Dr. V.K. Maheshwari, Ph.D

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V. (P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materialsthat are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world.

The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was first introduced at a conference hosted by UNESCO in 2000 and was promoted in the context of providing free access to educational resources on a global scale.

The Open Movement

A range of ‘Open’ philosophies and models have emerged during the 20th Century as a result of several different drivers and motivations – including sharing freely, preventing duplication, avoiding restrictive  (Copyright) practices, promoting economic efficiencies and improving access to wide groups of stakeholders. Many of these have been driven by and created by communities that recognise the benefits to themselves, and sometimes to wider groups. Some of these are listed below:

•             Open source (relating to business and technology)

•             Open source software

•             Open source hardware

•             Open standards

•             Open access (research)

•             Open design

•             Open knowledge

•             Open data

•             Open content

•             Open courseware

•             Open educational resources

•             Open educational practice

Several of these ‘movements’ or ‘philosophies’ have been significant within the education community both in terms of research and learning & teaching (particularly educational technology), it is widely expected that sharing and openness would bring benefits to some stakeholders in the educational community.

Whilst the terms ‘Open content’ are sometimes used to mean the wide range of resources to support learning and teaching. We have chosen to use the term Open Educational Resources (OER) as this relates to resources that are specifically licensed to be used and re-used in an educational context.

“At the heart of the open educational resources movement is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the World Wide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse that knowledge” (Smith & Casserly, 2006, p. 10).

Rather than try to define the entire term open educational resources, some researchers split the term up in order to define its components separately.  Hylén (2006) problematizes each of the three concepts in the name, questioning what is meant by “open,” “educational,” and “resources,” as do Mulder (2007) and OECD (2007).

Wiley (2010) assumes common understanding of the term educational resources, and argues that open is a matter of (1) cost and (2) copyright licensing and related permissions. For Wiley, open means that a resource is available free of cost and that four permissions (called the “4Rs”) are also made available free of cost. These permissions include:

Reuse: the right to reuse the content in its unaltered/verbatim form (e.g., make a backup copy of the content)

Revise: the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into an- other language)

Remix: the right to combine the original or revised content with other content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)

Redistribute: the right to share copies of the original content, the revisions, or the remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

Wenk (2010) repeats the definition put forth by Freedom. Defined openness:

• The freedom to use the work and enjoy the benefits of using it.
• The freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it.
• The freedom to make and redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expression.
• The freedom to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative works .

Tuomi (2006) takes another approach to defining openness, though one still focused on permissions. Tuomi describes OER as “sources of services” that:

(a) Provide non-discriminatory access to information and knowledge about the resource

(b) The services of which can be enjoyed by anyone with sufficient non-discriminatory capabilities .

(c) Can be contributed.

The following definition of OER has been proposed by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation:  OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

Open educational resources O.E.R are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or creative common area and are freely available to anyone over the Web. They are an important element of an infrastructure for learning and range from podcasts to digital libraries to textbooks and games.

Thus open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under a copyright license that permits anyone to freely use and repurpose them. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, journal articles, and any other tools or materials used to support learning.

Open educational resources (OER) are any resources available at little or no cost that can be used for teaching, learning, or research. The term can include textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other learning applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other material that can be used for educational purposes. OER typically refers to electronic resources, including those in multimedia formats, and such materials are generally released under a Creative Commons or similar license that supports open or nearly open use of the content. OER can originate from colleges and universities, libraries, archival organizations, government agencies, commercial organizations such as publishers, or faculty or other individuals who develop educational resources they are willing to share.

The Open Educational Resources (OER)

In its simplest form, the concept of Open Educational Resources (OER) describes any educational resources (including curriculum maps, course materials, textbooks, streaming videos, multimedia applications, podcasts, and any other materials that have been designed for use in teaching and learning) that are openly available for use by educators and students, without an accompanying need to pay royalties or license fees.

OER has emerged as a concept with great potential to support educational transformation. While its educational value lies in the idea of using resources as an integral method of communication of curriculum in educational courses, its transformative power lies in the ease with which such resources, when digitized, can be shared via the Internet.

Importantly, there is only one key differentiator between an OER and any other educational resource: its license. Thus, an OER is simply an educational resource that incorporates a license that facilitates reuse, and potentially adaptation, without first requesting permission from the copyright holder.

Difference between OER and open access publishing

Open access publishing is an important concept, which is clearly related to – but distinct from – that of OER.

Wikipedia notes that the term ‘open access’ is applied to many concepts, but usually refers either to:

• ‘Open access (publishing)’; or

• ‘Access to material (mainly scholarly publications) via the Internet in such a way that the material is free for all to read, and to use (or reuse) to various extents’; or

• ‘Open access journal, journals that give open access to all .

Open access publishing is typically referring to research publications of some kind released under an open license. OER refers to teaching and learning materials released under such a licence. Clearly, especially in higher education, there is an overlap, as research publications typically form an important part of the overall set of materials that students need to access to complete their studies successfully, particularly at postgraduate level.

Nevertheless, the distinction seems worth applying because it allows more nuanced discussion and planning about which kinds of open licences would be most appropriate for different types of resources.

OER verses e-learning

OER is not synonymous with online learning or e-learning, although many educaters make the mistake of using the terms interchangeably.

Openly licensed content can be produced in any medium: paper-based text, video, audio or computer-based multimedia. A lot of e-learning courses may harness OER, but this does not mean that OER are necessarily e-learning. Indeed, many open resources being produced currently – while shareable in a digital format – are also printable. Given the bandwidth and connectivity challenges common in some developing countries, it would be expected that a high percentage of resources of relevance to higher education in such countries are shared as printable resources, rather than being designed for use in e-learning.

OER verses open learning/open education

Although use of OER can support open learning/open education, the two are not the same. Making ‘open education’ or ‘open learning’ a priority has significantly bigger implications than only committing to releasing resources as open or using OER in educational programmes. It requires systematic analysis of assessment and accreditation systems, student support, curriculum frameworks, mechanisms to recognize prior learning, and so on, in order to determine the extent to which they enhance or impede openness.

Open learning is an approach to education that seeks to remove all unnecessary barriers to learning, while aiming to provide students with a reasonable chance of success in an education and training system centred on their specific needs and located in multiple arenas of learning.

While effective use of OER might give practical expression to some similarities, the two terms are distinct in both scope and meaning.

OER and concept of resource based learning

The resource-based learning mean, in essence is moving away from the traditional notion of the ‘talking teacher’ to communicate curriculum; a significant but varying proportion of communication between students and educators is not face to face but rather takes place through the use of different media as necessary.

The use of resource-based learning does not of course imply any intrinsic improvements in quality of learning experience. The extent to which shifting the communication of curriculum to instructionally designed resources leads improves the quality of education depends entirely on the quality of the resources developed.

To summarize:

• There is no direct relationship between OER and resource-based learning.

• Many OER available online have not explicitly been designed as part of a deliberate strategy to shift to resource-based learning.

• Likewise, most practice in resource-based learning currently uses fully copyrighted materials rather than OER.

Nevertheless, linking OER and resource-based learning provides an opportunity to leverage both most effectively.

Benefits of sharing content under an open license:

A key concern for educators and senior managers of educational institutions about the concept of OER relates to ‘giving away’ intellectual property, with potential loss of commercial gain that might come from it. This is often combined with a related anxiety that others will take unfair advantage of their intellectual property, benefitting by selling it, plagiarizing it (i.e. passing it off as their own work), or otherwise exploiting it. These concerns are completely understandable.

While a small percentage of teaching and learning materials can – and will continue to – generate revenue through direct sales, the reality has always been that the percentage of teaching and learning materials that have commercial resale value is minimal; it is also declining further as more and more educational material is made freely accessible on the Internet. Much of the content that was previously saleable will lose its economic value while the niches for sale of generic educational content will likely become more specialized.

Given this, it is important for copyright holders of educational materials to consider carefully what commercial benefits they might find in sharing their materials openly. Of course, the primary benefits of harnessing OER should be educational (see ‘How can education benefit by harnessing OER?’ below), but the issue of sharing content openly may also be considered a strategy to protect oneself commercially.

The following benefits can accrue from sharing content under an open license:

• As digitized content can so easily be shared between students and institutions, sharing it publicly under an open license is the safest way to protect the author’s IPR and copyright; the license can ensure that, when content is shared, it remains attributed to the original author. Open sharing of content can more rapidly expose plagiarism, by making the original materials easy to access. In addition, releasing materials under an open license also reduces the incentive for others to lie about the source of materials because they have permission to use them.
• For individual educators, proper commercial incentives for sharing content openly are most likely to flow when institutions have policies to reward such activity properly.
• Guiding students effectively through educational resources (via well-designed teaching and learning pathways);
• Offering effective student support (such as practical sessions, tutorials, individual counselling sessions or online); and
• Open licenses maximize the likelihood of content-sharing taking place in a transparent way that protects the moral rights of content authors. Furthermore, people who seek to ring-fence, protect, and hide their educational content and research will likely place limits on their educational careers.
• Providing intelligent assessment and critical feedback to students on their performance (ultimately leading to some form of accreditation).
• Sharing of materials provides institutions opportunities to market their services. Educational institutions that succeed economically in an environment where content has been digitized and is increasingly easy to access online are likely to do so because they understand that their real potential educational value lies not in content itself, but in offering related services valued by their students. These might include:
• They will also increasingly be excluded from opportunities to improve their teaching practice and domain-specific knowledge by sharing and collaborating with growing networks of educators around the world. Those who share materials openly already have significant opportunities to build their individual reputations through these online vehicles .
• Within this environment, the more other institutions make use of their materials, the more this will serve to market the originating institution’s services and thereby attract new students.

Education benefit by harnessing OER

The most important reason for harnessing OER is that openly licensed educational materials have tremendous potential to contribute to improving the quality and effectiveness of education. The challenges of growing access, combined with the ongoing roll out of ICT infrastructure into educational institutions, indicates that it is becoming increasingly important for them to support, in a planned and deliberate manner, the development and improvement of curricula, ongoing programme and course design, planning of contact sessions with students, development of quality teaching and learning materials, and design of effective assessment – activities all aimed at improving the teaching and learning environment while managing the cost of this through increased use of resource based learning.

Given this, the trans formative educational potential of OER revolves around three linked possibilities:

1. The principle of allowing adaptation of materials provides one mechanism amongst many for constructing roles for students as active participants in educational processes, who learn best by doing and creating, not by passively reading and absorbing. Content licences that encourage activity and creation by students through re-use and adaptation of that content can make a significant contribution to creating more effective learning environments.

2. Increased availability of high quality, relevant learning materials can contribute to more productive students and educators. Because OER removes restrictions around copying resources, it can reduce the cost of accessing educational materials. In many systems, royalty payments for text books and other educational materials constitute a significant proportion of the overall cost, while processes of procuring permission to use copyrighted material can also be very time-consuming and expensive.

3. OER has potential to build capacity by providing institutions and educators access, at low or no cost, to the means of production to develop their competence in producing educational materials and carrying out the necessary instructional design to integrate such materials into high quality programmes of learning.

Deliberate openness thus acknowledges that:

• Investment in designing effective educational environments is critically important to good education.

• A key to productive systems is to build on common intellectual capital, rather than duplicating similar efforts.

• All things being equal, collaboration will improve quality.

• As education is a contextualized practice, it is important to make it easy to adapt materials imported from different settings where this is required, and this should be encouraged rather than restricted

Principles of OER use

It incorporates several key principles:

•Principle of learning opportunity: Learning opportunity should be lifelong and should encompass both education and training;

• Principle of independent and critical thinking: The learning process should encourage independent and critical thinking. It should be Lerner centered

•Principle of flexibility: Learning provision should be flexible so that learners can increasingly choose, where, when, what and how they learn, as well as the pace at which they will learn;

•Principle of prior learning: Prior learning, prior experience and demonstrated competencies should be recognized so that learners are not unnecessarily barred from educational opportunities by lack of appropriate qualifications;

•Principle of credit accumulation: Learners should be able to accumulate credits from different learning contexts;

•Principle of appropriate conditions: Providers should create the conditions for a fair chance of learner success.

Types of educational resources?

Whilst purely informational content has a significant role in learning and teaching, it is helpful to consider learning resources by their levels of granularity and to focus on the degree to which information content is embedded within a learning activity:

•             Digital assets – normally a single file (e.g. an image, video or audio clip), sometimes called a ‘raw media asset’;

•             Information objects – a structured aggregation of digital assets, designed purely to present information;

•             Learning objects – an aggregation of one or more digital assets which represents an educationally meaningful stand-alone unit;

•             Learning activities – tasks involving interactions with information to attain a specific learning outcome;

•             Learning design – structured sequences of information and activities to promote learning.

Contents in OER

OER can be separated, by content type, into four groups:

1.            Text led,

2.            Video led,

3.            Animation led and

4.            Multiple media.

OER may be freely and openly available static resources, dynamic resources which change over time in the course of having knowledge seekers interacting with and updating them, or a course or module with a combination of these resources.

Types of open educational resources include:

            course materials,

            full courses,

            learning objects,

            materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

            modules,

            open textbooks,

            openly licensed (often streamed) videos,

            software, and other tools,

            tests,

Effective use of OER

In most instances, a user has enormous latitude to adapt OER to suit contextual needs where the licence allows adaptation.

The vast majority of published OER welcome users to adapt the original resource. Common ways in which OER can be changed include the following:

• Mixing: A number of OER are mixed together and additional content is added to create an altogether new resource. This is common when course designers need to develop materials and resources to match a local curriculum or programme. A common concern is that it is rare to find existing OER that fit perfectly ‘as is’.

• Adaption: This occurs when one OER is used and multiple adaptations are developed to suit multiple contexts. It could be that the language is translated into others but usually adaptation requires local case studies/ examples to be added to make the materials relevant to students in a particular context.

• Asset extraction: It is also possible to extract only some of the assets of a resource or course and use them in a completely different context. This is especially true of media elements such as photos, illustrations, and graphs, as developers often lack the skills or resources to develop their own versions of commonly used visual aids. In many ways, the fact that changes may be made to the original is what makes OER – compared with other forms of copyrighted materials – especially useful to programme developers.

Skills Requirements for Open Educational Resources

Below is a list of the core skills that institutions will need to develop in order to make most effective use of Open Educational Resources:

Expertise in managing networks/consortia of people and institutions to work cooperatively on various teaching and learning improvement projects (including an ability to adapt to challenging environments – for example, power outages, physical discomfort, difficult personalities, institutional politics – and remain focused on the task at hand).

Monitoring and evaluation expertise to design and conduct formative evaluation processes, as well as longer-term summative evaluation and/or impact assessment activities that determine the extent to which use of open licensing has led to improvements in quality of teaching and learning, greater productivity, enhanced cost-effectiveness, and so on.

Expertise in curating and sharing OER effectively. This includes:

• Ability to generate relevant and meaningful meta-data for OER;
• Communication and research skills to be able to share information about OER, in the form of web updates, newsletters, brochures, case studies, research reports, and so on. This will include the full spectrum of skills required for such communication activities, from researching and documenting best practices, core concepts to graphic design and layout expertise.
• Knowledge of and the skills to deploy standardized global taxonomies for describing resources in different disciplines and domains;
• Technical skills to develop and maintain web platforms to host OER online, as well as to share the content and meta-data with other web platforms;
• Website design and management skills to create online environments in which content can be easily discovered and downloaded.

Modification of OER for some specific purpose

In most instances, a user has enormous latitude to adapt OER to suit contextual needs where the licence allows adaptation. If, however, the license restricts adaptation (as, for example, the Creative Commons license with a ‘No Derivatives’ restriction does), others may not alter the resource in any way. It has to be used ‘as is’. This right is not reserved often in OER.

The vast majority of published OER welcome users to adapt the original resource.

Common ways in which OER can be changed include the following:

• Mixing: A number of OER are mixed together and additional content is added to create an altogether new resource. This is common when course designers need to develop materials and resources to match a local curriculum or programme. A common concern is that it is rare to find existing OER that fit perfectly ‘as is’.

• Adaption: This occurs when one OER is used and multiple adaptations are developed to suit multiple contexts. It could be that the language is translated into others but usually adaptation requires local case studies/examples to be added to make the materials relevant to students in a particular context.

• Asset extraction: It is also possible to extract only some of the assets of a resource or course and use them in a completely different context. This is especially true of media elements such as photos, illustrations, and graphs, as developers often lack the skills or resources to develop their own versions of commonly used visual aids.

In many ways, the fact that changes may be made to the original is what makes OER – compared with other forms of copyrighted materials – especially useful to programme developers.

Conclusion

Online communities have demonstrated the now indisputable power and value of lots of people working collaboratively towards a common cause. And doing this in education has the potential to re-focus educational systems, restoring the core values of building and sharing knowledge that underpin good education, and systematically encouraging us to work with and learn from one another.

OER encapsulates a potential vision for educational systems globally wherein individual educators, and then increasingly entire departments and institutions, come together in common online spaces  to start sharing the materials they have produced, in an effort ultimately to ensure that all the material which students need to complete their studies successfully can be accessed – legally – without any costs of licensing. There are vast quantities of such material already available across the world, from which no-one is generating any meaningful commercial return – and many more being produced every week. These represent a common intellectual capital that should be unlocked to drive and support education rather than being kept locked away.

The potential of OER includes bringing transparency to educational processes, facilitating collaborations between educators and students at different institutions, and establishing a new economic model for procuring and publishing learning materials. Ultimately, a key to its success will be to demonstrate that, in the medium to long term, OER will help over-stretched educators to manage their work more effectively, rather than adding new work requirements to their job description.

However, successful OER initiatives will be those that can work immediately and add educational value within the existing ICT infrastructure constraints of any participating institutions . Proving the potential of a concept that will only have an impact when  these infrastructural constraints are removed is of little value to higher educational institutions in the short to medium term.

Thus, the value of OER projects and initiatives should be measured, in practical terms, against the extent to which they advance core educational objectives; and the principles of operation that govern OER communities should be driven by this imperative. Education is a social investment, and should be protected as such if it is truly to fulfil its potential in creating a more equal world. This makes it critical to find practical ways to build business models that will ensure the success of the online educational commons. Critically, we would do well to accept that – until this new model is established – it is likely that we will need to retain open minds and a spirit of compromise in engaging the interests of different parties seeking to open access to educational content.

At its most effective, creating and sharing OER is essentially about working together towards a common cause, whether this be within a single faculty or across a global network. Sharing materials that others can adapt and use recognizes the value inherent in team work and the improvements in thinking that will emerge from such collaboration. Doing this openly, using the already proven innovations of the Internet to facilitate sharing of content, presents a practical way to use cooperation to find simple solutions to pressing problems we face in education.

If educators start doing this in large numbers, the values of the systems for which they work will catch up, as all systems ultimately are simply a codification of how people have agreed to work and interact with one another. Consequently, rewards and incentives will shift to reflect appreciation for sharing and communal building at the expense of individualism and unhealthy competition. Conversely, if we wait for systemic policies to change before we start collaborating, then we have only ourselves to blame if the system’s values are never shifted.

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V. (P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Good communication skills are indispensable for the success of any professional. If one wants to reach out to people, he or she has to speak their language. The English language, in particular, has become essential in the lives of young people who aspire to advance their careers anywhere in the world. English language learning has therefore become a must for any Indian student today.

It is required of any learner to have a good command of the language for communication purposes, with clarity and accuracy being vital for effective and efficient communication. What helps one to acquire such proficiency in a language is the process and the method of learning that language.

Language learning is quite different from learning any other subject. It is not limited to writing an examination paper and getting marks or award. The four skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing have to be put into practice since having the ability to communicate well is the central purpose in learning any language. Communication entails the student’s capability to listen attentively to the exact meaning and to respond with appropriate words and with clear pronunciation.

We can, however, describe what language is, language is a medium of communication. Communication implies carrying of message or receiving of message. The importance of English is not because of its more users but what it is used for. In the present century English has gained a position. It is commonly used in many fields. English language makes the people to know what is happening around the world.

There are several components necessary to master a language. It is not just about being able to read and understand certain words. It also entails mastery of the spoken language. There are language learners who learn how to read and write fast. However, if they are asked to talk, they could barely pronounce the words right. This is true especially in learning the English language. This is the reason why  language laboratories are essential.

The curriculum of the present educational system in India does not have a laboratory session for arts subjects. Only those who study science subjects have practical work, which is undertaken in a laboratory. Hence, a laboratory for language learning is something new to Indian students, whereas it is very common in Western countries to train children in the laboratory to enrich their language learning experiences.

In the current digital age, we are all connected regardless of the geographic distance. Advancement in technology has metaphorically brought the world into our living room in the form of TV or internet which allow us to watch events happening in other countries or talk to friends and family living in another continents via internet. As a result, we are exposed to different languages, cultures and traditions of people from all over the world. As we live in multilingual and multicultural world, language lab can greatly help students to learn language of their choice, as it will allow students to learn at their own pace. They can record and assess their performance to make sure that they are paying attention to all aspects of phonetics.

In today’s e world the basic but the most expensive skill required is to handle the English Language efficiently. It silently reveals the caliber of the individual in their profession which in turn contributes to career growth.

The language lab provides access to native-speakers via audio-video aids so that they learn correctly. Given large number of students pursue higher studies outside their home country; language lab would help them in studying the language of the country where they are planning to pursue their higher education.. As strong communication skills are essential in almost all of the professional careers, language lab can help in acquiring this important skill.

Language Laboratory

Laboratories in schools might only be associated with science subjects. This serves as their workplace to experiment on specific subjects. However, this is also necessary for language learning. This provides an avenue for the students to improve the way they pronounce the words and be corrected by the teacher whenever necessary. Generally laboratories were used in India for the science subjects. With technological advancement and exposure to western models of teaching and learning, there has been a spurt in the growth of language laboratories in colleges.

The language laboratory is an audio or audio-visual installation used as an aid in modern language teaching. They can be found, amongst other places, in schools, universities and academies. Perhaps the first lab was at the University of Grenoble. (Ruby,W.B. 2004) In the 1950s up until the 1990s, they were tape based systems using reel to reel or (latterly) cassette. Current installations are generally multimedia PCs. The original language labs are now very outdated. They allowed a teacher to listen to and manage student audio via a hard-wired analogue tape deck based systems with ‘sound booths’ in fixed locations.

According to American Heritage Dictionary 4, language laboratory is: “A room designed for learning foreign languages and equipped with tape recorders, videocassette recorders, or computers connected to monitoring devices enabling the instructor to listen and speak to the students individually or as a group”.

The Webster’s New World College Dictionary definition of the language laboratory is: “A classroom in which students learning a foreign language can practice sound and word patterns individually or under supervision with the aid of audio equipment, etc”(Language

Lab in Webster’s New World College Dictionary). Cesar (2006) defined language laboratory as: “…a teaching tool requiring the implementation of well-constructed tasks based on the students ‘needs”. Beder (2008) in defining language laboratory stated:“A Language Laboratory is a room in a school, college, training institute, university or academy that contains special equipment to help students learn foreign languages by listening to tapes or CDs, watching videos, recording themselves, etc.”.

Mambo(2004) affirmed that:

“language laboratories are environments designed to enhance foreign language learners’ skills. Generally equipped with analog and digital hardware, and software (tape recorders, videocassette recorders, or computers), they provide practices in listening comprehension, speaking (listen and repeat), with the goal to reinforce the grammar, vocabulary and functions (grammatical structures) presented in class. “

Characteristics of a good Language Laboratory

There are different features of language lab, which make the students to have interactive session. Few are summarized here.

Attention : Attention on subject is increased resulting in better retention of the concepts. As the language lab allows the student to listen to the program stimulus individually, each individual student’s attention is focused on the program material being studied, ultimately increasing the attention span of the student and teaching the student to listen and analyze the content of the lesson.

Acoustics : It provides equal opportunity to all the students to hear the instructor irrespective of place where they are seated. There will be less miscommunication because of direct nature of the sound transmission. The language lab provides all students no matter where they are seated in the room with equal opportunity to hear the instructor and to be heard by the instructor. None of the lesson material is misheard due to the direct nature of the sound transmission   Each student can listen to the lesson material at a level set by themselves for their own comfort.

Building Student Experience : Students can build on their existing experiences and gain further knowledge of computers while learning in the computer language lab. Practicing with systems, software and new applications enhances exportable skills. The more experience students have with computer technology, the more successful they will be in the “real world”.

Developing  Listening skills : Listening skills are an essential element in becoming linguistically fluent. The language lab helps students develop good listening skills and aids the process of communication.. Furthermore, it develops the listening and communication skills, since they hear correct pronunciation through their headphones.

Excitement : Students become excited when using learning lab systems. The student’s attention is heightened and the boredom of repetitive learning is lifted. Learner will show more enthusiasm and excitement in learning lesson because of learning lab system.

Efficiency: The teacher can monitor individual students (and talk to them) much more efficiently than in a regular classroom. Usually in a regular classroom all other students stop speaking when the teacher communicates with an individual student. In a lab they will continue working without interruption.

Appropriate use of time: The language lab makes most efficient use of time, improving the teacher/student time ratio and allowing the instructor to maximize the use of time in a given lesson. Efficient use of time and learning efficiency is much more than usual classroom learning.

Improve discipline : The instructor can improve the discipline of the class by privately conversing with individual students who are being objectionable. By utilizing a system of seat management, any equipment faults or acts of minor vandalism can be reported by the next student entering the booth. If not reported by the student, they become the target of the investigation when the next student enters the booth. Students have great difficulty talking to each other when wearing headsets.

Individualization: Labs provide the capability for dividing the class into several groups. These groups can be listening to different programs on varying subject matter and at different levels of interactivity. This set up fosters more interactive session between students and teacher.

Internet access: The new generation of multimedia systems allows the students to be connected to the World Wide Web and to be able to access information on a global basis. This allows instantaneous access to information worldwide and communication in the following ways:

v  Access to foreign literature and museums for research and study.

v  Direct communication with other students from their country and culture of study.

v  Person-to-person communication through email, chat rooms, internet phone, etc.

v  Student-to-student video conferencing with local and foreign classes.

v  Viewing English and target language web sites.

v  Watching live TV broadcasts and listening to foreign radio broadcasts.

Native speaker/ Different voice: The lab provides the students with a variety of model voices rather than just the voice of the teacher (who is often not a native speaker). All modern systems have a Model Voice feature allowing a native speaker to converse and be used as a model voice subject for the rest of the class.

Overcoming shyness: Lab systems tend to make students more anonymous. Language labs motivate students to talk freely and lose the shyness when talking in front of their friends.

Oral testing: Oral test features allow instructors to test students with a question or stimulus and only record the student’s answer. Instructors can then play back the recorded answers at a later time for grading, without having to listen to the questions.

Privacy : It also provides the privacy that encourages the shy students to speak without any hesitation. In addition instructor can speak to individual or group of students in privacy without interrupting rest of class.The headset/microphone provides students with a psychological privacy that promotes their speaking ability. It reduces the inhibitions felt in normal classroom situations.

Provide feedback  : The instructor can easily generate records of attendance, grading and oral responses to true/false or multiple choice taped tests. An automated record keeping process can save much time. . The student’s progress can also be monitored regularly so that teacher can provide feedback based on individual pace and ability.

Record/Comparing: The students have the ability to record their own voices along with the master stimulus. Each student can be working interactively on different segments within the same program or be working with completely different program material.

Role playing exercises: Using the random pairing/random grouping feature that all advanced modern learning systems incorporate, instructors can generate a variety of exercises structured around role-playing. Students can be paired or grouped together in small numbers and hold conversational practice with each other. Due to the random selection of student partners the students interest level is always high in anticipation of who their paired partner is likely to be. The instructor can also allow the students to listen to a stimulus from the console allowing the students to practice with each other while responding to the master stimulus.

Self-pacing: The students may work through the lesson material at a pace suited to their ability. The lab is for them a personal tutor. Thus allowing the classroom as student-centered approach. The students can access digitally stored programs, exercises and tests that can be completed at their own pace and at a time they decide is appropriate.

Teacher monitoring: Since the teacher is not concentrating on producing the next question or drill, he/she can concentrate more on the student responses. The instructor has more time to produce materials and oversee class activities due to the automatically, rather than manually, controlled instructor console features. Teacher can look after each student, which is not possible in case of the regular classroom. In a lab instructor can communicate with many students by pressing a mouse key in order to talk with students

Varity: The language lab provides variety from regular classroom situations. The teacher’s role is changed and the students are more active for longer periods of time. The use of visual stimulus coupled with selective audio materials increases the attention span of the students. The language lab brings variety in teaching learning process instead of boring verbal centered teaching.

The Basic aims of the language Laboratory

Many of you may have already used a language lab as a student or perhaps as a teacher however you will see that the language lab has changed for the better. The opportunities and learning potential that a new Language lab can offer is vast however you may be pleased to hear that some things stay the same.

The basic aims of the language lab are the same as they ever were and they are;

To improve listening skills – classroom and individual with high quality audio

To improve speaking skills – individual, paired, groups

To present and demonstrate language skills – both screen and voice in seconds

To monitor and guide students – discrete monitoring and intervention as required

Empirical evidence from users over many years has shown that language labs help to;

Increase the number of students taking languages

Attract more boys to study languages

Significantly improve the Speaking Test results obtained

Encourage peer-assessment and parental involvement

The general Layout of Language Laboratory

We live in a multilingual as well as in a multicultural world, which is getting smaller to the size of a village as a result of the expansion of science and technology. The language laboratory was established to help one to use technology efficiently to communicate. It has a considerable role in improving listening skill by obtaining a sensibility to the sounds and rhythm of a language

Wilson and Thayalan (2007) highlighted some of the features language laboratory are given below:

• A tool designed for teaching any language.
• Effective communicative training programmes for the general public, private and corporate sectors, junior and senior level officers can be given through the lab.
• Efficient teaching programs of communication for the students.
• Experts are able to use the language laboratory for creating and editing technical resources for teaching language.
• General documentation, software documentation and all forms of technical documentation can be done.
• It helps students to be familiar with the different aspects of the language like pronunciation, accent, stress and all other aspects of the phonetics of a language.
• Online lessons and oral examinations can be carried out through the language laboratory .
• Web-content creation, the setting up of in-house news magazines, corporate publicity and identity, and teaching materials can be generated through the language laboratory.

