Free AIOU Solved Assignment 2 Code 831 Spring 2024

Free AIOU Solved Assignment 2 Code 831 Spring 2024

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Course: Foundation of Education (831)
Semester: Spring, 2024
ASSIGNMENT No. 2

Q. 1 Differentiate between aims, goals and objectives by giving examples.

i) Social conditions and education

In such competitive world, education is a very significant tool for every person to succeed in life. Education is must for both women and men equally as both together make an educated and healthy society. It gives many purposes to the lifelike as the development of the personal advancement, increases social status and health.

Much of what goes on in society disclosures into the school method, impacting students and their learning and knowledge experience. School systems should identify what kinds of social problems are of main anxiety, and educate students regarding ways to fight them. Parents and teachers can cooperate on plans for reducing social issues in schools.

1. Classroom racism

Racism is a social issue that is present in every aspect of society, from business atmospheres to schools.  That this problem has worked its technique into classrooms is proofed by biased peers full of prejudiced notes towards classmates of minority backgrounds. However teachers can ban language conflicts at school, racism might continue to survive if parents don’t also assist to accurate the preconception behaviors of their children in the home. Though, if students are learning their racist views & comments from their teachers, parents will not be capable to depend on parents to assist resolve the problems.

2. Ethnic issues

Children have its place in certain ethnic groups, are incorrectly evaluated as being slower learners when measuring up to other competitions.  This is, obviously, not true for the reason that one’s learning capabilities not straightforwardly connected to their customs. Though by reason of social or even geographical aspects, students from certain ethnic groups lack sufficient disclosure to sources of learning.  It puts the students belonging to them at risk of increasing low self-esteem.

3. Unequal opportunity

Within the realm of judgment is the social issue of unequal education opportunities for individuals who come from smaller backgrounds. Students who belong to this demographic risk lost out on the similar stage of educational excellence as middle to higher class students of non-minority backgrounds.  The social problem here is that the offers disproportionate opportunities and education system has inequities based on cultural affiliation and income level when in an ideal world, all students should have exposure to an equal education.

4. Economy

The economy plays an important part in social issues that affect students. As children become older, they begin to notice the financial burdens that their families experience. In an economy, it can be hard for families. Subsequently, some high scholars drop out of school so that they can assist support the family financially. Students who belong to deprived families are most probable to attend public schools. These schools are not as sound prepared with technology as a private school. This then automatically lay them at a difficulty when judge against to other students who go to private schools.

5. Cultural issues

Students belonging to migrant families may not be sound proficient with the English language. This makes an obstacle to contact students and teachers. Such students are not capable to get an accurate education.

6. Ethical issues

There are certain extra ethical issues in education which have an effect on students. For instance, whether to permit mobile in school or not, should school uniforms be made compulsory, etc.

7.  Gender issues

Social problems in education are the degree of difference treatment delivered on the cause of gender. In certain parts of the society, girls are delivered few opportunities for studying, in comparison to boys. Expectations from girls to achieve high in studies or study further less.

8. Substance abuse

Substance abuse and habits have become an epidemic. Many students have the way into addictive substances, alcohol, and drugs. The use of such substances leads to trouble in the type of criminal behaviors, violence and a withdrawing interest in education. This social issue can be controlled through the supportive environment for students, both at school and home.

These are some of the social issues that impact education. it plays a great role in a student’s education. The social issues can impact education positively as well as negatively. so, students and teachers should be careful towards these social issues.

ii) Economic conditions and education

It is well established that improvements in education are associated with long-term improvements in economic performance. There are three broad theories about how education influences economic performance:

·         The basic human capital approach is that education improves the overall skills and abilities of the workforce, leading to greater productivity and improved ability to use existing technology, and thus contributing to economic growth.

·         The innovation approach links education to improving the capacity of the economy to develop of new ideas and technologies.

·         An extension of this is the knowledge transfer approach, which sees education as a means of spreading the knowledge needed to apply new ideas and make use of new technologies (OECD, 2010a).

However, there is an important question as whether there is a causal link between education and economic performance, and if so, in what direction. It may be that the two are associated, but not causally linked. It also could be that better economic performance leads to an increase in educational participation and achievement. Or it could be that having more people with education leads to improved economic performance.

In general, education and economic performance are likely to be interlinked. Having a more educated workforce enables firms to take advantage of new economic opportunities, leading to improved performance. Also, economic growth can lead to greater national and personal wealth, which increases the resources available and opportunities for education.

Economic analysis shows that on the whole, improvements in school-level education lead to improvements in economic performance, and more so than the other way around. Analyses using international cognitive tests have shown that it is improvements in cognitive skills, rather than years of schooling, which have a strong influence on economic growth. The amount of schooling undertaken is not related to growth, unless it also results in improved cognitive skills.  Therefore, the quality of education is very important (OECD, 2010a).

The evidence about the relationship between tertiary education and economic performance is less clear. Long-run analysis of the New Zealand economy has shown that increased tertiary education is related to economic performance. Razzak and Timmins (2010) showed that increases in the proportion of employees with bachelors degrees and above are highly correlated to increases in the average gross domestic product per person. However, it is not clear if the growing economy attracted more degree-qualified workers or the increase in degree-qualified workers stimulated economic growth, or a combination of both.

Q. 2

AIOU Solved Assignment Code 831 Spring 2024

Discuss the awakening movements in Muslims of the sub-continent during the British period.

Muslim communities of India have never been united as a single cohesive entity. Their religious identity was transformed from a passive state to an active one according to the changing priorities of the ruling classes. They invoked religious sentiments when they fought against Hindu rulers and suppressed them when the shariah hindered their absolute rule. The concept of a Muslim political identity was a product of British rule when the electoral process, the so-called democratic institutions and traditions were introduced. British rule that created a minority complex amongst Indian Muslims and thereby a consciousness of Muslim political identity. After passing through a series of upheavals, the Muslim community shed its minority complex and declared itself a nation, asserting its separateness.

