Today, 57 Academic Staff Colleges are offering staff development and teaching training programmes in the form of orientation programmes, refresher courses and short term courses to teachers, administrators and the likes, who are associated with the tertiary education in India. The fact of the matter is that the importance of initial training and then continued retraining of teachers was emphasized as long as the mind-sixties. Even when the fourth plan was being drawn, the Task Force on Higher Education appointed by the Planning Commission mooted this idea. Something was done in consequence of this initiative. Over the year, teacher fellowships and similar programmes were launched, but nothing like a system got evolved. Till 1986, there was not even a single ASC. During 1987, a number of such colleges were established. This pace of activity gave birth to a number of problems which were not ascertained through empirical research till 1999. To cite a few, what kind of formats was evolved by these college? What were the background and outlook of the instructors? How were the programmes organized? What was the nature and mode of delivery of such programmes? What kind of problems was encountered in the classroom?It is in this context that the present book, based on a national level survey funded by the UGC has undertaken an –depth evaluation of the practices and procedures adopted for the management of course content, course materials, organization, administration, duration, financial aspects, resource persons, and evaluation so as to suggest viable strategy for organizing teacher education programmes. A critical evaluation of all these sub-systems of the system has been presented in separate chapters along with concrete suggestions an alternate model for teacher education at the tertiary level in the end. It is hoped that, this book would serve as a handbook to teachers, researchers, planners and policy makers who are directly associated with teacher education programmes at the tertiary level.ContentsPrefaceForewordIntroductionMethod and procedure Selection of participantsCourse content and course materialsOrganization, administration and durastionCo-curricular and financial systemResource personsMethodology followed in orientation programmeThe evaluation systemProblems of the academic staff collegesFuture plansMajor findings and suggestionsTeacher education through distance modeAppendix IAppendix IIBibliographyIndex