Need creativity to encourage logical thinking among students: Prof Vasudha Kamat

OUR CORRESPONDENT

ITANAGAR: National Education Policy (NEP) Draft Committee member Prof. Vasudha Kamat has stressed the need of conceptual understanding of each and every subject, critical thinking, capabilities and creativity to encourage logical thinking among students.

Speaking at a seminar on 'Role of Teachers in National Education Policy: Awareness, Orientation, Challenges and Responses', through the virtual mode on Friday, she said that the 'National Education Policy' has a view for fostering the unique capabilities of student.

Prof. Kamat while throwing light on the new vision expected from the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) from NEP 2020, said that setting up of multi-disciplinary HEIs with institutional restructuring and consolidation would be the new path for the education revolution in new India.

"The Centre is about to come up with Multi-disciplinary Education and Research Universities (MERU) by 2030, at least one in every district. This will serve the purpose of having flexible high quality higher education which, is also one of the aspects of NEP 2020. These institutions will come up with 3–4-year undergraduate programs with multi-exit options," she disclosed.

Prof. Kamat added that the curriculum will offer multi-disciplinary education where there will be no hard separation between streams and will be offered with a learner centered pedagogy.

"Assessment of these curriculums will be having outcome-based approach and concerned faculties will have autonomy in designing of course curriculum. HEIs will be entrusted with task of setting up incubation center for start-up ideas, technology development centers. It aims to have faculties who are more happy, more energized, highly motivated and enthusiastic," she said.

Referring to the observation of the Kasturi Nagarajan Committee who came up with NEP-2020, Prof. Kamat said that the report mentioned the present scenario of faculties whose aspects are far lower than the desired level.

"Overcoming these lacunae is aimed with reducing of teaching loads, improvising existing student-teacher ratio, implementing interactive sessions between teacher and students, conducting collaborative research works with other universities. This all will help to achieve the goal of truly creative and outstanding works in the education sector," she added.

The freedom to design own curriculum by faculties will be realized with multidisciplinary curriculum and innovative pedagogy. And assessment of these works will be based on outcome, experiences and evaluation with a closed loop formation, Prof Kamat said.

"The NEP 2020 expects a faculty to be a communicator, curriculum designer, innovative assessor, ICT integrator, collaborator, researcher, facilitator and innovation supporter," she added.

The day-long seminar was organized by the National Institute of Technology (NIT) here under the banner of Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal (BSM) Arunachal Pradesh and Niti Aayog.

Speaking on the occasion retired professor of JNU Prof. Anand Kumar spoke on the importance of Arunachal Pradesh as the mingle point of Indo-Tibetian Culture.

"Arunachal Pradesh stands between the rest of India and China and with increased tension in international border issues, now the country needs to analyze what this place needs further to be a land of unity and harmony," he said.

Highlighting the status of school and teachers in India, he said that much has to be done for their upliftment and motivation.

"Teachers are capable minds but lack of interaction with modern technology has limited their performance a lot," he said adding need of increase in investment is required in education sector which presently is only two third of what is actually required.

Pointing out the six major challenges of India, Prof Kumar highlighted realization of actual literacy with digital skills, overcoming poverty, decrease in drop-out rate from schools in rural areas, increase in seats at HEIs which is only 25 per cent of the required figure at present, de-colonization of education model and inclusion of Indian traditional values and ethics.

Social thinker and eminent educationist Dr Sunil Mohanty focused on the Indian traditional values and education system highlighting the inclusion of word "Guru" by Oxford in its dictionary volume where Guru stands for Gu-meaning darkness and Ru-meaning driving out, so Guru is one who drives out darkness.

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