Northern India remained the centre of Muslim power, historically. The class of leading Muslim elites played an active role in determining and affirming Muslim identity according to their economic and political interests. Muslims of the other parts of India followed in their footsteps and looked at issues and problems from the point of view of northern Indian Muslims. We shall look at the changing concepts of Muslim identity in the Indian subcontinent before 1947.

Three elements were amalgamated in the making of Muslim communities in India, namely conquerors who came from the north-west, immigrants, and local converts. The conquerors and their entourage had a sense of higher rank and superiority as it was they who wielded political power. Arab, Persian, Turkish, Central Asian, and Pathan immigrants, who came to India to make careers for themselves, were treated as if they shared a common ethnic background, and were integrated with the conqueror class as the ruling elite. Local converts, on the other hand, were treated as being lower down the social ladder and never accorded an equal place in the ethnically divided Muslim society. Thus, ethnic identity was more powerful in dividing Muslim society than the religious factor was in unifying it.

We can find an example of this in Chachnama, which is a basic source of the history of Sindh. Muslim conquerors of Sindh are referred to in the Chachnama as Arabs. Similarly, the early conquerors of northern India were known by their ethnic identity as Turks. After the foundation of their kingdom (AD 1206) they maintained their exclusive ethnic domination and did not share their power and privileges with other Muslim groups. The same policy was followed by other Muslim dynasties. The founder of the Lodhi dynasty, Bahlul (1451-1489), did not trust non-Afghan Muslims and invited Afghans from the mountains (Roh) to support him.

Locally converted Muslims were excluded from high positions and were despised by their foreign (Muslim) brothers. Ziauddin Barani (fourteenth century) cited a number of examples in the Tarikh-i-Firuzshahi when the Sultan refused to appoint lower caste Muslims to high posts, despite their intelligence, ability, and integrity. Barani propounds his racist theory by advising Muslim rulers to appoint only racially pure family members to high administrative jobs. He suggested that low caste Muslims should not be allowed to acquire higher education as that would make them arrogant. The theory of racial superiority served to reserve the limited available resources of the kingdom for the benefit of the privileged elite who did not want to share them with others. The ruling dynasties kept available resources in the hands of their own communities and excluded others.

The Mughals wrested power from a Muslim dynasty (AD 1526). On their arrival, therefore, they posed a threat to other Muslim rulers as well as to Hindu rulers. The danger of Mughal hegemony united Muslim Afghans and Hindu Rajputs in a common cause. They fought jointly against Babar in the battle of Kanwaha (AD 1527). However, Mughal rule changed the social structure of the Muslim community in India, as a large number Iranaians and Turks arrived in India after the opening of the North-West frontier. These new immigrants revived Iranian and Central Asian culture which had been in a process of decline during Afghan rule. To monopolize top positions in the state, Muslims of foreign origin formed a socially and culturally privilged group that not only excluded locally converted Muslims but also Afghans who were deprived of high status jobs. The Mughals were also very conscious of their fair colour, which distinguished them from the converted, darker complexioned Muslims. Since being a Muslim of foreign origin was considered prestigious, most of the locally converted Muslim families began to trace their origin to famous Arab tribes or to prominent Persian families.

The social structure of the Mughal aristocracy changed further when the empire extended its territories and required more people to administer them. Akbar (AD 1556-1605) as the emperor, realized that to rule the country exclusively with the help of Muslims of foreign origin posed a problem as there would not be enough administrators for the entire state. He realized that the administration had to be Indianized. Therefore, he broadened the Muslim aristocracy by including Rajputs in the administration. He eliminated all signs and symbols which differentiated Muslims and Hindus, and made attempts to integrate them as one. Despite Akbar’s efforts, however, the rigid social structure did not allow lower class (caste) Hindus and Muslims to move from their lower position in society to a higher status. Class rather than faith was the true dividing line. The Muslim aristocracy preferred to accept upper caste Rajputs as their equals rather than integrate with lower caste Muslims. Akbar’s policy was followed by his successors. Even Aurangzeb, in spite of his dislike of Hindus, had to keep them in his administration. He tried to create a semblance of homogeneity in the Muslim community by introducing religious reforms. But all his attempts to create a consciousness of Muslim identity came to nothing. During the entire Sultanate and Mughal periods, politically there was no symbol that could unite the Muslims into a single cohesive community. In the absence of any common economic interest that might bind the different groups of Muslims, they failed to cohere and achieve homogeneity as a single community. Biradaris, castes, professions, and class interests kept them politically and culturally divided.

The ulema made strenuous attempts to foster a religious consciousness and to build a Muslim identity on such consciousness, by dividing Indian society into believers and non-believers. They fulminated against ‘Hindu rituals’ being practised mainly by lower-class Muslims and warned them to reform and keep their religion ‘pure’. Their attitude towards locally converted Muslims was particularly hostile. They argued that by retaining some of their indigenous Indian customs, they were half Muslims and half Hindus. The ulema further argued that true Islam could be understood only through knowledge of Arabic or Persian. Therefore, to integrate with the ‘Muslim Community’ locally converted Muslims should abandon their vernacular culture and learn Arabic and Persian (the everday language of the ruling elite). By that definition, Muslims of foreign origin were taken to be better than those who had been locally converted. These latter were catgorized as ignorant, illiterate, and bad Muslims. However, it must be said that in that period (AD 1206-1707) when the power of the Muslim rulers in India was at its height, no attempts were made to arouse religious, political, or social consciousness on the basis of a Muslim identity. It was only in the period of Akbar, when Rajputs were being integrated with Mughal nobility, that some ulema raised a voice against his religious, political, and social reforms and asserted the separateness of Hindu and Muslim communities. Later on, Aurangzeb tried to rally Muslim support by trying to unite them under a state-imposed version of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), compiled as the Fatawa-i-Alamgiri. But all his efforts failed to arrest the process of political disintegration which he was thus trying to avoid.

During the later period, the decline of Mughal political power dealt a heavy blow to the ruling Mughal aristocracy. Immigrants from Iran and Central Asia stopped coming in due to lack of patronage. The dominance of the Persian language weakened. Urdu emerged as the new language of the Muslim elite. The social as well as the political hegemony of Muslims of foreign origin was reduced. Locally converted Muslims began to claim and raise themselves to a new, higher status.

