Training for teaching workforce – a consequential initiative of assessment and development in South Indian educational institutions

Abstract

The concept of need assessment varies as per the circumstantial perspective and interpretations in this study and the training need assessment encompasses both what the individual knows and what the individual need to know. The main focus for conducting this study is to enrich the planning process of training the staff. For any individual - learning is based on the professional interaction in the work atmosphere, educational events, information and feedback. Hence, the search for one best way of understanding the individual need is an industrious task involving complexities in the process. The first step that enables one to recognize the need assessment and learning would be to collect the data that are a part of the daily professional life to formalize, highlight and use these as the basis for future recorded need assessment and subsequent planning, action, as well as integrating them with more formal or informal methods of needs assessment to form a routine part of training, learning, and improving practice.

Types of Training Needs

While analyzing an individual’s need, we realize that there are varied levels of need within oneself and its probability of the underlying reasons behind need assessment may be:

-          Felt need (what people express in words)

-          Expressed needs (what people express in action)

-          Normative needs ( what experts suggest)

-          Comparative needs (institutional comparison)

-          Target needs (what people have to achieve)

All the above types of training needs have been considered in this study to ensure a full-fledged training need assessment document. It also contributes towards further research for the institution keeping this document as the basis.

Keywords: Training need assessment, Training and development, training for teachers, Training need analysis, need assessment