Considering the above referred features the general lay-out must provide the following:

The layout of language laboratories formed from a teacher’s console and students’ booths. The teacher’s console has the managing functions and the student booth equipped with facilities that permit him/her to receive the recorded lessons and to listen to them. The focal features of a language lab are the following:

Evaluate :Students can listen to their pronunciation and do a review evaluation to measure their advancement as well as evaluate their language with that of the teacher.

Listen: Absorbing language skills faultlessly by listening to the normal pronunciation.

Monitor & Guide :The teacher can supervise each student separately without disturbing other students and direct him/her directly.

Record : Through a direct comparison of the learners’ voice with the teacher’s one, all ambiguous aspects of the spoken language can be picked up easily.

Respond : Repeating the lessons and having them evaluated by the teacher.

The Features of a Teacher’s Console

A console is the desk like part of an organ that contains the keyboard, stops, and a central control panel for a mechanical, electrical, or electronic system, in other words, a console is a keyboard or a panel for keys of an electronic or mechanical equipment.

Teacher’s console is a desk like part in the language laboratory which is endowed with a broadcasting system that is utilized to control the teacher and students’ talks, it makes the communication between the teacher and a precise student, individually possible with just a button blow, in addition to a headphone, and a microphone. In some laboratories the teacher’s console is provided with a computer which can be used for supervising students’ work and activities.

The teacher console acts as a control board enables the teacher to:

 

ü  Enables the teacher to interact with students in private without disturbing others.

ü  Encourage the students separately, as well.

ü  Gives the role of the moderator of the group discussions.

ü  Giving instructions to individual student with personalized attention

ü  Listen to the student’s voice independently.

ü  Permits the teacher to include a wide range of language learning materials and activities

ü  Prevent actions at a selected student’s booth for giving instructions.

ü  Provide options for listening to the native speakers

ü  Supervise the activities of students while they practice the lessons.

Features of Student’s Booth (console)

Booths are small semi-private enclosed spaces where learners seat to receive and listen to the lesson directed by the teacher. In general, there are ten to twenty booths in a language laboratory. In a language laboratory each student has: earphone ,a microphone, a booth and a tape recorder. Students’ booths enables the student to:

• Allows the students to speak and being corrected at the same time in the language lab’s time session.
• Enables them to self – evaluate themselves.
• Listen to pre-recorded material spoken by native voices,
• Listen to the native speaker’s records and pronunciations.
• Permits to recite simultaneously and receive correction in the laboratory period”
• Ready to play back the recording of his own repetition in alternation with the native model
• Repeat the lesson determined by the teacher, record, and replay, can be part of a group discussion .
• Repeats what he hears in pauses,
• Transport or carry pre-recorded lessons from the teacher’s console

From the above descriptions we can summarize the features of the students’ booth in this points:

v  All the contemporary activities in the student console could be paused if the teacher tries to communicate with students, and could be sustained after teacher finishes the communication.

v  Private Interaction would be possible because every students is connected to the teacher separately.

v  Self-evaluating, a student could assess his/her pronunciation by recording his/her voice and comparing it with that of the natives (Language Lab Software).

v  Students can listen, repeat and compare the repeated lessons any number of times using student console.

v  Students can look for the help of teacher by sending him a call using the call teacher facility.

v  Students can receive and listen to the determined lesson.

Language Lab Design

Procedure of the Use of Language Laboratories

A language laboratory can be utilized for teaching or learning through a teacher’s console. The functions of a teacher’s console are staying in control, reinforcing learning, teaching with software that is approachable, and ensuring the best learning results.

a. Staying in Control:

Staying in control includes various activities, like monitoring students’ work and activities; locking cursors and keyboards to focus attention on a given task; shutting down, logging off, or restarting student computer sets; etc.

b. Reinforcing Learning:

Teachers can use communication tools that are familiar for their students, such as text messaging or chatting. They can also communicate with them in an engaging way by creating more opportunities to interact in the target language. Learners can reinforce their language in various activities. They can revise pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, sentence structures, and conversations.

c. Teaching with Software that is approachable:

Approachable software is one with which teachers will be perfectly at ease in their teaching activities. It is used as the interfaces which are easy to use and activity-driven. No specialized Instructional technology skills are needed for this interface.

d. Ensuring the Best Learning Result:

The best learning result can be reinforced by the existence of language learning software. The language learning software gives learners access to resources for independent or supplemental learning and study. This unique learning-on-demand feature creates additional learning opportunities and reinforces classroom activities. It is possible to carry out tests, practice tests, and get results in individualized manners.

Steps for Improving Listening in The Language Laboratory

Madhavi(2009) suggested six stages that can be done to improve students’ listening skills in the language   laboratory. They are understanding the setting, pre-teaching unfamiliar English words, focusing on listening, comprehending, analyzing, and giving graded listening tasks.

a. Understanding the Setting : After the first listening, students should be able to understand the location of the recording. Thinking about the setting encourages students to go on to guess about the contents of what the speakers are intending to say or will say.

b. Pre-teaching Unfamiliar  Words: Teachers may choose to introduce the setting before the students listen. This provides an opportunity to introduce and explain the sort of language that might be heard in that setting. This language is listed on the board and students listen and mark what they actually hear.

c. Focusing on Listening: the teacher should line up a number of Listening tasks before the students listen so it gives them a reason for listening and focus their attention on.

d. Comprehending: Each student has a different level of comprehension from another student. The teacher gives students a number of questions equally to groups of students after listening, students share their answers for comprehension.

e. Analyzing: After students have understood the general idea and some important details of a recording, they can analyze it in more details and examine the way in which the speakers have expressed their ideas.

f. Giving Graded Listening Tasks: Teachers often teach listening by ranking comprehension from understanding generally to identifying specific information. They   can also grade the listening tasks from easy to more difficult by the forms of the questions. They use and evaluate them based on the kind of production by the learners in the form of writing or speaking.

Model of the Language Laboratory Lesson Suggested by Dwyer, T. P

In his book Teaching and Learning Dwyer(2010) stated: Lessons in the laboratory must be planned in such a way that the overall objective of the lesson is to bring about a transfer of any mechanical skill taught in the laboratory to a functional context reflecting the way the student has to use that skill outside the classroom in real life.

From the perspective of Dwyer what language laboratory lessons must do, is to stress from the beginning on putting the language in its context (the communicative setting) and functional use of the skill to be learnt(listening in our case),in other words, there should be a purposeful use of the skill in the learning process, then provide practice of the skill itself. For listening, listening to a tape recorder and dialogues performed by native speakers, and lastly provide practice in transferring the skill to a practical situation.

To make it real, students could record their voices and check pronunciation. He also stated: “These three activities are elements of the one lesson with the major objective being ensuring the student’s ability to use the skill in a communicative setting”

According to him the model lesson proposed can be drawn up in this way:

a. Input: teacher’s demonstration of the skill to be learnt in a communicative situation (done away from the laboratory booths).

b. Practice: modeling practice of the specific skill(listening in our case), Self- practice by the students, following a given model, Performance monitored by the teacher (done in the laboratory booths)

c. Application: students’ demonstration in a communicative situation of the skill learnt (listening in our case), open dialogues, group work, role play. The teacher acts as adviser, offering encouragement.

Kinds of Language Laboratories

The language laboratory assists educators in delivering foreign language instruction, and has been through many developmental stages over the years.

Few kinds of laboratories are being focused on here

Traditional/Conventional laboratory.

This is the earliest form of language laboratory developed. It makes use of a recorder and cassette tapes to help language learners. The tape usually contains texts or stories read aloud by a native language speaker. There are also listening and speaking exercises that follow in each chapter. . The teacher plays back the tape and the learners listen to it and learn the material

Here, the teacher’s console is located in front of the array of booths, Distribution switches enable the teacher to determine which students will hear which source.

Lingua Phone Laboratory

A lingua-phone laboratory is like conventional laboratory, with a little modernization . The students are given a headphones to listen to the audiocassettes that are played back. As regards to the conventional laboratory, the distractions in this laboratory are less so there is certain amount of clarity in listening There is also a modernized lingua phone laboratory available today, which uses an electronic device that works as a cassette player with all the features of a normal cassette player on the left side, and as a repeater on the right side that helps one to record one’s voice and replay it for comparison.

Computer Assisted Language Laboratory (CALL)

There are two brands of this laboratory: Computer Assisted Language Laboratory (CALL) and Web Assisted Language Laboratory (WALL).

The first one that is CALL uses the computer to teach language. Computer Assisted Language Laboratory. This is one of the most modern speech laboratories available today. The entire course module is already stored in the computer.  The language course resources are already downloaded on the computer and are presented to students according to the features available in the system.

The development of CALL has been gradual, and this development has been categorized into three distinct phases: Behavioristic CALL, Communicative CALL and Integrative CALL . They can also practice different types of exercises to avoid boredom. Most of all, they can listen to different speakers when practicing the language. In fact, they can also learn grammar and other language skills with this modern laboratory. Though the development of CALL has been gradual, its acceptance has come slowly and unevenly.

Compared with CALL, WALL is almost the same as CALL with one difference that is, in WALL system, computers are connected to the internet. In WALL, the teacher as well as students can browse any resources from the internet during the teaching learning process. (Wilson, & Thayalan, 2007). There are many and different other kinds of language laboratories like The Dial Access Lab, Mobile Lab, Wireless Lab…etc.

Mobile Lab:

This is basically a console on wheels with storage spaces for headsets. It is best used within a single building where it can be moved from one room to another.While the advantage of the mobile lab is that any classroom may be turned into a lab, the drawback is that the equipment is heavy and hampers free movement. It requires time and energy to set up.

The Dial Access Lab:

needs more spaces than the Conventional Lab. It also needs more technicians at any given time. It is basically a broadcast operation. Depending on the size of operation, any number of students can access a particular tape at any given time. Usually, a number of rooms are used to provide space for the different programs mounted; video and /or computer interface may be added again, depending on the size of the operation, The student needs a minimum of equipment, namely, an activated headset, a dial or touch-tone selector, and controls for a remote selector.

Wireless Lab:

The wires connecting the sources to student headsets are replaced by radio transmission in a wireless laboratory. The console contains a small transmitter that serves this purpose. Monitoring and intercom are NOT possible with this lab. It combines well with the Mobile Lab, though the important functions of monitoring and intercom are forfeited.

Remote Controlled Lab

This arrangement enables students to control specific tape decks located elsewhere at remote locations. The actual equipment installation is similar to that of a conventional laboratory room. The electronics are relatively more complex, though. Here, the student can; start, stop, backtrack, and rewind at will, without actually including combinations e.g. Listen,Respond, and Record.

Both library operations are available. The student is freed from handling tapes. Maintenance problems are reduced as students cannot damage tape decks. Semi-automatic operation of the lab, without much supervision, is possible. Remote decks may be permanently loaded with the current tape enabling students to go to certain booths and immediately work in library mode.

Advantages of Language Lab

Using a language lab has many benefits:

Gets into deeper side of language

This application gets into deeper side of language rather than covering its outer layer, which are mostly seen in the year old teaching practices. The practical sessions provide the chance for understanding the clear concept regarding right pronunciation, different accent and other aspects of language learning too.

The language lab is available in many standards

The language lab is available in many standards which can be used for teaching the people in different sectors. Some of the training programmes are included at junior, senior school level, private, public and also for the people at corporate sectors. The language lab does provide additional assistance like producing documents, editing, creating documents for teaching, students’ reference etc.

Language labs allow for diversity in the classroom

Language laboratories provide teacher attention to students, especially in the case of schools with different levels because as interactive courses, language labs are tailored to the individual needs of students. On the other hand, thanks to monitoring and evaluation in real time, the teacher knows exactly what course objectives pose major difficulties for the student time and can reinforce the class accordingly.

A language lab is  practical

Language labs provide practice in an entertaining and interactive way to acquire the 4 main language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students learn more comprehensively through a language lab.

Students learn much faster in the language lab

Language labs’ interactive courses help students learn much faster than in a regular classroom setting. The methodology of the classroom language network uses a progressive model to promote natural learning, where students learn the different concepts of language in an intuitive way.

The teacher takes on a more important role in the language lab

The language lab  it provides supplementary materials that only facilitate the role of the instructor rather than compete with it. The teacher can then focus on the important parts of the course rather than waste time explaining everything. The structure of the language lab courses also facilitate the work teacher puts in when preparing lessons and allows them to prepare them in less time and with a greater volume of interactive resources.

Labs foster communication in the classroom

Language labs also encourage communication student-teacher as well as student-student with activities and exercises essential to oral communication and the understanding of the language. The labs include tools for creating groups, host conversations via chat, promote messages on the board, access to a community of students who are also studying the same language, etc. Since language learning in laboratories can be done privately and at their own pace, students who are shy or quite slow in learning the language, become more confident.

Learning the language without a time constraint.

It gives different and rare experience for the user to hear the English Language distinctly and precisely. While using the language lab the students get the advantage of listening and learning the language without a time constraint.

Assess and improve the speech in English through the self help features.

Another advantage of the language lab is that it helps one to assess and improve the speech in English through the self help features. These features include model pronunciation of words, also the students can use it in record and playback mode that counterpart the user in self assessment. The best part of the laboratory is that it gives the users the freedom to learn the language according to their convenience without an instructor.

Allows learners to pronounce certain words correctly

It allows learners to pronounce certain words correctly. Small details like accent, stress and blending of words can also be corrected. Kids and adults suffering from speech disorders can also use the laboratory to minimize the problems. Not only primary students can learn from this laboratory. It is also designed for junior and senior executives who wish to improve their speaking proficiency.

Auditory Oriented:

The direct sound transmission gives step by step guidance from the teacher to the heads of the students with crystal clear clarity.  The Lab software is more attention enthralling for the students, where they are engaged with individual systems.

Comprehensive quickly:

The Lab increases the pace of comprehension as students coaching is purely based on the level of study. The Lab regulates the language through the different thoughts created in the mind of the students.

Effective learning, Focus Veracity: By using text, audio and video can easily be integrated with  actuality in every day situations. The lab provides to learn the foreign language practice in a focused setting that eliminates the feelings of self-consciousness.

Have the self evaluation:

The students can do a periodical self evaluation to measure the progress as well as evaluate his/her language with that of the expert. The students can record their own voice and play back the recordings, interact with the each other and the teacher, and store the results. The automated learning environment removes one’s fear and creates a happy learning situation. Learn the need: The lab fulfills the need of the learner that is learning the language skills in an effective way .

Listening skills are primary in becoming fluent.

Even Level II language labs (the simplest type of system) help develop listening skills, allowing the students to focus on the spoken word and therefore enhancing their ability to repeat and understand the spoken language.

Provide Individualistic Learning

The ability of each student to speak at the same time and yet be audibly isolated from each other allows efficient use of time and a higher degree of practice and learning. All of the students can practice simultaneously (rather than one at a time) thus increasing the student’s actual practice and fluency.

Disadvantages of Language Laboratory

Although of the various advantages of the language laboratory, it has also a few disadvantages or let us say difficulties, which are related to the high cost, it needs skilled instructors, and it makes unsuccessful instruction in some cases.

• The language lab requires a high cost to be built in the university and to be kept on going. It is very expensive to set up the language lab and country like India there is no lab syllabus and usually language classes are conducted as theory.  Furthermore, it needs more money for resource management.
• The language lab would not let the English teaching-learning process be effective if there are some troubles with the technology of it. Worse even, it becomes useless when the electricity is off.
• The language laboratory needs an qualified teacher to be able to activate all the technology provided in it. Universities, or more precisely, faculties of
• English has to employ technicians who would keep the equipment in the language laboratory always in a high-quality conditions.
• These days student does not have enough patience to listen to pronunciation and practice them so the recording of pronunciation is useless.
• As the teacher listens to students randomly the response can be unorganized and ineffective as there are many students to attend to.
• The teacher should be well trained in executing the language lab effectively. Given the nature of teaching, a language teacher may need an assistant in taking care of the technological part while teacher attends to the instructional components.
• As technology changes rapidly, there should be a provision for upgrade in the medium of instructions, which can be burden for school in terms of finances.

Conclusion

The language laboratory is a very helpful tool for practicing and assessing one’s speech in any language. It provides a facility which allows the student to listen to model pronunciation, repeat and record the same, listen to their performance and compare with the model, and do self-assessment. Since the language laboratory gives every learner of any language freedom to learn at their own pace, it is flexible and does not necessarily require a teacher all the time. At the same time, it is possible for teachers to provide assistance individually and collectively. The language laboratory allows every participant his or her privacy to speak and listen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V. (P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Since a long time ago, simulation has been used by human and even by animasl to train their young ones for adaptation with their environment .For example At first, chess was assumed as the original form of the war game, later on it developed into more serious and sophisticated military game to train new soldiers. The simulation technique has been applied successfully in the last decade in education .The advantages of the technique has been appreciated all over the world by educationist. The national games council was established in 1961 in USA. The International “simulation and games Association “was formed in Germany in1970. It is the evidence of the importance of simulation technique.

The use of role-plays and simulations within higher education is not a new development. Examples can be found stretching back over fifty years across a variety of disciplines including law, psychology, business and politics . Both methods fall into a larger body of teaching strategies often-labeled ‘active learning techniques’. This form of teaching also includes group discussions, debates, collaborative projects and internships. In essence this can include any method that asks students to help develop and apply their own knowledge (Shaw 2010).

Meaning and Definitions of Simulation technique/ Skill

The word ‘Simulation’ means to imitate exactly. Interest is aroused in the students through, Roe LE-PLAYING, while teaching. This skill is used by teachers and students in the class room by playing some role without any preliminary training i.e. without any rehearsal. This way simulation is a form of Role Playing where in student teachers display this skill spontaneously.

What is defined as a role-play and/or a simulation is not immediately clear from the teaching literature. For the terms are often used interchangeably or confused with similar methods such as ‘games’ and ‘gaming’ (Shaw 2010). However, there seems to be a convergence on the correct terminology. As Krain and Shadle (2006) have suggested simulations are best considered as those cases in which students are placed ‘within a reasonable representation of a real environment within which political or social interactions occur”.

Simulation in teaching has recently entered the field of education. It is used at different level of instruction. The teacher is trained practically and also imparted theoretical learning. The student teacher needs to be trained in simulated situations before sending him to schools for practice teaching. In this way he will be able to teach in good manner.

Alternatively role-play exercises typically provide fewer set instructions regarding the roles the students are asked to play, and instead students are asked to determine how they would respond in a certain context (Shaw 2010). In this sense the student should “inhabit the issue (making it more real and immediate) and think beyond their own perspectives” . Both role-plays and simulations can take place in either the classroom or within an online/virtual environment. Games are something different, a context with clearly defined rules regarding how players can win the exercise .

Simulation refers to the imitation of real-world activities and processes in a safe environment. Simulations aim to provide an experience as close to the ‘real thing’ as possible; however, a simulated activity has the advantage of allowing learners to ‘reset’ the scenario and try alternative strategies and approaches. This allows learners to develop experience of specific situations by applying their wider learning and knowledge.

The approach is frequently used in disciplines where students need to develop skills and experience but safety issues or cost considerations prevent this happening in the real-world.

Simulations are instructional scenarios where the learner is placed in a “world” defined by the teacher. They represent a reality within which students interact. The teacher controls the parameters of this “world” and uses it to achieve the desired instructional results. Students experience the reality of the scenario and gather meaning from it. A simulation is a form of experiential learning. It is a strategy that fits well with the principles of  constructivist learning and teaching.

Simulations take a number of forms. They may contain elements of:

• a game
• a role-play, or
• an activity that acts as a metaphor.

Simulations are characterized by their non-linear nature and by then controlled ambiguity within which students must make decisions. The inventiveness and commitment of the participants usually determines the success of a simulation.

Definition of Simulation method

Simulation is an old word with a new application. For a time it meant “deception” or “misrepresentation”, or more bluntly, lying. It now applies to a variety of technical (or pseudo-technical) activities in which models of, or analogs to, real situations are created for the purpose of testing or teaching, and is based on the philosophy of “let’s try it out and see what happens”

Simulation and Gaming refers to a series of instructional designs that use elements from simulation and gaming. Simulation and Gaming can be done with board games, computer assisted board games, or fully computerized environments.

According to Fink, “Simulation is the controlled representation of reality”.

According to Tansey. “Simulation is in the all-inclusive term which contains those activities which produce artificial environment for the partcipants in  the activity. It is reproduction of reality”.

According to Hall (2011), “”Total enterprise” simulations or management or business games.

The Simulation & Gaming journal defines Simulation/gaming in its broadest meaning, “to encompass such areas as simulation, computerized simulation, internet simulation, gaming, simulation/gaming, serious games, educational games, training games, e-games, internet games, video games, policy exercises, day-in-the-life simulations, planning exercises, debriefing, analytic discussion, post-experience analysis, modeling, virtual reality, game theory, role-play, role-playing, play, active learning, experiential learning, learning from experience, toys, augmented reality, playthings, structured exercises, education games, alternative purpose games, edutainment, digital game-based learning, immersive learning, brain games, social impact games, games for change, games for good, synthetic learning environments, synthetic task environments.” D Schneider believes that Role Play Simulations belong to the same category

According to Dumlekar (2004) “ A simulation is a replica of reality. As a training program, it enables adult participants to learn through interactive experiences. Simulations contain elements of experiential learning and adult learning [...] Simulations would therefore be useful to learn about complex situations (where data is incomplete, unreliable or unavailable), where the problems are unfamiliar, and where the cost of errors in making decisions is likely to be high. Therefore, simulations offer many benefits. They accelerate and compress time to offer a foresight of a hazy future. They are experimental, experiential, and rigorous. They promote creativity amongst the participants, who develop a shared view of their learning and behaviors. Above all, making decisions have no real-life cost implications.”.

Characteristics of Simulation Teaching

Simulated experience is a naturally occurring activity in children in all cultures. Left to themselves, children spontaneously simulate (or pretend) aspects of their present or future life experience.

As a tool in training, simulation has four principal characteristics:

1. It starts with an analogous situation.- The first characteristic, that of analogous circumstances, provides a setting in which a learner can function. This setting is equivalent to the assumptions in a scientific investigation; the “given” in a mathematical model; the equipment and the rules in a game; the definition of conflict and personal characteristics in role playing; and the independent variable in an experiment. In education for decision making it represents the “real” environment in which the learner is to function, and is assumed to have enough of the characteristics of the real environment to provide practice in meeting contingencies which could occur in the learner’s life.

2. It provides for low risk input.- The second characteristic of simulation in training is the provision for tentative or low risk input. The learner can make a response without irrevocable commitment and without destroying the circumstances which are the basis of the simulation exercise. This allows the student to make disastrous mistakes, to “live another day”, and to test alternative actions.

3. It feeds back consequences symbolically. Low risk input leads to the third characteristic of simulation as discussed here: symbolic consequences. The simulation system informs the learner what would have happened had he responded  in the simulated situation.

4. It is replicable-.It delivers a message without modifying the physical or psychological learning climate.

With low risk response and symbolic consequence, the whole simulation exercise is replicable. Replicability provides an opportunity for iterative procedures in arriving at best solutions.

5. Implies teaching aid for learner.- Simulated teaching implies an analysis of teaching act and of the teaching situation from the point of view of the learner.

6. Different Disciplines have Different Simulations.- Every discipline treats the conceptual structure of the simulation differently. To economists, the conceptual structure is typically mathematical. To sociologists, the conceptual structure is typically sets of social interactions. To political scientists, the conceptual structure is often institutional.

7.-Simulations Vary in Style and Complexity.- Simulations may use computer programs that require only a portion of a single class period .Simulations range from attempts to duplicate complex social processes, such as a legislature, to very simple social interactions, such as making eye contact. These simulations may be conducted with computers, pencil-and-paper, or physical models of some natural phenomenon. Some work only with small classes. Some work with all class sizes.

8.-Deep Learning.- Instructional simulations have the potential to engage students in “deep learning” that empowers understanding as opposed to “surface learning” that requires only memorization.

9-. Awareness of the unique circumstances .-  In a simulation, guided by a set of parameters, students undertake to solve problems, adapt to issues arising from their scenario and gain an awareness of the unique circumstances that exist within the confines of the simulation.

Objectives of Simulation method

1-      To modify Teacher behavior  by the use of feedback devices.

2-      To modify   social-communication skills of teacher behavior which are essential for effective teaching.

3-      To develop psychological appreciation of the class room problems

4-       To develop in the student-teacher a basis for handling the problem in the class.

5-      To develop Teacher behavior taxonomy by using simulated teaching technique.

Arts of Simulation in teaching

Simulation on techniques for all their artificiality can often be preferable to putting students in classroom to learn their own or lecturing them in classroom. This is eminently sensible. Simulation removes the risk from the first steps of a new type and enable him to come to terms with demands of a complex skill learning without the stress of the real situation. At the same time it is to be preferred to merely ‘telling’ the student teachers how to teach when he find himself actually in the school.

Simulation in teaching plays a great role, instead of telling the student-teacher ‘does and don’ts ‘he should be put to simulation so that he could prove to be a successful teacher

Following are the arts of simulation in teaching:

• Bodily expression
• Development of all aspects
• Development of expression
• Emotional organization
• Mimic
• Solo-acting

The Benefits of Simulation Method

Much of the early literature centered upon these more active methods of teaching, in particular simulations, was generally focused upon preaching the benefits of this method.

Create an environment where the onus is on the teacher to teach and the student to listen,

For it was suggested that simulations offered a means through which students could engage with complex social processes in a manner not encouraged by merely reading books or listening to lecturers (Shellman 2001: 827). Thus rather than create an environment where the onus is on the teacher to teach and the student to listen, role-plays/simulations force students to apply themselves to a particular situation.

More active method

It difficult for students to become passive during the simulation. Students must submit timely input and not rely on classmates to play for them. This more active method is believed to be better than more passive methods at developing deep learning, and facilitating the development of more innovative and creative thinkers.

Create complex, dynamic processes in the classroom,

For as Smith and Boyer (1996: 690) have suggested, ‘Simulations have the power to recreate complex, dynamic processes in the classroom, allowing students to examine the motivations, behavioral constraints, resources and interactions among institutional actors”.

Fully immersed within real decision-making processes

In this sense it is argued that students can become fully immersed within real decision-making processes, allowing the content of the course to become more relevant as the applicability of certain ideas and concepts become apparent. This deeper immersion is meant to bring about a deeper understanding. Moreover when students become engaged within simulations based upon real world situations, they become immersed in practical examples of abstract theoretical constructs.

Develop Cognitive and Conative powers

Building on this notion a number of scholars have suggested that this form of teaching improves both knowledge retention and long-term student learning. For by engaging students on a more emotional level, this form of teaching creates more enduring and easily recalled memories.

Promote the use of critical and evaluative thinking. Because they are ambiguous or open-ended, they encourage students to contemplate the implications of a scenario. The situation feels real and thus leads to more engaging interaction by learners.

Student Engagement

The second broad group of benefits ascribed to simulations within the literature relates to positive effect that the method produces in terms of student engagement. For the more enjoyable and practical nature of roleplays lead many to suggest that simulations generate greater student participation and satisfaction than the lecture-seminar format (Henley 1993).

Increased class participation

Moreover in addition to increased class participation, it has also been suggested that simulations lead a greater participation in the wider learning process, through shared reflection and discussion amongst students outside of the classroom.

Promote better relations between the student and the teacher

Simulations can also promote better relations between the student and the teacher. By creating a more open, relaxed and collegial atmosphere in the classroom, the increased interactions improve student satisfaction with the teacher. This effect might also be the result of additional benefits that might occur for the instructor.

Foster an exciting, energetic and engaged teaching environment

For simulations can foster an exciting, energetic and engaged teaching environment. This is particularly welcome in classes that are being taught repeatedly and thus have the potential to turn stale without some more exciting and original elements.

Students in a class that used simulations learned a set of concepts in less time

Provide sufficient time for students to reflect on and discuss what they learned from the simulation. There are evidences that students in a class that used simulations learned a set of concepts in less time that students in a traditional, lecture based class. Shute & Glaser (1989).The findings also suggest that upper-division courses that structure the curriculum in terms of scientific inquiry are tailor made for instructional simulations.

Providing a mechanism for quick feedback

Finally from the instructors perspective the benefits of simulations in terms of providing a mechanism through which quick feedback can be provided to the students and in turn gain a feel as to how students are progressing.

Good increase in student participation

It is observed that there is a fairly good increase in student participation, motivation and preparation for simulation exercises. Using measures such as attendance, amount of reading completed, time spent preparing, and desire to continue the specific area of studies, the scholars noted big increases relative to traditional methods of teaching.

Transferable Skills Development

The final broad area of support for simulation based teaching relates to a specific skill set developed through this method that are not generally well cultivated through more traditional methods. For example professions such as law, social work, planning, politics and health care each use some form of simulation to develop, practice and test students ability to apply communicate, argue and negotiate with others in a manner that applies theoretical ideas in a practical sense. In this sense the skills developed are highly transferable, as to communicate and negotiate effectively with others are core life skills.

