Unit I — Teaching Aptitude

Topics Covered

1. Teaching: Concept and Objectives

Three ideas about teaching recur in the paper:

• Teaching is a tripolar process. It joins the teacher, the learner and the content (or curriculum), in a social setting. Older views were bipolar: teacher and learner only.
• Teaching is both an art and a science. An art because it depends on the teacher's skill and judgement in the moment; a science because its methods can be studied, tested and improved.
• Teaching has phases. Philip Jackson distinguished the pre-active phase (planning: objectives, content, method) from the interactive phase (the class itself: presenting, questioning, responding); the post-active phase (evaluating and revising) is usually added as the third. Questions attribute all three to Jackson.

Objectives: Bloom's three domains

The objectives of teaching are usually written as changes in what learners know, feel and can do. Benjamin Bloom and colleagues (1956) set out the cognitive domain; later work added the other two.

Note the change at the top of the cognitive domain: in the revision, create (once "synthesis") is the highest level, above evaluate.

Maxims of teaching

The classic maxims say in which order to present content: known to unknown, simple to complex, concrete to abstract, particular to general, whole to part, analysis to synthesis, empirical to rational and psychological to logical (start from the learner's interest, end with the subject's logical order).

2. Levels of Teaching: Memory, Understanding, Reflective

The three levels describe how deeply a lesson engages the learner's mind. Each assumes the one below it.

• The Herbartian five steps (set out by Herbart's followers from his teaching) for a memory-level lesson: preparation, presentation, comparison (association), generalisation, application.
• Morrison's teaching model for the understanding level: exploration, presentation, assimilation, organisation, recitation.
• Hunt's reflective level works through a felt problem: the learner defines it, forms and tests hypotheses, and draws conclusions.

3. Characteristics and Basic Requirements of Teaching

Characteristics of good teaching, as the paper asks about them:

• it is interactive and two-way, with feedback in both directions;
• it is purposeful: it has stated objectives and is planned;
• it is diagnostic and remedial: it finds what learners do not yet know and acts on it;
• it is democratic: it respects the learner, invites questions and allows disagreement;
• it is a professional activity that can be observed, analysed and improved;
• it ends in learning; teaching that changes nothing in the learner has not succeeded.

Basic requirements are what must be in place for teaching to happen at all: a teacher with command of the subject and the skill to communicate it; learners who are ready (prior knowledge, motivation); content suited to them; a method suited to the objective; time, space and materials; and a way to evaluate what was learnt.

4. Adolescent and Adult Learners

The syllabus asks about four kinds of characteristic: academic, social, emotional and cognitive.

Two names to know:

• Erik Erikson: adolescence is the stage of identity versus role confusion.
• Malcolm Knowles popularised andragogy, the art and science of helping adults learn, as against pedagogy for children. His assumptions about adults: they need to know why they are learning; they have a self-concept of being responsible for themselves; their experience is a resource; they are ready to learn what their life roles need; their orientation is problem-centred; and their motivation is mainly internal.

5. Individual Differences

• Causes: heredity and environment (home, schooling, language, economic position), and their interaction.
• Intelligence is not one thing on some accounts: Howard Gardner (1983) proposed multiple intelligences — linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and later naturalistic.
• Learning styles, such as Neil Fleming's VARK (visual, aural, read/write, kinaesthetic), describe preferences. Research does not show that matching teaching to a preferred style improves learning, so use varied modes for everyone rather than labelling learners.
• What the teacher does: varied methods and materials; differentiated tasks; enrichment for the fast and remedial help for the slow; self-paced and online resources; grouping that changes.

6. Factors Affecting Teaching

The syllabus names six, and questions often ask you to place a factor in its group.

7. Teacher-centred and Learner-centred Methods

Methods and their originators, often asked:

• Project method: W. H. Kilpatrick (1918), from John Dewey's ideas; a purposeful activity in a real setting.
• Heuristic method: H. E. Armstrong; the learner finds out for themselves.
• Dalton plan: Helen Parkhurst; assignments done at the learner's pace.
• Programmed instruction: B. F. Skinner; small steps, immediate feedback (linear programming).
• Personalised System of Instruction (the Keller plan): Fred Keller; self-paced units, mastery before moving on.
• Brainstorming: Alex Osborn; many ideas first, judgement later.
• Case study method: associated with Harvard Law and Business Schools.
• Flipped classroom: learners meet the content before class (video, reading) and use class time for problems and discussion.

8. Off-line and On-line Methods: SWAYAM, SWAYAM Prabha, MOOCs

Off-line methods are face-to-face, in a room at a set time. On-line methods use the internet, and may be synchronous (live: a webinar, a live class) or asynchronous (any time: recorded lectures, forums). Blended learning mixes the two.

