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 now is the digital transformation of society and the penetration of digital technologies into learning. The subject of twentieth-century pedagogy was “upbringing”. The subject of twenty-first-century pedagogy — the category of “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 come, and make sure of 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 policymakers to work on the way to drive engagement at a scale while ensuring inclusive e-learning solutions and tackling the digital divide. The Prime Minister asked policymakers on 11 May to also keep in mind how to embrace new models of teaching and learning in the education sector.
This shows that it is the right time to get over chalk-talk and embrace new and innovative pedagogies for twenty-first-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 it shouldn’t be limited to Zoom Calls and Learning Management Systems.
Instead, 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 force”.
It is also essential to establish quality assurance mechanisms and quality benchmarks for not just online learning but online teaching as well. It’s the time when 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 an evolving demand globally.
There is a lot more required for professional and teaching development. The highly experienced ones need to understand the chalk-talk is finally over; the pedagogy of the twentieth century differs from the pedagogy of the twenty-first century. It’s time they need to cope with the pace of technology so that they don’t turn 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 actualise such a need, to form methodological competence. The mission of the school and universities is to encourage and stimulate the development of teachers’ and students’ creativity. An essential task of the teacher is to reflect and develop his pedagogical potential continually. 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 modernised 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:
- Work on anticipation, the anticipation of development;
- Openness to the future;
- Constant inconsistency, in other words, the non-equilibrium of the system, especially the person himself;
- Specialise in the personality, his development;
- The obligatory presence of creative elements; and
- 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,
- Value education,
- Enquiry learning,
- Appropriate assessment,
- Future problem solving,
- Outside classroom learning and
- Community problem-solving.
Innovation in pedagogies can be thought of by keeping in mind:
- The belief that human potential is unlimited;
- The pedagogical approach to be aimed at mastering reality in the system;
- Stimulation of nonlinear thinking;
- 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.