Saturday, March 24, 2018

Response to author . assignment 2




Quoting the author "We would first have to acknowledge that all children start off with pre-conceptions of reality. The ‘pre’ refers to the fact that these conceptions are developed before they join a formal school! Each student is far from a blank slate on which we can simply write pages and pages of information. Psychologists have found many examples of the ‘naïve’ or intuitive theories that children construct, about subjects as varied as force, matter, the earth, and numbers"  children often  construct knowledge based on their pre-knowledge. Teachers can act as facilitator to facilitate this process of construction. But in India, I feel we do not have too much hand-on experience of this process.
As I read and reread the chapter on ‘learning’, it became more and more clear that the activity of teaching is about owning responsibility – owning responsibility for their learning. As I finished reading the chapter I felt the need to ask this question – if something is not clear to children, is it their constraint or mine ,as a parent and a teacher??
I was often told as a teacher " what a teacher has not taught ,the child has not learnt" and for many years I believed that ...but now in my present workplace I realise that is a misconception ;
students also feel at times they can't do it they don't know how to ,do they don't extend themselves...and as a teacher I don't teach but play the role model, don't dictate but let them build up their knowledge and understanding through different ways.
I simply loved what Ms Kamala says" Remember you need to do two things for a student to learn something new: activate relevant existing schemas, and fit new information into existing schemas.
If the misconception of students be spoken...their reasons can be schemas and conditioning..but dispelling these is our challenge as adults.while in many progressive schools one sees it happen ; generally too many influences withhold learning in a large number of schools across our country.

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