Three ways to develop a deeper understanding of teaching and learning at PYLP

We practice a systemic approach to bringing change, where we mobilize teachers, the village community, and panchayats through collective spaces. We are mindful that students are the center of our work; everything we do is eventually to provide them with a good classroom environment and quality learning experience. Hence, it’s essential to understand how teaching-learning occurs in an ideal way that leads to a child’s holistic development. Additionally, understanding the learning and teaching process helps us as young leaders. Equipped with the knowledge of teaching and learning, we better understand the classroom context, build connections, and make meaningful observations later used during Cluster Academic Meetings. Not only this, when we are facilitating CAMs or just having a simple conversation with a teacher, having some basic understanding of how teaching and learning happen in a classroom helps in leading a productive and meaningful discussion.

Here are a few ways that helped us young leaders develop the said understanding:

1. Workshops and discussion calls by IEC are a great source of knowledge. We discussed children’s abilities, the true meaning of progressive education, effective classroom practices, etc.
2. Discussion forums (NCF, NEP, Courses) — Reading NCF / NEP helped us understand the vision of the policymakers and allowed us to find loopholes and gaps between the current classroom practices and the suggestions in the education policies. Knowledge from these documents was used as evidence for officials and teachers during Cluster Academic Meetings to talk about effective teaching practices suggested by the educationists. These also serve as excellent resources to make suggestions for classroom practices and classroom environments when conducting discussions with the teachers.
3. Classroom observation and interaction with children — Once we are hands full with knowledge, next is the practice time. Doing classroom observations, we observe the teacher’s teaching practices and analyze how they are helpful/not helpful for children and how they align with the parameters we discussed during the IEC workshops or while reading NCF. Observing classrooms gives us data points on teachers’ best practices and what more can be done to improve classroom instructional methods, which can be discussed in the CAM. If we engage with children through some playful learning activities, we will be able to understand their ways of learning and the challenges a teacher can face during teaching. It helps us make better connections between teaching and learning and become empathetic. When we engage with children in a meaningful way through simple activities, the chances are that the teachers will adopt the same actions as they have been modeled out for them.

In a nutshell, if we are curious to learn, open to sharing our knowledge in the collective spaces, and are consistent with our practices in the field, we can support the teaching-learning practices in schools in an effective manner.