Question Discussion & Solution

The Montessori method is propounded by ‘Maria Montessori’, an Italian physician and naturalist. This method lays emphasis on student's all-round development which includes personal, social, moral, emotional, and cognitive development of the child.

The Montessori system of teaching is focused on the child as it ensures student's all-round development by:

• making learning fun and burden-free by including self-directed activity, hands-on learning to reach full potential in all areas of life.
• providing many practical exercises in her school to enable the child to learn good habits of cleanliness and order.
• making students learn the lesson of the dignity of labour and self-reliability by attending to their needs themselves.
• introducing concepts such as ‘Learning through living’, ‘Sense training’, ‘individual teaching’.

Hence, it could be concluded that the Montessori system of teaching is focused on the child.

The Right to Education Act commonly known as RTE Act was enacted in August 2009 by the Indian government.

It is an act which aims to provide free and compulsory education to all children between the age of 6 to 14 years in India under the Article 21A of the Indian Constitution.

Objectives of RTE Act 2009:

• Appoint trained teachers for better educational outcomes.
• Improve school infrastructure(if needed) in every three years.
• Prohibit private tuition by teachers to equalize educational opportunities to all.
• Reserve 25% seats for children belonging to economically weaker sections in private schools.
• Not to deploy teachers in non-academic work except for census, population elections, and disaster relief duties.
• Establish primary and upper primary schools within the distance of 1km and 3kms respectively from the child's house.

Hence, it could be concluded that the Government of India enacted the Right of  Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act in the year 2009.

The use of the term ‘field work’ emphasizes some of the formal exercises which are done outside of the classroom, usually in biology and geology at senior high school and tertiary levels. These activities may be considered to be a subset of field trips or excursions. Field trips are an important part of the curriculum because it provides opportunities for hands-on experience.  

• It is a visit to a place outside the regular classroom which is designed to achieve certain objectives, which cannot be achieved as well by using other means.
• The textbooks provide conceptual knowledge but cannot provide hands-on- experience that may create difficulty in achieving educational objectives. 
• It provides practical knowledge through personal experience. It is the appropriate tool to engage children effectively and actively in the learning process.

Key PointsField trips or excursions play a significant role in science teaching learning BECAUSE:-

• It helps in clarifying the subject matter.
• It creates interest in the subject. 
• It has entertainment value and makes learning enjoyable.
•  It helps the learners in establishing contact with the outer world. 
• It develops a scientific attitude and scientific temper among the learners. 
• Filed trips or excursions are very useful in collecting useful material. 
• Excursions help in developing the spirit of cooperation among the learners.
•  It provides an opportunity for the selection of the projects.

Concluding our discussion you will get to know that the scientific excursions or trips when organized in a systematic and proper way prove to be quite effective and useful from the point of view of the realization of the aims and objectives of teaching science.

Thus, it is concluded that Because of All of the above options field trips or excursions play an important role in science teaching-learning.

Inclusive Education means education for all children in school. It refers to the inclusion of all children in the education system, regardless of their differences and disabilities.

• Hearing impairment refers to hearing loss that prevents a person from totally receiving sounds through the ear. If the loss is mild, the person has difficulty hearing faint or distant speech.

Key Points

If a teacher has a 'hearing impaired' child in her middle school class. She needs to make the child sit at a place from where she can see the teacher's lips and facial expressions clearly. 

Strategies for teaching Hearing Impaired child

• It is not possible to establish enough special schools to accommodate every hearing impaired\child. The other alternative is to use the already existing infrastructure in the general stream and integrate the hearing impaired children into the mainstream of education.
• Generally, hearing impaired children are as intelligent as children with normal hearing. Given timely help, these children can get successfully integrated into the educational system. 
• Children with hearing impairment find it difficult to have focussed listening for every word which is spoken. Children with hearing impairment find it difficult to have focussed listening for every word which is spoken. 
• Children are often comfortable with signs, and to facilitate them to understand the message, one may use signs freely. Once the child has understood the word or sentence, you may not need to use signs. Do encourage your child to speak words. You may repeat the word.

We can conclude that teacher can make the child sit at a place from where she can see the teacher's lips and facial expressions clearly.

Ever since 1986 when the National Policy on Education was approved by Parliament, efforts to redesign the curriculum have been focused on the creation of a national system of education.

National Curriculum Framework (NCF):

• NPE proposed a national framework for curriculum as a means of evolving a national system of education capable of responding to India’s diversity of geographical and cultural milieus while ensuring a common core of values along with academic components.
• The NPE (1986) entrusted NCERT with the responsibility of developing the National Curriculum Framework and reviewing the framework at frequent intervals.
• The National Curriculum Framework 2005 is an official document laying down the needs of the school system of India envisioning the Constitution of India upholding all its tenets.
• The main purpose was to reduce the curriculum load, remove the anomalies in the system and to create a consensus with the help of new syllabi in the form of a thematically organized body of knowledge. 

Hence, it is clear that the National Curriculum Framework was developed by the NCERT.

The Five Basic Tenets of the NCF 2005:

• Connecting knowledge to life outside the school.
• Ensuring that learning shifts away from rote methods.
• Enriching the curriculum so that it goes beyond textbooks.
• Making examinations more flexible and integrating them with classroom life, and
• Nurturing an overriding identity informed by caring concerns within the democratic polity of the country.

• University Grants Commission (UGC): It came into existence on 28th December 1953 and became a statutory Organization of the Government of India by an Act of Parliament in 1956, for the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of teaching, examination and research in university education.
• National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE): The NCTE, as a statutory body came into existence in pursuance of the National Council for Teacher Education Act on the 17th August 1995. The main objective of the NCTE is to achieve planned and coordinated development of the teacher education system throughout the country.
• Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE): It was reconstituted in the year 1962. The main objectives were to serve the educational institutions more effectively, to be responsive to the educational needs of those students whose parents were employed in the Central Government and had frequently transferable jobs.