Role of the Core Committee in Teacher Professional Development

By Guru Moger

Scenario 1: Meeting of Core Committee Members, Hallikhed TLC of Bidar district, Karnataka 

It was the last Monday of November at around 6.30 in the evening, teachers started entering the Teaching-Learning Centre (TLC1). One of the teachers picked up a ledger from the table and started creating lines to take the attendance of the participants. Another teacher went to the next room to bring drinking water for the teachers. Another teacher went to check if the toilets were open for use. Some teachers were making calls and sending messages to fellow teachers to come to the meeting. Some were reading newspapers and magazines, and some were listening to music. The whole environment was animated, and the teachers were doing all this with joy without instructions from any coordinator or supervisor. It was like family members doing routine work at home.

Around 7 pm, the room was filled with 23 people – teachers (including ten women teachers), head teachers, Cluster Resource Persons (CRPs) and Block Resource Persons (BRPs). They were sharing their classroom experiences, new experiments and learnings. A teacher shared, ‘We realised that our children made errors in selecting the options for questions in the KSQAAC2 (CSAS)3test; they were ticking and rounding off multiple options. Hence, we prepared model question papers and made the children practice the correct process.’ A social science teacher added to this, ‘My students had problem remembering history, particularly the dates and events, so, I had thought of a game [around it] involving all the children. Now the children remember and can recall at least 80-100 historical dates and events.’ Similarly, all other core committee members shared their classroom experiences. After this, they reviewed the previous month’s TLC academic activities and planned for events for the next month. The meeting went on till 8:30 pm. The whole discussion was facilitated by a team member.

Scenario 2: Meeting of Core Committee Members, Kalaburgi South TLC of Kalaburgi district, Karnataka

It was around 4.30 in the evening, on a Saturday, and 15 teachers were gathered in the TLC, seven of them women. The agenda was to review the previous month’s activities and plan for the next month. The discussion was facilitated by a TLC coordinator. The team seemed very motivated and enthusiastic to do new experiments.

A science teacher shared how a self-motivated science group, voluntarily designed and implemented a three-day workshop module for primary school teachers and recoded the learnings. A state resource person for Nali Kali shared how the Nali Kali teachers of the South block voluntarily came forward on a weekend to prepare Nali Kali TLMs, which concluded in a Nali Kali mela for teachers.

The interesting point discussed was, on the occasion of TLC Annual Day celebration, the core committee members were planning to stage a play on ‘Savithri Bai Pule’ to introduce the teachers to her contribution to education. The core committee members had organized a three-day residential workshop on ‘Drama in education’ which was facilitated by a member of the Azim Premji Foundation. They discussed the roles and responsibilities and prepared a list and shared the responsibilities amongst themselves.

Core Committees

The practice, currently, is to form core committees before establishing TLCs in any location. At present, most of the TLCs in the districts of North-East Karnataka (NEK) region have core committees and are performing better. Thus, this study will attempt to understand how a TLC core committee helps in the vibrancy (organizing regular events, increasing the footfall, book transactions etc.) of a TLC and how it contributes to the Teacher Professional Development (TPD) process. This is a case study of core committees from three NEK districts –Bidar, Kalaburgi and Koppal.

Six core committee members and three TLC coordinators were interviewed to collect information. Two core committee meetings were observed to understand the role of committee members, how they work towards the TDP of their fellow teachers. Previous documents, such as concept note, process documents, were referred to as a secondary source of data for this case study.

Concept of core committee

Teacher Professional Development is the most important factor contributing to quality educational outcome. Facilitating TPD has been the core work of the Azim Premji Foundation. One of the many lessons for the Foundation has been that teachers need conducive autonomous spaces—in the physical and symbolic sense—to engage with each other, with other experts, and with professionally relevant materials and resources, to be able to learn and develop professionally. The Foundation has established TLCs in many teacher towns to provide autonomous space for teachers to develop professionally.

With many years of experience with TLCs, the Foundation realized that the vibrancy and sustainability of TLCs could be best achieved with the collaborative effort from the Foundation and the Education Department. From this learning, emerged the need for core committees. A core committee is a group of members comprising teachers, head teachers, educational functionaries (CRP) and members of the Foundation. They meet once every month with a full quorum and discuss TLC activities. The meeting is scheduled based on the nature of the discussion, sometimes, it may require a full day and at other times, just a few hours in the evening.

The purpose of the meeting is two-fold – first, to thoroughly review the activities of the previous month and secondly, to plan the activities for the next month. The core committee meetings are facilitated by one of the committee members on a rotation basis. The committee is responsible for taking decisions, inviting resource persons, visualization the vibrancy of their TLC, teacher mobilisation and execution of activities.

