Reddy stresses on heads significant role
Teachers need to encourage students to think outside the box, says Education Minister Mahendra Reddy.
“The future of our children is in our hands and we are not only preparing them for the intermediate output of academic excellence but for the long term goal of building a peaceful, vibrant and growing society and country,” Mr Reddy said.
He said that teaching strategies and assessment methods should be designed in such a way that would encourage children to undertake outside the box thinking. “The lessons should be interesting and teachers need to be a step ahead in enabling students to think, analyse situations and make independent decisions,” he said. Mr Reddy said curiosity needed to be promoted amongst students so that they were interested and thus, strive for excellence. “The school environment should be inviting, classroom should be bright and cheery, lessons should be interesting where the students should be doing more talking and working, a teaching methodology which I term as “Student Centred”. “We need to move away from the concept of “teacher knows all” and in turn move towards the notion of polishing what our children already know. The 21st Century students are already moving leaps and bounds in their knowledge of technology and computers and therefore, we need to use that as a tool to assist their learning of other subject areas.” He said that some strategies that created
such a teaching environment include: allowing students in decision making,
assisting students to lead discussions that is, for teachers to give up absolute control,
supporting students to take control of their learning, using diverse range of strategies to teach concepts, using activity based instructions for discovery learning and never undermining or discrediting a child’s effort. Mr Reddy said that teaching critical thinking and problem solving effectively in the classroom was vital for students.
“Involving students in critical thinking will enable students to develop other skills, such as, a higher level of concentration, deeper analytical abilities and improved thought processing. “Our contemporary society requires our children to be active critical thinkers as the solutions for many problems in today’s society require highly developed critical thinking and problem-solving abilities,” he said.