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‘Maria Montessori’, an Italian physician and naturalist has propounded Montessori method . This method lays emphasis on student's all-round development which includes personal, social, moral, emotional, and cognitive development of the child.

• Dr. Montessori’s Method has been time tested, with over 100 years of success in diverse cultures throughout the world.
• It is a view of the child as one who is naturally eager for knowledge and capable of initiating learning in a supportive, thoughtfully prepared learning environment.
• It is an approach that values the human spirit and the development of the whole child—physical, social, emotional, cognitive.

Important Points

The Montessori system of teaching is focused on the child as it ensures student's all-round development by:

• making learning fun and burden-free by including self-directed activity, hands-on learning to reach full potential in all areas of life.
• providing many practical exercises in her school to enable the child to learn good habits of cleanliness and order.
• making students learn the lesson of the dignity of labour and self-reliability by attending to their needs themselves.
• introducing concepts such as ‘Learning through living’, ‘Sense training’, ‘individual teaching’.

Hence, it could be concluded that the ‘Maria Montessori’ was an Italian physician.

Intelligence refers to the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. It is the ability to solve problems, learn from experiences, and apply knowledge to deal with new situations.

• There are many theories related to intelligence. These theories are propounded by eminent psychologists to provide a framework to understand different aspects of human intelligence.

Key Points

The two-factor theory of intelligence:

• Charles Spearman proposed this theory in the year 1923.
• According to his theory, intelligence consists of two factors: ‘g’ and ‘s’, where ‘g’ stands for generalized factor and ‘s’ stands for the specific factor.
• As per him, the ‘g’ factor is responsible for different tasks which are common for all people while the ‘s’ factor is for abilities like musical, spatial, mechanical, etc.
• S-factor is applicable in specific fields and changeable in nature while G-factor is a universal innate ability to perform all cognitive tasks effectively.

Hence, we can conclude that G factors is learnt and hence acquired in the environment is not a characteristic of 'G factors' with reference to 'two - factor theory'.

There are many theories related to intelligence. These theories are propounded by eminent psychologists to provide a framework to understand different aspects of human intelligence.

• L. L. Thurstone has propounded ‘Primary Mental Abilities / Group Factor Theory’, he believed that certain mental operations have a primary factor differentiating them from other mental operations.
• The theory emphasizes that intelligence is not a general or specific factor rather a combination of seven different primary mental abilities which includes spatial, perceptual, numerical, verbal, etc.
• In other words, there are a number of groups of mental abilities, each of which has its own primary factor, giving the group functional unity and cohesiveness.

Each of these primary factors is said to be relatively independent of the others.

Key Points

Thurstone has given the following seven primary factors:

• The Number Factor (N) refers to the ability to do rapid and accurate numerical calculations.
• The Verbal Factor (V) refers to the ability of verbal comprehension.
• The Spatial relations (S) is involved in a task requiring the manipulation of the imaginary objects in space.
• Memory (M) involves the ability to memorize quickly.
• Word Fluency (W) refers to the ability to think of isolated words at a rapid rate.
• Reasoning (R) refers to the ability to discover a rule or principle involved in a series or groups of letters.
• Perceptual Speed (P) is the ability to note visual details rapidly.

Hence, we conclude that the number factors of 'primary mental ability' enables the individual to do numerical calculations rapidly and accurately.

Intelligence refers to the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. It is the ability to solve problems, learn from experiences, and apply knowledge to deal with new situations.

• There are many theories related to intelligence. These theories are propounded by eminent psychologists to provide a framework to understand different aspects of human intelligence.

Important Points

Three-dimensional Model of Intelligence 

• J. P. Guilford developed the Three-dimensional Model or Structure of Intellect Model as a way of organizing intellectual factors into a system.
• The model is three dimensional, and dimensions are Operation categories, Content Categories, and Product categories.
• According to this theory, There are
• 6 kinds of operations (cognition, memory recording, memory retention, divergent production, convergent production, evaluation),
• 6 kinds of products (units, classes, relations, systems, transformations, and implications), and
• 5 kinds of contents (visual, auditory, symbolic, semantic, behavioral).
• Each of these dimensions is independent, there are theoretically 180 different components of intelligence.
• Guilford researched and developed a wide variety of psychometric tests to measure the specific abilities predicted by SI theory.
• These tests provide an operational definition of the many abilities proposed by the theory. Furthermore, factor analysis was used to determine which tests appeared to measure the same or different abilities.

Hence, it is clear that according to J. P. Guilford, human intelligence is composed of three dimensions, viz., operations, contents and products, as detected by factor analysis so, None of them would be the correct answer.

Additional Information

Galton was the founder of the field of Differential Psychology, which concerns itself with psychological differences between people, rather than on common traits.

