Introduction
The proposed curriculum has been developed as a part of group discussions held with Teacher Educators from across nine Telangana State Universities. The teachers increasingly work in rural schools in the current scenario. They need to be groomed to handle the rural communities which send their wards to the schools. Hence curriculum inputs designed to equip trainee teachers or students of teacher education programs to engage with the rural communities’ forms an important input in teacher education curriculum. This could be offered as a compulsory practical course to all the students in order to bridge the gap between the expectations and actual practices of teachers in rural settings. It is felt important, in the context of National Curricular Framework for Teacher Education 2005 as well as National Curriculum Framework 2009, focusing on construction of knowledge, there is a need to integrate the two important aspects viz., living and learning. Unlike the other forms of education, teacher education has a variety of objectives that makes it a unique and a practicing profession to be pursued with intensive involvement with local communities apart from the students. Imparting adequate knowledge on the subject matter, equipping the prospective teachers with pedagogic skills, enabling the teacher to acquire understanding of child psychology, developing proper attitudes towards teaching, enabling teachers to make use of proper instructional facilities, enabling the teachers to understand the significance of individual child differences and take appropriate steps for their optimum development and development of children’s ability to provide satisfaction to the parents are some of the major objectives of teacher education. This is facilitated by community engagement and orientation in community engagement.
1. Understand the context of the child from various backgrounds & occupations.
2. Know the school education programs and policies of Telangana State which have community engagement aspects.
3. Connect text with context & child.
4. Distinguish traditional from constructivist approaches of community engagement.
5. Train in usage of dialogic method of community engagement.
6. Train in usage of organic intellectual approach for community engagement.
7. Experiential learning of best practices in community engagement.
8. Participate effectively in the community service.
9. Develop insights and field realities on indignity and indigenous models.
10. Understand & implement the popular models of Tagore, Gandhi, Shyama Prasad Mukkherji for rural reconstruction.
11. Explore models of art, craft for entrepreneurship for self-reliance.
12. Understand various real, community stories of children, families.
13. Discover latent talents in the traditional occupations to promote.
14. Devise contextually suitable engagement activities.
15. Promote village occupations with literacy, technology integration and research to make entrepreneurs.
