State of English Teacher Education in Bangladesh

Abstract

With the introduction of modern approaches to language teaching like CLT in the Bangladesh context it was expected that the learners in the country would be more proficient in English. With this view some modifications and innovations were introduced in the syllabuses, methods of teaching and some changes were also made in testing and evaluation at the Secondary and Higher Secondary levels, but still there is no visible sign of improvement as far as the learning outcomes of English learners are concerned. The reasons for the poor outcomes could be ascribed to many factors. One probable reason, as it is assumed, could be its implementation in the classroom. To implement any changes, or innovation, one of the most appropriate factors is changing the teachers’ attitudes and roles which is a precondition for implementing change/innovation. Changes were introduced in Bangladesh, but if the teachers were not sufficiently prepared for the changes, the proposed changes are doomed to fail. This may be one of the major reasons for not successfully implementing CLT in the Bangladesh classrooms. It is, therefore, important to examine the English teachers education programmes in the country. This is what the study proposes to do. Under this reality this research was done on English teacher education programmes for the Secondary English teachers of Bangladesh to examine the strengths and the weaknesses and to explore the possible reasons that hinders their desired achievement. The study has three major objectives: (i) to present an overview of the teacher training programme for the English teachers in Bangladesh, (ii) to highlight the strength and weakness of the teacher training programme for the English teachers of Bangladesh, and (iii) to analyze the course content of the teacher training programme with reference to CLT objectives. The study tries to find to three research questions: (i) What are the trainees’ and trainers’ views of the training programmes?, (ii) Is there sufficient training on implementing the different activities of CLT, e.g. classroom management, lesson planning, group or pair works, learner’s autonomy, participatory class feedback etc?, (iii) Is the content of the present syllabus good enough for implementation of CLT? Two training institutions such as Teachers’ Training College of Rajshahi and National Academy for Educational Management of Dhaka were randomly selected to conduct the study. The subjects of the study were the trainees and trainers of the training programmes. 10 trainers and 74 trainees were the samples randomly selected for the study. Data for this research were collected through questionnaire survey, observation and document analysis. Findings illustrate the fact that the trainers’ and trainees’ perceptions of the training programmes are positive. However, the training programmes do not seem to take effect in reality after the teachers go back to the classroom. Findings of this study also indicate that the training was not provided by experts. So it is expected that if this training is provided by the well-trained professional trainers it may have better outcomes. Another important finding of the study is that the transmissive model of teaching is still following in the training programmes. The study recommends that if instead of a one way transmissive model of in-service training, a comprehensive reflective model is used for both pre-service and in-service training, the teacher education in Bangladesh will produce better results.