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A heuristic, or heuristic technique, is an approach to problem-solving that uses a practical method or various shortcuts in order to produce solutions that may not be optimal but are sufficient given a limited timeframe or deadline.

Key Points

1. It helps in achieving cognitive, affective, and psychomotor objectives i.e. it helps in the all-around development of the child.
2. Students are put into the situation to learn by self-experience.
3. It certainly develops self-confidence and self-reliance in the learners.
4. It helps in developing scientific attitudes and creativity in the learners.
5. The teacher encourages the learners to explore the environment in search of the solution to the problems. By doing so, some new knowledge is discovered by them.
6. The teacher is always ready to provide individual guidance regarding the solution of the problem. Thus the interaction between the teacher and the learner takes place in a cooperative, conducive environment.

Additional Information

Disadvantages of Heuristic Teaching Method

1. It cannot be used at the primary level of education
2. Higher intelligence and divergent thinking are required in the learners. But, there are some students who are below average and fail to succeed in discovering the solutions to the problems. It frustrates them.
3. In a true sense, none of the teachers have patience for providing individual guidance to the learners. And learners, too, feel hesitation to approach the teacher for seeking his help.

Dysgraphia is a term that refers to trouble with writing.

 Key Points

• Dysgraphia is a Greek word. The base word graph refers both to the hand’s function in writing and to the letters formed by the hand.
• The prefix dys indicates that there is impairment. Graph refers to producing letterforms by hand. The suffix ia refers to having a condition. Thus, dysgraphia is the condition of impaired letter writing by hand, that is, disabled handwriting.
• Impaired handwriting can interfere with learning to spell words in writing and the speed of writing text.
• Children with dysgraphia may have only impaired handwriting, only impaired spelling (without reading problems), or both impaired handwriting and impaired spelling.

Additional Information

• Developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD), also known as dyspraxia, is a condition affecting physical coordination. It causes a child to perform less well than expected in daily activities for their age, and appear to move clumsily.
• Dyscalculia is a term referring to a wide range of difficulties with maths, including weaknesses in understanding the meaning of numbers, and difficulty applying mathematical principles to solve problems. Dyscalculia is rarely identified early.
• Dyslexia is a specific learning disorder that specifically affects their reading development.

Hence, A primary school child frequently makes mistakes in writing numbers. He is showing the symptoms of dysgraphia.

Repression is a psychological attempt to unconsciously forget or block unpleasant, uncomfortable or distressing memories, thoughts, or desires from conscious awareness. These thoughts or memories are directed into areas of the subconscious mind that are not easily accessible and completely unaware of their existence.

Key Points

Sigmund Freud And Repression

• Sigmund Freud originally developed the concept of repression as part of his famed psychoanalytic theory. As a definition, Freud believed repression to be the unconscious prevention of dangerous drives or impulses, which would lead to unacceptable behaviors.
• Freud believed repression played a crucial role in the human psyche and was the most important defense mechanism, declaring that the concept is “the cornerstone on which the whole structure of psychoanalysis rests.”
• His entire theory was built on it; he firmly believed that bringing unconscious thoughts into awareness could alleviate psychological distress.

Repression In Contemporary Psychology

• Psychologists often refer to repression as blocking painful memories and not necessarily censoring forbidden impulses as Freud originally meant it.
• Mainstream psychologists today often believe that repressing memories is not common and is quite rare.

Additional Information

• Withdrawal is the combination of physical and mental effects that a person experiences after they stop using or reduce their intake of a substance such as alcohol and prescription or recreational drugs.
• inhibition, in psychology, conscious or unconscious constraint or curtailment of a process or behavior, especially of impulses or desires.
• Suppression is the conscious process of pushing unwanted, anxiety-provoking thoughts, memories, emotions, fantasies, and desires out of awareness. 
• Suppression is the voluntary form of repression proposed by Sigmund Freud in 1892.

Therefore, psychological forgetting is also known as repression.

