A GUEST LECTURE ON ‘TOWARDS A VIABLE MODEL OF CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT’

Guest Speaker: Dr Ramanujam Parthasarathy
Director, ELT Centre, and Senior Professor of English
Gudlavalleru Engineering College

A brief outline of the lecture and its significance

Given the increasing challenges in higher education in general and engineering education in particular, teachers are required to enhance both their subject-matter competence and pedagogical competence in an ongoing way. This calls for continuing professional development (CPD). But, there is no institutional mechanism for CPD in our country. As a matter of fact, teacher education and training itself is rather undefined in Indian higher education. In the absence of an institutional mechanism, perhaps, teachers themselves must take care of their CPD. To facilitate this, they need a professional development model:

that places them at the centre of the development process;

that makes them responsible for their professional development’;

that is dynamic and responsive; and

that can ensure their professional development in an ongoing way.

In the one-and-a-half-hour lecture, Dr P. Ramanujam, a CPD expert, proposes to present the Reflective Approach as a viable and self-sustaining model of CPD and acquaint the K L E Ffaculty with some of the proven strategies for teacher reflection.