Nothing tells you more about the health of learning in a school than a conversation with its teachers.
Just after the release of NCF 2023, I was invited by a school to conduct a workshop on competency-based learning. During a coffee break I had the opportunity to informally interact with a group of teachers. Their enthusiastic descriptions of their academic initiatives – project-based learning, use of case studies, experiential activities and use of digital tools to enhance engagement were very impressive. One of the teachers proudly showed a project file that contained solved problems and pictures of hands-on experiential activities conducted by groups of students.
Curious, I asked her, ‘do your students use this learning to solve problems in their everyday lives?’
The teacher paused, not certain how to respond, ‘Do you mean application-based questions? Yes, we give them plenty of those from other books and sample question papers.’ Her response was understandable. She interpreted application as solving problems beyond the prescribed textbook. Yet the question that I was asking was different. I wanted to know if her students could use what they had learnt to understand and address situations and issues that their family and neighbourhood communities faced and think how to solve them.
The Next Frontier in Learning
This brief conversation made me realise that while the schools have begun moving away from rote learning, the application of learning was still confined to textbooks, familiar projects and tests designed by the teachers.
What is perhaps less recognised in schools is that for learning to be truly meaningful and experiential, students need to apply their knowledge and skills in unfamiliar situations beyond the classroom. It is in such situations they think independently, use their conceptual knowledge to make decisions and solve real-life problems. That is the real test of their understanding, critical thinking and practical hands-on skills.
Why Real-world Application Matters
A simple task like preparing dosa or paratha for breakfast requires children to draw upon their learning from various disciplines. They need to understand nutrition and food groups, measure ingredients, estimate cooking time, make decisions about flavour, taste, appearance of the dish, and be safe and hygienic while cooking. A single task like this requires integration of different concepts and skills from their curriculum.
Real life is holistic. It does not present problems subject-wise or chapter-wise. It would not quiz them on units of measurement or definition of sustainable development. It requires them to estimate how much water their family uses every day and use their understanding of water conservation to reduce wastage. It requires them to use their knowledge of health and hygiene to protect themselves and their families from flu, cough, common cold and diarrhoea. It requires them to use their mathematical skills to estimate their monthly expenses on electricity and combine it with their learnings from social science to explore practical ways in which to reduce energy consumption by their family.
Therefore, the important question before us is not whether application-based learning is important but how can teachers create regular opportunities in their classrooms for students to apply their understanding of new concepts to solve problems in their own life and world around them.
Creating Opportunities for Real-Life Application
Teachers can use these five strategies to connect learning with life in their classrooms.
- Begin Lesson with a Real-life Question: Instead of beginning your lesson with definitions and facts, ask a real-life question that connects the concept to its practical application in life.
- Convert Local Environment into Learning Laboratory: Most meaningful learning opportunities are found in children’s immediate environment-their school, home and neighbourhood. Use these spaces as learning laboratories and ask them to observe, estimate, analyse, map and discuss various situations and issues such as food wastage, waste segregation, water/electricity consumption, alternate sources of energy, sources of noise pollution or green cover in the school campus.
- Collect Real Data: Go beyond the textbooks and plan tasks that require students to measure, count, observe, compare, and record data. Real data makes learning meaningful for students.
- Connect Learning across Subjects: For example, ask students to choose a healthy snack. This task is not merely a lesson in nutrition. It requires children to read labels, compare prices, understand dietary needs, analyse advertisements and make informed choices. Real-life tasks naturally draw upon learning from multiple subjects.
- End Every Lesson with a Challenge: Ask students to practically use that day’s learning in a situation at home or school and share in the next class. This challenge may be small, but it creates a bridge between learning and student’s life!
A Framework for Real-life Application
Teachers can use a practical framework to plan a real-life application task, by following a simple four step process – ‘observe- reflect- connect- act’ inspired by David A. Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle.
Students begin by
- Observing a real-life situation,
- Reflecting on what they see,
- Connecting it with the concepts they are learning across different subjects, and
- Taking an informed action.
For example-
Water conservation–Observe the water use at home, reflect upon water use patterns, connect water usage with what they have learnt in math, science and social science classes and decide actions that would help them reduce wastage.
School Energy Audit- Observe electricity consumption patterns in different areas of the school, reflect on where and why energy is being used inefficiently, and find reasons for it. Connect findings with concepts of data analysis, energy efficiency and conservation, environmental sustainability and responsible citizenship. Act by developing recommendations to reduce electricity consumption and present it to school administration.
When students learn in this manner, concepts begin to make deeper sense, they become useful and meaningful in their life because retention of learning is significantly enhanced.
Learning for Life
As schools work towards achieving learning outcomes it would be useful to remember that the real purpose of education is not to prepare children for exams, but to prepare them for life. It is for this reason that every curriculum is drawn from life and every lesson, in every subject offers opportunities to understand, engage and improve the world around us.
The more opportunities we create for real-life application, the more learning outcomes cease to be mere entries in the curriculum documents but become visible realities in everyday lives of the learners.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