“Education should create a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect”. is the statement given by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1835. He successfully westernised education in India; English was made the official language for the government and courts and was adopted as the official medium of instruction.

Key Points

• The British planned to educate a small section of upper and middle classes, thus creating a class that would act as interpreters. This was called the 'downward filtration theory'
• Downward filtration theory states that giving education to the members of the higher classes of the society would facilitate an opportunity for the grass root people of the society, too, because the lower class people always tend to imitate and follow the model of the people of higher status in the society.
• Downward Filtration Theory shows that Macaulay had some keen observation of human psychology. People always would select anything by looking at those who live in better circumstances. But he either failed to realize that formal education was not such a thing that could be gained only by imitating others or had a hidden agenda of creating two groups of people in India so that they could rule the country forever by making use of the tricky policy called divide and rule.

Hence “Education should create a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” is recommended by Downward filtration theory.

Additional Information

• Magna Carta of education in India- Wood’s Despatch on Education in 1854 laid the foundation of the Indian educational system and the establishments of Universities in Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai.
• The despatch came to be considered as the Magna Carta of English education in India. The Scheme of education, as proposed by Wood`s Despatch, envisaged a coordinated system of education throughout the country.
• University education in India has a long history of its own and has a long tradition of learning.
• The ancient universities in India were the leading centers of learning in the contemporary world and attracted scholars from other countries.
• The earliest of the university was Takshashila (West Punjab, now Pakistan) which attained great fame as a university in the seventh century B.C.
• National Policy on Education ensures proper administration, management, and implementation of the educational system in all areas of society.
• It provides the direction for educational activities.
• India has had three national policies on education to date.
• The first came in 1968 and the second in 1986, under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi respectively; the NEP of 1986 was revised in 1992 when P V Narasimha Rao was Prime Minister.
• The third is the NEP released in 2020 under the Prime Ministership of Narendra Modi.

Teacher evaluation is the standardized process of rating and assessing the teaching effectiveness of educators.

Key Points

Teacher evaluation systems often rely on a predetermined set of indicators. Effective teaching should include subcategories, such as

• Content knowledge
• Preparation and lesson planning
• Instructional techniques
• Student evaluation
• Classroom environment
• Collaboration
• Professional development

The most appropriate strategy to assess teachers is the evaluation done by students.

• Students spend most of their time with the teacher.
• Students should be given a feedback form containing various parameters on which to assess a teacher.

Additional Information

• Peer Evaluation of Teaching consists of the review of teaching performance by colleagues, usually in the same or a similar discipline, with the purpose of assessing and improving the quality of teaching. Peer review puts faculty in charge of the quality of their teaching.
• Self-assessments allow instructors to reflect upon and describe their teaching and learning goals, challenges, and accomplishments.
• Across the country, states and districts are designing principal evaluation systems as a means of improving leadership, learning, and school performance.
• Principal evaluation systems hold potential for supporting leaders' learning and a sense of accountability for instructional excellence and student performance.

The National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), (Deemed to be a University) was established by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India.

Key Points

• It is a premier organization dealing with capacity building and research in the planning and management of education not only in India but also in South Asia.
• In recognition of the pioneering work done by the organization in the field of educational planning and administration, the Government of India has empowered it to award its own degrees by way of conferring it the status of Deemed to be University in August, 2006.
• The National Institute has its origin dating back to 1962 when UNESCO established the Asian Regional Centre for Educational Planners and Administrators which later became the Asian Institute of Educational Planning and Administration in 1965.
• After 4 years of its existence, it was taken over by the Government of India and renamed the National Staff College for Educational Planners and Administrators.
• Subsequently, with the increased roles and functions of the National Staff College, particularly in capacity building, research, and professional support services to governments, it was again renamed as the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) in 1979.

Inclusive education means all children in the same classrooms, in the same schools. 

Key Points

• Inclusive education values diversity and the unique contributions each student brings to the classroom.
• In a truly inclusive setting, every child feels safe and has a sense of belonging.
• Students and their parents participate in setting learning goals and take part in decisions that affect them.
• It means real learning opportunities for groups who have traditionally been excluded – not only children with disabilities but speakers of minority languages too.

