Aiou Solved Assignments code 8625 Autumn & Spring 2024 assignments 1 and 2 Elementary Education (8625) spring 2024. aiou past papers.
AIOU Solved Assignments 1 & 2 Code 8625 Autumn & Spring 2024
Course: Elementary Education (8625)
Level: B. Ed (1.5 year)
Semester: Autumn & Spring 2024
Assignment No: 1
Q 1. Elucidate the role of public and private sector in elementary education. Discuss the initiatives of government of Pakistan in this context.
Answer:
ducation plays a pivotal role in the rise and fall of the nations especially in the 23st century importance of education influence much to meet the fast growing challenges. It is mainly due to the emergence of global competition in education and technology. This competitive environment is the core need for progress of any country. All countries including Pakistan have different school systems but when we divide them we find two major categories of school systems: private and public schools. In Pakistan, private schools are getting mass acceptance today to ensure sustained progress of the country.
During 1990s and 2000s, private sector emerged as a key provider of education services in Pakistan both in absolute terms and relative to the public sector. Private educational institutions are playing key role not only in eradicating illiteracy but also enhancing the level of students as well as teachers by providing better academic environment. Private sector contributed significantly in eradicating illiteracy in the emerging economies. If private schools are properly managed they can uplift educational standard in Pakistan as well.
The educational landscape of Pakistan has gone through numerous transformations in the past two decades. Enrollment levels and gender parity index have been on the rise. The changes in the education sector that have been taking place in Pakistan have created an environment with numerous opportunities as well as challenges in terms of policy development. Even though the enrollment in government schools is much bigger than any other sector, the declining trend in favor of non –state providers is significant.
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Education, especially primary education is mostly considered a public service which should be provided to the citizens without discrimination, irrespective of affordability and mainly as the government’s responsibility. This ideology was behind the nationalization of all education institutions in 1972, which severely interrupted the role of the robust private sector particularly at the post elementary level. However, like other services provided by the government, education provision has been severely constrained by governance, quality and effectiveness.
After the end of nationalization in 1979, Pakistan has witnessed an exponential increase in the role of private sector service providers. The negative experiences of government schools have instigated parents to shift children from government to private schools. Private schools no longer remain an urban or elite phenomenon, but rather poor households also use these facilities to a large extent, due to their better locations, reasonable fees, teachers’ presence and better-quality learning, especially in the fields of mathematics and language. Even though private schools started off as an urban phenomenon, more recently they have mushroomed in rural areas as well.
Several characteristics are responsible for making private schooling more attractive to parents compared to government schools; these include better test scores, better physical infrastructure, and lower rates of teacher absenteeism. Some of the other factors are:
1- Income of parents
2- Teacher quality factors influencing school choice:
(i) Parents’ knowledge of the teacher’s educational qualifications
(ii) Parents’ opinion of the teacher’s regularity
(iii) Parents’ rating of the teacher’s teaching skills
3- Facilities in School
4- Child safety
5- Quality of education
6- School Fee
7- Medium of Instruction
8- Better results
Even if we disregard the debate of whether the learning levels are better in private or government schools, the fact remains that the learning levels for both types of institutes remain poor in an absolute sense. The private schools advantage over the public schools is marginal up if we look at the problems of education in the country holistically speaking. Therefore, the policy developers should cater to supporting and improving both the sectors and not either of the two.
The outcomes of private versus public schools’ debate may be a popular discourse, however, at a policy level it is essential to understand that the current education emergency in Pakistan cannot be confronted with just a single player in the education sector. Multiple players, other than the government alone are required in the process to combat the problems. The government needs private sector’s help to contest the challenges. Various other challenges including the flood, security issues and dislocations of citizens due to the regional conflicts in the country also pose major concerns that the households and state need to plan around in the future. The need of the hour is a collective action by all the stakeholders, including the households, government, private sector and the civil society.
It can be a better option if the government uses its resources not on increasing the number of schools but rather on the quality of existing schools. Increasing access to education for children by increasing the number of schools should be a policy left for the private sector and the government itself should concentrate on improving the quality of physical facilities and teachers in the existing schools. By doing this, the benchmark for the private schools will also increase, thus increasing both access to, and quality of education.