Promote concept attainment through experiential practice. They help students understand the nuances of a concept. Students often find them more deeply engaging than other activities, as they experience the activity first-hand, rather than hearing about it or seeing it.

Develops more practical skills,

In addition to developing more practical skills, it has also been suggested that simulations can more efficiently redefine attitudes and perceptions of participants. This form of learning is better equipped to foster empathy of others’ positions and thus impact some form of change in actors perceptions of others.

Integrate the course goals

Integrate the course goals into the post-simulation discussion. Simulation helped them understand the course goals or how it may have made the goals more confusing.

When Simulation Is Not Appropriate

„ When the problem can be solved by common sense.

„ When the problem can be solved analytically.

„ If it is easier to perform direct experiments

. „ If cost exceed savings.

„ If resource or time are not available. „ If system behavior is too complex.

… Like human behavior.

Procedural Mechanism of Simulated Teaching

Prior to sending the pupil-teachers to the real classrooms, they must be trained in the artificial environment by simulated teaching technique

Pre requisites forTeaching with Simulations

Effectiveness instructional simulations require:

• Teacher preparation.
• Active student participation
• Post-simulation discussion.

Teacher preparation. The instructional simulations can be very effective in stimulating student understanding. This  require intensive lesson preparation.

The instructional simulations can be very effective in stimulating student understanding. The  simulations require intensive pre-simulation lesson preparation. Lesson preparation varies with the type and complexity of the simulation. However, most expert users argue that teaching simulation work best when:

• Teacher have a clear written statement in the course syllabus about the goals of the simulation and an explanation of how the simulation is tied to the course goals.
• Teacher read ALL the supporting material for the simulation.
• Teacher  do a trial run of the simulation before assigning the simulation to students, when possible.
• Teacher make sure  that  specific facilities support the simulation when these facilities are needed.
• Teacher  integrate instructional simulations with other pedagogies such as Cooperative Learning or Interactive Lecture Demonstration.

Active student participation. The learning effectiveness of instructional simulation rests on actively engaging students in problem solving.

Students learn through instructional simulations when they are actively engaged.

• Students should predict and explain the outcome they expect the simulation to generate.
• Every effort should be made to make it difficult for students to become passive during the simulation. Students must submit timely input and not rely on classmates to play for them.
• Teacher should anticipate ways the simulation can go wrong and include this in their pre-simulation discussion with the class.

Post-simulation discussion. Students need sufficient time to reflect on the simulation results.

Post-simulation discussion with students leads to deeper learning. The teacher  should:

• Provide sufficient time for students to reflect on and discuss what they learned from the simulation.
• Integrate the course goals into the post-simulation discussion.
• Ask students explicitly asked how the simulation helped them understand the course goals or how it may have made the goals more confusing.

Procedural Steps of Simulated Teaching-

The procedure or steps of this technique are as follows:

1. Assignment of Roles:

The first step of this technique is the assignment of roles to the pupil-teachers. All the pupil-teachers have to play all the roles. All the pupils play the roles of teacher, pupil and the supervisor.

2. Selection of Social Skills for Practice:

After assigning the roles in the first step, some specific social skills are selected and discussed. The topics related to these skills are practiced. For practice, those topics are selected in selected social skills “fit”.

3. Preparation of Work Schedule:

After this, it is decided that who should initiate the simulated teaching. When it should be summed up? Who will sum it up? Who will interrupt? etc. hence, such work schedule is decided before-hand.

4. Determination of Observation Technique:

In this step, decision regarding the observation technique is taken. It also includes the types of data to be recorded and their way of interpretation. Hence, this step is related to the procedure of evaluation.

5. Organization of First Practice Session:

After all the preparations, the first practice session is organized and the feedback is provided to all the participant pupil-teachers regarding their teaching work. If the need is felt, some changes can be made for second session. The data regarding the first practice session is recorded so that the evaluation of the teaching behavior can be conducted on the basis of that recorded data. Hence, the sessions go on and everyone gets his turn.

6. Altering the Procedure:

After the first session, necessary changes are made in the procedure. In this, topics are changed. Also, the pupil-teacher, observer and the teaching skills are altered. Hence, in this altered procedure too everyone plays the role of a teacher and all the pupil teachers get a chance to practice. Hence, this cycle goes on till the pupil-teacher is trained.

Principles to achieve effective Simulation  based teaching

Resources and time are required to develop a quality learning experience with simulations. Assessment of student learning through simulation is often more complex than with other methods.

Simulated experiences are more realistic than some other techniques and they can be so engaging and absorbing that students forget the educational purpose of the exercise.

If the simulation has an element of competition, it is important to remind the students that the goal is not to win, but to acquire knowledge and understanding.

However, similar principles apply to all simulations.

1) Prepare in advance as much as possible

• Develop a student guide and put the rules in writing.  Ensure that students understand the procedures before beginning. Frustration can arise when too many uncertainties exist
• Some simulations are fast-paced, and the sense of reality is best maintained with ready responses. Try to anticipate questions before they are asked.
• Many simulations have more than one instructional goal. Developing evaluation criteria, and ensure that students are aware of the specific outcomes expected of them in advance. Know what you want to accomplish.

2) Monitor the process closely

Teachers must monitor the simulation process to ensure that students both understand the process and benefit from it :

• Are problem-solving techniques in evidence?
• Are the desired instructional outcomes well defined?
• Does the research being generated match the nature of the problem?
• Does the student demonstrate an understanding of his/her role?
• Does the student provide meaningful answers to probing questions?
• Does this simulation offer an appropriate measure of realism for my group of students?
• Has the student been able to resolve the issue satisfactorily?
• Is cooperation between participants in evidence?
• Is the level of ambiguity manageable for this group?
• Will follow-up activities be necessary?

3) Consider what to evaluate

It is best to use simulations as part of the process of learning rather than as a summative measure of it. Use follow-up activities to establish a measure of comprehension and as a de-briefing mechanism when students return to reality.

Suggestions of Successful Simulations

One of the most satisfying experiences in training or education, no matter what the subject, is the so-called “Aha!” moment, that instant when sudden, spontaneous insight cuts through the tangle of loose ends in a learner’s mind to reveal a memorable truth.

Simulations are the most likely teaching method to create those “Aha!” moments. Simulations, however, are widely misunderstood. Here are few suggestion for creating successful training simulations.

1. Don’t Confuse Replication with Simulation

The temptation in designing a simulation is to make a small scale replica of some full-blown reality. It seems logical that the closer the simulation comes to reality, the more valid and memorable the experience will be.

2. Choose the Right Subject to Simulate

Some subjects lend themselves better to simulation training than others. A topic is more apt to be suitable for simulation if it embodies at least one of the following characteristics:

• Developing systems thinking.
• Performing tasks simultaneously.
• Performing under pressure.
• Recognizing cognitive dissonance.
• Seeing the world through other people’s eyes.

3. Develop a Design Plan

In preparing to design a simulation, you must make two key planning decisions. First, will you design it alone or use a design team? Second, will you employ a structured creative process .

Whether you go it alone or put together a team, you need to fill the following roles:

• Principal designer, who has firsthand knowledge of training simulations and, for a team, the commitment to lead.
• Subject matter expert, who has a thorough understanding of the subject to be simulated;
• Administrator, who sets and maintains the design schedule, oversees acquisition .
• Representative, who provides a reality check as the project develops (in an oversight capacity only).

4. Avoid premature closure of ideas. Don’t stop searching for ideas after the first workable one appears. Often the best idea comes second, third…or 10th. Think of ideas as stepping stones to other ideas rather than as destinations in themselves.

5. Get outside a problem and look at it from different angles. Try approaching a problem in a teaching simulation from the point of view of a student.

6. Give your subconscious a chance to work on the problem. The solution to an especially intransigent problem will often pop into your head when you least expect it-on the freeway.

The guaranteed responsibility avoiders:

Pretending. If the rules even imply that trainees should “pretend” to be someone or do something. Design all “roles” in a simulation so that trainees must be themselves.

Using competition for its own sake. Employing competition between trainees to increase interest in a simulation can, and often does, backfire. Trainees can then justify all kinds of inappropriate behavior in their quest to win. If competition is not a factor in the real-world situation you are simulating, leave it out. If the simulation of a competitive situation is designed well, the inherent competitiveness of most participants will create enough competition to motivate energetic participation.

Giving inappropriate importance to chance. Limit chance to events that actually occur randomly in the real world.There are other common mistakes designers often make when they first begin designing a simulation. Being aware of them can help you avoid them.

Emphasizing fun at the sacrifice of learning. Many people use the words, simulation, simulation games, and games interchangeably .The word ”game” evokes feelings and expectations that make it difficult to design effective simulations.

As soon as you say “game”, many people think of winning and competing to win. Many simulations do involve competition, but not always. it is important to manage the competitive elements of the simulation so the competition doesn’t overwhelm the learnings.

Games often create an expectation of fun and frivolity.Most of the time it is also fun to participate in a simulation, but not always.. When having fun is one of the criteria used by designers to create a simulation, it greatly limits the design options.

Dumbing down the experience. I believe shorter simulations are better than longer; simpler is better than complicated; learning something is better than learning nothing; capturing the essence is better than replicating every detail . If we remove the difficult parts from the simulation, we risk missing an opportunity to teach extremely important ideas, concepts and values.

Use Symbols and Metaphors to Deal with Emotionally Charged Ideas

Occasionally a simulation focuses on an emotionally charged issue that threatens to overpower the learning experience.

Don’t Play Games with Trainees

No matter how clever it seem to designers at the time of creation, they undermine the authority and effectiveness of the simulation by signaling trainees not to take it seriously.

Develop an Appropriate Performance Assessment Model

Because of a perceived superiority of mathematics-based scoring systems in training, simulation designers often attempt to develop quantitative models for assessing trainee performance. By “qualitative,” means simulations that teach human-centered subjects like ethics or teamwork or cultural diversity. Also, trainees often figure out quantitative models and skew the results.

Alpha Test Your Simulation in Low-Risk Circumstances

Both alpha and beta testing are critical to the development of even simple simulations, but confusing them can be disastrous. A beta test is a real test-a shakedown-of an anticipated final product, always occurring after the design is at least provisionally set. Alpha testing often happens so early in the design process that it might more properly be termed a design technique.

Merits of Simulation in comparison of other teaching methods

Simulation as a method of instruction can be assessed along two dimensions in comparison with other instructional methods, and with direct experience. Arguments favoring simulation follow.

A. Merits of  simulation over direct experience fall into three general categories:

(1) Cost: Simulation can provide experience in a low cost model of a high cost environment.

(2) Time Control: Simulation can provide short time experience and feedback in long time processes. Simulation allows practice in decision making in a timeless environment.

(3) Experimentation: Simulation can provide a field for practice in hypothesis formulation, testing, and modification. Successive strategies in problem solving can be tried on an “unaltered” base situation.

(4) Rehearsing responses in a structured environment: Teacher trainees can practice responses to filmed classroom situations; students can practice test taking. Simulation can provide systematic exercises in inquiry training. Both teachers and students can create designs for sharing experience with others.

B. Merits of simulation over lecture-reading methods include:

(1) Simulation can provide experience in a wider range of educational objectives: affective as well as cognitive; process as well as content oriented; evaluation by self and system criteria as well as by the instructor; and an elaborated concept of cause and effect.

(2) With simulation there may be greater transfer from the training situation to the life situation.

(3) Simulation provides a responsive environment which may give learners a sense of immediacy and involvement.

Advantages of Simulation Teaching

• Simulation allows trainees to purposely undertake high-risk activities or procedural tasks within a safe environment without dangerous implications. Learners don’t have to wait for a real situation to come up in order to learn.
• Simulation can improve trainees’ skills and allow them to learn from error. Learners are able to gain a greater understanding about the consequences of their actions and the need to reduce any errors.
• Simulation offers trainee participation. Rather than sitting through a training lecture, trainees can practice what they have learnt and quickly learn from any mistakes without serious implications.
• Learners address hands-on and thinking skills, including knowledge-in-action, procedures, decision-making, and effective communication. Many games enable players to embody different characters thus helping to breed attitudes of tolerance and understanding.

• Simulation  provide a safe artificial environment within which learners with low self-esteem may feel more inclined to explore, investigate and express themselves. Simulated learning can be set up at appropriate times and locations, and repeated as often as necessary.

• Simulation learning can be customized to suite beginners, intermediates and experts to hone their skills as to speak .Feedback can be given to learners immediately and allow them to understand exactly what went wrong and how they can improve.

• Simulation is best suited to analyze complex and large practical problems when it is not possible to solve them through a mathematical method.
• Simulation is flexible, hence changes in the system variables can be made to select the best solution among the various alternatives .In simulation, the experiments are carried out with the model without disturbing the system.
• Simulation provides a valuable link between activities within the classroom and life outside school. Such a connection will help to make students to have better understanding to see the world in different perspective.
• Simulation help teacher to connect the teaching material to the student’s real world and encourage the students to make a relation between the knowledge that they have already had with the application in their life as a member of society.
• It is similar to the real life experience; the problems that students will be found in the real life can be stimulated. So, the students try to solve the problem and make a decision from among alternatives to achieve a particular object.
• Simulation can be used to teach content that it is very difficult to teach in the classroom. Simulation offers different technique from the others it can deliver all kind of issues which cannot be limited by time perspectives.
• The power of simulations is to transpose the normal classroom into an authentic setting where skills can be evaluated under more realistic conditions. It prepares students to be able to face the complexity in the real world .
• Simulation is engaging and motivating approach to students. It gets them involved and holds their attention longer. Children usually learn and retain more knowledge using role play.
• Students actually engage in the learning process rather than passive receiver of knowledge. Children learn the most from play when they have skilled teachers who are well-trained in understanding how play contributes to learning.

Disadvantages of Simulation Method

• Simulation does not generate optimal solutions. No real consequences for mistakes may result in students under performing and not being fully engaged in the training, thus producing inaccurate result.
• It may take a long time to develop a good simulation model. To simulate something a thorough understanding is needed and an awareness of all the factors involved, without this a simulation cannot be created.
• In certain cases simulation models can be very expensive. Simulators can be very expensive and require constant updates and maintenance.
• The decision-maker must provide all information about the constraints and conditions for examination, as simulation does not give the answers by itself.

• Simulation is not always able to completely re-create real-life situations .So not every situation can be included.
• The results and feedback are only as effective as the actual training provided.
• Staff need to be trained on how to use the software and/or hardware and this takes up time and costs money.
• The results of the simulation may not be readily available after the simulation has started — an event that may occur instantaneously in the real world may actually take hours to mimic in a simulated environment..
• While this technique can dramatically reduce the simulation time, it may also give its users a false sense of security regarding the accuracy of the simulation results.
• If the level of abstraction is too high, then it may be impossible to actually build the device physically due to the lack of sufficiently detailed information within the design.

Conclusion

Empirical research has shown that simulated teaching could be one of the most powerful tools in preparing college education students for a solid field teaching experience. With the right function and mechanics, this pedagogy can equip students with the necessary teaching skills, aptitudes and competencies majority of the respondents strongly believed they should be exposed to teaching prior to practicum and agreed that early training could develop their competence in teaching. They showed a highly positive attitude towards simulated teaching as an effective way to acquire and apply both content and skills in teaching and learning. it may be concluded that when simulated teaching functions under conditions such as clear goals, guidelines, proper mentoring and guidance from teachers, students are then able to unlock and develop their potentials and prepare for every issue they will face in their practicum stage. The study further confirms a long-held principle that prolonged practice builds expertise.

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V. (P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Education is formation, recapitulation; retrospection and reconstruction. These are all continuous processes of education and only be provided with the help of experience. Different experiences are planned and adopted to educate and train the learners at different levels of education system.

James Q Knowlton rightly suggested another important component which can be added for the process of instruction is” Experience”. Experience is the accumulation of knowledge or skill that results from direct participation in events or activities; the content of direct observation or participation in an event; something personally lived through or encountered. The practical wisdom gained from what one has observed, encountered, or undergone or felt. Experiences may be direct or indirect and of concrete and abstract.

Edgar Dale (April 27, 1900 – March 8, 1985) was a U.S. educationist who developed the famous Cone of Experience. Dale was a professor of education at University. He made several contributions to audio and visual instruction, including a methodology for analyzing the content of motion pictures Edgar Dale, an expert in audiovisual education, created a model in his 1946 book Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching that he named the Cone of Experience to discuss various modalities/channels of imparting information. . The cone of experience given by Edgar dale has rightly said that it is not offered as a perfect or mechanically flaw less picture to be taken with absolute literalness in its simplified form. It is merely a visual aid to explain the interrelationships of various types of audiovisual materials, as well as their individual positions in learning process His cone did not refer to learning or retention at all, instead modelling levels of abstraction: words being the most abstract in his model, at the top of the cone, and real-life experiences the most concrete, and at the base of the cone.

Dale’s Cone of Experience is a model that incorporates several theories related to instructional design and learning processes.  During the 1960s, Edgar Dale theorized that learners retain more information by what they “do” as opposed to what is “heard”, “read” or “observed”.  His research led to the development of the Cone of Experience. The Cone was originally developed in 1946 and was intended as a way to describe various learning experiences. Essentially, the Cone shows the progression of experiences from the most concrete (at the bottom of the cone) to the most abstract (at the top of the cone).

The cone of experience is a pictorial device use to explain the interrelationships of the various types of audio-visual media, as well as their individual “positions” in the learning process. The cone’s utility in selecting instructional resources and activities is as practical today as when Dale created it.

EDGAR DALE’S CONE/ PYRAMID OF EXPERIENCE

Dale’s Cone of Experience is a visual model that is composed of eleven (11) stages starting from concrete experiences at the bottom of the cone then it becomes more and more abstract as it reach the peak of the cone. Also, according to Dale, the arrangement in the cone is not based on its difficulty but rather based on abstraction and on the number of senses involved. The experiences in each stages can be mixed and are interrelated that fosters more meaningful learning.

According to one of the principles in the selection and use of teaching strategies, the more senses that are involved in learning, the more and the better the learning will be but it does not mean that concrete experience is the only effective experience that educators should use in transferring knowledge to the learner. Like what was mentioned above, the experiences in each stages can be mixed and are interrelated thus, a balance must be achieved between concrete and abstract experiences in order to cater the and address all the need of the learner in all the domains of development and in order to help each learner in their holistic development.

The generalization about the Cone of Experience that was presented above is not enough. Actually, we should try to go deeper in each of the component of the cone since Educational Technology basically revolves around the Cone of Experience. By going one-by-one, starting from concrete to abstract, we will understand more the different components of the cone that will help us in grasping the real meaning of educational technology.

Direct Purposeful Experiences.

These are first hand experiences which serve as the foundation of learning. In this level, more senses are used in order to build up the knowledge. Also, in this level, the learner learned by doing things by him/herself. Learning happens through actual hands-on experiences. This level explains and proves one of the principles in the selection and use of teaching strategies, the more senses that are involved in learning, the more and the better the learning will be. This level also proves that educational technology is not limited to the  modern gadgets and software that are commercially available nowadays. This shows that even the simple opportunity that you give to each child could help them learn.

The Contrived Experiences.

In this level, representative models and mock-ups of reality are being used in order to provide an experience that as close as reality.  This level is very practical and it makes learning experience more accessible to the learner. In this stage, it provides more concrete experiences, even if not as concrete as direct experiences, that allows visualization that fosters better understanding of the concept.

The Dramatized experiences.

In this level, learners can participate in a reconstructed experiences that could give them better understanding of the event or of a concept. Through dramatized experiences, learners become more familiar with the concept as they emerge themselves to the “as-if” situation.

The Demonstrations.

It is a visualize explanation of important fact, idea, or process through the use of pictures, drawings, film and other types of media in order to facilitate clear and effective learning. In this level, things are shown based on how they are done.

The Study Trips.

This level extends the learning experience through excursions and visits on the different places that are not available inside the classroom. Through this level, the learning experience will not be limited to the classroom setting but rather extended in a more complex environment.

The Exhibits

The level of study trips is followed by exhibits. It is a somewhat a combination of some of the first levels in the cone. Actually, exhibits are combination of several mock ups and models. Most of the time, exhibits are experiences that is “for your eyes” only but some exhibits includes sensory experiences which could be related to direct purposeful experiences. In this level, meanings ideas are presented to the learners in a more abstract manner. This experience allows student to see the meaning and relevance of things based on the different pictures and representations presented.

The television and motion pictures etc.

The next levels would be the level of television and motion pictures and still pictures, recordings, and Radio. For television and motion pictures, it implies values and messages through television and films. On the other hand, still pictures, recordings and radio are visual and audio devices that can be used by a group of learner that could enhance and extend learning experience

The Visual symbolic and Verbal symbolic

The last two levels would be the Visual symbolic and Verbal symbolic. These two levels are the most complex and abstract among all the components of the Cone of Experience. In the visual symbolic level, charts, maps, graphs, and diagrams are used for abstract representations. On the other hand, the verbal symbolic level does not involve visual representation or clues to their meanings. Mostly, the things involved in this level are words, ideas, principles, formula, and the likes.

After going through the different components of the Cone of Experience, it could be said that in facilitating learning, we can use variety of materials and medium in order to maximize the learning experience. One medium is not enough so there’s nothing wrong with trying to combine several medium for as long as it could benefit the learners.

Through the levels provided by the Cone of Experience, it could be said that concrete experiences must be provided first in order to support abstract learning.  Lastly, staying on the concrete experiences is not even ideal because through providing abstract experiences to the learner, the more he will develop his  higher order thinking skills which is important for more complex way of thinking and for dealing with more complex life situations.

Through understanding each component of the Cone of Experience, it could be said that Educational Technology is not limited to the modern gadgets that we have right now but rather it is a broad concept that includes all the media that we can use to attain balance as we facilitate effective and meaningful learning.

To understand more the Cone of Experience, you may refer to this picture:

 

Modes of learning in Cone of Experience

In Edgar Dale introduced the Cone of Experience demonstrate a progression from direct, first-hand experience to pictorial representation and on to purely abstract, symbolic expression.

The Cone of Experience corresponds with three major modes of learning:

Enactive (direct experience),- Enactive or direct experience involves practicing with objects (the student actually ties a knot to learn knot-tying).  Enactive experience involves concrete, immediate action and use of the senses and body.

Iconic (pictorial experience) - Iconic experience involves interpreting images and drawings (the student looks at drawings, pictures or films to learn to tie knots).  Iconic experience is once removed from the physical realm and limited to two or three senses.

Symbolic (highly abstract experience)- Symbolic experience involves reading or hearing symbols (the student reads or hears the word “knot” and forms an image in the mind). In symbolic experience, action is removed nearly altogether and the experience is limited to thoughts and ideas.

Some theorists prefer to be more specific and refer to these possible modes of learning

Conditioned- Conditioning refers to learning by pre-design or control via a series of punishments and rewards.

Imitative – Imitation refers to learning tasks by observation or modeling.

Trial and error – Trial and error refers to learning via a series of successful and unsuccessful trials and deliberations.

Investigative - Investigation refers to learning via a series of informed hypotheses and inquiries into problems

Expansive learning - Refers to the questioning of the validity of tasks and problems of a given context to the transformation of the context itself.

Passive and Active Aspects of the Cone of Experience

Although no experience is fully passive, iconic and symbolic experiences are generally more passive than direct experiences. Dale proposed that active and passive modes of participation can be contrasted by assigning a percentage of we tend to remember after two weeks after our experience.

The concrete and abstract aspects in the Cone of Experience

The Cone of Experience invokes a bi-directional movement from the concrete to abstract and from the abstract to concrete. Dale’s theory suggests that objects and the material culture of technology are mere augmentations or media to be used in the learning process. To fully empower teachers with a theory of practice in technology studies, technologies and physical settings have to play a more active role in cognition, emotion and action.

Learning and Experiences: A Step model based on Dale Cone of Experience

When Dale researched learning and teaching methods he found that much of what we found to be true of direct and indirect (and of concrete and abstract) experience could be summarised in a pyramid or ‘pictorial device’ Dales called ‘the Cone of Experience’. In his book ‘Audio visual methods in teaching’ – 1957, he stated that the cone was not offered as a perfect or mechanically flawless picture to be taken absolutely literally. It was merely designed as a visual aid to help explain the interrelationships of the various types of audio-visual materials, as well as their individual ‘positions’ in the learning process.

Dale points out that it would be a dangerous mistake to regard the bands on the cone as rigid, inflexible divisions. He said “The cone device is a visual metaphor of learning experiences, in which the various types of audio-visual materials are arranged in the order of increasing abstractness as one proceeds from direct experiences.”

In true sense the bands of the (Edgar Dale’s) cone are not only the types of audiovisual materials but the different experiences are also included. In fact the upper four bands like verbal symbols, visual symbols, Radio, Recordings, and still pictures, and motion pictures are more related with Audiovisual materials but the later six bands of the cone like Exhibits, Field Trips, Demonstrations, Dramatic Participation, are the strategies of teaching-learning.

Contrived Experiences and Direct, Purposeful Experiences are related with term Experiences .Each division represents a stage between two extremes-direct experience and pure abstraction. As we move from base of the cone to the up in order of decreasing directness. Similarly, if we move down from pinnacle of the cone in the order of the decreasing abstraction .Based on experience of teaching at different levels it was felt that, there are many experiences and audiovisual materials which are missing in dale’s cone and to be included by making a new model of experiences which is presented in the following Step Learning Experiences model.

The base of the step learning experiences model is direct and purposeful experience which is always preferable for any new learner and any kind of learning concept and gives firsthand experience in turn leads to the permanent learning. At the top of the cone is verbal or text these are the least effective ways to introduce new content to students. The step learning experience model includes 17 different experiences.

Verbal Symbols:

Verbal symbols are words, sentences, sounds, or other utterances that are said aloud in order to convey some meaning. The verbal symbol may be a word , an idea , concept , a scientific principle , a formula , a philosophic aphorism  or any other representation of experience that has been classified in some verbal symbolism.

Olfactory Experience:

It is also called Aroma Experience; Aroma is a quality that can be perceived by the olfactory sense. It is a type of Experience where the learner can have the concrete idea of the abstract thing through the sense of smell.

Gustatory Experience:

Gustatory is an adjective that refers to tasting or the sense of taste, Gustatory has its roots in the Latin Gustare, meaning “to taste,” It is a type of Experience where the learner can have the concrete idea of the thing or object or concept through the sense of taste. We can have the taste of real thing which may be in different forms (different Size, shape, color)..

Tactile-kinesthetic Experience:

It is a type of Experience where the learner can have the idea or the concept of the thing or object through the sense of touch and feel; it is learning through a hands-on approach and learners will be physically involved. Kinesthetic Learning Experience refers to one of the modalities that learners use in order to approach and absorb new information.

Kinesthetic-tactile refers to a pupil who learns by movement and by touching. This type of experience can be given through hands-on activities, manipulating objects or flash cards, working problems or re-typing notes.

Visual symbols:

Visual symbol may be a picture or shape that has a particular meaning or represents a particular process or idea. Something visible that by association or convention represents something else that is invisible; and something that represents or stands for something else, usually by association or used to represent something abstract. Visual experience has a rich predictive structure.

Still Pictures, Radio, and Recordings:

This stage includes number of devices that might be classified roughly as “one dimensional aids” because they use only one sense organ that is either eye (seeing) or ear (hearing). All these materials are less direct than the audio-visual experiences.

Motion pictures, Television and computers:

These can eliminate the unnecessary and unimportant material and concentrate upon only selected points. The important processes can be watched with slow motion and vital content and issues can be repeated number of times. The pupils are mere spectators and are distant from the experiences like touching, tasting, handling and feeling from directly experiencing.

Television’s influence on language habits, vocabulary, consumer patterns, cultural values and behavior patterns should not be underestimated. Research suggests that even the learning pace can be enhanced or improved through television learning.

The present day computers are not only compact, extremely powerful and versatile, commonly accessible and easy to use. The computer has, indeed become an integral part of our teaching process and daily life. Students then simulate the entire lab experience using the CAI, which saves time, resources.

Exhibits:

In education normally the arranged working models exhibited in a meaningful way. Sometimes they may be series of photographs or of photographs mixed with models and charts . The opportunity to handle the materials by the participant makes the way to use more sense organs and Learning by doing always helpful for meaningful or concrete learning.

Field-trip (Educational Excursion):

It is a trip by the students to gain firsthand knowledge away from the classroom as to a museum, factory, geological area, or environment of certain plants and animals. A field trip gives students a chance to study something in real environment, rather than in a classroom or laboratory. At field trips normally students see and note down certain important things. Sometimes they get chance to interview and discuss the things with officials or local people to clarify the doubts with supportive to observation.

Demonstrations:

A demonstration is another means whereby pupils can see how certain things are done. Demonstration may require nothing more than observation on the part of the pupil or observer. It is the act of showing or making evident or circumstance of proving or being proved conclusively as by reasoning. It may be description or explanation of a process and illustrated by examples, specimens and it also includes the act of exhibiting the operation or use of a device, machine, process and product.

Dramatization:

There are many things we cannot possibly experience at first hand and we cannot experience directly something that has already happened. Furthermore some matters cannot be reduced to contrived experience and some ideas must of necessary be somewhat abstract and symbolic. Dramatic participation can help us get close as possible to certain realities that we cannot reach at first hand.

As students re-create images, pictures, visual details, staging, movement, location and direction with drama their spatial learning skills are developed. Logical learning follows from using rational patterns, cause and effect relationships and other believable concepts involved with the drama. Sometimes music, or even the music of language, is also used in working with drama.

