Friday, July 26, 2013

EVOLVING CLASSROOMS…

In the traditional education system, it was usually assumed that students needed to be taught according to a set curriculum, following defined rules. His or her ability to recall what has been taught in the way it had been taught was the measure of his or her success as a student. No harm in the methodology but it did not leave students with any motivation to think and apply the concepts on own and neither was there any way to test his or ability. Teachers knew what was to be taught and there were very hardly any change in what went on in classrooms year on year. Very few students who took an applied approach to what they learnt became major fuel to innovations and new discoveries. But with the pace and need of innovation multiplying manifold these modern times, it is fast becoming a necessity for entire student community to adopt a more active role in his/her education.

Time and again it has been proved that passive, apathetic and bored student community can only excel in a traditional memorizing and recall style of education and evaluation. But to architect, design and develop new knowledge he/she will need to take control of his/her education. Western world, somewhat ahead on these ideas now, have been attempting to bring new models to their schools like experiential learning, adventure learning, problem based learning, discovery learning etc. Many names but objective of all attempt is to weigh the merits and demerits of academic learning to other modes of learning. Various research studies that have not been able to directly correlate success in life to a better performance in life later on fuel these attempts of identifying improvement avenues.

So we are seeing many schools promoting a Student Centered Learning Culture, right from play schools: Emphasis is on teacher being the facilitator not the executor of process of maturation.   So we have Montessori methodology where teachers are referred to as “Guides”. The classroom is a “prepared environment” and children learn what they are ready to learn. While in “Practical life” children learn how to take care of themselves, others and environment, in other sections of class like sensorial, mathematics, language cultural children learn other skills. Another worth mentioning approach that showcases this shift between the perceived roles of teachers and taught in a classroom is Reggio Amelio Approach. In this approach teachers give a lot of attention to the environment, which must be specially set up to invite children to learn and explore. Classroom itself is thought of as a teacher. Teachers are expected not to talk down to children and instead encourage them to find their own ways of solving problems.

In Primary and secondary sections, focus is more towards teaching pupils to think and learn more effectively using a range of visual, auditory and other techniques like mind mapping, music stimulation, physical activity and practical design activities. Many studies have been carried to figure out which skill (listening, looking carefully or doing/building/making) was easiest and hardest for students and results reflect that students identified “doing” as the easiest skill. And this has been the fuel to drive the new models of learning.

Another aspect to the fast changing relation between teachers and the taught is the difference in the way how knowledge was controlled and distributed earlier and these days. The Internet is fast becoming one of the largest and most important learning resources available to both teachers and students. Over the last decade this situation has been matched by an ongoing commitment by the Government and society to increase the use of ICT and Internet technologies in education and to ensure that everyone has access to them. There is the sense that ICT will not only feature in the future but that it will reflect and shape it.

In this scenario, the teacher becomes more a point of guidance that lends to the student the skills and the confidence to conduct their own learning processes than a holder or facilitator of knowledge. This ideological paradigm shift has been matched by a rise in the use of computers and the Internet as teaching devices and, in fact, the one upholds and allows the facilitation of the other. This shift means that the process of education which could be described as teachers telling is (or must) change to process of teachers facilitating access to information for the learner.

This also means teachers now need to be involved in the dual capacities of both teaching and learning and creates new Vision of what, when, and how teachers should learn. During the eighties, Rosenholtz (1989) brought teachers' workplace factors into the discussion of teaching quality, maintaining that teachers who felt supported in their own ongoing learning and classroom practice were more committed and effective than those who did not receive such confirmation. Support by means of teacher networks, cooperation among colleagues, and expanded professional roles increased teacher efficacy in meeting students' needs. Further, Rosenholtz found that teachers with a high sense of their own efficacy were more likely to adopt new classroom behaviors and also more likely to stay in the profession. So we see more and more teachers becoming part of learning communities like “Teacher Learning Community”. Such communities provide teachers will access to Webinars, Online Learning programs, Global resource sharing, social networking and collaboration etc to bring in 21st century teaching strategies into classroom, without travelling across the world.

SaaS, PaaS, On-Demand Models, Pay-As-You use models, Cloud Computing and virtualization are taking down the investment barriers making it all the more affordable to bring technology to Classrooms. Current innovations on handheld devices and tablets, efforts to make tablets as cheap and affordable delivery vehicle for knowledge areas are all accelerating the way classrooms will be designed as we go forward.

In summary, the teacher's role is fast evolving from one of teaching knowledge to teaching how knowledge can be acquired. Teacher is now more a guide facilitating development of “readiness” of a child to learn. However, as with everything, schools and teachers need to identify what are optimal boundaries of such new changes. Dilution of curriculum, isolation of students, confusion of roles, strategy more glorified than required end of education are some of the pitfalls we need to be careful of as we go on adopting new roles of teachers and taught.

Richa Verma

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