Innovative Practices In Teacher Education

Teacher education system is an important vehicle to improve the quality of school education. The revitalization and strengthening of the teacher education system is a powerful means for the upliftment of educational standards in the country. There are many issues that need urgent attention for improving the quality of teacher education programme. One of them is the need of innovations in teacher education programme. Innovativeness means the ability to think beyond the boundaries and create something which is different from that which already exists. Without innovations, no progress is possible. Teachers have to be innovative and their grooming has to start from their training institutions. Innovations in teacher education include IT literacy, interactive teleconferencing etc. NPE (1986) stated “The existing system of teacher education needs to be overhauled or revamped.” Unfortunately, the secondary teacher education institutions in India are stated to be largely not innovative. There are some resisting factors in our education system which prevents the teacher education institution from being innovative such as lack of physical facilities and funds, lack of diffusion of innovations among teacher educators, rigid framework, lack of research orientation etc. In this paper the authors have tried to throw light on the need of innovations required in teacher education, the resisting factors and have also given suggestions to overcome those factors. Keywords: Teacher Education, Innovation, resisting factors