Contrived Experiences (Artificial Experience):

A contrived experience is editing of reality, an editing which makes the reality easier to grasp. It may be illustrated by working model and it differs from the original either in size or complexity; contrived experiences lead to a suspension of disbelief. In other words, during the period of experience, the learner believes in the reality of the experience. We make use of contrived experiences to overcome limitation of space and time, to edit reality for us to be able to focus on parts or a process of a system that we intend to study and to overcome difficulties of size and finally to understand easily and effectively

Virtual learning experience :

Though the virtual experience can be called as contrived experience but the pupils level of experience may differ and the kind of joy and level of understanding may be high at virtual than the contrived experiences which include models mock ups and cut-away as we can consider them as hardware. A virtual learning experience involves a set of teaching and learning tools designed to enhance a student’s learning experience by including computers and the Internet in the learning process. The representation of the learning environment ranges from text-based interfaces to the most complex 3D graphical output.

Smart boards are the best examples for virtual experience where students can conduct science experiments in simulated way. In virtual experience pupil can see and hear but not use the senses of touch and smell. We can bring reality in the classroom which is more than contrived experience and as near as the real experience.

Four-Dimensional Experiences:

Four-Dimensional Experiences that describes a presentation system combining a Three Dimensional film with Physical effects in the theater, which occurs in synchronization with the film.

Because physical effects can be expensive to install, 4-D films are usually presented only at special venues, such as theme parks and amusement parks. Due to the fast growth of technology, 3-D Theaters have been enhanced by the addition of special simulations.In Education some of the abstract concepts of literature, history and science can be taught with Four dimensional effects and pupil may enjoy the abstract content in a concrete way with same effect as it is given by the poets in the poems, even at science issues and concepts as if they are experiencing in a real situation.

Ubiquitous learning Experience:

Ubiquitous means “pervasive, omnipresent, ever present, and everywhere”.A ubiquitous learning experience is any setting of the environment in which students can become totally immersed in the learning process. To define, it is a kind of experience where learning is happening all around the student but the student may not even be conscious of the learning process.

The Ubiquitous learning Environment includes an ubiquitous computing technology-equipped system supplies users with timely information and relevant services by automatically sensing users’ various context data and smartly generating proper results. So the characteristics of a pervasive computing environment can be mainly concluded as the following: User mobility, Resource and location discovery, Context awareness (user/time/location), Collaborative interaction, Ambient information, Calm technology, Event notification, Adaptive interfaces, Invisibility object augmentation, and Any time/anywhere.

Direct Real Experience

These experiences can be observed live or in real time through technological gadgets and the same can be used effectively to the students understanding of the processes, certain special environments and sometimes the special actions too.

Direct real experience can give greater experience in learning for the students than virtual or contrived experiences. The pupil will have an opportunity to observe and study directly. Hence its impact may be high on learning than the other earlier experiences. It is also an alternative experience to the direct purposeful experience. When teachers are unable to provide direct purposeful experience, they may only have the best option of direct real experience.

Direct Purposeful Experience: The Base of the Step Learning Experiences Model represents direct reality itself as we experience it at first hand. It is the rich full bodied experience that is the base of education. It is the purposeful experience that is seen, handled, tasted, felt, touched, and smelled. It is the experience of life and we get it by living. Some of our richest, most vivid sense impressions are those which involve our feelings and perceptions in an eager exploration of the world.

Critical Appraisal

The cone of experience given by Edgar dale has rightly said that it is not offered as a perfect or mechanically flaw less picture to be taken with absolute literalness in its simplified form. It is merely a visual aid to explain the interrelationships of various types of audiovisual materials, as well as their individual positions in learning process.

The Cone should be considered as a continuum rather than a hierarchy. Learning occurs through all of the experiences present in the Cone, and all experiences may be appropriate at different stages in the learning process or for different audiences.

The Cone does not demonstrate which is the best method of learning? One can conclude that many different kinds of instruction should be used in the classroom. Since no single method is superior to another, instructors must analyze the audience as well as the content. Some content may fit into one teaching method, while other content may be better suited to another method.

The use of audio-visual materials in teaching does not depend primarily upon reading to convey their meaning. It is based upon the principle that all teaching can be greatly improved by the use of such materials because they can help make the learning experience memorable we do not mean that sensory materials must be introduced into every teaching situation

Mathematics is a subject of abstract concepts and can be learnt better through verbal and visual symbols, contrived and virtual experiences. It may not be possible to give direct experiences for pupil in subjects like mathematics and statistics.Verbal and visual experiences are suitable only for Language learning.

Experiences are meant to experience not to evaluate or compare among them. Experiences are purely individualised, with the same kind of experience one’s perception may be differ from others. One can learn better than other, some pupil can learn better with the direct experiences and others can learn easily with virtual experience, some through contrived, one dimensional and two dimensional aids.

John Dewey says that “Direct experience had the disadvantage of being limited in range and fatally restricted”(1946. P-51). Indeed, we learn many things indirectly even better than the direct experience. The direct experience is not necessary or suitable for learning all kinds of concepts.

James P. Lalley and Robert H. Miller have examined many different studies about learning and retention and have concluded that the most learning and retention occurs when many different teaching methods are used in the classroom. They found that direct instruction, or lecture, is most commonly used in the classroom and has “a significant effect on retention”. Reading, although it appears to have little value based on Dale’s Cone will influence the students’ ability to learn throughout their lives.

When Dale researched learning and teaching methods he found that much of what we found to be true of direct and indirect (and of concrete and abstract) experience could be summarized in a pyramid or ‘pictorial device’. He stated that the cone was not offered as a perfect or mechanically flawless picture to be taken absolutely literally. It was merely designed as a visual aid to help explain the interrelationships of the various types of audio-visual materials, as well as their individual ‘positions’ in the learning process.

It is important to note that Dale never intended the Cone to depict a value judgment of experiences; in other words, his argument was not that more concrete experiences were better than more abstract ones. Dale believed that any and all of the approaches could and should be used, depending on the needs of the learner.

Practicability of Learning Pyramid

In order for students to develop meaningful knowledge, feelings and skills, their direct experiences must be “associated with abstractions,” as Dale noted. Language and expression are essential to skill acquisition.

Beyond its sketchy background, the learning pyramid should raise concerns:

1. What kind of research results end up in such tidy percentages, all multiples of 10?
2. How would one even develop a method for testing such broad claims?
3. Do we really believe a learner can remember 90% of anything?
4. Can an activity be separated from its content and be given credit for learning?

Many distinguished authors have gutted the pyramid’s claims. Educational expert Daniel Willingham was against the pyramid related to oversimplification; providing an optimal learning experience does not boil down to the instruction method. There are many different variables that impact learning.

In her book  Char Booth explains another danger of the pyramid, that relying too heavily on the idea of mode strips away designing instruction for differences in context and content . Booth’s anecdote about how she embraced the pyramid because of its implications for student engagement illustrates another flaw with it. The pyramid is a visual sighting. If we only remember 30% of what we see, then a picture of the pyramid should not have such a dramatic memory impact on so many people.

Looking at Dale’s cone of Experience, one can realize that there can be numbers of model that can be used by the teacher to reach the learner depending on the learners need. Despite the pyramid having been debunked in many venues for decades, it continues to show up in educational presentations and literature.

To conclude, the Cone of Experience is essentially a visual metaphor for the idea that learning activities can be placed in broad categories based on the extent to which they convey the concrete referents of real-life experiences. It has also been interpreted by many as a prescriptive formula for selecting instructional media. Dale’s own explanations are nebulous enough to enable a wide variety of interpretations to find support. Finally, the fact that the Cone has been taken seriously enough to be used in so many ways testifies to the robustness and attractiveness of Dale’s visual metaphor

References:

Dale Edgar. (1954). Audio-visual methods in Teaching. (2nd ed).New York: The Dryden Press.

Dale, Edgar.(1946). Audio-visual methods in Teaching. New York: The Dryden Press.

Dale Edgar. (1969). Audio-visual methods in Teaching. (3rd ed).New York: The Dryden Press.

Dewey, John. (1944). Democracy and Education. NY: Free Press

Dewey. John. (1916). Democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education. New York: The Macmillan Company.

Dewey, John. (1998) Experience and Education: The 60th Anniversary Edition . Kappa Delta Pi: West Lafayette IN.

Lalley, James P. & Robert H. Miller. (2007). The Learning Pyramid: Does It Point Teachers in the Right Direction?. Education 128, No. 1: 64-79.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V. (P.G) College, Roorkee, India

The goal of early developers of programmed instruction was to design the instructional activities to minimize the probability of an incorrect response (Beck, 1959). However, much has been made of the distinction between what some have called Crowder’s (1960) multiple-choice branching versus Skinner’s linear-type program. Crowder, like Skinner (1954, 1958a) likens his intrinsic system to a private tutor. Although Crowder himself claimed no theoretical roots, his method of intrinsic programming or “branching,” was developed out of his experience as a wartime instructor for the Air Force. In a sense they were talking about two very different things. Skinner was writing about education and Crowder was writing from his experience in the teaching complex skills to adults with widely varying backgrounds and abilities. The issue is informative, however. Neither man wanted errors per se.

Linear sequences / linear programme,

The credit of linear programming style goes to B. F. Skinner. Linear programming style is related to “operant conditioning”. Operant conditioning states that human behavior is shaped through suitable reinforcement to the responses. It tells that “A Certain direction can be given to human behavior”, for this purpose activities is needed to divide in small parts and make their analysis. It is a gradual process and the responses are conditioned in a step by step manner.

In a linear programme, learner’s responses are controlled externally by the programmer sitting at a distant place. A linear programme is called a straight line programme as the learner starts from his initial behaviour to the terminal behaviour following a straight line. The student proceeds from one frame to the next until he completes the programme.

Characteristics of linear programme

1. Linear are exposed to small amount of information and proceed from one frame to one item of information, to the next in an orderly fashion.

2. Linear responds overtly  that their correct responses can be rewarded and heir incorrect responses can be corrected.

3. Linear are informed immediately about whether or not their response is correct (feedback).

4. Linear proceed at their own pace (self-pacing).

Features of Linear programme

1) Linear means proceeding in a straight line. In linear programme generally, information is broken into small steps of 40-50 words in length which is called a frame. The learner must respond to each frame in succession by filling in word or phrase in a blank.

2) Linear Arrangement: In such type of programme, the learner advances in a single series of shorts steps which are designed to ensure high rate of correct responding to the questions (frames). Same path is followed by each learner. The learner starts from initial behaviour to the terminal behaviour following straight-line sequence. All learners pass through the same path.

3) Responses are controlled. In a linear programme, responses are controlled by the programmer. The responses and their order are fixed. The learner has no choice to respond in his own way.

4) Response is emphasized. In linear programme, the emphasis is laid on response. The learner must respond to each and every in order the learning to occur.

5) Feedback is quick. As soon a s the learner responds to the frame he can immediately compare his response with the response f the programme. Learners are informed immediately about whether or not their response is correct

6) Provision for prompt. In the beginning, prompt or cue can be supplied to facilitate learning too occur.

7) Cheating is discouraged by not revealing the answer to the learner.

Learners proceed at their own pace. Learner can skip certain frames.

9) Responses are self-constructed. Learners respond overtly so that their correct responses can be rewarded and their incorrect responses can be corrected

Fundamental Principles of Linear Programming

Linear programming is based on five fundamental principles-
1. Principles of small step.
2. Principle of Active responding.
3. Principle of immediate confirmation.
4. Principle of self-pacing.
5. Principle of student testing.

In this type of sequencing all students read and respond to the same frames. The sequence is linear in that there is a single line or path for all students to follow.

While programming in linear way the information is broken down in pieces of related information and then they are sequenced into meaningful steps. The information which is to written in the steps is planned out. The information should be so written that it should be linked to the information in the next step. The learner has to respond to each step actively and the reinforcement is given immediately. The reinforcement depends on the correctness of the responses given by the learner. If the response is correct a positive reinforcement is given, motivating the learner to attempt more responses which will be positively reinforced

A pictorial representation an example of linear programming –

Each square represents a frame. The student proceeds from one frame to the next until he completes the program. Most linear sequences use the constructed (or fill-in) response.. Many new programs, however, use both constructed and multiple-choice responses. Although most linear sequences use shorter frames than those used by the branching sequences we describe below, the single-sentence or short frame is not an essential characteristic of linear sequences. Markle (1964) developed a linear sequence on programming which contained frames which were paragraphs or longer in length. Even the major characteristic of linear sequences—the use of the single path—is no longer rigidly prescribed.

Lysaught and Williams (1963) show many ways in which a linear sequence can be modified into a multi path program. An interesting variation is the linear sequence with criterion frames. These frames test entering behavior at various points in the program to determine whether the students should go through the sequence of frames which follows. If this is not necessary, the student is directed to a sub sequence, which will move him quickly to an advanced point in the program.

Advantage of Linear Programming

Ø The assumption behind the linear programming is students learns better if content is presented in small units, students response if immediately confirmed, results in better learning, Student’s error create hindrance in learning, Student learns better in Laissez fairy environment.

• Ø Frame size in small steps; include only one element of topic at a time. Each step is complete in itself. It can be taught independently and can be measured independently. Frame structure is based on stimulus-Response-reinforcement. There are four types of frames. Introductory frames, Teaching frame, practice frames and testing frames.
  Ø Responses in linear programming are structured responses and these are controlled by programmer and not by learners. Immediate confirmation of correct responses provide reinforcement, wrong responses are ignored.
  Ø It is used for secondary level students, used for achieving lower objectives of learning especially for recall and recognition, useful for student of average and below average intelligence can be used in Distance education program.

Limitations of Linear programming-

1) Lack of motivation: It is alleged that learning becomes dull and learner experiences monotony and boredom. It takes too much time to teach a few points.

2) Freedom of choice is curtailed: The learner has no choice of his own to respond, thus it s alleged that creative imagination of learner is inhibited.

3) Costly: It has been found that preparation of programmed material requires too much paper and time.

4) Blanks and key terms are guessed: Rothkopf is of the opinion that in many programmes, the learners find out the cues as to what is to be filled in blanks and key terms are guessed

5) It can be used in limited areas: Where the behaviour is measurable and observable such as Maths and science.

6 ) Searching of material is not permitted: as in a textbook. Judgmental learning is not practiced.

c) Does not permit differentiation among responses: No freedom for student to response.

7) Students follow a rigid line prescribed by the programmers: Every learner has to follow the same path; therefore, student may cheat from one another.

It is very difficult to find out exactly the background of each learner : Programmes are generally designed with a view that learner has no previous background of the subject matter..

9) In book form presentation: learners are expected to be honest but from all learners we cannot expect honesty. They can see the correct response without reading the frames.

10. Based on learning theories which were formulated by experience conducted on animals. A human being is more intelligent, than animals, he has got an intelligent brain.

11. Wrong responses are avoided in the program: No remedy is provided for them.

Branching Sequences / Branching Programming

The founder of Branching programming is Norman A Crowder, hence it is also known as Crowderian Model. It is based on configuration theory of learning. It is a problem solving approach. It is stimulus centered approach of learning. As the word “branching” means the subdivision the stem or trunk. The same concept is applied in the branched programming instruction style.

The main concept (the trunk of the tree) is sub divided into smaller concepts (the stems of the tree) and further again to other minute details of the topic.   Norman A Crowder has given its definition as ―It is a programme which adapts to the needs of the students without the medium of extrinsic device as a computer.‖ It is called intrinsic because the learner within himself makes the decision, to adapt the Learning to his/her needs. The rationale of intrinsic programming postulates that the basic learning takes place during the student‘s exposure to the new material on each page. In branching programme, the learning material is divided into “units‘ of material called “frames‘. Much information, one or two paragraphs or even a page, is provided in a frame. Thus each frame is quite larger than that employed in linear programme. The learner goes through the frame. After that he is required to respond to multiple choice questions associate with the learning material of the frame.

The learner moves forward if he answers correctly but is diverted (branched) to one or more remedial frames if he does not. These frames explain the matter afresh, ask him questions to elicit the right answer and reveal his previous mistakes, and then return him to original frame. This cycle goes on till the learner passes through the whole instructional material at his own pace.

Each Content frame includes the following:

a) Repeating student response

b) Positive confirmation

c) New information‘

d) Question

e) Alternatives followed by page numbers, where the student should go next.

Each Remedial frame includes the following :

a) Repeating student response

b) Negative confirmation

c) Reasons why he is wrong

d) Further explanation in simple language

e) Directions as to where the student should go next.

Features of Branching programme

1) Material in a frame is larger; much information is presented at each step. A step may consist of two or more paragraphs and sometimes a full page.

2) The method of student response is different than that of linear model; student has to make choice out of several choices. Multiple-choice question are asked. Each response to the question is keyed to different pages. If the learner selects correct response, his response is confirmed and in case he selects wrong response, then he routed to material which explains as to why he is wrong.

3) Crowder holds that teaching is communication and so he concentrates his attention upon the improvement of communication.

4) Learner has freedom to choose his own path of action according to the background of subject matter. The learner controls the exact sequence that he will follow.

5) The programmer has ample opportunity to exploit the literary style.

6) Student is more alert and concentrates on the subject matter more carefully.

7) Detection and concentration of errors is important. Crowder holds that making error is basic to learning. He permits 20 percent errors in his model. In such a model first the errors are detected and then corrected. The learner knows why he is wrong. Crowder says that it is impractical to eliminate errors in the process of learning

The crucial and identifying feature of branching model is the fact that the material presented to each student is continuously and directly controlled by the learner‘s performance in answering questions.

9) Intrinsic programmed material when presented in a book form, the book is called scrambled book because the pages do not follow in a normal sequence.

10)It is very useful to concept learning or where the material is given I larger steps.

11)The role of active response is not central in intrinsic theory. Intrinsic programme offer less guidance to learner as to what material in the frame is important.

Fundamental Principles of Branching Programming

1. Principle of Exposition,
2. Principle of Diagnosis,
3. Principle of remediation.

Branching programmed learning is similar to linear programmed learning except that it is more complicated because it attempts to diagnose the learner’s response. It usually involves a multi-choice format:

After the learners have been presented a certain amount of information, they are given a multiple-choice question. If they answer correctly they branch to the next body of information. If they are incorrect, they are directed to additional information, depending on the mistake they made. Many CBT training courses are based on the concept of linear or branching programmed learning.

The best known branching technique is called intrinsic programming. Its major characteristics are:

• Frame size is large.
• There may be a Para or page in the frame.
• It consists of rather long frames which often appear as pages in an ordinary textbook.
• The student reads the page (or frame) and then responds by selecting the correct alternative in a three-alternative multiple-choice item.
• Each alternative is associated with a page number which directs the students to another frame.
• Frame structure is Exposition.

Responses not rigidly structured and responses are selected by learner and not by the programmer. Confirmation of correct responses provides reinforcement. Wrong responses also help in diagnosis of weaknesses of the learner. Remedy is provided on the basis of diagnosed weaknesses of the learner. Remedy is provided on the basis of diagnosed weaknesses. Error helps in diagnosis of the weaknesses of learner. More than 20% error rate can be accepted. The purpose of Branching programming is to draw out weak points of learner and provide remedy for recovering those weaknesses.
Branching programming is used for secondary as well as higher classes. Higher objectives can be achieved such as multiple discrimination etc. It is useful for students of above average and high intelligence. It can also be used in Distance education programs.
The advantages of branched programming instructions are as follows –
Assumption behind this programming is that a student learns better if he is exposed to whole situation or content. Student errors help in diagnosis. Student learns better if remediation is provided side by side. A Student learns better in democratic environment.

Ø In this format the student proceeds to the next frame until he makes an error. The errors branch him to supplementary material designed to give him remedial instruction
Ø The center of the teaching – learning process is the learner and not the facilitator or the instructor.
Ø The learner learns with his or her own speed and pace.
Ø Much of the learning takes place when freedom is give to the learners. In branched programming style freedom is given to the learners so that they can learn at their own pace.
Ø Learning is done when the new concepts are revised. The learner gets an opportunity to travel to and fro in the newly learnt content. If the responses given by the learner are not up to the mark, the learner can start learning the content from which he or she has not understood. The correct responses are appreciated there by internally motivating the learner to grasp the content till the end.

Limitations of Branching programming

1) The learner may guess the correct response without understanding the subject matter of the frame.

2) Infinite branching cannot be provided. It cannot cater to the needs of the individuals. It is very difficult to find out the total number of branches for each individual.

3) Cost of preparation is high, audio-visual equipment is costly.

4) The programme needs revision after every two years which is a very costly affair.

5) Programmes are the product of programmer‘s imagination and it is he who decides diagnostic questions and level of content.

6) Branching model can be used after sixth grade the grade because small children do not follow its mechanism.

7) It is very difficult to ask questions on the whole matter of the frames because the frames are too large and sometimes important subject matter is left.

It does not consider learning process whether learning is taking place or not. Main emphasis is on diagnosing the weakness of learners and providing remedy to them.

9)There is no sequencing of pages. Student finds it difficult to follow the steps. He does not find it exciting or motivating, therefore he does not want to go through these pages.

10) More emphasis on remediation rather than teaching. Hence, it is only a tutorial approach.

Linear Versus Branching Systems

The matter or the concept is placed in a logical sequence in both the programming methods. The difference is the simplicity of the presentations of the matter. In linear programming the subject matter is presented in a straightforward and uncomplicated form. It follows a certain direction. Whereas the branched programming follows a complicated format, which does not follow a definite direction, it is like a scrambled book where the pages do not follow the normal sequence. As the linear programming the subject matter is presented in a straightforward and uncomplicated format it is used for fixing of learning and generally meant for the lower classes. But this is not in the case with branched programming. The subject matter is in complicated format generally meant for higher class students.

The goal of early developers of programmed instruction was to design the instructional activities to minimize the probability of an incorrect response . However, much has been made of the distinction between what some have called Crowder’s (1960) multiple-choice branching versus Skinner’s linear-type program .

Crowder, like Skinner (1954, 1958a) likens his intrinsic system to a private tutor. Although Crowder himself claimed no theoretical roots, his method of intrinsic programming or “branching,” was developed out of his experience as a wartime instructor for the Air Force. Crowder’s method used the errors made by the recruits to send them into a different, remedial path or branch of the programming materials. Although the remediation was not in any way based on any sort of analysis of the error patterns or “procedural bugs.” it may well have been the first use of errors in a tutorial system.

Although much has been made about the differences between Skinner and Crowder, it is clear that although the two men worked independently, Skinner was clearly aware of the use of branching and accepted it. Crowder began publishing his work a year later in 1959 . In a sense they were talking about two very different things. Skinner was writing about education and Crowder was writing from his experience in the teaching complex skills to adults with widely varying backgrounds and abilities. Certainly no one would propose to write materials systematically designed to lead the student into errors and anyone would prefer programs in which no student made an error if this could be achieved.

REFERENCES:

Crowder N. 1959. Automatic tutoring by means of intrinsic programming. In Galanter E.H. (ed) Automatic teaching: the state of the art. New York: Wiley,

Fisch, Shalom M. & Bernstein, Lewis . Formative research revealed: methodological and process issues in formative research”.

Friedman, Daniel and Felleisen, Matthias  The Little Schemer MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts,

Glaser R. (ed) . Teaching machines and programmed learning II: data and directions. Washington D.C. National Education Association of the United States.

Hanson L.F. & Komoski P.K. School use of programmed instruction; National Education Association of the United States.

Hilgard E.R. & Bower G.H. . Theories of learning. 3rd ed, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,

Hilgard E.R. 1966. Learning & the technology of instruction.

Holland J.G. & Skinner B.F.  The analysis of behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Hovland C.I; Lumsdaine A.A. & Sheffield F.D. 1949. Experiments on mass communication. Princeton University Press.

Jones, Susan J. (2003) Blueprint for student success: a guide to research-based teaching practices, K-12 Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, California,

Lumsdaine A.A. Audio-visual research in the U.S. Air Force. AV Communication Review1, 76–90.

Margulies S. & Eigen L.D. 1961. Applied programmed instruction. New York: Wiley.

Miller, Robert B.  Analysis and specification of behavior for training. In Glaser R. (ed) Training research and education. New York: Wiley,.

Popham W.J. & Baker E.L.  Establishing instructional goals. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.

Pressey S.L. 1926. A simple apparatus which gives tests and scores – and teaches. School & Society .

Pritchard, Alan . Ways of learning: learning theories and learning styles in the classroom. London: Taylor & Francis,

Skinner B.F. 1965. The technology of teaching. Appleton-Century-Croft. Includes reprints of his papers on programmed learning.

Skinner B.F. The science of learning and the art of teaching. Harvard Educational Review.

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V. (P.G) College, Roorkee, India

One can gain appreciable insights to the present day status of the field of instructional technology from examining its early beginnings and the origins of current practice. Programmed Instruction  was an integral factor in the evolution of the instructional design process, and serves as the foundation for the procedures in which IT professionals now engage for the development of effective learning environments. In fact, the use of the term programming was applied to the production of learning materials long before it was used to describe the design and creation of computerized outputs.- Romizowski (1986)

The programmed instruction movement was developed by American psychologist B. F. Skinner during the 1950s. Programmed instruction, modelled after the scientific method, arose as a response to teacher shortages and to increasing student populations. It automates instruction through breaking up curriculum into small, self-contained, manageable frames that are then logically sequenced in a systematic manner and presented through technological devices. Ultimately, the goal of programmed instruction is to control learning through measuring observable outcomes and through devising precise methodologies of teaching that are guaranteed to work. Programmed instruction has been extinguished as a movement, but its influences form the foundation for much of modern education. Systematization of instruction through codified objectives, evaluation methods (especially through standardized testing), and techniques of teaching that emphasize a back to the basics, step-by-step approach are, for example, some of the ways in which programmed instruction influenced the educational field as it is understood in the present.

“The Technology of Teaching.” In the 1954 work, Skinner listed the problems he saw in the schools using as a specific case “for example, the teaching of arithmetic in the lower grades” (p. 90). In the 1950s many of the ideas that had surfaced earlier were clarified and popularized.  Programmed instruction was among the first, in historical significance for instructional developments and analytical processes, important to instructional design.  This form of instruction is based on the behavioural learning theories.

The early programmed instruction was often delivered by some form of ‘teaching machine’ but later it brought the concept of interactive text.  The programmed instruction movement extended the use of printed self – instruction to all school subject areas to adult and vocational education as well (Romiszowski,1997).

Meaning and Definition of Programmed Instruction

Programmed learning (or programmed instruction) is a research-based system which helps learners work successfully. The method is guided by research done by a variety of applied psychologists and educators. The learning material is in a kind of textbook or teaching machine or computer.

Programmed instruction is a method of presenting new subject matters to students in a graded sequence of controlled steps. Students work through the programmed material by themselves at their own speed and after each step test their comprehension by answering an examination question or filling in a diagram. They are then immediately shown the correct answer or given additional information. Computers and other types of teaching machines are often used to present the material, although books may also be used. (The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05, retrieved 16:22, 16 August 2007 (MEST)).

The instructions provided by teaching machine or programmed text book is referred to as programmed instruction.

According to J E Espich and Bill Williams, “programmed instruction is a planned sequence of experiences, leading to proficiency, in terms of stimulus- response relationship that have proven to be effective. ”

According to Susan Markle, 1969, “programmed instruction is a method of designing reproducible sequence of instructional events to produce a measurable consistent effect on a behaviour of each and every acceptable student. ”

Although Skinners initial programmed instruction format has undergone many transformations, most adaptations retain three essential features:

(1) An ordered sequence of items, either questions or statements to which the student is asked to respond;

(2) The student’s response, which may be in the form of filling in a blank, recalling the answer to a question, selecting from among a series of answers, or solving a problem; and

(3) Provision for immediate response confirmation, sometimes within the program frame itself but usually in a different location, as on the next page in a programmed textbook or in a separate window in the teaching machine. (Joyce, Weil & Calhoun, 2000:332)

Philosophical Basis of Programme Instruction

Programmed instruction was imagined by Skinner as the full implementation of the scientific aims and premises in the realm of education. Programmed instruction was not formulated as just another teaching methodology, pedagogical philosophy, or educational implementation. Rather, it was the very embodiment of science in all aspects of the field of education. Programmed instruction breaks up the field of education into small, self-contained, manageable parts that it then logically sequences in a systematic manner. Ultimately, the goal is to control learning through measuring observable outcomes and through devising precise methodologies of teaching that are “guaranteed” to work (Skinner, 1958)–even relationships between students and teachers are codified and explained in terms of behavioral objectives and laws of communication and learning. In mechanical ways of learning, “communication conceived as the transmission of information from one place (the sender) to another place (the receiver) through a medium or channel”.

Determinism

Programmed instruction is thus grounded in assumptions of determinism (McDonald et al., 2005)–the view that we can predict future events (or behaviours, in the case of programmed instruction) based on current knowledge of “laws” that are “true.” According to McDonald et al. (2005), “Programmers believed that an effective instructional product was the sum of its constituent parts, and that if all the factors were presented in the correct order, students would succeed” . Laws of learning, according to Skinner and the proponents of programmed instruction, dictated that curricula be implemented by systematically dividing material into in small, logical, linearly-sequenced parts. McDonald wrote that the assumption of determinism manifested in programmed instruction is in the form of less responsibility for students. Because steps were so small (in order for learning to be “guaranteed”), students often got bored, motivation became a problem, and less “genuine exploration” occurred in classrooms .Further, this assumption implies that aptitude and skills are irrelevant to success in school. The scientific method, as applied to education in the form of programmed instruction, theoretically works each and every time, with all students.

