CORE PAPER I - PRACTICUM I/2010 - PROBLEM BASED LEARNING SCENARIO

How Far Has the School Scenario Changed in Recent Times?

Now- a- days people are much worried about the changes in school curricula. For example, the recent decision of the Central Board of Secondary Education to do away with 10th standard examination – that once considered being very sacrosanct- has been received with shock by many. The Kerala school system also has been in a flux of sweeping curricular changes for more than a decade. What is the true nature of these changes? Are these changes influenced by the system itself or by outside forces? Have the teachers, headmasters and the general public imbibed the real spirit of curricular changes? Is there a shift in the very purpose of schooling itself? What will be the nature of schooling in the coming decades? Are we going in the right direction?
To raise more questions and search for answers you are requested to have a revisit of the school scenario in terms of the following four sets of components.
1. Physical appearance of the school, buildings, facilities, profile of students and teachers, management, cost of education, interest of various stake holders etc.
2.Curriculum and syllabus, teaching- learning approaches, assessment practices, technological inputs for learning, importance of co- curricular activities etc.
3. Planning and implementation of lessons, students’ role in learning, student- teacher relationship, professional development of teachers, etc.
4. Parents’ involvement, community participation, local bodies and government initiatives etc.
Have a close look at them taking at least one component each from the above four areas. Prepare your report and share your findings.

PRACTICUM III

Semester I
Core Paper I
THEORETICAL BASE OF EDUCATION

PRACTICUM IV

WHAT SOCIAL CHANGES ARE NOW BEING FOSTERED BY EDUCATION?
A MICRO-LEVEL STUDY ON THE IMPACT OF MODERN EDUCATION ON 20th CENTURY KERALAM.

Many studies have identified modern education as one of the agencies that has brought out radical social changes in Kerala. Kerala now has become the most the most literate state in India. But at the dawn of the third millennium, the Kerala society is at crossroads; Kerela now spends more on liquor than on rice; agriculture, which is the backbone of our society is in shambles; fissiparous tendencies find fertile soil here; poor sections find increasingly difficult to make both ends meet; environmental disasters are common and people are ruthlessly displaced ; there are strong forces getting ready to commercialize the education sector and so on . What kind of social change does education now want to foster? One really doubts the role education now plays at this crucial juncture.
An appraisal of the dynamics of social changes initiated by modern education a century ago in Kerala shall provide an insight into the current imbroglio. Our forefathers have considered modern education as the torch bearer of social change. This Practicum aims to identify the role modern education has been playing since the dawn of the 20th century in the social transformation of Kerala

Guidelines.

To undertake this micro-level study you please select the first educational initiative in your locality /area. It may be a school, an initiative by an enlightened individual to popularize modern education, a community effort to build a school etc. Please meet people who are associated with such events and movements, refer documents and interview people who got benefited from these educational efforts. Study the social changes which have been brought about by education in your area.

A FINE LINK TO CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING

Please go to the following link to have a good description of constructivist principles.
http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~emurphy/stemnet/cle3.html
best regrds

FEW TIPS ON CONSTRUCTIVIST LEARNING

Constructivist approaches to teaching and learning have emerged from the work of psychologists and educators such as: Jerome S.Bruner,Jean Piaget and L.Vygotsky.
Jonassen (1994) proposed that there are eight characteristics that differentiate constructivist learning environments:

1. Constructivist learning environments provide multiple representations of reality.

2. Multiple representations avoid oversimplification and represent the complexity of the real world.

3. Constructivist learning environments emphasize knowledge construction instead of knowledge reproduction.

4. Constructivist learning environments emphasize authentic tasks in a meaningful context rather than abstract instruction out of context.

5. Constructivist learning environments provide learning environments such as real-world settings or case-based learning instead of predetermined sequences of instruction.

6. Constructivist learning environments encourage thoughtful reflection on experience.

7. Constructivist learning environments enable "context- and content- dependent knowledge construction."

8. Constructivist learning environments support "collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, not competition among learners for recognition."