Tag - Online Primary Education Teaching Professional

Education is progressive, as is life. Neither stand still. What you learned today gets added to your knowledge base and this gets bigger. You are continually learning - from the day you are born until the day you die. Your experiences never stop and your learning from these helps to shape your personality and character. It makes you who you are.

Some individuals have a greater knowledge and experience of some topics or themes and should share this with others. It is important that everyone, from parents to teachers to managers to professors is given the time to "catch up" with developments in the domains in which they aspire to develop competencies.

None of us have the time to pursue all the avenues we are interested in. We rely on others to share that with us during our lifetime.

Ways of delivering education are constantly changing and expanding. Many educators are not fully aware of these. Consider how one area of Maths changed over the centuries, from the abacus to the slide rule and log tables, to the calculator.

In the written word, we have gone from a quill and parchment, to a biro and paper, to word processing on a computer. We have seen drawing on walls of caves, to books and magazines to the internet and cameras on mobile phones.

If someone began a career as, say, a teacher 50 years ago, how could they have kept up with the new developments around them if they were not given an opportunity to experience these new techniques and ideas and bring them into their teaching schemes? Life today is not the same as life 50 years ago. You cannot compare education in 1972 with 2022.

The various vehicles for passing on knowledge have increased and educators need to be aware of all of these. Satellite communication allows instant access to all knowledge. However, the skills to seek out this knowledge have to be taught. These skills and the delivery of these skills change as education develops further. Educators and teachers must be given opportunities to experience these skills themselves and then introduce them into their teaching.

We are understanding more about how we learn. Our present teachers and educators need to identify these methods so that they can help the learners further develop their skills.

Everyone relies on somebody, somewhere to have the specialist skill and knowledge to complete a task or solve a problem. For example, a plumber, electrician or carpenter. We should not expect an electrician to be able to sort out a plumbing problem.

Should we expect a teacher to have the knowledge and skill to deliver a balanced education to our students at 25 years of age, or 40 or 55? Should we expect a doctor to know everything in medicine from broken bones to brain tumours or cancer? The knowledge base is really great and experience on the job needs time.

Everyone, no matter what job, needs time during their career to "rub shoulders" with experts, whether they are teachers, or doctors, or plumbers. Parents should not be left out of this equation either.

As educators in their own right, they need to be kept abreast of developments in the content and delivery of the education to their children. They can help reinforce ideas, even if they do not fully understand them.

Why teachers and educators need to be trained in the current education scenario could be a question asked 80 years ago and ever since. Now is no different to then. However, enlightened individuals and organisations, and head-teachers have taken up the cause and done something about it. It is a big positive and one that is paying dividends for all our students, teachers and educators.

By - Ken Joshua
Senior Advisor, Academic Council
Saamarthya Teachers Training Academy of Research (STTAR)

Source: India Today
Link: https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/featurephilia/story/explained-why-teachers-and-educators-need-to-be-trained-in-the-current-education-scenario-2311768-2022-12-21
Published on: 21st December 2022

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) is gaining prominence among education fraternity across India, especially in light of the emphasis on foundational learning in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Over and above the NTT diplomas, aspiring and in-service pre-primary teachers are now yearning for specific knowledge and skills that can make them more proficient and help them gain a professional edge as ECCE educators.

Saamarthya Teachers Training Academy of Research (STTAR), a premier academy for developing new-age pedagogical competencies in teachers, has identified a few key topics and areas that need special attention and has curated them in a one-of-its-kind certificate programme on Early Childhood Care and Education as envisioned in NEP 2020. Being conducted in collaboration with Early Childhood Association (India), the online programme will be held from November 10 to November 13, 2022, and will feature some of the best ECCE trainers, including Dr Swati Popat Vats, Ms Saswati Nanda Satpathy, Ms Carole Paul and Ms Poonam Kochitty.

THE PROGRAMME SESSIONS

Leveraging academic research and expert advice, STTAR has chosen most pertinent topics for sessions and workshops to cover all essential and important elements of ECCE. These sessions are:

Importance of Foundational Learning: To be helmed by Swati Popat Vats, this session will be a comprehensive overview of Early Childhood Care and Education. It will touch upon ECCE components such as foundational literacy, numeracy, cognitive development, gross and fine motor skills, and socio-emotional development of children.

