Edu Research & Insights

Work more! Study harder! Live less???? No. No No. Finland have the least amount of outside work and homework than any other student in the world. - Finnish students are getting everything they need to get done in school without the added pressures that come with excelling at a subject. Without having to worry about grades and busy-work they are able to focus on the true task at hand – learning and growing as a human being. Why Finland’s education system is dominating the world stage. Internationally despite calls for education reform and a continual lackluster performance, not a lot is being done or changing within the educational system. What often happens is that students will learn to cram just to pass a test and teachers will be teaching with the sole purpose of students passing a test. Learning has been thrown out of the equation. All children throughout Finland are graded on an individualized basis and grading system set by their teacher. In Finland all the teachers are

- The first level in how to teach phonics involves showing your student how to recognise the sounds of the alphabet letters. - Many children from the age of 4 can effortlessly learn the names of the letters of the alphabet by singing the Alphabet Song. It is important that they do learn the letter names but focus your time at this stage on teaching them the  sounds the letters make, which is a new and greater challenge.  - It's important that you teach your child at their pace, not yours. You might find 5-10 minutes is a long enough period to spend at a time. Or they might be prepared to work for 30 minutes. It all depends on their attention span. - Why phonic system does not go with the order ABCD...? It is because children will not need to read letters like  q nearly as frequently as  a  and  m . So it makes sense to learn the sounds  a  and  m before  q . Click to read full article from source:

Kids today are in a devastating emotional state! Most come to school emotionally unavailable for learning. There are many factors in our modern lifestyle that contribute to this.” In her practice, my friend Victoria Prooday, OT is seeing something so widespread and alarming that I asked if I could share her thoughts. Due to the overwhelming interest and conversation on this topic, I am re-sharing her post. I encourage every parent who cares about the future of his/her children to read it. I know that many would choose not to hear what she says in the article, but your children needs you to hear this message. Victoria writes: I am an occupational therapist with years of experience working with children, parents, and teachers. I completely agree with this teacher’s message that our children are getting worse and worse in many aspects. I hear the same consistent message from every teacher I meet. Clearly, throughout my time as an Occupational Therapist, I have seen and continue to s

Snippets: - Social development : It is our interaction with others. It is the ability to form secure relationships.  - Emotional development : It is regulating and expressing emotions. It involves the way one feels about themselves, others and the world. ·          -    Show your feelings. Let your child see when you are happy or sad. This helps them to develop empathy for others. -  Young children who develop strong early relationships with parents, family, caregivers, and teachers learn how to pay attention, cooperate, and get along with others. Image source: https://mn.wordpress.com/tag/social-emotional-development/page/3/ What can affect social-emotional development? A person’s life experiences, genetic makeup, and temperament can affect social-emotional development. How will social-emotional development impact academic success? When children feel good about themselves and develop confidence, they will form secure relationships with others and ulti

- Social-Emotional Skills include the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary for youth to recognize and control their emotions and behaviors; establish and maintain positive relationships; make responsible decisions and solve challenging situations; and set and achieve positive goals. Source . - Some examples of social-emotional skills are like Adaptability, Empathy, Patience, Forgiveness, Gratitude, Honesty and so on. More examples. - Many researches indicate that  social and emotional skills children gain, or don’t gain, before they enter kindergarten have a profound effect on their lifelong journey. - The problem is that more and more children are entering school without these critical skills. - One study found that of over 9,000 children entering kindergarten in the Baltimore Public Schools more than half didn’t meet benchmarks for social-behavior readiness. These include social and emotional skills which are used everyday. Like following directions, complying with r

In today’s scenario, we face unprecedented challenges – social, economic and environmental – driven by accelerating globalization and a faster rate of technological developments. At the same time, these forces provide us with myriad new opportunities for human advancement through education. On the contrary, current education system is preparing students only for jobs. It is not a question whether the education provides or fails to provide employment but it is a question if the education brings the best out of the children. The children entering schools in 2019 will be young adults in 2037. Schools are expected to prepare them for jobs that have not yet been created, to the technologies that have not yet been invented, to solve problems that have not yet been anticipated. It is going to be our shared responsibilities to seize opportunities and find solutions. To navigate through such uncertainty, students have to develop curiosity, imagination, resilience and self regulation; they ha

Work with parents/carers and families can add strength and depth, and has been shown to have a significant impact in making approaches and specific interventions more effective, both by helping family life reinforce the messages of the school and through helping parents and carers develop their own parenting skills and attitudes. The school has an important part to play in supporting the kind of parenting and family life that boosts well-being. This can be done informally, through conversation with individual parents and carers, or more formally through presentations at parents’ evenings, printed information, parenting education courses, and designated family link workers. Parents and carers who may not have had a positive experience of parenting themselves may need particular help to respond to their children’s behaviour in emotionally literate ways, to spend quality time with their children, to focus on their children’s strengths, to listen, empathise and understand the causes

