Child Development and Pedagogy PYQs

Learning is the process of acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviours, skills.

Characteristics of learning:

• Learning is transferable.
• Learning requires interaction.
• Learning is a lifelong process.
• It can be observed directly.
• It can be retained through practice.
• Learning is the growth of organisms.
• Learning is a goal-directed process.
• Learning is a relatively permanent change in behaviour.
• Learning is the relationship between stimulus and response.

Hence, we conclude that Learning is a form of behavioural ​modification.

B.F. Skinner is considered as the most influential psychologist advocating the role of operant conditioning in learning. He developed an experimental chamber (called Skinner Box) to study the learning process in rats. The book "The Behaviour of Organisms" was launched by BF Skinner in 1938 in which he explained that behaviour changes lifetime. Also, he wrote about the basic unit of behaviour i.e. operant which is explained below.

Operant Conditioning: Modification of Behaviour through Reinforcement

• If a child completes the homework she is praised (rewarded) by the parents and the child learns to perform the task.
• If the child breaks a plate, he/she is scolded (punished) and she will learn not to repeat the behaviour. This is called Operant Conditioning or instrumental conditioning.
• In other words, we learn to perform behaviours that produce positive outcomes and avoid behaviours that yield negative outcomes.

Hence, we conclude that a Skinner box is used for ​operant conditioning

Performance test, also known as a non-verbal intelligence test is a test that:

• assesses learner's ability to understand and interpret visual information like pictures or diagrams.
• emphasizes to activate learner's logical, spatial, and abstract reasoning to solve a particular task.

Key Points

• Bhatia Battery test is a performance test of intelligence which is developed by C.M. Bhatia in 1955. It includes cards with different patterns and the children are required to draw these patterns without lifting the pencil.

Bhatia Battery Test includes five sub-tests, namely:

• Pattern Drawing Test
• Kohs' Block Design Test
• Picture construction Testx
• Alexander Pass along Test
• Immediate Memory Test for Digits

Let's Understand the Sub-tests in Brief:

 

Hence, it could be concluded that Bhatia battery test of intelligence has '5 sub-sets'.

Kindergarten system of teaching is propounded by Friedrich Frobel, a German pedagogue who established the first Kindergarten school in Germany in 1837. Note that:

• In this method, he characterized children as 'plants' and the teachers as the 'gardeners' because they are the optimistic one who could foster the potential of young seedlings to grow and bloom.
• The purpose of this method is to provide children with a rich, meaningful and balanced learning through appropriate activities at their own pace in a collaborative environment.
• It is based on the physiological principle of development and growth to keep the child fit and enables the overall development of child and understanding of the subject to make learning more effective.

Hence, we conclude that Froebel was the founder of the Kindergarten method.

Counseling is a process of enabling the individual to know himself and his present and possible future situations in order that he may make substantial contributions to society and to solve his own problems through a face-to-face relationship with the counselor.

Key Points

1. There are different types of counseling approaches which include Collective/eclectic, Directive, and Non-directive counseling. Collective counseling is a combination of Directive and Non-directive counseling.

Key Points

Collective counselling was propounded by 'F.C.Thorn'. It is a more flexible type of counselling approch which:

• uses techniques drawn from several different schools of thought.
• allows the therapist to adapt to each client’s individual diverse needs.
• combines different counselling methods to deal with counsellee's problems.
• collaborates behavioral and psychodynamic therapeutic techniques effectively.

Hence, it could be concluded that collective counselling was propounded by **'**F.C. Thorn'.

Additional Information

Classroom Management consists of the teacher’s thoughts, plans, and actions that create an orderly environment and promote learning. Classroom management stands for the management of resources, pupils’ learning activities, and behaviours in the classroom. It is essentially a human relation skill.

In order to modify the undesirable behaviour of students the most effective method is to find out the reasons and attempt to provide remedies. The modification of undesirable behaviour is part of classroom management.