To close the education gap for children with disabilities, UNICEF supports government efforts to foster and monitor inclusive education systems. Their work focuses on four key areas:

Additional Information

• Advocacy: UNICEF promotes inclusive education in discussions, high-level events, and other forms of outreach geared towards policymakers and the general public.
• Awareness-raising: UNICEF shines a spotlight on the needs of children with disabilities by conducting research and hosting roundtables, workshops, and other events for government partners.
• Capacity-building: UNICEF builds the capacity of education systems in partner countries by training teachers, administrators, and communities, and providing technical assistance to Governments.
• Implementation support: UNICEF assists with monitoring and evaluation in partner countries to close the implementation gap between policy and practice.

Self Learning Material (SLM) is developed with the approach of self-explanatory, self-contained, self-directed, self-motivating, and self-evaluating.

Key Points

“Programmed learning refers to the arrangement of instructional material in progressive sequences” -Harold W.Bernard.

• Programmed Instruction or Programmed Learning is one of the important innovations in the teaching-learning process.
• The term ‘Programmed Learning’ has been coined from principles of operant learning, developed in psychological laboratories on the basis of experimental studies conducted on animals by B.F Skinner of Harvard University (1943).

CHARACTERISTICS OF PROGRAMMED LEARNING

• The content is broken into small steps and each step is presented in several sentences, each step is called a frame
• The frames are arranged sequentially.
• Most of the frames require that the learner makes some kind of responses-an an answer to a question, an activity to demonstrate the understanding of the material.
• The student is provided with immediate confirmation of the right answers (i.e.) the learner is provided immediate reinforcement.
• In case he is correct, his response is reinforced and if he is wrong, he may correct himself by receiving the correct answer.
• It is the interaction between the learner and learning material that is emphasized in programmed learning.
• Here, the learner is active and is motivated to learn and respond.

Hence a self-contained instructional material is known as programme.

Additional Information A module is considered to be a set of learning opportunities organized around a well-defined topic that contains elements of instruction, specific objectives, learning activities, and self-assessment and evaluation using criteria-referenced measurement.

Survey method is suitable for finding the status of a society.

Key Points

• A survey is a research method used for collecting data from a predefined group of respondents to gain information and insights into various topics of interest.
• The process involves asking people for information through a questionnaire, which can be either online or offline.
• It is used to collect information about people's attitudes, beliefs and behaviour and involves the collection of standardized information from the population being studied.
• Standardized information is gathered by asking the same questions to all respondents in the exact same order.
• A social survey is most commonly used to describe research done on a social platform or survey software based on sample data collection through a systematic questionnaire or interview.

Additional Information

• A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon.
• An experiment is a procedure carried out under controlled conditions in order to discover an unknown effect or law, to test or establish a hypothesis, or to illustrate a known law.
• Observation is the active acquisition of information from a primary source.

Global village describes the phenomenon of the entire world becoming more interconnected as the result of the propagation of media technologies throughout the world.

Key Points

• The term Global village was coined by Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan in his books The Gutenberg Galaxy(1962) and Understanding Media (1964).
• The term "global village" means all parts of the world as they are being brought together by the internet and other electronic communication interconnections.
• The new reality of the digital age has implications for forming new socially meaningful structures within the context of culture.
• On the Internet, physical distance is even less of a hindrance to the real-time communicative activities of people.
• Social Spheres are greatly expanded by the openness of the web and the ease at which people can search for online communities and interact with others who share the same interests and concerns.

 Additional Information

• ​The World Wide Web which is commonly referred to as WWW, W3, or the Web—is an interconnected system of public webpages accessible through the Internet.
• The Internet is a vast network that connects computers all over the world. Through the Internet, people can share information and communicate from anywhere with an Internet connection.
• Globalization is a term used to describe how trade and technology have made the world into a more connected and interdependent place.