ABL - How's and What's - 12 January 2008

Participants: Vijaya, Alexander, Ranjan De, Amukta Mahapatra, Dr. L.S. Saraswathi, Reineke, Melinda, Subha, Atmapraana Amba, Nishkaamya Praana, Nidosha Praana, Ram, Priya

Note: Amukta joined the Paatashaala session to talk about how ABL works, the philosophy and methods of ABL and how they developed it.

A summary of Ms. Amukta Mahapatra’s talk and discussions
Amukta started the discussion by saying that why ABL was conceptualised and introduced is more important than the genesis itself. The problems that were identified by the government were many and ABL came as one way to tackle some of these problems.

The primary problems were that children were not learning and there was only a one point source of teaching – the teacher. In the class room the children were just obedient or not; nothing else defined them within the classroom – many problems were identified with the classroom processes. ABL was introduced as the solution and it has achieved a couple of things in the last 5-6 years since it has been brought in –

- It has succeeded in changing the geography of the class room

- Children can do things on their own. Teacher is not the only resource in the classroom

- It has helped the teachers re-look at their own roles in the classroom

ABL has opened up methodologies and ideas. For example, instead of the conventional class rooms, there are subject class rooms like maths room and language room, and the group is a mixed age-group… this has brought in newer ways of learning like never before. For instance, child-to-child learning.

An ABL classroom:
There are 6 circles / groups of mixed age children in one class room. These groups are formed on the basis of their learning, like “Teacher needed”, “Peer support”, “Self learn”, “Partial teacher support” and so on.

There are activity charts for the children, and there is the ladder chart for each subject with milestones on it for the child to see for herself what her progress is. Textbooks are not used by the children in the conventional way of mugging up. There are flash cards that are colour coded for the different levels, with each containing one concept. This is what is used primarily by the children along with the activity charts and a few other aids. The activity is curriculum driven and the child does not choose.

The subjects are Language (English, Tamil), Maths, EVS, Social studies and Science.

The questions that came up for discussion are as follows:

- How have the teachers taken the change and transitioned from earlier to now

- On what basis are the 6 circles chosen

- Is not this class room process difficult when the teacher has to look after 40 students

- How do teachers identify when some circle who are on their own have learnt correctly

- What is the feedback from the children

- How do they learn English language and grammar

- How is it decided which group does a child go to

- Which class / Std is the child in then

Amukta spoke to the group about the nature of the circles, that they are dynamic and keep changing according to the learning needs and progress. This is determined by the evaluation charts by which the child knows how much progress she has made and what she has to do next. All material is learner’s material, not teaching aids. This is important to remember, and it is the learner’s responsibility to learn and finish. The onus for learning has shifted from the teacher for 40 students to each child for herself.

Philosophy behind the restructuring of the classroom

But the concern remained among the group that the teacher still has a lot to do, since she has to individually spend time with the children at all 6 levels and whether this would be happening effectively.

Questions and a discussion on the philosophy behind the restructuring of the class room followed. The concern was whether this is only going to be a structural change or it would go deeper. One of the participants, Alexander, pointed out one problem that he has noticed, of contrariness of values, which would not change if things remain at the structural level – he spoke about how the industry and professionals are constantly asked to cultivate or given training in team work, but in schools, al the focus is on the individual and individual identity.

The other associated question was whether this was connected to real life for the child; that this is methodology but how is it changing what she is learning and in what way – the content. Apropos, the other concern was that there is no change in the value system.

Amukta spoke about how even if the content of textbooks has not explicitly changed, such methods cannot be practiced without some changes in the way the content is looked at, which in itself is a major change. The teacher’s solitary authority in the class room is now questioned; there are other resource points for the children. This leaves the teacher to engage with the children freely and the scope for the teacher and child to co-learn expands dramatically. It is true that though all are in their circles, the learning happens individually and hence the teacher has to be aware of each child’s learning level. This, from what is happening on the field, is not so difficult, and teacher training and meetings at every level is being given importance. The one thing to remember even the classroom processes should not be rigidified, as this would again create problems.

