New Delhi: Young professionals who aspire to teach in technical institutions such as engineering, pharmacy or management colleges will now have to undergo mandatory training and internship facilitated by the central government and also qualify an exam.
This will be in line with the B.Ed qualification for school teachers and the National Eligibility Test (NET) for college and university teachers.
At present, technical teachers, especially those in engineering colleges are not required to possess separate teaching qualifications. They are selected on the basis of their B.Tech or M. Tech degrees.
The mandatory training and exam will be under the aegis of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), the technical education regulator of the central government.
“We have developed a specific training module for technical teachers suited to their needs,” said AICTE chairman Anil Sahasrabuddhe. “They will be required to undergo eight modules of training and then a three-week internship with the industry. They will then have to qualify this test, following which they will be made permanent,” he added.
“It is important for technical teachers to be trained because they require different kinds of skillsets as compared to other teachers,” said Sahasrabuddhe. “They need to be more abreast with the latest technological developments.”
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Eight training modules & training
The eight modules that the prospective technical teachers need to study include — “Orientation towards Technical Education & Curriculum Aspects”; “Professional Values, Ethics, Ecology & Sustainable Development”; “Communication Skills, Modes and Knowledge Dissemination”; “Instructional Planning and Delivery”; “Technology Enabled Learning and Life-long Self-learning”; “Effective Modes of Student Assessment and Evaluation”; “Creative Problem Solving, Innovation and Meaningful R&D” and other miscellaneous aspects.
For the training, AICTE has developed special academies called ATAL (AICTE Training and Learning Academy). There are four such academies at present — in Jaipur, Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati and Vadodra.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development has planned 11 more such academies in other states as well. The government already has National Institutes of Technical Teacher’s Training and Research (NITTTRs) for the training of technical teachers. ATAL will be an additional teacher training institute focusing on new-age training.
The new-age curriculum module for teachers will be in areas such as artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, cybersecurity, augmented reality, data sciences, 3D printing, quantum computing, Internet of Things and Robotics.
The idea of mandatory teacher training stemmed from suggestions that technical education needed an overhaul. Various reports pointed to the fact that engineering and management graduates in India are unemployable and one of the reasons that led to the unemployability was lack of good teaching and training. Keeping this in mind, the government decided to improve the teaching standards.
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