A study on Primary Education – Teaching methodology & Curriculum
Authors:   NIILM University Kaithal, Kumar Sandeep , Simran Simran ,   Imperial College Hisar
Published: November 2024

Early childhood years are of crucial importance for the mental development of the child and possibly the ultimate level of development attained by an individual is determined by her experiences in the first five years of life. Practicing the right way to teach is the most important factor for every school. Therefore, educationists all over the world have been struggling to develop methods that can optimize the attainment of teaching-learning objectives. Objective of every school should be to offer students maximum opportunities in a caring environment where they are enabled to reach their potential in all areas of school. A balanced curriculum should be offered in all schools. CBSE is doing lot of efforts for achieve the aim of quality school education, despite lot of interventions the desired quality in education is yet not achieved. There are many shortcomings and imbalances. Not only social and economic inequalities are responsible for this, skilled and trained human resource, structured and balance elementary curriculum is also lacking. I did survey in 190 rural and urban schools of Haryana to know the various aspects of pre-primary and primary schooling. The survey was carried out with the help of other teacher trainers and principals. This survey includes various face to face interactions with principals, teacher, group discussions, workshops and questionnaire. In the research I included the untrained teacher resource, school infra, teaching learning materials, elementary curriculum and various teaching methodologies used in rural and urban schools and other aspects of pre-primary and primary schooling. The objective of the survey was to identify the innovative pedagogies and curriculum adopted in all the schools at elementary level. In my survey I found that teachers blame poor parenting for dismal learning standards in schools. But according to me poorly trained teachers and social attitudes is the real problem. Teaching methodologies followed by teachers are still old. Innovative and creative teachers are lacking in all schools. Learning attitude is missing from teacher side, but is expected from student side. D.Ed. or B.Ed. course don’t prepare the teacher for real classroom teaching. There is great variation in the real class room teaching in all schools. No standardized teaching methodologies and curriculum is followed. Cognitive development based, joyful and structured elementary curriculum is missing in all the schools. Besides learning should be fun for the kids, there is lot of pressure of study on them. According to Dr. Maria Montessori, “A child’s work is to create the person she will become. Children are born with special mental powers which create the person she will become”. But they cannot accomplish the task of self-construction without purposeful movement, exploration, and discovery of their environment. They must be given the freedom to use their inborn powers to develop physically, intellectually and spiritually. Preschool marks a new beginning for a child. It is a time for new experiences, discoveries, knowledge and challenges as a child leaf home to enter a new world of schooling. It is important to remember that each child is different and will learn and achieve in her own way. We must not compare them with other children but assess them by their own daily improvements. The various teaching methodologies should be learner oriented that develop core skills like creativity, imagination, thinking, decision making, concentration, citizenship, problem solving, leadership etc. Before to plan pedagogy teacher have to keep in mind-Each Child is Unique & Each Child Matter. Sir Ken Robinson claims that ‘Schools kill creativity’ and the same I found in my research. So, I have tried to add in the recommendations some extracts for the innovative teaching methodologies and curriculum that are significant in cognitive development. There is constant need to conduct in job teacher training sessions to train teacher for multi grade teaching methodologies.