Child Development and Pedagogy

Divyansh Bordia -

The branch of psychology that studies the behavior and consciousness of children from their birth to adolescence is called child psychology. Child psychology not only pays attention to children's physical development, but also considers their psychological, social, and emotional development. Child development and pedagogy is an important part of child psychology to understand the physiological and biological changes that occur in students.

For teachers, the importance of child development and pedagogy increases further as it is an essential topic of the Common Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET), which is an entrance examination conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to recruit government school teachers for classes 1st to 8th. Both paper 1 and paper 2 of CTET include questions from topics related to child development and pedagogy.

Before we talk about the instructional techniques of child development and pedagogy, important topics and tips to understand child development and pedagogy for CTET, let us understand the following:

  • Concept of child development
  • Pedagogy meaning

Child Development

The term 'development' literally means the physical and biological changes that occur within human beings from conception to the end of puberty. It can also be defined as a process in which a person’s internal characteristics interact with external factors or environment that causes changes in the human body. The four areas of development in a child are as follows:

  • Physical changes
  • Emotional changes
  • Cognitive or mental changes
  • Social changes

Pedagogy

Pedagogy refers to the art and science of teaching, which includes accompanying, guiding, and bringing learning concepts to real life. Various teaching principles allow teachers to design evaluation strategies and create memorable learning experiences for students. The most common strategy used by teachers to create learning experiences and design evaluation strategies is based on the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation model, also known as the ADDIE model.

The teaching strategies for child development and pedagogy are divided into two techniques:

  • Autocratic teaching techniques, where the teacher has complete control over the course and students cannot act freely.
  • Democratic teaching techniques, where children can express their opinions freely in front of teachers, and there is a lot of interaction between teachers and students. This is an important topic under CTET as a lot of questions are asked about democratic teaching techniques.

Autocratic Teaching Techniques

Autocratic teaching techniques include the following strategies:

  • Storytelling method: In this method, teachers convey content to students in the form of short stories. This method increases the students' vocabulary and improves their mental strength.
  • Reading method: The reading method is the oldest and most one-way communication teaching method, which is very useful for developing children's cognitive and emotional fields.
  • Demonstration method: This method is most suitable for teaching practical subjects, and the students can understand these subjects with simple demonstrations.

Democratic Teaching Techniques

Democratic teaching techniques include the following strategies:

  • Discussion strategy: This method involves verbal dialogue between students and teachers on a topic. The discussion method cultivates thinking and communication skills, which leads to the development of higher cognitive and emotional fields.
  • Heuristic method: In this method, the teacher gives the student a task and guides him. Students can solve problems after acquiring knowledge through self-study and external research.
  • Discovery method: Through this method, students can find solutions to problems in their own environment.
  • Group method: In this method, students are asked to form a group, and then they are assigned a project related to real experience. Students collaborate with others to learn and solve real-world problems.
  • Brainstorming: This is a creative teaching method that can generate a series of ideas to solve specific problems.

Now, let's talk about the importance of child development and pedagogy for CTET as well as preparation tips to prepare for topics related to child development and pedagogy.

Importance of Child Development and Pedagogy in Common Teacher Eligibility Test (CTET)

Child development and pedagogy is an important topic of CTET, which carries a very high weight in both papers of CTET. Following are a few facts related to child development and pedagogy:

  • Child development and pedagogy are important subjects in both paper 1 and paper 2.
  • These topics cover around 20% in both papers, which means that child development and pedagogy questions consist of 30 marks each in both papers.
  • Questions are theoretical-based and test your theoretical knowledge of the topics.
  • Child development and pedagogy questions are of medium difficulty.

Child Development and Pedagogy Syllabus for CTET is divided into three broad sections:

  • Child Development: Important topics under this section include principles of child development, multi-dimensional intelligence, critical perspective of the construct of intelligence, gender, continuous evaluation, etc.
  • Understanding children with special needs and inclusive education concepts: Important topics under this section include understanding learners with diverse backgrounds, teaching children with special needs and disabilities, etc.
  • Pedagogy: Important topics under this section include cognitive changes, learning, and motivation, improving a child's problem-solving skills, basics of teaching, learning as a social activity, learning in a group, etc.

Tips and Tricks to Prepare for Child Development and Pedagogy Topics

The following tips will help you in preparation for child development and pedagogy topics for the CTET examination:

  • Applicants should try various online mock tests. Many test series are uploaded by online examination websites. These mock tests will help increase the candidate’s confidence and improve accuracy. Try giving at least 5-6 mock tests to improve accuracy.
  • Practice last year CTET child development and pedagogy questions to understand the various types of questions asked and difficulty level of the questions.
  • Child development and pedagogy are all about understanding child psychology so try talking to students and children to understand these topics better.
  • Since there is no negative marking in CTET, it is always advised to attempt all the questions as this will help increase your score. You can even use elimination methods to answer complex and tricky questions.
  • Read all the questions and the instructions very carefully.

We hope that child development and pedagogy notes, pedagogy teaching techniques, important topics of child development and pedagogy, and CTET preparation tips will help you score well in your CTET exam.

All the Best!
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