PREMAKUMARI DHERAM A LEARNING EXPERIENCE, NOT A LESSON PLAN: WHAT MAKES TEACHERS INNOVATIVE?

ABSTRACT: This paper raises a few questions, none of them new. But they are all raised at one place in an attempt to encourage the well-meaning academic to think about them one more time. The questions are supported by anecdotes, the nature of which the reader is familiar with. So the anecdotes are not new either. They are drawn from a study, conducted over a period of ten months, including school teachers and students of three programmes – Ph.D, M.Ed, and Postgraduate Diploma in the Teaching of English (PGDTE). Based on the findings, I argue that there appears to be only a vague understanding of the competencies a teacher must have in the ESL context, and this has led to the designing and carrying out of training programmes which do not seem to prepare trainees to learn and grow. The findings highlight the need for operationalizing the key concepts of pedagogy, and evolving a detailed framework of competencies. The question central to this study is: What kind of training makes teachers innovative