Teaching Career

career in teaching

— by Naresh Singh

Future is bright if right direction is taken at the right time. Teaching is re-emerging as an important and increasingly popular career option because of the stability that it offers in these troubled times. Whatever your circumstances, if you are still at school, about to graduate or finishing higher degree in any stream or looking for change of direction, there are newer and more ways to enter the profession than ever before. Teaching is deemed as a noble career. Teaching is a career only for those, who do not hold money in high regard and have passion for knowledge. Genuine interest in the profession is the most important virtue that one must possess. For teachers, learning and teaching are a complementary process. Bright students can choose even professional disciplines—mana-gement, engineering, medicine etc. Demand for quality teachers is always high.

No profession is free of challenges. Teachers have to face several hurdles in their careers. The teaching refers to a specific cluster of activities which includes such acts as explaining, demonstrating, questioning and motivating. The process of teaching-learning is as old as human beings on earth. It has been from informal learning to formal learning with the passage of time. The learning is the permanent change in learner’s behavior with the help of effective teaching. True learning is change in personality which if not practiced or reinforced, extincts.

The teaching as convent-ionally understood by traditional people is the act of dissemination of information to the learners in the class rooms. A number of researches have evidenced that teaching is to make the learner realize his/her potential at the fullest. Traditional methods and techniques have been replaced by new methods of teaching and Innovative teaching-learning techniques. Gone are the days when teaching was understood as imparting mere information and when a learner was underrated or underestimated to learn.

Every learner has almost an average I.Q. He/ she can acquire utmost knowledge with self-efforts directed by the teacher. Teaching is to motivate the learners to acquire information, knowledge and skills with self efforts. The teaching must stress self-learning with teacher’s guidance rather than providing instruction to the learner at every step. Role of the teaching is to enable the learner to become self-dependent to explore oppor-tunities. An ideal teacher helps the learner to tremendously use self- senses in order to experience different real life situations.

The process of teaching was carried out by early human beings and even by animals to teach their young ones for successful adjustment in the environment. The process has undergone several changes from informal to formal. Today, the need is to rouse dormant potentialities of learners. Today, the learning can be made efficient and effective with the advent of technological media. Efficiency as a term involves relationship between inputs and outputs in a production process — The underlying notion is that- production is efficient if given inputs produce maximum output. Efficient teaching is that which reduces wastage of learning material — learners (animate human resources- students) and inanimate teaching – learning aids. Maximum utilization of resources can curtail the wastage. The wastage of resources is in high rate of dropouts, failures and truants of students–learners & the misuse and the unuse of teaching- learning aids, The use and misuse of teaching- learning aids are due to lack of knowledge to operate at the part of teacher. How can teaching – learning be made interesting and attractive? Interaction between teacher and student should be intensive and more frequent. It is possible as ratio between student and teacher is less. And highly motivated teachers may make the teaching –learning interested and attractive. High incentives and on the job training can make teachers more motivated and committed. Mobilization of students is a must by motivational techniques.

Utilization of electronical gadgets, as teaching aids as computer, projector and other simulation demonstrative aids can be helpful in efficient teaching- learning. Traditional teaching- learning methods should be taken off. Balanced participation between teacher and student should involve healthy discussion through active interaction.

Moreover teaching is the stimulation, guidance, direction, facilitation and encouragement for learning. It is an art and a teacher is an artist. An artist is governed by certain principles which help him acquire proficiency in his profession, so a teacher is also governed by certain principles which help him acquire proficiency in teaching. The teacher must understand the developmental characteristics of learners at different stages so that he/ she takes advantage of the interest and motivation of the learners in a learning task. Lack of under-standing of differences in emotional quotient, age-groups, socio-economic background, interests and motivational levels of learners makes the teacher- centered teaching fail. So only learner-centered approach may make the teaching effective and efficient. True teaching brings novelty and excitement to the classroom through methodologies that encourage self-learning firmly believing that “education is not filling a bucket but kindling a lamp.”

In true teaching the teacher does not tell, but the class learns all the time. The teacher may speak and ask and often even tell but the class never stops from learning. The class never stops from searching, finding and gathering. The greater thing in teaching is that the pupils must learn and sincere in these days they seldom learn teaching has become singularly barren of fruit

The teaching where the teacher bosses a dead show is not effective teaching. In true teaching first of all the teacher is at once all and nothing. He is nothing because he is not immediately concerned with the operations of the young minds before him, and he is all because he is ultimately responsible for the result of these very operations. This is no doubt a task calling for the greatest circumspection an extremely delicate work in which one is continually called upon to on tread thin ice.

The teaching is a sovereign remedy. It is the quack methods that are often practiced in the name of teaching that fail us in the hour of great expectation. The need is urgent to clear educational ideals of false silt. This is the risk that awaits the true educational reformer.

If it is bad to stuff a child with food, it is worse to stuff him with easy rudiments or mere information or even with learning. The mechanism of physical well being will not long bear the strain of excessive food. Likewise, the heaping of information on the childs mind must retard its growth and diminish its strength.

— Quality in education is nowadays a buzzword. Quality means offering the highest level of performance in all education services and programmes, quality teacher is he who performs his/ her best to deliver competent services in order to bring about positive change in the learners’ behavior. The services of a competent teacher include efficient delivery of knowledge of content in compart-mentalized easy manner and the delivery of skills in a manner as how to use knowledge and the delivery of ethical values as how to adapt to social environment. The positive change in the learners’ behavior reduces wastage of education services and reflects in his or her behaviour. Aquality teacher’s service product is the learner who is equipped with knowledge, skills and ethical values through different teaching styles Quality learners are those who are supposed to perform more than expected and gets advantage edge over other competitors in a tough competi-tion market.

be willing continually to change, learn and adapt. If you are preparing to teach in the twenty –first century, try to imagine what your role will be. You will no doubt be teaching facts and skills that have traditionally been devised. Teachers’ successes will depend upon their flexibility and their ability to view teaching as an ever-changing process that reflects the society in which it occurs.

