Panaji: As part of the NEP implementation, 80 govt high school teachers from Goa — 40 science and 40 math teachers — were provided intensive residential training on the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) campus in Karnataka in June last year.
The teachers were given a pre-test and post-test during the training, where they answered a Class X question paper taken by students. During the pre-test, the teachers were seen having scored an average of only 22 marks out of 100 in the case of math and 26 in science.
Some teachers scored as low as four marks, the training report shows.
In the pre-test, as many as 32 teachers scored between 0 and 35 in both science and math. The lowest score in math was four and the lowest score in science was nine.
The IISc trainers found that most of the teachers did not have math and physics subjects in their graduate studies. The trainers termed the pre-test performance of the teachers ‘far below our expectation’.
“In most high schools, science is taught by teachers who have studied chemistry, botany, and zoology during their BSc. However, they do not have math and physics in their BSc and hence they are not confident in teaching physics topics contained in the science subject,” the training report states.
“This is clearly visible in their pre-test result in that they score less than 5% in physics and less than 10% in basic math.”
Following these pre-test results, the teachers were put through intensive training of 10 hours per day and were made to perform over 90 experiments for 11 days in June last year to upgrade their skills for syllabi from Class VIII to X.
Though they showed significant improvement, a few teachers still had a score of 50% or below in the post-test. One math teacher’s score was still nine marks out of 100 after the training.
To help the teachers overcome the fear of teaching physics, four days of physics training including basic math was built into the programme, besides two-and-a-half days of chemistry and biology training.
After the test, the average math score of teachers improved massively from 22.1 to 72.4 and of science teachers from 26.1 to 76.7.
“The results after the training (post-test result) clearly suggest that the teachers are indeed talented. Therefore, it is possible to enrich their knowledge. In turn, they are expected to train and teach their students better than what they have been doing so far…,” the report states. “There are very few teachers who scored less than 50% in the post-test. In addition to improving their knowledge as reflected in their marks in comparison to the pre-test, they are motivated to teach correctly.”
Typically, each day three lectures were given followed by problem-solving sessions during the training.
“In-house tutors assisted the teachers in problem-solving sessions. One or two topics were covered each day to maintain a focused and in-depth approach,” the training report states. “At the end of the session, assignment problems were discussed. Every alternate day, a small test was given on the subject taught on previous days and evaluated.”
The report adds, “The morning of the last day was kept for revision and doubt resolving. To ensure the impact of training on teachers, on the final day of the training, post-test was conducted and evaluated.”
