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Effectiveness of Activity – Based – Learning Methodology for Elementary School
Education
Paper Submitted for National Child Rights Research Fellowship 2010
CRY
Dr. Prabha Hariharan
Coimbatore
Tamil Nadu
India
April - 2011
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Abstract
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) has brought about numerous innovative
methods to bring about changes in the educational practices. In the state of Tamil Nadu,
the elementary schools have started using the methodology called as activity based
learning (ABL) through the SSA. This study investigated the educational experiences and
attainment of learning outcomes of students in class IV who have gone through the ABL
methodology. Classroom observations showed that a good deal of student time is spent
on non-learning related activities for a majority of students. Certain social, emotional and
psychological aspects of classroom behaviour have been seen to be positive in ABL
classes although certain problems were also seen consistently. Students with disabilities
who are included in the regular classes have shown improvements in communication and
certain life skills but not in cognitive skills. Various aspects of the methodology have
been explored to analyze how the activities in the methodology address the issue of
individual differences in learner needs and the cognitive needs of the age group of
elementary school. Learning achievements were seen to be moderate for basic language
and mathematical skills and low for advanced language and mathematical skills. Further
the levels of learning outcomes of public school students was found to be significantly
lower than that of private school students even at basic levels of skills. A set of
recommendations arising out of the study has been presented.
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Acknowledgement
I would like to thank the Child Rights and You (CRY-India) and their National Child
Rights Research Fellowship (NCRRF) for their funding and support to this research
project.
I would also like to thank the NCRRF team of CRY for the enabling workshop and mid
year workshops they conducted as these were time when I was able to interact with senior
scholars, the selection committee professors and co-fellows whose inputs, feedback and
direction was invaluable for my study.
I am grateful to the State Project Director, Thiru R. Venkatesan, IAS; Joint Director,
Tmt. N. Lata, and the Research co-coordinator, Ms. Nagamani of the Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan – Tamil Nadu for their permission and guidance for conducting this study.
I am grateful to the District Program Coordinator – Coimbatore, Ms. Kalaivani; Block
supervisor, Ms Gita; the Block Resource Teacher, Ms. Pushpalata; Head of the Integrated
Education Department, Ms Pushpalatha and their staff, and the headmistresses and
teachers of all the participating schools for their co-operation during my study.
I also thank Ms. Kalaiselvi, who worked as my research assistant for her timely
assistance in this project.
My sincere thanks to the documentation center of CRY-Mumbai and Mr. Keith for
providing me necessary documents and reference articles.
Last but not the least, I would like to thank my family for their unstinting support that
enabled me to work towards this project.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
a. Background and significance of the study 5
b. Framework of „best interest principle‟ for education of the child 9
c. Research questions . 11
2. Literature Review
a. History of elementary education in India 13
b. Activity-based-learning 17
c. Insights into individual differences 18
d. Learning outcomes at end of class IV 23
e. Inclusion of students with disabilities in regular education 24
3. Methodology 25
4. Data Analysis and Results 30
5. Discussion and Conclusion 68
6. Recommendations 78
7. References 81
8. Appendix 83
9. Photos 84
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INTRODUCTION
Background of the study
The Indian Education System has set high constitutional goals of Universalization
of Elementary Education and Education for all. The Right of Children to Free and
Compulsory Education Act of 2009 specified certain aspects of the curriculum and
evaluation procedures in elementary education in its section 29, sub-section (2), clauses
(a) to (h). Of these, it says, in clause (b), that curriculum should take into consideration
„all round development of the child‟, in clause (c) „building up child‟s knowledge,
potential and talent‟, in clause (d) „development of physical and mental abilities to the
fullest extent‟, in clause (e), it says “learning through activities, discovery and
exploration in a child-friendly and child-centered manner” and in clause (g) „make the
child free of fear, trauma and anxiety and helping the child express views freely‟. This
Law has provided the policy direction for implementing high quality education for
children at elementary level (Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act,
2009).