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AIOU Solved Assignments 1 Code 8625 Autumn & Spring 2024
Q 2. Describe in the light of Piaget’s theory the cognitive and intellectual development of a child at different levels.
Answer:
Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge, but also on understanding the nature of intelligence. Piaget’s stages are:
Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years
Preoperational stage: ages 2 to 7
Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11
Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up
Piaget believed that children take an active role in the learning process, acting much like little scientists as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn about the world. As kids interact with the world around them, they continually add new knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt previously held ideas to accommodate new information.
How Piaget Developed the Theory
Piaget was born in Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a precocious student, publishing his first scientific paper when he was just 11 years old. His early exposure to the intellectual development of children came when he worked as an assistant to Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon as they worked to standardize their famous IQ test.
Much of Piaget’s interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by his observations of his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his budding hypothesis that children’s minds were not merely smaller versions of adult minds. Up until this point in history, children were largely treated simply as smaller versions of adults. Piaget was one of the first to identify that the way that children think is different from the way adults think.
Instead, he proposed, intelligence is something that grows and develops through a series of stages. Older children do not just think more quickly than younger children, he suggested. Instead, there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older children. Based on his observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults, they simply think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget’s discovery “so simple only a genius could have thought of it.”
Piaget’s stage theory describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development involves changes in cognitive process and abilities. In Piaget’s view, early cognitive development involves processes based upon actions and later progresses to changes in mental operations.
The Stages
Through his observations of his children, Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development that included four distinct stages:
The Sensorimotor Stage
Ages: Birth to 2 Years
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
The infant knows the world through their movements and sensations
Children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening
Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen (object permanence)
They are separate beings from the people and objects around them
They realize that their actions can cause things to happen in the world around them
During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects. A child’s entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and motor responses. It is during the sensorimotor stage that children go through a period of dramatic growth and learning. As kids interact with their environment, they are continually making new discoveries about how the world works. The cognitive development that occurs during this period takes place over a relatively short period of time and involves a great deal of growth. Children not only learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a great deal about language from the people with whom they interact. Piaget also broke this stage down into a number of different substages. It is during the final part of the sensorimotor stage that early representational thought emerges.
Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object constancy, the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of development. By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an existence of their own outside of individual perception, children are then able to begin to attach names and words to objects.
The Preoperational Stage
Ages: 2 to 7 Years
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects.
Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others.
While they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to think about things in very concrete terms.
The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous stage, but it is the emergence of language that is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.
Children become much more skilled at pretend play during this stage of development, yet continue to think very concretely about the world around them.
At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy.
For example, a researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball while the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Since the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational child will likely choose that piece even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.
The Concrete Operational Stage
Ages: 7 to 11 Years
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes
During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events
They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example
Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete
Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle
While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they become much more adept at using logic. The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation. While thinking becomes much more logical during the concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid. Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts. During this stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might think and feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin to understand that their thoughts are unique to them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
The Formal Operational Stage
Ages: 12 and Up
Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:
At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical problems
Abstract thought emerges
Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require theoretical and abstract reasoning
Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information
The final stage of Piaget’s theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an understanding of abstract ideas. At this point, people become capable of seeing multiple potential solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.
The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage. It is important to note that Piaget did not view children’s intellectual development as a quantitative process; that is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge as they get older. Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they gradually process through these four stages. A child at age 7 doesn’t just have more information about the world than he did at age 2; there is a fundamental change in how he thinks about the world.
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AIOU Solved Assignments 2 Code 8625 Autumn & Spring 2024
Q 3. Personality development occurs early in life but later years provide an opportunity for the modification of previously developed trends’. Discuss.
Answer:
Personality development is the development of the organized pattern of behaviors and attitudes that makes a person distinctive. Personality development occurs by the ongoing interaction of temperament, character, and environment.
Description
Personality is what makes a person a unique person, and it is recognizable soon after birth. A child’s personality has several components: temperament, environment, and character. Temperament is the set of genetically determined traits that determine the child’s approach to the world and how the child learns about the world. There are no genes that specify personality traits, but some genes do control the development of the nervous system, which in turn controls behavior. A second component of personality comes from adaptive patterns related to a child’s specific environment. Most psychologists agree that these two factors—temperament and environment—influence the development of a person’s personality the most. Temperament, with its dependence on genetic factors, is sometimes referred to as “nature,” while the environmental factors are called “nurture.”
