B.Ed students debate the new integrated BA/BSc/B.Com B.Ed program
Morung Express News
Dimapur | May 11
The Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley while presenting the Educational Budget 2018-19 on February 1, 2018, indicated that the there is going to be a paradigm shift toward the Integrated Teacher Education Program (ITEP) as an undergraduate program of teacher preparation.
Following this proposal, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), Government of India is all set to change the structure of the B.Ed course once again and planning to make it an integrated BA/BSc/B.Com B.Ed program of four years duration throughout the country.
The State College of Teacher Education (SCTE), Kohima M.Ed second semester student-teachers team, interning at Unity College of Teachers’ Education picked up the topic ‘The four year B.Ed programme is the most ideal for teacher preparation’ for a debate competition for the B.Ed students of Unity College on May 11.
The event was undertaken as partial fulfillment of the M.Ed course completion. The M.Ed student-teachers of the SCTE, Kohima are currently undertaking internship in various educational institutes for a period of one month in different parts of the state.
The topic was picked up with the objective to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the new course and also to bring out the concerns as a tool of finding the way forward with the possible issues to be addressed with.
The debaters on both the affirmative and opposition team presented their position on the topic for consultation and also to establish their standpoints.
One of the speakers from the opposition team strongly pointed out that the new course lacks research and thus, it fails to address the ambiguities prevailing in the previous two year B.Ed programme. “It over lapse mastery over the subject matter and extension of the duration alone cannot address the loopholes. The state agencies and other implementing bodies should check the curriculum,” asserted the speakers.
Delivering on the advantages of the new programme, another speaker stated in a positive note that young people of the present generation have high intelligence and faster learning skills. Also it was pointed out that candidates can apply for the four-year integrated teacher training programme right after completing their class 12 and the new programme would be formulated on the lines of other professional degree courses such as MBBS, Engineering and B.Tech etc.
Other pertaining matters like redesigning curriculum with proper consultation and preplanning, imparting quality education, taking up professionally trained teachers, and availability of teacher’s training institutions etc were discussed.
The opposition team won the debate by scoring a single point higher than the affirmative team.
The panel of judges for the competition were Dr. K.P. Avikasit, Retd Associate Professor, Higher Education, Nagaland; Charles Saldhana, founder of the IPANLP - Indian & International Professional Association of Neuro-Linguistic Programming; and Akangjungla from The Morung Express.