Apart from core committee meetings, the members also participate in regular evening discussions, Voluntary Teacher Forums (VTFs) and other special events, like Teacher’s Day celebrations. The members take the responsibility of facilitating some of the evening discussions (individual and group-wise). All special or informal events are planned and executed by core committee members. The TLC is now a collaborative platform. Most of the administrative and academic responsibilities are shared between the Foundation and the Core Committee members. This collaborative approach contributes immensely to TPD. A gradual shift in the role of core committee members from mere administrative or logistic support to academic support can be seen.

Characteristics of core committees

A core committee is formed along with the setting-up of a TLC. Initially, TLC visioning workshops were organised by the Foundation with locally available teachers. Then, the idea and need of a core committee were introduced to the group of teachers, CRPs and community members. The CRPs and interested teachers took up the initiative and volunteered to become members of the committee. The committees have BRPs, CRPs, head teachers and assistant teachers. Generally, in all the core committees, 40 percent of the members are women.

There is no formal structure for a core committee, it is a very informal group with shared understanding and responsibilities. Initially, they focus more on the administrative work like mobilizing teachers, deciding what materials are to be procured for the TLC etc., but gradually the ownership moves towards academic aspects. They meet on the first or the last Friday (it varies depending on the need of each TLC) of every month to review and discuss TLC activities.

The core committee is an academic content-rich group since the group has many state- and district-level Master Resource Persons (MRPs) who work for Guruchethna and other department trainings. There are MRPs in Mathematics, Science, English, Social Science and Nali Kali. This is very positive and encouraging for other teachers. Many of the VTFs and events were facilitated by state-level MRPs, if a TLC does not have subject-wise Resource Persons (RPs). Voluntarily core committee members organise workshops, seminars and VTFs. Since they have been facilitating department trainings; they use those learning materials and contents with some modifications, in consultation with the Foundation members.

Members of the core committee are bound by a common interest. At the Hallikhed TLC, most of the teachers working in and around six clusters reside in Hallikhed Cluster although they come from various other districts. They spend most of their time in Hallikhed, going to their native places once or twice a month. The TLC is their meeting point where they discuss professional and personal issues with their fellow teachers.

Along with managing TLC activities, the members also help with capacity-building. They are trained on the content of education perspective, how children learn, aims of education, education leadership etc. They are also taken for exposure visits to understand school practices. All these have helped augment their motivation and improve their classroom and school practices.

A core committee has leaders with specific leadership qualities. Whenever there is an issue, these leaders involve themselves and solve it. The others follow and listen to them. In the Bidar TLC, initially, there was some problem related to the TLC being set-up in a particular school, but one of the leaders resolved the issue.

As observed by TLC Coordinators, the classroom practice of most of the core committee members is good. They have been trying to take the learnings from the workshops and trainings to their classroom. The coordinators observe their classroom on a regular basis and record their practices.

Some of the members have received Best Teacher and Best School awards for their academic performance and overall school development. Some members have improved their schools in terms of infrastructure and academics; some have prepared action plans for their schools. A teacher from Hallikhed TLC was taken to an exposure visit to Kerala, after coming back motivated, he has developed his school as a ‘green school’ for which the school has received the Green School award.

The membership number of the group vary from TLC to TLC, at Hallikhed, the core committee has 32 members; Kalaburgi South has 16 members and; Koppal has around 18 members. The core members have been in the team since its inception, but some members come and go depending on their interests and other responsibilities.

The core committee does not practice hierarchy, even though the group consist of CRPs, BRPs, and Head Teachers; they do not follow any protocol. They identify one person to lead the discussion based on its relevance. Responsibilities are shared based on the competency and capacity of members.

Contribution to Teacher Professional Development

The core committees were formed initially to manage the administrative process of the TLC but gradually, these became the key drivers for teacher capacity building. Along with their contribution to the vibrancy of the TLC, they are now voluntarily initiating events for building the professional capacity of teachers. Some of the attempts by the committee members are mentioned below:

Science Jatha
In Hallikhed TLC, the core committee has initiated a Science Jatha. The idea behind the jatha was, every school has science equipment, but teachers were not using them in their classroom transactions. A group of Science teachers and core committee members together discussed and decided to create resources and materials mapping the Science textbook from classes VI-VIII. They identified the experiments to be done for each class and developed materials based on that. Then, the Science teachers visited a few schools and conducted science experiments with the teacher of that school. This was very useful. Later, they realised that they have to reach a greater number of schools. Hence, they organised a workshop for 30 Science teachers and oriented them about this jatha and how to conduct experiments in school.

After the jatha, they made follow-up visits to see the change or regular practice of experiments. Later, this jatha led to a Kalika Mela, and many exhibitions were held in different schools. This takes place every year. They also use this process to mobilise teachers and introduce the teachers to TLC materials.

