Teacher of Today vs Guru: 17 Characteristics a teacher today needs to acquire and develop

Teacher of Today vs Guru: 17 Characteristics a teacher today needs to acquire and develop

Even though there are several aspects of ancient Indian education that could be adopted in modern education, if you want to be a professional teacher today, you will be required to learn and master different skills and imbibe different qualities, and try to portray them in your interaction with others. Following are some of the characteristics that a teacher today needs to acquire and develop:

1. Open and positive - think positively- encourage others also to be positive
2. Communicative - share ideas with others encouraging effective communication
3. Listener - to students in an empathetic manner
4. Dependable – honest, open and authentic in working with others.
5. Personable – establish and maintain positive mutual working relationships while building trust and appreciation through personal interaction and involvement.
6. Organized – systematic, working in a planned manner
7. Self-confident and poised, encourage students to develop a positive self- concept.
8. Motivated - enthusiastic with standards and expectations
9. Constructive - in thoughts actions.
10. Compassionate - caring, empathetic and able to respond to people at a feeling level. Open with personal thoughts and feelings, encouraging others to do so.
11. Individually perceptive - sees each student as a unique and valuable individual
12. Value based - focuses upon the worth and dignity of human beings.
13. Sensitive to community values.
14. Knowledgeable - is in a constant quest for knowledge
15. Creative - versatile, innovative, and open to new ideas
16. Patient – strives to be highly fair and objecive
17. Committed — to students and the profession

A professional teacher needs to be confident without being arrogant. Interaction with the group needs professional standards of behaviour: polite, firm and fair. Proper preparation is another crucial requirement of professionalism. When you enter the classroom, you should have all the required materials and the lesson plan ready.

1.3.4 The Changing Nature of the Society Today and Corresponding Roles and Responsibility of the Teacher

Changing Nature of To-days Society: You may realize the tremendous metamorphosis taking place in the global society due to ICT interventions, today. ICT influences all walks of our life. The whole new social order is emerging in last couple of decades. There is no precedence to these changes. The technological developments and advances in the emerging society of to-day are so fast that taking place it is not possible to imagine the life after hundred years. But one can visualize the life in next ten-twenty years. What form of tomorrow’s society are we visualizing? What are the changes occurring in the purposes and conceptual framework of education due to this social transformation? How the delivery modes are changing? Is the education today relevant for tomorrow, or we are producing the misfits?

This transformed society requires an immediate Plan of Action (POA) for Education to cope up with the new social structure and its unprecedented needs.

Connected and knowledge-based society: The impact of ICT is simply astounding - changing the face of world so fast-particularly in last two decades. The all pervading applications of ICT tools and techniques have revolutionized the entire life, including education. What one can do with the marvels like mobile phone, television, computers, etc, is simply unbelievable. On the one hand, these applications are increasing in number and extended to newer areas, every day; On the other hand, they are becoming cheaper and affordable to and in routine use of under privileged section of society. In the vast population of in India, today, crores of people are connected on mobile phones, telephones, internet, and social networks on computers and this number is increasing exponentially.

Statistics retrieved on 07-10-2011 from the web site of TRAI shows that India has over 100 million internet users (of whom 40 million use the Internet via mobile phones) as of December 2010. Also, India had 851.70 million mobile phone subscribers and 885.99 million telephone connections at the end of June 2011. Mobile telephones grow at the rate of 11.41 million subscribers a month,

When everything is getting costlier in the global economy, the only commodity becoming cheaper day by day, is ICT, whereas, its access, utility, quality, affordability, and outreach are improving every second. Still, the penetration of computer with internet connection as a partner and principal contributor in the process of learning is very slow. When the whole world is getting connected we are still teaching them in disconnected way; in compartments of content, isolated disciplines, not holistically, not integrated with life.

ICT Applications in educational process: Today’s educational processes are also influenced by the ICT applications. We can see that ICT can be useful in curriculum development and delivery modes, learning processes, assessment and evaluation like online exams (large number), on-demand exams (individual), curriculum transaction and new learning processes like collaborative working, learning and developing, self-study, open education resources, L3 groups, online learning, etc.

Teachers today, have to address to the issues related to this new learning process and newer learning environment. They have to find out as how to facilitate learning and accelerate the process of change. Today’s students would live active life for another half a century in this connected society. They will need new competencies, potentials, skills to be efficient and productive citizens of this global society. Education, as an instrument of social change has to cater to the needs of this emerging society. Education in this knowledge-based society is not the content-based teacher-centric literacy of 3 Rs (reading / writing / arithmetic) but the learner-centric, work- based computer literacy and proficiency for facilitation of learning; not only the values of our culture but also the global values

Delivery of the curricular activities is confined not only to the conventional class with teacher-taught face to face interaction but also through self- learning, and distributed class interacting through social networks, like chat, face book, twitter, discussion groups, L3 groups, etc.

It’s not teaching and learning in conventional sense, but many new and innovative modes of intervention have come up like self-learning and group cooperative collaborative working, learning facilitated by mentors and supported by technology while working together.

Must Read:

Ancient Indian Education- A brief overview

• 1.1 Concept of ‘Guru’ of the yore.
• 1.2 Role and responsibilities of Guru
• 1.3&4 Professional teacher of today | Characteristics, roles and responsibilities of teacher

Autonomy of the learner: Instructional processes are changing to respect the learner autonomy. The learner is supreme and has got all the choices available to select his/her learning strategy. New learning processes like self study, cooperative and collaborative learning, e-learning and blended learning, group learning-working-developing together, L3 groups of teachers/ learners, social networking like blogs / face book / twitter / web pages etc are being used with ever increasing frequency, for sharing of ideas, experiences, discussions and learning. Development and use of OERs, techniques and technologies for curriculum development and delivery, new pedagogies like constructivist pedagogy, are proving more effective than the conventional pedagogy in creation and sharing of knowledge.

Role of teacher in emerging society: Challenges of technology have created new roles for the teacher. Lorillard’s Conversation Model describes the four types of roles viz. discursive, adaptive, interactive and reflective roles of the teacher.

In the new world, there are numerous roles the teacher is expected to perform. The typical roles may include:

• Developer and nurturer of e-culture,
• Networker and change agent,
• Learning practitioner and facilitator.
• Learning resource developer
• Techno-pedagogue
• Evaluator
• Action researcher
• Behaviour scientist
• Curriculum designer and transact or
• Instructional system designer

But does our education systems prepare such teachers? There are many similarities between Guru of the yore and the professional teacher of 21st century. But the conditions are altogether different. Therefore, before comparing them, it is required to see the conditions and circumstances which education had to pass through and how the modern education emerged and the role perceptions of the teacher changed, particularly at elementary schooling. RTE also has prescribed roles and responsibilities of the teacher. They are described in the next unit.