Child Psychology and Parenting: This session will help you know and understand the triggers that influence a child’s behavior and shape personality in the formative years. It will enable participants to understand a child’s psychological, emotional and social needs and also learn the strategies that may be leveraged to bring harmony in the child’s growth into adolescence.

Phonics (Level 1 and Level 2): The session presents structured and systematic methodology of mastering the alphabetic code for raising early readers. This is an intensive workshop with optimum coverage to theory and practical teaching of International Synthetic Phonics techniques.

Storytelling (Level 1 and Level 2): The participants will learn how to incorporate storytelling in classrooms to explain complex concepts to young learners in an engaging manner. They will understand the key elements of narration – voice, tone, language, modulation and pace – and know different styles of storytelling by using props, puppets, music and movement.

Developing Critical Thinking Curriculum: The session focuses on the prerequisites for optimal growth in the early years. Participants will learn the importance of a conducive preschool environment, loving interactions, and exposure to language, numbers, shapes and colours. They will also get to know the strategies to trigger critical thinking through integration of subjects in the curriculum.

WHO WILL BENEFIT MOST FROM THIS PROGRAMME

The programme has been designed to make ECCE competencies highly accessible to in-service teachers and aspirants alike. It is highly recommended to aspiring pre-primary teachers with minimum of 10+2 qualifications and those who are already teaching foundational learning and want to upskill. Each participant will get a STTAR Certificate, in collaboration with Early Childhood Association, and STTAR’s global partners Global Education Futures and The Weaving Lab.

Source: Education World
Link: https://www.educationworld.in/sttar-certificate-programme-on-ecce-career-boost-for-pre-primary-teachers/
Published on: 10th November 2022

The modern education environment has become extremely competitive, and has considerably added to the burden of children with potential hazards to their physical and mental health. The bags they carry to their schools are heavier, the time they are required to spend in school has become longer, the number of activities they are now engaged in – over and above the studies – have increased, inevitably leading to pressure that creates stress and physical strain.

Surprisingly, parents seem more aspirational than the children and push them to engage, and indeed excel in multiple activities at the same time, as if there is no tomorrow. Previous generation of students, who are now parents, perhaps did not have so many opportunities, and such a wide range of scholastic and co-scholastic activities for engagement. They do not want their children to miss out, regardless of whether the child has the aptitude or willingness to perform. This phenomenon also creates avoidable stress, leading to certain serious health issues, in both physical and mental context. Children want to excel, their parents want them to achieve the highest, society and the peer pressure recognizes only high achievers. Such expectations from multiple quarters create a situation where a perfectly normal child would succumb to the pressure and start showing symptoms of mental stress, leading to mental health issues.

We recently suffered serious afflictions caused by Covid-19 that played havoc with the lives of many, destroyed many families, orphaned many children and led to job losses and consequent financial stress. This clearly added to the stress level of children and many drop-outs occurred across different parts of the country.

The pandemic also sent children scurrying indoors for many months at a stretch, depriving them of a school connect, time to play and be with their friends and peers.

All these factors whose recurrence can’t be wished away, will continue to impact children and mental health issues will become an important area of concern. Teachers will have to be equipped to observe, discern, and indeed handle these matters with alacrity and profound sense of responsibility. Some pointers towards identification of these symptoms and early detection may be helpful.

1. Continued absence of a child from school for many days is the first sign and teachers must immediately report this to the parents. Maybe parents are not fully aware. The child leaves home but does not attend school.
2. The child’s attendance is erratic, meaning that the student is in the school but skips the class and spends time in library, canteen or playfield to be alone.
3. Tendency to stay away from a group activity is the first sign of stress.
4. The child is absent-minded in class. There is a visible diminution in the attention span of children these days. The pandemic has only made it worse.
5. The child shows signs of irritability and picks up fights at the slightest provocation.
6. The child shows little interest in studies, sports or even in such activities that he or she enjoyed earlier.
7. There is a perceptible decline in academic performance.
8. The child’s energy levels are also visibly low.

