Inviting suggestions on rationalising curriculum/ syllabus/ subject contents for class I to class XII with the objective of all round development of students
“It has been envisioned that in order to develop a fairer and more egalitarian society comprising of well-balanced human beings, in addition to cognitive and analytical skills,adequate attention on activities like life skills, experiential learning,health and physical education, sports, visual and performing arts,literary & creative skills, and work based education are indispensable. Though the existing curriculum does incorporate these skills, however, the load of curriculum in cognitive and analytical area seems to be so heavy that students practically do not get much time to develop skills in other areas.
In order to balance the curriculum for cognitive and analytical areas with curriculum in other life skills including creativity and sports, specific suggestions are invited from teachers, academics, students, parents and other stakeholders associated with school education. The objective is to make the content more balanced in various subjects offered from class I to class XII as prescribed by NCERT/CBSE.”
The present education system does NOT incorporate cognitive (connected with mental processes of understanding) and analytical area. So, it’s a false reason that because of the load of the curriculum in the cognitive and analytical area seems to be so heavy that students practically do not get much time to develop skills in other areas.
But what if we make the curriculum more cognitive and analytical? Yes, it will create the same condition: “Students practically do not get much time to develop skills in other areas” IF the content is loaded with so much of concepts. Think of giving an upper high school student a pedagogically right master-level book. Even though the student can learn the book, but it will be very time consuming to master all concepts.
So, the curriculum should be clear about what to include and what to exclude.
e.g. Its possible to teach all chapters of Chemistry (Nivaldo J Tro) in two years which has pages of about 1315. It’s possible because the content quality is too good, so it saves time and achieves the purpose of true learning. The questions don’t ask to reproduce the texts and are cue based. https://iambrainstorming.wordpress.com/2018/02/17/question-designing-should-be-brain-friendly-cue-based/ So you spend more time on analysis, than on memorizing the abstract formulas, equations, reactions, and structures. But remember, it takes two years, not one year, which our student usually study, because there is no pressure on the first year, as there are no exams. As all concepts are interlinked, a second-year student will face substantial trouble and pressure to grasp the concepts in one year.
Now, add 1000 pages of organic chemistry (L. G.Wade Jr) and 1000 pages of Inorganic chemistry (Armstrong). It is also impractical to teach in two years. It will usually take 5-6 years if you have other subjects to master.
Creativity should be linked to the curriculum so that its fun and enjoyable with learning. Regarding arts and sports, it improves the brain functioning, and helps you to take more content, not less,it’s about managing the time, with spaced learning. Make a ritual of formative assessment that includes no stake tests and retrieval practice, with well-designed questions and students will always find time to play, no pressure, and best results in final tests. Its no more about rote memorizing, or scoring marks by hook or crook.
Most often questions are designed that tests the understanding of whole instead of its components. Students miserably fail to solve these problems due to lack of enough practice of its components.
So systematically breaking down the whole concept into its required components is important.
e.g. Take this question: [Cr(NH3)6]3+ is paramagnetic while [Ni(CN)4]2- is diamagnetic. Explain why?
To start solving this question you have to know the following components: 1) You have to know the atomic number of Cr and Ni. If you have forgotten the atomic number or not memorized it, you are out of luck to solve it. So, has the teacher or the book has given memory tricks to memorize the periodic table. 2) After you know the atomic number, do you know the electronic configuration of the metal atom? 3) Then, can you determine the electronic configuration of metal ion? 4) Do you know how to calculate the oxidation state, because you need to calculate the charge of metal ion? 5) Have you memorized the charge of different ligands? 6) Do you know the spectrochemical series, which of the ligands are the weak field or strong field? 7) Do you know which of the ligands bidentate and polydentate? 8) Can you predict the geometry and hybridization based upon the attached ligands? 9) Do you know the d orbital splitting for a different type of geometry (i.e. what will be the splitting pattern of octahedral and square planar geometry.) 10)Can you know whether it’s a square planar geometry or tetrahedral geometry based upon metal ion electronic configuration? 11) Do you know how to fill the orbitals with electron based on splitting energy? 12) Do you know what is diamagnetic (i.e. with no unpaired electron) and what is paramagnetic (i.e. with a unpaired electron)?
So after you have practiced all these components you will be able to solve this question.
This component approach learning can be seen in organic chemistry book: Organic Chemistry as a Second Language by David Klein
Concepts are broken into components, and enough exercises are given for practice for each component, and at the end of the chapter, questions that require comprehension of the whole is presented.
Some suggestions for effective component practice:
Give students an example solved problems before asking them to solve.