Materialism

Programmed instruction is also grounded in the assumption of materialism .Materialism is the view that only observable things can be manipulated by scientific methods. Thus, all aspects of programmed instruction are cantered upon observable behaviour and specific content that can be broken up into learning objectives. Education is seen as a process that produces terminal outcomes in students. The implications of this assumption are that programmed instruction courses were often found to distort material in order to make it conform to a measurable format.

The theoretical underpinnings of science (and consequently, of programmed instruction) did not prove effective or practical as applied to education, and by the mid to late 1960s the movement had started to lose supporters. Many schools found that the rigid step-by-step process not only did not cater to student differences as claimed by theorists, but ignored them. The attempt to break down student behaviours into observable behaviour was initially theoretically promising and had much support from a world fascinated by new technologies and scientific developments.

Characteristics of Programmed Instruction

When discussing the underpinnings of Programmed Instruction it is easy to get bogged down in conflicting definitions of what the term means, which leads to disagreements as to when it first began, which leads into the arguments, efficacies and origins of particular concepts, and so forth. Since the work (and personality) of B. F. Skinner is included in the topic, the literature is further complicated by the visual array of misconceptions, misrepresentations, etc. of his work. Programmed Instruction, now a days is considered  as a method of teaching in which the information to be learned is presented in discrete units, with a correct response to each unit required before the learner may advance to the next unit, a monitored, step-by-step teaching method in which a student must master one stage before moving on to the next.

Here are some major characteristics of programmed instruction;

• An interaction is emphasised between the learner and the programme in programmed learning.
• Each student progresses at his own pace without any threat of being exposed to any humiliation in a heterogeneous class
• Frequent response is required of the student.
• In a programmed material continuous evaluation is possible by the record of student’s response.
• The assumption about the learner is clearly stated in the programmed learning materials.
• The content and sequence of the frames are subjected to actual try out with students and are revised on the basis of data gathered by the programmer i. e “diagnostic feature”
• The objectives underlying programming are defined explicitly and in operational terms so that the terminal behaviour is made observable and measurable
• The strategy provides sufficient situation for teaching the student to make discriminations among range of possibilities and to reduce generalizations.
• The subject matter is broken down in to small steps called frames and arranged sequentially
• There is immediate confirmation of right answer or correction of wrong answers given by the learner’s i. e. “self-correcting feature.”

A program, however, is the actual instruction. The student’s success or failure depends on the program. Nearly all students are capable of learning when properly programed materials are made available.  A program can be distinguished from a lesson plan or a book. A book is only a source of materials to which the student exposes himself. There is little or no predetermined interaction between the book and the reader in the form of required responses and feedback. A lesson plan is often a skeletal outline of materials and activities the teacher will use in teaching. The actual instruction is something related to but apart from the lesson outline .The programmed materials, as distinguished from programmed instruction, or the actual use   of the materials are simply the educational materials which the students learn. A program accepts the responsibility for the management of the learning situation, the program tries to see to it that the student does learn, and it takes the blame for the student’s failure.

Principles of programmed learning

Researchers of programmed learning formulated five principles .According to behaviourist psychology, a learning effect is considered to be measured by the number of responses a learner makes under arranged conditions. Feedback should be given to correct responses in order to “reinforce” such response, and it was thought that such a process would require individual learning. The last principle; “Learner verification” is the most valuable contribution that behaviourist psychology has made to the pedagogy in terms of valuing an empirical approach. Such a standpoint is inherited in “Formative Evaluation” or “Feedback and Improvement” in an ID process.

Researchers of programmed learning formulated five principles.. According to behaviourist psychology, a learning effect is considered to be measured by the number of responses a learner makes under arranged conditions. Feedback should be given to correct responses in order to “reinforce” such response, and it was thought that such a process would require individual learning.

· Principle of small steps:

Set small steps in order to prevent a learner from stumbling as much as possible. When he/she makes a mistake, there is the risk of being labelled a failure.  It is shown by experiments that even the dullest students can learn as effectively as the brightest students if the subject matter is presented to them in suitable small steps. When we divide the task to be learnt into very small steps, and ask the students to learn only one step at a time, then probably all the students will be able to learn one small step at a time and sequentially learn all the steps.

· Principle of activity responding:

The second psychological principle is that the students learn better and faster when they are actively participating in the teaching-learning process. To what extent a learner can understand is judged by making him/her answer questions. The extent of a learner’s understanding is ascertained from what is demonstrated in the responses. In our classroom teaching the teachers do ask a few questions and the students respond. But it is not possible for the teachers to ask all the students to respond at each small step. A teaching machine text or a programmed text contains a large number of questions-one question at each small step and the students respond actively. The principle of active responding is used for the programmed.

· Principle of reinforcement:

Every response even approximately correct must be reinforced immediately. Delayed reinforcement fails to work. This is possible only when a teacher has to teach only one student at a time. The most situation is when the teacher can cater to the needs of his students individually. But in classroom teaching this is hardly possible. No teacher, however efficient and sincere he may be, can reinforce each correct response of each of his students as soon as it is made in a classroom situation where he has to teach 40/50 students.

· Principle of self-pacing:

The programmed instruction is based on the basis assumption that learning take place effectively if the learner is allowed to learn at his own pace. Therefore, a good programme of the material always take care of the principles of self-pacing. A learner moves from one frame to another according to his own speed of learning.

· Principle of student-evaluation or student testing:

Continuous evaluation of the student and the learning process leads to better teaching-learning. In the programmed instruction, the learner has to leave the record of his responses because he is required to write a response for each frame on response sheet. This detailed record helps in revising the programmed.

Process  of   Programmed Instruction

Programmed Instruction is a process for the design and development of self-instructional materials. A program of instruction is simply a product of this process and is identified by the process, not by superficial characteristics of format of the product.

The process contains these steps:

1.            Task analysis

2.            Setting objectives

3.            Analysis and design of instructional content

4.            Developmental testing and revision

5.            Field testing

6.            Field administration

The process starts with the question of what you want the learner to be able to do, then analyses the factors that would prevent the learner from reaching the objective, establishes an evaluation procedure for determining whether he has reached the objective, and ends with the development of instructional materials designed to obtain the desired behaviour.

The process of analysis is probably the most important single aspect of programmed instruction. First there is the statement of the problem.  The training problem must be separated from other aspects of the problem, and specific behaviours must be isolated and considered for the course. During the analysis, certain “system” or organizational problems relevant to the desired behaviour are identified. This makes it possible to teach the desired behaviour and hopefully, to control or eradicate those variables in the system

Writing and Revising a Program

Central to the roots of Programmed Instruction is the idea that programmers must decide what students should be to be able to do once they have completed the program. Generally, this involves some sort of activity analysis and specification of objectives.

Program writing has three major steps

A-Preparation

B-The actual writing

C- Try-out and revision

The Preparation

The Preparation of a program consists of five steps you should consider before you begin writing it:

A-     Select a unit or topic

B-     Prepare a content outline

C-     Define the objectives in behavioural terms

D-      Construct (and administer) a test of entering behaviour

E-      Construct (and administer) a test of terminal behaviour

Select a unit or topic

The selection of a topic can be guided by several factors. First, select subject matter with which you are thoroughly familiar. Unfamiliarity will result in misleading and inaccurate materials and will interfere with your learning how to program the materials. Second restrict yourself to a very small area of subject matter. The tendency of the beginning programmer is to select too wide a topic. The development of a program and the administration of it to the student are usually very time consuming activities.

Prepare a content outline

This outline should cover all the material you plan to teach. It is frequently the product of a careful examination of a number of textbooks and reference sources. An experienced teacher also has the use of his notes, textbooks, and assignments he has used in conventional instruction. If you have not taught the material you are about to program, you should consult an experienced teacher who can supply knowledge, specific examples, and interesting illustrations which may be useful in your program. One of the chief criticism s of programed materials is that they have been published before adequate editing of the manuscript for accuracy and clarity of subject matter and presentation (Soles,1963). Occasionally an individual with some unpolished programing skills and with little knowledge of the subject matter has accepted the responsibility of writing a program. The results can be and have been disastrous. The chief advantage of the teacher as a programmer is that he can combine his knowledge of the subject matter with his new knowledge about programmed instruction.

Define the objectives in behavioural terms

The writing of objectives involves both task description and task analysis. Task description, is the description of terminal behaviour. Task analysis examines the component behaviours the student must acquire in the process of reaching the terminal behaviour. It is better to state your objective in general rather than in behavioural terms. The general statement is an instructional goal. You then analyse this goal by asking yourself what behaviours are needed to attain it. You must continue the analysis of behaviour until you have reached the probable level of entering behaviour.

Construct (and administer) a test of entering behaviour

The construction of this test requires you to determine the necessary prerequisite behaviour which you will recall but not provide instruction for in your program. The prerequisite behaviours are the bases for writing the items for the test of entering behaviour. If you administer such a test to your students early in the development of your program, the test results should indicate at what points your programming must begin. You should write several items for each entering behaviour to be certain that the student does not answer an item correctly by only making a lucky guess. In dealing with a group of students you may discover considerable variability in entering behaviour. One possible way of handling this problem is to develop a program with branches. The program can direct students with more adequate entering behaviour than other to skip the introductory frames of the program and to turn to the advanced frames.

Construct (and administer) a test of terminal behaviour

This test, based on your original task description, is used for performance assessment, the fourth component of the basic teaching model. The items should be scrambled and should not follow the order in which the terminal behaviours were acquired in the program. Administer the test to your students before they study the program. In this way you can discover whether any student have already acquired the behaviours your program teaches. Material which the student already knows should be deleted from the program. In the administration of your entering and terminal tests, the ideal result is that all students obtain a perfect score on the test of entering behaviour and obtain a zero score on the test of terminal behaviour.

The Actual Writing

The Actual Writing of a program consists of five steps you should consider:

A-Present the material frames.

B- Require active responding

C- Provide for confirmation or correction of response

D-Use prompts to guide student’s response

E-Provide careful sequencing of the frames

Present the material frames

A frame is a small segment of subject matter which calls forth particular student responses. As a programmer your task is to provide those stimuli necessary to evoke the student responses which must be acquired as steps toward the terminal behaviour. Not only a frame a unit of subject matter, such as a sentence or paragraph of a chapter, but also it is constructed to call forth particulars and eventually, specific terminal behaviours. Not only is a frame a unit of subject matter, such as a sentence or paragraph of a chapter, but also it is constructed to call forth particular responses and, eventually, specific terminal behaviours. There are four essential parts of a frame;  the stimulus and the stimulus context; the cues or prompts necessary to produce the response reliably; the response or responses the stimulus evokes; and enrichment material which makes the frame more readable or interesting or which recalls previously learned materials to facilitate student response. It is found that short steps are more effective than large steps for initial learning, and the progressive lengthening of steps leads to the best performance on the test of terminal behaviour.

Require active responding

An necessary part of the frame is the response the student is asked to make . For the construction of frames, the Stuart Margulies critical response rule can be used. The student can be expected to know only that portion of the material to which he has responded correctly. He cannot be expected to learn information which he does not use in making an immediate response.

It is important that the student be required to make the critical response. Holland (1960) altered the normal version of a program by choosing different response words which had little relationship with the critical content and which could be supplied by observing trivial cues. The absence of errors made during the study of a program can mislead the programmer into believing that the students are learning more than they are. By making trivial responses they are learning very little.

If you analyse the terminal behaviour, you will be able to indicate clearly the critical responses the student should make. The responses in the frame always depend on some important part of the subject matter, such as understanding a new illustration, recognizing important details of the subject matter, or acquiring a new term.

The location of the response blank may also be a source of difficulty.  Robert Horn (1963, p.4) argued that the blank should appear a close to the end of the frame as possible because this position spares the student the awkwardness of flipping his eyes back and forth, “skidding around inside frame after frame looking for the relevant material.” It is often helpful at first to write the frame in question form because the question focuses the attention on the form of the required response. It is, of course, entirely permissible that a frame remain in question form. And it is sometimes desirable to use multiple-choice alternatives rather than fill-in blanks.

Weather the response programmed material should be OVERT or COVERT has been the subject of considerable discussion. Unfortunately, these terms have shifted in meaning and “one man’s overt is frequently another man’s covert”. Actually in overt response the students wrote down their answers on sheet of paper,, while in covert response students mentally composed a response to each blank in the frame before turning the page to the correct answer. Although the findings on the relative benefits of overt and covert responding have not always been consistent. Richard Anderson (1967) points to two conclusions which have considerable empirical support:

(a) Overt responses facilitate learning when the responses are relevant to the content of the lesson,

(b) Overt responses should be required in the learning of unfamiliar and technical terms.

The reason overt responding facilitate learning is not clear at present. Ernest Rothkopf (1966) suggests that test questions/ frames off a program control what he calls ‘ Mathemagenic  Behaviour’- covert and overt behaviours of the student in the instructional situations which give birth to learning. Mathemagenic behaviours include reading, asking questions, inspecting an object, keeping the face oriented toward the teacher, and mentally reviewing a recently seen motion picture. They also include looking out of the classroom window, yawning, turning the pages of a textbook without reading, writing notes to a student in a neighbouring seat, and sleeping either in class or either in a library carrel. Some of these behaviours, you can see, are quite unrelated to the achievement of instructional objectives. If it were possible, however, to control mathemagenic behaviours, the control could facilitate learning. Such control can be obtained through the insertions of questions in reading passage.

Provide for confirmation or correction of student responses

You have seen in the preceding examples of frames that the correct response to the frame always appears. Providing the correct response, with which the students compares his own response, has been a standard characteristic of programmed instruction. When the student discovers that his response is correct, he obtains confirmation; when it is incorrect, he receives correction. The practical necessity or efficiency of immediate confirmation has never been adequately studied. It does appear that early programmers failed to distinguish between the motivational and informational aspects of immediate knowledge of results.

It is suggested that supplying the correct response may be more important later than earlier in the program, when most of the prompts for the correct responses are withdrawn. The tight sequencing of program frames, so that one frame interlocks with those which precede and follow it, provides a source of informational feedback apart form that provides by the printed answers.

Use prompts to guide Student Response

Prompts are cues provided in the program frame to guide the student to the correct response. They are supplementary stimuli in that they are added to a frame to make the frame easier, but are not sufficient in themselves to produce the response.

Prompts have two basic purposes:  They guide the student to the correct response without over controlling his behaviour, and they prevent the student from making unnecessary errors. These purposes suggests that you must avoid both over prompting and under prompting in writing your frames. A common source of over prompting is the COPYING FRAME, in which the student is asked to make a response given in the frame. In it the student need only copy the important word to respond correctly. The copying frame is a means for producing the response the first time and is useful as an introductory frame. Since it displays the full response, however, it is not a form of prompting. The main disadvantage is that the student can make correct verbatim responses which he conceptually does not understand. The use of copying frame tends to make a program dull and reduce the amount of student learning. It is not uncommon that students respond correctly to all the frames in a program and still fail to answer correctly to the test of terminal behaviour. Such a result is usually the result of over prompting and of the liberal use of copying frames.

The use of prompts to guide student responses requires you to withdraw these prompts so that the student can eventually achieve the terminal behaviour without supporting cues.

Provide careful Sequencing of the Frames

The sequence, or order, in which your frames appear depends upon two factors: the description and analysis of the behaviours your program intends to teach, and the conditions essential for the learning required by the various tasks.

It is even possible to develop frames which engage the student in problem solving and discovery learning. Kersh(1964) developed a programmed discovery procedure which prescribed conditions under which the student would engage in searching behaviour and which specified occasions for the teacher to give verbal approval to the student for the searching behaviour he exhibited as he progressed through the program.

All the fundamental learning conditions-discrimination, generalization, contiguity, practice and reinforcement- can be embodied in the frame sequences, of course, can also provide for review and testing whenever these are necessary. One of the major advantages for educational psychologists in studying programmed instruction is the freedom allowed in manipulating the fundamental learning conditions.

Tryout and Revision

We have divided the third stage of program development into three steps:

1-Develop the first draft of the program while working closely with your students.

2-Edit the program on the basis of the original try-out with these students.

3-Revise the program on the basis of terminal test performance and student responses to the program frames.

Develop the first draft of the program-

At this stage you should not try to produce highly polished frames. Thomas Gilbert suggests that  you work closely with each student in this stage of program development. Find out where the student makes his mistakes and what you can do about it. Revise the frames or frame sequence until the student learns from them what he is supposed to learn. The first tryout should occur before developing the program very far.

Edit the program

The following suggestions can be taken care of while editing the program:

• Frames should be written clearly in good language
• What is said should be correct
• The response required of the student should be relevant to the purpose of the frame. If the student is to learn to do something, you should make him do it rather than talk about it
• If you use a multiple-choice items, the alternatives should be feasible answers
• Frames should contain sufficient context to make clear what is being presented and what is wanted
• You should not include more points than the student can respond to in one frame
• You should eliminate irrelevant material
• In concept teaching, you should provide a representative sample of illustrations and provide for negative examples as well
• You should make liberal use of thematic prompts and sparing use of formal prompts
• You should make the frames toward mastery as large as  the student can reasonably be expected to handle. Let testing tell you when the step is too large
• The testing should tell you how much practice and prompting to provide

Try out and revise

After this editing you have a fledgling program to try out, It should be neatly typed and carefully duplicated. You will need about fifteen to forty or more students- but use as many/as few as you have when you administer your program this time, resist any impulse to intervene. The program must now assume the full instructional responsibility. You can supply the student with paper which bears numbered blanks. On these they can check the frames which give them difficulty and give a description of the difficulty. You can also record any questions they ask while studying the program. After finishing the program the students should take the test of terminal behavior. The students’ response records will reveal which frames were missed. From these records you an make a list of common errors. If you group the items of the test by sub units, you can also determine which sections of the program were ineffective. High error rates on particular frames or particular sections indicate a need for revision. The conventional standard has been the 10 percent error rate. Finally, if you require the students to annotate their copies of the program, their comments can also guide your revision.

Advantages of Programmed Instruction.

Following are the advantages of this teaching strategy

• Immediate confirmation of the results provides reinforcement to the learners and encourages the learners to proceed further. Feedback is provided to wrong answers, so that learner is able to develop mastery over the content.
• It may be less complicated to keep materials in current Programmed Instruction unit than it is to update in a textbook.
• Learning by doing maxim of teaching is followed to involve learners in the learning process.
• Material can be exchanged from country to country and from state to state, giving flexibility and variety to extension offering.
• Programmed Materials can be prepared for and adapted to fit almost any local situation related to nationality, economic or cultural variations in a community.
• Students are exposed only to correct responses, therefore, possibility to commit errors in reduced.
• The main emphasis is on individual differences and students’ involvement. Learners will work individually.
• There is not fixed time interval for learning. Students may learn at their own pace. Students can proceed at their own pace and at time convenient to them. A slow learner is not embarrassed.
• Those who setup programmed instruction units may be motivated to plan their efforts more deliberately and more thoroughly than with traditional teaching.

Disadvantages of Programmed Instruction

Programmed Instruction has disadvantage too, among them are-

v  In absence of the teacher, students may spoil the disciplinary tone of the class, or they will be helpless when any problem arises.

v  Motivation is necessary for students, whether they’re staff members or layman, to complete units of programmed instruction. It may be that job promotion in their own organization would be sufficient enticement. Possibly an item in the individual personnel record would motivate him to complete a unit.

v  Only cognitive objectives can be achieved. There is no chance for students’ creativity, their responses are highly structured.

v  Programmed Instruction done on an individual basis at student’s home or offices would likely have to be limited to the linear type. While this could be effective, it may not have the potential that more sophisticated computers would have.

v  The extension teacher must keep in touch with their students working on units and let them know he’s interested in progress and keeping in touch. This may be difficult to do in some cases, like in case of high rate of competition.

v  The preparation of Programmed Instruction material is time demanding, many hours are usually required to produce a unit. Due to tight schedule of time table, students cannot be left to learn at their own pace. It would be very difficult to learn the content the subject matter in a limited period of time.

v  The problem of teacher motivation, one of the human factors in programmed learning, must be given attention if this method is to succeed.

v  The technique may be new to the particular students and they may not complete units satisfactorily because they don’t adequately understand Programmed Instruction.

Suggestion for this Teaching Strategy

1. A programmer should have thorough knowledge of the content and technique of content analysis.

2. This strategy should be used as a supplementary device for remedial teaching in the class room.

3. It should be used in distance education or continuing education programs where no rigid time table is applied.

4. If no at a primary level or higher level of education, this strategy may be useful at secondary level of education where many new subjects are introduced in the curriculum and they create problems in learning.

If applied in classroom teaching, teacher should be present in the class. He can maintain discipline in the class and help in eradicating the difficulties of the learners. Personal touch of the teacher can be more fruitful and effective in student’s learning.

Probably no single movement has impacted the field of instructional design and technology than Programmed Instruction. It spawned widespread interest, research; then it was placed as a component within the larger systems movement and, was largely forgotten. In many ways, the arguments and misconceptions of the “golden age” of Programmed Instruction over its conceptual and theoretical underpinnings have had a profound effect on the research and practice of our , past, present and future.

To conclude we can say that the Programs are normally validated as part of the development process to ensure reliable, replicable learning results that is they are “automatic and guaranteed.”  They are developed to meet specific needs since the process usually begins with a needs assessment. Programming provides for adaptation of instruction to the characteristics and capabilities of individual users.

Users can usually proceed at their own rate of learning. This avoids unfair comparisons with other users. Users are required to be active participants in the program, engaging in learning activities rather than passively receiving information. Programs can be sequenced to match the information processing requirements of the task to the structure of the content.

Different sequences or delivery strategies can be used to meet the same objectives allowing for further adaptation. The reinforcement resulting from the completion of a set of frames leaves the user with a sense of accomplishment or success, which in turn increases the motivation to learn. All or parts of the program can be repeated or restudied as required. Learning may be accomplished at any convenient time or place in many formats. Programs can be used without supervision. Self-teaching guides are common and effective. Knowledge is usually gained more quickly than with traditional instruction.

A wide variety of media or display devices can be employed to deliver the programs. PI materials provide flexibility in arranging the user’s work load, and they are logistically easy to administer. PI materials are well suited to many kinds of learning tasks and learning models. The feedback is continuous throughout the learning process. Slow learners do not become lost and discouraged as the material becomes more complex and detailed.

The highly structured nature can help users move well beyond their normal level of progress. Reduces need for large instructional staff .Does not require special facilities or equipment. Content can be easily tailored to specific jobs or vocational needs.

REFERENCES:

Margulies S. & Eigen L.D. 1961. Applied programmed instruction. New York: Wiley.

Pressey S.L. 1926. A simple apparatus which gives tests and scores – and teaches. School & Society .

Hilgard E.R. 1966. Learning & the technology of instruction.

Hilgard E.R. & Bower G.H. . Theories of learning. 3rd ed, New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,

Hovland C.I; Lumsdaine A.A. & Sheffield F.D. 1949. Experiments on mass communication. Princeton University Press.

Lumsdaine A.A. Audio-visual research in the U.S. Air Force. AV Communication Review1, 76–90.

Crowder N. 1959. Automatic tutoring by means of intrinsic programming. In Galanter E.H. (ed) Automatic teaching: the state of the art. New York: Wiley,

Skinner B.F. 1965. The technology of teaching. Appleton-Century-Croft. Includes reprints of his papers on programmed learning.

Holland J.G. & Skinner B.F.  The analysis of behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Skinner B.F. The science of learning and the art of teaching. Harvard Educational Review.

Glaser R. (ed) . Teaching machines and programmed learning II: data and directions. Washington D.C. National Education Association of the United States.

Pritchard, Alan . Ways of learning: learning theories and learning styles in the classroom. London: Taylor & Francis,

Fisch, Shalom M. & Bernstein, Lewis . Formative research revealed: methodological and process issues in formative research”.

Hanson L.F. & Komoski P.K. School use of programmed instruction; National Education Association of the United States.

Miller, Robert B.  Analysis and specification of behavior for training. In Glaser R. (ed) Training research and education. New York: Wiley,.

Popham W.J. & Baker E.L.  Establishing instructional goals. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.

Jones, Susan J. (2003) Blueprint for student success: a guide to research-based teaching practices, K-12 Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, California,

Friedman, Daniel and Felleisen, Matthias  The Little Schemer MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts,

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V. (P.G) College, Roorkee, India

SRI AUROBINDO was born on the 15th August 1872 at Calcutta.  At the age of seven Sri Aurobindo’s father sent him to England for schooling, where he was placed in the care of a Protestant minister and his family who were given strict instructions to keep him and his two brothers ignorant of their Indian background , because his father wanted him to have no Indian influence in the shaping of his outlook and personality He remained in England for fourteen years during which time he helped organize a group known as the Indian Majlis that advocated Indian independence. . While in England, Sri Aurobindo passed the I.C.S. Examination, and yet he felt no call for it; so he got himself disqualified by remaining absent from the riding test. The Gaekwad of Baroda happened to be there at that time, and Sri Aurobindo accepted the proposal to be his Personal Secretary, and returned to India.

Soon thereafter, however, Sri Aurobindo switched over to the Baroda College as Professor of French and then of English, and when in 1906, he left for Bengal, he was the acting Principal of the College. It was during the Baroda period that Sri Aurobindo assimilated in himself the spirit and culture of India and prepared himself for his future political and spiritual work. Indeed, his political work had already begun in Baroda, but it was behind the scenes, largely of the nature of a preparation for an armed revolution for the liberation of India.

Aurobindo’s spiritual adventure began in earnest after a meeting he had with a yogi named Vishnu Bhaskar Lele. The two spent three days together in a solitary room during which time Lele told him, “see the thoughts entering from the outside. Fling them back, do not let them enter.” The result of this was that Aurobindo had a change of consciousness in which he experienced, in his own words, the “divine Silence”

Sri Aurobindo was the first among the Indian leaders to declare and work for the aim of complete Independence of India. In 1905, Bengal was divided, and Sri Aurobindo left Baroda and, invited by the nationalistic leaders, he joined at Calcutta the newly started National College as its first Principal. It was here that Sri Aurobindo, while working secretly for the revolution,chalked out also a plan of outer action. This plan consisted of the programme of passive Resistance, Boycott and Swadeshi, which was later adopted as the policy of the struggle for freedom. It was here again that Sri Aurobindo wrote powerfully and boldly for Bande Mataram, and later for Karma Yogin; through his writings, he electrified the nation and surcharged the people with a new energy which ultimately led the nation to her freedom. It was, therefore, significant that when India attained her liberation in 1947, it was on the 15th August, the birthday of Sri Aurobindo.

The pioneering work that Sri Aurobindo did for the liberation of India was evidently a part of his larger work for the entire humanity and for the whole earth. For him, the liberation of India was an indispensable part of the new world-order. Moreover, the practice of Yoga, which he had started in 1902, led him, even while in the thick of intense political and literary activity, to major realisations of the Brahmic Silence, Nirvana, and also of the universal dynamic Presence of the Divine. And, in 1908, when he was in Alipore jail during his trial under the charge of sedition, he received through numerous experiences and realisations the assurance of the liberation of the country and also the knowledge of the initial lines on which his own future work was to proceed. For he saw that even in the field of Yoga something was still lacking, something radical that alone would help resolve the problems of the world and would lead mankind to its next evolutionary stage. And so, in 1910, soon after his acquittal from the jail, he withdrew to Pondicherry to concentrate upon this new research work, to hew a new path.

In 1910 he left politics to work solely for the fulfillment of his vision of human unity through the spiritual development of the system he called “Integral Yoga”. Aurobindo was critical of the popular interpretations of yoga and spirituality, and felt that they were incomplete, being based almost universally on a model of spiritual development that had the ascent of consciousness (or a radical separation of consciousness from the body) as its goal. To Aurobindo only a complete divinization of the body and world would fulfill the hidden meanings of the ancient Vedic wisdom, which he felt it was his mission to uncover for mankind.
Sri Aurobindo has explained the nature of this work, the nature of the Supermind, the necessity of its descent, the process of this descent and the dynamic consequences of this descent or the solutions of the problems of mankind, in his voluminous writings most of which were written serially in the philosophical monthly, Arya, which was started in 1914, immediately after the first arrival of The Mother from France to Pondicherry. Some of the most important of these and other writings are: The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Human Cycle, The Foundations of Indian Culture, Essays on the Gita, On the Veda, The Upanishads, The Future Poetry, The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, and the epic Savitri.

When Sri Aurobindo withdrew in 1926 into his room for concentrating in the required way on the ‘Supramental Yoga’, Mother organised and developed his Ashram. In 1943, a school for the education of children was founded, and after the passing of Sri Aurobindo in 1950, Mother developed that school into an International University Centre, where numerous original and bold experiments of education were carried out under her guidance. This educational work was a part of Supramental Yoga, and we have rare insights into education and yoga in the volumes entitled Questions and Answers, which contain conversations of the Mother that took place in her classes. In 1958, Mother withdrew to her room in order to come to terms with the research in the problems related to the supramental transformation of the physical consciousness at the cellular level. In 1968, Mother founded Auroville, an International city as a collective field for the material and spiritual researches required for realising human unity as a part of the supramental action on the earth.

The concept of Integral Yoga

The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo (which he also referred to as synthetic, Supramental, or purna yoga) advocated a total transformation: physical, vital, mental, and spiritual. In the big picture which he envisioned, moreover, this transformation was for the purpose of not merely individual, but cosmic, salvation. The liberation of the individual was, for Aurobindo, an illusion; what was required was the divinization of the totality of the cosmos, and to literally bring the Kingdom of God on earth. Liberation of the spirit from the cycle of birth and death was not sufficient for the perfection of man’s spiritual realization, he felt; rather, the very cells of the body must be brought into contact with the divine light. The rare phenomenon of the divine body (jyotir maya deha – “radiant or luminous body”) was to be the goal of all yogic endeavour. Until that was achieved, said Aurobindo, realization was not perfect.