While there is still controversy as to which factor ranks higher in affecting personality development, all experts agree that high-quality parenting plays a critical role in the development of a child’s personality. When parents understand how their child responds to certain situations, they can anticipate issues that might be problematic for their child. They can prepare the child for the situation or in some cases they may avoid a potentially difficult situation altogether. Parents who know how to adapt their parenting approach to the particular temperament of their child can best provide guidance and ensure the successful development of their child’s personality.
Finally, the third component of personality is character—the set of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral patterns learned from experience that determines how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. A person’s character continues to evolve throughout life, although much depends on inborn traits and early experiences. Character is also dependent on a person’s moral development .
In 1956, psychiatrist Erik Erikson provided an insightful description as to how personality develops based on his extensive experience in psychotherapy with children and adolescents from low, upper, and middle-class backgrounds. According to Erikson, the socialization process of an individual consists of eight phases, each one accompanied by a “psychosocial crisis” that must be solved if the person is to manage the next and subsequent phases satisfactorily. The stages significantly influence personality development, with five of them occurring during infancy, childhood, and adolescence.
Infancy
During the first two years of life, an infant goes through the first stage: Learning Basic Trust or Mistrust (Hope) . Well-nurtured and loved, the infant develops trust and security and a basic optimism. Badly handled, the infant becomes insecure and learns “basic mistrust.”
Toddlerhood
The second stage occurs during early childhood, between about 18 months to two years and three to four years of age. It deals with Learning Autonomy or Shame (Will) . Well-parented, the child emerges from this stage with self-confidence, elated with his or her newly found control. The early part of this stage can also include stormy tantrums, stubbornness, and negativism, depending on the child’s temperament.
Preschool
The third stage occurs during the “play age,” or the later preschool years from about three to entry into formal school. The developing child goes through Learning Initiative or Guilt (Purpose) . The child learns to use imagination; to broaden skills through active play and fantasy; to cooperate with others; and to lead as well as to follow. If unsuccessful, the child becomes fearful, is unable to join groups, and harbors guilty feelings. The child depends excessively on adults and is restricted both in the development of play skills and in imagination.
School age
The fourth stage, Learning Industry or Inferiority (Competence) , occurs during school age, up to and possibly including junior high school. The child learns to master more formal skills:
relating with peers according to rules
progressing from free play to play that is structured by rules and requires teamwork (team sports)
learning basic intellectual skills (reading, arithmetic)
At this stage, the need for self-discipline increases every year. The child who, because of his or her successful passage through earlier stages, is trusting, autonomous, and full of initiative, will quickly learn to be industrious. However, the mistrusting child will doubt the future and will feel inferior.
Adolescence
The fifth stage, Learning Identity or Identity Diffusion (Fidelity) , occurs during adolescence from age 13 or 14. Maturity starts developing during this time; the young person acquires self-certainty as opposed to self-doubt and experiments with different constructive roles rather than adopting a negative identity, such as delinquency. The well-adjusted adolescent actually looks forward to achievement, and, in later adolescence, clear sexual identity is established. The adolescent seeks leadership (someone to inspire him or her), and gradually develops a set of ideals to live by.
The Child Development Institute (CDI) rightfully points out that very little knowledge is available on the type of specific environment that will result, for example, in traits of trust being more developed in a person’s personality. Helping the child through the various stages of emotional and personality development is a complex and difficult task. Searching for the best ways of accomplishing this task accounts for most of the research carried out in the field of child development today.
Renowned psychologist Carl Rogers emphasized how childhood experiences affect personality development. Many psychologists believe that there are certain critical periods in personality development—periods when the child will be more sensitive to certain environmental factors. Most experts believe that a child’s experiences in the family are important for his or her personality development, although not exactly as described by Erikson’s stages, but in good agreement with the importance of how a child’s needs should to be met in the family environment. For example, children who are toilet trained too early or have their toilet training carried out too strictly may become rebellious. Another example is shown by children who learn appropriate behavior to their sex lives when there is a good relationship with their same-sex parent. Another environmental factor of importance is culture. Researchers comparing cultural groups for specific personality types have found some important differences. For example, Northern European countries and the United States have individualistic cultures that put more emphasis on individual needs and accomplishments. In contrast, Asian, African, Central American, and South American countries are characterized more by community-centered cultures that focus on belonging to a larger group, such as a family, or nation. In these cultures, cooperation is considered a more important value than competitiveness, which will necessarily affect personality development.
