The paper argues that teacher empowerment is a necessary condition for quality education and social transformation, but this has been systematically neglected by policy makers and educational planners in India. The agency of the teacher is important in realising larger social goals and in the context of the recent legislation to make the Right to Education a Fundamental Right. The curriculum design of the BElEd programme offered by the University of Delhi is discussed in detail to illustrate the potential of achieving this through pre-service teacher education.
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