DIFFERENTIAL EFFECT OF CONTENT BASED AND PEDAGOGICAL TRAINING ON TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

in quality instructions because of the limitations of their natural pedagogies. A better understanding of new methods of teaching and the expanding range of pedagogies is only through training Training in content not only contributes to improve the content knowledge of teachers but also expands their natural pedagogies. The reason behind the limited success of exiting in-service teacher training programmes is that training activity for teachers content and pedagogical areas planned separately with long intervals. This gap in execution is the main cause of the ineffectiveness of training in these areas. Eliminating the gaps and sequencing the training in content and then pedagogy provides significant results in this research. The most important finding of this research is that training sessions must be conducted in sequence. Teachers benefited from training in content, which consequently resulted in efficient use of pedagogy already known to them. Therefore, academic qualifications in the relevant subject alone cannot be assumed as an alternative to content training. Training in specific content from the textbooks to be taught in the classroom is a desired element of training of in service teachers. In the changing scenario of education policies and curriculum change, training in content is necessary for novice and in-service teachers, especially in our context a teacher has to teach almost all subjects at primary level irrespective of his or her own subject specialization.