Building up capabilities of educational administrators in India

Since independence in 1947, India has made a rapid development in all spheres, more particularly in the field of education. With the national commitment to provide educational opportunity to all citizens of the country and the highest priority given to the programme of universalisation of elementary education, the educational facilities have increased considerably over the years. Special attention is being paid to provide education to girls and to the children of the weaker sections of the community. Besides formal education, non-formal channels of education are also being exploited.This has increased the responsibilities of educational administrators manifold. The complexity and enormity of the tasks that they have to perform, the quality of leadership that they have to possess, the horizontal and vertical linkages that they have to establish within and outside the Education Department, and the managerial role that they have to discharge in order that the resources are effectively mobilised and utilised, have made it incumbent upon them to be familiar with the latest techniques of planning and management.The National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) which is a specialised Central Institution for advanced training of key educational personnel has for the past two decades been playing an important role in building up the capabilities of different kinds of educational functionaries and serving as a catalytic agent for change.The need for training of educational administrators of all levels is now well recognised in India. In a developing country where there are certain aspirations of students, teachers, parents and community about education and where quantity, quality and equity all play a vital role, the development of professional skills in the educational administrators assumes great importance. Such a training not only leads to human resource development and an increase in the productivity of the officers but it also helps in the speedy realisation of the targets of educational and social development.     

Education research speaks—dare we listen?

From learning theorists, from political and social scientists, from counseling psychologists, from cognition scientists, and from pedagogical researchers, have come messages that have the potential of quiet revolutions.     

An example of the teacher expectation effect in mixed ability teaching

Much interest has been shown recently in teacher expectation or “self-fulfilling prophecy” effects, despite the difficulty of making objective observations of the phenomenon. The present case study concerns a population of twelve mixed-ability chemistry classes in a comprehensive school in the U.K. The poor behavior of one of the groups led to a stigma being attached to it by staff, and for various doubtful reasons, this became associated with another class as well. A statistical analysis of examination marks shows that neither reputation was justified in terms of academic achievement, and quantifies possible teacher expectation effects arising from the situation. The findings demonstrate the ease with which academic achievements can be hampered unwittingly by the prejudices of a teacher even in a well-structured learning situation.     

Changes in serum haptoglobin as an acute response to a marathon road race

In order to assess the possible occurrence of acute haemolysis with prolonged exertion, serum haptoglobin levels were determined from venous blood samples collected from eight male runners immediately preceding (PreRH), immediately following (PRH1), and 6 h following (PRH2) completion of a marathon road race. The subjects' mean age, percentage of body fat, and maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max) were 46 +/- 9 years, 12.1 +/- 3.4% and 54.9 +/- 8.4 ml kg-1 min-1, respectively. The mean race finish time for the subjects was 3:35 +/- 0:18 h:min. The PreRH, PRH1 and PRH2 averaged 129 +/-18, 97 +/- 48 and 86 +/- 35 mg dl-1 respectively. Significant differences of -32.5 mg dl-1 between PreRH versus PRH1 and -42.5 mg dl-1 between PreRH versus PRH2 were found. The difference between PRH1 and PRH2 of -10.6 mg dl-1 was not significant. No significant correlations were found between the decreases in serum haptoglobin and VO2max or race finish time. The data suggests to occurrence of an acute haemolysis with performance of the marathon road race.