in the context of India. This chapter begins by outlining the work of teacher educators in higher education-based initial teacher preparation programs. It then gives a brief overview of the changes in initial teacher education in the early twenty-first century. This chapter further analyses the various dimensions of teacher educators’ quality of practice as framed by educational documents to gather insights about their practice among the diverse contexts in India. This chapter makes a plea to teacher educators in India to come together as a collective and take responsibility for strengthening quality teaching in India. This chapter concludes with a proposal for a framework of professional practice of teacher educators.

Education in India is valued as a transformative tool for upward mobility, increased opportunity and individual freedom. A variety of education policies over the years have sought to ensure greater equity with varied impact. Student learning has suffered across the country in part due to differences in regional access, linguistic ability, and family income. Furthermore, India lies at the intersection of aspiring ambitions of international influence and vast inequities ensuring many sectors of the populations lag far behind the “modern” aspirations of the middle class. In this conflicting space, Indian policy-makers established the Right to Education Act in 2010 as an effort to create broad and sweeping change in educational policy. This chapter seeks to look critically at the main components of the act, now 10 years in, to evaluate how some of the most controversial aspects of the law, have affected student learning, through the lens of teacher quality, including teacher preparation, teacher professional development, teacher dispositions, and teacher’s attitudes and perceptions of students. Vignettes from teacher experiences will be used to illustrate challenges and recommendations will be provided to support teacher educators working to ensure a more equitable and socially just education for Indian students.

Indian education system is obligated to assure “accessibility” to the “quality” preschool education for all children. National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has emphasised this endeavor loudly and provided clear directions to bring quality in the preschool education through effective implementation strategies. En route to this, trained and motivated preschool teachers are considered as the key factor for quality assurance. Diversity of the Indian society (language, culture, socio-economic status), variety of preschool service providers, different models of preschool education system, uneven salary structure, work load, shortage of support system, huge teacher children ratio, and unregulated sector of teacher preparation are the upfront challenge for the quality of preschool teachers and teacher education. Recruitment of trained preschool teachers, assured career growth, performance-based promotions and salary structure, regulated teacher preparation programs, adherence to the other quality standards for preschool education, digital/distance mode of obtaining required qualifications, and development of strong mechanism for monitoring; supervision as well as on-site mentoring of preschool teachers are some of the major milestones set by the government in the policy. With all this, the most important aspect is to provide encouraging and respectful environment for preschool teachers to keep them happy, contented, and motivated. The teachers, who are prepared in this way contribute in the lives of young children by creating warm and welcoming environment when they enter preschool. The NEP 2020 has brought hope, possibilities, and directions in this regard.

Building a quality teaching force depends fundamentally upon attracting suitable candidates into teaching. This translates into transparent and clear policies and procedures for recruitment and transfers. Teacher recruitment and transfer are significant aspects of teacher management in Indian states because of the size and the differences that exist in different locations, in terms of facilities including access to health care services, higher educational institutions, and also transport and mobility. The presence or absence of these facilities and services determine the perceived quality for teachers, especially as it also determines their and the family members’ (including spouse and children) ability to access education, health care, or job market. This makes the recruitment and transfer policy a critical aspect of teacher management that contributes significantly to the motivation and job satisfaction of the teacher. Karnataka was able to make progress on designing and implementing transparent and effective teacher recruitment and transfer policies and move away from a system plagued by the weaknesses exhibited by other states. This chapter undertakes a historical analysis of teacher recruitment and transfers in the state, examines the determinants that led to current policies and an examination of the on-going changes since the policy was first introduced. Using Karnataka’s example, it argues that effective and efficient teacher management systems can lead to better teacher quality.

This chapter looks at the experiments of the Aam Aadmi Party led government’s initiatives in building teacher quality for its government schools in the capital city. Outlining the contours of neoliberal influence on Indian education policy and its consequences on teacher quality, the chapter explores the political rationality that governs the case of Delhi. It does this by understanding the changing subjectivities of the school teachers within the educational reforms. The government schools in Delhi have been blamed for worsening school performance especially in student learning outcomes through basic educational tests conducted by various assessment and evaluation surveys. Among other reasons, poor teacher quality has been identified as one of the major causes of this poor performance of government school children. Therefore, gaps were identified in the teacher support system and efforts were made to revamp the system. The chapter brings out in detail how the state’s initiatives in educational reforms have produced paradoxical situations and unintended effects in practice as the state has retained a controlling role even though the reform strategies show a shift toward increasing autonomy and deregulation.

