Enhancing teacher education through OER:
Using TESS-India Teacher Development OER in teacher education programmes
Case Study 1
During a pre-service programme for elementary school teachers, Rakshi was due to organise micro-teaching. Students work in groups of six and teach each other a short lesson, and then give each other feedback. Her group had spent the previous semester doing a maths course, so she decided that this was an opportunity to help them consolidate their mathematical knowledge as well. 
When she introduced the micro-teaching programme, Rakshi also provided her students with copies of two elementary TESS-India maths OER each. When they were planning their micro-teaching session, she asked them to choose an activity from one of the units. She also gave them the website address and encouraged them to go and look at the Key Resources and videos that are referred to in the unit. 
The micro-teaching took place over two weeks, with three students doing their teaching to the others each week. 
In the third week, she reorganised the groups so that everyone was working with different people. Working in their new groups, she asked them to brainstorm all the active teaching approaches that they had experienced. Each group then discussed each of the approaches, writing down what skills the student teacher had demonstrated. Finally, she asked each group to plan a lesson on a different topic, using one of the teaching approaches they had discussed. 
Case Study 2
During an in-service training programme for secondary science teachers, teachers attended the DIET once a fortnight for six weeks. The title of the course was ‘active approaches to learning’. 
Ravindra – a lecturer in the DIET who was coordinating the training – had a plan: in week one he would lecture on ‘practical work’, in week two he would lecture on ‘groupwork’ and in week three he would give a lecture on ‘using local resources’. However, having been introduced to the TESS-India resources, he realised that he should be trying to model the approaches. 
When they arrived in week one, the teachers were very surprised to be asked to cut out a paper helicopter (Secondary Science: Practical work and investigations: teaching gravitation to class IX). They were split into groups, and each group was given a question to investigate (for example, the effect of reducing the size of the wings on the time to fall to the ground, or the effect of adding paperclips on the time taken for the helicopter to fall to the ground). 
They had 20 minutes to generate some data – some groups even plotted a graph of the results. Ravindra then conducted a whole-class discussion on what they had learnt. They could immediately see that they had covered a lot of important science, such as making accurate measurements, conducting a fair test and repeating results. He gave out copies of the unit and asked the teachers to work in pairs to read the unit together and discuss the ‘pause for thoughts’. He listened carefully to their discussions and asked some people to report back to the whole group. Finally, he asked them to work with a different person to complete Activity 4 and to plan a practical lesson. Their homework was to do the lesson and report back in the next session. 
He based the second and third sessions on other Secondary Science units. He found that once he had planned the sessions, he had less to do on the actual day and was able to go round listening and observing the teachers. He found that he learnt a great deal about each one of them, and was able to make a special effort to encourage those who were less confident. In the last session he encouraged them to keep in touch after the course. As a result of all their interactions during the sessions, they had got to know each other much better than in previous years, so he realised that using an interactive methodology had worked well. 
Case Study 3
On a course for pre-service teachers in Bihar, students have to complete an exam and pass their teaching practice. Prof. Paranjpe decided to introduce a written assignment linked to the teaching practice. She explained to the rest of the department that she felt that they could do better at teaching their students to become reflective teachers. 
Before their teaching practice they were asked to select a TESS-India OER linked to a skill that they particularly wanted to develop. Student teachers worked in pairs to share their initial ideas and to choose an appropriate OER. In order to complete the assignment, they were asked to write an introduction explaining why they had chosen that OER, and to provide some extra theoretical background. When they were in school, they had to teach three lessons based on the unit, adapting the activities and case studies to different content if necessary. 
After each lesson they were encouraged to reflect on what had happened – what had gone well and what they would like to change – and to adjust their plans for the next lesson. Finally, to complete the assignment they had to describe what they had done and what they had learnt, and reflect on the planning decisions that they had made.