Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) aims at the holistic development of child’s social, emotional, cognition and physical domain to build a solid foundation for lifelong learning and well-being. Hence the National Education Policy2020 envisages a five-year foundational stage of Education. It also recommended that ECCE will be to attain optimal outcomes in the domains of: physical and motor development, cognitive development, socio-emotional-ethical development, cultural/artistic development, and the development of communication and early language, literacy, and numeracy. ECCE also serves as the base for foundation level and quality ECCE education is needed for smooth transition of pre- primary learners to regular schooling system. NEP 2020 sec.1.4 &1.5 highlighted universal access to high quality ECCE centers through strengthening Anganwadi Centers with high-quality infrastructure, play equipment, and well-trained Anganwadi workers/teachers. In this context, a field level research has been conducted to know the need of the AWCs on academic grounds.

Objective:

Overall understanding of-

• Infrastructure development with print rich environment
• Material development (Print &digital)
• Teacher capacity building
• Monitoring, mentoring and on-site support to AWWs.
• Community participation to strengthen ECCE centers.

Key Performance Indicators:

• Understanding the need and necessities of AWC and AWC workers
• Preparation of a long-term perspective plan for next 10 years on ECCE.

DIETs focus on the professional development of CRCCs and BRCCs at the district level. DIETs conduct various academic support strengthening programmes to enhance the quality of elementary education and ensure the learning of the students. DIETs often conduct workshops, training programmes, seminars, and classroom observation as part of academic support activities.
For the whole session, the DIETs have been building the academic capabilities of the CRCCs through DIET-CRCs Linkage by tagging DIET faculties with a block. Under the guidance of SCERT and DIETs, the DIET faculty members observe the classroom practices every month with a structured classroom observation tool and providing academic support to the teachers.
SCERT conducted bi-yearly sharing meeting with DIET Principals, Officer in charge, DIET -CRC linkage from each DIET, ADEO (Academic) and Pedagogy coordinator on the best practices adopted in the district for strengthening DIET-CRC linkage activities.

Objective:

• To share the best practices adopted through DIET-CRC linkage for strengthening the mentoring process in the district.
• To develop and share a six-month Plan of action for building the capacity of CRCCs and strengthening DIET-CRC linkage activities for holistic development of the children.

Modalities:
The following modalities were followed:

• Workshop on Sharing of best practices with DIET Principals, Officers in-charge of DIET-CRC Linkage, ADEO (Academic) and Pedagogy coordinator
• Documentation of best practices in the district level

Key Performance Indicators:

• State-level Academic review of the activities of DIET-CRC linkage
• Development of report on DIET-CRC linkage activities and Classroom observation of DIET faculties
• Development of Plan of action for DIET-CRC Linkage by 30 DIETs across the state.

An Induction Level Training Programme was organized for the 95 newly recruited Teacher Educators of DIETs and BIETs of the State from 11.09.2023 to 17.09.2023 at Regional Institute of Education, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. During the programme a diverse set of activities including Yoga, Educational Movie, Field visits to DIETs , OSEPA, TBPM, Mo School including regular lectures by different educationists, administrators and eminent personalities across the state.

Objectives

• To orient the teacher educators on changing perspectives of teacher education.
• To make the teacher educators as prospective educators for imparting contextual knowledge to prospective and in-service teachers

Modalities

10-days Workshop based residential orientation was conducted at RIE, BBSR
Key Performance Indicator

• Overall understanding of creative and critical pedagogy and andragogy by the teacher educators.
• Positive work culture in DIETs

As per the recommendation of NEP 2020, the transformation in the process of adopting new pedagogy at different levels of school education has been given immense importance. Experience-based learning, Art integrated learning, toy-based learning, and game-based learning, etc. are now being practiced by many schools and AWCs in an innovative way.
Throughout the year, DIETs and SCERT conducted various activities like Teacher Professional Development, research, assessment, use of Technology, academic mentoring, DIET-CRC linkage, strengthening Prayogshala School etc. Few activities were unique in nature and have a strong, positive impact on teachers, children, and community at large. The innovative practices were shared at district and State level through seminars, discussion forums, documentary videos, booklet etc

Objectives

• To disseminate the best practices widely and implement those practices for enhancing the quality of education.
• To adopt and practice ongoing good practices from other schools
• To do documentation of good practices using available technology for further usage and follow up action.

