‘Change is the only constant in the world’. This literally stands true for an activity as dynamic as knowledge. If teachers taught their students as they were taught, chances are we would be moving backward instead of forward. It is crucial for the educators to make significant changes that help further the society.
Children of 21st-century have talents mixed with capabilities and attitude in order to prevail in the data-driven age. These incorporate learning, education, and fundamental abilities such as cognitive thinking, teamwork, interaction, adaptability, activity, leadership, and specialised proficiency.
Inquiry-based teaching is a methodology that definitively resonate with the way learning has turned out to be in this ever-developing world. Unlike traditional form of teaching, which required students to memorise the textbooks, this is firmly associated with how young minds gradually learn.
The conventional way to teach was restricted in its methodology and viability in building skills and capabilities in children, essentially because it was only focused on facts. Hence, teachers were only supposed to pass the facts from them to their students and what mattered was who had the “right answer”. In an inquirybased model, the emphasis is on the student and their communication with their fellow classmates, adults in the family, nature, and the general setting of teaching. The instructor is a facilitator who offers ways, which intrigue students to ask, embrace new activities, and discover answers and arrangements dependent on information and their own experimentation. As a response, how has providing education changed?
Digital Influx
The digitisation of the classroom across the globe has brought about a change in the pattern. Students now have better accessibility to study material. Digital devices make complex technique extremely straightforward for students, which was prior hard to comprehend from primary study material. It has reformed the elearning projects or distance learning programmes, consequently giving a superior way of learning.
Interactive learning
Innovative applications have encouraged a move in the method of guidance from one approach to twoway and multi-way learning. Today tech-based learning modules are preparing for changing interest of students. More educators and students are taking part in online courses, live online study sessions, as and when they can. This has led to popularity of shared form of learning for school or competitive exams. This is empowering the development of student and teacher study.
Technology
Issues such as access to internet, geographical or language barriers, and/or cultural differences are no longer ignored issues. Rather, they have become important in preparing curriculum, instruction framework, and community participation. With the ascent of advanced learning, teachers and students have started incorporating the idea of collaborative learning. This has led to the rise of different EdTech software and applications wherein online courses are offered in a joint effort with private/ public funding as well as industry players to assist students to stay relevant. Its simple availability across boundaries and feasibility has additionally broadened its range.
Professionalism
Further, teaching has gotten more professional than before. Rising expectations of students imply that educators have increased obligation for their students’ scholastic achievement, yet additionally for their own advancement as teachers. Becoming a certified teacher presently requires more specific work than before. These increased expectations are somewhat a reaction to the complexities presented by rapid utilisation of technology in educational institutions.
Collaborative classrooms
Instructors, just as students, also utilise web-based life skills to find different ways of initiating discussions in the class. They additionally use other platforms for video conferencing and remote teaching to communicate with students in remote locations. This prompts solid collaboration and beneficial trade of thoughts among students. Innovation is increasing the extent of imagination in learning and boosting students’ commitment. More up to date uses of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are changing how information is shared and assimilated. With gamification of complex concepts, students are enjoying the fun ways to learn.
Instructors’ knowledge is dynamic but so are our surroundings; it is continually formed by data, joint effort with fellow teachers, and commitment towards teaching devices and reading material, etc. It is an ever-evolving process and should never stop.
The writer is founder, Global Education & Training Institute