The Government of India’s National Policy of Education 2020 stipulates that in the following five years all stand-alone teacher education colleges will be required to convert to multidisciplinary higher education institutions. This calls for a complete overhaul of the country’s vast, diverse, and age-old system of teacher preparation. Evidence-based policy implementation is thus the need of the hour. This chapter attempts to aid the process by presenting insights from a comparative education research on pre-service teacher education (PSTE) of secondary school teachers at stand-alone teacher education institutions (TEIs) in the Indian city of Mumbai and university-based teacher education in the Chinese city of Hong Kong. Documentary sources, field visits, and 57 interviews form the basis of the findings. The dimensions for comparison include academic freedom and autonomy; pathways to PSTE; linkages of teacher education providers; and role and working conditions of teacher educators. The chapter deduces the core differences in teacher education at stand-alone TEIs vis-à-vis that at a university and draws out implications of shutting down the former. It concludes by laying down a road map for the effective universitization of teacher education in India that will result in genuinely improving teacher quality.

This chapter focuses on one particular practice that came to the forefront in over a dozen teacher education sessions with government schoolteachers in southern India- the reflective practice “Dialogic Modeling.” This chapter delves into two primary facets of dialogic modeling: how it operates and how it fosters opportunities to study the practices being modeled. To help supporters’ and critics’ reading, this chapter examines the form of several episodes of dialogic modeling. By form, the author refers to terms such as logic, structure, and conditions. This form and function analytic is critical to recognizing the mechanics of the practice, and provides an understanding of how a reflective dialogic practice can operate. The chapter also takes up why this form matters for how teachers learn to do their work, and how doing the work of teaching can be bolstered through reflective practice. By doing so, the chapter aims to provide additional warrants for the claims that teacher education can, and likely should, involve teacher-learners in the deliberate study of principled practices. Moreover, the author argues that modeling as it is commonly done leaves much to chance and squanders the opportunity to learn and build teachers’ capacities.

The quality of teaching across the world is often defined by students’ academic achievement. Yet, teaching and learning is a complex phenomenon. Standards and policy documents, internationally and within India, specify knowledge and skills for teachers. A variety of evaluation tools exist to measure teaching performance. The authors describe a Teacher Performance Review Process (TPRP) using a diagnostic tool internationally benchmarked and contextualized for India. Initially, 408 teachers from 10 schools completed the TPRP, with 95 teachers from 3 schools completing two cycles of TPRP. The TPRP incorporated multiple sources of evidence for rating each teacher on 27 performance indicators using a four-point scale. Rating frequencies were analyzed and results reported for an initial and second cycle of TPRP. Feedback from teachers and school leaders indicated this process supported improving the quality of teaching. TPRP, implemented as a cyclical process capturing evidence from multiple sources over time, potentially provides comprehensive documentation of the complex phenomenon of teaching performance, and supports teachers in continuous improvement.

This chapter takes the case of contextualizing a solar-powered Information and Communications Technology Center Model to train young women for employment in an informal education setting. One of the sites in which the Model has been actualized is in Mahabubnagar District of Telangana State, India. The Center provides employment-aligned training through computer, communications, business, personal and interpersonal development topics, while supplying steady energy source through solar panels to cover for the needs of sustained computer usage. The learning contents are delivered through a tailored curriculum founded on affective/humanistic education approach, facilitated through a teacher – better described as facilitator – for the personal, interpersonal and skills development of over 450 young women trainees. The objective of this chapter is to add a consideration in the teacher quality literature from the perspective of prioritizing affective education approach, both in the teacher as well as the learner. The chapter illustrates that teachers who can communicate the messaging and delivery of learning contents in a way that allow learners to feel understood and prioritized – with social, emotional, and attitude of learners considered – will be much more effective than an approach where teachers prioritize skills development and academic achievement.