UGC NET 2021
PAPER 1
TEACHING APTITIDE NOTES

Levels of Teaching

The Overall object of teaching is to build the overall personality of the learners and it evolves around the development of learner’s capability, thinking and change in the behavior of students.

Different level of Teaching

  • Memory Level of Teaching
  • Understanding the Level of Teaching
  • Reflective Level of Teaching

Important Points on Memory level teaching (MLT)

  • Memory level teaching emphasis on presentation of fact and information and it’s all about CRAMMING.
  • Knowledge or information is gained by the learner through memorization.
  • It is the initial stage of teaching and induces the habit of ROTE Learning of facts and subject matters
  • It provides students the ability to retain and reproduce the learned subject.
  • It covers only the knowledge-based objectives of Bloom’s Taxonomy. At this level, the student learns to identify, recall or remembers the objects, events, ideas and retain them in memory.
  • The teacher plays a very dominating and authoritarian role while instructing
  • The evaluation system mainly includes Oral, Written and easy type-examination as well organized and is simple in nature so that it can be acquired through rote learning.
  • The role of the teacher is prominent (Primary & active) and that of the student is secondary (Secondary & Passive).
  • Memory level teaching does not improve intelligence and increase student’s capability but this is required for other types of teaching levels.

The Herbartian theory of apperception supports that the young children’s mind is ready for perceiving themselves and the world around. Their mind is ready for a great mass of factual information including concepts, elements, structures, models and theories. They can acquire and retain information about a large number of things, objects, and material through memorization.

Classification of memory:

  • Immediate memory: when a recall is immediate
  • Permanent memory: the recalling of material for a longer time.
  • Personal memory: while recalling past experiences, we remember our personal past experience.
  • Impersonal memory: recalling from books, and companion.
  • Active memory: make effort to recall past experiences, recalling answers in exams.
  • Passive memory: recall past experience without effort.
  • Mechanical memory or physical memory: body becoming habitual of doing any task repeatedly.
  • Rote memory: cramming facts without understanding.
  • Logical memory: to learn something by using intellect and it’s recalling when needed.

Important Points on Understanding level of teaching (ULT)

  • Memory level teaching is the prerequisite for the understanding level of teaching as it talks about the generalization of principles, theory and other key important facts.
  • This helps to build the thinking level of students to make use of their acquired knowledge on the basis of previously known facts and subjects.
  • The teacher explains the student about the relationship between principles and facts and teaches them how these principles can be applied.
  • It focusses on mastery of the subject
  • It provides more and more opportunity for the students to develop skills of ‘Memory + Insight’
  • The evaluation system of this level is mainly objective type questions and essays.
  • Student and teacher both play an active role in the Understanding level of teaching

Morrison has divided the understanding level of teaching into 5 steps;

  • Exploration: testing previous knowledge, analysing the content.
  • Presentation: content is presented, diagnosis, and recapitulation till the students understand.
  • Assimilation: generalization, individual activities, working in laboratory and library, the test of content.
  • Organization: pupils are provided with the occasions for representation.
  • Recitation: The pupil presents the content orally.

Important Points on Reflective level of teaching (RLT)

Reflecting on something means giving careful thought to something over a period of time. It also means thinking deeply about something.

  • It talks about both ‘Understanding level’ & ‘Memory Level’ teaching and its problem-centred.
  • Its main objective to develop problem-solving, critical and constructive, independent, original thinking.
  • At this level, the emphasis is laid on identifying the problem, defining it and finding a solution to it. The student’s original thinking and creative-abilities develop at this level.
  • A student is Core ‘Active & Primary’ while the Teacher becomes ‘Secondary & passive’ in this.
  • In Reflective level of teaching (RLT) Hunt is the main Proponent. It includes ULT and MLT. It is problem-centred teaching. The students are assumed to adopt some sort of research approach to solve the problem. The classroom environment is to be sufficiently ‘Open and Independent’
  • Hunt developed the reflective model of teaching which goes through the various steps including creating a problematic situation. Formulate and verify the hypothesis, data analysis and testing the hypothesis around the problem.
  • An essay type test is used to evaluate the learning process.
  • The teaching at this level is not teacher-centred or subject-centred, it is leaner-centred.