SWAYAM

• SWAYAM stands for Study Webs of Active-Learning for Young Aspiring Minds. It is the Government of India's MOOC platform, launched in July 2017, with courses from school to postgraduate level.
• Its courses follow a four-quadrant approach: (1) e-tutorial (video lectures), (2) e-content (readable material), (3) self-assessment (quizzes, assignments), (4) a discussion forum.
• Courses are prepared by national coordinators, among them AICTE, NPTEL, UGC, CEC, NCERT, NIOS and IGNOU.
• Credit transfer: under the UGC's credit framework regulations for online learning through SWAYAM, a university may let students earn part of a semester's credits through SWAYAM courses; the limit was raised from 20% to 40% of the courses in a semester in 2021.

SWAYAM Prabha

• A group of educational DTH (direct-to-home) television channels, broadcasting 24 hours a day by satellite, for learners without good internet. It began in 2017 with 32 channels; the number has since grown, so check the current count on its site before quoting one.

9. Teaching Support Systems: Traditional, Modern, ICT-based

Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience (1946) arranges teaching aids from the most concrete at the base (direct, purposeful experiences) through contrived experiences, demonstrations, field trips, exhibits, television and film, recordings and pictures, visual symbols, to the most abstract at the top (verbal symbols). The higher an aid sits, the more it depends on words alone.

Aids are also grouped by sense: audio (radio, recordings), visual (chart, slide, model) and audio-visual (film, television, video).

10. Evaluation: Elements and Types

Elements. Evaluation is tied to two other things in a triangle: the objectives, the learning experiences that serve them, and the evaluation that checks them. Change one and the others must follow.

Types by purpose and timing:

• The terms formative and summative were introduced by Michael Scriven (1967), for evaluating curricula.
• Norm-referenced evaluation compares a learner with others (rank, percentile); criterion-referenced compares with a fixed standard (did they reach 60%? can they do the task?). Robert Glaser made the distinction in 1963.
• Continuous and comprehensive evaluation covers both scholastic and co-scholastic areas, throughout the year.
• A good test is valid (measures what it claims to), reliable (consistent), objective (free of the marker's bias) and usable (practical to give and score).

11. Evaluation in the Choice Based Credit System

The Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) was introduced by the UGC in Indian universities from 2015–16. Students choose from core, elective and skill courses, earn credits for each, and are graded on a ten-point scale.

• Courses: core; elective (discipline-specific, generic, and dissertation or project); ability enhancement (compulsory courses, and skill enhancement courses).
• A credit stands for one hour of teaching (lecture or tutorial), or two hours of practical work, a week through a semester.

SGPA (semester grade point average) is the credit-weighted mean of the grade points: the sum of (credits × grade point) over the semester's courses, divided by the sum of the credits. CGPA is the same over all semesters so far.

12. Computer-based Testing and Innovations in Evaluation

In computer-based testing (CBT) the candidate reads and answers on a computer at a test centre, and the machine records and scores the answers. UGC NET itself is held this way by the National Testing Agency.

• For it: quick and accurate scoring; questions shuffled for each candidate; secure delivery; analysis of every item.
• Against it: needs equipment and power at every centre; unfamiliar to some candidates; suits objective questions better than long answers.
• Computer adaptive testing chooses each next question from the candidate's answers so far: harder after a right answer, easier after a wrong one.

Innovations in evaluation that questions name: grading in place of marks; continuous internal assessment; open-book examinations; online and on-demand examinations; question banks; rubrics; e-portfolios; peer and self-assessment; and credit banks such as the Academic Bank of Credits, which stores the credits a student earns so they can be carried between institutions.

Final Revision Checklist

• Concept, phases (pre-active, interactive, post-active) and maxims of teaching.
• The three levels with their proponents and steps.
• Adolescent against adult learners on academic, social, emotional and cognitive lines.
• The six factors affecting teaching, with an example of each.
• Methods and their originators: Kilpatrick, Armstrong, Parkhurst, Skinner, Keller, Osborn.
• SWAYAM, SWAYAM Prabha, MOOCs; synchronous and asynchronous; blended.
• Dale's cone; traditional, modern and ICT-based aids.
• Types of evaluation; qualities of a test; CBCS grades and SGPA/CGPA; CBT and adaptive testing.

Sources

• University Grants Commission, guidelines on the Choice Based Credit System (grading scale, SGPA and CGPA): ugc.gov.in.
• University Grants Commission (Credit Framework for Online Learning Courses through SWAYAM) Regulations, 2016, and the 2021 amendment: ugc.gov.in.
• SWAYAM: swayam.gov.in; SWAYAM Prabha: swayamprabha.gov.in.
• B. S. Bloom (ed.), Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: Cognitive Domain (1956); L. W. Anderson and D. R. Krathwohl (eds.), A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing (2001).
• M. S. Knowles, The Modern Practice of Adult Education (1970, revised 1980).
• M. Scriven, "The Methodology of Evaluation" (1967); R. Glaser, "Instructional Technology and the Measurement of Learning Outcomes" (1963).