There could be similar other signs of disinterest in anything which children ordinarily enjoy. Teachers, first of all, have to be empathetic and observant, exhibiting deep sensitivity to all children, and particularly to those who show any signs of abnormal behaviour. Teachers should then, without any delay, touch base with the parents and share the contours of unusual conduct seen in the child. Sometimes parents miss out on this. Interestingly, a child is not necessarily the same person at home and school.

Teachers must talk to such children, preferably alone or sometimes, if required along with the child’s close friends. Some children don’t open up with their parents, but may do so with teachers who they respect and love.

Above all, love and understanding is the biggest antidote of any stress or mental health issues.

Children, especially those with such tendencies, should be handled with kid gloves and care must be taken to detect them early, and do nothing to antagonize them.

Source: Times of India
Link: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/voices/training-teachers-to-identify-mental-health-issues-among-children/
Published on: 12th October 2022

Research shows that children learn better when they are actively engaged in the classroom. According to Daniel Goleman, a famous psychologist, the brain is the last organ of the body to become anatomically mature. It keeps growing until the mid-20s. For this reason, it becomes vital to keep children focused on tasks that will build their neural circuitry for cognitive development. 

In an age of frequent disruptions, students’ attention span has, in general, witnessed a downward trend. This, in turn, has given rise to many academic as well as socio-emotional concerns. Students, especially after the pandemic, are more unsettled than ever. Many surveys have revealed that apart from technology and excessive use of social media, which are the biggest source of distraction, there are other sources of stressors linked to anxiety and lack of social skills that have caused hindrance to learning both in school and at home.

Teachers are at their tether’s end as they attempt to grapple with various challenges to keep the students motivated. In order to shut out distractions, teachers will need to create interactive learning environment where they are able to harness their potential and students uncover their intrinsic motivation for learning.

It then becomes imperative for schools and institutions to create an interactive learning environment where the students develop a sense of purpose and take ownership of their learning.

Passive teaching methodologies where students were expected to regurgitate all the information learned is on the decline. Educators are now looking out for innovative strategies to increase purposeful student involvement. Boosting student engagement has taken precedence at all levels of learning now.

The question that arises then is: What is interactive learning? 

Interactive learning pedagogy is a kind of approach that is designed to reach out to different types of learners through stimulating technology infused with activities and discussions for purposeful student engagement.  Research from the Stanford University School of Medicine indicates that “Interactive learning actively engages the students in wrestling with the material. It reinvigorates the classroom for both students and instructors.”

The relevance of interactive learning can be observed when students are actively engaged through hands-on learning, working collaboratively with their peers displaying critical thinking and decision-making skills with improved social and emotional skills. 

There are many forms and types of Interactive learning, which may be implemented differently so long as it succeeds in establishing a learning environment that encourages and strengthen critical thinking and problem-solving skills in students. Interactive learning can be planned and implemented with or without technology, each activity needs to be planned thoroughly so as to develop a set of specific skills. 

Various case studies have proven that interactive learning methods when planned with definite objectives harmonizes with positive learning outcomes and influence students to see the concepts taught in a whole new light. The present time demands educators to be adept with interactive learning tools and engaging content that should promote an immersive learning environment with distinct learning outcomes. For creating an interactive learning environment, teachers’ skill level is of utmost importance. Apart from having good domain knowledge, they need to be innovative so as to make their students more engrossed with the subject matter.

Teacher training on interactive learning pedagogy, be it with or without technology, should focus on guiding them on how to frame questions that evoke good responses, discussions, and tools for hands-on activities. Training for creating interactive content and delivery techniques must ensure a learning atmosphere for every student where they acquire the necessary skills to be future-ready.

Thorough guidance needs to be provided to the teachers so that they are well-versed with the interactive tools and tech apps to create learning opportunities for students that will sharpen their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Acquisition of new knowledge and skills, by itself, is not sufficient. What is more important is how these skills and knowledge can be translated into practice. Schools must invest to provide essential amenities and decent educational infrastructure to maximize the accessibility and effectiveness of the trainings given to the teachers. 