Classroom management is complex and many variables need to be considered when making decisions about specific situations. Planning and organizations, procedures used for handling various types of behaviours of learners are all parts of classroom management. Components of Classroom management

• It focuses on ways to establish and maintain workable systems for classroom groups, rather than ways to identify misbehaviour, resolve behavioural disorders, or capture the attention of individual students.
• One of these ways is to reinforce (praise) the good (desirable) behaviours and try to ignore the bad (undesirable) ones. Praise for appropriate behaviours is probably the key behaviour for achieving effective classroom management.
• A teacher should always keep an eye on each pupil in the classroom with a view to watching everyone’s behaviour.
• Give directions to pupils for a number of purposes. If your direction is not clear, it may disrupt the teaching-learning process in the classroom.
• For effective classroom management, it is necessary that pupils are engaged in work. For this purpose, she should direct his/her pupils to take down notes of what she is teaching in the classroom.
• In order to manage the classroom effectively, there is a need on the part of a teacher to generate interaction in the classroom.
• Securing and sustaining pupils' attention to the learning task is very helpful in managing the classroom effectively. If the students do not pay attention to the learning task there is always a tendency on their part to engage in disruptive behaviour.

Hence, we conclude that In order to modify the undesirable behaviour of student the most effective method is ​to find out the reasons and attempt to provide remedies.

Learning disability refers to the neurological disorder that causes cognitive impairment. Dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, etc are the example of learning disability.

'Dyslexia' is the most common learning disability which is related with problem in reading as it makes learners:

• confuse with the same shapes and sounds of alphabet.
• unable to read, interpret, and understand letters and words.
• bewilder in identifying and relating speech sounds with letters and words.

Hence, it could be concluded that Dyslexia is related with problem in reading.

Additional Information

Other Disabilities in Brief:

A visually impaired child is the one who has a problem seeing with the naked eyes or is not able to see completely.

Key Points

Strategies for Addressing the Needs of Visually Challenged Learners:

• Speaking clearly and loudly with appropriate pauses and reiterations.
• Using the braille system as it's raised dots help in studying words through the pattern.
• Teaching can be done by a skilled teacher in Braille script or by using a tape recorder.
• Braille System: It refers to a pattern of raised dots called "Braille"  to represent letters, numbers, and punctuation marks, that can be felt with a finger.
• Tape recorder: An audio teaching-learning material, it is used for recording and replaying sounds can be used as a teaching aid.
• Designing alternate teaching-learning and assessment methods.
• Changing the objective/subject due to any inefficiency or problem is not a part of the teaching method to solve the problem or alternative formal steps will be taken.

Hence, we conclude that the Braille method and tape-recording can be used as educational provision for ​visually-impaired students.

As any individual knows, every child comes into a family with an abundance of needs: to be loved and cared for, nurtured, fed, clothed and educated, among other things. A child with special needs (acronymed as CWSN) is basically a child who, because of his or her unique medical or developmental difficulties, has needs in addition to those of his or her peers.

Key Points

Key points related to it:

• Special needs may range from mild to more severe. Most special needs respond well to treatment or special programs and services.
• The teacher plays a very important role in accomplishing most of the needs of the child.
• The Disability Act 1995 and UNCRPD (United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) rights is an important aspect for the teacher to explain it to the parents and other stakeholders.
• Role of the teacher is very crucial while dealing with CWSN, she has to understand the meanings of each disability, identify the child and classify it to which group of disability it belongs to, and later send the child to a professional for assessment and once the assessment is done, she can plan for further intervention jointly working with professionals, parents.

Hence, we conclude that CWSN stands for ​Children with Special Needs.

Counseling is a process of enabling the individual to know himself and his present and possible future situations in order that he may make substantial contributions to the society and to solve his own problems through a face to face relationship with the counselor.

• In educational settings, counselling refers to the process which gives importance to recognize the root of the learner's problems.
• Counseling helps the teacher to better relate to the unacceptable behavior of learners and to help them with the proper guidance.

Important Points

For effective counseling, the counselor should keep in mind the element of counseling which includes:

• Interview
• The interview is one of the main techniques employed in assisting the individual to understand himself. It is the fundamental operation in the counseling process.
• By interview, the actual causes can be listed, and then the counselor should take efforts to eliminate the effects of the factors that cause the problem and should work for a permanent solution.
• Confidence
• An expert counselor can arouse confidence in the counsellee that they are close enough for his free expression of any of his feelings which he cannot talk openly with others.
• The counselor builds up the confidence of the counsellee through positive strokes, warmth, acceptance, support, and encouragement, and makes him see the more positive side of himself.
• Communication
• Counselling provides a relationship and communications which help the client to develop understanding, explore options, and start the change.
• Counselor is responsible to establish a helping relationship based on trust, freedom, positive regard and mutual respect, genuineness, accurate empathy, etc.

Hence, it could be concluded that professional growth is not an element of counselling.

Learning Curve: A learning curve visualizes changes in pupil overall performance over time. The line graph displays opportunities across the x-axis, and a measure of student performance along the y-axis.

