Impacts on teachers' lives of a capacity building course: A case study in rural Rajasthan, India.

Abstract: This case study is conducted on teachers working in Non-Formal Education centers (NFE's), for the Non-Governmental Organization Seva Mandir, in the Udaipur district in Rajasthan, India. The setting for the study is remote rural villages around the small city Udaipur, with one million inhabitants. The purpose of this case study is to investigate what impact the capacity building course that Seva Mandir offers the teachers, the NFE certification course, have had on the teacher’s lives. The aim is to get a picture of the overall impact of the course on a professional level and on the individual NFE teachers’ personal life. The case study was conducted on a sample of eleven out of 50 NFE teachers working for Seva Mandir in the Jhadol block. The empirical data was collected through qualitative interviews conducted in the NFE schools. The NFE centers that are run by Seva Mandir are a complement to malfunctioning government schools in areas where most of the children are first generation learners. The schools aim to keep children from working or starting to work, through giving them an educational base. The teachers have no previous teachers training and are having an average prior education of 8th to 10th class. The general findings of the study are that a majority of the teachers felt an increase in self-confidence after participating in the course. They generally had more concrete and ambitious future plans after the course than before it, and they were highly dominated of plans for further education for themselves and their children. It was also found that the teachers felt major changes in their teaching approach after the course. They had learnt new teaching strategies and seemed to have changed their attitude against the children. The teachers used activities like games, songs and stories in their teaching as well as taking help of the local surroundings when teaching.