August 10th, 2009
“The present day classroom practices are, in almost all schools of the country, totally dominated by textbooks. All premises of flexibility of the curriculum and syllabus and freedom of the teacher are completely forgotten by the time an educational plan reaches the classroom. The teacher is seen as either incompetent or unwilling or both, the school is seen devoid of all learning material, and the environment is seen as of no use in the child’s learning. The textbook emerges as the single solution to all these problems. It is sought to collect all the knowledge that the child is supposed to acquire at a given stage or class and is planned so that the child never needs to look beyond. Thus, ‘teaching the textbook’ becomes the whole of education.
As a result of this undue importance given to the textbook, it has acquired an aura of supremacy and a standard format. It has to be completed from cover to cover in a strict sequence, has developed a language of its own that is difficult to comprehend, and is laden with dense concepts……It has become a symbol of authority difficult to ignore or disobey.”
Extract from: NCF Position Paper Volume II
On Curriculum, Syllabus and Textbooks
Why
* are Indian schools, as organisations unable to distinguish between curriculum and textbooks?
* are the monitoring bodies so incompetent that they are unable to ensure compliance with curriculum guidelines, especially in the primary years?
* are the parents so badly informed of the best teaching-learning practices that they accept the third rate education imparted by many of our schools?
* is the publishing lobby so influential that it has the last say in what our children are taught? Besides the vested profit motive, what makes them competent or qualified to do so?
Tags: classrooms, Curriculum, Education, educational plan, learning material, NCF 2005, syllabus, teacher, textbooks
Posted in Curriculum | No Comments »
June 3rd, 2009
Most of our classrooms adopt one-size-fits-all delivery system which breeds disengagement and detachment from learning and is detrimental to learning.
Nowadays, the students profile in the schools is more diverse in terms of background and needs than ever before. Most come to school both impoverished and enriched by their environment. They span a wide spectrum in readiness, interests and experiences. Ensuring optimization of learning of each one is a challenge for any teacher. But the challenge is not a new one – teachers grappled with it one hundred years ago and they continue to grapple with it today. What is new is the preparedness of the teachers to respond to different learning needs armed with the developments made in the field of education and resources available for differentiating teaching and learning. Not taking into account these developments while designing our classroom practices would be unfair to the children whose learning we are entrusted with.
In this writing I would like to dwell a little longer on how a differentiated classroom works vis-à-vis a traditional classroom.
1. In the traditional classroom, student differences are acknowledged when problematic; whereas a differentiated classroom has individual students’ learning profile drawn upfront which drives classroom instruction and assessment plan.
2. A traditional classroom is curriculum driven. In a differentiated classroom, modifications and accommodations are made for student individualism keeping in mind the learning needs of the students.
3. In a tradinional classroom, all students are assessed on a common task which is very rigid in terms of time and “right responses”; whereas variety of tasks and flexibility of time is the norm in a differentiated classroom.
4. Finally, a traditional classroom prepares children more for tests than for life and teachers are more loyal to the curriculum than to students’ learning. The differentiated classroom prepares children for lifelong learning and the teacher understands the needs of the curriculum as well as the needs of her learners. A differentiated classroom is based on respect for all students and equity of learning.
As Howard Gardner (1997) suggests, it is no point trying to make everyone into a brilliant violinist, an orchestra needs top-quality musicians who play woodwinds, brass, percussion and strings. The aim of education is achieving excellence in diversity that we are presented with in the classroom and not homogenization of that diversity.
Tags: assessment plan, classroom instruction, classroom practices, classrooms, Curriculum, curriculum driven, Differentiated Learning, differentiated teaching, Education, Howard Gardner, learner profile, learning, learning profile, school, student individualism, student profile, teacher
Posted in Differentiated Learning | 1 Comment »
May 19th, 2009
The inquiry approach to teaching-learning is departure from the traditional teacher-directed strategies. Once a teacher gets somewhat comfortable with the process, the next battle for her in the classroom is how to structure it into an effective teaching-learning strategy.
While questioning and searching for answers are extremely important parts of inquiry, effectively generating knowledge from this questioning and searching is greatly aided by a conceptual context for learning. To facilitate the inquiry process, teachers/schools adopt the inquiry cycle and the students’ go through the different stages of creating and refining their inquiries with the teacher’s help. The process might end up in the creation of a product or the construction of an understanding. This process of product making or answer building is an iterative process which goes through verification, validation, sifting and sorting till a clear picture emerges. In this journey of constructing meaning, a child works on his own or with a small group of peers necessitating social and communication skills. The teacher provides the appropriate resources and provocation, structuring the activities to support the inquiries.
One of the schools that I work with has developed and adopted the following Inquiry Cycle for their elementary students:
The inquiry approach to learning is complex and dynamic; it looks different in different classrooms. As the process unfolds, it is rarely linear but cyclic or back and forth, very much in sync with the way the brain functions. Therefore, it has been called “a human approach to knowledge acquisition”.
Suffice to conclude in the words of Gordon Wells, “Inquiry is not a ‘method’ of doing science, history, or any other subject, in which the obligatory first stage in a fixed, linear sequence,… is that of students each formulating questions to investigate. Rather, it is an approach to the chosen themes and topics in which the posing of real questions is positively encouraged, whenever they occur and by whoever they are asked. Equally important as the hallmark of an inquiry approach is that all tentative answers are taken seriously and are investigated as rigorously as the circumstances permit.”
Tags: classrooms, Gordon Wells, inquiry, inquiry approach, inquiry cycle, learning, schools, teacher, teaching, teaching-learning
Posted in Teacher Training | No Comments »
