Reinventing the concept of teacher

Anil Pagoda Arachchi

When the country is moving fast on a new path with a novel vision ushered in by the Mahinda Chinthana, the achievement of the goals set to a greater extent depends on the reinventing of the concepts of teacher education and the aims and objectives of the education policy. It is heartening to see Minister of Education Bandula Gunawardena taking strides in bringing in great changes in the education system of the country. At the same time, the teacher's role in the classroom and outside has to play a very efficient and productive role in this respect because the compatibility of the expectations and the integration of all the fields concerned will pave the way for bringing in the expected society.

What do we mean by reinventing the concept of teacher? What are the new paradigms which must be incorporated into the teacher's role? How can we do it?

Concept of teacher

Who is a teacher? Is he merely a person who gives lessons to students in a school? Is he someone who shows somebody else how to do something so that they will be able to do it by themselves? Or else is he someone who makes somebody feel in a different way. On the other hand, how can we define a teacher in the modern-day society? For example, teacher as a researcher, reflective practitioner, facilitator, transformer, practitioner of Multiple Intelligence Theory. Haven't we over the years tried to paint a picture of who a teacher is with the concepts given to us by our colonials masters? As governor McKenzie once said, aren't we even today producing foreigners in our soil through our education system? To my mind, one major reason for this is the colonial mentality of the Sri Lankan teacher. It must also be mentioned that all the teacher training institutes and education policy makers have to take the bulk of the responsibility of this situation.

Since President Mahinda Rajapaksa is steering the country on a different footing, it is high time we re-examined the teacher's role so that the goals of the education system could be paralleled with those of the social and economic development programmes. The education reforms which are in operation in the school system apparently have addressed this issue, and the competency based education given in the classroom can best be exploited to overcome it. What is saddening is that most important people who are expected to make these changes - teachers - have not yet been properly trained for the task. For instance, are the teachers making any attempts to embody the national goals or basic competencies in their teaching process in the classroom? Have the teacher training institutes done any research or made any comprehensive efforts to train teachers, for example, how to teach mathematics, science or any other subject in such a way so that it could help national integration and social cohesion.

The most important aspect of teaching process is not to be concerned with only the subject content, but a teacher must be able to expose the students to the value system of the country through his subject content. One obstacle we face in this respect is the fact that the majority of the teachers of the country still look at their subject through western perspectives, and are not cognizant of the value system of the country.

Teacher training

There is a dire need to redesign the pre-service and in-service teacher training courses with a view to reinventing the Sri Lankan teacher. The structure, syllabi and the teacher training methodology require a new orientation to produce teachers who can become an integral part of the Sri Lankan society. A perusal of the curriculum, syllabi and subject contents of many of the disciplines, trainees are expected to follow reveals that the teachers who are produced by the teacher training institutes of the country are equipped with Eurocentric concepts and show little knowledge of the socio cultural milieu of the country. Aren't we just forcing the stuff imported from outside down the throats of the teachers. For example, the subject contents of the disciplines such as Psychology and Guidance and Counselling are based on the theories and knowledge that originated in the west. No comprehensive attempts have so far been made to incorporate the practices and indigenous knowledge into the syllabi.

It is a fact that the changes that are expected to be brought in political and economic arenas to a greater extent depend on the changes made in the field of education. Since President Mahinda Rajapaksa is now gradually placing the country on a home based footing paying more attention to our own cultural values, the education system of the country has to play a key role in this direction. Therefore, training the teachers with a view to bringing in the expected teachers has become of paramount importance.

Exploring our culture

The main objective of the education system has to be discovering and establishing our national identity while equipping the student population with the necessary competencies, social skills and personality traits for their own development and development of the country at large.

In this context, unearthing the buried scientific and cultural values of the country has the potentiality to introduce qualitative changes to the education system so that it could go parallel with the new political vision of the present government. For instance, we can research into finding out the counseling methods and principles of guidance ingrained in the culture and in the major religions prevalent in the country.

They have to be given the priority in the syllabus and what is taken from outside can be integrated to them in order to establish our own value system and a repertoire of knowledge. Thus, teacher training courses must be designed in such a way that teachers could explore, preserve and expand the cultural milieu of the country and inculcate these values in our students though teaching their respective subjects. But, what actually happens today in pre-service and in-service teacher training is to direct the teachers to look at our own students from the Freudian perspectives.

The writer does not expect that these changes could be brought overnight. The first step in this direction is to delve into comprehensive research in all the fields concerned and to formulate the basic principles of our own educational philosophy.

This does not necessarily mean that we should close our doors to the outside world. Our goal has to be strengthening our own values with the help of the knowledge taken from other parts of the world.

Teaching methodology

The E5 model that has been recommended by the NIE is based on constructivist approach to teaching and learning. In constructivism, students are allowed to explore so that they could build new knowledge on a particular concept based on their present knowledge. It is accepted that this approach leads to develop the creative ability of the students. However, this model was first developed by Bybee to teach biological science in the west.

Rather than importing these Eurocentric approaches, what I personally propose is to plan and design our own approach based on our socio-cultural conditions. Then only can we produce a teacher equipped with the necessary competences to help the President achieve the goals he set in Mahinda Chinthanaya political manifesto.

The teacher should have the freedom to be Sri Lankan, and therefore reinvention the concept of teacher is, the writer thinks, a topic that deserves a lot of discussion from all the people concerned.