Exploring the Challenges and Prospects of ITEP under NEP-2020: Evidence from West Bengal

The ‘Four-Year Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP)’, launched under the ‘National Education Policy (NEP) 2020’, seeks to transform the landscape of Teacher Education in India by embracing an interdisciplinary, practice-oriented, and experiential framework. This study is qualitative in nature, and a qualitative research design was followed. In this study, the researcher used a purposive sampling technique to choose the particular Jalpaiguri and Coochbehar districts, and the purposive sampling technique was used to choose the 8 samples for conducting the SemiStructured interview schedule to gather qualitative and open-ended data from the respondents. The findings reveal multiple hurdles, such as infrastructural inadequacies, insufficient faculty preparedness, policy ambiguities, and unequal access in rural and marginalized regions, and highlight the transformative promise of ITEP in bridging the gap between theory and classroom practice, fostering equity and inclusivity, and redefining teacher education to meet the dynamic demands of the 21st century.