Fwd: National Education Policy and the Discipline of Psychology
The Committee for Draft National Education Policy with Dr. K. Kasturirangan as the Chair submitted the report on May 31, 2019. The Committee constituted, the Ministry of Human Resource Development. The report seeks and proposes an education policy, which would eventually address the hurdles of access, equity, quality, affordability, and accountability all of which creates havocs in the current education system of India. The discipline of psychology especially the branch of educational psychology could contribute as well as has immense implications when it comes to job opportunities etc.
The policy attempts to provide reforms at all facets of education, from school to higher education. It seeks to emphasize the importance of early childhood care, reform the current exam system, strengthen teacher training, and restructure the education regulatory framework all of which requires the intervention of an efficient educational psychologist. The impact and need of a psychologist in various realms of education could be seen throughout the policy.
Early Childhood Care and Education: In addition to problems of access, the NEP talks about several quality related deficiencies in the existing early childhood learning programmes. This could be seen in various aspects like where in the curriculum that doesn't meet the developmental needs of children, lack of qualified and trained teachers, and pedagogy that doesn't meet any kind of standards. The curriculum needs to be prepared by those individuals who have proficiency in the area of developmental psychology. The developmental psychologists specialize in child development and hence can help in the construction of a curriculum that meets the developmental needs of a child. The scarcity of qualified and trained teachers is another issue, which could be addressed by trained educational psychologists and child psychology as a paper could be emphasized in the trainee teachers curriculums. Currently, most early childhood education is delivered through anganwadis and private-preschools. However, there has been less focus on the educational aspects of early childhood. Hence, the draft Policy recommends developing a two-part curriculum for early childhood care and education. This will consist of: (i) guidelines for up to three-year-old children (for parents and teachers), and (ii) educational framework for three to eight-year-old children. This would be implemented by improving and expanding the anganwadi system and co-locating anganwadis with primary schools. Along with these interventions from the MHRD, psychologists could also be appointed in various anganwadis and private schools. The professionals could provide insight to both the parents and teachers as to what is best in the case of the child. The draft Policy recommends that the recent amendments to the RTE Act on continuous and comprehensive evaluation and the no detention policy must be reviewed. It states that there should be no detention of children till class eight. Instead, schools must ensure that children are achieving age-appropriate learning levels. This review could be hoisted with a board of educational and developmental psychologists on board as they could provide light into the topic with the expertise that they possess.
Curriculum framework: The current structure of school education must be restructured on the basis of the development needs of students. The Committee noted that the current education system solely focuses on rote learning of facts and procedures. Hence, it recommends that the curriculum load in each subject should be reduced to its essential core content. This would make space for holistic, discussion and analysis-based learning. The construction of such a curriculum could be assigned to psychologists as they are trained in module making and developmental aspects of students.
School exam reforms: The NEP points out that the current board examinations, force students to concentrate only on a few subjects and do not test learning in a formative manner. This inculcates stress among students. To track students' progress throughout their school experience, the draft Policy proposes State Census Examinations in classes three, five and eight. The progress of the students' need to be tracked and this could be done with the help of psychologist. Further, it recommends restructuring the board examinations to test only core concepts, skills and higher order capacities. These board examinations will be on a range of subjects. The students can choose their subjects, and the semester when they want to take these board exams. The in-school final examinations may be replaced by these board examinations. The mode of testing and the criterion for evaluation of learning could be efficiently designed with the help of a efficient board of educational psychologists.
School infrastructure: Establishing primary schools in every habitation across the country has helped increase access to education, but it has given birth to very small schools with low number of students. The small size of schools makes it operationally difficult to deploy teachers and critical physical resources. The structure of the class and the seating styles of students and the teacher has a lot of implications in the learning process. The various types of seating arrangements and styles could be discussed with a educational psychologist and the best style could be determined (in consideration of the number of students). A complex will consist of one secondary school (classes nine to twelve) and all the public schools in its neighbourhood that offer education from pre-primary till classes eight. This would also raise the demand of appointment of school counsellors.