Interactive learning pedagogy might look easy to adapt to; however, it is not all plain sailing once schools and institutions commit to implementing it. All stakeholders involved need to be well-oriented towards it or else it will end up leading to class interactions to chance.

Source: Easy Shiksha
Link: https://news.easyshiksha.com/how-can-teachers-training-programs-help-educators-in-making-learning-interactive/
Published on: 11th October 2022

A firm foundation of lifelong learning begins with Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). The formative years from birth to age 6 is the period when 85% of the human brain develops. These early years are the best time to initiate and stimulate cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional and motor development in children. Doing so requires the right set of knowledge, skills, and sensitivity about foundational learning.

To develop these essential and all-important competencies in pre-primary teachers, aspirants, educators, and parents, Saamarthya Teachers Training Academy of Research (STTAR), in collaboration with Early Childhood Association (ECA) India, and global partners Global Education Futures and The Weaving Lab, has curated a very special Certificate Programme on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), as it has been envisioned in the National Education Policy 2020.

The programme focusses specifically on those aspects of ECCE that have the greatest positive influence in shaping children’s mental, emotional and physical faculties. The aim is to engender in each participant an understanding of child psychology, child behavior, and the nuances of essential literacy and numeracy competencies for foundational years. This shall help to make teachers proficient in new-age pedagogy comprising play-based learning, active learning, inquiry based learning, storytelling, role-playing, and foundational literacy and numeracy.

Scheduled to be held in the online mode over the course of four days from November 10 to November 13, 2022, STTAR’s Certificate Programme on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) will cover the following key topics:

• Importance of Foundational Learning
• Child Psychology and Parenting
• Phonics
• Storytelling
• Developing Critical Thinking Curriculum for Pre-Primary

To know more about the 4-day certificate programme, visit: http://www.sttar.in/ecce

Each one of these sessions will be helmed by experts with decades of experience in Early Childhood Care and Education.

THE TRAINERS

On an opening day, the renowned Swati Popat Vats, President of the Early Childhood Association-India (ECA) and an educationist with 34 years of experience, will conduct the introductory session on the Importance of Foundational Learning. This would be followed by a session on Child Psychology and Parenting by Carole Paul, a consultant for special needs and early intervention with 24 years of experience.

A clutch of interesting synthetic phonics techniques will be revealed in the session on Phonics on Day 2 by Saswati Nanda Satpathy, a noted international phonics trainer with 18 years of experience in teaching and training. On Day 3, Satpathy will also share several effective strategies to incorporate Storytelling in pre-primary classrooms. The final day is reserved for the extremely pertinent session on Developing Critical Thinking Curriculum for Pre-Primary by Poonam Kochitty, a highly proficient teacher trainer in classroom management, curriculum planning and implementation, and an educator with 35 years of experience in school leadership roles.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The four-day programme consists of 12 hours of learning in sessions and 13 hours of self-paced learning through assignments. Each participant will get STTAR Certificate in association with Early Childhood Association (ECA) and STTAR’s global partners Global Education Futures and The Weaving Lab.

Vinod Malhotra, Chairman of the Academic Council, STTAR, says, “NEP 2020 aptly recognizes the need to strengthen Early Childhood Care and Education so that young learners may develop cognitive, linguistic, emotional and physical competence to progress to elementary and secondary learning. STTAR has designed this four-day certificate programme for pre-primary teachers, aspirants, career changers, young mothers and fathers, so that the potential of learning in young minds shall be fully realized.” 

STTAR is a premier teachers’ training academy with an expertise in developing latest pedagogical competencies in today’s educators. Its training modules are created out of extensive research and in consultation with academics and experts of national and global stature. Its flagship programme STTAR Future Learning Systems, held in May 2022, was a stupendous success. The Certificate Programme on ECCE is set to be the new laurel in the academy’s accomplishments.

