Embrace Innovative Pedagogies for Post-COVID Education Ecosystem

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, there have been many changes in the development of national and world education. The most observable phenomenon is now the digital transformation of society and the penetration of digital technologies into learning. The subject of the twentieth-century pedagogy was “upbringing”. The subject of the twenty-first-century pedagogy—the category “education”—has expanded the scope of meaning and understanding. Competence and personal-oriented approaches have been introduced.

We need to rebuild a resilient Indian education system in the long term. In this time of crisis, a well-rounded and effective educational practice is what's needed for the capacity-building of young minds. It will develop skills which will drive their employability, productivity, health, and well-being within the decades to return, and make sure the overall progress of India.

Needless to say, the pandemic has finally transformed the centuries-old, chalk–talk teaching model to one driven by technology and AI. This disruption within the delivery of education has started to push the policymakers to work out the way to drive engagement at scale while ensuring inclusive e-learning solutions and tackling the digital divide. Also, the Prime Minister asked the policymakers on 11th May to also keep in mind how to embrace new models of teaching and learning in the education sector.

Which shows that it is the right time to get over chalk-talk and embrace new and innovative pedagogies for 21st-century education. They say, ‘need is the mother of innovation’. The need hath came, the time is now. To improve and transform the education system to new capabilities which shouldn’t be limited to Zoom Calls and Learning Management Systems. Rather, strategies are required to prepare the higher education sector for the evolving demand-supply trends across the globe—particularly those related to the global mobility of students and faculty and improving the quality of and demand for post-school education in the country.

The time is to seamlessly integrate classroom learning with e-learning modes to build a unified learning system and Let “Diversity become the unifying the force”.

It is also important to establish quality assurance mechanisms and quality benchmark for not just online learning but for online teaching instead. It’s the peak when the academicians need to realise they need to upgrade their skills to match the demands of Generation Z. The abundance of knowledge and experience isn’t enough to deliver for evolving demand globally. There is a lot more for the professional development and teaching development that is required. The highly experienced ones need to understand the chalk-talk is finally over, Pedagogy of the twentieth century differs from the pedagogy of the twenty-first century. It’s time when they need to cope with the pace of technology so that they don’t get from a sage on the stage to the guide on the side.

The subjectivity of consciousness and professional activity is one of the principles of modern pedagogical science. That is, the application or non-use of innovative methods entirely depends on the personality of the teacher, his methodological competence, pedagogical skills. The task of the teacher training system is to actualize such a need, to form methodological competence. The task of the school and universities is to encourage and stimulate the development of teachers’ and students’ creativity. An important task of the teacher is to constantly reflect and develop his pedagogical potential; then the student influenced by the example of the teacher will be an active and competent person.

There are two types of “new”: 

“purely new” - first created, is at the extent of adequate discovery, the establishment of a replacement truth; 

“new”, having a mix of the old, more precisely, consisting of a layer of the old, a layer of the new, and so on.

Proposing one more typology of innovations in learning (technologies, methods, and techniques):

* an absolute innovation (absolutely new technology);

* a modernized innovation (significantly improved technology);

* a modified innovation (slightly improved technology);

* an innovation, technology introduced to a new territory;

* an innovative technology of a new field of application.

Features of innovative training: (1) work on anticipation, anticipation of development; (2) openness to the future; (3) constant inconsistency, in other words, the non-equilibrium of the system, especially the person himself; (4) specialise in the personality, his development; (5) the obligatory presence of creativity elements; and (6) partnership sort of relations: cooperation, co-creation, mutual assistance, and so on.

In 2010, UNESCO recommended the following teaching strategies for the twenty-first century: experiential learning, storytelling, values education, enquiry learning, appropriate assessment, future problem solving, outside classroom learning, and community problem-solving.

Innovation in pedagogies can be thought to keep the these in mind:

* the belief that the human potential is unlimited;

* the pedagogical approach to be aimed at mastering reality in the system;

* stimulation of nonlinear thinking;

* they should be based on the hedonistic principle that is, based on the enjoyment of learning, the joy of achievement, the pedagogy of success.

* the mobile role-playing field of the teacher—the teacher simultaneously teaches and learns from the student.

Lastly, the new pedagogies should have an active mixture of traditional and innovative methods, a combination of an activity approach with an energy-informational environment approach, cognition with constructivism and connectivity.