Learning Plateau-

• If the learner arrives at a plateau in his learning process, imperfect linguistic items, rules, and subsystems will become relatively permanently incorporated into the learning system of a second language learner, in spite of further experience, explanation, or instruction.
• The period of learning, where no improvement in performance is made,
• A learning plateau occurs when you stop learning quickly. It's easy to make quick progress early on, when you learn more, you naturally slow down. Because of this, learning plateau frequently occurs when learners reach an intermediate level of learning.

Following are the cause of plateau of learning-

• Overgeneralization of the linguistic material of the target
• Strategies of communication
• limit of motivation
• Physiological limit
• Limit of knowledge
• lack of confidence
• doing the same things all the time

The period of learning, where no improvement in performance is made, is called a plateau of learning.

Intelligence refers to a set of different cognitive abilities to think rationally, act purposefully, resolve problems, and deal with the demands of the environment.

Key Points

An individual’s Intelligence Quotient (IQ) is determined by the formula given below,

\({\bf{Intelligence}};{\bf{Quotient}};\left( {{\bf{IQ}}} \right) = \frac{{{\bf{Mental}};{\bf{Age}};\left( {{\bf{MA}}} \right);}}{{{\bf{Chronological}};{\bf{Age}};\left( {{\bf{CA}}} \right)}} \times 100\)

Where, Mental Age is based on intellectual development.

Chronological Age is the number of years a person has lived.

The below table shows classification of IQ:

Learning By Trial And Error**:** The connections between stimuli and responses are formed through random trial and error.

Key Points

• The law of trial and error was formulated after Thorndike’s experiment on a hungry cat imprisoned in a cage.
• When the cat could press the lever of the cage through several trials, it would get food as the reward.
• Thorndike also emphasized the significance of other factors like the readiness of learners, and goal-oriented learning endeavors, for learning.
• Thorndike also propounded "Trial & Error Theory" has developed three primary laws of learning that leads to development.

These primary laws are:

 

Hence, Thorndike propounded the law of trial and error of learning.

Additional Information

• The Theory of Classical Conditioning was propounded by ‘Ivan Pavlov’.
• 'Wolfgang Kohler', a German psychologist, has proposed the ‘Theory of Insight’. This theory advocates a sudden solution to the problem as insight doesn't rely on behaviour or observation.

Chromosomes are microscopic filamentous structures that contain an individual’s genetic material. This genetic material serves as the “instruction manual” for the body, containing the “directions” the body needs to form and function properly. Human cells have a total of 46 chromosomes, which are arranged into 23 pairs.

• Due to this, the gamete contains two X chromosomes rather than one. When such an egg containing XX is fertilized by sperm containing Y, an XXY zygote is formed that develops into a Klinefelter male.
• This first cell in which the male genes are joined with the female is called the Zygote. The zygote looks like an unfertilized egg.
• When an egg and sperm are united during fertilization, the resulting in the normal zygote has 23 pairs of homologous chromosomes, one pair from the egg and one from the sperm.

Hence, we can conclude that In a normal zygote, the number of chromosomes in pairs is 23.

Educational psychology is the systematic study of the development of the individual within the educational setting. It helps the teacher to foster the harmonious overall development of the student.

Theories of Educational Psychology:

 

Hence, we can conclude that Operant conditioning theory is Propounded by Skinner.

There are many learning theories in psychology that are related to different schools of psychology such as cognitive, humanistic, behavioristic, etc.

• These theories are propounded by eminent psychologists to provide a framework to understand different aspects of human behavior.
• Wolfgang Kohler, a German psychologist, is associated with the 'Theory of Learning', which he called the ‘Theory of Insightful learning’.
• In his theory, he has proposed the term ‘Insight’ that doesn't take place with trial & error, rather than it is a sudden reorganization of experience.

As per ‘Theory of Insightful learning’:

• The solution to a problem arrives ‘all of a sudden’ flash of insight when a person is struggling.
• Insight enhances an individual's ability to perceive and understand something or someone instinctively.
• Insight doesn't rely on behavior or observation, it is the sudden realization of a problem's solution using intuition.

Kohler demonstrated the following experiment based on insight:

• He kept chimpanzees in a closed room where food was kept out of their reach, and items like boxes, stick was there.
• The chimpanzee would roam inside the room to reach the food.
• They would ‘suddenly’ stand on a box and use the stick to bring food close to them.
• It should be noted that it was not the result of trial and error instead, the chimpanzee suddenly came up with the idea to use boxes and stick.

