Problems Faced By the Itinerant Teachers Working Under Sarva Siksha Abhiyan - a Case Study of Chhattisgarh

1. INTRODUCTION

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is an effort to universalise elementary education by community-ownership of the school system. It is a response to the demand for quality basic education all over the country. The SSA programme is also an attempt to provide an opportunity for improving human capabilities to all children, through provision of community-owned quality education in a mission mode. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is to provide useful and relevant elementary education for all children in the 6 to 1-4 age group by 2010. There is also another goal to bridge social, regional and gender gaps, with the active participation of the community in the management of schools. Useful and relevant education signifies a quest for an education system that is not alienating and that draws on community solidarity. Its aim is to allow children to learn about and master their natural environment in a manner that allows the fullest harnessing of their human potential both spiritually and materially. This quest must also be a process of value based learning that allows children an opportunity to work for each other's well being rather than to permit mere selfish pursuits. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan realizes the importance of Early Childhood Care and Education and looks at the 0-14 age as a continuum. All efforts to support pre-school learning in ICDS centres or special pre-school centres in non ICDS areas will be made to supplement the efforts being made by the Department of Women and Child Development. It is a process of normalizing the life and education of a child with disability in the least restrictive environment. In this system the disabled children are taught alongside the normal children in general school. According to M.N.G. Mani "integrated education means providing equaeducational opportunities and experiences to children withdisabilities with assistance of a trained specialist teacher inthe least restrictive environment such as regular school,normal school, standard school. In tile integrated educationmodel there are four types of service delivery methods. Resource model: In this model disabled children areenrolled in general school which has a full fledged resourceteacher to meet the educational needs 'of them. The speciateacher is there for assisting the children as well as thegeneral teacher. Itinerant model: In tllis model the disabled child is enrolled ina regular class in his home school whereas the specialistteacher visits frequently to serve the need of the child. Theeducational needs of the child are met through thecombined efforts of the regular teacher and the visitingitinerant teacher. Combined model: This is a combination of regular as welas residential school program. Children are provided twoyears program at central place. This place may be a daycentre or a residential centre. At the centre children areprovided plus curricular skills. After they are enrolled inregular schools, they may be covered under resource oritinerant model. Cooperative model: cooperative model is adopting "selfcontained classroom" approach. This is an educational planin which the disabled child is enrolled with a teacher ofdisabled child in a special room from where he goes to theregular classrooms for a portion of his day. The specialteacher plans and is responsible for the. programme incooperation with regular classroom teachers. Most of theresource plans work as cooperative model when the

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children enrolled are severely handicapped and need individual care.

• To study the problems faced by the itinerant teachers working under sarva siksha abhiyan.

• To know the feasibility of employing the itinerant teacher

• To let the managers of the program, frame policies to tackle the problems at different levels of delivering the services to the disabled children.

• To know the success of the teacher training program in delivering the teachers of high quality.

• To know the societal attitude towards itinerant teachers.

• To know the participation of the local leaders and society ill general in the education of the disabled children

• The current study is mainly concerned with the districts of Chhattisgarh.

• The current study is also delimited to the itinerant teachers working under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

In the proposed study 150 itinerant teachers were drawn at simple random sampling from the 3 districts of Chhattisgarh ie.Sarguja, Raipur & Bilaspur. 50 itinerant teachers will be randomly selected from each of 3 selected districts.. The itinerant teachers are from the field of visual impairment, hearing impairment and mental retardation

Questionnaire method will be used for collection of data from samples. It will be made with the help of views of experts of the field. The questionnaire will involve the influential inputs from the research supervisor and others.

The tool will be administered by the investigator directly by him. The investigators himself distribute the questionnaire personally and through the e-mail along with small description of the questionnaire. The questionnaire will later collect by the investigator himself.

The scoring and consolidation of data will be appropriately quantified by the investigator with the help of graph and tables and use of percentage method to analyse the data.

The major findings have been emerged on the basis of analysis and data gathered in the fourth chapter. In the following lines major findings has been enlisted.

• Experienced IT are very few in no.

• Maximum no. of itinerant teachers wanted to work asIT only to earn money and not to help the disabled.

• The teachers take interest in being part of disabledsociety and like to teach their students and don't wantto be working as administrators.

• Current teachers are more knowledgeable andemphasize on all the knowledge for them.

• Teachers faced problems from the administrators asmost of them are insensitive to the problem of thedisabled.

• General teachers and community leaders have beenfound to be a supportive elements in the system, forthe itinerant teachers.

• Parental attitude towards the education of their wardhas not been up to the mark. Poor level of''understanding of the situation" by them is a graveproblem.

• Most of the training center of special education iscurrently providing education which is either outdatedor not very useful for working in the field.

• Large and distant numbers of pupils are a cause ofconcern for the itinerant teachers.

• Despite a vast and rapid development allover, thereis still a lot of ignorance in the society for theeducation of the disabled. This causes a lot ofproblems to the itinerant teachers.

• Lack of TLM and unavailability of requisite manner ofAids and Appliance is a big problem for the itinerantteachers.

• Books specially for the low visually impaired studentswere not available or available in lesser no. thanrequired.

• Cultural diversity of the area teachers covered werenot much cause of concern.

• Higher working hour is not a cause of concern asmost of the teachers are new and energetic.

• The itinerant teachers have been found to bond verywell with each other.

• Government policies for the itinerant teachers need tobe changed wherever it is going against their genuineinterest.

• Due to the young age climatic condition and healthissues posed no major threats to these teachers.

• The new teachers due to lack of expos

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1- Researches in comparison of the problems of general teacher and itinerant teacher should be taken up. 2- Physical education of the disabled students by the itinerant teachers could be one exciting area for an interesting research. 3- Child-teacher relation in itinerant teaching should be taken up. 4- Effective use of technology by the itinerant teacher should be an area of interest to the investigators. 5- Comparison of the Problems of itinerant teachers of different disability would be one more area of research.

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