Don’t give the same type of questions for each component, always twist the question a little, so that it requires same problem-solving approach in a different situation, or requires little more information or little different information to solve. Just changing the given values of a question is not a different situation.
Interleave between questions of different components, if they have similarities and associative dissimilarities so that they can identify the patterns and transfer learning in different context. e.g. coins and notes are similar, but coins and wallet are associative dissimilar.
Don’t ask to repeat questions, until they begin to forget it, it takes away student time for doing fruitless work. Use spaced learning instead. Forgetting doesn’t mean unlearning.
1) Homogenization of skills When a finished product reaches the market, the product development cycle goes through the touch of many divergent skilled peoples. A product can have many components which require different skill sets of different people.
For example, Website Development: When you begin to develop a website, you start with designing a prototype of how it will look, which requires the expertise of graphic designers, you need the skill of programmer to code for the website, you need to be a webmaster to host your website. If you look into the depth, there is much more complexity to it. Each website has its own requirements. A prototype can be designed by using different software, such as Inkscape, illustrator and many others. Each software requires a different kind of learning and experience. Similarly, from programmer side, which language you will be using, which framework, based upon your website requirements such as speed of development, scalability. While hosting it, which type of server you use. These all require different kinds of skill sets.
The example is applicable to all types of problem-solving. Most of our real-world community/country or global problems are too complex to be solved, that requires divergent skill sets.
2) Lack of divergent thinking You don’t know what you don’t know. In order to fix a problem, not only we have to bring different pieces together, but also there are different ways to solve the same problem. If you have not read or seen about the alternate approach, you probably don’t know how it can be solved in an alternative way.
Why all our books look alike?
Strictly Based on Syllabus
Its because of our examination system of boards and entrances, and giving authors only a single reference book such as NCERT to follow and write content based upon it. Bad examination leads to bad content and even vice versa (bad content leads to bad examination). Both pulling tightly to each other and constraining each other, and the author gets no freedom to bring the new type of content or subject matter. Even stringent syllabus puts a limit on the author. You can’t put anything other than the syllabus, or you can’t even modify the sequence of content, it must be based on the syllabus sequence.
Govt => Students => Teachers => Infrastructure provider NOT Students => Private Infrastructure provider => Teachers or NOT Govt => Infrastructure provider and Teachers
Incentives are rewards and penalties that motivate behavior
Benefits of this model: 1) No much reliance on government for the safeguarding of the quality education. Teachers as an entrepreneur will take care of it because it will bring competition for quality.
2) Teachers income depends on the ability to uphold students. So they are solely responsible for their income. They will work for themselves, instead of doing just an obligatory job on a monthly salary.
3) Students will have the freedom to choose a class, not just school. (Funding children not school)
It also solves most problems that belong to coaching center model. Some of the problems of coaching center model, that is solved in it are: 1) There is no limitation of students intake, so no personalized care. 2) They are expensive. Students after attending a few months usually don’t go to coaching centers because of teaching to test, but many coaching centers charge yearly fees, just like private schools and colleges, especially popular ones. Also, add expenses that parents spend on colleges and schools. 3) Many coaching centers have poor infrastructure. No auditing of infrastructure for them. 4) Students exhaustion due to coaching centers, as they have to attain both schools and coaching classes.
Teachers should run the schools, instead of any building owner. Each teacher will have its share of the money produced. A govt website can be made that will help in the collaboration of teachers for becoming partners. Teachers should pay some amount of money for infrastructure spending of the government or other private entities every month.
3) Ability to choose teacher not school. Students should have the ability to choose at the level of the teacher, not at the level of school. 4) Limits to the number of students per teacher Students should be affiliated in the name of teacher for a particular subject instead of school. The teacher should be given the charge for student results instead of school. Students must register their teacher name before five months of course completion. They can’t change their teacher after registering. 15 days should be kept as a testing period for students, teachers, and parents to explore their preferences.
The maximum limit of students per subject teacher for six months should be 30 with an average classroom size of 10 students. Teachers can take more students in special cases, such as the online library with mentors, project works that require large collaboration, or for learning things where 1:1 teacher and student participation is not that important, such as gym or dance classes.
Even 30 students for me seems unachievable for teaching technical subjects if students don’t make an intrinsic effort or have less foundational knowledge or teacher lack the required knowledge (inexperienced) who is still learning. It depends on teacher, how many students (s)he can manage, based on time (s)he wants to give, type of students, and creative pedagogical ideas and technological ideas to handle students.