Dr.L.S. Saraswathi mentioned here that even the terms ‘content’ and ‘methodology’ are obsolete; If we were to look at them as ‘process’ and ‘practice’, then the entire dynamics would change and how can there be a change in one without affecting the other? She also said that value is in everything, they cannot be taught separately as one component, they will have to be part of everything that they child does.

There were other miscellaneous discussions on parents and their expectations from the children as well as the school, peer support etc.

In summarising, Ram said that it is always taken for granted that private players are pioneers, but in this the government has come forward with the change and this is very good. HE continued saying that however there are huge obstacles to cross, since this is still in transition phase and our very language and terms of reference will have to change.

Amukta concluded saying that a mention has to be made of Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan Official, Mr. Vijay Kumar, who has made all the difference and made this change possible.

Amukta’s Inputs on the Board
Problems in Present schooling system	Changes seen as a result of solutions presented by ABL	Difficulties at Field Level
- Herd teaching - Children not learning, even reading, writing and maths - teacher is a mere policeman - children idle most of the time or tracing mechanically - all children doing the same thing at the same time in the same manner	- individual, group and collective learning - children able to read and write by class 2 - maths skills are pretty high - each child learns at her / his own pace	- not enough teacher support in the field - training is too brief, focused on ladder, logos and charts - circle, not child directed - danger of mechanical learning if not enough care

- Priya

Quotable Quotes from the January 2008 session

"We are changing the system, but we are also resisting the change"
- Ranjan De, 12th January 2008, Paatashaala session on ABL

Notes from 2nd July 2007 session

Participants: Chitra Nagesh, Sumitra, Ranjan De, Prasanna, Karuna, Sangeetha, Priya, Ram, Akila, Shuba, Giridhar, Dr. Saraswathi

Note: The two primary areas for this session were social sciences textbook review by Chitra Nagesh and a briefing of the multiversity initiative of redesigning social sciences curriculum at the university level, by Ram.

Introduction to Samanvaya and the Paatashaala initiative was given by Ram.

Sumitra’s question at the end of the introduction was that these are all very new and different things and how do people accept new and different things. Some amount of discussion and Ram’s response was that there are neither ready-made problems nor ready-made solutions, so we have to go with new and different.

A free-flow discussion followed from the introduction and centered around the condition of schools today and activity based learning methods as well. One of the opinions from the people working with schools, children (Ranjan, Giridhar) was that activity is taken up as an independent thing to be done, but not understood as to how learning can happen and happens through this activity. Ranjan is now actively working with the deployment of the ABL method at different levels of the government hierarchy and shared his experiences with the teachers.

A theme which took up considerable energy and time in spurts through out the session - was parents’, their attitude, values and how they view school. Some felt that parents must take part in the education of the child and with school activities and others that this must not be so since they go by media and “expert”-touted trends which actually hamper the child’s learning. Parents push their children in to various classes so that they are ‘all-rounders’ but ultimately leave the latter with no time to just be. They also play an important part in conditioning children to look towards education as a tool for employment and higher paying jobs. However, this issue has many connected aspects that needed deeper analysis, and many were unwilling to slap a value judgment on this. Shuba expressed the quintessential conflict of the parent, that “I know it is wrong, but I am still pushing them into it” (where the ‘it’ may be many things including school, numerous classes, the rat race, value of consumerism… in the context of this discussion). Other related topics that came up were choice of schools and how parents decide which school they must put their children in, who are role models – teachers and parents as role models, values today (it has become a matter of pride that “my child earns as her first salary what I took home at retirement”), career options and how parents completely impose or take over the decision many a time.

