Teacher Education Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The University's key gives the Radhakrishnan Commission. What could and could not be confirmed: the Commission (the University Education Commission of 1948-49) is the earliest of the four bodies listed, but no source that could be opened states that it was the first to recommend pre-service teacher education, so the keyed option rests on the key.

The Mudaliar Commission (the Secondary Education Commission, 1952-53) and the Kothari Commission (1964-66) came later, and the Chattopadhyaya Commission, which reported on teacher education in 1985, later still. Taking 'firstly' to mean the earliest in time, the Radhakrishnan Commission is the one that fits, which is the reading the key adopts.

Answer: C

The key gives the Delors Commission (spelt 'Delor' in the paper).

The International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century, chaired by Jacques Delors, reported to UNESCO in 1996 as Learning: The Treasure Within. Its chapter on teachers stresses that the success of educational reform depends on teachers, their training, status and working conditions, and that reform cannot succeed without their co-operation and active participation.

The Kothari, Radhakrishnan and Mudaliar Commissions were Indian commissions that also valued the teacher, but the key attributes this sentence to the Delors report, which framed teachers as the agents of any reform.

Answer: B

The behaviouristic model stresses skill development.

The behaviouristic (or competency-based) model of teacher education treats teaching as a set of observable behaviours that can be broken down, practised and reinforced. Microteaching, with its practice of specific teaching skills such as questioning, explaining and reinforcement under feedback, is its typical method. The aim is the mastery of teaching skills.

Theory building is the concern of the more academic or inquiry-oriented models, and value and attitude development belong to the humanistic or personalistic models, which focus on the teacher's personal growth. The behaviourist approach deliberately concentrates on what can be observed and trained, which is skill.

Answer: C

The answer is professional.

The sentence plays on the root of the word: to be a professional is to profess, to declare publicly a body of beliefs and knowledge and to act on them. As a professional, the educator has a considered view of what education means and why it matters, and is in a position to state and defend those substantive beliefs, not just to deliver content.

An expert has specialised knowledge of a subject, a resource person supplies information or materials when called on, and a counsellor helps individuals with their problems. None of these roles carries the sense of professing beliefs about the meaning and value of education.

Answer: D

UGC started Academic staff colleges/HRDC.

Following the National Policy on Education 1986, the UGC set up Academic Staff Colleges in universities from 1987 to run orientation and refresher courses for in-service college and university teachers. They were renamed Human Resource Development Centres in 2015.

NET is an eligibility test for appointment, not in-service training, Regional Colleges of Education belong to NCERT, and central universities are not training centres for teachers.

Answer: A

The body is NCERT, the National Council of Educational Research and Training.

NCERT is the national body for research, publication and resource work in school education, and compiling reference material such as a dictionary or encyclopaedia of Indian education fits that publication and research role.

SCERT is the state-level counterpart and works within one state, UGC funds and coordinates universities and higher education, and NCTE regulates teacher-education institutions and their norms. None of these three has reference publishing as a defining function.

I could not find a source that lists a dictionary or encyclopaedia among NCERT's formal functions, so this rests on elimination and on the University's key.

Answer: B

The NCTE's Eastern Regional Committee is at Bhubaneshwar.

The National Council for Teacher Education has four regional committees, which grant recognition to teacher education institutions: Eastern at Bhubaneswar, Western at Bhopal, Northern at Jaipur and Southern at Bengaluru.

Ranchi, Kolkata and Patna are cities of the eastern region, but none is the seat of the regional committee.

Answer: D

The third kind of knowledge is pedagogical content knowledge.

Lee Shulman (spelled 'Schoulmn' in the paper) argued in 1986-87 that teachers need not only subject matter knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge but pedagogical content knowledge: knowing how to represent and teach a particular subject so that students understand it, including their likely misconceptions.

Knowledge of students, textbooks and institutions appears in his wider list of teacher knowledge, but the concept he is known for, the one that joins the other two, is pedagogical content knowledge.

Answer: B

At the reflective level of teaching the teacher's role is laissez faire.

Teaching is described at three levels: the memory level (Herbart), the understanding level (Morrison) and the reflective level (Hunt). In the usual presentation the memory level is autocratic, the understanding level democratic, and the reflective level laissez faire: the teacher creates a problem and then leaves pupils free to frame and test hypotheses, so the pupil is primary and the teacher secondary.

Autocratic and authoritarian describe the teacher-dominated memory level. "Student friendly" is a pleasant description but is not one of the three recognised teacher roles, which is why the laissez faire option is the keyed one. Some texts label the reflective level differently, so the key follows the common textbook scheme.

Answer: A

The sequence is diagnosis - prescription - evaluation.

In simulated teaching, trainees practise teaching in an artificial, role-play situation before real classes. The trainer first diagnoses the trainee's weaknesses, then prescribes the skills and practice needed, and finally evaluates the improvement, after which the cycle can be repeated.

Preparation, presentation and evaluation describe ordinary lesson stages, and 'imitation' or 'modelling' sequences belong to other training models, not to the elements of simulated training.