Teacher management: The NEP points out that there has been a steep rise in teacher shortage, lack of professionally qualified teachers, and deployment of teachers for non-educational purposes. The MHRD could come up with a teacher recruitment program where enough training could be provided. The draft Policy recommends that teachers should be deployed with a particular school complex for at least five to seven years. Further, teachers will not be allowed to participate in any non-teaching activities (such as cooking mid-day meals or participating in vaccination campaigns) during school hours that could affect their teaching capacities. For teacher training, the existing B.Ed. programme will be replaced by a four-year integrated B.Ed. programme that combines high-quality content, pedagogy, and practical training. This raises the need for professionally trained educational as well a s developmental psychologists for the teachers to be given training. An integrated continuous professional development will also be developed for all subjects. Teachers will be required to complete a minimum of 50 hours of continuous professional development training every year.
Higher Education
Regulatory structure and accreditation: Currently, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) is an accreditation body under the UGC. The draft Policy recommends separating NAAC from the UGC into an independent and autonomous body. In its new role, NAAC will function as the top level accreditor, and will issue licenses to different accreditation institutions, who will assess higher educational institutions once every five to seven years. All existing higher education institutions should be accredited by 2030. This would again call for more job opportunities for psychologists. Higher education institutions will be restructured into three types, research universities focusing equally on research and teaching; teaching universities focusing primarily on teaching; and colleges focusing only on teaching at undergraduate levels. All such institutions will gradually move towards full autonomy - academic, administrative, and financial. This would also call for college counsellors and psychologists in anti-ragging cells .
Moving towards a liberal approach: The draft Policy recommends making undergraduate programmes interdisciplinary by redesigning their curriculum to include: (a) a common core curriculum and (b) one/two area(s) of specialisation. Students will be required to choose an area of specialisation as 'major', and an optional area as 'minor'. Four-year undergraduate programmes in Liberal Arts will be introduced and multiple exit options with appropriate certification will be made available to students. Further, within the next five years, five Indian Institute of Liberal Arts must be setup as model multidisciplinary liberal arts institutions. The development of various curriculums would require the interventions of expert psychologists.
Professional development of faculty: The NEP points out that poor service conditions and heavy teaching loads at higher education institutions have resulted in very low motivation in faculty. This could be because of lack of autonomy and no clear career progression system. The draft Policy recommends development of a Continuous Professional Development programme and introduction of a permanent employment (tenure) track system for faculty in all higher education institutions by 2030. Further, a desirable student-teacher ratio of not more than 30:1 must be ensured. The training module for the teachers could be prepared with the help of experts from the area as well psychologists. The teacher burnout as well the mental health status of the teachers could be assessed with the help of counsellors and psychologists. Interventions from their part could improve the teaching efficiency in the long run.
Optimal learning environment: The Committee observed that the curricula remain rigid, narrow, and archaic. Moreover, the faculty often lacks the autonomy to design curricula, which negatively impacts pedagogy. It recommends that all higher education institutions must have complete autonomy on curricular, pedagogical and resource-related matters. The materials could be designed with the help of educational psychologists
Technology in Education
The NEP observed that technology plays an imperative role in, improving the classroom process of teaching, learning and evaluation, aiding in preparation of teachers and continuous professional development of teachers, improving access to education in remote areas and for disadvantaged groups, and improving the overall planning, administration and management of the entire education system. It recommends focused electrification of all educational institutions as electricity is a pre-requisite for all technology-based interventions. The influence of technology could be assessed using scales and could be kept on check with the help of psychologists. The advent of AI has also helped. Inculcation of these technologies would also help in the progress of education
Conclusion
The NEP focuses on reforming the whole education system in India, be it at a primary or a higher education level. As psychologists especially those specializing in education and development have expertise when it comes to reforming education and at the same time cater to the needs of individuals, they could provide ample intervention in a sophisticated and professional way. This increases the requirement of including psychologists in the implementation of the NEP.
Eleanora Nallu Edavalath Chith
Reference
Draft National Education Policy 2019. Retrieved from http://mhrd.gov.in/
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