A Comparative Study of Multilingual and Digital Competence of Government Secondary School Teachers of Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 asks a great deal of secondary teachers at once: handling classrooms where several languages meet, teaching with digital resources, and logging a minimum of 50 CPD hours a year. Indian studies, however, tend to examine these capacities one at a time, and few compare states that differ in language and infrastructure, such as Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. This review paper draws on an integrative desk review of policy documents, UDISE+ school statistics and peer-reviewed studies whose bibliographic details were checked. It defines four constructs — multilingual competence, digital competence, teaching effectiveness and professional development — and proposes a framework that connects them. According to UDISE+ 2024-25, 30% of government schools with Class VI and above in Jharkhand have a computer/ICT lab, against only 8% in Uttar Pradesh, so any reading of teachers’ digital competence has to take infrastructure into account. Three patterns emerge from the reviewed evidence: observed Indian classrooms mix languages extensively, and the reviewed studies call for teacher education to prepare teachers for this explicitly; results of digital professional development differ by language and by teacher characteristics; and large, government-run CPD programmes offer less practice and follow-up than effective programmes do. The paper sets out five testable propositions and five research gaps, and recommends in-service modules that combine language and digital pedagogy, to be delivered by state and district teacher-education institutions (SCERTs and DIETs).