Dear leader makers, Teachers could do action research in their schools and classrooms, work on their ideas and share stories so that it can be published formally and informally too. We can also publish in this blog (reach.clf@gmail.com). What is action research and it's steps? Click to read from internet: All you have to do is to give shape to your ideas with data. For example, MS school branch at Zaheerabad have removed school bell and started teaching time management. Now, teachers as well as students value time and teachers reach classes on time without Bells. MS Mallepally is experimenting with goals and block period. They found that a chapter that is taught in 7 periods can be taught within 3 continuous periods with proper planning and breaks & innovative methodologies. Below are few topics on which Action Research can be undertaken: Changing cultural dynamics in lifestyle, parenting as well as schooling: • Holistic Education to nurture Body, Mind, Heart and Soul

Children these days are so lucky that they don't even know that in our days we could get beaten up for any of the following reasons: (a loooooooong list) 😶😳🙄😆🤣 1. Crying after being beaten. 2. Not crying after being beaten. 3. Crying without being beaten. 4. Standing while the elders were seated. 5. Sitting while the elders were standing. 6. Walking around aimlessly where the elders were seated. 7. Replying back to an elder. 8. Not replying back to an elder. 9. Sleeping while the elders had already woken up. 10. Looking at an elder eye ball to eye ball. 11. When an elder was talking to you and you blinked your eye. 12. When an elder was talking to you and you stared without blinking. 13. When you looked at an elder with a corner eye. 14. Spending too much time without being beaten. 15. Singing after being beaten. 16. Not greeting visitors. 17. Eating food prepared for the visitors. 18. Crying to go with the visitors when the visitors were leaving. 19. Look

- Technology is changing education from being a teacher-centred instruction to a learner-centred education, where students take greater initiative and responsibility to manage their own learning. In these developments how can we integrate peer learning strategy to improve learning outcomes. - Peer learning refers to students learning with and from each other as fellow learners without any implied authority to any individual. - Peer learning pedagogy is part of an active learning strategy. - Students who engage in an environment of open and free communication, study well and perform better academically. - In peer learning students will engage with each other intellectually, debate each other’s views, reaching an agreement or a disagreement. - What is happening in most of the schools? . Currently students learn in 'silos". In business language silos refers to a situation wherein departments or management groups do not share information, goals, tools, priorities and processe

This was the question asked in WhatsApp group. This was answered by an education counselor: We need to believe that there is nothing called solution, we can call it as some of the steps which we can take to keep the usage of social media in control. That is, ethical use of social media. 1. First of all parents should be the role models for the children. parents should reduce their time on social media. 2. There should be strong bonding between parents and Children. This will makesure that the children respect the parents' views. 3. Some Do's and don'ts should be decided through democratic consensus. It means there should be some set of rules like no no mobile before and during food, no mobile before bedtime, no mobile after bedtime, no mobile to school, no mobile during family discussions/time. It is often found that we as a parent are not following these ethics. 4. We can also set and agree upon rules as to, what sites and apps are allowed, based on type of app/websit

- While delivering lecture in class many of us are unaware that we are addressing the minds and hearts with the powerful tool of communication and hence are not very mindful of the choice of words. - Teachers have the opportunity to reframe students’ pessimistic statements into more optimistic ones. - The kind of language that the students use also can reflect the thoughts that they have about themselves. Click to read from source:

It is a general consensus that our schools are making our children future ready to get into the collaborative, dynamic and diverse world out there. It is believed that if a child secures good grades and receives some talent certificates, the child is successful. Is it enough for a child to be future ready? Today I wrote this article as a reflection for a Whatsapp forward video I just watched. (Video is in the link at the end of the article). In this video, one of the corporate people tells that the young generation which is entering the jobs are not socially ready and competent. They come with job skills and not with social skills which are equally important to work in diverse teams as today. He further says, now we have taken this responsibility at our offices to teach the young the required social skills. People who are working will very well acknowledge that when we work with organizations, actually we are working with dissimilar people for a similar goal and vision. Isn’t

This is a 30 minute session @ IIM-A by Ritesh Agarwal. Interesting fact is that he is a college drop out giving lecture at prestigious IIM. After listening to his experience of building a billion dollar Business, it makes one to think, is only college degree certifies a person's talent and capability. He discusses: - Experiencial learning in business. - Fixing things in an organised way. - Building processes and systems. - Building team. - Scaling up.... And lot more. Click to watch the video on YouTube:

Bill gates explains the importance of feedback for teachers. Below is a link of Ted talk at YouTube. https://youtu.be/81Ub0SMxZQo

Snippets: - For a school to be outstanding, it should consider the wellbeing of children and of it's staff who work with them. - While schools should never be expected to do the job of mental health services, they have a crucial role to play in promoting good mental health in everything they do. - Taking a whole-school approach to wellbeing has benefits for young people’s wider education, and for everyone who works in school. - For this we need to see a more fundamental change to the system. Click to read from source:

At the end of this webpage in below link you will find many blogs discussing about home schooling. https://wonderyearsschool.com

Snippets: - When it comes to schools, teachers who accept textbook content uncritically are quite likely to accept content on the internet without questioning the sources and quality of information that is shared.  - Textbooks are also not used for critical analysis. Teachers primarily teach in order that students would be able to write the expected answers to questions based on the lessons in the textbook. - For many teachers, the main objective of the lesson is to transmit the content of the lessons as presented in the textbook. As per observation of one study, teachers did not critically examine textbook content and did not expect students to engage with the textbooks directly. - Teachers explicitly managed the ways in which students used their textbooks within the classroom. - Like the English language, the use of the internet too seems to be a marker of privilege. - The sources and quality of content that is made available for educational purposes through the use of smart bo

When I was interacting with one of the entrepreneur, he shared about challenges in getting suitable candidates for his organisation. One of the highlights was about MTI (Mother tongue influence) in english language. And the next day I was traveling with the help of Google maps assistant. When I observed the way google maps pronounced Indian names, it had MTI. And by taking this as a reason I will not reject google device claiming that it has MTI. I believe only call centres need pakka english as they want their foreign clients to believe that the person in conversation is someone from their own country. But other than this client satisfaction why are we bothered with accent. When we are not perfect in our own mother tongue, and when we are not even bothered to work on it. Then why do we feel so inferior when we do not know english. I don't have grudge with english. The reason I bother is, the inferiority of not knowing english is making our children feel inferior in their persona

Snippets : - Are we feeding children that there’s only one way to think, one way to feel, and one way to determine intelligence? - There is not one way of determining intellect because we are all unique in our own way. So we cannot follow one size fits all strategy. - The education system’s sole purpose should be to  educate  us in order to better ourselves and society, and for that it should teach us 'how' to think. But instead it just tells us what to think. It means that it is helping us to gather knowledge, but not to create it through our uniqueness. - The good news is, some countries are now trying to shift the way we approach education. For example: Finland, a longstanding leader in education, is in the process of completely reforming its education system. - Finland is trying to implement 'phenomenon based learning'. Its a system where students take one particular phenomenon or concept and look at it through multiple lenses, applying it to whatever subjects

Snippets: - 'Ministry of loneliness'. Yes you read it right. In January, British Prime Minister Theresa May, appointed the first “minister of loneliness.” Her administration released an 84-page plan detailing the actions it will take to curb loneliness across the country, including measures that will be enacted in schools. - What kind of development does these happenings signal. What precautions can be taken by the more cultural, traditional countries like India, Pakistan, Thailand, Bhutan and some strong tribal communities around the world. - The article reflects on changes in the structure of society, which is rampant in Western countries. It says, marriage rates and religious-participation rates are dropping, and  both are risk factors  for social isolation and loneliness.  - The chronic loneliness is linked to a variety of health issues, such as  decreased immunity to viral infections ,  poor sleep, and  cardiovascular issues like hypertension . - Individual teachers,

- The involvement of parents in child's education is as important as teachers. - Parents and teachers' collaboration is very important. And one means of collaboration is Parent-teacher meetings and orientations. - At home, parents should talk to their child about his experiences on a daily basis. - Each parent-teacher meeting is an opportunity to refine child's individual learning plan and to make sure the roles of teacher, student and parents are clear, specific and designed to bring out the best in child. - The below link discusses about a sample plan as to what can be discussed in a parent-teacher meeting. Click to read from source:

Snippets : - There is lot of difference in the way we work. The more emphasis in today's world is on collaboration, than competition. - Most of the schooling systems today consciously and subconsciously foster competition. - The new approach of Singapore will put a break to the old ranking system which encourages competition. - Critical thinking, leadership and complex problem-solving will become increasingly important. Thus we need to focus our children's abilities towards developing these skills. - To achieve multi-disciplinary skills, alongside academic performance the new system should foster social development among pupils to raise self awareness and build decision-making skills.  - The Singapore primary and secondary school report books will no longer indicate whether a pupil finishes top or bottom of the class, while subject and group averages, overall total marks and minimum and maximum grades are set to disappear.  Click to read full article from World Economic