Topic: A Certificate Programme On Early Childhood Care And Education (ECCE)
Date: November 10 to November 13, 2022
Time: 4 PM to 7 PM
Register Here: http://www.sttar.in/ecce

Who Should Attend: Aspiring Teachers, In-Service Teachers, Career Changers, Edupreneurs, Young Mothers, Caretakers, NTT teachers

Source: Education World
Link: https://www.educationworld.in/be-an-effective-pre-primary-teacher-with-sttar-certificate-programme-on-ecce/
Published on: 23rd September 2022

Sushma Raturi is an enthusiastic professional educator with over 25 years of varied work experience in the field of education. She is an alumna of St. Mary, Shillong, who after obtaining a gold medal in her post-graduate course in Public Administration, decided to do her Bachelors in Education to pursue her childhood dream of being an educator. Currently, she is working with Seth Anandram Jaipuria Group of Schools as Head of Teaching, Learning, and Training. She is Member Secretary of the Academic Council of Saamarthya Teachers Training Academy of Research (STTAR), a premier teachers’ training institute that aims to develop teaching competencies based on extensive research on all aspects of education.

The World Economic Forum estimates that 85 million jobs are likely to be displaced by 2025 due to a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines. At the same time, 97 million new roles could emerge which can adapt to this new division of labour. 

As the world changes at a rapid speed, education, too, is witnessing a paradigm shift by developing innovative pedagogy, rethinking assessments and ensuring that new-age technology can be harnessed to develop a sustainable future.

Being future-ready is the need of the hour. This means that education must evolve to teach children the skills they require to flourish in contemporary and future markets. The education sector as a whole need to be reimagined in order to stave off redundancy. It must be made ready to impart future skills to students.  Teachers play a vital role in this. They need to develop the necessary skills to be competent at making students future-ready.

During the Covid -19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns, teachers were faced with a great responsibility of dealing with the sudden transformation in curricular practices through digital mode despite lack of appropriate training while also dealing with a changed student profile.

Teaching is by no means an easy task, particularly in the current day and age of frequent disruptions. Teachers have to juggle multiple responsibilities along with teaching strategies to keep students interested, engaged and focused. They also need to be digitally competent to ensure the purposeful use of ICT and digital media to achieve goals related to teaching and learning. We are now witnessing a transition, as teachers reinvent themselves to navigate the tectonic shifts in the education landscape. 

It now becomes extremely imperative that teachers update their skills with emerging techniques to bridge the skill gap. The range of skills necessary for quality student learning requires certain essential competencies and adroitness beyond academia. Besides acquiring pedagogical skills, 21st-century skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, meta-cognition, Socio-emotional learning, communication, collaboration, media literacy, economic and financial literacy, civic responsibility and global awareness are equally essential.

If we are to prepare our children to deal with the unknown future, we must lay emphasis on teachers being well versed with a certain set of skills to be future-oriented. It might even require reconceptualizing how they can be supported so as to foster the growth and development of students.

The question before us is this: What are the skills that will make them current to deal with the fast-changing educational scenario?

All decision-makers, school leaders and educators need to collectively focus on the existing approach in skill development towards creating a broad set of new age skills. Bolstering teacher capabilities for acquiring a large breadth of skills is the need of the hour but providing training for dissemination of those acquired competencies is equally important and challenging too. 

The first step to boost skill development is by sharing clear-cut expectations of essential skills with all the educators and reaching a common understanding.  This is followed by observing the current skills through class observations using a specific measuring tool, the framework of which has clear parameters with well-defined indicators to capture the current skills. This will lead to the identification of the gaps that exist. The framework needs to be tweaked for different sets of educators – academic and non-academic and be tailored to the details of their work.

Ideally, a teacher development plan with focus on skill-specific domains needs to be prepared to monitor their progress. This may provide them the directions to upskill themselves and get a fair idea about which skills are central and which are peripheral to their requirements.

Accordingly, training programs can be designed to enhance the skillsets to meet the demand. However, these training programs must be planned with utmost care so as to match the needs of the participants.

Plugging skill gaps is a very exacting and arduous task and must be commensurate with the right cultural fit, gap analysis, and trainings.