The rise and successes of the East India Company undermined the role of the Muslim ruling classes. Defeats in the battles of Plassey (AD 1757), Buxar (AD 1764) and, finally, the occupation of Delhi by the British (AD 1803) sealed the fate of Mughal power and threatened the privileged existence of the Muslim ruling elite, as the Mughal emperor became incapable of defending their interests.

Under these circumstances, after Shah Alam II, the practice of reciting the name of the Ottoman caliph in the khutba began. This was meant to indicate that the Ottoman Caliph, and no longer the Mughal emperor, was the defender and protector of the Muslim community in India. Another significant change was that with the eclipse of the political authority of the Mughal emperor, the ulema began to represent themselves as the protectors and custodians of the interests of the community. They were now contemptuous of the Mughals whose decline they attribute to their indifference towards religion. They embarked on revivalistic movements which they claimed would lift the community from the low position to which it had fallen. Their revivalism was intended to reform the Muslim community and infuse homogeneity in order to meet the challenges that confronted them.

Sayyid Ahmed’s Jihad (AD 1831) and Haji Shariatullah’s Faraizi movements’ were revivalist and strove to purify Islam of Hindu rituals and customs. Their ultimate goal was to establish an Islamic state in India and to unite Muslims into one community on the basis of religion. Two factors played an important role in reinforcing the creation of a separate identity amongst Indian Muslims. They were, firstly, the activities of Christian Missionaries and secondly, the Hindu reformist and revivalist movements. Muslims felt threatened by both. The fear of Muslims being converted into another faith, and of being dominated by others, led the ulema to organize themselves ‘to save Muslims from extinction’. Recognizing the authority of the ulema, Muslims turned towards them for guidance. They sought fatawa over whether they should learn the English language, serve the East India Company, and regard India as Dar-ul-Islam(under which they could live peacefully) rather than as Dar-ul-Harb (which imposed upon them an obligation to rebel). Thus, external and internal challenges brought the Muslims of India closer together. Religious consciousness paved the way towards their separate identity. The madrassa, mosque, and khanqah became symbols of their religious identity. However, the hopes that they placed in religious revivalism as the path to political power came to an end when Sayyid Ahmed was defeated and his Jihad movement failed to mobilize Muslims to fight against British rule. Bengali Muslims were subdued with the suppression of the Faraizi movement, and the brutal repression that followed the uprising of 1857 reduced the Muslim upper classes to a shadow of what they had been.

Indian Muslims were demoralized after the failure of the rebellion of 1857. Sadness and gloom prevailed everywhere. Muslims felt crushed and isolated. There came a challenge from British scholars who criticized Islamic institutions as being unsuitable for modern times. Never before had Indian Muslims faced such criticism of their religion. This frightened and angered them. In response, Indian Muslim scholars came forward to defend their religion. This led them to study Islamic history in order to rediscover that they believed to be a golden past. In reply to Western criticism they formulated their arguments, substantiated by historical facts, that Europe owed its progress to the contributions of Muslim scientists and scholars, which were transmitted to it through the University of Cordoba in Moorish Spain, where, under Umayyid rule, there was a policy of religious tolerance towards Christians and Jews. Muslim contributions to art, literature, architecture, and science, thus enriched human civilization. To popularize this new image of the role of Muslims in history, there followed a host of historical literature, popular as well as scholarly, to satiate the thirst of Muslims for recognition of their achievements. Such images of a golden past provided consolation to a community that felt helpless and folorn. Images of the glories of the Abbasids, the grandeur of the Moors of Spain, and the conquests of the Seljuks healed their wounded pride and helped to restore their self-confidence and pride. Ironically, while glorifying the Islamic past outside India, they ignored the past of the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal India. In their eyes, the distant and outside past was more attractive than the past they had actually inherited. It was left to the nationalist historians of India, mainly Hindu, to reconstruct the glory of Muslim India in building a secular, nationalist ideology in the struggle against British rule.

Muslim search for pride in their Islamic past, thus, once again turned the orientation of Indian Muslims towards the rest of the Muslim world. That consciousness of a greater Muslim identity obscured their Indian identity from their minds. Their sense of solidarity with the Muslim world found expression, especially, in sympathy for the Ottoman empire. Although most educated Indians were quite unaware of the history of the Ottomans, it became a focal point of their pride, displacing the Mughals. Sayyid Ahmad Khan, while explaining the attachment of Muslims to Turkey, said ‘When there were many Muslim kingdoms we did not feel grief when one of them was destroyed. If Turkey is conquered, there will be great grief, for she is the last of the great powers left to Islam.

During the Balkan wars (AD 1911-1914), when the existence of the Turkish empire was threatened, the sentiments of the Indian Muslims were deeply affected. Muhammad Ali expressed those feelings in these words ‘The Musalman’s heart throbs in unison with the Moors of Fez… with the Persians of Tehran… and with the Turks of Stamboul. The highly emotional articles that appeared in Muslim newspapers such as al-Hilal, Zamindar, Hamdard, Comrade, and Urdu-i-Mualla, aroused feelings of religious identity. Even secular Muslims turned towards religion, growing beards and observing religious rituals.

The Khilafat movement extended the consciousness of a greater Muslim identity amongst Indian Muslims. It also united the ulema and Western educated Muslims. The Muslim League, in its session of 1918, invited leading ulema to join the party. They grasped the opportunity and soon established control of the movement. When Gandhi supported the Khilafat issue and launched his non-cooperation movement (AD 1919-20), he brought out Hindus to protest in solidarity with the Muslims. But the withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement and the eventual collapse of the Muslims, their unity with the Hindus evaporated.

