On Children’s Day, educationists tell Ayushi Sharma about how we can make teaching a multi-sensorial experience rather than a digital one for toddlers and kindergarteners
The best gift we could give a child is of wonder and a free mindspace, which lets him or her imagine a blue leaf and a green sky. But the question is how can we make education a multi-sensorial experience rather than just a digital one in today’s time, especially for toddlers and kindergarteners? In a blog about using imaginative inquiry in the classroom, advanced skills teacher and lecturer Tim Taylor argued that children learn best when they are playing. He writes, “Children need to be engaged in their learning. They learn best when it matters to them as it’s contextualised in meaningful ways. Then, they have a sense of ownership. The best learning I’ve been involved in has not been delivered to a class, but built, over time, in collaboration with students. Explored, examined and argued over.”
Over the time, teachers have believed that play has little or no place in the classroom. However, the idea is evolving. As most of the children today are completely dependent on learning apps to pick up things, a lot of schools are deliberately taking children out and making them sit in gardens for the real touch and feel. They are teaching them the importance of bonding by giving them various tasks. But the question arises again — how can we not make them more dependent on these apps and focus on learning through real experiences.
Speaker, author, education and life transformer, and founder of TLI Pedagogics, Marion Hopfgartner tells us that children are attracted to all these digital tools because since day one, they have observed their parents using phones, laptops and other digital devices. So they try to “imitate” what they see. For toddlers, imitation follows a four-step process — watching and listening, processing the information, attempting to copy a behaviour and then practising. For instance, language development. If parents are more inclined towards reading books, children will capture it and naturally, they will be more interested in that rather than using the gadgets. “When education becomes a real life experience, the child will follow his/her natural impulses. Hence, the surrounding plays a vital role. Using all five senses, the child will take information from the surrounding and process it. For a kid, the world is always multidimensional. For example, take an apple. When the kid eats it, s/he first looks at it, understands its shape, colour and much more. So the most important thing in real life experience is not to create a scenario but rather to live it with the child and let them be a part of it,” says the expert, who has been honoured as the Ambassador of Peace and awarded as an international speaker on education.
Children are always curious about everything and they are born with the interest to learn, points out Marion. And this is exactly what Amit Verma, CEO of Makebot, believes. He says, “The creativity factor in early childhood is very sharp and it goes down over a period when the child stops practising innovation. This happens due to a lot of structured learning over the period of time. Hence, it is very important to keep the curiosity and creativity factor high in every child. When we involve children at an early age with hands on activities, their minds get tuned to experiential learning methodologies. This enables them to learn things by practising and creating a strong and long-term self-learning ability, which also forms a strong foundation at an early stage.”
Marion adds that it is important that we place a special focus on guiding children towards being autonomous and able to easily adapt to challenges. A recent research has emphasised on the need to adopt ‘modern thinking models’ for the early childhood education on the lines of those adopted in the West, namely, Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, Vygotsky’s theory of socio-cultural learning, tools of the mind and many more. Just like everything else, educational needs of children are changing at a very high pace, believes Shakti Chaturvedi, a researcher in the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He says that just subjecting them to mathematical tables, mugging up poems and memorising the names of animals is not going to help. “They need to be exposed to ‘experiences’ no matter how trivial. They must be allowed the time of their choice for extra-curricular activities to fetch maximum output. Such style of pedagogy keeps them hooked. Activity-based learning and curriculum gives each child the appropriate time to find his/her acumen and develop an interest. Most importantly, it allows them an opportunity to narrate stories and voice their opinions. These attempts certainly yield great results,” he adds.
Effective learning comes with movement, touch, music, audio and visual, feels Nitin Pandey, co-founder and CEO of Parentune.com. For him, digital learning isn’t bad by any means but he says that it needs to be done in a balanced manner. “Learning practically and through interpersonal interactions are equally important for a child’s mental development. And to get that going, curricula need to go beyond the screen and move towards a multi-sensory approach of learning. This is especially important in the early years (18 months toddlers to nine-year-olds), as this is the time when cognitive development is at its peak,” he believes.
It has been revealed in a report that practical learning not only aids children’s mental and physical health but it teaches them risk taking and problem-solving skills, enhances imagination, independence and creativity too. Even though Ashwani Kumar Prithviwasi, founder and principal of Delhi Collage of Art, feels that if children are getting something useful from digital learning apps, it should be welcomed. However, he also suggests that students must be taken out in the playground for the real touch and feel. He suggests that gardening should be a subject in the curriculum as it can stimulate them and help activate their senses. “When children themselves grow plants and nurture them, their first-hand experience makes them learn more. This should be observed by the schools that how much time is given on knowledge through textbooks and how much is dedicated to outdoor activities. It’s not always okay to say no to children from playing in mud. Being protective is fine but then this restriction that their parents put on them makes them opt for electronics,” he says.
Nowadays, a very strong part which has been missing from children’s lives is the art of storytelling, Anita Sharma, principal of SD Public School, Pitampura, tells us. “The stories narrated by parents or grandparents, where children were exposed to our culture, traditions and heritage and also to many morals in life at a very early age, are not a part of their lives anymore. Communication, language development, expressions, control over emotions, empathy and sense of belonging, many such skills and values were automatically infused with the storytelling. Apart from all educational activities and events happening at school, parents must develop the habit of reading and sharing stories with their children,” says she.
Undoubtedly, the Indian education system is very dynamic and provides a lot of flexibility in delivering the right set of knowledge and skills to students. “When we use existing curriculum and create an inter-disciplinary approach around it rather than creating a parallel programme, it synchronises with what the child is learning today. Through innovative delivery techniques, the entire process becomes interactive,” says Amit.
He points out another factor. “The introduction of the ‘edutainment’ mode of learning — through various real life problem-solving challenges, competitions targetted toward life skills, community building for like minded innovators, fueling new age ideas through project building/prototyping. The learning which comes out of edutainment not only prepares the children for future but also opens vistas to start thinking on innovation which is what required for forthcoming generations since we don’t know what kind of jobs would be there in the future,” adds Amit.
To create more awareness around multidimensional experiential learning and edutainment, experts suggest that we have to bring the ecosystem together including parents, children and educational institutions. Since parents today are also concerned with kids’ screen time going up alarmingly. The same time can be used to building something creative and by doing new things which are going to be part of future like, coding, story building, robotics, artificial intelligence, project building, mechanics and much more. This allows students to see things in practice and will aligns their thoughts with real world scenarios.
But could this approach also be adapted for secondary education? Or should there be a point when learning stops being a game? Do you think innovative approaches to teaching are some of the most effective ways to motivate students and that secondary schools should look to primaries for inspiration?