Mrs. Chitra Nagesh reviewed the class XI social sciences textbook as a sample of the changes that have come about in content and presentation, according to the national curriculum draft 2005. Some of the points raised by her and discussed are :
- too much material and too exhaustive, swamping the child and leaving no motivation to explore on her own,
- something should be left for the respective imagination and individuality of the teacher and children. Everything is given, and nothing to tease the child’s curiosity and incite her to explore further.
- however good the textbooks may be (if they are), ultimately all schools are exam-oriented and hence the result may not be unlike what has always happened – cramming and hurrying to finish portions, mugging answers etc. Infact the tension and stress on both teacher and child would be much more because of the increase in material and the information overload
- the text material does not have a natural flow from the earlier standard

A discussion here on rote learning and repetition and whether this is healthy. The two almost-opposing perspectives were that nothing stays until it is done with understanding, hence rote learning should not be encouraged at all, and that there are some things that are learnt by repetition and it is good for this to happen, for instance, multiplication tables – this is not to say that understanding should not be facilitated. A linked subject was that of discipline and process of discipline - should it be enforced sometimes, all the time or not at all, will it be effective only when it comes from within, but should this be taught, how will a child know discipline, is it that discipline is a corollary to interest and enthusiasm, then how can pursuit of interest and passion juxtaposed with what needs to be done for a particular situation, be balanced… As several other discussions, no definite conclusions were drawn.

Other discussions pertaining to the textbook review
How many teachers would actually get the time to work with so much material and give it their best? Also, all this material is today available over the internet. What is the purpose of the textbook? There was also a thought that it will take a few years, but if we keep working with the change process, better things will come. At least where there was nothing, there is a change process that has started. The teachers have to be better oriented, with more practice, and even other changes to the content itself. A question that was raised was whether teachers were included in the national curriculum draft process. And any rural teachers, at that? Any teachers from south India?

Regarding exams, a question that came up was, should open book exams be taken up or no exams at all for these textbooks re-orientation to make an impact? Another reasoning was that the approach to the book was more important than the information overload, but then how many teachers would actually read the introduction and preface section, which explains the approach, and actively practice and internalize it? The approach cannot be forced. Ram’s take was that the person who wrote the preface was a visionary and would probably not have done the actual work on the textbook which is a whole lot of graphic-rich information taken from the internet

A summary by Mrs. Chitra is also uploaded into the online group space as a pointer for reflection and further discussion.

Miscellaneous related discussions
Creativity is lost. Educational institutions have become sorting machines and so this has an impact on the choice of parents. Students coming out of a particular school or college are in a certain way or have a certain label.

Thinking for oneself doesn’t happen for an individual suddenly in 10th std, this quality in the child’s nature has to be encouraged right from the start.
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Redesigning university social sciences curriculum
Ram’s Introduction: This particular initiative is still more in the minds of the people working with it than ready tangible output and deliverables.

Many groups are wanting to come out of a colonial mindset and chalk out fresh paths of study and exploration that come from their own culture and strength. Today, much of what we read and write has the “hangover of the Raj”. Multiversity was born out of a complete rejection of this. In the social sciences, which define “identity”, there has been no larger movement for such a process. We have largely a colonial identity as far as academia or formal education is concerned. And this slowly percolates into other areas. Anthropology is the study of the brown or black man by the white man. The base of such a colonial study is that the brown man is a heathen. And he needs to be educated. There could be a science, knowledge, a culture that is his, is completely unacceptable and systematically negated. So, today an astronomist who wants to understand astrophysics in India – where does he go to access this science here?

For instance, there are traditional boat builders in Ramnad, who are fast becoming an extinct community, who built boats with such precision and knowledge that the earliest repair to one of their boats is at the end of 8 years of use. But where is his science if someone wants to understand. This initiative is to bring these different things available today together as a curriculum. This entire problem of schooling content could be solved if we look at this curriculum approach.

Notes from Paatashaala session on June 1, 2007

The meeting had an informal beginning with the discussion slipping into the Activity Based Learning (ABL) programme being upscaled by the Tamilnadu government. A brief introduction of the current initiative and developments in ABL as well as NCERT chief Krishna Kumar’s column on quality of education, was given by Priya. Smt Saraswathi shared her experience with this programme as also her life’s work with education.

Some of the highlights of her sharing included:

• Ÿ Flash cards that are being introduced as part of the ABL programme in the schools now are of no use without the children first being used to self-learning.
  