Support of Pan-Islamism and the Khilafat by the Indian Muslims was the emotional need of the growing Muslim middle class, which was in search of an identity. Rejecting the territorial concept of nationhood, they turned to the Muslim world in order to add weight to their demands. The failure of the Khilafat Movement weakened their relationship with the Muslim world and the logic of extra-territorial nationalism came to an end with the end of the Turkish caliphate. The Muslim elite realized that to fulfil their demands they had to assert their separate identity in India. In the words of Prabhha Dixit, the Khilafat movement ‘constituted an intermediary stage in the transformation of a minority into a nation’.

The assertion of a separate national identity by the Indian Muslims brought them into conflict with the Hindus. The factors that had contributed to distance the two communities were the uneven development of Western education among them, the Urdu-Hindi conflict, the partition of Bengal, the Muslim demand for separate electorates, their demand for quotas for government jobs, and political representation. Communalist feelings in both communities were deepened by revivalist movements of the 1920s. In 1928, in response to the Shuddhi (purification) and Sangathan (Hindu unity) movements of Hindus, the Muslims formed Tabligh (proselytizing) and Tanzim (organization) movements to protect Muslim peasants from reconversion to Hinduism. In order to ‘purify’ the Muslims peasants, Muslim preachers visited far off villages and thus made them conscious of their religious identity. The consequently heightened awareness of their religious identity affected their relationship with the Hindu peasants and communalism greatly damaged their cordial and long-time social and cultural relationship.

This heightened religious consciousness was fully exploited by Muslim politicians when the question of distribution of government jobs and political representation arose. The Muslim elite, in order to get a better share in the name of the Muslim community, made full use of appeals to Muslim identity. Thus, the two-nation theory arose out of political necessity, and for the first time it highlighted the differences between Muslim and Hindu culture, social life, and history, as well as religion.

Q. 3

AIOU Solved Assignment 2 Code 831 Spring 2024

Discuss ways and means to enhance international understanding through education.

In the past decade or two teaching has changed significantly, so much in fact that schools may not be what some of us remember from our own childhood. Changes have affected both the opportunities and the challenges of teaching, as well as the attitudes, knowledge, and skills needed to prepare for a teaching career. The changes have influenced much of the content of this book.

To see what we mean, look briefly at four new trends in education, at how they have changed what teachers do, and at how you will therefore need to prepare to teach:

·         increased diversity: there are more differences among students than there used to be. Diversity has made teaching more fulfilling as a career, but also made more challenging in certain respects.

·         increased instructional technology: classrooms, schools, and students use computers more often today than in the past for research, writing, communicating, and keeping records. Technology has created new ways for students to learn (for example, this textbook would not be possible without Internet technology!). It has also altered how teachers can teach most effectively, and even raised issues about what constitutes “true” teaching and learning.

·         greater accountability in education: both the public and educators themselves pay more attention than in the past to how to assess (or provide evidence for) learning and good quality teaching. The attention has increased the importance of education to the public (a good thing) and improved education for some students. But it has also created new constraints on what teachers teach and what students learn.

·         increased professionalism of teachers: Now more than ever, teachers are able to assess the quality of their own work as well as that of colleagues, and to take steps to improve it when necessary. Professionalism improves teaching, but by creating higher standards of practice it also creates greater worries about whether particular teachers and schools are “good enough.”

How do these changes show up in the daily life of classrooms? The answer depends partly on where you teach; circumstances differ among schools, cities, and even whole societies. Some clues about the effects of the trends on classroom life can be found, however, by considering one particular case—the changes happening in North America.

New trend #1: diversity in students

Students have, of course, always been diverse. Whether in the past or in the present day, students learn at unique paces, show unique personalities, and learn in their own ways. In recent decades, though, the forms and extent of diversity have increased. Now more than ever, teachers are likely to serve students from diverse language backgrounds, to serve more individuals with special educational needs, and to teach students either younger and older than in the past.

Language diversity

Take the case of language diversity. In the United States, about 40 million people, or 14 per cent of the population are Hispanic. About 20 per cent of these speak primarily Spanish, and approximately another 50 per cent speak only limited English (United States Census Bureau, 2005). The educators responsible for the children in this group need to accommodate instruction to these students somehow. Part of the solution, of course, is to arrange specialized second-language teachers and classes. But adjustment must also happen in “regular” classrooms of various grade levels and subjects. Classroom teachers must learn to communicate with students whose English language background is limited, at the same time that the students themselves are learning to use English more fluently (Pitt, 2005). Since relatively few teachers are Hispanic or speak fluent Spanish, the adjustments can sometimes be a challenge. Teachers must plan lessons and tasks that students actually understand. At the same time teachers must also keep track of the major learning goals of the curriculum. As you gain experience teaching, you will no doubt find additional strategies and resources (Gebhard, 2006), especially if second-language learners become an important part of your classes.

Diversity of special educational needs

Another factor making classroom increasingly diverse has been the inclusion of students with disabilities into classrooms with non-disabled peers. In the United States the trend began in the 1970s, but accelerated with the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1975, and again when the Act was amended in 2004 (United States Government Printing Office, 2005). In Canada similar legislation was passed in individual provinces during the same general time period. The laws guarantee free, appropriate education for children with disabilities of any kind—whether the impairment is physical, cognitive, emotional, or behavioral. The laws also recognize that such students need special supports in order to learn or function effectively in a classroom with non-disabled peers, so they provide for special services (for example, teaching assistants) and procedures for making individualized educational plans for students with disabilities.

As a result of these changes, most American and Canadian teachers are likely to have at least a few students with special educational needs, even if they are not trained as special education teachers or have had no prior personal experience with people with disabilities. Classroom teachers are also likely to work as part of a professional team focused on helping these students to learn as well as possible and to participate in the life of the school. The trend toward inclusion is definitely new compared to circumstances just a generation or two ago. It raises new challenges about planning instruction (such as how is a teacher to find time to plan for individuals?), and philosophical questions about the very nature of education (such as what in the curriculum is truly important to learn?).