• His influential study Hereditary Genius (1869) was the first systematic attempt to investigate the effect of heredity on intellectual abilities, and was notable for its use of the bell-shaped Normal Distribution, then called the "Law of Errors", to describe differences in intellectual ability.
• Later Galton went on to suggest the use of twin studies to disentangle nature from nurture, by comparing identical twins to fraternal twins.
• His psychological studies also embraced mental differences in visualization, and he was the first to identify and study "number forms", now called "synesthesia".
• He also invented the word-association test and investigated the operations of the subconscious mind.

Hence, we can conclude that the book, Hereditary Genius was written by F. Galton.

Learning disability refers to a neurological disorder that causes cognitive impairment. Dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, etc are the most common learning disability.

Key Points

Dysgraphia refers to a learning disability which:

• affects learners' ability to write coherently.
• hinders in organizing letters, numbers, or words on papers.
• leads to problems with poor spelling, impaired handwriting, etc.

Remedies useful for treating students with Dysgraphia:

• giving extra time for writing assessment, will reduce the copying activity and will emphasize the importance of writing original answers.
• dividing tasks into small steps will enable the learners to assimilate the idea easily and will help them in putting their thoughts on paper.
• providing low-stress opportunities will allow the learners to learn and write at their own pace and to foster their own strategy of learning and writing.

Hence, it could be concluded that 'Dysgraphia' means difficulty in writing.

Additional Information

Other Disabilities in Brief:

Education is concerned with all people and considered as basic social need of all societies. John Dewey viewed that being a social need it performs major functions to the society as follows:

• Education and society have close association since the inception of society itself.
• On one hand, education prepares individual to perform different social roles in society, whereas on other hand, society and culture determines the system of socialization and the nature of education to be imparted to the members.
• Each society, from simple to the complex one, has its own system of educating their young generation and accordingly the institutions are developed.

Hence, the above statement is said by Dewey.

Conditioning is the process of modifying one’s behaviour with the help of some preparation or training. Behaviourism theory is an idea that states that learning takes place owing to conditioning. John Watson is called the father of behaviourism. There are two types of conditioning: Operant and Classical.

Operant: This method of conditioning works on reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement promotes the happening of behaviour in the future while punishment is a term that implies the reduction of happening of a behaviour in the future. It has positive (to add) and negative (to take away) factors:

• Negative Reinforcement refers to following an undesired response with an outcome that is painful or not liked.
• Positive Reinforcement: When the consequence that strengthens a behaviour is the presentation (addition) of a new stimulus, the situation is defined as positive reinforcement.

Aversive Conditioning: Aversive unconditioned stimuli, such as noise, bitter taste, electric shock, painful injections, etc. are painful, and harmful, and elicit avoidance and escape responses. Aversive classical conditioning is established in one, two or three trials depending on the intensity of the aversive unconditioned stimuli.

​Hence, we conclude that the above statement is of negative reinforcement.

Evaluation refers to a process of making value judgments based on both qualitative and quantitative data collected over a period of time.

• Evaluation is integral to the teaching-learning process as it helps in facilitating student learning and improving instruction. It is a systematic way of collecting information to make a judgment about student learning.

Key Points

Continuous evaluation is the best method to evaluate the achievement of students as it helps in:

• making reliable decisions about educational planning.
• determining the effectiveness of the learning process or program.
• providing constructive feedback to both the students and the teachers.
• assessing both scholastic and co-scholastic aspects of a child's growth.
• evaluating teaching methodology regarding the expected learning objectives.

Hence, it could be concluded that continuous evaluation is the best method to evaluate the achievement of students.

Additional Information

Assessment is always considered an integral part of the teaching-learning process.  The assessment reflects how well classroom instruction has been organized by teachers and how far learners have progressed in their learning. It is an inbuilt process in teaching-learning, teachers can understand the needs of the learners better and accordingly change or adjust the quality of their instruction during the process of teaching the unit itself.

Purpose of Assessment: The purpose of an assessment for learning is to provide feedback to both the teacher and student regarding the student’s progress towards achieving the learning objective(s).

• The main purpose of assessment is to help to identify gaps in student's learning and what remedial measures should appropriate to reducing the learning gaps of the students that are needed to be taken for continuing or improving their learning.
• It gathers data during the learning process when the class progresses through a unit of study to determine a student’s knowledge and skills, including learning gaps.
• Provide feedback about the work the students have completed using the atlas and provide ideas for adjusting, rethinking, and articulating their learning.
• It informs students about what they have done well, where they have had difficulty, and what they need to do differently to improve their work.
• It expects students to make errors and directs them to examine these errors to improve their learning.
• It also measures the achievement in learning and decides if the student should be promoted to the next class.

Hence, we can conclude that none of the above statements are the main purpose of the assessment.