LITERATURE DIRECTED TEACHER EDUCATION

Abstract

In the world where education is given paramount importance, the quality of teachers, in terms of their knowledge and skills, is evaluated at a higher rate. Teacher education institutions are expected to grow with the rapidly changing world and its demands. But the fact is teacher education is often criticized for ineffective classroom transactions, outdated syllabus, and unresponsiveness to new demands and fragmentation from practice. Dissatisfaction has been raised from within the profession as well. This scenario calls for a rock-hard stride towards quality which can bring in a momentous and holistic teacher development during its conception phase.The present paper seeks to explore the strength of literature in developing pedagogic insights in pre service students. Literature, being a powerful mean for addressing the head and the heart, can be used as a resource for making the why, what and how aspect of teaching practice concrete in the minds of would be teachers. This preposition is tested here in this paper by undertaking an experiment wherein literature will be used for developing pedagogical soundness of the student teachers. Identification of appropriate literature having pedagogical undercurrents, devising a scheme for processing the literature for extracting pedagogy, executing literature directed teaching of the foundations of teacher education and deriving insights for utilizing the strength of literature is a novel venture to be aimed at in this paper. Its research base, practical treat and futuristic derivations have something to offer to quality teacher training. In a nutshell, this paper delineated a new approach to amalgamate theory practice in teacher education using literature.