Make the TTCs homes of academic activities

Ranjit Podder :
The history of teacher education,teacher training,and Teachers’ Training Colleges (TTC) in Bangladesh is older than a century. Teacher training and teacher education started formally in this sub-continent in 1908 with the establishment of David Hare Teachers’ Training College affiliated to Calcutta University in Kolkata. And the Teachers’ Training College, Dhaka was established in order to train and educate the secondary teachers of East Bengal a year later in 1909. Since then some more TTCs were established in Bangladesh to meet the increasing demand of teachers to be professionally developed. Currently there are 14 public TTCs in Bangladesh. These 14 TTCs are contributing to the framing and implementing the national curriculum of Bangladesh, especially the secondary curriculum.
For the last two decades, these 14 public TTCs have been passing through a lot of hazards such as threats posed by private TTCs, Bangladesh Open University (BOU), posting of non-trained teachers in TTCs and so on. Bangladesh Open University follows the same curriculum as National University (NU) and offers the same degreeby teaching their students on only some of the Fridays of the year whereas trainees in Govt. TTCs have to attend almost all the classes on all working days of the year, take part in teaching practices, have to conduct an action research and write a report on the findings, take part in ICT classes and so on.
However, the same curriculum is taught in about 104 private TTCs all over the country under NU. Most of the private TTCs do not have their own campuses, qualified teaching staff, and adequate infrastructural facilities to implement the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) curriculum.
Andrew Morris, a British Consultant who worked in Bangladesh for the Ministry of Education, conducted a comparative study in the Govt. and the private TTCs and submitted a report asking the government to shut the private TTCs except two or three for the sake of quality education in the country. The government step was not successful due to the writ petition of the private TTCs. Some practising and would-be teachers are admitted to those colleges and buy the B.Ed certificates mostly for monetary gains like salary increase or appointment in the post of head and assistant head teachers.
Trainees in private TTCs do not have to take part in two phases of six-week teaching practices each in schools where they practise the methods, techniques, and employ the learning theories learnt in TTC classrooms.On the other hand, BOU completes the same B.Edcurriculum in around 26Fridays of the year! What an arrangement of certificates distribution by a national university of a country and a public university like BOU! This compromise with quality should not be allowed to go so far if we want to secure the national interest.
Why is it necessary to sella professional certificateso cheap? We will have to decide if we really need teachers without proper teachingknowledge and skills.Besides, national level institutions cannot and should not serve petty individual purposes defying national interests.
In this backdrop when the public TTCs were suffering from student crisis, the Teachers’ Training Colleges have started to widen their periphery of activities through introducinghonourscourse in education to provide education sectors with more skilled and specialized manpower alongside providing training to the practicing teachers, head teachers, School Managing Committee (SMC) members, local elite, and so on. Six TTCs have started to teach honourscourse in education from 2013 -14 academic sessions. It needs to mention that TTC Dhaka started this honours course in 2005. With the introduction of honours, the status of all these colleges has been upgraded and they will be further upgraded with the introduction of Master of Education (M.Ed) in these colleges in next three or four years. By this time the TTCs will, no doubt, develop their capacities.
Probably those days are not very far when these TTCs will be the homes of various academic activities and interested researchers will be able to pursue M.Phil and Ph.D level research under the guidance of the TTC staff. Of course, for that, the TTCs need to prepare themselves as soon as possible.
When these colleges are set to work for academic excellence, the name Teachers’ Training College does not match with the coursesand activities of the colleges. Alongside short training courses, the colleges currently run and will run other academic courses. Then what is the justification of calling them as Teachers’ Training Colleges? Is it not wise to change the names to ‘College of Education and Research’ or something that matches the activities of the colleges? I would like to request the concerned authority to ponder upon the matter and to give a suitable name that will reflect the activities of the colleges.