TEP is running in its third year currently. The journey from April 2013 has been challenging yet exciting! Right from negotiating and developing camaraderie with education system at state, district and block level to getting teachers voluntarily willing to participate in the research, and then getting together and organizing workshops, organizing meetings with the stakeholders to finally collecting the first portfolio entries from teachers, the research seems to have evinced some very rich experiences of working on the field.

The team received an encouraging response right from the onset of the program from the SSA Commissioner and Joint Director (Pedagogy), Rajasthan Council of Elementary Education (RCEE) and succeeded in obtaining a formal approval to carry out the research with 30 teachers for three years in Phagi block, Rajasthan.

School Visits were made in order to select participant teachers. 84 schools were visited in all and 46 teachers showed interest in the research with a constitution of 28 males and 18 female teachers. However, meeting with teachers to ask for their participation for consecutive three years was a real challenge, as there isn’t any evident extrinsic reward/benefit which could motivate them to get ready for participating in a program that demands rigorous engagement. We received a mixed response from teachers: some seemed puzzled, some curious but unwilling, others complained about the last program. Through all this the team kept it’s spirit high and was able to get the desired number of teacher volunteers for the program.

School visits and some experiences

• Acceptance of participation from female teachers was less and most of them showed their unwillingness due to personal reasons.
• Teachers seemed less curious about the research aspect of the program.
• Teachers were ready to participate in meeting but seemed hesitant in expressing their experiences in a written form.
• Teachers’ continuous engagements in tasks other than teaching like election duties/trainings, BhamashahYojana, Ekikaran, board examination etc.