Open Educational Resources in Indian Teacher Education

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Dr. Neeraj Saxena

Professor, MIT colleges of Management

Affiliated to MIT Art Design and Technology University, pune

neerajsaxena2000@gmail.com

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OER) have emerged as a significant lever for democratizing access to quality educational content, especially in contexts where resource constraints limit teacher preparation and continuous professional development. In India, teacher education is simultaneously undergoing regulatory reform, technological disruption, and a push toward inclusive, competency-based curricula. This manuscript investigates how OER are perceived, accessed, integrated, and sustained within Indian teacher education programmes (pre-service and in-service). Drawing on a survey of 100 stakeholders—comprising student-teachers, teacher educators, and academic administrators—this study triangulates quantitative trends with qualitative insights to unpack motivators and barriers to OER adoption. The analysis reveals that while awareness of OER is moderately high, structured integration into pedagogy, assessment, and reflective practice remains inconsistent.

Fig.1 Open Educational Resources,Source([1])

Key facilitators include cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and alignment with local curricular needs; prominent barriers involve digital literacy gaps, inadequate institutional policy support, and concerns about content quality and contextual relevance. The paper concludes with recommendations for institutional capacity-building, policy scaffolding, community-driven curation, and robust evaluation frameworks. It also delineates the scope and limitations of the present study and identifies areas for future research, such as the role of artificial intelligence in OER personalization and sustainable OER ecosystems in multilingual teacher education. Overall, the study underscores OER’s transformative potential when embedded thoughtfully within the socio-cultural and infrastructural realities of Indian teacher education.

Keywords

Open Educational Resources; Teacher Education; India; Pre-service Training; Digital Pedagogy; Policy; Quality Assurance; Survey Research

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