Source: K-12 Digest
Link: https://www.k12digest.com/emerging-techniques-for-teacher-training-to-bridge-the-skill-gap/
Published on: 23rd September 2022

Higher education pedagogy is defined by the diverse elements of academic proficiency, skill development, research, simulation, and career orientation. Facilitating the nurturing of theoretical and empirical knowledge and making learners future-ready require special competencies among educators.

Three distinct influences have a bearing on higher education. Firstly, advances in technology are bringing radical changes in the learning content, methodology, modes and even the learning environment. Secondly, new pedagogical breakthroughs and the emergence of new curriculum are increasingly transforming the teaching and learning practices and experiences. Add to the two the dynamic nature of the 21st century industry to which business education has to constantly align itself. These cumulative influences make continual teacher professional development pivotal to higher education. 

To better understand the critical role of teacher education in today’s higher education ecosystem, we must consider the changes taking place along the following dimensions.

The Changing Role of Teachers

From the ‘sage on the stage’, teachers are now transitioning to the new role of ‘guide on the side’. Student-centric learning is redefining the role of teachers as knowledge facilitators. Managing learning processes, integrating summative and formative assessments, acquiring tech proficiency for hybrid teaching, data analysis, Learning Management System tools, and updating with modified curriculum and applying outcome-based education (OBE) methodology are some of the competencies teachers need to be up to speed with. 

The educator profile is changing in conjunction with the profile of the learners who need to develop higher cognitive skills such as critical thinking, quantitative analysis and statistical prowess. Teachers need to constantly upskill and reskill themselves to help nurture these capabilities in students along with an aptitude for complex problem solving, risk management and research and development. At the more holistic level, teachers have to be mentors and guides in facilitating a harmonious social, emotional, physical and spiritual development of learners. 

Keeping Up With Technology

Technology is turning out to be a game changer in Industry 4.0, and teachers have to keep in step with latest innovations to deliver learning experiences that best fit corporate needs. The systemic shift to online learning during the pandemic is now giving way to a new paradigm where remote learning digital tools have become integral to blended pedagogy. According to a study conducted by McKinsey, higher educational institutions are continuing to leverage eight learning methodologies that are reliant on technology. These are:

1. Group work: virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing between teachers and learners
2. Connectivity and community building: This comprises tools through which teachers connect with students and build a large learning community
3. AR/VR: Augmented and Virtual reality provide an excellent form of experiential learning which may, in the future, transform learning experience through the emergence of the metaverse
4. Machine Learning-powered teaching: This constitutes automated apps and chat-bots that can be good assistants to educators
5. AI-driven adaptive learning: Personalized learning journeys created by AI powered algorithms
6. Student progress monitoring: Tech-driven assessment tools and LMS to chart out learning pathways
7. Classroom interactions: Breakout rooms, chats, group discussions, quizzes etc facilitated by tech
8. Classroom exercises: Ludic learning, gamification, simulation exercise through tech

Aligning Education With Ever-Changing Industry

The Future of Education and Skills 2030 report by OECD asserts the potential of education and educators to equip learners with a sense of purpose – apart from knowledge, skills, values and attitude – to shape their own lives and contribute towards societal growth and global sustainability. For this purpose educators have to bear the huge responsibility of nurturing the agency (or sense of purpose) in today’s learners. Given the dynamic nature of the industry, plenty of future jobs and job profiles will be added anew each year in this third decade of the 21st century.  

Some of these new jobs include:

• Human-Machine Teaming Manager 
• XR Immersion Counsellor
• Augmented Reality Journey Builder
• Algorithm Bias Auditor 
• Cyber Calamity Forecaster
• Metaverse Planner
• Data Detective

Continuous teacher professional development programmes, as advocated in the National Education Policy 2020, shall be the prominent means to prepare educators who can meet the pedagogical challenges arising out of these new jobs and profiles. Over and above the new-age pedagogy, teachers also need to be in sync with the global realities, geopolitics, cultural dynamics and societal transformations to be best positioned to nurture learners into change-makers and leaders who shall confidently navigate through the new world order and define the future of humanity.