The Delhi Government’s International Education Conference 2021 day three had a panel discussion on “Treating Teachers as Professionals” led by policy experts from India, Netherlands, and UK.

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Manish Sisodia joined the conversation to extend his gratitude and said, “Ideas like focusing on quality teacher training, developing good infrastructure and offering a conducive work environment for the teachers. If we work together then we can implement all these ideas,” he said.

In a conversation regarding improving professional development for teachers, panelist Vimala Ramachandran, director of Educational Resource Unit (India) said, “In India, we need to re-imagine professional development for teachers. By consciously nurturing and creating micro-training ecosystems, we can move in the right direction.”

This panel had internationally revered education experts like Jelmer Evers, learning expert and innovator from the Netherlands, Subramanian Giridhar, COO of Azim Premji University, Harry Fletcher-Wood, Associate Dean at Ambition Institute and an expert in teacher development and Lucy Crehan, author of Cleverlands and an international education consultant. The session was moderated by Murari Jha, a mentor teacher for the schools of Directorate of Education.

The four key topics that the panelists engaged in were teacher job description and workload in India vs elsewhere, factors affecting teacher motivation, or lack thereof, teacher autonomy and the effective modes of professional development, followed by a question and answer round.

Subramanian talked about the importance of the Voluntary Teacher Forum which serves as an integral work that is being done on-ground. “A forum where groups of 20-25 teachers take up a topic and come together periodically with a simple focus on ‘Can I teach better tomorrow?’,” he said.

Similarly, Ramachandran said “Volunteer teacher forums are the heart of teacher professional development. There needs to be systematic cluster groups in the district level. There also needs to be an affirmative process post teacher training. This can only happen when teachers have trained together and their resource person is able to provide feedback regularly.”

Evers, who is also a teacher in the Netherlands, brought the importance of acknowledging overall systematic issues to the foray. He said, “Just being a good teacher is not good enough anymore. If you are not aware of the systemic issues in education, it would be hard to to get used to the new practices that are coming in.”

Crehan, on the other hand, offered comparative models from other countries. “In Japan, China, Singapore, the practice of ‘lesson study’ is common. The teachers come together and produce lesson plans on how to teach a certain concept. Talking to colleagues about your practice is intrinsically motivating,” she said.

Fletcher, who is a history teacher in England, discussed how it is crucial to give teachers space to build on their ideas. “We need to give teachers the time together to work on their ideas outside of classrooms to refine their teaching plans and help them identify habits they need to change,” he said.