Idea: Innovative ways on reframing the pedagogy at rural schools/ Institutes.

Introduction:  Almost 70% of the total Indian population resides in rural India. It is possible to have a drastic change in the Soft skills Indian educational schools/institutes? Yes, it’s easy & practicable. Pedagogy at rural schools/educational institutes can be made more effective & innovative through the new teaching way discussed further in the case.  It is globally observed that the basic soft skills are the most lacking skills among students especially in rural states. If we are able to succeed in making them smart by doing some key changes in the existing education system, our rural students will no longer be different from tier 1 or 2 cities. So the most difficult question is how to do this? I have got a plan. We all know how important is the Soft skills while living in the competitive scenario where everyone wants to be better than other people around them. The idea to follow at every class level will achieve this objective very smoothly. 85% of professional success in career is due to soft skills & 15% only through the hard skills is already proven by a research (ref. given at the end).

 

The basic problem can also be in the form of non-availability of highly trained teacher. We can make such students understand why soft skills & overall personality development is so much important in life. This unique class activity aims at building up strong psychological & mutual understanding relationships among the teachers & students in each class systematically. Every teacher should have a personal attention to the progress of every student to identify & make him/her realize real potential. This will be useful for students in personal as well as professional lives.

 

Problems in the current rural schools/institutes/education system:

Ø  Non-Availability of sufficient trained teaching staff to train the students.

Ø  Mostly non English background elementary education.

Ø  Poor soft skills & Life skills when compared to tier 1 or 2 citiesstudents.

Ø  Poor goal setting due to lack of quality educational facilities.

Ø  Economically backward families are not encouraging education.

Ø  No motivation to develop soft skills & overall personality due to low morale of teachers.

Ø  Low interest of students to learn global business language.

 The need to develop a new pedagogy:

Following are the key benefits & reasons to carry out this unique activity:

Ø  Every student will be benefited out of this innovative soft skills relatedactivity.

Ø  Subject teacher & class teacher will have a better control over the assigned class.

Ø  Uniformity will be achieved in teaching-learning process in every class.

Ø  Students will look into it as a healthy competition & deserving students will use this opportunity to design & achieve their career goals.

Ø  Students will have their subject related knowledge as well as overall personality development related parameters on improving mode incareer.

Ø  Students will develop the habit of reading; studying and most importantly theywill automatically have the best public speakingskills.

Ø  As a class teacher we can monitor every kind of student in our subject as well as class when these reports are publicly shared with other teachers &classes.

Ø  Poor and average students (B & C) will need a constant motivation to convert theminto 'Good' category(A)

Ø  Along with all students will learn Life management skills automatically.

Grading principles to change existing situation in rural education: The basic objective of my idea is to find out & grade all the students in a class by its teacher (as discussed later in this article) as A, B & C grade students.

➢      A grade means the students who are excellent & always participative in class room discussions (soft skills) activities & ready to learn even more.

➢      B grade means the students who are little ahead of average, lacking in basics soft skills but willing & trying positively to improve themselves if proper support is provided to them by teachers.

➢      C grade means the students who are not interested initially or those who create nuisance in the class while teaching. These are the students who need to be given special counseling by the teachers to go further in B & A grades. This requires huge motivation by the teachers.

When this grading is done in every class, we can send a positive message to the entire students to focus & develop themselves limitless.

 Methodology to change this situation:

➢     Every teacher must start communicating with the students professionally & mostly in English language in class, Labs & campus.

➢      Even all teachers must communicate among themselves in English in class & campus (staff room & labs) so that students learn the importance & learn through even listening.

➢      Professionalism must be observed on priority; by avoiding in communicating in Local/Hindi/Marathi languages in front of students at anytime by all teachers.

➢   Students must be motivated & rewarded to follow a practice of English speaking & public speaking skills always.

➢      References from the current market scenario must be given as assignments to students on regular basis to prepare for their presentations along with the study topics.