Lifelong learning

The diversity of modern classrooms is not limited to language or disabilities. Another recent change has been the broadening simply of the age range of individuals who count as “students.” In many nations of the world, half or most of all three- and four-year-olds attend some form of educational program, either part-time preschool or full-time child care (National Institute for Early Education Research, 2006). In North America some public school divisions have moved toward including nursery or preschool programs as a newer “grade level” preceding kindergarten. Others have expanded the hours of kindergarten (itself considered a “new” program early in the 20th century) to span a full-day program.

The obvious differences in maturity between preschoolers and older children lead most teachers of the very young to use flexible, open-ended plans and teaching strategies, and to develop more personal or family-like relationships with their young “students” than typical with older students (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). Just as important, though, are the educational and philosophical issues that early childhood education has brought to public attention. Some educational critics ask whether preschool and day care programs risk becoming inappropriate substitutes for families. Other educators suggest, in contrast, that teachers of older students can learn from the flexibility and open-ended approach common in early childhood education. For teachers of any grade level, it is a debate that cannot be avoided completely or permanently. In this book, it reappears in Chapter 3, where I discuss students’ development—their major long-term, changes in skills, knowledge, and attitudes.

The other end of the age spectrum has also expanded. Many individuals take courses well into adulthood even if they do not attend formal university or college. Adult education, as it is sometimes called, often takes place in workplaces, but it often also happens in public high schools or at local community colleges or universities. Some adult students may be completing high school credentials that they missed earlier in their lives, but often the students have other purposes that are even more focused, such as learning a trade-related skill. The teachers of adult students have to adjust their instructional strategies and relationships with students so as to challenge and respect their special strengths and constraints as adults (Bash, 2005). The students’ maturity often means that they have had life experiences that enhance and motivate their learning. But it may also mean that they have significant personal responsibilities—such as parenting or a full-time job—which compete for study time, and that make them impatient with teaching that is irrelevant to their personal goals or needs. These advantages and constraints also occur to a lesser extent among “regular” high school students. Even secondary school teachers must ask, how they can make sure that instruction does not waste students’ time, and how they can make it truly efficient, effective, and valuable.

New trend #2: using technology to support learning

For most teachers, “technology” means using computers and the Internet as resources for teaching and learning. These tools have greatly increased the amount and range of information available to students, even if their benefits have sometimes been exaggerated in media reports (Cuban, 2001). With the Internet, it is now relatively easy to access up-to-date information on practically any subject imaginable, often with pictures, video clips, and audio to accompany them. It would seem not only that the Internet and its associated technologies have the potential to transform traditional school-based learning, but also that they have in fact begun to do so.

For a variety of reasons, however, technology has not always been integrated into teachers’ practices very thoroughly (Haertel & Means, 2003). One reason is practical: in many societies and regions, classrooms contain only one or two computers at most, and many schools have at best only limited access to the Internet. Waiting for a turn on the computer or arranging to visit a computer lab or school library limits how much students use the Internet, no matter how valuable the Internet may be. In such cases, furthermore, computers tend to function in relatively traditional ways that do not take full advantage of the Internet: as a word processor (a “fancy typewriter”), for example, or as a reference book similar to an encyclopedia.

Even so, single-computer classrooms create new possibilities and challenges for teachers. A single computer can be used, for example, to present upcoming assignments or supplementary material to students, either one at a time or small groups. In functioning in this way, the computer gives students more flexibility about when to finish old tasks or to begin new ones. A single computer can also enrich the learning of individual students with special interests or motivation and it can provide additional review to students who need extra help. These changes are not dramatic, but they lead to important revisions in teachers’ roles: they move teachers away from simply delivering information to students, and toward facilitating students’ own constructions of knowledge.

A shift from “full-frontal teaching” to “guide on the side” becomes easier as the amount and use of computer and Internet technologies increases. If a school (or better yet, a classroom) has numerous computers with full Internet access, then students’ can in principle direct their own learning more independently than if computers are scarce commodities. With ample technology available, teachers can focus much more on helping individuals in developing and carrying out learning plans, as well as on assisting individuals with special learning problems. In these ways a strong shift to computers and the Internet can change a teacher’s role significantly, and make the teacher more effective.

But technology also brings some challenges, or even creates problems. It costs money to equip classrooms and schools fully: often that money is scarce, and may therefore mean depriving students of other valuable resources, like additional staff or additional books and supplies. Other challenges are less tangible. In using the Internet, for example, students need help in sorting out trustworthy information or websites from the “fluff,” websites that are unreliable or even damaging (Seiter, 2005). Providing this help can sometimes be challenging even for experienced teachers. Some educational activities simply do not lend themselves to computerized learning—sports, for example, driver education, or choral practice. As a new teacher, therefore, you will need not only to assess what technologies are possible in your particular classroom, but also what will actually be assisted by new technologies. Then be prepared for your decisions to affect how you teach—the ways you work with students.

New trend #3: accountability in education

In recent years, the public and its leaders have increasingly expected teachers and students to be accountable for their work, meaning that schools and teachers are held responsible for implementing particular curricula and goals, and that students are held responsible for learning particular knowledge. The trend toward accountability has increased the legal requirements for becoming and (sometimes) remaining certified as a teacher. In the United States in particular, preservice teachers need more subject-area and education-related courses than in the past. They must also spend more time practice teaching than in the past, and they must pass one or more examinations of knowledge of subject matter and teaching strategies. The specifics of these requirements vary among regions, but the general trend—toward more numerous and “higher” levels of requirements—has occurred broadly throughout the English-speaking world. The changes obviously affect individuals’ experiences of becoming a teacher— especially the speed and cost of doing so.

Public accountability has led to increased use of high-stakes testing, which are tests taken by all students in a district or region that have important consequences for students’ further education (Fuhrman & Elmore, 2004). High-stakes tests may influence grades that students receive in courses or determine whether students graduate or continue to the next level of schooling. The tests are often a mixture of essay and structured-response questions (such as multiple-choice items), and raise important issues about what teachers should teach, as well as how (and whether) teachers should help students to pass the examinations. It also raises issues about whether high-stakes testing is fair to all students and consistent with other ideals of public education, such as giving students the best possible start in life instead of disqualifying them from educational opportunities. Furthermore, since the results of high-stakes tests are sometimes also used to evaluate the performance of teachers, schools, or school districts, insuring students’ success on them becomes an obvious concern for teachers—one that affects instructional decisions on a daily basis.

