Embracing The Digital Guru: Evolving Role Of Teachers

The government’s immediate response to the Covid-19 pandemic underwent the lockdowns to mitigate the early and quick spread of the virus and strengthen the health infrastructure to ensure lives without adversely impacting livelihoods. Subsequently, the challenge was to ensure an education that has been impacted adversely due to the closure of schools, colleges and universities. The closure of educational institutions as a policy response to contain the Corona pandemic resulted in approximately 1.2 billion children being out of the classroom as estimated by the World Economic Forum. The reaction to the disruptions in education is digital learning through a wide array of digital tools and platforms. The paradigm shift in the mode of imparting education to students throughout the globe has immensely transformed for both the stakeholders - on the demand side as well as the supply side.

Digital transformation has reshaped the educational landscape globally with no exception in India. However, the Indian educational ecosystem exposes cracks in the education system. On one end we have government schools, colleges and universities and on the other end the urban-centric private education system. While the government schools were struggling, private schools transformed to digital learning more effortlessly. Digital infrastructure, especially in rural India, tells a completely different story. The rural-urban divide in terms of infrastructure, socioeconomic profile and the technical skills of the people were more visible at times of crisis. In such a scenario, the public policy response becomes essentially crucial.

Specifically, the effects of Corona pandemic have not been spread evenly among the global populace. It brought severe and irreparable damages to the marginalized and vulnerable people throughout the globe. Around 463 million children globally were not capable to access the online learning during 2020 as per the data of UNICEF. Figure 1 shows the number of students in million reached and not reached by digital learning by different regions at pre-primary to upper secondary levels.

Source: UNICEF (2022). Retrieved from https://data.unicef.org/covid-19-and-children/

Figure 1: Number of students (Million) reached and not reached by digital learning

Digitalisation in education has opened new possibilities and opportunities and has redefined the nature and scope of knowledge acquisition. The role and engagement of teachers has, however, increased manifold. As of teacher-centric learning to student-centric, personalised and more flexible learning, digital space is more collaborative. Admitting this revolution to online education, nonetheless, it has inherited challenges. The learning outcome is a function of the quality and skills of the teachers among other determinants. The dearth of technical knowledge of the teachers especially the senior teachers and upskilling is the biggest impediment in the new mode of teaching. Infrastructural problems and technical glitches, communication challenge, challenge of engaging passive learners, lack of motivation is among other hurdles. Teachers are held responsible for themselves to become technically skilled and for the students for their learning outcomes. In the present context, the educational ecosystem facilitated the mobilisation of online resources and the adoption of new modes of learning.

The teacher in the digital eon must counter the cognitive, emotional, behavioural and the technical and socio-economic bottlenecks in the path of learning of the students and motivate them for better understanding and learning outcomes. The role of teachers has been consistently evolving and the global health crisis triggered a tectonic shift in the pedagogical learning method and delivery mechanism. The orientation of teachers eventually becomes more diversified in such a scenario. The teachers must transform the delivery mechanism by accounting for the needs based on the capabilities and cognitive abilities of the learners.

Dr Kumar Gaurav

Guest Author The author is PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Patna (IITP) and currently works as Assistant Professor and Head - Deptt of Economics, SN Sinha College, Magadh University