A team of five academicians from Assam will leave for a tour of the US this week to study the education system there and put this experience to use back at home. They will return in December. The academicians, who are working as teacher-educators in the state, will spend three months at the Arizona State University (ASU). They are among the 53 participants who will visit the ASU this year under the ‘India-Support for Teacher Education Programme‘, organized by the USAID in collaboration with the Union ministry of human resource development with support from the Institute of International Education, a nonprofit organization based in the US. Deva Kumar Dutta, one of the chosen five, said the team will undergo extensive training at some of the leading educational institutions in the US. “The team of teacher-educators from India will go for mentored teaching and leadership development. Moreover, we will study research activities at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College in the US,” Dutta told TOI. He said the Indian educators will learn from their experience in the ASU classrooms and Arizona’s diverse K-12 schools how to run classrooms in today’s world where education is being digitalized. The Indian team is expected to internalize and apply the practices and teacher education methodology they learn in the US in institutions back home once they return. Their experiences will be adapted to the Indian context to enhance the capabilities of the country’s current and future teachers. Dutta is a reader in the State Council of Educational Research and Training, Assam, while the other four of the team are teacher-educators in institutes of education and training. The tour will lay emphasis on inclusive education and comparison of facilities for students from the marginalized sections and differently-abled pupils in both the countries. Source: Education News