➢      A mix of theory + industry knowledge whose base is soft skills must be designed.

➢      Along with all this, a teacher should be a friend to every kind of students.

Recommended Solution:

Ø  Grading must be done as per above discussed methods.

Ø  Class teachers must be defined for each class.

Ø  Manageable number of students per teacher makes it easy to monitor personally. Every teacher who shows more efforts must be awarded & felicitated to boost his/her morale to work beyond limits.

Ø  Counseling must be done as & when required by the teachers to know the psychologyof students & to connect with him/her friendly.

Ø  Parents must be involved in this innovative practice to make it succeed at large scale.

Ø  Every problem of student needs close attention by teacher to capture the trust of students.

Ø  Once students witness the efforts taken by teachers, they automatically start changing their attitude towards education & teacher.

Ø  Make such an environment in class that students should find it easier to discuss their issues with teacher openly like they do discuss with their family or friends.

Implementation process in details:

A proper plan student wise, class wise, school wise, area wise can change the entire scenario of overall educational system in India.

Education department must appoint some responsible persons just to make sure this is happening throughout all schools.

A training session for all teachers initially must be arranged at higher level to increase the awareness on large scale with discussion of the basic objectives.

Teachers must be groomed in advance to extend these training of grading students as per above methods at various institutes.

To grade students into ABC every teacher primarily should tell the importance of soft skills & presentation skills to the students & process how he/she will grade them all.

Every teacher is supposed to give students a topic from the syllabus contents; on which they can prepare a presentation in the class.

Teacher will give sufficient time to prepare on this (subject related) presentation to the student, for his/her allotted presentation topics & students will give this presentation in the class on allotted day & time.

Based on the results teachers will grade students in A, B or C.

Conclusion & suggestions: When this ABC grading activity is seriously carried out, teachers come to know the exact potentials of the students in their classes, their interest levels & improvement scope so I think this is the most important seed to have a perfect tree of a trained new generations in the near future which is best in soft skills & overall personality aspects when judged globally. As we all know soft skills matter 85% and hard skills play a role of 15% in our lives. (Ref-http://www.nationalsoftskills.org/research-publications/). Today is the age of extensive competition and ‘survival of the fittest’ is the new mantra for any student in the corporate world. Merely passing with the high CGPA/marks never assures a good future to any student.

 My suggestions on this unique grading activity:

All teachers must use English language in class as the listening will surely affect students and they will try their own their hands on English speaking. All teachers must present themselves as an ideal example of soft skilled person in front of the students. It’s the need of the hour that all students are told frequently the importance of the soft skills in the every stage of the life. As already stated by the Stanford Carnegie foundation that 85% soft skills & 15% hard skills do actually matter; but as per the current situation we all are focusing 85% on hard skills & total ignoring soft skills. Acquiring Soft skills is a continuous process and it requires dedication, patience, hard work & readiness to acquire all the skills day by day by students. So I just wish that we impart soft skills in students.

English speaking is the most important foundation among the overall personality development parameters those include: Stress management, Time management, SWOT analysis, Team building, Leadership, Presentation, Public speaking etc. But communication is the base of every above quality and if it’s in English (Global business language) we will be really successful in building the soft skills of students rather than hard skills. One more thing; ‘Getting into the company through formal selection process is mainly a matter of hard skills but being in the job and showing good interpersonal skills to develop & grow with the team and high performance is purely a matter of soft skills.’ So for overall development of students I have the above steps of action which I think will make a lot of difference in the lives of our hundreds of students. If the above written case is followed seriously at each school/institute promptly, we will have a defined structure & even goals will be achieved for most of the students. This activity will surely make a huge and positive change in the lives of all students. We can’t deny the possibility of changing the entire Indian education system if this is made to adopt at national level so probably we will be able to see the names of Indian universities on top list when compared to the world’s top universities. It looks difficult but never impossible.

 Submitted by: Prof. Amul S. Tamboli, Shirpur.

 Thank you.