A Professional Learning Community Approach for Teacher Development and OER creation - A toolkit/Introduction to the tool-kit

The status of the teacher reflects the socio-cultural ethos of a society; it is said that no people can rise above the level of its teachers. The Government and the community should endeavour to create conditions which will help motivate and inspire teachers on constructive and creative lines. Teachers should have the freedom to innovate, to devise appropriate methods of communication and activities relevant to the needs and capabilities of and the concerns of the community - National Policy of Education, 1986 (NPE).

Teacher education acknowledged as an important lever for the quality of school education. Improving the quality of teacher education would help in development of more capable and motivated teachers, which would improve the quality of classroom processes and school education. The National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education, 2010 (NCFTE) has highlighted the challenges in limitation in the current teacher-education system. It says "An attitude of resignation towards initial teacher education and piecemeal in-service training courses have become an integral part of state provisioning for elementary education. The training of teachers is a major area of concern at present as both  pre-service and in-service training of school teachers are extremely inadequate  and poorly managed in most states". The NCFTE envisions that 'the broad aims of continuing professional development programmes for teachers are to : Break out of intellectual isolation and share experiences and insights with others in the field, both teachers and academics working in the area of specific disciplines as well as intellectuals in the immediate and wider society'.

In a society that is termed as the 'digital society', educational processes too can be meaningfully impacted by digital technologies (popularly known as Information and Communication Technologies, or simply ICTs). Perhaps the most important area of integration would be teacher education. A significant focus of ICT in education has been on students learning to use few software applications, without much involvement of the teachers, this has made these programs stand-alone. Integrating ICT into the academic and administrative processes of the school will require investing in integrating it for Teacher Professional Development (TPD). The NPE 1986 says, "The importance of competent teachers to the nation’s school system can in no way be overemphasized. It is well known that the quality and extent of learner achievement are determined primarily by teacher competence, sensitivity and teacher motivation. It is common knowledge too that the academic and professional standards of teachers constitute a critical component of the essential learning conditions for achieving the educational goals".

Material development has been acknowledged as an important component of TPD, which would enhance the availability of local resources for teaching. A recent development in the educational domain has been the rise of Open Educational Resources (OER), with the promise of delivering quality education. An essentially, digital phenomenon, OER seek to leverage the possibilities of digital methods for accessing, creating, modifying and sharing educational content. OER has redefined the copyright regime, stimulating the sharing of content with license to re-use, modify and share or publish.

There is need to promote the integration of ICT in education, to meet the aims of TPD and creation of teaching resources. This toolkit aims to promote a model of TPD, which integrates ICT the creation, re-purposing and publishing of OER using FOSS applications.

Implementing the PLC-OER model in government school systems would improve the teacher development and curricular resource development processes and thereby support the national goal of an equitable education system.