Modalities
The following modalities were…

• Discussion with CRCCs to collect information regarding the best school/AWC of their respective clusters.
• Develop an observation sheet by stating the criteria for selecting the best school/AWC.
• Field visit by the DIET faculty/ SCERT to observe best practices made by the school/AWC/ DIET and take note of it along with photos and videos.
• Design a script for documentation and gather relevant materials for documentation.
• Edit and finalize the documentary video with the help of a good video editor / agency.
• Documentation of best practices of DIETs / Schools / clusters
• Sharing of experiences of conduct of these activities and its impact on enhancing quality education

Key Performance Indicators:

• Availability of Observation sheet for Selection of best school/AWC / cluster/ DIET
• Finalization of a documentary video/ text of best school /AWC
• Documents (word/ image) and performing videos of innovations

National Education Policy, 2020 emphasizes quality education and improving the academic climate of schools. SCERT, being the State Academic Authority develops curriculum, textbooks, imparts teacher professional development activities so also design the assessment procedure. DIET also monitors the programmes and activities of ETEIs, BRCs, CRCs, and Schools of the State. To ensure the quality of the teacher’s professional development programmes, research – regular monitoring from the state is necessary.
In this context, continuous monitoring, reviews and feedback have been given time to time at block and district level by DIET and at state level by SCERT.

 Objectives:

• To assess the quality of the programmes conducted by different blocks of the State
• To provide academic support to the CRCCs by observing the classroom practices
• To ensure effective teaching and learning practices in the schools

Modalities:

• Detailed plan of action for each month shall be developed for monitoring the activities of the Schools and CRCCs
• The monitoring report and mutually agreed strategies shall be shared among different stakeholders.

Key Performance Indicators:

• Mentoring over classroom practices and quality training programmes
• The best practices of the schools were observed and shared in the state, district and level.

Exposure visit is one of the important components of professional development activity as it enables the participants from a different setting to interact and learn from each other, allowing them to understand real life situations of successful and sustainable practices. Exposure visits are organized so that people of one organization of one location can visit another location to observe, learn & share experiences with others. Hence, exposure visit is a vital platform for professional development of the faculties. For DIET and SCERT faculties, exposure visit is necessary because the transformation happens in school Education and Teacher Education of good performing States shall give an insight and with this learning experience, certainly a change can be visible in our schools.

Different teams of educators of different DIETs have visited innovative activities of different state like- Karnataka, Rajasthan, Haryana, New Delhi.

Objectives

• To enhance the professional growth of the Teacher Educators.
• To practice the learnt activities/ good practices of other States and to implement those good practices in their respective districts.

Modalities

The following modalities were followed for the exposure visit:

• Selection of SCERT / DIETs / National level institutions like IITs, IIMs, Initiatives of Change Training Centre, Panchgani, Maharastra, Azim Premji University, or any other organizations working exceptionally well in the field of school Education or Teacher Education to be visited.
• Selection of faculties for exposure visit (around 20)
• Observation format will be developed for the visit.
• Sharing of learning experience at district and state level
• Post field visit plan of action for implementation in our state.

Key Performance Indicators:

• The faculties will grow professionally and share their experiences with other faculties of SCERT and DIETs
• They will practice the learnt activities/ good practices of other State.
• They will implement those good practices in their respective districts.

NEP 2020 has proposed the implementation of digital learning is a way to improve the quality of education and increase access to it. And it envisions a comprehensive transformation with special emphasis on on-line and blended learning. It also focuses on a 50-hrs training programme for the continuous professional development of the teachers, which is not feasible for all the teachers in the physical mode. So, to overcome the issue and implement the digitalization in the education system TE & SCERT Odisha created different Micro Learning Packages on a particular theme.

Micro Learning Packages were organized on different themes by DIET and provided opportunity to read & reflect on concern theme which is more focused and effective and helped in building the capacity of the stakeholders and create an atmosphere of collaborative learning through online platform. Different kinds of resources (print, audioand video) were developed and used in the course. Assignments, projects, and certification were part of the course design. Generally, the course stretches from two weeks to six weeks.

Objectives

• To empower the Teacher Educators, CRCCs and DRGs for developing short term blended course (micro learning package) on district specific issues at DIET level.

Modalities

• The course design, study materials, audio video resources, assignments, modalities shall be developed at SCERT level and DIET level.
• Synchronous and asynchronous sessions using LMS / DIKSHA
• Video tutorials by the experts
• Telegram app / WhatsApp.
• Discussion Forum for immediate solution
• Online Technical assistance
• Orientation, feedback and mentoring in physical mode.

 Key Performance Indicators:

• The teacher educators act as the course developers in the field to provide need based orientation.