Why Teachers and Educators Need to be Trained in the Current Education Scenario ?

Education is progressive, as is life. Neither stand still. What you learned today gets added to your knowledge base and this gets bigger. You are continually learning – from the day you are born until the day you die. Your experiences never stop and your learning from these helps to shape your personality and character. It makes you who you are.

Some individuals have a greater knowledge and experience of some topics or themes and should share this with others. It is important that everyone, from parents to teachers to managers to professors is given the time to “catch up” with developments in the domains in which they aspire to develop competencies.

None of us have the time to pursue all the avenues we are interested in. We rely on others to share that with us during our lifetime.

Ways of delivering education are constantly changing and expanding. Many educators are not fully aware of these. Consider how one area of Maths changed over the centuries, from the abacus to the slide rule and log tables, to the calculator.

In the written word, we have gone from a quill and parchment, to a biro and paper, to word processing on a computer. We have seen drawing on walls of caves, to books and magazines to the internet and cameras on mobile phones.

If someone began a career as, say, a teacher 50 years ago, how could they have kept up with the new developments around them if they were not given an opportunity to experience these new techniques and ideas and bring them into their teaching schemes? Life today is not the same as life 50 years ago. You cannot compare education in 1972 with 2022.

The various vehicles for passing on knowledge have increased and educators need to be aware of all of these. Satellite communication allows instant access to all knowledge. However, the skills to seek out this knowledge have to be taught. These skills and the delivery of these skills change as education develops further. Educators and teachers must be given opportunities to experience these skills themselves and then introduce them into their teaching.

We are understanding more about how we learn. Our present teachers and educators need to identify these methods so that they can help the learners further develop their skills.

Everyone relies on somebody, somewhere to have the specialist skill and knowledge to complete a task or solve a problem. For example, a plumber, electrician or carpenter. We should not expect an electrician to be able to sort out a plumbing problem.

Should we expect a teacher to have the knowledge and skill to deliver a balanced education to our students at 25 years of age, or 40 or 55? Should we expect a doctor to know everything in medicine from broken bones to brain tumours or cancer? The knowledge base is really great and experience on the job needs time.

Everyone, no matter what job, needs time during their career to “rub shoulders” with experts, whether they are teachers, or doctors, or plumbers. Parents should not be left out of this equation either.

As educators in their own right, they need to be kept abreast of developments in the content and delivery of the education to their children. They can help reinforce ideas, even if they do not fully understand them.

Why teachers and educators need to be trained in the current education scenario could be a question asked 80 years ago and ever since. Now is no different to then. However, enlightened individuals and organisations, and head-teachers have taken up the cause and done something about it. It is a big positive and one that is paying dividends for all our students, teachers and educators.

By – Ken Joshua
Senior Advisor, Academic Council
Saamarthya Teachers Training Academy of Research (STTAR)

Source: India Today
Link: https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/explained-why-teachers-and-educators-need-to-be-trained-in-the-current-education-scenario-2311768-2022-12-21
Published on: 21st December 2022