Informal monthly meetings with Dr Simon Pratt-Adams and Dr Mark Warnes for those engaged in or interested in pedagogic research, with a different focus each month.
Tuesday 13 May, 4pm-5.30pm
Presentation by Laxman Gnawali, Kathmandu University; Ganga Ram Gautam, Tribhuvan University.
Exploring Teacher Education in Nepal from Within: Gaps, Disconnects and Alternatives
Teacher education programmes are designed based on the contemporary training philosophy, national needs of education and international trends and practices. Their curricula envisage an image of the teacher who is ready as a plug-and-play device. It is anticipated that graduates, in their real-world classrooms, can plan their curriculum for the year/semester, deliver as planned, and carry out the assessment to check how far the learning objectives have been achieved. Thus, a new teacher is born in the image envisaged by the curriculum. However, that image is shaped largely by the actual process of transacting the curriculum, training hall practices and the amount of exposure to the real-world classroom the student teachers get during the training. In this talk, we, as insiders of the teacher education programmes in Nepal, share some critical insights based on our reflections along with the graduates’ observations on their first encounter with the real-world context. We also share some alternatives that seem to be surfacing in the initiatives of some universities in Nepal.