Can IPP bond with NEP?

By Peter Francis, SJ

Education, we all realize, is at a pivotal juncture, poised for transformation. Knowledge, skills, and competencies that are relevant today are likely to get largely irrelevant in the times to come. The jobs for which we are to prepare our students are not there yet. So, learning in this new interconnected context would have to get much more innovative, fast-paced, responsive, and experiential. That requires focus on acquiring and developing cognitive skills, in order to equip our students with future-focussed skills and knowledge and to work out a practicable methodology that enables learners to apply what they learn to unfamiliar situations. The challenge before us is to ensure that our educational institutions fit this route and rate of change.

This calls for a three-pronged approach – to assess what we need to retain  two, what needs to be abandoned, and three, what should be reimagined.

Our institutions have a robust structure, a meticulous system, a committed cadre of teachers and a proven track record of reaching the unreached. This is part of our forte we need to retain. We also realize that we are to deal with not just inefficiency, not improving what we do, but making education future-focussed. The major concern is to identify the desired outcomes and an efficient way to deliver them.

This could happen through two models i.e. – NEP (New Education Policy) and IPP (Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm). Some have affirmed that these two are incompatible, in fact counterproductive. There are, no doubt some proposals of NEP, such as the re-organising of the classes, the clustering of schools of the neighbourhood, mandatory teaching of extra languages etc. that are not wholesome. However, the kernel issues that ruffle our feathers are in the operational domain. There are excessive interference and control mechanisms constricting the local initiative and decision-making powers.

Clearly this is part of a larger agenda of weakening local and individual rights and concentrating all powers with the centre. Such attempts at extracting subservience with curtailed rights to individuals and institutions and even the state governments are part of a larger hegemonic plan to wrest control over coordinates. This attempt at curbing the voice of democracy is a diabolic plan that must be collectively addressed and stoutly resisted at a larger forum.

The major concern is to identify the desired outcomes and an efficient way to deliver them. This could happen through two models – NEP and IPP.

However, there is no denying that the overall vision of NEP is robust, lofty, and well-intentioned. It is an attempt at reengineering education aiming at transforming our nation into a vibrant knowledge society by providing high quality education to all. In summary, what NEP advocates is a new paradigm that shifts from getting learners to pass the exams to ensuring their holistic growth, resulting not in successful completion of lessons but in the development of successful learners.

This calls for abandoning the old static teaching style in favour of a more varied and dynamic teaching. The outcome aimed at is a mastery of learning, demonstrated by the learners’ ability to apply what they have learnt to unseen situations. Rote learning and memorizing are no longer to be the staple in schools. Knowledge can no longer be pigeonholed into silos, so inter-disciplinarity is the future. The teacher is not to be a delivery person, who ‘banks’ information in the ‘empty slates’ of the learners. Learning is stimulated and provoked.

Furthermore, NEP affirms, education is more than self-aggrandizement fostering good, thoughtful, well-rounded, and creative individuals, develop character, ethical and Constitutional values, intellectual curiosity, scientific temper, creativity, and spirit of service. Certainly, there can be nothing to object in these goals that in spirit and intention echo the statements of IPP.

Rejecting the insight NEP offers because one doesn’t trust the initiator is like throwing the baby with the bathwater and that can only be at our risk. We now need an operational platform that makes learning stick and operable, earn it rather than be presented pre-packaged and readymade information and knowledge. The IPP proposal of exposure, experience, reflection, evaluation, and action, when done proactively, purposefully, and effectively would seamlessly dovetail the vision of NEP with IPPs’ pedagogy.

The starting point in an Ignatian pedagogy is exposure. IPP begins with exposure, establishing the Context, an essentially pre-learning element igniting a metacognitive dance between the learner, the theme and the teacher making them learning ready. It helps raise their awareness about the theme, its relevance, the challenge it offers, the methodology to be pursued, their confidence in achieving the goal etc. This stage makes the abstract ideas of the text come alive. Once ignited with a compelling need to learn, the learners actively and co-operatively engage in their learning.

The next stage is Experience, an immersion in context through firsthand learning, case studies, real life issues, field visits and the like. The learner is led to grapple with a problem, or issue to be solved and lingers on interacting with peers and experience the blossoming of understanding, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. The process sensitizes students to the details of expert performance as the basis for incremental adjustments to be made in their own thinking and performance.

There is no denying that the overall vision of NEP is robust, lofty, and well-intentioned. It is an attempt at reengineering education aiming at transforming our nation into a vibrant knowledge society by providing high quality education to all.

This stage is accompanied by Reflection which helps learners deepen their experience and get a good grasp and critical understanding, making them capable of transferring what they learn to near natural situations. Research affirms that learning is enhanced when content is contextualized, and learners work on authentic situations such as the ones to which the knowledge will ultimately be applied. The process gently manoeuvres learners into the driver’s seat and then gets the instructors out of the way. Learning routines get thinking rich and as the caregiver hands over the lead role to the learner, providing only limited hints, refinements, and feedback, who practices by successively approximating smooth execution of the skill independently.

Over and above a cognitive grasp of the matter the learner is helped to focus on the affective aspects. They are encouraged to explore the significance of what they study and who and how they impact thus integrating their reflection, speech, and action to turn them out to be persons of competence, conscience, and compassion.

Evaluation or introspection, in Ignatian perception, is an ongoing process. The entire learning process is supervised by the expert caregiver, who acts as a guide by the side to the apprentice providing ‘just in time’ feedback. The mid-task engagement and assessment make possible improvement in the learners’ performance and helps them identify areas for growth. Building upon peer and expert feedback they organise what is learnt into patterns and chunks, developing, and maturing as it fosters decision and commitment. The teacher gingerly shifts the focus from assessment ‘of’ learning to assessment ‘for’ learning, keeping tab on higher-order skills such as analysis, application, and extension.

In this way, IPP helps make the educational process, lead the learner to  human development based on a reflective experience that transforms the student and their environment.

In fine, IPP would fit snugly into NEP’s goals to give us a theoretical construct and an action plan to shape the future of our learners. The two models jointly help us move away from imparting mere ‘equipping skills’, that offers only ‘restricted competence to cope with certain clearly-defined tasks’ to training them in ‘enabling skills’ -helping them to cope with undefined future eventualities one may confront in real life. The type of learners NEP envisions, with skills required for their unknown future, IPP can deliver through a process of discovery, creativity, promoting lifelong learning and action for the greater good of all. Grounded in experience, accompanied by reflection replete with tasks, activities and exercises, built like muscle around the bone both NEP and IPP promote learning, reflection and action making us fit the future better.

NEP does bond with IPP!

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