Active Learning
When students’ voices take centre-stage Fiona Vaz
I
n the past few years, considerable attention has been paid to improving the educational outcomes for children. Schools serving students from all socio-economic backgrounds are expending more efforts to improve learning outcomes and to create adults who can flourish at a global scale. However, schools in India tend to be quite resistant to change. Pedagogies that have seemed effective continue to be used since teachers and schools get comfortable and better versed with the methods that they are familiar with. Amidst the pulls of staying with what has worked in the past and the push of wanting to adopt the new, traditional classrooms in urban, peri-urban and rural schools are trying out digital learning using projectors, smartboards, tablets and the Internet. Some schools are adopting alternative co-curricular and extra-curricular activities such as drama and theatre and sports to enhance student leadership, newer approaches to teaching STEM and to build critical thinking and so forth. All these learning 12
TEACHER PLUS, JULY 2020
methods, aim to change what has remained at the very core of the Indian education system – the culture of silence on the part of the students and the authority of the teacher as the sole person possessing and disseminating knowledge. Given all the efforts being made, in multiple directions, is an exploration on active learning even relevant? According to Nilesh Nimkar, Founder and Director of QUEST Education in India that works with schools in rural Maharashtra, active learning is not a reality in most schools. “As far as rural elementary schools are concerned, the upper primary grades (6-8) largely depend on the old chalk and talk way of teaching, based on the prescribed textbook. There is some shift of approach visible in primary grades where teachers try to increase children’s active participation using some concrete materials or by planning group activities,” he says. Nilesh observes that these changes however are not consistent across grades and even across different student demographics. Those who are marginalized continue to be taught
Photos courtesy: Fiona Vaz
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