Pedagogical Leadership
In the Indian Public School system , basically administrative leadership is more predominant than pedagogical leadership . The system is highly influenced by bureaucratic governance . In many instances , the leader of a school keeps him busy with administrative work ; mostly in connection to meet the deadlines given by the school inspectorate, submitting different reports and others . In spite of that , pedagogical leadership has vital importance in the Indian school system to go ahead in a meaningful and effective manner . India is a hugely heterogeneous country not in terms of only topography , race and religion , but also for socio-economic reasons and political reasons . So , to meet the needs that come out of this heterogeneity in the field of education may be successfully addressed through contextually developed community ecology . Developing community ecology in India is a tough task to be performed. The number of uneducated and semi-educated parents is huge . As a result of that , the responsibility of the public school education system in many instances is the responsibility of only teachers or the government . The school leaders , on one hand , are heavily overburdened by administrative work , and parents are not concerned about their wards’ education as they should be , for which , the teacher plays a vital role in an environment where the performance of a school is mostly counted on the basis of school annual results in terms of marks obtained by the students . So , this kind of traditional culture of assessing a school or education system on the basis of marks or results of the students really keeps the Indian public school system far away from the quality benchmark that has been set by many International bodies . On the other hand , the political will of making the public school system effective is confined mostly in providing infrastructure , appointing teachers and providing them a salary . No serious efforts , on the other hand, have been seen on the part of the government to take for improving the pedagogical culture by forming the community ecology . Giving due importance to administrative leadership in the Indian context , it is also felt that pedagogical leadership is essential to promote the Indian school system . It is high time now , to relook and re-evaluate the existing school process and its leadership styles and rearrange it as per the requirements of the present age of digital technologies . Though the role of digital media in education has immense potential , it was not taken seriously by the Indian public school system till the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic situation . The pandemic has halted the education system like other systems , for which in search of alternatives only , the school system adopts digital media as the mode of teaching-learning . It is still at the experimental stage and numerous problems arise to introduce online education as there is a digital divide in society , there was no digital culture of formal learning at school levels , and teachers- students-parents were not properly trained and oriented to online teaching . In spite of all odds , presently to deal with the pandemic situation , the most schools have now adopted online teaching- learning by using different digital platforms . As such , the digital culture is gradually becoming the new normal in the Indian public school system . So , in the current context of digital intervention in the teaching-learning process , now it becomes very essential to develop a learning community . In a country like India , without political will , public school education can’t prosper as the states have to bear the responsibility of carrying out the system in all aspects including building a learning community . The emergence of digital education in school education now makes education a 24x7 activity , so , the participation of teachers , students , parents and the government in this regard is very important and decisive . Multi-level collaboration in the pedagogical field for knowledge acquisition and knowledge creation has now become the order of the day . Education no longer remains only in the classroom now , it is now being spread all around inaccessible points through digital platforms . Further , education and development go side by side , it influences each other , pedagogy does not mean only the transaction of knowledge inside the classroom but it also needs to take care of children’s health , and mental well-being . Further , for the consideration of local , national and global issues in teaching- learning , there needs to be a strong learning community that by collaborative approach not only facilitates the knowledge acquisition of children but also generates a culture of knowledge creation . So , pedagogical leadership is very important and vital for the school education of twenty-first -century schools . Though there are some obstacles in developing pedagogical leadership in India , still those obstacles are not as strong as the forces that have emerged and created the platform for the development of pedagogical leadership in the near future. The changing trend is now being observed in the thinking level , policy level , and execution level of school education which indicates that pedagogical leadership has been evolving and becoming a reality .
Dr. Pranab Saikia
Director , Indira Miri School of Education ,
KKHSOU , Guwahati
KKHSOU , Guwahati
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