PRE-SERVICE SECONDARY TEACHER EDUCATION PROGRAMME: SOME CONCERNS OF SUSTAINABILITY

With the onset of a new academic session, teacher education programmes across the county will be in a new avatar. The revamping of a teacher education programme has been on the cards for several years but stiff resistance from different quarters of the educational community made it impossible to do so. The revised secondary teacher education programme is new in several counts. Firstly, curricular areas have been made more contextual, class, student and community based. Secondly, teaching pedagogy has been made more child centred, experiential and reflective. Thirdly, internship model has been introduced giving more thrust on acquisition of skills and competencies in actual classroom and real settings rather than artificial settings. But, the reform has brought several challenges in its realm which teacher education programmes and institutes have to face. The present paper deals with the new challenges like demand for teacher education programmes, the role of private teacher education institutes and their increasing focus on commercialization, demand for teacher educators and whether the new system is pro-rich or pro-poor student etc.