Fwd: Article on NEP
From: ANANTHA U G 1950036 <anantha.ug@res.christuniversity.in>
Date: Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 10:37 AM
Subject: Article on NEP
To: <anil.pinto.phd2019@blogspot.com>
Possible Impact of National Education Policy Draft on the Subject "Psychology"
*Anantha U G
MPhil Scholar, Christ University, Bangalore
The draft National Education Policy, 2019 was one of the first documents to be released by Modi's government that formulated on 30th May 2019. In the public domain from 1 June 2019, with suggestions invited till 30 June, and the draft is about to make careful scrutiny. The draft mainly consists of four parts: dealing with "School Education," "Higher Education," "Additional Key Focus Areas," and "Transforming Education," with an addendum, and 14 appendices. Interestingly it upholds a view of "India-centered" education system that will lead to the creation of an "equitable and vibrant knowledge society" (p 41).
This paper on NEP discusses about the possible impact of its new upbringings on the subject Psychology.
Psychology is one of the rapidly developing domains in India and is getting enough attention these days by the student community as well as by the government. The new draft NEP focuses on incorporating Indian knowledge systems into the curriculum. Along with other subjects like mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, yoga, architecture, medicine etc, attention is also given to Indian contribution to the field of psychology which is a welcoming initiative from the policy makers. However, not enough contributions are made in the field of "modern psychology" but the given attention can ignite the spark in some of us to contribute something to our domain.
Multi paradigmatic, multidisciplinary, and integrated study of psychological phenomena through converging operations are essential to study psychology as an unified subject (J. Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2002). Interestingly, this draft mainly talks about the importance of multidisciplinary approach in teacher education and opines that teachers-in-training would thereby be able to interact with peers from other disciplines and be taught by faculty in allied disciplines of education such as psychology and child development. For example, many of the world's greatest innovations and breakthroughs have occurred due to such cross-fertilization of ideas across seemingly different fields. X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs, and lasers in medicine all originally came about due to physicists and space scientists thinking about these concepts for completely different reasons. Now we are about to witness some amount of revolution from a psychologist's side also in contributing many such wonders for the society through multidisciplinary approach and seeing it as a unified subject as quoted by Robert Sternberg. NEP says by 2030, every HEI offering a teacher education programme will be multidisciplinary and offer the four-year integrated B.Ed. programme. The four-year integrated B.Ed. will be a dual-major liberal Bachelor's degree, in education as well as a specialized subject.
The NEP also emphasizes on making Sanskrit mode of instruction at least until class five. Sanskrit will be offered as one of the optional languages on par with all Schedule 8 languages, at all levels of school and higher education. My view is that, most of the works on early "manah shastra" (psychology) are in Sanskrit and the glimpse of the subject can be seen in most of the works of early Sanskrit scholars. Providing opportunity to learn Sanskrit can give some illuminations for students to gain interest and to have different opinions about psychology in a naive way. I also strongly urge that, digging back the earlier concepts of psychology in Sanskrit literature can also lead to the development of an indigenous psychology. Some researchers had already done the studies on factors influencing indigenous approach to psychology and analysed some slight movement of Indian researchers toward an indigenous discipline. (Adair, Puhan, & Vohra, 1993) and viewing them in the light of "Sanskrit" will be an add on bonus.
Another concern on mine is the quanta of employment opportunities given in the field of psychology especially in the counselling sector. Counselling and counsellors surely require some limelight in the Indian context to emerge against tremendous social change. Counselling services are mostly ill-defined and anyone with minimum or zero expertise can offer these services in our country. Available counselling services are largely based on Western approaches to psychology (Arulmani, 2007). I was expecting some revolutionary ideas from this draft through RCI to strengthen the matter of interest and to provide some "well deserved justice" for learned counsellors. Though my expectations are not satisfied, making a policy like every school should have a school counsellor to help address the children with mental health and other issues is welcoming in terms of job creation for "school counsellors" who have studied psychology as their subject.
The last concern I am having is on the dilemma created by NEP on the cancellation of MPhil programmes. Unlike other programmes like physics, chemistry, or any social science subjects per se, psychology is not having many good institutions to go and study which makes the PhD degree an unsatisfying business (doing in state/central universities). MPhil is a kind of bridge which makes us learn something about research on which we have almost zero expertise. Having a degree of MPhil would at least make us to take some bold steps and help us to get into those institutions. If this way is closed then it hinders the balance in education system which I say an absolute threat for a PhD aspirant who desperate for a tier 1 institution like NIMHANS or HSS programmes of IITs. Assurance cannot be given on the effective teaching at our MSc level even the syllabus becomes more research oriented. I am concerned about the vulnerability of my subject to these changes as it is a still developing one.
Finally, I want to quote Kumkum Roy who writes for EPW, "Fields of study such Women's Studies or Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Development Studies (psychology has role in them) all of which have developed in challenging ways over the last three or four decades, and are extremely vibrant, need to find space and active encouragement. Additionally, existing disciplines such as history, political science, psychology need to be supported rather than marginalized.
References
Adair, J. G., Puhan, B. N., & Vohra, N. (1993). Indigenization of Psychology: Empirical Assessment of Progress in Indian Research. International Journal of Psychology, 28(2), 149–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207599308247182
Arulmani, G. (2007). Counselling Psychology in India: At the Confluence of Two Traditions. Applied Psychology, 56(1), 69–82. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.2007.00276.x
J. Sternberg, R., & Grigorenko, E. (2002). Unified psychology. The American Psychologist, 56, 1069–1079. https://doi.org/10.1037//0003-066X.56.12.1069
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