Hence, it could be concluded that Kohler is associated with the 'Theory of learning'.

Intelligence is the ability to undertake activities that are characterized by difficulty, complexity, abstractness, economy, adaptiveness to a goal, social value, and the emergence of originals, and to maintain such activities under conditions that demand a concentration of energy and resistance to emotional forces.

Fluid Mosaic Model of Intelligence: The fluid mosaic model of intelligence was proposed by Raymond B. Cattell.

• Cattell defined fluid intelligence as the ability to perceive relationships independent of previous specific practice or instruction concerning those relationships.
• "Fluid intelligence is the ability to think and reason abstractly and solve problems. This ability is considered independent of learning, experience, and education. Examples of the use of fluid intelligence include solving puzzles and coming up with problem-solving strategies.
• Fluid intelligence is the capacity to reason and solve new problems. There is no influence from any knowledge from past experiences, rather the person innovates new logical methods to resolve the problem.
• Fluid intelligence peaks in adolescence and begins to decline progressively beginning around age 30 or 40.

Hence it is clear that Fluid mosaic model of intelligence was proposed by Cattel.

The teaching method is a way to put theory in practice with the help of principles, pedagogy, and management strategies. It helps the teachers to plan and present the lesson coherently.

Key Points 

The brainstorming method is developed by Alex F. Osborn. It is the oldest and best-known technique for stimulating creative thinking. It is the most fruitful exercise to solve complex and critical problems.

• In Brainstorming, many creative minds work together and apply their diverse thinking patterns to achieve the same learning goals. Ideas are generated spontaneously by the learners.
• It is a teaching-learning process in which the student is the active role player. The teacher gives one problem or topic to the entire class and allots time.
• Within the given time, the student must create ideas. The role of the teacher in this method is just to consider all the ideas and arise conclusions based on the healthy discussion.

Important Points  Characteristics of Brainstorming Process:

• Quantity is more important than quality as in each time span, how many questions are prepared by the child based on the topic is considered.
• Associating different ideas to come up with a new one as in this process thought arising in the mind of the learner is noted down for further discussion and use.
• Generation of unusual ideas as it just demands the active participation of the child in the learning process by making them think and note the ideas in his own style.

Hence, it could be concluded that the Brainstorming model of teaching is used to improve creativity.

Emotional Intelligence refers to our emotions have a mind of their own, one which can hold views quite independently of our rational mind.

Theory of Emotional Intelligence:

• In the early 1990s, Daniel Goleman became aware of Salovey and Mayer’s work and eventually led into the study in his book “Emotional Intelligence”.
• Goleman has tried to make a distinction between emotional intelligence and emotional competencies. It is referred to in relation to emotions. The merging of emotion and intelligence as a cognitive ability under the caption of ‘Emotional intelligence’.
• Emotional intelligence determines our potential for learning practical skills based on the five elements: self-awareness, motivation, self-regulation, empathy, and adeptness in relationships.
• Emotional intelligence involves striking a balance between emotion and reason in which neither is completely in control.
• Emotionally intelligent people know when it is right to control their emotions and when it is right to be controlled by them.
• Emotional intelligence also involves the ability to read other people’s emotions correctly.

Hence Goleman is associated with emotional intelligence theory.

Motivation is defined as an inner state of need or desire. That state of desire creates a movement or activity towards satisfying that desire. It depends to some degree upon whether we look at the internal forces or the resultant external behaviors.

• Drive reduction theory of Motivation that adequately explains how behavior is channelized by primary drives. However, it does not adequately explain behaviors that have goals to maintain or increase arousal. For example, it may not help in explaining the behavior of an adolescent who enjoys a roller coaster ride or rides his/ her bike at full speed.

Learning: Learning is the total of an individual’s life experience acquitted through the socialization process. It exceeds a mere acquisition of factual information or mastering of skills, as it also includes the total of an individual’s life experience which are relatively permanent in nature and have survived values for him.

Theories of learning:

• Theory of generalization: When conditioning has occurred or when the conditioned response to a stimulus has been acquired, then other similar stimuli can also elicit the same response. This is known as stimulus generalization. In Pavlov’s experience, the dog gave CR (salivation) to a slightly different bell also.
• Theory of identical elements: Thorndike by proposing the theory of identical elements took the stand that resemblance and similarity between situations has a considerable effect on the amount and kind of transfer of learning that can be carried over from one situation to the other.

Hence, we can conclude that Drive reduction theory is a theory of Motivation and the rest falls under the learning theories.