Innovative approach in teacher education

Abstract

During the last few decades, large number of seminars have been organized at the national and international level with the express purpose of innovation in the field of teacher education. One of the most fundamental problems in education today is that people do not have a clear, rational sense of meaning about what educational innovation is for, what it is, and how it proceeds. Thus, there is much faddism, superficiality, muddle, failure of change programs, unwarranted and misguided resistance, and misunderstood reform. For the implementation of successful innovation a teacher requires gathering support for an innovation, the motivation for undertaking an innovation, the importance of participation and sustained efforts. Most of the teachers adopt the methods like discussions, seminars, library-reading and many more. As an alternative to lectures the programmed learning method has been tried and some institutions have institutionalized it. The paper focuses on the importance of innovative teaching-learning pedagogy that should be practiced in education to sustain interest among teacher trainees. Teaching through instructional strategies is an outcome of such a trend. The innovation of teaching through instructional strategies has introduced several changes in the instructional practices at the teacher education level, which are: Shift of emphasis from unstructured methods of teaching to structured methods, use of more than one medium of instruction, objective based assessment of entry and terminal behaviors by providing appropriate learning experiences, individual based instruction instead of normative based instruction and role of a teacher educator akin to that of a facilitator.