Development of Teachers through Tech-MODE to Meet the Goal of Universal Primary Education: Proposed NTERCs Model for India

Abstract

Teachers are shapers of the modern world. They play a leading role in transforming the children into responsible global citizens by facilitating them acquire knowledge, skills, values and attitudes. Educated citizens are the agents of change for a better world. Realizing the power of education on development of individual and development of a country, Universal Primary Education (UPE) is taken as the first goal of UN Development Goals 2000. In reality, the supply of qualified teachers is not meeting the demand in different regions and countries to realize this goal. According to the UNESCO projections a total 10.3 million teachers are needed in order to achieve UPE. The two thirds of world’s teacher gap is in certain Sub-Saharan, African and Arab States. In order to meet the goal of UPE many countries need political will, commitment and investment to scale-up the teacher development activity with cost effective teaching learning practices to meet the challenge of UPE 2015. These statistics reflects the need for strategies for developing innovative methods/ models to revamp teacher development with commitment and investment to minimize the teacher gap. Open Distance Education is playing a major role in development of qualified teacher’s world wide. // This paper discuss about the barriers in teacher education and the need, relevance and advantages of technology mediated Open Distance Education (Tech-MODE) for teacher development and training to meet the demand of qualified teachers. After assessing the existing ICT enabled strategies for teacher development world over an ICT enabled, ODL mediated Network of Teacher Education Resource Centers (NTERCs) model is proposed that facilitate the suggested Three Stage Teacher Development Approach to meet the demand of qualified teachers in a developing country like India.