Teacher Education, Critical Pedagogy, and Standards: An Exploration of Theory and

Practice in Andhra Pradesh Teacher training colleges

Abstract

As teachers are one of the core agents of socialization and national development, teacher training
occupies a central role in the Indian education system. Just as schools are central in molding the
personality of youth, teacher training colleges play a significant role in the pedagogical process.
A school teacher is required to undergo training for one year, in order to be eligible to work. This
has led to the mushrooming of thousands of teacher training colleges all over India as well as in
Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Telangana. By the year 2012, the total number of B.Ed. colleges in
(erstwhile) Andhra Pradesh increased to 650, a dramatic increase from the previous figure of 350
in 2008, because of announcement of mega DSC to recruit teachers in 2008(Maitreyi,2009).
The present study therefore aims to study the process of teacher training. Previous studies have
found that good training is essential for teachers to update their pedagogic approaches from
traditional methods to alternative methods so as to make teaching and learning process
interactive and more interesting (Ramachandran, 2005). Vimala & Taramani (2013) found that
there were several micro-level issues in teacher training such as absenteeism and inadequate
supervision. Sriprakash (2011) found that most of the teachers did not have motivation and
interest in the field of teaching profession. Teacher training also plays a particularly important
role when there are changes in curriculum. Recent research by Repudi & Ranganathan (2014)
was conducted on the new curriculum which was introduced in 2013 in government schools in
AP and Telangana. They found that the VIII standard teachers who were dealing with the new

curriculum emphasized the need for adequate training in order to effectively implement the
activity based curriculum. Other scholars have also found the need for specific training in the use
of activities in the classroom (Ramachandran, 2005). With this background, this study is framed
with the objective of studying the following research questions:
1. How the training takes place in teacher training colleges?
2. What are the difficulties facing by trainee teachers from training period to internship?
3. Do trainees are instructed approaches to teach activity based syllabus as per the new
curriculum in state level school education?
Methodology:
Filed site: Andhra Pradesh,
Sample: 10 B.Ed. and 5 D.Ed. Colleges both Government and Private in Andhra Pradesh
Methods of data collection: Qualitative and Quantitative methods,
Instruments/tools: Interviews, Questionnaires, participant Observations,
Implications for policy and practice in education: I hope that there is a scope of getting new
training approaches which will help in quality improvement of teacher education.
Key words: Teacher education, Critical pedagogy, activity based teaching.