MAJOR REFORMS IN THE CONTEMPORARY TEACHER EDUCATION

Knowledge enables an individual to think, to analyze and to understand the existing situation, and the inter-linkages and externalities of each action. It empowers an individual to form his or her own opinion, to act and transform conditions to lead to a better quality of life. Teaching is a versatile field that requires at all times the right identification of indices of developments in the society. The Indian education system improvement is required at many levels? from primary schools to higher education and research institutions of national excellence. Kothari commission (1964-66) remarks- ‘The destiny of India is being shaped in its classroom.’ But the quality of education is greatly determined by the quality of teachers and teacher education programmes. For getting knowledgeable society of human beings, there is a critical need to bring quality in teacher education. In a society of the future, education will play an essential role in creating the new way of life specific to knowledge and learning based society. Effective teachers and educators possess a well-grounded knowledge of the content areas that are central to their teaching. The rapid changes in our world require students to be flexible, to take the initiative and lead when necessary, and to produce something new and useful. In order to create a world class knowledge society, every one of us has to be knowledge worker. This paper describes the importance of creating a knowledge based society through teacher education programmes for making India a powerful country.