Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Fostering a Questioning Attitude in children


Fostering a basic Questioning Attitude in Children




The purpose of education is to make mankind capable, competent and wise so as to meet the challenges which life. In a world that's dynamic, entropy and chaos quickly enter the picture as pace of life becomes faster, demands on an individual's mental, physical, and emotional resources creation and flexibility and adaptability become the buzz words. To accommodate consuming these factors, one needs to be innovative, creative, able to do business collaboratively, communicate effectively, think critically and be proactive.







It necessarily follows which usually education too must adapt and shift focus to teaching-learning methods that are based on inquiry, information creation and insight construction ??life skills that help in problem solving and decision - making.



Our conventional education system lays load on:





  • Information gathering


  • Quantum of data stored in memory


  • Evaluation based on memorized material


  • ?mparting' education


  • Chalk moreover talk method


  • Focus aboard LOTS (Lower Order Planning Skills)


  • Questioning attitude is not encouraged, making students passive information recipients rather than proactive knowledge creators.




We need to work upon each of the areas outlined above have a bring a meaningful improvements on the education system.



Of all the above, fostering a questioning attitude in children is perhaps the area that would like maximum qualitative and attitudinal change on the part of the educators. A questioning attitude is not just about ASKING QUESTIONS. It involves investing oneself in the experience of learning in order to create/construct meaning through research, effort, application of intelligence using HOTS (Higher Get Thinking Skills).



When encouraged to list traits that characterize children which are 2-3 years old, teachers consistently list inquisitiveness and curiosity as being the defining traits for this age group. Thus, Inquisitiveness and curiosity vivid traits possessed by all children even at this age and form the root learning experience. Children use these traits in order to make sense of the a topic around them.



To illustrate, consider that for the topic ?ruits we eat', a group of 3-4 year olds are encouraged to identify all the fruits which are used to prepare a fruit salad made it easy to them. Consider the method they would adopt access to arrive at the address. You will find that they're regular little scientists who intuitively stick to the scientific approach in a totally logical way. They consists of the following steps:





  • Enquire


  • Explore


  • Experiment


  • Experience


  • Evaluate


  • Extrapolate


  • Express




By observing the children it can be inferred that constructing meaning is really a PROCESS involving logical opportunity. It follows that learning also is, therefore, a PROCESS, facilitated greatly by teaching. We can thus conclude that constructing knowledge includes a meaningful Teaching-Learning process.





Infancy is a stage in Child Development in which the child receives plenty of input from his atmosphere using his senses and attempts to make sense of the earth around him through burrowing and experience. Young children are propelled by inquisitiveness as well as curiosity, the need to learn, question, discover and translate.



To allow inquisitiveness and curiosity to expand, the 7 ?'s listed above are indispensable. For the 7 ?'s to build, a questioning mind and a questioning attitude are will need to.



As children cultivate, the very traits that characterize babyhood, and which are central for those learning experience, shrink and peter out instead of developing more fully. The result is that children are unable shell out themselves fully in the experience of learning. They become ?assive account details sponges'. The outcome of this entire series is that the creative and critical thinking skills are stunted, HOTS behave as limited, and the child is ill-prepared to face the demands of the intensely competitive world.



This analysis delivers to a very useful question: Why do the zones central to learning and which all children inherently possess from an altogether early age, show regression? There are a number of reasons educators will list, the favourites being that newness to complete the syllabus leaves very little time for anything other than lecture to be able to be adopted, lack of facilities and teaching assists to support and supplement the topic, disturbances in classes due to extra-curricular activities, large quantity of students in the very good quality, burden of duties over and above teaching, etc.



Unfortunately, the tendency of giving it the buck is sadly i must say apparent here. This is not to say that the above tend to be not issues of concern, but certainly none are so insurmountable as avoiding any solutions at all four. In every school there is a breed of teachers who is complete the syllabus with time, who will use innovative pedagogy, who will find resources and become routine things into learning aids and which might be loved and respected by way of a students because they go that one step further. Coming back to the question as to why children show regression into traits central to acquiring knowledge, we would do the greatest possible as educators to introspect and pin a corner of the blame that particular belongs, that is, with us. It is the teachers' attitudes and behaviours that're largely responsible.



Now, how do we develop the traits central on the web learning experience instead of allowing them to peter out? The obvious answer is:





  • Address a particular ATTITUDE of teachers just for questioning by students.


  • Modify the behavior of teachers towards clogs a questioning attitude in children.




This will provide a big boost regarding any preserving the traits substantial to learning. There is no denying that the role of the educator is of paramount importance in fostering a questioning attitude in kids. Now that we have zeroed-in the simplest way we as educators can achieve to stop the down-slide, we have to evolve strategies to remedy the situation without coming in direct confrontation for a education system. The system has its own positive points, we don't need to turn it on that it is head; only modify this steadily and carefully to efficiency.

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