PLAY BASED LEARNING - GOVERNANCE
News: Class
teaching for 3 to 8-year-olds to be play-based, textbook-free
What's in the news?
● Classroom
learning sans textbooks and one that is instead based on toys, puppets, playbooks, and story cards are at the core of the
implementation of a curriculum framework prepared by the Union government for
children in the age group of three to eight
to meet a key focus area of the National Education Policy to improve
foundational skills of students.
Key takeaways:
● The
teaching material released will pave the way for implementation of the National
Curriculum Framework for Foundational Skills 2022.
Jaadui Pitara:
● “Jaadui
Pitara” is a magical box containing
learning and teaching material for the foundational stage of schooling that
also leverages technology.
● It
provides QR codes to enable teachers
to access teaching resources such as poems, storybooks, and flash cards.
● The
teaching material released will pave the way for implementation of the National Curriculum Framework for
Foundational Skills 2022 released in October last year for students in
balvatika (pre-primary) and classes 1 and 2.
National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Skills:
● The
Framework describes that children between three
and six years learn best through doing activities “such as talking,
listening, using toys, working with material, painting, and drawing, singing,
dancing, running, and jumping".
● Therefore,
the teaching material now readied by the NCERT requires teacher engagement to
not only be “textbook-free” but also involve “conversations, storytelling,
toy-based learning, songs and rhymes, music and movement, arts and craft,
indoor and outdoor games, spending time with nature, and field trips.”
● The
emphasis on play-based learning and
the need to improve foundational skill is one of the core focus areas of the
National Education Policy 2020.
● It
also requires State and Union Territory governments to “prepare an
implementation plan for attaining universal foundational literacy and numeracy
in all primary schools and identifying
stage-wise targets and goals to be achieved by 2025.”
Go back to basics:
NCF 2022-Backdrop:
● NCF
provides the framework for creation of the school syllabi and the writing of
textbooks, while giving guidelines on teaching practices in India.
● It
addresses four issues:
a. Educational
purpose
b. Educational
experience
c. Organization
of experience
d. Assessing
learners.
● NCF
is only suggestive and provides guidelines on different aspects of education.
● All
the states also developed the State
Curriculum Framework (SCF) in line with NCF.
Purpose:
● To
make education comparable across the country in qualitative terms and also
making it as a means of ensuring national integration without compromising on
the country’s pluralistic character.
Previous NCF:
NCF
past guidelines came in 1975, 1988, 2000 and 2005.
● NCF 1975:
General Science as a compulsory subject, activity based integrated science
recommended up to Class X.
● NCF 1988:
Science curriculum should be learner-centered, develop well-defined abilities
in cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains.
● NCF 2000:
Teaching of Science and tech in upper primary and secondary, part of
environment studies in primary recommended.
● NCF 2005:
Focus on learning without burden, reduction in syllabus, including age appropriate
concepts.
Sections of NCF:
The
NCF has four sections:
National Curriculum Framework for Early Childhood Care
and Education:
● The
NCF 2022 for foundational age groups, a 360-page document, favours developing
an interactive curriculum for children at various levels using story-telling
techniques and real-life experiences.
● It
says board games and stories from the Panchatantra
(a collection of Indian fables and folktales) should be used to teach children
in the age group of 6-8 years.
● For
the first three years of the foundational stage, that is 3 to 6 years, there
should not be any prescribed textbooks.
● Rather,
simple worksheets are more than sufficient to meet the curricular goals, says
the document.
● It
also recommends that the mother tongue should be the primary medium of
instruction for children till eight years of age, in both public and private
schools.
● English
could be one of the second language options, it says, without giving any
time-frame for introducing the language.
Panchakosha:
● Another
thrust of NCF 2022 is the focus on cognitive
development and socio-emotional stimulation in the early years of a child
through “panchakosha”.
● Panchakosha
is an ancient explication of the importance of the body-mind complex in human experience and understanding.
● This
non-dichotomous approach to human development gives clear pathways and
direction towards a more holistic education.
Five parts of Panchakosha:
● The
concept’s five parts are
○ Physical
development (sharirik vikas)
○ Development
of life energy (pranik vikas)
○ Emotional
and mental development (manasik vikas)
○ Intellectual
development (bauddhik vikas)
○ Spiritual
development (chaitsik vikas).