Unfortunately, spiritual consciousness is often conceived as a denial of material life and concerns of collective life. In Sri Aurobindo’s, however, there is no fundamental opposition between Matter and Spirit. True integrity, according to them, implies rejection of no element in human personality and no denial of anything that can contribute to the full flowering of faculties of personality.

Again, according to Sri Aurobindo, psychic and spiritual development cannot be effected without effecting high level development of the body, life and mind, and that the perfection of the body, life and mind can be attained only when the powers of psychic and spiritual consciousness are bestowed upon the instruments of the body, life and mind.

As far as the supramental education is concerned, the supramental education will result no longer in a progressive formation of human nature and an increasing development of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the nature itself, a transfiguration of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond man towards superman, leading in the end to the appearance of a divine race upon earth.

If these three aspects of higher education are to be conducted properly, one must take great care to ensure that methods of religion are not introduced. Religion implies normally the methods of belief or dogma, performance of rituals and ceremonies, and prescriptions of certain specific acts, which are considered to be religious as distinguished from profane.

National System of Education

The contemporary scene of India compels everyone to turn to education as the central key to the road to regeneration. Unfortunately, our educational system is suffering from long-standing negligence and maladies and unless drastic steps are taken to bring radical and revolutionary changes, it would be futile to expect education to perform any miracle.

Sri Aurobindo firmly believe that the question is not between modernism and antiquity, but between an imported civilisation and the greater possibilities of the Indian mind and nature, not between the present and the past, but between the present and the future. He pointed out that “the living spirit of the demand for national education no more requires a return to the astronomy and mathematics of Bhaskara or the forms of the system of Nalanda than the living spirit of Swadheshi, a return from railway and motor traction to the ancient chariot and the bullock-cart.” He, therefore, spoke not of a return to the 5th century but an initiation of the centuries to come, not a reversion but a break forward away from a present artificial falsity to India’s own greater innate potentialities, which are demanded by the soul of India.

Synthesis of East and West

The twentieth century has been an unquiet age of ferment, chaos of ideas and inventions, clash of enormous forces, creation, catastrophe and dissolution amid the formidable agony and tension of the body and soul of humankind. In the 21st century we need to turn to a new orientation that we require in the field of education.

After centuries of experiments, materialism is giving way to the pressures of new discoveries which require exploration of the physical and spiritual domains. It has now become clear that the knowledge of the Spirit and knowledge of Matter need to be blended and synthesized, and in doing so, all that is intermediate between Spirit and Matter has all to be perfected and brought into unity in complete integration. All this has to be done both at the collective level and at the individual level,

The major question, he pointed out, is not merely what science we learn, but what we shall do with our science and how too, acquiring the scientific mind and recovering the habit of scientific discovery, we shall relate it to other powers of the human mind and scientific knowledge to other knowledge more intimate to other and not less light-giving and power-giving parts of our intelligence and nature. Again, he pointed out the question is not what language, Sanskrit or another, should be acquired by whatever method is most natural, efficient and stimulating to the mind, but the vital question is how we are to learn and make use of Sanskrit and the indigenous languages so as to get the heart and intimate sense of our own culture and establish a vivid continuity between the still living power of our past and the yet uncreated power of our future, and how we are to learn and use English or any other foreign tongue so as to know helpfully the life, ideas and culture of other countries and establish our right relations with the world around us. He argued that the aim and principle of a true national education is not to ignore modern truth and knowledge, but to take our foundation on India’s own being, own mind, and own spirit.

As against the idea that the modern European civilisation is a thing that we have to acquire and fit ourselves for, and so only can we live and prosper, and it is this that our education must do for us, he argued that the idea of national education challenges the sufficiency of that assumption. He pointed out that India would do better, taking over whatever new knowledge or just ideas Europe has to offer, to assimilate them to its own knowledge and culture, its own native temperament and spirit, mind and social genius and create there-from the civilisation of the future.

Concept of integral education

Sri Aurobindo’s concept of integral education finds its full relevance in the context of what he has called the Evolutionary Crisis, a crisis that occurs in a species at a time when some kind of mutation is imminent.

Integral education would not only aim at the integral development of personality, but it would also embrace all knowledge in its scope. It would pursue physical and psychical sciences, not merely to know the world and Nature in her processes and to use them for material human needs, but to know through them the Spirit in the world and the ways of the Spirit in its appearances. It would study ethics in order, not only to search for the good as the mind sees it, but also to perceive the supra-ethical Good. Similarly, it would pursue Art not merely to present images of the subjective and the objective world, but to see them with significant and creative vision that goes behind their appearances and to reveal the supra-rational Truth and Beauty. It would encourage the study of humanities, not in order to foster a society as a background for a few luminous spiritual figures so that the many necessarily remain for ever on the lower ranges of life, but to inspire the regeneration of the total life of the earth and to encourage voluntary optimism for that regeneration in spite of all previous failures. Finally, it would encourage unity of knowledge and harmony of knowledge, and it would strive to foster the spirit of universality and oneness.

An important characteristic of integral education is its insistence on simultaneous development of Knowledge, Will, Harmony, and Skill as also various parts of the being to the extent possible from the earliest stages of education. And since each individual child is unique in the composition of its qualities and characteristics, its capacities and propensities, integral education in its practice tends to become increasingly individualised. Again, for this very reason, the methods of education become increasingly dynamic, involving active participation of the child in its own growth.

The knowledge of the secrets of the process of integral education is largely contained in the Veda and Upanishads, and what we find missing there has been the special subject of study and experimentation in Sri Aurobindo. It is in the light of all this that we can speak today with great assurance of the concept and practice of integral education and of the synthesis of the ancient secrets of the reign of Spirit over mind, life and the body and the modern secrets of utilisation of the life in perfecting the instrumentality of the body, life and mind.

Considering that India has seen always in the human being a soul, a portion of the divinity enwrapped in the mind and body, a conscious manifestation in Nature of the universal self and spirit, he concluded that the one central object of the national system of education should be the growth of the soul and its powers and possibilities as also the preservation, strengthening and enrichment of the nation-soul and the normative needs of its ascending movements. Not limited to these two, Sri Aurobindo put forth in its aim also the raising of both the individual soul and the national soul into the powers of the life and the ascending mind and the soul of humanity. He added “at no time will it lose sight of man’s highest object, the awakening and development of his spiritual being.”

Education for humanity

According to Sri Aurobindo, there is within the universal mind and soul of humanity the mind and soul of the individual with its infinite variation, its commonness and its uniqueness and between them there stands an intermediate power, the mind of a nation, the soul of the people. In his concept of a national system of education, Sri Aurobindo aimed at taking account of these three elements so that national education would not be a machine-made fabric, but a true building or a living evocation of the powers of the mind and spirit of the human being.

According to Sri Aurobindo, one favourable factor, which is likely to help contemporary humanity, is the contemporary dissatisfaction that has arisen with materialism, on the one hand, and on the other hand, with asceticism, which has been negating the meaning and purposefulness of the material world. After centuries of experiments, materialism is gradually giving way to the pressures of new discoveries, which require exploration of the psychical and spiritual domains. Similarly, centuries of experiments in the spiritual fields have shown that the neglect of material life and neglect of collective welfare result in poverty or bankruptcy and even in economic and political slavery. As Sri Aurobindo pointed out:

It is therefore of good augury that after many experiments and verbal solutions we should now find ourselves standing today in the presence of the two that have alone borne for long the most rigorous tests of experience, the two extremes. … In Europe and in India, respectively, the negation of the materialist and the refusal of the ascetic have sought to assert themselves as the sole truth and to dominate the conception of Life. In India, if the result has been a great heaping up of the treasures of the Spirit, — or of some of them, — it has also been a great bankruptcy of Life; in Europe, the fullness of riches and the triumphant mastery of this world’s powers and possessions have progressed towards an equal bankruptcy in the things of the Spirit. … Therefore the time grows ripe and the tendency of the world moves towards a new and comprehensive affirmation in thought and in inner and outer experience and to its corollary, a new and rich self-fulfilment in an integral human existence for the individual and for the race.

Mental Education

In regard to mental education, the processes and methods can best be determined by understanding the mind. Mind is concerned largely with the activities of understanding, and all understanding is a discovery of a centre around which the ideas or things in question are held together.

Mental education is a process of training the mind of students to arrive at such central conceptions around which the widest and most complex and subtle ideas can be assimilated and integrated.This point marks the climax of the mental development as also a clear sign of the limitations of the mind. Having reached there its office is to fall into contemplation of silence and to open to the higher realms of experience, to receive clearly and precisely the intuitions and inspirations from those higher realms, and to give creative expression to them.

To train the mind on these lines, there are five phases of the programme:

1. Development of the power of concentration and attention;
2. Development of the capacities of expansion, wideness, complexity and richness;
3. Organisation of ideas round a central or a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that will serve as a guide in life;
4. Thought control, rejection of undesirable thoughts so that one may, in the end, think only what one wants and when one wants;
5. Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the being.

Multiplicity of ideas, richness of ideas, totality of points of view – these should be made to grow by a developed power of observation and concentration and by a wideness of interest. Care should be taken to see that the central ideas are not imposed upon the growing mind – that would be the dogmatic method, which tends to atrophy the mind. The mind should grow towards central ideas which should come as a discovery of the mind made through rigorous exercise of the rational faculty.

Stress should fall not only on understanding but also on criticism and control of ideas; not only of comprehension, synthesis, creativity, judgement, imagination, memory and observation, but also on critical functions of comparison, reasoning, inference and conclusion. Both these aspects of human reason are essential to the completeness of the mental training.

Thinkers alone can produce thinkers; and unless teachers are constantly in the process of building up great thoughts and ideas, it is futile to expect a sound or vigorous mental education.

An atmosphere vibrant at once with ideation and silence, an atmosphere surcharged with synthetic thoughts and most integral aspirations and an atmosphere filled with the widest realisation and a harmonious unity – such an atmosphere is indispensable for perfect mental education.

Education for creativity

A constant attempt should be made to present each topic to the student in a challenging way so as to stimulate him and create his interest in the topic. To find new and imaginative methods, to compile materials from various sources, to introduce new concepts and new interpretations in various subjects, to develop new subjects, and above all, to attend in detail to all the psychological faculties and their development in such a way that the mental education does not veil the soul – this, in brief, should be the endeavour and its spirit.

We have to recognise that different children react to various activities of education differently. There are children who feel a powerful attraction towards creative activities such as arts, music, dance, composition of poetry, drama, etc. They should, of course, be given freedom to pursue these valuable activities. But there are instances where children who do not have this natural inclination towards creative activities are also compelled to be engaged in these activities. This is entirely unacceptable.

It  may also be  noted that there are children who do not easily respond either to the activities of creativity or activities of production, but who are deeply reflective and to whom abstraction of thought and clarity and beauty of ideation constitute a fascinating project. We must recognise that a deep exercise in ideation and organisation of ideas is a very active engagement. It is a great activity of concentration.

At the same time, an exclusive pursuit of ideation without devoting any attention whatever to creative or productive activity may lead to a lopsided development of personality. The remedy is not to make things compulsory, but to counsel children, to motivate and suggest to them how gradually various kinds of activities can be blended together for a harmonious development.It may also be noted that there are children who are deeply interested in activities of self-sacrifice or of purifying their base emotions, or of the worship of the noblest ideals of life. Sometimes they may show no interest  in arts or in crafts and often teachers complain of their dullness or their lack of concentration in studies. But a good teacher should ask himself if the child in question is not inwardly engaged in what may be called activities of “purification”.

Vital Education

Vital education aims at training the life-force (that normally vibrates in emotions, desires and impulses) in three directions: to discover its real function and to replace its egoistic and ignorant tendency so as to become the master by willingness and capacity to serve higher principles of the psychological constitution; to subtilise and sublimate its sensitivity which expresses itself through sensuous and aesthetic activities; and to resolve and transcend the dualities and contradictions in the character constituted by the vital seekings, and to achieve the trans-formation of the character.

The usual methods of dealing with the vital have been in the past those of coercion, suppression, abstinence and asceticism. But these methods do not give lasting results. Besides, they onlyhelp in drying up the drive and dynamism of the life-force; and thus the collaboration of the life-force in self-fulfilment is eliminated.

The right training of the vital then is much more subtle and much more difficult, needing endurance, endless persistence and an inflexible will. For what is to be aimed at is not the negation of life but the fulfilment of life by its transformation.

First, the powers of the senses have to be developed, subtilised and enriched. Next, there are inner and latent senses which are to be discovered and similarly developed. Third, the seekings of these senses have to be trained to reject grossness and coarseness and to enjoy the finer tastes and higher aesthetic experiences. Finally, there has to be a deeper and piercing observation of the desires, passions, ambitions, lusts, etc., their risings, revolts and contradictions, and an attempt by various methods to separate out in each movement the elements that contribute to the concord and harmony from those tending in the opposite direction, and to eliminate the latter from the very nature and fibre of our psychological constitution.

The effective methods of this last aspect are:

To instil in the child, as soon as possible, the will towards progress and perfection;

Rational arguments, sentiment and goodwill, or appeal to the sense of dignity and self-respect according to the nature of the child in question;

To insist on the idea that the will can be developed, and that no defeat should be taken as final;

To demand from the will the maximum effort, for the will is strengthened by effort;

Above all, the example of the educator shown constantly and sincerely.

Vital education is greatly aided by stress on different kinds of fine arts and crafts. Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that the first and the lowest use of Art is purely aesthetic, the second is the intellectual and the third and the highest is the spiritual. He has even stated that music, art and poetry are a perfect education for the soul; they make and keep its movements purified, deep and harmonious. He has added, “These, therefore, are agents which cannot profitably be neglected by humanity on its onward march or degraded to the mere satisfaction of sensuous pleasure which will disintegrate rather than build the character. They are, when properly used, great educating, edifying and civilising forces.”

A great lesson in vital education is to develop the will of the individual and to encourage the exercise of the will in which what is valued most is not the result but application and doing one’s best.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

On the subject of physical education, it must be mentioned that the physical is our base, and even the highest spiritual values are to be expressed through the life that is embodied here. Sariram adyam khalu dharmasadhanam, says the old Sanskrit

Of all the domains of education, physical is the one most completely governed by method, order, discipline and procedure. All education of the body must be rigorous, detailed and methodical.

The education of the body has three principal aspects: control and discipline of functions of the body; a total methodical and harmonious development of all the parts and movements of the body; rectification of defects and deformities, if there are any.

Physical education must be based upon knowledge of the human body, its structure and its functions. And the formation of the habits of the body must be in consonance with that knowledge.

The child should be taught right from the early stage the right positions, postures and movements.

A similar training should be with regard to the choice of food. The child should develop the taste that is simple and healthy, substantial and appetising. He must avoid all that merely stuffs and causes heaviness; particularly, he must be taught to eat according to his hunger and not make food a means to satisfy his greed and gluttony.

The child should also be taught the taste for cleanliness and hygienic habits. It is important to impress upon the child that he is not more interesting by being ill, rather the contrary. Children should be taught that to be ill is a sign of failing and inferiority, not of virtue and sacrifice.

A very important problem in respect of integral education arises from its insistence on proper synthesis between freedom and discipline. Since education is a creative process, and since compulsion and creativity cannot go together, freedom has to be a very important instrument of education. The ideal condition is obtained when discipline becomes the child of freedom and discipline is transformed into self-discipline.

Instructional procedure

Sri Aurobindo speaks of three principles of teaching, and when implemented, they provide a sound basis of a system of natural organisation of the highest processes and the movements of which the human nature is capable

In brief, the three principles of teaching are as follows in Sri Aurobindo’s own words: “The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or task-master, he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest and not to impose. …The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth. The idea of hammering the child into the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition. It is he himself who must be induced to expand in accordance with his own nature. … The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use. … The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall be. … A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development. …”

There are, according to Sri Aurobindo, three instruments of the teacher: instruction, example, and influence. The good teacher will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will not impose his opinions on the passive acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed, which will grow under the benign fostering within. He will know that the example is more powerful than instruction. Actually, the example is not that of the outward acts but of the inner motivation of life and the inner states and inner activities. Finally, he will also acknowledge that influence is more important than example. For influence proceeds from the power or contact of the teacher with his pupil, from the nearness of his soul to the soul of another, infusing into the pupil, even though in silence, all that which the teacher himself is or possesses. The good teacher is himself a constant student. He is a child leading children, and a light kindling other lights, a vessel and a channel.

Principles and methods of education advocated by Sri Aurobindo have a profound bearing on psychic and spiritual education. These two domains bring into the picture all that is central to value-oriented education, and to higher and profounder elements of human psychology. Sri Aurobindo have advocated new methods that are free from those of dogmas, rituals, ceremonies, prescribed acts. Spirituality, according to Sri Aurobindo is a vast domain of the inmost soul, of the immobile silence, of the higher objects of the higher psychological exploration. The justification for psychic and spiritual education rests upon three important considerations: (a) education should provide to the individual a steady exploration of something that is inmost in the psychological complexity of human consciousness; (b) the most important human question of human life is to consider the aim of human life and the aim of one’s own life and one’s own position and rolein the society; and this question can best be answered only when the psychic and spiritual domains are explored and when one is enabled to develop psychic and spiritual faculties of knowledge; and (c) the contemporary crisis of humanity has arisen because of the disbalancement between the material advancement on the one hand and inadequate spiritual progression, on the other. If, therefore, this crisis has to be met, development of psychic and spiritual consciousness should be fostered.

Another important point that should be noted is that a great care should be taken to get the development of the child in such a way that in spite of the growth of knowledge, the student does not lose freshness and sense of wonder and mystery. This indeed is the most difficult part of the work of the teacher.

If we make a deep study of the experiments in education guided and conducted under the inspiration of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, it may be said that there are three important features that come to the forefront and which may help us to define what may be called “New Education”:

1. Learning by practice;

2. Search for meaning and unity of knowledge; and

3. Unending education and perpetual youth.

New education insists on the development of the mind, life and body; it aims at development of these instruments for the discovery of the inner psychic being; it proposes to utilise mental, vital, physical perfection as instruments of the perfect manifestation of the inner and higher realities. The effort is to make the body supple, strong, agile and beautiful; the vital is to be trained to become dynamic, disciplined, obedient and effective; the mind has to be cultivated to be intelligent, observant, concentrated, free, rich and complex. But at every stage the paramount importance is to be given to the needs of the psychic and spiritual growth.

An unprecedented kind of experiment in education was launched by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, when in 1943, a school came to be established at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry in South India. It was expanded into Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education in due course, and the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on education have influenced greatly the innovative processes of education in the country, and they have also received wide attention from the world at large. Mention may be made of the Mother’s small but great book on education as also to a series of “Conversations” and “Questions and Answers” which have been published by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Creativity is a great motivator because it makes people interested in what they are doing. Creativity gives hope that there can be a worthwhile idea. Creativity gives the possibility of some sort of achievement to everyone. Creativity makes life more fun and more interesting.

Edward de Bono

So much confusion surrounds the term creativity that it is most difficult to discuss and use it. Ausubel believes that we should use it to refer to “rare and unique talent in a particular field of endeavor. Creative achievement—- reflects a rare capacity for developing insights, sensitivities, and appreciations in a circumscribed content area of intellectual or artistic activity. “Thus, the creative individual who embodies this capacity is, by definition, an uncommon individual who embodies this capacity is, by definition, an uncommon individual, much rarer than the intelligent person.

Creativity is a process which generates ideas that have value to the individual. It involves looking at familiar things with a fresh eye, examining problems with an open mind, making connections, learning from mistakes and using imagination to explore new possibilities.

Creativity can be defined on a variety of levels: cognitively, intellectually, socially, economically, spiritually, and from the perspective of different disciplines within the arts, sciences, and humanities. All students can develop their creative capacities if they have access to rich learning opportunities in environments that nurture and support their creative development.

There are two other concepts to keep in mind: imagination and innovation. Imagination is the root of creativity. It is the ability to bring to mind things that aren’t present to our senses.

Creativity is putting your imagination to work. It is applied imagination. Innovation is putting new ideas into practice. There are various myths about creativity. One is that only special people are creative, another is that creativity is only about the arts, a third is that creativity cannot be taught, and a fourth is that it’s all to do with uninhibited “self-expression.”

None of these is true. Creativity draws from many powers that we all have by virtue of being human. Creativity is possible in all areas of human life, in science, the arts, mathematics, technology, cuisine, teaching, politics, business, you name it. And like many human capacities, our creative powers can be cultivated and refined. Doing that involves an increasing mastery of skills, knowledge, and ideas.

Crucially, creativity can be the hook which engages learners, influencing their attainment and achievement. In addition, as they are core to employability, creativity skills can help learners not only prepare for the world of work but also to shape their own job opportunities.

Definitions of Creativity

According to Plucker, Beghetto, and Dow (2004) “Creativity is the interaction among aptitude, process and environment by which an individual or group produces a perceptible product that is both novel and useful as defined within a social context.‘‘

Over the course of the last decade, however, we seem to have reached a general agreement that creativity involves the production of novel, useful products‘‘

Mumford (2003) defines creativity as “Creativity is the ability to produce work that is both novel (i.e., original, unexpected) and appropriate (i.e., useful, adaptive concerning task constraints)‘‘

In accordance toSternberg and Lubart (1999). . . creativity must entail the following two separate components. First a creative idea or product must be original . . . However, to provide a meaningful criterion; originality must be defined with respect to a particular socio-cultural group. What may be original with respect to one culture may be old news to the members of some other culture . . . Second, the original idea or product must prove adaptive in some sense. The exact nature of this criterion depends on the type of creativity being displayed‘‘

On the basis of above definitions we can conclude

1) Creativity is universal

2) It is innate as well as acquired

3) It produces something new or novel

4) It is adventures and open thinking

5) Creativity is a mean as well as end in itself

6) It carries ego involvement

7) It has a wide scope

Creativity and intelligence necessarily does not hand in hand.

9) Creativity rest more on divergent thinking than on convergent thinking.

10) It can‘t be separated from intelligence

11) It is full of original ideas and thoughts

12) It is more sensitive and ambitious.

13) It can‘t be measured as IQ.

14) It is an individualistic ability

15) It may or may not be hereditary.

Difference between Creative Teaching, Learning, Skills and Change:

Creative Learning – learners are using their creativity skills

Creative Teaching – educators are using their creativity skills

Developing Creativity Skills – where learners skills are expressly being ‘taught’ or developed

Creative Improvement – where creativity is used to innovate systems, administration and strategy

Educationalist Eric Booth sees creativity as the key that can unlock Curriculum for Excellence. Planning for creativity can make both teaching and learning experiences more challenging, engaging and motivating for everyone.

Major Characteristics of Creativity

Creativity is about fresh thinking, its major characteristics are:

• Creativity also involves making critical judgments about whether what you’re working on is any good, be it a theorem, a design, or a poem.
• Creative work often passes through typical phases. Sometimes what you end up with is not what you had in mind when you started.
• It’s a dynamic process that often involves making new connections, crossing disciplines, and using metaphors and analogies.
• Being creative is not just about having off-the-wall ideas and letting your imagination run free. It may involve all of that, but it also involves refining, testing, and focusing what you’re doing. It’s about original thinking on the part of the individual, and it’s also about judging critically whether the work in process is taking the right shape and is worthwhile, at least for the person producing it.
• Creativity is not the opposite of discipline and control. On the contrary, creativity in any field may involve deep factual knowledge and high levels of practical skill. Cultivating creativity is one of the most interesting challenges for any teacher. It involves understanding the real dynamics of creative work.
• Creativity is not a linear process, in which you have to learn all the necessary skills before you get started. It is true that creative work in any field involves a growing mastery of skills and concepts. It is not true that they have to be mastered before the creative work can begin.

Creative Capacities

These capacities   can be defined as the means the individual has for  expressing whatever creativity he possesses. These abilities are somewhat general and can be applied to a variety of tasks. They are not associated with particular subject matter or disciplines, these abilities together constitute creative thinking. The distinctive aspect of creative thinking is divergent thinking which is characterized, by, among other things, flexibility, originality, and fluency.

Integrating creativity education into arts, academic, and training programs can help learners develop their creative capacities—the skills and attitudes that contribute to imaginative, creative, and innovative thinking. The creative process often involves identifying a problem, exploring multiple solutions, and accepting the risk of failure as the best solution emerges. A base of disciplinary knowledge enables creative work.

v  Think Critically, inquire. Pose questions that arise from curiosity.

v  Find, Frame, and Solve Problems. Question, analyze, and synthesize ideas

v  Identify, articulate, and solve problems.

v  Integrate Ideas,see patterns, find relationships, and make connections among ideas.

v  Reflect.  Contemplate and evaluate ideas.

v  Take Action.Initiate action and follow through in bringing ideas to fruition.

v  Skills.Collaborate.Work productively with others to bring ideas to fruition.

v  Communicate.Express ideas in a variety of ways using a variety of media.

v  Attitudes. Curious.Risk-taker. Flexible and adaptable

v  Comfortable with ambiguity. Comfortable with more than one right answer.Open and responsive to diverse perspectives

The Creative Process

According to international education expert Sir Ken Robinson, the creative process involves being imaginative, creative and innovative – three distinct but related concepts.

See - Imagination, Seeing something in the mind’s eye

Think – Creativity, Using imagination to solve problems

Produce - Innovation, Applying creative ideas and implementing solutions

Similarly, business consultant Linda Naiman defines creativity as “the act of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality.”

“Creativity involves two processes: thinking, then producing.  Innovation is the production or implementation of an idea.  If you have ideas, but don’t act on them, you are imaginative but not creative.”

According to these experts, learners who exercise creativity combine imagination, creative thought, and innovation to produce something novel that has value.  The ability to imagine, create, and innovate are key components of what it means to be creative – a quality that is fast becoming a key to future success.

Stage of the Creative Process

Creativity means bringing into being; it involves the generation of new things or ideas or the transformation of those previously existing. Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.

Association-integration Stage

The first stage of the creative process, the association-integration stage involves the association of previously unrelated elements of inner and outer experiences, forming new associations among what is perceived through the senses, thoughts, memories, ideas, and emotions. This process can involve different degrees of consciousness such as automatic creation ,sudden insight, it can be achieved while we perform any other apparently unrelated activity, a process that has been known as incubation or it can involve a conscious and playful combination of elements.

Elaboration Stage

The second stage, the elaboration involves all the subsequent conscious and voluntary work that is required to transform the associations developed in the previous stage into tangible works.

Communication Stage

The final stage communication, involves sharing the work with others, a process that can be challenging and requires special courage. Sharing the creative outcome with others often unleashes new creative processes in other individuals, making creativity “contagious”.

Divergent thinking, a style of thinking that produces a number of different possible answers, is necessary during all the stages of the creative process. However, some degree of convergent thinking (which leads to a single solution) is also required, particularly during the elaboration phase of the creative process when it is essential to discriminate and choose between alternatives (convergent) while at the same time generating new ideas (divergent).

Identifying Creative Potential

Highly creative individuals display exploratory behavior when encountering novelty, are optimistic, tolerant of uncertainty, pursue their goals with intensity,; display responsibility, are directed to their goals, are able to utilize resources, are self accepting and congruent, and they display empathy, tolerance, and integrated consciousness . Highly creative individuals have a tendency to be physiologically over reactive to stimulation .Further, over excitabilities, which refer to patterns of intense responses, have been found to be indicators of creative potential and giftedness.

There are five types of over excitabilities: emotional, sensual, intellectual, imaginational, and psychomotor. According to Dabrowski, over excitabilities are critical components of one’s potential for development, which allows a person to become authentic and autonomous. The Over excitability Questionnaire II (OEQII) is a 50-item instrument that evaluates the five over excitabilities, it has been used in cross cultural studies involving China, Mexico, Spain, Turkey and USA.

The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) created by E.P. Torrance (1990) are the most widely used instruments that assess creative potential. These tests have been used for identification of the creatively gifted and are reliable in multicultural settings. The TTCT provide a creativity index (CI) and scores for the following dimensions: flexibility, fluency, originality, elaboration, resistance to premature closure, and abstractness of titles.

The TTCT have shown high reliability and high predictive validity for future career image, and for academic, and style-living creative achievements .

Environments that Support Creative Development

Both the “culture” and physical space of a learning environment can support learners’ creative development. Nurturing such learning environments is an important role of learning leaders—the teachers, principals, administrators, and business and cultural leaders of a community. Whether in a school, business, or community organization, creative learning environments often share the following characteristics:

Culture of a Creative Environment

• The creative environment is welcoming; it is a place where learners feel safe in taking risks. A sense of community and teamwork exists among learners.
• Learning is situated in an authentic context and work is focused on important learning goals. Time is allowed for ideas to incubate .Ideas are challenged.
• Inquiry and investigation are important components of the learning process, as the outcomes of creative work are often unknown at the beginning of a project.
• Diverse perspectives are welcomed and explored to deepen and strengthen the creative process and products of creativity.
• “Mistakes” are viewed as a normal part of the learning process and viewed as opportunities to improve. Curiosity is encouraged and respected as an important first step in learning.
• Project-based learning is common; learners often explore open-ended problems.There is an excitement about learning; learners take ownership of their work.