Snippets : - The below snippets have been prepared by Peter Gray's year 2008's article 'A brief history of education'. In this article he discusses about how schools were discovered. - Children now are almost universally identified by their grade in school, much as adults are identified by their job or career. - If we want to understand why standard schools are what they are, we have to abandon the idea that they are products of logical necessity or scientific insight.  - The human instincts (its natural) to play and explore are so powerful that they can never be fully beaten out of a child.  - In relation to the biological history of our species, schools are very recent institutions.  - When society became steeply hierarchical, with a few kings and lords at the top and masses of slaves and serfs at the bottom. Now the lot of most people, children included, was servitude. The principal lessons that children had to learn were obedience, suppression of their own wi

- This is the Early Childhood Education intervention success story of a country called Guyana. It is a country on South America’s North Atlantic coast. Guyana is one of the poorest countries in South America. The rural poor are often completely cut off from population centers and live in crowded, unsanitary conditions. - An organisation known as GPE, together with the government of Guyana is making great progress in improving early childhood education and reducing disparities in learning outcomes between coastal and hinterland areas. - During initial period of project on ECE they found that many teachers were unaware of how play can stimulate cognitive thinking and develop social and motor skills just as much as learning letters and numbers. In a study in 2013, the ministry of Education (MoE) administered a diagnostic assessment to more than 700 children entering grade 1 in hinterland areas. The findings were alarming: approximately 60% of children had not mastered pre-requisite ski

- The teaching profession does not attract enough candidates due to the deterioration of teachers’ social status caused by low salaries, poor working conditions and a lack of career development options.  -  Due to shortage of teachers, contract teachers are hired. These ‘contract teachers’ are hired as an emergency measure and do not meet the same training and qualification requirements as permanent teachers.  - Schools in rural and remote areas have more difficulties in attracting qualified teachers than their counterparts in urban areas. - Difference between qualified teacher and trained teacher: A qualified teacher is one who receives an academic qualification, while a trained teacher is one who has completed the minimum organized teacher training requirements (whether during pre-service training or in-service). Click to read the article from GPE : This is an intiative of credence Learning Foundation to bring news and views on education from various sources .

Snippets: - These snippets are compiled by CLF from a News paper article by Avijit Pathak. He is Professor of Sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University. - He writes, society that values the significance of teaching knows that the task of a teacher is not merely to ‘cover’ the syllabus, and prepare students for the examination. A teacher engages in a delicate art of the transmission of social heritage — its knowledge systems, its aspirations, achievements and struggles — from one generation to another. And also teacher inspires and makes it possible for a young learner to tap her innate potential. - Society cannot evolve and citizenship cannot become mature and reflexive without good teachers — teachers who are not just ‘subject experts’ or ‘skill providers’, teachers who carry the lamp of wisdom, and enchant the young minds. - Education is not about information; a teacher is not a data bank. Education, in its true spirit, is essentially an enchanting experience, and the touch of a t

Reflections from the lecture of Dr. S. Faiyaz Ahmed (Regional Director IGNOU). - Teaching is the most complex activity because each student in the class is different and the same method cannot be applied to all. -  Teachers' knowledge has to be fresh and one needs to regularly update and keep himself abreast of the latest. - Teachers should make documentation of their good works and practices, so that others can replicate that practice. - If you are from teaching community and have no love for the subject, and you are teaching, then you are not fit for teaching. Click to read full article from source:

Snippets : - I have been into this debate from a very long time. And I found this great article written by V Santha Kumar, professor at Azim Premji University, Bangalore. - My debate is not that english is a foreign language. It's because due to lack of strong transactional english our children are weak in concept formation/comprehension. - Teaching through child’s mother tongue/home language is internationally recognised as the most appropriate way of working with children particularly in the early years of concept formation, which will, in turn, helps strong academic foundation. Below are few highlights from the original  article. This article speaks from economic/developmental perspective. You might have an other angle of debate. - If a country’s industry and economy have grown organically and in a wholesome manner, then there is no need to study a foreign language by the majority. This kind of industrial and economic development would absorb all kinds of people with diff

The idea basically being, that it's what's happening in kids' families and the kinds of conditions that they're able to purchase for their kids and the circumstances that they're able to provide for their kids over the long haul that really matter in. When the study looked at the low-income kids in the sample who were in private schools, it didn't see any advantage to private education there either. Click to read from source:

Snippets: - Many researches have studied culture and demonstrated a strong and significant correlation between organizational culture and an organization’s performance. - A good culture arises from messages that promote traits like collaboration, honesty and hard work. - Beliefs, values, and actions will spread the farthest and be tightly reinforced when everyone is communicating with everyone else. - In a weak culture, sparse interactions make it difficult for people to learn the organization’s culture, so its character is barely noticeable. Click read from source:

'Usable knowledge' is an initiative of Harvard University's Harvard Graduate school of education. Usable Knowledge is a trusted source of insight into what works in Education — translating new research into easy-to-use stories and strategies for teachers, parents, K-12 leaders, higher education professionals, and policymakers. Once you open the below link, at the top of the Harvard webpage you can find search option, where you can search for education related concepts you are looking for. And also you can select area of interest from drop down box. There are two options 'Focus area' and 'Audience: Click to open the website of 'Usable Knowledge': Contact Email for Usable knowledge:  uknow@gse.harvard.edu

Sharing this very nice write up about the Failure of modern upbringing in kids. VERY interesting and educative eye opener article. - By Priya Tondon This article was first published in The Hindustan Times, a leading national daily. Click to read

My Ai and robots can replace technocrats but not philosophers or social workers who can empathise or real deep creative thinkers . True. Becoming Drs and engineers has become a litmus test for proving one's intelligence. But why this rat race for provong one's mettle? It sprouts from sick hearts who seek self aggrandisement in the guise of academic excellence. What r we turning our next generation into? Self seeking people? This is a result of a society whose educational system is controlled by corporates and industrial houses. Such  systems produce aggrandised labourers instead of thought leaders. As much as we appreciate and need budding technocrats but we also need original thinkers, writers etc . Maulana Azad was a self proclaimed bunny in Maths but was cerebrally gifted enough to write philosophical master pieces as a teenager. Received as whatsaap message. Republished in blog.

A story on parenting: Once upon a time, there were two neighbors living next to each other. One of them was a retired teacher and another was an engineer who had a lot of interest in technology. Both of them had planted different plants in their garden. The retired teacher was giving a small amount of water to his plants and didn’t always give a full attention to them, while the other neighbor interested in technology, had given a lot of water to his plants and looked after them too well. The retired teacher’s plants were simple but looked good. The engineer's plants were much fuller and greener. One day, during the night, there was a heavy rain and a wind due to a minor storm. Next morning, both of the neighbors came out to inspect the damage to their garden. The neighbor who was an engineer saw that his plants came off from the roots and were totally destroyed. But, the retired teacher’s plants were not damaged at all and were standing firm. The engineer neighbor was surpri

Snippets: - In our traditional schooling system children are merely collecting the data, memorizing and reproducing it for an exam. - Are they applying it in real life situations. And firstly are they given an opportunity to apply in real life situations. - What  is the problem with collection? The collection ends with gathering of information. - Which is the best way of learning? In the below article an educationist discusses in detail about a concept called 'Curation'. - How Curation is different? Curation stimulates higher order thinking, by making students dig deeper into the collection of data, finding ways to not just apply it in current scenarios, but also retain and remember it for further application in real life, any time in the future. - Collection ends with gathering information, whereas curation begins with it. Click to read full article:

Snippets: - As parent and teachers we see child not sharing things among siblings and friends as embarassing. - This research has linked sharing with number counting. - It’s not that children don’t want to share. It’s that they don’t yet understand  how  to share fairly. - The reserachers point out from their recent work, that one of the reasons young children fail to share when they know they should is that they simply lack the cognitive toolbox to do so. - The children who recognise numbers well, tend to easily understand the concept of sharing and also do share too. - This research explains how closely the numerical skills and social skill of sharing is linked. - Why would sharing be related to counting? It is because children can’t share the proper number if they don’t also know how to count it. - Research also points out that, many children were actually  trying  to be fair—but couldn’t do it on account of their underdeveloped counting skills. - Example of how counting he

This activity @ Credence Learning Foundation blog is contributed by www.education.com  as a guest. Science Project:  A Visual Model of the Doppler Effect This project uses a toy race car moving through paper circles representing soundwaves to visually model the Doppler Effect. ·         >  What causes the Doppler Effect? ·        >  How does the distance between soundwaves effect pitch? Vrooooooom! Vrooooooom! Here we are, folks, in the final lap of the Doppler 500 and look at those cars speed by. Let’s cheer them on by making racecar sounds… Vroom! Vroom! Let’s do it again… Vroom! Hey, did you notice how your racecar voice starts out high and ends up low? Let’s do it again. Vrooom! That’s right, that’s how race cars really sound when they go by. But why? It is because of something called the Doppler Effect. Sound moves from the car to you in waves. Let's make a model of these waves. Materials required : ·       __   Construction paper ·