Guftagu - February 2023
NalandaWay Foundation
Empowering children and adolescents through art and play-based interventions
NEWS AND DEVELOPMENT
1. ASER 2022 Report?
The Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2022, also known as the ASER report was published in the month of January 2023. The national level enrollment rate for children in the age group 6-14 has increased to 98.4% in 2022 from 97 % in 2018. The enrollment rate in government schools has seen a sharp increase from 65.6% in 2018 to 72.9% in 2022. One of the most shocking data points that have come out of the ASER 2022 report is that the reading ability of children across all classes has gone down to Pre-2012 levels and Maths ability has gone down to Pre-2018 levels.? While the average teacher attendance at the national level has increased from? 85.4% in 2018 to 87.1% in 2022, the attendance level of children has remained almost the same at 72%. To read the report in detail click here .?
2. Mobile school vans launched in Noida by the Police Department
The Noida Police Department in collaboration with HCL Foundation and Chetna NGO has launched a program “Nanhe Parinde” which provides an alternate education system to children, especially those who have dropped out of school. Under the initiative, multiple mobile classrooms in vans equipped with LCD screens, sound systems and educational materials travel to urban slums in Noida to reach out to children from these communities. To read more about the initiative, read the article here .?
In a similar initiative to reach out to children from underserved communities of Tamil Nadu, NalandaWay Foundation is running the “Art Vandi” project which is taking the joy of experiencing and learning arts to them through a mobile art truck. More about Art Vandi here .
3. TRAC Report on the mental health of children during COVID?
Bal Raksha Bharat, also known as Save the Children India released the ‘TRAC 2022– The Rights and Agency of Children’ report which focuses on the Mental health and Psychosocial well-being of children amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. The primary study on mental health and psychosocial well-being amid COVID-19 highlights the coping strategy used by children to face the distress caused by the pandemic in the last two years. The findings of the study highlight that 52.7% of children used avoidant coping, and 51%? used problem-focused coping often/more often, followed by 43.3% of children using emotion-focused coping mechanisms. The most commonly used coping strategies were religious coping followed by acceptance, active coping, seeking informational support, positive reframing, planning, emotional support, and self-distraction. Religious coping was practised more among rural adolescents compared to urban settings. The full report can be accessed through the official website of Save the Children India here .
4. A Review of SEL for Education systems?
“Rethinking Learning: A Review of Social and Emotional Learning for Education Systems" a publication by the UNESCO MGIEP reviews the latest research on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), its impact on student health and school climate and its transformative role in building happier classrooms. The report highlights key questions such as ‘What is SEL?, Why is SEL needed in education?, What is the science behind SEL?, What are SEL competencies and frameworks?’ etc in detail. The report can be accessed here .
THOUGHT BUBBLE
领英推荐
1. How to raise happy teenagers
From cultivating creative outlets to promoting autonomy and structured thought, nurturing teen mental health can have long-term physical benefits too. A study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that happier teenagers are more likely to become healthier adults, with a lowered risk of conditions such as insulin resistance, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Raising happy teenagers (adolescents) is a demanding yet crucial task that requires parents and teachers to be equipped with some level of knowledge and skills to guide the children through this crucial stage of growth. To meet this demand NalandaWay Institute, an initiative by NalandaWay Foundation is launching a two-day workshop in Mumbai on how to develop resilient adolescents using expressive arts. To register for this workshop visit the link here . Read the article about raising happy teenagers here .
2. Spanking children - a longitudinal study?
A longitudinal study published in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect presents compelling evidence that spanking is detrimental to children’s social development. It is revealed that children who were exposed to spanking had higher externalising behaviour, lower self-control, and lower interpersonal skills compared to children who had never been spanked. Read more in the article here .
Spanking/ physical punishment is a culturally accepted/ normalised approach used to discipline children or correct their behaviours. While this can seem like an easy-fix method in parenting there are better ways of approaching punishment and reinforcing behaviours that are not potentially harmful or worse, counterproductive with children. Refer to the article here to read more about the best alternatives to spanking and methods to reinforce positive behaviour in children.
3. How to design effective FLN Teaching learning material?
Teachers have multiple responsibilities and are expected to balance complicated socio-emotional classroom interactions while achieving high cognitive outcomes. The complexity of the job is often accompanied by the lack of support needed to perform the job: the absence of quality tools and inadequate pre and in-service training. Read this article by Central Square Foundation to know more about how Teaching Learning Material (TLM) can be used as a ‘tool’ for improving student learning in India. The article advocates how the ‘structured pedagogy’ method equips teachers with the right techniques, tools, and training needed for classroom learning. The article further highlights the optimum use of Teaching learning materials (TLM), teacher and student-facing material, the key components of teacher-facing material etc.
4. Teachers and Technology need to go hand in hand.
Technology replacing teachers in classrooms has been a long happening discussion in the education sector. The Covid-19 pandemic and the related school closures have opened the stage wide open for ed-tech initiatives and remote learning platforms to push teacherless education to the forefront. The newly emerging discussions in the education sector suggest that technology will not replace teachers, but teachers who adopt technology will replace those who do not. Read more about this topic in the article here .
Read earlier editions of the Guftagu newsletter?here !