The Physical Environment

v  The physical learning environment allows for flexibility so learners can work alone, in small groups, and in larger groups.

v  The environment itself is stimulating and may serve as a provocation for questions and investigations.

v  Learning often extends beyond the confines of the physical environment. Creative work is visible, communicating the importance of process and production.

v  Creativity is a renewable resource that fuels learners’ ability to navigate the unknown.  Developing creative capacities among learners will improve schools, communities, and workplaces.

Models  to Facilitate Creativity

There are several models  useful to facilitate creative thinking that can be used in the classroom. Let us review  of these Models  :

1- Creative Problem Solving  Model

2- Incubation Model of Teaching

3- Graham Wallis’ Model of the Creative process

Creative Problem Solving  Model

Creative Problem Solving   is a model to make creative processes more visible, explicit and deliberate by organizing the creative approaches to problem solving, therefore enhancing productivity and effectiveness. It can be used at personal, organizational or social levels. Creative Problem Solving  uses research-based techniques, such as brainstorming, future problem solving, and creative role playing. Creative Problem Solving contains components and stages that correspond with the stages of the creative process and involves divergent thinking and convergent thinking tools. Creative Problem Solving is helpful to gain clarity about a challenge, to create ideas, to visualize and overcome that challenge, and to develop solutions and plans.

The Incubation Model of Teaching

The Incubation Model of Teaching involves three stages:

(1) Before the lesson: heightening anticipation to create the desire for learning, engaging students’ attention, stimulating curiosity and imagination and enhancing intrinsic motivation.

(2) During the lesson: the purpose is to deepen expectations. What was anticipated in the first stage must be fulfilled and new expectations are created so students will want to go deeper into what is being taught.

(3) After the lesson: strategies to keep the creative and the learning processes going, even years after the lesson is over. The purpose of the Incubation Model of Teaching, as envisioned by Torrance, is to provide teachers the tools necessary to go beyond simply good practice and become great teachers who are capable to inspire, arouse and motivate students and keep them thinking.

Graham Wallis’ Model of the Creative Process

1. Preparation- In the preparation stage, we define the problem, need, or desire, and gather any information the solution or response needs to account for, and set up criteria for verifying the solution’s acceptability.

2. Incubation- In the incubation stage, we step back from the problem and let our minds contemplate and work it through. Like preparation, incubation can last minutes, weeks, even years.

3. Illumination. In the illumination stage, ideas arise from the mind to provide the basis of a creative response. These ideas can be pieces of the whole or the whole itself, i.e. seeing the entire concept or entity all at once. Unlike the other stages, illumination is often very brief, involving a tremendous rush of insights within a few minutes or hours.

4. Verification- In verification, the final stage, one carries out activities to demonstrate whether or not what emerged in illumination satisfies the need and the criteria defined in the preparation stage.

Psychologist Graham Wallis, many years ago, set down a description of what happens as people approach problems with the objective of coming up with creative solutions. He described his four-stage process as follows:

The first and last stages are left brain (Quadrant A and B) activities, whereas the second and third stages belong to the right brain (Quadrant D and C).

This model of the creative process has been placed on to Ned Herrmann’s Four Quadrant model of the human brain. The following approaches can help teachers to promote creativity in the classroom.

 Ensuring that planning incorporates a range of teaching and learning styles.

 Providing regular opportunities for hands-on experimentation, problem solving, discussion and collaborative work.

 Creating opportunities where pupils are encouraged to actively do the work and question what is going on.

 Making use of creative thinking techniques such as Brainstorming, Thinking Hats.

 Sharing the learning intentions with pupils and providing them with opportunities for choosing how they are going to work.

 Encouraging pupils to improvise experiment and think outside the box.  Actively encouraging pupils to question, make connections, envisaging what might be possible and exploring ideas.  Asking open-ended questions such as ‗What if…?‘ and ‗How might you…?‘  Joining in with activities and modelling creative thinking and behaviour.

 Encouraging pupils to develop criteria that they can use to judge their own work, in particular its originality and value.  Facilitating open discussion of the problems pupils are facing and how they can solve them.  Encouraging pupils to share ideas with others and to talk about their progress.  Using failure or setbacks as opportunities to learn.

 Ensuring that assessment procedures reflect and reward creativity, enterprise and innovation.  Making effective use of encouragement, praise and positive language.

 Creating opportunities to learn through the imagined experience, giving them a safe context to explore ideas using drama techniques.

Creativity in the Classroom

When students are being creative in the classroom they are likely to:

• question and challenge. Creative pupils are curious, question and challenge, and don’t necessarily follow the rules

. • make connections and see relationships. Creative pupils think laterally and make associations between things that are not usually connected.

• envision want might be. They imagine, see possibilities, ask ‘what if?’, picture alternatives, and look at things from different view points.

• explore ideas and options. Creative pupils play with ideas, try alternatives and fresh approaches, keep open minds and modify their ideas to achieve creative results

• reflect critically on ideas, actions and outcomes. They review progress, invite and use feedback, criticize constructively and make perceptive observations.

To encourage the above is likely to require a change in the way schools are run and the way teachers teach.

“The most powerful way to develop creativity in your students is to be a role model. Children develop creativity not when you tell them to, but when you show them.” Source: Robert J Sternberg

, How to Develop Student Creativity

Creative Teaching

“We humans have not yet achieved our full creative potential primarily because every child’s creativity is not properly nurtured. The critical role of imagination, discovery and creativity in a child’s education is only beginning to come to light and, even within the educational community, many still do not appreciate or realize its vital importance.”

Creative teaching may be defined in two ways: firstly, teaching creatively and secondly, teaching for creativity. Teaching creatively might be described as teachers using imaginative approaches to make learning more interesting, engaging, exciting and effective. Teaching for creativity might best be described as using forms of teaching that are intended to develop students own creative thinking and behaviour. However it would be fair to say that teaching for creativity must involve creative teaching. Teachers cannot develop thecreative abilities of their students if their own creative abilities are undiscovered or suppressed.

Teaching with creativity and teaching for creativity include all the characteristics of good teaching – including high motivation, high expectations, the ability to communicate and listen and the ability to interest, engage and inspire. Creative teachers need expertise in their particular fields but they need more than this. They need techniques that stimulate curiosity and raise self esteem and confidence. They must recognize when encouragement is needed and confidence threatened. They must balance structured learning with opportunities for self-direction; and the management of groups while giving attention to individuals.

Teaching for creativity is not an easy option, but it can be enjoyable and deeply fulfilling. It can involve more time and planning to generate and develop ideas and to evaluate whether they have worked. It involves confidence to improvise and take detours, to pick up unexpected opportunities for learning; to live with uncertainty and to risk admitting that an idea led nowhere. Creative teachers are always willing to experiment but they recognize the need to learn from experience. All of this requires more, not less, expertise of teachers.

Creative teachers need confidence in their disciplines and in themselves. There are many highly creative teachers in our schools and many schools where creative approaches to teaching and learning are encouraged. But many schools and teachers do not have access to the necessary practical support and guidance in developing these approaches. Consequently there are important issues of staff development.

It is important to reduce or eliminate the factors which inhibit the creative activity of teachers and learners and give priority to those that encourage it. There are, in education, extraordinarily high levels of prescription in relation to content and teaching methods. There are huge risks of de-skilling teachers and encouraging conformity and passivity in some.

We have an interesting paradox. We have industry commentators saying that, for a successful future, we need people who think, are creative and innovative and yet our education systems seem to be working against this. At a national level government has a responsibility to reduce these risks and to promote higher levels of teacher autonomy and creativity in teaching and learning.

Teachers Encouraging Creativity

Carolyn Edwards and Kay Springate give the following suggestions on encouraging student creativity:

• Give students extended, unhurried time to explore and do their best work. Don’t interfere when students are productively engaged and motivated to complete tasks in which they are fully engaged. • Create an inviting and exciting classroom environment. Provide students with space to leave unfinished work for later completion and quiet space for contemplation.

• Provide an abundant supply of interesting and useful materials and resources.

• Create a classroom climate where students feel mistakes are acceptable and risk taking is encouraged. Appropriate noise, mess and autonomy are accepted.

School Leaders Encouraging Creativity

Teachers can do a lot to encourage creativity in their classes but it’s a job only half done without the support of the school leadership. School leaders have the ability to build an expectation of creativity into a school’s learning and teaching strategies. They can encourage, recognize and reward creativity in both pupils and teachers.

School leaders have the ability to provide resources for creative endeavours; to involve teachers and pupils in creating stimulating environments; to tap the creativity of staff, parents and the local community and much more.

They have the ability to make creativity art of the staff development programme; to include creativity in everyone’s performance reviews; to invite creative people into the school and most important of all, to lead by example.

Measurement of Creativity

Most empirical work on creativity has employed one of three assessment techniques.

• An objective analysis of products.
• Subjective judgments of products or persons as creative.
• Vast majority-used creativity tests.

Creativity Test (I)

Personality test-from creativity scales

v  Gough‘s(1957)-California Psychological Inventory

v  Cattell & Eber‘s(1968)-Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire

v  Gough & Heilbrun‘s(1965)-Adjective Check List

v  Heist & Yonge‘s(1968)-Omnibus Personality Inventory

Creativity Test(II)

Biographical inventories-an intuitive basis and rated (high, low or average)

ü  Alpha Biographical Inventory-includes several hundred items

ü  The Biographical Inventory- creativity includes 165 items into five categories

ü  50-item biographical inventory made from Taylor(1963)

Creativity Test (III)

Behavioral assessment-similar as traditional intelligence tests.

• Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) = Minnesota Tests of Creative Thinking
• Torrance Test of Creativity Thinking
• Oral, written, or drawn responses
• It can be scored separately by category
• Teachers given the tests in a group to children
• Four criterion components : fluency, flexibility, elaboration, originality
• Three categories : nonverbal tests, verbal tests using nonverbal stimuli, verbal tests using verbal stimuli

Other Creativity Tests

• Wallach & Kogan tests include five subscales： Instances, Alternate Uses, Similarities, Pattern Meaning, Line Meaning
• Ghiselin, et. al.- Creative Process Checklist-designed to assess states of attention and affect in scientists at the moment of invention

Creativity and Problem solving-

Many authors discuss creativity as creative thinking or problem solving., they define creative thinking as the process of ‘sensing gaps or disturbing or missing elements; forming ideas or hypothesizes concerning them; testing these hypothesizes; and communicating the results. Possibly modifying and retesting the hypotheses’. Gagne also considers creativity to be a form of problem solving which involves intuitive leaps, or a combining of ideas from widely separated fields of knowledge.

Amazingly, sometimes, individuals emphasizes the emotional aspects of the experience_ sudden illumination, the heightened excitement, the esthetic appeal of an idea which  has suddenly taken shape and the accident of the experience_ the drinking of black coffee, and the bathing in a bath tub, as in the case of Archimedes or musing under the apple tree as in the case of Newton. What is not emphasized often enough are two factors: These insights which suddenly bridge seemingly unrelated bodies of knowledge can only occur in individuals who have acquired the prerequisite knowledge, and they are often the result of concentrated effort over long period of time. Creativity, at this level, is advanced problem solving. It is very doubtful that any teacher could deliberately foster such creativity.

Creativity and Intelligence

Although certain degree of intelligent for creative thinking yet both are independent abilities. Cognitive process involved in intelligence and creativity may be somewhat different. The differences between intelligence and creativity are summarized below:

Convergent thinking is the basic of intelligence where as divergent thinking is the basis of creativity. Highly creative persons usually possess intelligence to a high degree, but it is not always essential for an intelligent person to be creative, because one may possess high intelligence capacity without having creative abilities. The speed and accuracy of the cognitive behavior are emphasized in intelligence testing, while in testing creativity emphasis is given on flexibility, originality and innovation.

Creativity and Gender difference

No simple  conclusions can be drawn from the empirical evidence on gender differences in creativity test scores; there are studies that report that girls and women score higher than boys and men, and there are studies that report the opposite. The former (that is, studies in which girls and women score higher) are more numerous, so it would be hard to make a case for an overall male advantage. The case for a female advantage is also less than conclusive, however, both because there are many studies pointing in opposite directions and there are many that report no significant gender difference.

Vernon  argued that although social-environmental influences are certainly major causes of differences in the numbers of highly creative men and women in various fields, these factors are not sufficient explanation for the patterns of achievement that have been observed. “It is entirely implausible that human society should approve of females becoming highly talented performers of music, dance, and drama, and even allowing them to become creative writers, while, at the same time, disapproving of their becoming musical composers or painters. To me, this is the crux of the argument for attributing sex differences in creativity at least, in part, to genetic factors” .

Several theorists have tried to explain why there are so many more creatively accomplished men than women. Helson  argued that cultural values, social roles, and sexist thinking are now recognized as key reasons for the comparative. lack of creative accomplishment by women. In comparison to the situation just 30 years ago, we now “realize that social roles have not been structured so that many women would ever become high achievers. It is hard to feel a sense of mystery about ,why there are more eminent men than women” . According to Helson , “differences between men and women in biology and early socialization experience are ‘exaggerated’ by culture” . Among the differences in early socialization experiences that culture exaggerates are differences in the ways parents perceive and interact with their daughters and sons.“Right from childhood, women are less likely to be picked as special by their parents” . These early differences are then intensified by cultural rules, roles, and assumptions. Lack of differences between girls and boys, and between men and women, is the most common outcome for the many studies.

Conclusions

Creativity has been identified as a key component for survival and resilience. If our goal is to teach and nurture future scientists, artists, engineers, entrepreneurs we need to understand and nurture the creative potential because creativity has provided the foundation for art, science, philosophy, and technology. If we want to teach children to become productive human beings, and more satisfied with what they do with their lives we need to support them in the process of discovering and enjoying their creative potential.

Understanding, identifying, and nurturing the creative potential is relevant in education if we want students able to solve academic and personal problems and challenges, to find innovative solutions and alternatives, and to have better tools and resources for success in a fast-changing world. Creative thinking not only enhances our ability to adapt to our environment and circumstances but also allows us to transform those environment and circumstances.

REFERANCES

Bhatia, H. R.: Elements of Educational Psychology, Orient Langman Ltd., Bombay, 1990.

Bloom, B. S. ,Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook  Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co. Inc.: pp. 7-8.

Chauhan, S. S.: Advance Educational Psychology, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 2000.

Dandipani, S.: A Textbook of Advanced Educational Psychology. New Delhi: Anmol Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2000.

Dash, M.: Educational Psychology. New Delhi: Deep and Deep, 1991.

Khan M.A., Fundamentals of educational psychology, Himalaya publishing House.

Kundu, C.L. and Tutoo, D.N.: Educational Psychology. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., 2000.

Mangal S.K. ,Advanced Educational Psychology,New Delhi,prentice-Hall of India private ltd.

Nanda S.K., Philosophical And Sociological Foundations Of Education, Doaba Book House. Delhi.

Nayak N.K. & Rao V.K. Educational psychology, New Delhi, APH Publishing Corporation.

Srivastava, G. N. P.: Recent Trends in Educational Psychology, Psycho Research Cell,Agra, 2000.

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Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

“There are some authors who contend that meanings and values are “nothing but defense mechanisms, reaction formations and sublimations.” But as for myself, I would not be willing to live merely for the sake of my “defense mechanisms,” nor would I be ready to die merely for the sake of my “reaction formations.”

Viktor E. Frankl

In some areas of psychology (especially in psychodynamic theory), psychologists talk about “defense mechanisms,” or manners in which we behave or think in certain ways to better protect or “defend” ourselves. Defense mechanisms are one way of looking at how people distance themselves from a full awareness of unpleasant thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Defense mechanisms are a part of our everyday life. You’ve got to admit that there’s something to be said for the idea that everyone engages in some form of self-deception at least some of the time. The question is—can you detect the form of deception that you, your friends, colleagues, and family are using at any given moment?

Defense mechanisms are simply ways of coping with difficult feelings – your mind’s way of dealing with stress. These little mental tricks (distortions of reality) help you meet your needs in socially acceptable ways.

People learn how to behave in a specific situation. However, when you encounter a new situation, it could not be possible to cope with that situation with the help of your previous experiences. However, we want to overcome any problem in one way or another, but we meet several obstacles in the process .

The changes that occur in the environment where individuals live are known as stress that they experience due to the desires and expectations requiring adaptation. Therefore, stress is the pressure and tension that individuals feel and could be regarded as a part of the daily life. Most of us think that stress results from such external factors as school, family, friends and illness (Dyson and Renk, 2006). However, these factors are not themselves stressful events. What makes them stressful is our interpretations and internal responses .It mean what determines stress is not just that external factor but its interaction with the individual.

Students have a number of sources of stress. These sources range from attempts to meet the academic expectations to financial problems, from adaptation to new environments to the problems experienced in establishing new friendships .There are a number of symptoms of stress physical, behavioral, emotional, spiritual and psychological .

Low level of stress could be considered positive as it provides the energy to activate the individual. However, when the level of stress is high, both productivity and the pleasure with life could decrease and problems in the relationships with the environment could occur.

Within the context above, the stress experienced by the students is important since it causes defection in memory and learning due to the energy spent by the brain in reaction to the stress. Therefore, awareness of the stressors for university students and of how frequently and which methods they use to cope with these stressors is important for students’ success and their welfare .

Remember, defense mechanisms are most often learned behaviors, most of which we learned during childhood. That’s a good thing, because it means that, as an adult, you can choose to learn some new behaviors and new defense mechanisms that may be more beneficial to you in your life.

Since people are supposed to act according to social norms, it requires them to regulate themselves. Besides, without defense mechanism, the whole world could be a mess. If people just followed their own instinctual drives without any brake, literally chaos will emerge. In order to live together with others, people should utilize defense mechanism. Defense mechanism helps to protect our whole society as well as ego from some displeasure.

Coping with Stress

Whatever its source is, stress requires harmony. Psychologists discriminate between two types of harmony: direct and defensive .Direct coping refers to any behavior demonstrated to change a disturbing situation. For example, when our needs or desires are hindered, we either try to remove the obstacle between our goal and ourselves or give up. Similarly, when we are threatened, we try to avoid the danger either by attacking or by escaping. Overcoming stress involves the behavior and thoughts of individuals to manage the results of stressful events (Folkman, 2010; Lundin, 1974; Saroson, 1972).

Defensive coping is known as ego-defense mechanisms or as subconscious efforts for adaptation. Ways for defensive coping are sub-conscious efforts to protect the self, to avoid any damage to ego or to decrease anxiety and tension .Defensive coping includes internal and mostly subconscious conflicts that occur when we can not emotionally tolerate either bringing an intensely threatening problem to the level of consciousness or dealing directly with that situation. Defensive coping, a kind of self-deception, refers to different ways of convincing yourself of the fact that you are not really threatened or that you do not really want something that you can not get.

Freud described the typical attitudes demonstrated by individuals to decrease or avoid anxiety. He called them defence mechanisms. According to Freud, human tends to decrease tension for the purpose of decreasing anxiety and uses defence mechanisms for this purpose. Therefore, defense mechanisms serve the function of protecting individuals from anxiety. These mechanisms could be psychologically healthy or unhealthy, yet in either case, the basic purpose is to decrease the tension

Freud defined three main types of anxiety: reality anxiety, neurotic anxiety and moral anxiety. Reality anxiety occurs due to the real situations likely to be encountered in the environment. For example, a dog attacks as a result of a certain situation.

Reality anxiety occurs due to the ego. In this type of anxiety, the most popular method for decreasing the tension is to leave the environment which could lead to damage.

Neurotic anxiety refers to subconscious fears that occur when especially subconscious sexual desires take control over ego. This type of anxiety results from the fear that might occur when subconscious desires are not met appropriately.

As for moral anxiety, it occurs as a result of the fear for violating the current moral or social values. Moral anxiety occurs in the form of feeling oneself guilty and embarrassed.

Uses of Defense Mechanisms

As mentioned above, in case of any type of stress, human mind reacts in two ways. The first one involves increasing the problem-solving efforts, which is called direct coping. The second involves putting the defence mechanisms into effect.

Freud’s concepts and defense mechanisms are tactics developed by ego to cope with the sub consciousness and superego.

All defense mechanisms have two common characteristics. As the first one, the individual is not aware of the fact that he or she uses these mechanisms. As for the second, these somehow damage, transform or ignore the reality. It would be beneficial here to remember that the function of defense mechanisms is to change the perceived reality for the purpose of decreasing the psychological tension experienced by the individual.

Defense mechanisms are not worth focusing on when they are used unimportant conflicts and unless they damage others. They comfort us as long as they decrease the tension and thus allow us to approach to important problems in better harmony. However, when they are overused, these defensive attempts which are regarded as a way of coping with problems become harmful. They can not solve the real problem but merely decrease our anxiety regarding the problem. If specific situations make us anxious, we may encounter them from time to time and may have to face one of them sooner or later.

In such a case, the level of anxiety increases, and the situation of anxiety-attack is inevitably experienced (Köknel, 1987; Morris, 2002). Efforts made to cope with stress are called “harmony”. Any factor that ruins the balance of harmony is perceived by the organism as a danger and leads to anxiety. As a result, the preventive and adaptive mechanisms of people are activated.

A History of the Concept of defense

Freud first introduced the term in “The neuro-psychoses of defense”(1894). In this paper, he wrote that in order to ward off unacceptable ideas or feelings that would cause  “distressing affect,” a person unconsciously resorts to certain mental processes that oppose these ideas or feelings and render them less disturbing. These mental processes, which take place outside the person’s awareness, he called “defenses.” This was one of Freud’s earliest statements about conflict within the mind, wherein one part has wishes or feelings that another part finds objectionable, opposing their continued presence in consciousness. In opposing them, the part of the mind later known as the ego institutes defenses against the awareness of these unacceptable thoughts or feelings.

Previously, anxiety was considered to be the result of repression. Now, repression was seen to be initiated by anxiety rather than causing it. “Defense” now came to be a general form for describing the way the ego protected itself against the dangers or calamities that Freud had enumerated.

In 1936, Anna Freud published The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. She elaborated upon, refined, and clarified the concept of defense, in relation not only to the theory of psychic conflict but also to the technique of psychoanalysis. She also noted that the unvarying use of a special method of defense, when confronted with a particular instinctual demand”

She was the one who constructed a list of these “special methods of defense,” which by now were called “defense mechanisms.” What she suggested in relation of defense mechanisms was many: repression, regression, reaction for motion, displacement, projection, isolation, undoing, denial, turning against the self, and reversal.

Another important aspect of the concept of defense which was introduced by Wilhelm was that an individual’s defensive operations become embedded in his or her personality or character and that these traits of character must be analyzed along with the content of the person’s associations, memories, feelings, and dreams. He stressed that they function like a “character armor,” which is very difficult to alter or to analyze.

Reich also pointed out that these same traits of character functioned as powerful resistances to change and to analytic treatment. More defensive operations were added or reconstructed by Melanie Klein and the British school of psychoanalysis. They were the defenses of splitting of the object and the impulses, splitting of the ego, idealization, denial of inner and outer reality, the stifling of emotions, projection, introjection, omnipotence, and projective identification.

Psychological Explanation of Defense Mechanism

As we are well aware of the fact that Sigmund Freud has been under severe criticisms because many of his theories were not scientifically verified. Nonetheless, still, his theories have been considered very unique and practical from certain perspectives as well.

In particular, his research on defense mechanism, which is today’s supplementary topic today, has made a marvellous milestone. Human mind consists of three elements, according to Sigmund Freud: Super Ego, Ego and Id. Once the balance between Super Ego, Ego and Id gives away, our minds are supposed to produce some defenses against causing factors. I will show how it arises in more details later on.

Superego, Ego and Id

First and foremost, what we need to understand is the concept of Super Ego, Ego and

Id that Sigmund Freud coined at first.

If you take a look at the diagram below, it will help you have some understanding of the concept very clearly. The basic postulate of psychoanalysis, the concept of a dynamic unconscious mind, discovered out of Freud’s observation that the physical symptoms of hysterical patients tended to disappear after apparently forgotten material was made conscious. He saw the unconscious as an area of great psychic activity, which affected personality and behavior but operated with material not subject to recall through normal mental processes. Freud postulated that there were a number of defense mechanisms including repression, reaction-formation, regression, displacement, and rationalization that protect the conscious mind from those aspects of reality it may find difficult to accept. The major defense mechanism is “repression”, which induced a “forgetfulness” for harsh realities. (For example, when you don’t want to meet someone, you conveniently may forget the appointment.)

Observing the relationship between psychoneurosis and repressed memories, Freud made conscious recognition of these forgotten experiences the foundation of psychoanalytic therapy. Hypnosis was the earliest method used to probe the  unconscious, but because of its limited effectiveness, it was soon abandoned in favor of free association dream, which Freud interpreted as symbolic wish fulfillments, were considered a primary key to the unconscious, and their analysis was an important part of Freudian therapy.

To clarify the operation of the human psyche, Freud and his followers introduced a vast body of psychoanalytic theory. In considering the human personality as a whole, Freud divided it into three functional parts: id, ego, and superego. He saw the id as the deepest level of the unconscious, dominated by the pleasure principle, with its object the immediate gratification of instinctual drives.

The superego, originating in the child through an identification with parents, and in response to social pressures, functions as an internal censor to repress the urges of the id.

The ego is seen as a part of the id modified by contact with the external world. It is a mental agent mediating among three contending forces: the outside demands of social pressure or reality, libidinal demands for immediate satisfaction arising from the id, and the moral demands of the superego. Although considered only partly conscious, the ego constitutes the major part of what is commonly referred to as consciousness.

The function of the id center around the basic needs of humankind that compel gratification, in particular the pressures arising from the sexual and aggressive drives. These drives were considered to be always fused to some degrees. If the drives did not evoke displeasure, they could be gratified with the assistance of the ego either in reality or in fantasy. If the wishes evoked by the drives caused too much displeasure, they were warded off by certain functions of the ego in accordance with the pleasure principle: the tendency of the mind to seek pleasure and avoid displeasure.

Freud insisted that conflicts between these often-opposing components of the human mind render defense mechanism surface.

It was  Anna Freud, but not Sigmund, who defined the defense mechanisms. Anna Freud defined in detail the defense mechanisms sketched out by her father in her book, “The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense.” Second, defense mechanisms aren’t just an unconscoius protective measure to prevent you from connecting with your ravenous instinctual desires.

Manners/ Types of Defense Mechanisms

Psychologists have categorized defense mechanisms based upon how primitive they are. The more primitive a defense mechanism, the less effective it works for a person over the long-term. However, more primitive defense mechanisms are usually very effective short-term, and hence are favored by many people and children especially (when such primitive defense mechanisms are first learned). Adults who don’t learn better ways of coping with stress or traumatic events in their lives will often resort to such primitive defense mechanisms as well.

A comprehensive list of defense mechanisms was prepared by Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmond Freud

Primitive Defense Mechanisms:

Denial:

Refusing to believe something that you find too upsetting. You can consider this the “generic” defense mechanism because it underlies many of the others. When you use denial, you simply refuse to accept the truth or reality of a fact or experience

Denial is the refusal to accept reality or fact, acting as if a painful event, thought or feeling did not exist. It is considered one of the most primitive of the defense mechanisms because it is characteristic of early childhood development. Many people use denial in their everyday lives to avoid dealing with painful feelings or areas of their life they don’t wish to admit.

Denial is a positive attitude in some cases, while it is not in others. For example, students who deny their need for studying and go to the cinema for a couple of times instead of studying will fail their exams.. As another example, a student receiving a low mark from an exam attributes this low mark to an assessment-related mistake made by the teacher.

The functioning of denial mechanism gradually faces increasing difficulty when the ego matures and understands the reality better, and the individual spends more energy for denial.

Denial may also be used by victims of trauma or disasters and may even be a beneficial initial protective response. In the long run, however, denial can prevent you from incorporating unpleasant information about yourself and your life and have potentially destructive consequences.

Regression

This complex behavior pattern or psychic phenomenon is a fundamental characteristics of mental life. When the term is used to designate a defensive process, it can refer to drive, ego, or super ego functioning. In the first of these, it refers to a return to the wishes and aims of the earlier oral and anal phases, in an effort to avoid the anxieties of the phallic phase. Thus, a woman might express intense longings to sit in her male friend’s lap and be taken care of, while her unconscious wishes for intercourse with him and a baby are repressed. An example of the regression of ego functioning for the purpose  of defense would be a five-year-old boy who reverts to sucking his thumb and wanting a bottle when his sister is born.

From repression to regression—one little “g” makes all the difference. In regression, you revert back to a childlike emotional state in which your unconscious fears, anxieties, and general “angst” reappear. In Freud’s theory of “psychosexual” development, people develop through stages such as the oral, anal, and phallic so that by the time they’re five or six, the basic structures of personality are laid down

People under severe stress could demonstrate childish attitudes in a process called regression. Regression is the reversion to an earlier stage of development in the face of unacceptable thoughts or impulses. It is reverting to earlier (younger) ways of coping with problems. Example: you are overwhelmed with all the studying you have to do for finals, and you throw your pencil across the room in a little tantrum. For an example an adolescent who is overwhelmed with fear, anger and growing sexual impulses might become clingy and start exhibiting earlier childhood behaviors he has long since overcome. . However, every once in a while, a person either reverts back to a childlike state of development. particularly under conditions of stress. That road rage you see when drivers are stuck in traffic is a great example of regression. People may also show regression when they return to a child-like state of dependency. Retreating under the blankets when you’ve had a bad day is one possible instance. The problem with regression is that you may regret letting your childish self show in a self-destructive way. Driving badly or refusing to talk to people who’ve made you feel bad, mad, or sad can eventually get you in worse trouble than what you had when you began Or you are overwhelmed with all the studying you have to do for finals, and you throw your pencil across the room in a little tantrum

Although regression is not developed or appropriate, it could sometimes be used as a strategy for controlling as well. An adult having a crying jag when his/her views and thoughts are defeated could expect others to understand him/her as his/her parents did when s/he was a child.

