Page 54 - EW August 2023

Cover Story

NCF FOR SCHOOL EDUCATION 2023 and vocational education, and one on
Guidelines for teachers school culture and processes. These
volumes promise “greater details” to
practitioners including curriculum
and textbook developers, teachers and
assessors to enable realisation of NEP
2020 goals. Altogether, NCFSE 2023
will comprise ten volumes.
Given below are the highlights of
Section 3.3 on pedagogy which de-
tails “pedagogical considerations for
physical development, emotional de-
velopment, social and ethical devel-
opment and cognitive development
of children”.

Foundational Stage
• Pedagogic strategies for early child-
hood education must ensure literacy
and numeracy learning
• Teachers should encourage learning
through play including conversations,
stories, toys, music and art
Teacher in Nagpur classroom: new pedagogies plea • Indoor games including strategy,
logic, board and word puzzles should
ighteen years ago when the gives serious consideration to stu- be used to develop children’s logical
National Curriculum Frame- dent experiences and student voices, and critical thinking skills. Also out-
Ework 2005 was published by acknowledges and accommodates door games
the then UPA-I government, one of student diversity, builds on students’ • Teaching-learning outdoors in na-
its main thrusts was to ensure that previous knowledge, uses a range of ture, and field trips should be utilised
“learning is shifted away from rote teaching techniques, and gives time- • Teachers should use multi-modal
methods”. Fast forward to 2023 and ly feedback on work done,” intones teaching-learning materials including
NCFSE released to the public for feed- NCFSE 2023. toys for numeracy, children’s books,
back by the BJP/NDA government in In Chapter 3 Section 3.3 titled ‘Ped- picture and activity books, work-
April, promulgates the same objective agogy’, detailed guidelines are set out sheets, audio-visual materials, etc.
— to “move away from an overem- on child development, effective peda-
phasis on memorisation and content gogy for achieving the aims of school Preparatory Stage
accumulation”. Though the two docu- education, teacher planning, man- • Teachers should move to pedago-
ments are 18 years apart, NCFSE’s re- aging classroom/student behaviour gies which stimulate children’s think-
newed push to move away from rote and pedagogy to be used in the new ing and analytical skills and encourage
learning is acknowledgement that 5+3+3+4 system. In addition, detailed independent learning
teaching-learning in the majority of pedagogy strategies are listed for all • Teachers should use multimodal
the country’s 1.5 million schools is 10 curricular areas/subjects. For in- teaching-learning materials, plan for
still mired in traditional rote learning stance for maths education, NCFSE field visits, apportion sufficient time
pedagogies. 2023 recommends using play-way outdoors, encourage children to dem-
Therefore, this time round the (activity-based), discovery-inquiry, onstrate logic in their reasoning, and
draft NCFSE 2023 explicitly recom- problem-solving, inductive and de- prompt thoughtful questioning in the
mends shift to experiential activity, ductive teaching. classroom
inquiry-based pedagogies to develop Moreover to enable the objective • Moreover, children should be en-
children’s creativity, critical thinking, of making the NCFSE “as relatable to couraged to refer to books and peri-
and problem-solving skills in eight practitioners as possible”, eight vol- odicals for research
core subjects and also classes XI and umes will follow, of which seven will be
XII. “Effective pedagogy encourages on the specific curricular areas — arts Middle & Secondary Stages
conceptual understanding, active dis- and music, languages, math, science, • Teachers need to enable students to
covery, and independent learning, social science and humanities, sports, shift from practical to theoretical con-

54 EDUCATIONWORLD AUGUST 2023