5) Exams
Exams need to be topic-wise, mastery-based, and are of low stakes. You need to reappear the topic exam which you have not scored well. Examination center can be another node in the given below competitive collaboration algorithm, where some 5 students of a teacher can connect to a particular exam center node. Exam centers should have properties like CCTV cameras, random invigilators.
Its the subject teacher who will prepare or select the questions for his/her students, if a teacher has 30 or fewer students, he/she has to prepare 30 times n questions for each topic, where n is a number of questions assigned to a student for each topic.
For example, each topic can have 6 questions, 30 times 6 equals 180 questions per topic. If there are 5 topics, total questions equal 180*5= 900 questions. The question paper will have 900 questions, but the student will attempt 6*5 = 30 assigned questions out of it.
Its an example, question paper can contain all the questions of the content. It would be somewhere around 300-400 questions per chapter with a few topics.
Questions can be the same or equivalent that of practice questions given in the classroom.
In case of multiple choice questions and numerical, one has to elaborate the thinking process, approach to the problem, strategy to solve it, and the reasoning for eliminating and choosing the options, in order to fetch marks. There will not be any stringent time limitation in the exam. One can take extra one to two hours for writing.
Exam center node will randomly assign these questions to students.
How random selection will be done? Mapping of question number and student id generated by the algorithm will come through the internet at the time of examination. All questions will already be present offline on the computer or as paper, students will just choose the questions they are asked to do.
3 hours exams is not a place where you will give students research questions or questions that differ a lot from practice questions. It’s for classroom assignments, not for the exam.
Also, questions and answers will come under peer review to check the quality of questions and how students have learned, and are of low stakes i.e Pass or fail in each topic, not whole subject. Other evidence of learning should also come under peer review.
Continuous boundless learning with #RetrievalPractice #Spacing
Last week of Nth month will have three exams each of two days. The one taught in Nth month, that is taught in N-2 month, and that is taught in N-5 month. #SimplifiedModelYou can also skip the one that is taught in Nth month if you are doing assessment weekly in real time. So, only 4 days for exams for N-2 and N-5 month.
Avrit: A democratic way of designing and reviewing the quality and the importance of study material or content, assignments, projects, practicals and assessments and your evidence of learning.
What competitive collaboration algorithm can achieve in education? Please read the advantages after reading the linked blog. 1) The network can include all service providers, such as classroom, content provider such as MOOCs, open laboratories, dance classes, gym, parks, playground, child care for working parents, teachers based on specialization, science park with essential experiments and equipments like telescope to validate what has been learned in classroom, even part-time job providers at the same place or just anything that is required in education. 2) Anyone can become a service provider that meets the requirements, and resources will not remain ideal, because of its availability and discovery in the app. 3) Reviews of services in the app will help to get the quality assessment of services. 4) No requirement of residential colleges and schools, quality education will be available just nearby your home, as entrepreneurs will like to add nodes based on requirements in a particular location using the data available in the app. 5) High teacher salary, less student fees, and more quality education. 6) Life long learning with no certificate or degree provider, real learning that is required for society, and evidence of your work and learning are directly uploaded online that is linked to the resume of the student which will come under review. For example, if you are learning painting, you have to provide a beautiful painting done by you, if you are learning music, you have to provide a music composition done by you, if you are learning science, you need to provide the annotations, questions, explanation through voice recording or through documentation. Your resume with all the evidence links can be stored in immutable and open database like blockchain.
Glad to hear feedback or any loopholes in the system.
References:
Social democracies give free higher education to everybody, and cheap student loans, and grants. That enables more people to use their talents and earn money
Large class size (8-10) comes with students of different learning pace, but it can be an opportunity because it’s more economical, more collaboration and more Faymen’s Technique, more questions and more thinking. It works if you are giving more time to students, and able to keep all students engaged in learning with best learning practices.
IITians, doctors, and most desired teachers try to join coaching institute instead of colleges.
Reason: If you run a coaching institute, teachers are heavily paid, because about 70-80% of students money goes into the pocket of teachers, but no matter how much students pay to college, teachers are given fixed and very low salary. Also, brilliant students don’t aim to join as a teacher, as pay scale is too low.
Coaching institute business model works best to provide quality education as teachers have the complete sole responsibility about their amount of income and autonomy to provide quality. If teachers don’t perform well, their pay scale will be low, so it creates a subconscious pressure to compete for quality. But this doesn’t happen in schools or colleges.
How allowing mediocre colleges to provide degree certification creates a problem? Allowing them to provide certificate enables them to bring students despite not providing quality.
I am Brainstorming 