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AIOU Solved Assignments Code 8625 Autumn & Spring 2024
Q 4. Explain the inter-relationship of language skills. How does the classroom environment affect them?
Answer:
The significance of listening skill in effective communication has been recognized for a century. Rankin (1926) conducted a study and found that listening skill was the most dominant skill for the mode of human communication. However, there were no more similar studies until the 1940s. The base of listening inquiry was primarily laid academically in the late 1940s and the founders (James Brown, Ralph Nichols and Carl Weaver) of the listening skill were considered as the “fathers of listening” (Vocile, 1987). Listening skill was taken into the second and foreign language research field in the mid 20th Century and many researchers put listening as the focus of their studies. After half a century, a professional committee International Listening Association (ILA) was established in 1979 to develop listening skill (Feyten, 1991). Knowing how to entail listening instruction and assessment in the school syllabi was the main target of the pedagogy. Steven (1987) pointed out that many studies provide a focus on either understanding listening comprehension or listening critically – agree or disagree with oral input. Similarly, Floyed (1985) defines listening as a process entailing hearing, attending to, understanding, evaluating and responding to spoken messages. He further believes that listeners should be active participants in communication process. The nature/purpose of listening skills varies as the context of communication differs. Wolvin and Coakley (1988) propose five different kinds of listening.
First, discriminative listening helps listeners draw a distinction between facts and opinions.
Second, comprehensive listening facilitates understanding oral input.
Third, critical listening allows listeners to analyse the incoming message before accepting and rejecting it.
Fourth, therapeutic listening serves as a sounding board and lack any critiques, e.g., advising.
Finally, appreciative listening contributes listeners to enjoy and receives emotional impressions. All the varieties of listening help to demonstrate that listening is an active process rather than a passive product. The authors define the process of listening as making sense of oral input by attending to the message. Thus, this study adopts the second definition of listening – understand the oral input mentioned by Wolvin and Coakley as a tool to evaluate the research assumption. The current study seeks to delve into the correlation between listening and other skills in International English Language Testing System.
Language development involves four fundamental and interactive abilities: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The attempt has widely been made to teach four macro skills in second and foreign language for more than 60 years. Berninger and Winn (2006) emphasize that external and internal environment interacts with functional systems to extent, which the nature-nurture interaction at birth evolves over the course of time. The question is how much and how long the basic skill of listening gains attention in second and foreign language learning while listening is recognized to play a significant role in primary and secondary language acquisition (Ellis, 1994; Faerch & Kasper, 1986). In the 1970s, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) method was introduced to develop language learning proficiency. Some prominent researchers (Asher, 1977; Krashen, 1992) highlighted the significance of listening in the pedagogy. Krashen (1992) has argued that language acquisition highly depends on the decoding process of making sense of incoming messages. Language acquisition never occurs without access to the comprehensible language input (Rost, 1994) because in addition to visual learning, more than three quarters (80 %) of human learning occurs through listening direction (Hunsaker, 1990). Returning to language acquisition, Nunan (2003) suggested that listening is the gasoline that fuels the acquisition process. Thus, the main reason experts emphasize the significance of listening in language acquisition is the frequency of listening in language development. However, much of the relevant research incorporated into listening as an inevitable medium to drive primary and secondary language acquisition. What is more, none of them focuses on the relationship between listening skill and other language skills – speaking, reading and writing in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The current research study aims to fill this gap by providing empirical data obtained in a large-scale investigation of 1800 participants taking the international known language proficiency test – IELTS administered in the capital of Iran, Tehran.
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Autumn & Spring 2024 AIOU Solved Assignments 1 & 2 Code 8625
Q 5. Differentiate between role-play and simulation. Discuss the use of each for making teaching learning process effective at elementary level.
