Teacher Accountability

 Teacher Accountability

A teacher is one who teaches. The word 'teach' has been derived from the Anglo Saxon (0ld English) word "Taecon" which means to impart', 'to instruct', 'to train' and to make aware of. The teacher acts as pivot of any educational system for the transmission of intellectual and technical skills from one generation to next. The teacher is the key man on whom the future of children and mankind depends. He plays an important role in shaping and molding the personality of the individual.

A successful teacher is one who is able to foster creative thinking, develop skills and instills a desire for lifelong learning among students. In any society a teacher has a very important and respectable place because teaching is a noble profession.

Teaching as a profession is different from other professions because of its multitude of dimensions. Teachers are the largest professional group engaged in human development activities. As the teachers are torch bearer of a learning society, so they have to aware the learner to face the challenges in this era of Globalization, Privatization and Liberalization along with the technical advancements in educational sector.

Teacher's accountability,is the responsibility of a teacher for her students and his or her learning progress. Teachers should accept ownership over their student's performance in their classroom. Teacher accountability is an ethical concept - it concerns proper behaviour, and it deals with the responsibilities of teachers for their actions towards students, colleagues, school, parents, Society and country.

Areas of Teacher's Accountability: Every profession has a set of ethics principles, guidance, responsibilities and norms to guide the conduct and behavior of its profession. Accordingly in teaching as a profession there are various guidelines, principles, norms of morality, accountability which a teacher has to follow in teaching profession while dealing with students, stakeholders, and community. Every teacher need to follow these principles and should be accountable for his profession.

l Accountability towards the Learner: Student is the most important pillar in the education system. Today, teacher has to concern himself with the total development of child's personality. To achieve the optimal learning of the child the teacher should take care of the students' progress according to their capacity. Hence the motto of the teachers should be always for the benefits of their students because the success of the students depends essentially upon the competencies of teachers, their sense of dedication and accountability.

l Accountability towards Stake Holders/Parents: Parents are the most important stakeholders because they invest a lot for the education and development of their children.Therefore, not only the students, parents of the students also seek indulgence of teachers in achieving their desired goal. Therefore, a teacher must develop more time in public relation, parent counseling and behavioural therapy to fulfill the global societal needs.

l  Accountability towards Community: A teacher must be accountable towards the community to which he belongs. He should co-ordinate different activities of the community and should motivate the deprived and weaker sections of the community to get education. A teacher should work as a bridge between the school and community. So the various behavioral problems and day-to-day learning problems can be solved easily. Hence the teachers should be more concerned about the community which is above the classroom teaching.

l  Accountability towards Profession: It is the duty of a teacher to think about various ways and means to help the students in acquiring knowledge and skills and shaping their future. He has to become a friend, a guide, more of an adviser and a partner to talk. For the students' harmonious development, he will have to devote more time and energy to direct the students for self learning. Through self learning one can achieve professional enrichment and excellence which will be a great help to the nation in future.

l  Accountability towards Humanity and Values: A teacher should believe in human values such as truth, beauty, goodness, honesty, love, equality, regularity, punctuality etc. Because when a teacher inculcates these values through his behavior then his students will automatically accept them. Hence, a teacher should believe in these values and exhibit the same in his behaviour and instructional system for the betterment of humanity.

l Accountability towards Nation: A teacher must organize his research activities as per the needs of the country. It means that research process in education should be such that these solve various problems from different angles. For example, India is being faced by problems like violence by school students,  problems at primary stage, aspiration of parents that their child should excel in each activity (which results in increase suicidal rate), going for tuitions even at preprimary level etc. The answer to such problems is not so simple. Therefore, a teacher should get all essential knowledge to take-up the issues and find appropriate solutions.

Characteristics of professionally accountable teacher: A teacher having professional accountability is concerned with student's harmonious development, community, his profession, humanity and national development.

Some of the characteristics of the teachers who are professionally accountable are:-

• Dedicated and have patience. Positive attitude/optimistic in his outlook.

• Guide in a right way and update his knowledge time to time. Start any work with appropriate knowledge.

• Work to remove social evils, violence and communalism. Work to remove class, caste and gender differences and to bring equality. Make the students to do the work.

 • Use diversity of resource and understand the problem. Understand and solve problems

• Aware about one's role and responsibilities and possess high degree of professionalism. In all systems of education the teacher occupies a central place. The teacher is at the basis of the work of mankind, the builder of the nation, the maker of history. He sets ideal examples before others. It is therefore very essential that he must be a man of sterling character & observe the code of professional ethics.

A good and responsible teacher should have excelled in his teaching subject but they should also understand the problems and needs of his students. This leads to the harmonious development of the student's personality and prosperity of the nation. Hence a teacher must be conscious, committed and accountable for his profession for providing quality education. If a teacher contributes wholeheartedly to the profession, he can prove that the saying ‘teaching profession is the noblest of all professions.' is true.