Curriculum Development and Teacher Training for Government Schools in Nandurbar District, Maharashtra
One of the most challenging aspects of working towards improving the quality of education for children from marginalised communities is changing attitudes of teachers and prevailing pedagogy. Usually with high formal qualifications, most teachers have a great deal of confidence in their abilities to teach, as well as a real commitment towards their learners. However, large scale studies continue to show poor learning levels in the foundational years. To help teachers to decode these findings, introspect about the underlying issues and find ways to address them has been one of CLR’s most important, albeit difficult, tasks over the years. One such project was the work in 24 schools in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra.
Language Learning Focus
The project worked towards developing teacher capacity to teach literacy skills in the school language to children who came from at least three different linguistic backgrounds. Understanding the place of the child’s mother tongue in her cognitive development, accepting home languages as valid and valuable learning resources, and changing classroom processes to accommodate these understandings, were the challenges that teachers faced, while CLR faced the challenge of recognising teachers’ perceptions and attitudes to language learning and bringing about change in these in an acceptable manner. This involved teachers to participate in redesigning the early literacy curriculum, developing or adapting relevant materials, and observing and supporting classroom practice.
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Changing Language Pedagogy
The work in Nandurbar, as in all CLR capacity building programmes for FLN, was based on the following principles:
- Emphasis on spoken language before reading/writing.
- Encouraging cognitive maturity through a series of pre-reading activities using CLR material.
- Acceptance of the child’s language and thoughts in the classroom, by allowing the child free expression during class, writing down what the children speak and reading it back to them/with them, displaying children’s work and writing in a non-judgmental manner.
- Inculcating the desire to read through story-telling.
- Mastering sound-symbol mapping through a combination of games/activities
- Promoting a “balanced approach” in the teaching of reading, whereby decoding and reading for meaning is combined right from the start
- Linking language to the child’s reality, structuring classes around what the children experience rather than only what the textbook presents
- Introducing small group instruction apart from whole class teaching.
- Stressing the importance of lesson-planning to ensure a good balance of listening, speaking, reading and writing in every class.
- Using the prescribed textbook as one teaching tool amongst many.