It is the responsibility of every teacher to make their teaching easy and understandable for the learners. Effectiveness in teaching hardly comes without a predetermined set of pedagogies.
!! Alaul Alam !!
It is evident that educational outcome is somehow connected to pedagogical practices. An innovative classroom pedagogy may ensure quality education. But the class without any innovation conducted by a teacher may fail to serve its students. Education experts opine that poor classroom pedagogy not only demotivates students but also disrupts the education system resulting in poor outcome from the learners.
In introducing updated pedagogical practices teachers are the frontline personnel. If teachers are not updated with the latest knowledge and technology, classroom teaching and learning merely contribute to enriching students with necessary qualities and skills. It is the responsibility of every teacher to make their teaching easy and understandable for the learners. Effectiveness in teaching hardly comes without a predetermined set of pedagogies.
Obviously through conducting pedagogy research the teachers at different level of education can see ample scopes to furnish their teaching approaches. Research may be the single most factor to accelerate innovations in the field of education as we need to identify our challenges through studies.
In these days, coronavirus pandemic has brought many challenges in education sector that find no alternatives to the sufficient engagement of teachers from online to campus centric education. In this connection, can we find any alternatives to conducting pedagogical research to find out the ways to face the ongoing challenges? Obviously the answer will be negative.
It is evident that online education has not been as effective as was supposed from the beginning. Many more challenges in introducing virtual education to the optimum level are still unaddressed. In most cases it has failed to address inclusive learning. So considering these, it is time to introduce effective pedagogical practices to see the desirous outcome in teaching and learning, whether it is virtual or campus-centric education.
To develop pedagogical practices teachers play a very crucial role. Unless they undergo action research and many more experimental studies, it is tough to develop these practices that contribute to developing class room education. In the developed countries education research is mandatory for all stakeholders including students, teaching staff and others who are associated with this profession. One of the most important criteria of the recruitment of teaching staff is the research knowledge. With their research knowledge they find out innovations in teaching and learning methodology.
But in our context the overall scenario in teaching–learning is not appreciative as we see in many cases teachers are indifferent to getting out with new strategies while teaching students. It seems that they are busy with completing their assigned responsibilities as teachers. Even despite receiving training, for many the class management and teaching pedagogy is not appreciated.
At primary, secondary and higher secondary level of education teaching staff hardly get involved in research activities to improve their teaching strategies. It is true that conducting research is not mandatory for them. Even if when they are appointed for teaching profession, they need not demonstrate whether they are capable of teaching students and it is beyond the question whether they have any research experience prior. But in many countries classroom demonstration is a must if someone wants to enter the teaching profession and in some cases someone gets a favour who has research articles in the field of education.
Even at the tertiary level of education conducting research and having research articles is not mandatory to be selected as a lecturer at any university. Academic result along with theory-based performance is given the priority through the selection procedures. Even the applicants need not demonstrate their teaching capability in the class before being appointed.
To this end, it is obvious that updated materials and teachers training hardly come out with effectiveness if traditional pedagogy continues in the classroom discarding the innovations which are urgently needed to enrich the culture and pedagogy of education.
Actually the responsibility of teachers cannot be confined to mere teaching but be knowledgeable with new innovations and techniques that they only can achieve throughout their engagement in education research. More importantly, classroom is a research place for a teacher to get innovations in teaching.
The writer teaches at Prime University. He is also aresearch scholar at the IBS. Email: malaulalam@gmail.com