New trend #4: increased professionalism of teachers

Whatever your reactions to the first three trends, it is important to realize that they have contributed to a fourth trend, an increase in professionalism of teachers. By most definitions, an occupation (like medicine or law—or in this case teaching) is a profession if its members take personal responsibility for the quality of their work, hold each other accountable for its quality, and recognize and require special training in order to practice it.

By this definition, teaching has definitely become more professional than in the past (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005). Increased expectations of achievement by students mean that teachers have increased responsibility not only for their students’ academic success, but also for their own development as teachers. Becoming a new teacher now requires more specialized work than in the past, as reflected in the increased requirements for certification and licensing in many societies and regions. The increased requirements are partly a response to the complexities created by the increasing diversity of students and increasing use of technology in classrooms.

Greater professionalism has also been encouraged by initiatives from educators themselves to study and improve their own practice. One way to do so, for example, is through action research (sometimes also called teacher research), a form of investigation carried out by teachers about their own students or their own teaching. Action research studies lead to concrete decisions that improve teaching and learning in particular educational contexts (Mertler, 2006; Stringer, 2004). The studies can take many forms, but here are a few brief examples:

·         How precisely do individual children learn to read? In an action research study, the teacher might observe and track one child’s reading progress carefully for an extended time. From the observations she can get clues about how to help not only that particular child to read better, but also other children in her class or even in colleagues’ classes.

·         Does it really matter if a high school social studies teacher uses more, rather than fewer, open-ended questions? As an action of research study, the teacher might videotape his own lessons, and systematically compare students’ responses to his open-ended questions compared to their responses to more closed questions (the ones with more fixed answers). The analysis might suggest when and how much it is indeed desirable to use open-ended questions.

Q. 4

AIOU Solved Assignment Code 831 Autumn 2024

Social media is a good source of informal learning. Justify by arguments.        

There are lots of social networking tools with weird-sounding names: blogs, wikis, Twitter (also known as micro-blogs), Ning, Facebook, and more. Similarly, we hear buzz phrases: learning 2.0, social media, co-creation, user-generated content, and so on. The question is, what are the real opportunities?

Things are not getting slower: we are seeing decreasing time to market for products and services, more information coming in, and fewer resources with which to cope. The rate of disruption in industries is increasing to the point that it’s almost continuous. The days when you could plan, adapt, and then execute are mostly behind us.

What we need, going forward, is the ability to take a continuous read on the environment and to adapt quickly. The nimble organization will be the one that thrives.

The ability to adapt comes both from a good background of theory, and from the ability to problem-solve and innovate. You need to support learners in communicating and collaborating. That’s where social learning comes in. The new ideas, the collaborative problem-solving, can be augmented with tools that provide value even with co-location, but when geographic reach is added in, the value is even higher.

I’ll first explore the informal learning roles for social media tools, and make the case that social learning tool skills make sense. Then I’ll explore the formal learning applications of these tools, concluding that using the tools for formal learning provides a valuable “onramp” to their use more broadly. I’ll focus on five particular tools, but the arguments extend.

Informal learning payoffs in real life

Think of the way people work together in the workplace: they pop over the cubicle to ask a question, they sit together over a document, they brainstorm around a whiteboard, they hold meetings, and give presentations. Now, can we support, and augment, that?

Let’s turn it around, and think of some particular activities. We’ll go through several cases, and for each we’ll look at the benefits, and then see the social media tools that support this.

Making it possible for a group of people to converse means that they can cover issues, solve problems, debate approaches, ask questions, get thoughtful responses, and more. Someone in the group can schedule specific topics, or the group members can call for discussion as needed.

E-mail forums are just such a discussion tool. Group members receive questions, and their responses go back out to the group. Before the World Wide Web, Usenet was an internet-based e-mail discussion list that was quite popular and very useful.

We often overlook discussion forums in the excitement of new technologies, but the simple capabilities of an e-mail list are quite powerful. And anyone interested (and appropriate) can become a forum member, or opt out, while no one has to figure out just who to send it to. For over 10 years, ITFORUM has been a way for those interested in instructional technology to discuss current topics, as well as to get and provide help.

Having people work together to craft a statement, document an approach, or generate a response can be a powerful tool for developing a shared understanding. A team can develop their ideas, others can review, add, and edit; ultimately the best ideas can coalesce. Managed properly, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

Wikis are collaboration tools. In essence, they are shared editable spaces, where individuals can access and edit a document in an ongoing process. A wiki can track contributions and history, so who does what is known, and participants can revisit previous versions. Wikipedia is the poster-child for these tools, but organizations from Intel to the CIA have used them. Collaborative document services, like Google Docs, are essentially the same as a wiki.

In the old days, this “one place” might have been a manual or a library. When users can find the tools they need in a reliable place, they don’t waste time searching, or making things up in lieu of the answer. The estimates are that people spend 15-20% or more of their time searching, and up to 40% of that unsuccessfully. People do prefer self-help, if they can, but if they can’t find what they need easily, or if there are too many places to search, they’ll use more costly resources such as phone calls, or worse, just wing it and make mistakes.

The modern-day equivalent of the library is the portal. A well-configured portal provides a place for people to stash and look for the resources they need. Note that “well-configured” is a rare quality, and it’s all too common to hear “we’ve got hundreds of resources,” just to find that they’re organized in only one way. You can’t let someone handcraft a portal; it requires the same information architecture that other online resources need. So, doing it by role or task makes much more sense than doing it by, say, department.

When done right, however, portals are powerful resources for self-help and performance. IBM has taken it a step further and actually created custom portals, based upon employee roles and tasks.

The person nearest to you, or your boss, may not be the best person to ask! If you have met folks in the organization, you might know who to go to. If you don’t, you could waste time asking around. Being able to identify people based upon their knowledge and expertise is powerful both for getting answers, and for getting collaboration when it’s a new problem. (And the latter is increasingly going to be the case!)