  
• Ÿ The problem with the teachers is that they all want to TEACH rather than allow the students to LEARN on their own
  
  
  
• ŸThough the teachers are convinced after they undergo a training on the benefits of ABL, they cannot often connect to the student
  
  
  
• Ÿ An anecdote she narrated was about a teacher who complained that despite the teacher repeatedly asking the student in a Tamil language class what a ‘vaali’ (tamil for bucket) is, the student did not understand. But, when the teacher asked him to write about the card containing an image of a bucket, she wrote down that it was a ‘buckit’ (local lingo for bucket)! This is because in many parts of Tamilnadu, particularly Chennai, children learn the English terms before they learn the Tamil ones. But, this particular teacher found it to be inadequacy on the part of the student that she did not understand what a ‘vaali’ was.
  
  
  
• ŸIf and when the teacher thinks her teaching is more important than the child’s learning, then the problems starts
  
  
  
• ŸOften in ABL, the teaching aid and the learners’ material gets mixed up
  
  
• ŸWhere there was nothing but boring rote learning, now there is something at least (the flash cards), although in many cases it has been found they use the cards only during the inspection reverting to rote learning during other times
  
  
  
• Ÿ The problem is also with teachers’ training – in many cases they have not changed at all, they ‘tell’ the teacher how to use different methods and tools for encouraging learning rather than allow the teachers to go through the process themselves so that they first get an experience and enjoy the learning process; in her experience she found that there are teachers training colleges where some of the supposedly most popular trainers often don’t even use the black board and just drone on to the class about teaching and aids of teaching. Such lecturing can only bore the future teachers to death and cannot inspire them to either adopt any methods or take up teaching seriously

Mr. Jeyapal, Ramanujam Mathematics Museum, who has used the ABL methods in his teaching and has a teaching experience of over 30 years shared his thoughts:

• Ÿ The ABL is the only child-centered method of learning, earlier methods were either teacher centered or material centered.
  
  
• ŸEvaluation of students performance has been modeled to make evaluation process easy rather than actually provide an opportunity for the student to express themselves
  
  
  
• ŸThe state board evaluation is more of rote learning whereas the CBSE tries to emphasise on the application of knowledge, the state board only looks at the knowledge
  
  
  
• ŸIt is not true that the new method (ABL) of learning has become more demanding on the teaching staff, it is not true, they were supposed to provide such personal care to the students even before, but, they didn’t and because they could escape in the earlier system and blame it all on the students, now they are complaining
  
  
  
• Ÿ Here the child herself evaluates her learning process

Saraswathi (showing the chart that children in the corporation schools use once they shift to the ABL programme, to evaluate their own performance)

• Ÿ The perspective of education among the teaching community has to change, this has to happen through re-doing the courses in the teacher’s training college
• In some teacher’s training colleges often the learners’ materials are used as teaching aids!

Akila: How do the teachers change / adopt to the changes? Is it a problem with our tradition that maintained that we listen to our elders and look up to them??

Saraswathi: Traditionally children were permitted to play much and they learnt through their games, however, the current problem is that there is no scope for any games.

Chitra Nagesh: We have seen it in schools that whenever there was a emphasis on games and games centered activities, the children innovate, they can come up with things themselves rather well

At this stage there was an introduction of all the participants present:Ram, Chitra Nagesh, Saraswathi, Nithyanandam, Priya, Sangeetha, Naveen, Jayapal, Akila, Rama

While talking about children an how they are natural learners, there was also much discussion about traditional processes of learning as well as experiences with education in rural scenarios. For instance, Smt. Saraswathi spoke of an activity where children had to exhibit and explain about the things that they had made. One small boy had made a clay model of a “working” rice mill with all the intricate details in place. One part was with clay and the second was in wood. So she asked him why this was in wood? “well, there was no more clay so I used the wood (of course)!” was the answer. So this working model comes out of pure observation and instead we sit inside the class room and go on and on about how a rice mill works, which neither the teacher nor the children woul have seen.

A brief introduction to the Multiversity initiative was given by Ram and more discussion reserved for a later date. The review of NCERT textbook content which ha also been planned has been postponed to the next session.

- Priya