LAUSR

Despite growing realization around the central role of cultural beliefs in restricting pedagogical change in India, there remains little clarity on how to address such beliefs among Indian teachers. This chapter presents a rationale and framework for engaging with teachers’ beliefs within Indian teacher education. It draws from a review of global research and a few Indian teacher education programs that have attempted to engage with teachers’ beliefs. It proposes a theoretically ground yet practice-oriented framework that weaves insights from two approaches used in Western contexts for bringing change in adult learners’ beliefs and practice, but rarely before applied to Indian teacher education: Transformative Learning and Freirean problem-posing. Building commitment to learner-centered beliefs could be one way of developing Indian teachers as professionals and intellectuals able to determine the most effective context-specific practices best suited for helping all their learners succeed.