This process also led to the creation of subject-wise forums. A teacher says, ‘Earlier there was a notion among teachers that TLC is only for science teachers, because most of the members were from a science background, creating subject-wise forum broke the myth and now all subject teachers participate in the events.’ The experience sharing is not only limited to academic events; they also share some important processes that they set up in their schools, such as gardening, SDMC etc.

Science workshop
Kalaburgi South core committee members realised the need for building the capacity of Science teachers and they designed a three-day module on six science concepts. The Science group spent 15 days on the module preparation after school hours, and it was executed well by them. They have facilitated the three-day sessions, and it was received well by the participants.

A core committee member expresses the success of the workshop, ‘Very few teachers have been utilizing TLC; there are teachers who work in remote schools and do not get the time to participate in TLC activities. As a responsible core committee member, we don’t want them to be left behind. Hence, we decided to help them to build their understanding. We took help from the Foundation members in designing the module, spent our personal time to prepare. But teachers were mobilized by an order from the BEO. The workshop was very good, we received valid feedback from participants. Now we are thinking of organizing similar workshops for other subject teachers.’

School as a Resource Centre
Alavandi (Koppal District) TLC core committee members developed a school as a resource centre to cater to the needs of the teachers working in remote clusters. Kavaloor is a remote cluster located at the distance of around 20km from the TLC. Similar activities run in this centre and core committee members share the responsibility of running this resource centre. They organise the events and sometimes, they invite the Foundation members for the facilitation. Around 90 percent of the resources in the centre were mobilized by core committee members and teachers by means of a donation from village people. This centre does not have too many physical materials, but it works as an extended TLC centre and core committee members organise events for teachers.

Kalika Anubhav
Hallikhed core committee members started sharing their classroom experiences. They take up the responsibility of identifying classroom challenges, such as teaching difficulties, children learning difficulties and how they are trying to resolve them. They discuss this with the Foundation members, department RPs and execute the plan in their classrooms. The reflection on the process is shared in the TLC meetings. They share their learning and challenges and other members and teachers provide solutions for their challenges. It helps the teachers who face similar challenges to adopt these methods in their classroom. This is an ongoing process and is linked with the capacity-building events organised by the Foundation.

Practice of constitutional values
Some core committee members are trying to practice constitutional values in their school and this is observed by the Foundation members. The learnings are shared every Monday. For example, being democratic in the class, providing equal opportunities to all children etc. This was initiated very recently.

Contribution to vibrancy of TLC

Footfall (Mobilistaion)
The core committee members share the responsibility of mobilizing teachers for the event. In particular, more than 80 percent of the mobilisation effort in non-formal events is by the core committee members. There lead teachers to the core committees where they listen to them. A teacher explains how they have reached a greater number of teachers over the years, ‘We have reached about 60 teachers in the first year, 125 in the second year, 150 in the third and in this fourth year, we have reached around 250 teachers. We motivate and invite other teachers; we work in a good relationship.’

Whenever the events are planned, members share the responsibility of organizing them. Responsibilities, such as stage management, guest identification, teacher mobilisation, food and accommodation etc, are shared. This is a common process across the core committees. A member says, ‘The TLC is used for different purposes, but from it, we get inputs for our teaching; we gather there even without any notification, this helps to avoid unwanted activities. We have changed ourselves and we have changed the attitude of other teachers who are regular members now; we motivated them and involved them in TLC activities.’

Events (formal and informal)
The core committee is responsible for initiating new events in the TLC. The members believe that to make the TLC alive, there should be daily activities. Based on the need of the teachers, they organise both formal and informal events. Most of the informal events are solely managed by core committee members, and formal events are managed in collaboration with the Foundation members.

A core committee member says, ‘We want our TLC to be active throughout the week, hence, we plan events every day. From Monday to Saturday, we engage every day with the events like experience sharing, VTF, evening discussion, video screening etc. critical review of each event helps us to run the TLC effectively.’

Ownership of TLC
The core committee members take complete ownership of the TLC and they run the TLC in the absence of the Foundation members. A member says, ‘The TLC is for us, for our capacity-building; the objective of the TLC is achieved only with our regular participation and ownership. In the absence of Foundation members, one of us will take responsibility and run the TLC.’

In informal events, the role of Foundation members is minimal. They contribute to the formal events, like VTFs, workshops and seminars. There are evidences where core committee members have taken the responsibility of facilitating the formal events also. A member adds. ‘It is like our home, and it is our responsibility to make it vibrant, clean and active. We are all family members, together we can solve any problem.’

Advocacy
The core committee plays a very important role in advocating organizational activities with the public education system. A core committee member had this to say, ‘Whenever we organize large events, we try to share this with a larger audience through media. Also, whenever we get chance, we communicate this with the larger groups, like cluster interaction meeting. Whenever we go for an exposure visit, when we organize a mela, we share the information with all the teachers. This creates interest and motivates them. It is our role to bring as many teachers to this platform as possible so that they too reap its benefits.’ They share the events in the WhatsApp group which is very active in all the TLCs.