Everywhere, there is pressure for children to learn more in school. The new economy demands that young people leave school with strong abilities to read, write, calculate and apply disciplined thought to the solution of problems. Citizenship in every society requires an understanding of the history, government and tradition of not only that society but of many others as well. More and more the pursuit of individual happiness must begin with an educated view of a complex and rapidly changing world. As schools have been pressed to be more effective and more productive, the out-of-school influences on academic learning have escalated in importance. Even where the school day and school year have been lengthened, the amount of time, children spend in school during the first eighteen years of their lives is small (perhaps 13% of waking hours) compared to time spent with the family and the broader community. Fortunately, research on the family’s influence on school learning has a substantial history, and we can settle upon basic premises with great confidence.

With reasonable certainty, we can state that poverty may statistically predict lower school performance, yet families that provide a stimulating, language rich, and supportive environment defy the odds of socio-economic circumstances. In other words, an alterable ‘curriculum of the home’—including the family’s relationships, practices and patterns of life—is a more powerful predictor of academic learning than the family’s status. Schools can work with families to improve the curriculum of the home, regardless of the family’s economic situation. This, then, is a message of great hope. Research on the relationships among families who constitute a school community leans heavily on a long body of sociological literature on communities of all types. Recently, however, primarily within the past decade, a strand of this sociological research has focused on schools as communities, and we are arriving at a set of understandings that may soon achieve the status of theory.

As for what schools can do to affect family behaviors in ways that benefit children’s learning, the research trail is shorter and less conclusive. There remains a great amount of experimentation, casting about to see what works. Some initiatives have, in fact, worked, and we may report them, draw lessons from them, and generalize from them. While the home’s influence on academic learning is significant, the quality and quantity of instruction and the child’s own cognitive abilities are of equal or greater significance. There is a danger, then, in placing too much emphasis (or blame) on the family’s contribution to the learning equation while forgiving weaknesses in the school. By the same token, ignoring the gains to be made by helping families improve the alterable curriculum of the home limits of the potential effectiveness of the school.

Facets of Education

Complete education compri-ses many forms such as—

l Informal Education: It is acquired by the learner himself /herself with self efforts through socialization process. The learning subject-matter in Informal education is all social material in global village. In this system, the acquired know-ledge is not evaluated by any outside agency and no certificate is provided for it.

l Non-formal Education: In this system, learner is enrolled with an education agency to acquire knowledge and knowledge is evaluated for the award of certificate but no regular face-to-face interaction between teacher and student is provided. Non-formal education is acquired through distance /correspondence mode.

l Formal Education: In this setting, the knowledge is continuously evaluated for the award of certificate and learners’ development reflects in their behavior. Face-to-face interaction between teacher and student is intensive in this process of teaching-learning. The process of education delivery is ideal for all-round development of person’s personality. Pre-specified instructional curriculum is provided to teacher to make desired change in the learner.

l Functional Education: In this system learner acquires working skills through informal, non-formal and formal modes of education.

How to become a teacher

One has to acquire degree/Diploma level education to become a teacher for conventional disciplines of secondary standard. PhD or UGC -NET qualified examination is required for teaching at degree level disciplines. Indicative criteria to become a qualified teacher are shown here.

1. Teachers for conventional disciplines at pre-primary, primary/elementary and secon-dary level education

l Pre–Primary Teacher: Diploma of Early childhood care and Education (ECCE)/NTT /equivalents)

l Elementary Teacher: Diploma of Elementary Teacher Education (ETE/D.Ed/BTC etc.)

l Secondary Teacher: Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) after BA/B.Com/B.Sc. etc.

l Senior Secondary Teacher: Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) after MA/M.Com./MSc./equivalents

l Higher Education: Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D), / National Eligibility Test (NET)/State level eligibility Test (SLET) in any discipline for entry level of College/University Teacher/Lecturer/Asstt. Professor.

2. Teachers for Professional/Technical Education at certifi-cate, diploma and degree levels:

l Certificate/ Diploma Level Education in Library Science: B.Lib.Sc/M.Lib.Sc.

l Degree Level Education in Library Science: M.Lib.Sc. and UGC NET/PhD

l Certificate/ Diploma Level Education in Physical educa-tion: B.PEd./BPE

l Degree Level Education in Physical education: MPEd/MPE and UGC NET/Ph. D

l Certificate/ Diploma Level Education in Arts( Fine arts, Visual Arts etc.):BFA./BA(Fine Arts)

l Degree Level Education in Arts( Fine arts, Visual Arts etc.):MFA/MA in Fine Arts and UGC NET/Ph.D

l Certificate/Diploma Level Education in Musology (Musics): B.Muse

l Diploma Level Education in Engineering: B.E/BTech. in concerned Trade(Electrical/Electronics etc.)

l Degree Level Education in Engineering: M.E./MTech./Ph.D in concerned Trade (Electrical/Electronics etc.)

l Degree Level Medical Educa-tion: MD/ MS/MCh./Ph.D or equivalents

l Diploma Level Pharmacy Education: B.Pharma/M. Pharma

l Degree Level Pharmacy Education: M.Pharma / Ph.D

l Degree level Management: MBA/PhD or UGC NET/SLET Qualified exam.

(Naresh Singh is associated with SCERT New Delhi-110024)