INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Of
ALL INDIA ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH
on
IMPROVING RURAL EDUCATION
on
10-12 OCTOBER 2005
at
ANGEL MATRICULATION HIGHER SECONDARY SCHOOL,
THIRUNINRAVUR, NEAR CHENNAI, TAMIL NADU
ABSTRACTS OF THE PAPERS
Empowering Rural Students
through Soft Skills
Chandra Sekhar,Ch, Lecturer, Ghulam Ahmed College of Education, Rd.3, Banjara Hills , Hyderabad - 34
The higher education context of India has alienated the rural group of learners from its
main stream. The challenges faced by rural students do not respect state
boundaries. Persistent poverty, historical dependence on natural resources,
geographic isolation, underdeveloped infrastructure, high population, and
limited economic opportunities are common. The education in terms of cognitive,
affective and psychomotor domains they receive is far inferior to that of the
urban clientele. Except few contextual skills the rural students are not being
exposed to any kind of soft skills. After all they were not even identified as
a target group in the present education scenario. In developing curriculum at
every stage, the needs and requirements of rural learners are not looked into.
In this article the author thinks about the training programmes of soft skills
for the rural learners. He also proved that systematic training programmes may
help the needy to make them self worthy of moving ahead in this competitive
era. He also discusses the rural students strengths
and weakness with respect to soft skills. The author is very
much conscious about the needs of the students and have come with solid
strategic planning in the area of soft skills. This episode also discusses
about variety of soft skills such as Essential
Skills, Managerial Skills, Leadership Skills and other Contextual Skills
in detail. Especially, training modules for developing assertive skills were
designed and experimented. The results of the same substantiated the opinion of
the author in terms empirical evidence. The present paper concludes with a
positive note that planned systematic training programmes help the rural
students in developing their soft skills.
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Orienting
Primary Teachers towards Competency Based English Language Teaching
Chellamani,K, Lecturer, Department of Education, University of Madras, Chennai - 600 005
To meet the day’s need, English has been introduced
right from class 1, since 2003-2004. The area of development is focused on
Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing, Grammar, Vocabulary and Language Use.
The general objectives are specified in terms of competencies. The content of
the text carries these competencies and the teacher instruction is in the form
of a note. It is task of the teacher to follow the note, understand the
competencies and make use of the lesson, i.e., the tool for developing the
prescribed competencies. Comprehension of the above is the basic prerequisite
for any teacher to handle any text book whenever any revision occurs. The
investigator, in her observation of classes, and interactions with the teachers
understood that the primary teachers are not aware of the enlisted competencies
in its true sense; they do bother about syllabus completion and preparation of
students for examination. Therefore, hardly there is competency development.
With this need analysis, the investigator designed a training programme for
primary teachers, where they sensitized learner language competencies and
teacher language competencies. This in turn refined the perception of the
teachers to asses the relevance and appropriateness of the input for the
development of the given language competencies.
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