Sustainability
The core committee is responsible for the sustainability of the TLC – sustaining participation, organizing events and mobilizing teachers. The gradual shift from an administrative role to an academic role; change in their classroom practice and also having learnt how to balance between the department work and their role as TLC core committee members, has added to this.

Views on multi-mode approach

The core committee members are very positive about the multi-mode approach of TLC. They feel that this approach is very useful for teachers. A member shares, ‘It is always good for teachers to gather information from multiple sources; knowledge has to be upgraded always.’

They also speak about the importance of different events, their uniqueness and how these help teachers. ‘There is connectivity between what we discuss in workshops and what we see in the exposure visit. We may get some content knowledge in the workshops, but we see the real picture from exposure visits, this strengthens our knowledge,’ a member remarked. They also speak about the connection between larger events and related follow-up visits. They appreciate and see value in Foundation members’ school visit after the workshop. It helps them to stay connected and discuss classroom challenges.

A core committee member who went for an exposure visit, says, ‘We went to Beluru and Halebidu as a part of a social science workshop. We did a video call with our children and showed the place to them and explained its significance. It was a very useful and unique experience; teachers need such opportunities.’

They also believe that the multi-mode approach helps in reaching more teachers; some teachers might be interested in seminars, some might have interest in evening discussions, and hence, organizing multiple events helps all the teachers to participate in TLC events. A mix of both formal and non-formal events certainly create interest and keep them motivated. It also helps to nurture their capacity in other areas, like leadership and building relationship. They believe that the multi-mode approach is very useful for cross-learning and to get the overall teaching experience.

Changes in practice

Open to learning and change
After a two to three years of experience in the core committee in working with multiple responsibilities and participating in the capacity building events, the teachers feel that they are more open to learn and change their practices. All the core committee members are open to their classroom practice being observed. They invite RPs to observe their class and get feedback to improve their practice. A member shared, ‘I have been participating in core committee events but had felt a fear in sharing my thoughts; now there is confidence built due to the open practice in this group; I can share anything openly without  hesitation, thanks to core committee members.’

Equal opportunity to all
An important learning for core committee members is to provide equal opportunities to all. One member shares, ‘We organised a three-day science workshop for the teachers who work in the remote places and do not get time to participate in VTFs; we thought we should include them in the TPD and provide opportunities to learn. This decision was taken by the core committee and we prepared and implemented in the field.’

Reflection
Core committee members started reflecting on their practices. This is due to the practice developed by the Foundation through regular TLC review meetings. How to objectively and critically reflect on past events and plan accordingly for the next events without compromising on the quality is the purpose of this reflection. A similar process has been introduced in school-related activities, as well.

Discipline towards TPD
The team feels that TPD is a continuous process, hence, they participate in most of the TLC events. They allow others to observe their class and receive feedback. Also, they organise events for other teachers, like Science Jatha, Mela etc.

Personal and professional respect
Members believe that giving personal and professional respect holds everyone together to achieve success.  An HT adds to this and shares, ‘We have been in this group for the last two years, we feel like family members, we give respect to each other and support unconditionally. The similar nature has been carried in our school as well. In my school I treat my fellow teachers equally, we share the responsibilities and work in coordination with mutual respect. Maybe, we adopted this from the Foundation members, from how they work with us, how they respect us.’

Change in perspective
There is a change in the perspective of core committee members. They have stopped corporal punishment and believe that all children are capable of learning and they have adopted the activity-based teaching method. A TLC coordinator supports this by saying, ‘We have been observing their practices for the last two years, there is a gradual shift in their practice and perspective, many of the members have stopped corporal punishment, many have adopted activity-based classroom method and they are adopting innovative teaching method and their experiences are shared in the TLC events.’

Adopting organizational culture
The members strongly appreciate the culture followed in the organisation, like trusting and respecting each other, taking personal care, maintain gender-equality and motivating others. They say this culture helped them to practice in their academic and personal life.

Conclusion

In the present context of teacher professional development process, the TLC core committee has an important role to play. The TLC is a platform for teacher development through various modes but sustaining and motivating a group of teachers around the TLC to regularly engage in events needs concerted efforts. As an outsider, it would be challenging to do so, but it is possible when stakeholders from within the system come together to take the responsibility of identifying the professional needs of teachers and design suitable events to support them. The core committees are playing this role in most of the TLCs in the NEK region. It is evident from the study that every TLC or teacher development platform needs such committees with certain defined responsibilities to engage some segment of the teaching community in a sustained manner by showcasing possibilities of change in the school environment and teaching-learning process.

AUTHOR
Guru Moger, Field Research Group, Azim Premji Foundation, Kalaburgi, Karnataka