Answer:
There is a difference between simulations (where students act out real-life situations, for example the student checks in at “the airport”, but students do play themselves) and role plays where students take on different characters. In a role play, for example, one student may be asked to take on the role of “an angry landowner” in a role play which is concerned with discussing the possible construction of a new road. Another may be asked to play the role of the “road company representative”. Role plays will thus require more “imagination” on the part of the student to be able to get “into” the role.
Some students will find being asked to play a different person in a role play quite liberating. Some students who are normally quite shy can open up considerably in a role play lesson. The teacher, though, must attempt to maintain the “pretend” part of the simulations and role plays: i.e. the students ARE in an airport and not the classroom. Teachers can aid this process by use of realia and other props. Students who don’t enter into the ‘fantasy world’ can ruin it for everyone else.
Teacher intrusion must be kept to an absolute minimum during role plays and simulations….preferably, zero. We use role plays to allow students to test out learnt language in as realistic a situation as possible. They are, in a sense, a halfway house between a sterile classroom practice activity and the often frightening reality of the real world for students. Students can thus feel free to experiment with their language in a safe environment. Teacher intrusion is possible if the participating students, for example, are not understanding at all what they should be doing. Otherwise, teacher input should be left for the post-activity feedback session.
Feedback on what students have just done is vital. The role-play or simulation could be videotaped or recorded for example, which would allow a more detailed and thus useful analysis of their performances. Students need to see this as an important part of self evaluation. If students can learn to appreciate the weaknesses of their performance, they will only benefit. A student who says “he asked me about the ticket prices and I tripped up over the numbers again – I need to focus on that” is one who is well aware of where future performance needs to improve. The priority in the mind of the teacher, though, should remain communicative efficacy. Long feedback sessions of the mistaken use of the present perfect during the role play can be left for another time.
The more natural setting of a well set-up role play can also be used to introduce the unpredictability which makes communicating in the real world so daunting for many foreign language learners. This can be done either with the teacher playing “rogue” characters or handing out a couple of unusual role cards to other students. Teachers should seek to mix things up if you feel the simulations and role-plays are becoming too predictable for the class. As we said before, the safe environment offered by role plays means a few suprises can quite safely be thrown at students to see how they cope.
The Role of the Teacher
The teacher must first of all be convinced of what she is doing. She must have the conviction that drama can be an effective tool in language teaching. She must have clear objectives as to her role and the use of dramatic activities in achieving her goals. She is the one who sets the mood of the class. She must change her attitude towards her role in the classroom. In the drama classroom she needs to be less domineering and gradually withdraw. Her main function should be that of an initiator controlling but not directing the situation. Her rapport with the students is important. The students should feel at ease and relaxed in the classroom. Certain warming activities can help to achieve this. This will be discussed later.
Although the teacher is to slowly withdraw from the main scene, she still needs to be in control of all that is going on in class. She can still do this without appearing domineering if she has clear objectives and has prepared herself thoroughly. She must give clear instructions to the students to carry out their various tasks. She must also have close control of time so that her plans can be carried out accordingly. Thus do not be over ambitious in the aims of the lessons.
For lower level or weaker classes, there is a need for language preparation before the class. Lists of words, phrases, functions and sentence types, which are relevant to the activities to be carried out, have to be prepared before hand. These have to be presented to the students before the activities so that they can use them as aids/tools in their tasks.
Role of the Learner
In recent years there has been a move towards the “whole-person approach. The learner thus becomes the centre of focus and at the centre of the language learning process. This is influenced by the “effective humanistic approach” to language teaching. With this in mind, language learning must therefore appeal to the language learner intellectually and emotionally. Stevick (1980), states that language learning must appeal to the creative, intuitive aspect of personality as well as the conscious and the rational part.
Drama activities provide opportunities for active student participation. The activities involve the student’s whole personality and not merely his mental process. Effective learning takes place as the student involves himself in the tasks and is motivated to use the target language. As he uses the language, he becomes more aware of his ability to use the language and this will hopefully increase his motivation to learn.
In drama activities, the student is encouraged to discuss, evaluate and describe the activities. He has to explain, interpret and make decisions. The student thus has little time to be idle or daydream for he is an active participant in the lesson. Students may take some time to get used to this active role and the teacher may have to slowly but firmly initiate this change in the role and even attitudes.
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