Teacher Education NGOs in India: Agents of Change in a Complex System

The Indian education sector is striking in terms of its scale, complexity, and the diversity of actors involved, including NGOs. Many different types of NGO support the Government of India in its mandate to ensure the right to education. This paper focuses on a relatively new cohort of NGOs which support the right to education by providing teacher education. To understand them better, and as part of my Masters research, I interviewed staff members from nine teacher education NGOs to explore their perspectives on their role and to learn about the challenges they face. I found that teacher education NGOs value and pursue changes in teacher identity and lasting changes in practice, and they encounter significant and sometimes surprising challenges at all levels of the education system. I examine my findings with an ecological lens and show how the work and impact of these NGOs are limited by a complex and almost unyielding system. I argue that if NGOs are to assist the state in raising teaching quality, then they require accommodations to allow them to be effective.