In knowledge management, the usual way to identify people based on their knowledge and expertise is an employee “yellow pages,” and personal profiles are a common tool to provide this. Granted, having a system auto-troll for people’s expertise by parsing their e-mail or documents is going to be more accurate than what they self-describe, but it’s also part of building a culture of trust, and it’s much easier. There are additional benefits in allowing people to express not only their expertise, but also their personality (for instance, the customization of avatars in virtual worlds).

Personal profiles are a way for individuals to present themselves to the organization. People can use officially sanctioned tags, but they can also add personal characteristics or interests. This combination creates a richer picture of the individual, supporting communication and a sense of support of self-image.

Typically we think of journals as personal, but there can be benefits from sharing reflections. Recording your thoughts is a valuable way to make them concrete. You probably have experienced the situation where, by writing something down, you had to work out some details that were missed when the idea was pure conjecture. Keeping a journal forces you to take time for reflection. Moreover, if you share your journal, you can get feedback on your thoughts. If a leader keeps a journal and makes it available, then that person’s employees or peers can follow the leader’s thoughts, and keep in better touch with where the leader is going. It’s a form of virtual mentorship, or thinking out loud (an important aspect of learning).

A blog is just such an online journal. It’s a way a person can write their thoughts down and easily publish them for all to see. Better yet, others can add their own thoughts as comments. It provides a simple and useful way to share thoughts, progress, etc. Blogging has proved valuable both internally and outwardly to customers. Similarly, a project, or a product or service team, can update progress with a blog, and solicit feedback on new ideas. Sun and Oracle are among the companies exploring blogs.

There are more tools we could discuss, including IM (Instant Messaging) and “micro-blogs” (read: Twitter and Yammer), but the goal here is to point out some more common business goals and how these tools augment and/or accelerate them. Some of the emerging tools provide capabilities that are truly new, and it’s worth getting on top of the old ones to fully comprehend the opportunities of both.

Today’s informal learning environment has many of the same characteristics as the system of the bygone ages. However, with the proliferation of the Internet, learners are turning to social connections and tools to learn informally. The following are some ways that companies can leverage Social Media platforms in informal learning settings:

·         LinkedIn
This is a platform for aggregating professionals and peers, and then connecting with them through Social Media. Knowledge workers are much more likely to learn by interacting informally with their peers in such settings. Most professionals value tips/techniques and learning nuggets supplied informally by their peers more than those offered by a lecturer standing in front of a classroom.

·         Chat/Messaging
Formal courses won’t provide answers to every work situation. Tools like Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger (Skype) and Google Talk (Hangouts) can become great informal learning resources for employees to use in order to get quick responses to desperately needed work-related questions. They are quicker than sending an email to a Training Officer, and more effective than a phone call to a supervisor.

·         YouTube
Most learning takes place by “seeing”, and employers can take advantage of that by creating short videos about work-related situations, and posting them on YouTube for employees to access and learn. YouTube also hosts a wealth of instructional as well as “How To” videos that may apply to many organizational situations.

·         Facebook Groups
Almost two-thirds of the world’s population is on Facebook, and that offers a unique opportunity to use this social platform as an incredible informal learning tool. While most employees “should” be using formal company platforms (like websites and email) to stay “plugged in” to major corporate developments, a surprising number of knowledge workers are more connected to Facebook. Setting up Facebook Groups, and using them to stimulate discussions and debates can be a great informal way to deliver much needed learning to broad and dispersed groups of employees.

·         Twitter
Tweeting has now become a standard way to provide instant updates and feedback on global events. Companies can use this medium effectively as an integrated informal learning tool, by providing ongoing commentary on important corporate initiatives. Tweets from known Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) will help new-comers in the field pick up invaluable insight on the situation in progress – more so than any formal classroom lecture can offer.

·         Blogs
Each time that a company releases a new product or service, it might be difficult (especially if the audience is global) to bring every employee into a classroom/training center to disseminate information to them. Blogs can not only be used effectively in such situations, but can also be configured to stimulate discussion, elicit feedback and provoke comments about them. Unlike a formal email system, feedback on blogs can also be anonymous, which can often be more meaningful than comments/feedback received through formal systems.

Q. 5

AIOU Solved Assignment 2 Code 831 Autumn 2024

Discuss the status of literacy in Pakistan compare it with 5 developing and 5 developed countries. Suggest ways and means to improve the literacy rate.

Despite recent improvements, it remains a major challenge but is massively underfunded and subject to a number of misconceptions, experts said.

The Sustainable Development Goals call for “all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, to achieve literacy and numeracy” by 2030. While youth literacy rates have jumped in the past 50 years, progress is not fast enough, experts warned.

Approximately 750 million people over the age of 15 still lack basic reading and writing skills. Two-thirds of these are women, according to the United Nations, with female literacy improving by just 1 percent since 2000. Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia have the lowest literacy rates, and the poorest and most marginalized are least likely to be able to read and do basic sums.

See more related topics:

 Global Learning XPRIZE finalists chase $10M prize for literacy solutions

 The Future of Education: It’s coming, but will it get here fast enough?

 Do libraries have the key to the framework for implementing the SDGs?

 What it takes to educate South Sudan’s ‘forgotten’ communities

HRH Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands gave an opening address at this year’s World Literacy Summit which kicked off on Monday, calling on literacy to be framed as a “win-win” for everyone, and not simply as an education goal.

“We need to be framing literacy not as an educational issue but [as something] of importance to the ministry of finance because by helping literacy you help crime, poverty, health issues, employment issues,” she told Devex.

Here are five key takeaways for development from the two-day conference.

1Remember adult learning

Historically, donor funding for literacy has focused on young school children and has tended to miss adolescent or adult literacy, according to Katy Newell-Jones of the British Association for Literacy in Development, or BALID. In the past, literacy programs assumed a “trickle up feeling that if we can educate the next generation of children then literacy problems will be solved,” she said, but this has been “proved to be so wrong.”

