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TULSI PRAJÑA
CONCEPT Responsibility for in-service training is too 'important to be left floating uneasily between educational administrators and the specialized agencies of teacher education. In-Service education of teachers is a form of professional adult education and hence it should be organised at the place of work, i.e., at the school itself. In fact, this is an on-the spot education of teachers. It should aim at the professional growth and personal development of teachers through individual initiative and cooperative efforts. For this, there is evidently a need to develop a considered planofinnovations and coresponding strategies for in-service education to update the competence of practising teachers.
The school-based in-service education of teachers provides us with such a strategy. It is integrated with the total school programme and activities. It presupposes a dynamic leadership role on the part of the headmaster and optimum utilization of existing resources in the school and outside. Through regarding and revitalizing teaching techniques, school-based structure of in-service education bridges the gap between theory and practice. It is assumed that the practising teachers in the school-setting are the best possible resources for in-service or further education of teachers.
RATIONALE
The present age is an age of knowledge explosion because of unprecedented advancement in science and technology resulting in a fast changing society in every way. The teacher, in order to do his job well, must change accordingly and thus rise to the occasion in the realizing the national goals of education. The teacher can remain static or ignorant at his or her own peril. Tomorrow's schools cannot be run on yesterday's ideas and principles. Accordingly, a new programme has to be designed to deliver the package of new knowledge, innovative practices and modern techniques to teachers at their work places, i.e., schools. Making schools as the base and starting point. for their in-service education is the fundamental idea on which the programme of SBINSET is based. - Through the approach of SBINET, the important objective of universalization of in-service teacher-education can be achieved within available resources. Also, the constraints and limitations ofthe conventional structure of in-service education can be overcome through this new approach. Most of the schools are understaffed and therefore, they find it difficult to release teachers for 'off-premise' in-service preparation. Organization of in-service' of 'recurrent' education of teachers in some distant and unfamiliar institutions causes hardship and inconveniences to majority of teachers. Integrating training with teaching in the schools would not deprive the schools of the presence of teachers and, at the same time, it would generate in them a sense of obligation towards each other's professional growth by making the best use of the available resources.
January-March 1993
Jain Education International
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