Fantasy-formation- Day Dreaming

Sweet imagination, or fantasy formation, is a way of relaxation for a person who tries to overcome the conflicts via imagination. In fantasy formation, people do not regard the events as they but imagine them as what they want them to be. People not only give up thinking about the real situation that could lead them to anxiety or frustration but also satisfy the frustrated motives at least for a certain period of time.

Fantasy formation is seen especially among adults. Studies conducted demonstrate that almost all university students allocate a majority of their time to imagination rather than studying their lessons. To a certain extent, imagination is a harmless way of avoiding realities temporarily. However, constructive activities are quite rare.

Acting Out

Acting Out is performing an extreme behavior in order to express thoughts or feelings the person feels incapable of otherwise expressing. Instead of saying, “I’m angry with you,” a person who acts out may instead throw a book at the person, or punch a hole through a wall. When a person acts out, it can act as a pressure release, and often helps the individual feel calmer and peaceful once again. For instance, a child’s temper tantrum is a form of acting out when he or she doesn’t get his or her way with a parent. Self-injury may also be a form of acting-out, expressing in physical pain what one cannot stand to feel emotionally.

Dissociation

Dissociation is when a person loses track of time and/or person, and instead finds another representation of their self in order to continue in the moment. A person who dissociates often loses track of time or themselves and their usual thought processes and memories. People who have a history of any kind of childhood abuse often suffer from some form of dissociation. In extreme cases, dissociation can lead to a person believing they have multiple selves (“multiple personality disorder”). People who use dissociation often have a disconnected view of themselves in their world. Time and their own self-image may not flow continuously, as it does for most people. In this manner, a person who dissociates can “disconnect” from the real world for a time, and live in a different world that is not cluttered with thoughts, feelings or memories that are unbearable.

Projection

The first four defense mechanisms were relatively easy to understand. Projection is more challenging. First, you have to start with the assumption that to recognize a particular quality in yourself would cause you psychic pain. Let’s say you’re worried that you’re not really very smart. You make a dumb mistake that no one says anything about at all, and accuse others of saying that you’re dumb, inferior, or just plain stupid. The point is that no one said anything that in reality could be construed as critical. You are “projecting” your insecurities onto others and in the process, alienating them

Projection is the misattribution of a person’s undesired thoughts, feelings or impulses onto another person who does not have those thoughts, feelings or impulses. Projection is used especially when the thoughts are considered unacceptable for the person to express, or they feel completely ill at ease with having them. Projection is often the result of a lack of insight and acknowledgement of one’s own motivations and feelings.

In this process an unacceptable feeling, impulse, or idea is attributed to another person or thing. The person who is projecting has no awareness that the impulse or idea is his own. While projection is a ubiquitous and at times normal mental process, it is frequently predominant in sicker individuals, so is often accompanied by a diminution in reality testing. It is the major defense their own hateful thoughts and attribute their thoughts to a person or a group that they feel will harm them. However, all kinds of impulses can be projected, such as love, greed, envy, and sexual desire.

Suppose you love someone, but think that your parents have always told you to behave well to others and to get along with them. These recommendations of your parents have penetrated into your superego. When you discover that you do not actually like that person, this will cause you to feel guilty and anxious in moral aspect. The reflection mechanism will take the control and, without leading to any anxiety, create the thought of “this person does not like me”. In this way, we place the source of the conflict away from us.

If the problem can not be denied or repressed completely, we ruin the nature of the problem to solve it more easily. An example that could be given for this situation is reflection, in which individuals pass their repressed motives, thoughts and feelings to others. We pass our own emotions to others that we have not been able to acknowledge. Projection is Putting an unpleasant thought onto somebody else.

Reaction Formation

Most people have difficultyunderstanding reaction formation, but it’s really quite straightforward. Reaction Formation is the converting of unwanted or dangerous thoughts, feelings or impulses into their opposites

This term of developing reaction refers to the behavioral form of denial that people express by exaggerating their thoughts and emotions which are totally opposite to their own feelings. Exaggeration is a clue for this behavior. A woman praising her opponent excessively might conceal her jealousy of that person’s achievement.

This is a mechanism whereby an attitude is repressed and kept unconscious and its replaced in consciousness or behavior by its opposite. For example, hateful thoughts and feelings are repressed, and the individual is aware only of loving ones. Many reaction formations get to be so rigid and global that they become an intrinsic part of a person’s character. Such major reaction formations are sometimes considered to be discrete defense mechanisms themselves.

Developing a reaction could be a way of convincing oneself that his/her motives are sincere. A father with opposite feelings regarding becoming a parent could devote most of his time to his children in an effort to prove himself that he is quite a good father.

Less Primitive, More Mature Defense Mechanisms

Repression:

One step above denial in the generic classification scheme, repression involves simply forgetting something bad. Denial and repression are the most basic mechanisms. In denial, we delete the situations that we fail to cope with, while in repression, we delete our internal reactions or our thoughts that we can not acknowledge. These psychological strategies constitute the bases of coping in other defensive forms. You might also use repression when you “forget” to do something unpleasant. Repression, like denial, can be temporarily beneficial, particularly if you’ve forgotten something bad that happened to you, but as with denial, if you don’t come to grips with the experience it may come back to haunt you.

This is the commonest and most prominent defensive operation used in mental life, and it frequently operates in conjunction with other defenses. It occupies a singular place in the history of psychoanalysis concepts. It refers to the barring from consciousness of ideas, feelings, thoughts, fantasies, and memories. Ideas, fantasies, and memories associated with the instinctual drives are constantly pressing for discharge and entry into consciousness, where they can lead to action and gratification. The defense of repression keeps these thoughts in the unconscious part of the mind. But various repressed ideas, fantasies, and memories may overcome what is keeping them repressed and become conscious in dreams, slips of the tongue, daydreams, and symptoms.

Repression is the mechanism which is most common for wiping our painful feelings and memories and which removes distressing thoughts from the mind in a way not to remember them again. According to many psychologists, repression is an indicator of a person’s struggle against internal  reactions  that conflict with feelings of repression. For example, as children, most of us are taught that violence and offensiveness are wrong attitudes.

This conflict between our emotions and values could lead to stress and a way of coping with this stress in a defensive manner means suppressing our emotions – in other words, it means deleting any awareness of underlying anger and hostility completely.  Repression, inappropriate subconscious motives do not turn into behavior; disturbing thoughts come to the level of consciousness; and memories regarding what we did wrong in the past do not revive. What to repress depends mainly on cultural expectations and on the superego of the individual.

Repression is the unconscious blocking of unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses. It is pushing very upsetting memories deep down, away from conscious thought. The key to repression is that people do it unconsciously, so they often have very little control over it. “Repressed memories” are memories that have been unconsciously blocked from access or view. But because memory is very malleable and ever-changing .

Although repression can occur at any time during life, it regularly arises concerning memories in childhood. The repression of memories from this period is known as infantile amnesia. In adult life, repression is particularly apparent in amnesia, fugue states, and in patients who tend to have symptoms and character traits associated with hysteria.

Displacement

Displacement is the redirecting of thoughts feelings and impulses directed at one person or object, but taken out upon another person or object. People often use displacement when they cannot express their feelings in a safe manner to the person they are directed at. The classic example is the man who gets angry at his boss, but can’t express his anger to his boss for fear of being fired. He instead comes home and kicks the dog or starts an argument with his wife. The man is redirecting his anger from his boss to his dog or wife. Naturally, this is a pretty ineffective defense mechanism, because while the anger finds a route for expression, it’s misapplication to other harmless people or objects will cause additional problems for most people.

In Displacement ideas and feelings that a person may have toward an important object or thing are repressed and then experienced in relation to another animate or inanimate object which represents the former. This is also commonly found to be present in the manifest content of dreams. Repressed motives and emotions refer to directing them from the actual objects to other objects that will replace the actual objects.

In displacement you transfer your original feelings that would get you in trouble (usually anger) away from the person who is the target of your rage to a more hapless and harmless victim. Here’s the classic example: You’ve had a very unpleasant interaction with your teacher, but you can’t show your anger toward him or her. Instead, you come home and, so to speak, “kick the cat” (or dog). That’s not very nice imagery, but you get the picture. Any time you shift your true feelings from their original, anxiety-provoking, source to one you perceive as less likely to cause you harm, you’re quite possibly using displacement. Unfortunately, displacement may protect you from being fired or failing a class, but it won’t protect your hand if you decide to displace your anger from the true target to a window or wall.

Intellectualisation

This is a process which psychologically binds the instinctual drives in intellectual activities, especially as a measure of control. It is exemplified by typical adolescent preoccupations with philosophy and religion to ward off the tumultuous sexual and aggressive feelings of that period.

In intellectualisation, a latent form of denial, we analyze our problems as an abstract level and cope with these problems as if they were of all people. In this way, we keep ourselves away from our emotions related to problems.  Keeping very aloof and logical about painful topics.

You might also neutralize your feelings of anxiety, anger, or insecurity in a way that is less likely to lead to embarrassing moments than some of the above defense mechanisms. In intellectualization, you think away an emotion or reaction that you don’t enjoy feeling.

Intellectualization is the overemphasis on thinking when confronted with an unacceptable impulse, situation or behavior without employing any emotions whatsoever to help mediate and place the thoughts into an emotional, human context. Rather than deal with the painful associated emotions, a person might employ intellectualization to distance themselves from the impulse, event or behavior.

Rationalization.

Rationalization is putting something into a different light or offering a different explanation for one’s perceptions or behaviors in the face of a changing reality.

A more logical, reasoned explanation for behavior, thoughts, or feelings is given by a person in order to conceal unconscious meanings or motives that would arouse anxiety or guilt in that person. The person who is rationalizing is usually unaware of these repressed meanings or motives.

When you rationalize something, you try to explain it away. As a defense mechanism, rationalization is somewhat like intellectualization, but it involves dealing with a piece of bad behavior on your part rather than converting a painful or negative emotion into a more neutral set of thoughts. People often use rationalization to shore up their insecurities or remorse after doing something they regret such as an “oops” moment. It’s easier to blame someone else than to take the heat yourself, particularly if you would otherwise feel shame or embarrassment. For example, let’s say you lose your temper in front of people you want to like and respect you. Now, to help make yourself feel better, you mentally attribute your outburst to a situation outside your control, and twist things so that you can blame someone else for provoking you.

Isolation

This mechanism, which is the one most used by obsessive-compulsive personalities, consists of the separation of ideas from the emotions that usually accompany them. For example, a person may have the thought that his father will die, yet he experiences no emotion along with the thought; or a patient may tell his analyst that he has angry thoughts about him, but he does not feel angry. If isolation is severe, it can result in a general blunting of emotion. Sometimes a person’s thoughts seem unbidden, alien, or  unconnected; hence anxiety and guilt are diminished even though the thoughts are conscious.

Mature Defense Mechanisms

Mature defense mechanisms are often the most constructive and helpful to most adults, but may require practice and effort to put into daily use. While primitive defense mechanisms do little to try and resolve underlying issues or problems, mature defenses are more focused on helping a person be a more constructive component of their environment. People with more mature defenses tend to be more at peace with themselves and those around them.

Sublimation

Sublimation is simply the channelling of unacceptable impulses, thoughts and emotions into more acceptable ones. Refocusing such unacceptable or harmful impulses into productive use helps a person channel energy that otherwise would be lost or used in a manner that might cause the Although the term was originally used to designate a defense mechanisms, sublimation is now considered to be a normal aspect of ego functioning and ego maturation. As a defense, it refers to the transformation of an activity gratifying an infantile drive derivative into a more socially acceptable and creative activity person more anxiety.

Sublimation can also be done with humor or fantasy. Humor, when used as a defense mechanism, is the channelling of unacceptable impulses or thoughts into a light-hearted story or joke. Humor reduces the intensity of a situation, and places a cushion of laughter between the person and the impulses. Fantasy, when used as a defense mechanism, is the channelling of unacceptable or unattainable desires into imagination. For example, imagining one’s ultimate career goals can be helpful when one experiences temporary setbacks in academic achievement. Both can help a person look at a situation in a different way, or focus on aspects of the situation not previously explored.

We’ve just seen that people can use their emotions to fire up a cognitively-oriented response. Intellectualization tends to occur over the short run, but sublimation develops over a long period of time, perhaps even throughout the course of a person’s career.. More realistically, sublimation occurs when people transform their conflicted emotions into productive outlets. They do say that psychologists are inherently nosy (not true!!), but it’s possible that people who go into human services fields to help others are trying to “pay forward” to compensate for difficulties they experienced in their early lives.

Compensation

Compensation is a process of psychologically counterbalancing perceived weaknesses by emphasizing strength in other arenas. By emphasizing and focusing on one’s strengths, a person is recognizing they cannot be strong at all things and in all areas in their lives. For instance, when a person says, “I may not know how to cook, but I can sure do the dishes!,” they’re trying to compensate for their lack of cooking skills by emphasizing their cleaning skills instead. When done appropriately and not in an attempt to over-compensate, compensation is defense mechanism that helps reinforce a person’s self-esteem and self-image.

Assertiveness

Assertiveness is the emphasis of a person’s needs or thoughts in a manner that is respectful, direct and firm. Communication styles exist on a continuum, ranging from passive to aggressive, with assertiveness falling neatly inbetween. People who are passive and communicate in a passive manner tend to be good listeners, but rarely speak up for themselves or their own needs in a relationship. People who are aggressive and communicate in an aggressive manner tend to be good leaders, but often at the expense of being able to listen empathetically to others and their ideas and needs. People who are assertive strike a balance where they speak up for themselves, express their opinions or needs in a respectful yet firm manner, and listen when they are being spoken to. Becoming more assertive is one of the most desired communication skills and helpful defense mechanisms most people want to learn, and would benefit in doing so.

Identification

The opposite of reflection is identification. We save ourselves from unwanted qualifications that we have repressed by passing them to others via reflection. We take the qualifications of a person via identification and share the achievements of that person in the same way. In this way, we avoid feeling ourselves inefficient.

In other words, we adopt and then demonstrate the attitudes of a person whom we admire. A father who has not been able to achieve his goals in his profession shares the professional achievements of his son emotionally.

Identification uses the fantasy of being like another person or adopts behavior and character traits derived from another person. For example, a little boy who feels painfully small and weak may copy his father’s behavior in order to feel big and strong. In a particular form of identification known as “identification with the aggressor,” a person attempts to avoid a passive, frightened state by becoming like the person who frightened him. For instance, a boy may angrily scold his younger brother in exactly the same way in which his father has just scolded him.

In short, defense mechanisms are one of our commonest ways to cope with unpleasant emotions. Although Freud and many of his followers believed that we use them to combat sexual or aggressive feelings, defense mechanisms apply to a wide range of reactions from anxiety to insecurity.

As pointed out by Coleman and colleagues (1987), “defence is necessary to soothe failure, to decrease tension and anxiety, to fix the emotional damage, and to maintain our feelings of being valuable and efficient.” Any defence mechanism can be regarded as inadaptability only when it hinders the individual’s ability to become functional or leads to new problems rather than solving the current ones.

REFERENCES

Allen, B. P. (2000). Personality Theories –Development, Growth and Dversity, (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn and Bacon,

Allport, G. W. (1961). Pattern and growth in personality. New York: Holt.

Bandura, A. ve Walters, R. (1963). Social learning and personality development. New York: Holt.

Dyson, R. & Renk, K. (2006). Freshmen Adaptation to University Life: Depressive Symptoms, Stress and Coping. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 62(10), 1231-1244.

Folkman, S. (2010). Stress, Coping and Hope, Psycho-Oncology, 19, 901-908.

Grinker, R. R. & Spiegel, J. P. (1945). Men Under Stress. Michigan: J. & A Churchill,

Hall, C. S. ve Lindzey, G. (1970). Theories of personality (2nd ed). New York: Wiley.

Lundin, R. W. (1974). Personality : A behavioral analysis (2nd ed). New York: Macmillan.

Mischel, R. (1968). Personality and assessment. New York: Wiley.

Sarason, I. G. (1972). Personality: An objective approach (2nd ed). New York: Wiley.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D

Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India

Generally, three major approaches are Biogenic Theory, Psychogenic and Sociogenic. Biogenic views stress faulty Biology for Juvenile misconduct. Psychogenic approaches are varied in character, but in general stress the psychological pathology of the delinquency. The Sociogenic theory explains delinquency in terms and conditions of social structure. Likewise, Sociological explanation deals with Sociogenic theory. Some of the theories are briefly discussed below.

( A) Biogenic Theory

Biological determinists maintain that the physical qualities which people inherit or develop may cause them to violate the law. Physical make-up separates the deviant from the non-deviant.

Ceases Lambroso is regarded as the profounder of this theory. He declared “a criminal to be an atavistic phenomenon, a biological throwback since the somatological characteristics of criminals resemble those of primitive men. According to Cessare Lombroso, a biologist with an outstanding contribution to the science of criminology, “there exists a group of criminals born for evil, against whom all social cures break as against a rock.” Criminality according to him is in-born. A typical criminal, says Lombroso, has certain physical characteristics as low forehead, hairy body, red eyes, ear deformation, receding chin, big and protruding jaws, and an extreme sensitivity or nonsensitivity  to pain.

Gall was a Viennese physician, “noticed that some of his fellows with pronounced characteristics had certain head configurations. He asked himself why people had “such different faces and such different natures; why one was deceitful, another frank, a third virtuous”. In attempting to answer these questions he made it a point of his life to examine every head he could find. He haunted medical laboratories, he visited prisons and lunatic asylums, his fingers fairly “itched” to measure the bumps and inequalities of the skulls he found. He thought he discerned a relationship between head “Knobs” and certain propensities and character traits, to which he gave fancy names. In this manner phrenology launched itself upon a world eagerly waiting toreceive it.

(B) Psychogenic Theory

These theory stresses the psychological pathology of the delinquent. There are  many researchers who have stressed the Psychological and Psychiatric variables to be highly related to delinquency

Glueek and Glueek Theory of Social Condition

Held that physically a delinquent is mesomorph in constitution. In attitude he is hostile, defiant, resentful, suspicious, Stubborn adventurous, unconventional and non submissive to the authority.

The criminal is a product of society. The impact of sociological factors is so great on individuals that they either shun criminality or embrace it, depending upon their environment and immediate social conditions

Sutherland and Cressey Theory of Differential Association.

Felt that criminal behaviour is not inherited and one who is not already trained in crime does not indulge in criminal behaviour. Rather, criminal behaviour is learned in interaction with other person especially within intimate personal groups. This, would mean that impersonal agencies such as movies and News papers play a relatively important part in the genesis of criminal behaviour. “Differential association” varies in frequency,duration, priority and intensity.

Akers’s differential reinforcement theory

Akers’s differential reinforcement theory integrated differential association and the learning theory of operant conditioning. Operant conditioning holds that behaviour is controlled by the consequences of that behavior.

Everyone receives positive and negative reinforcements for behavior. According to differential reinforcement theory, a positive reinforcement is a reward and is designed to increase the behavior being rewarded. On the other hand, a negative reinforcement is a punishment designed to decreasethe behavior.

Therefore, behavior is controlled by the rewards and punishments people receive for their behavior.  If a positive reinforcement is given after a person commits a delinquent act, the person has received a reward for that behavior. It is to be expected that the person will continue the behaviour.

Learning theorists argue that rewards are more powerful than punishments in shaping behavior. However, in some cases, a juvenile may be expecting to receive a reward (positive reinforcement) for behavior, but the reward is withheld. If this occurs, the person has received an indirect punishment for the behavior, and the behavior is less likely to continue. For example, if a young male commits a robbery but fails to obtain any money or valuables, he has received an indirect punishment, and he is less likely to continue the delinquent behavior.

A juvenile may also receive negative reinforcement for a behavior. If this occurs, the juvenile has received a direct punishment and is less likely to continue the behaviour.

If a juvenile receives rewards from his or her peer group for committing delinquent acts, that delinquency may continue—even with punishment by the juvenile justice system. A juvenile may also anticipate that a punishment (negative reinforcement) is going to occur after delinquent behavior. If no punishment follows, the juvenile has received an indirect reward for the behavior and is likely to increase the behavior.

Sykes & Matza Theory of Social Interaction

Delinquent behaviour like most social behaviour, is learned in the process of social interaction. Both feel that the family of the delinquent will agree with respectable society that delinquency is wrong even though the family may be engaged in a variety of illegal activities. They say that a delinquent is partly committed to the dominant. Social order in the he frequently exhibits, quilts or shame when he violates its prescriptions, accords approval to certain conferring figures and distinguishes between appropriates and inappropriate targets for his deviance.

(C) Psychoanalytical and Psychiatric Theory

Airchorn asserted that there must be something in child himself which environment brings out in the form of delinquency. Delinquents behave as they do because they are in some way “Maladjusted” persons. Airchron’s statement indicates further that the environment may function as a precipitating force, but never as primary force in causation.

(D) Medico-Biological Theory

This theory has been advanced at many times and in many ways and often in combination as “Medico biological” thesis of causation. Here this theory would include the hereditary factors, chemical balances within the physical organism, and certainly the influence of physical illness on behaviour. The biological explanation, concerned primarily with inherited characteristic.

(E) The Classical Theory

The classical theory of free will advocated that man is a free moral agent who chooses to do wrong. On the assumption of free will, the Classical theorists maintained that the criminal is morally guilty and responsible, he should; therefore, receive a punishment proportionate to that moral guilt. Thus, there were set penalties according to the moral turpitude involved in the offence

Some have looked for explanations in physical and mental health, others in emotional attitudes and still others in general social environment. The Classical theory was attacked since it treated all men as mere digits ignoring their individual natures or the circumstances under which they  committed the crime. It subjected to the same punishment the hardened criminal, the accidental and the habitual.

(F) Multi-causal Theory

According to Abrahamsen, “a criminal act is the sum of a person’s criminalistic tendencies plus his total situation divided by the amount of his resistance.” He rendered the multiplicity of causal factors into a mathematical formula.

This shows that the root of the delinquency lies in both in nature and nurture.

Recent sociologists, psychiatrists and criminologists agree that delinquency is a result of a number of factors. Burt enumerated no less than 170 causes which were conducive to delinquency.

According to him, “crime is assignable to no single universal source nor yet to two or three: it springs from a wide variety, and usually from a multiplicity of alternative and converging influences. So violent a reaction, as may easily be conceived, is almost everywhere the outcome of a concurrence of subversive factors: it needs many coats of pitch to paint a thing thoroughly black.”

No one factor is the sole cause of delinquency. It is a result of the interaction between the individual and his immediate and economic factors like poverty, slums etc. The natural factors are biological, mental and emotional. Geography and climatic conditions are indirect contributors to delinquency.

(G) Subculture theories

A subculture is a set of values, norms, and beliefs that differs from those within the dominant culture. According to subculture theory, delinquent youth hold values, norms, and beliefs in opposition to those held in the dominant culture. Therefore, youths who behave in a manner that is consistent with the values, norms, and beliefs of their subculture will often be in conflict with the law.

Three subculture theories are: Cohen’s delinquency and frustration theory, Cloward and Ohlin’s differential opportunity theory,  and Miller’s lower-class focal concern theory.

(I)Cohen’s delinquency and frustration theory,

Albert K. Cohen believed that individuals from the lower class had different values, norms, and beliefs than those held by the middle class.   The goal of lower-class youths is middle-class membership. However, lower class youths face developmental handicaps that place them at a disadvantage in obtaining their goal of middle-class membership. These developmental handicaps include the lack of educational preparation and inability to delay gratification

The primary means of becoming a member of the middle class is education. These youths, who have been socialized to be part of the lower class, frequently have difficulty in school because teachers and administrators are members of the middle class and hold the values, norms, and beliefs of the middle class. The standards and values used in school to evaluate youths, which Cohen calls middle-class measuring rods ,  include ambition, responsibility, deferred gratification, courtesy, ability to control aggression, constructive use of time, and respect for property.  Essentially, lower-class youths are being evaluated by measures grounded in middle-class values and norms to which they are not accustomed. These middle-class measuring rods make it difficult for lower class children to succeed in school.

If lower-class students fail at school, they will not be able to attain their goal of middle-class status. Inability to fulfil this goal is known as status frustration . Frequently, students who are not performing well in school seek others like themselves with whom to associate. In other words, these young people may associate with others like themselves who are failing in school and are facing status frustration. These young people form delinquent subcultures and gangs. In gangs, youths develop new norms, values, and beliefs; they also establish new means to obtain status.

This delinquent behavior is actually a protest against the norms, values, and beliefs of the middle-class culture.

(II) Richard Cloward and Ohlin’s differential opportunity theory

Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin focused on serious delinquency committed by urban, male gang members.   Status frustration  Occurs due to a person’s inability to obtain the goal of middleclass status. Youths who had little ability to achieve these goals through legitimate means would form delinquent subcultures/gangs in an effort to obtain the goals.

Cloward and Ohlin believed that illegal opportunities, like conventional opportunities, are stratified unequally.  This means that there is an illegitimate opportunity structure just as there is a legitimate opportunity structure for success. The legitimate opportunity structure involves education, hard work, and a good occupation, and not everyone has access to this opportunity structure to obtain economic success. Not everyone has access to the illegitimate opportunity structure, either.

The illegitimate opportunity structure includes criminal enterprises in neighbourhoods where there are criminal mentors to assist youths in becoming successful criminals. Although there are illegitimate opportunity structures in many neighborhoods, not everyone has equal access to these structures.

Neighborhood structures such as established criminal enterprises and criminal mentors that lead youths to become criminals. When delinquent subcultures/gangs are established with a different set of values, norms, and beliefs, the type of delinquent gang that develops will depend on the neighbourhood in which the youths live and whether they have access to illegitimate opportunity structures.

(III) Miller’s lower-class focal concern theory

Walter B. Miller basic tenet was that society is composed of various social groups, each with its distinctive subculture.

Miller identified six focal concerns that describe six values of a lower-class subculture.  These focal concerns differentiate the lower class from the middle and upper classes.

1. Trouble —value by which people are evaluated on the basis of their involvement in trouble-making activity

2. Toughness —value of physical strength, fi ghting ability, and masculinity

3. Smartness —value of the ability to be streetwise and to con people

4. Excitement —value of thrill-seeking through gambling, fi ghting, and getting intoxicated

5. Fate —value or belief that most things that happen to people are beyond their control

6. Autonomy —value of personal freedom resulting in an active disdain of authority.

(H) Walter Reckless Containment Theory

Walter Reckless believed that both internal and external forces operate when juveniles make decisions to avoid or commit delinquent acts. Some internal forces inhibit people from committing delinquent acts while others encourage delinquent behavior. The same is true for external forces; some inhibit while others encourage delinquent acts.

Reckless identified four motivating and restraining forces for delinquency.

1. Inner pressures and pulls lead juveniles toward committing delinquent acts. Inner forces include an individual’s desires, needs, and wants. These  include feelings of restlessness, hostility, and the needfor immediate gratification.

2. Inner containments inhibit delinquent behavior. Inner containments are internal personal controls that lead someone to not commit delinquent acts. These include self-esteem, strong sense of responsibility, internalized moral codes, tolerance of frustration, and positive goal orientations.

3. Outer pressures  may lead to delinquency include the influence of one’s peer group, unemployment, and living conditions. External forces also include the rewards for committing delinquent acts such as status and financial gain.

4. Outer containments inhibit delinquent behavior. These include forces that provide discipline and supervision including parents, police, schools, and the juvenile justice system.

Inner containments are more effective at inhibiting delinquent activity than are outer containments. Outer containments are not always present prior to the commission of delinquent acts, while inner containments such as internalized moral codes are. An individual’s self-image and self-esteem are also major predictors of which of these forces will dominate behavior.

(I)Travis Hirschi Social Control /Social Bonding Theory

According to Travis Hirschi, people usually do not commit delinquent acts because they fear that this behavior will damage their relationships with their parents, friends, families, teachers, and employers; thus, individuals do not commit delinquent acts because they are bonded to the larger society. When these social bonds are broken or diminished, delinquency is likely. Hirschi stated that there were four elements of the social bond  including attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief.

• Attachment describes the emotional and psychological ties a person has with others. It includes sensitivity to and interest in others as well as a sense of belonging. Hirschi believed that attachment to parents is more important than attachment to peers and school. Attachment is the most important element of the social bond.

• Commitment involves the time, energy, and effort expended in conventional action.  Therefore, the more conventional assets people have—such as an education, job, and home—the less likely they are to commit crime.

• Involvement means significant time and attention spent in conventional activities, which leaves little time for illegal behavior. People who are busy working, going to school, are far less likely to commit crime. They do not have the spare time to indulge temptations to commit crimes.

• Belief describes the acceptance of moral legitimacy of law and authority, with an understanding that the law should be obeyed

Referance:

Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969.

Eaton, J. W. and Polk, K., Measuring Delinquency. Pittsburg; university Pittsberg Press,1961.

Hirschi, Travis. Causes of Delinquency,

Hirsh, N., Dynamic Causes of Juvenile Crime. Cambridge; Mass, Sci-Art Publisher, 1937.

K. Kusum, ‘Juvenile Delinquency- A Socio-legal Study’(1979) Published by KLM Book House, New Delhi 22

Kvaraceus, W. C. and Miller, W.B. Delinquent Behaviour; Cultuer and The Individual.

Sellin, T. and Wolfgang, M., The Measurement of Delinquency. New York; John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1964.

Washingoton; National Education Association,1959