Instead, a holistic approach to literacy is needed, Newell-Jones told Devex, which supports adults, especially women, to become literate and which also emphasizes the role of learning within the family, including intergenerational learning and creating a “learning environment in the home.” The theme of adult learning was picked up throughout the conference’s sessions.

2.  Teach in the mother tongue

In many developing countries, lessons are taught in English or another nonlocal language, such as French, from a young age.

In Pakistan, for example, this is has resulted in children learning to read English but with very little comprehension, according to Nadia Naviwala, an adviser to the Citizens Foundation in Pakistan. “Kids in Pakistan do learn to read English; they just have no comprehension of it,” she said. “Is literacy impeded because it’s being done in a language that’s not their own?”

Teachers are also often not proficient in the language they are instructing in, according to Ian Cheffy from BALID.

Instead, children and adults should be learning to read and write in their local languages, he said.

“Parents may be demanding English but let’s not ignore local languages,” Cheffy said, pointing out that in sub-Saharan Africa more than 1,700 languages are still regularly spoken by 750 million people, and of those 1,100 languages are also being written down. “Let’s not marginalize these supposedly marginal languages,” he said.

Nal’ibali Trust, a charity that aims to promote a culture of reading in South Africa, has made multilingual storytelling the center of its work to drive literacy rates among children. It is crucial for both readers and listeners that written stories are available in local languages, so they can understand and enjoy the experience, according to managing director Jade Jacobsohn, who spoke during the summit.

“Most parents work, and in South Africa they travel a long distance … [so] by the time they get home they’re exhausted,” and sitting down to read to their child is “the last thing they want to do,” she said. In response, Nal’ibali aims to make it as easy as it possible for parents to “access the resources” they need to read to their children. A key component is that books and other materials are “in a language that the child and the parent understands,” she said.

She also stressed the importance of recognizing the role played by grandparents, who tend to have lower literacy rates but can still offer oral storytelling. “How do you make sure that [grandparents] know that what they do have is good enough and even if you can’t read you can tell a story…[and] put value in what they are able to do already,” she said.

Matthew Johnson from Universal Learning Solutions, a U.K.-based social enterprise working with governments and donors to improve literacy, agreed that young children can be taught to read English without comprehending what they are reading.

In order to overcome this, ULS has been piloting an oral storytelling project that enables educators to teach in both English and their students’ mother tongue by “creating stories in mother tongue and then adding actions so it becomes universally understandable … then transferring that into English and developing the two side by side,” he said.

“The main message is that the more that children hear words — the more they get to experience stories and tell and share stories — [then] the more language and vocabulary and understanding they will have,” Johnson added.

3.  Don’t just hand out books: Foster a love of reading

The emphasis on storytelling in local languages is also key to We Love Reading, an NGO started in Jordan that aims to foster a love of reading among children by training local volunteers to read to them. Rana Dajani, the NGO’s founder, told Devex that fostering a love of reading is the first step to improving literacy but is something that many development programs fail to appreciate, instead focusing on inputs such as books.

“It’s not about giving books; that is secondary and I have seen books sitting on shelves but not being used,” Dajani said. Instead, it is important to “plant the need and the love of books first,” which she says leads to direct literacy, as well as a host of other gains by encouraging a love of school.

A molecular biologist by training, Dajani was at the summit to pick up an award from the World Literacy Council, and told Devex that We Love Reading has spread to 36 countries in 10 years with very little donor funding because of its low-cost, “niche” approach to promoting learning through reading and storytelling for pleasure, and its use of volunteers. Last year, the NGO secured funding from UNICEF and has recently begun partnering with international NGOs including Plan International.

4.  Embed literacy into other programs

Standalone literacy programs are not necessarily the best approach, according to Newell-Jones from BALID, who argued that literacy and numeracy should instead be embedded into community development projects.

Presenting at the conference, she gave examples of where applying literacy training had led to a “deeper understanding” of the topic being discussed, and thus to better results. For example, she described a program to help women secure land rights in Rwanda by training them up as paralegals. The project was much more effective once the NGO in charge of the project changed the type of language it was using from legal jargon to “simplified land right laws” in the mother tongue, “so that the community women could understand.” These changes meant “there was a real understanding of the sensitive topic,” but the program is also an example of increasing literacy levels within a community while not explicitly running literacy classes, Newell-Jones said. It is something she wants development programmers to do more of, especially for adults.

“Let’s get on with life and pull in literacy as we go, and people will develop literacy as they go,” she said. “They don’t have to learn the skills first and apply them [later].” Instead, developers can take advantage of “hidden literacies” within communities.

5. Use technology — but use it carefully

According to a 2016 analysis of the global literacy sector by United States NGO Results for Development, donors focus too much on technology at a time when there is a “significant lack of evidence on what types of technology interventions actually work.” Critics, including Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, also warn that the digitalization of communication could have negative impacts on literacy rates.

“We know reading and writing comes through talking, [but] research shows that in this digital age, through social media, we talk less to each other,” she told Devex.

However, Sun Books Uganda, a project by the World Literacy Foundation, which presented during the summit, offers an example of how technology can help. It provides low-cost, solar-powered tablets loaded up with “a toolbox of digital books and learning resources to ‘off the grid’ classrooms with no internet and electricity.” Usually one per classroom, the Sun Books tablets are written in Swahili and English, but Grace Baguma from Uganda’s National Curriculum Development Center, which has recently partnered with the NGO, said the plan is to add more languages so that mother tongue can be used as the mode of instruction, especially for younger years.

Word Scientists also presented about its work offering free online resources to improve early reading in Nepal, including lesson guides, teacher tutorials, and books. What is sometimes missed in ed tech interventions, said chief executive Jacob Bronstein, is the need to focus on the content and the software as opposed to the technology itself, since “the tech can’t do it alone.”

Word Scientists has developed materials intended to be engaging and practical, written in local languages so a teacher can read the story to pupils in their mother tongue before reading it in English. The “software” is also free to access and can be downloaded onto a USB or printed out, and so does not rely on internet access.

 

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