The right to education is a major right that children in our country have (National
Policy on Education, 1986, 1992; Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education
Act, 2009). Unfortunately, in reality, this fundamental right is denied to the most
underprivileged and needy children many times. This denial comes either from the
students‟ own families through negative parental attitudes and/or from the types of
schooling facilities provided to them (De et. al., 1999). Poverty, caste structure and
disability are three main bases that marginalize children leading to their reduced access to
quality education and their exploitation through child labour. Our government schools are
typically tasked with the job of providing education to students at low costs and are the
main place of education for children from the lower socioeconomic classes who
constitute a major proportion of children in our country. Children from dalit, tribal,
female headed and landless families, girl children, and children with disabilities, form a
majority among these marginalized children (De et. al., 1999; Sainath, 1996). Private
schools try to provide better education, but it is only the lesser percentage of children
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from middle to higher socio economic classes that can avail of them. Even these schools
are plagued with problems such as over focus on examinations, high school bag weights
and diminishing but yet omnipresent corporal punishments by teachers.
One major aspect of high quality in education is attainment of high learning
outcomes in the various academic skills and knowledge and when such education is able
to include students with disabilities as much as students without disabilities irrespective
of their socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Elementary education is the first stage
of the school education ladder, which sets the foundation for the rest of school education
and all higher education. Our education system, therefore must build in students the
essential skills and knowledge base that will enable cognitive growth and development
through using these essential skills. These basic skills are reading, writing, listening,
communication, mathematical skills and observation skills (NCF-2005).
Figure 1 conceptualizes our education system as concentric circles where the
outermost circle is the entire system, the second inner circle is the school, the third inner
circle, the classroom and the innermost circle is the student. At each level, philosophies
of education guide curricular decisions and practices. Further, personal philosophies of
teachers and school heads and other individuals at the various hierarchical levels of the
government departments of education also have impact on various decisions taken at the
classroom, school and system levels of education. These in turn have their final impact on
the educational experiences of the child. Children in our schools, especially government
schools, differ in multiple ways not only from each other but also from students studying
in private schools. These differences arise from their socio-economic backgrounds,
cultural backgrounds, ability levels and their natural learning styles.
Traditionally, our pedagogical practices have involved the „one size fits all‟ idea
where there is a lecture method and students who follow the teacher within the time
frame stipulated in the timetable progress while those that don‟t get left behind. Further,
those who get left behind would be detained in the same class leading to negative social,
emotional and psychological effects.
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Figure 1: Our Education System – a diagrammatic conceptualization
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the flagship program of the Indian Government, has
taken up the task of achieving universal elementary education in our country. With its
conception in order to achieve the promise of the 86th
amendment of the Constitution, it
has aimed at bringing back to school all those children who have not been able to avail
education and to improve the quality of education provided to all students. It has been
instrumental in bringing about many important reforms and improvements in our
education system through new initiatives. One such new initiative is the teaching
methodology in elementary schools. This methodology is the activity – based learning
(ABL) method for teaching students at the elementary schools. This method has its
origins in a multi-grade, multi – level methodology created by the Rishi Valley Institute
of Educational Research and the Montessori methods of teaching.
System
School
Classroom
Students
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The ABL method seeks to address some major problems of the traditional lecture
method of teaching. In doing so, it has brought about a paradigm shift in some key
classroom processes such as the role of the teacher and instructional materials and
methods. It was started in Chennai in 2003, first in 13 corporation schools, then in all 264
corporation schools and in 2007 it was upscaled to nearly 37,000 schools across the state
of Tamil Nadu. Its implementation has been made possible with a lot of effort and
resources. Key effectiveness studies, comparing the method with the traditional method
should have been taken up before upscaling but unfortunately, were not done (V.
Vasanthakumari, Dr. S. S. Rajagopalan and Dr. R. Jayakumar, 2008). Further, any
instructional methodology always presents challenges once set out into the field and
needs a lot of research that can provide good evidence of its effectiveness and /or provide
ways to improve its effectiveness. The SSA has been undertaking studies assessing its
impact on various aspects of schooling recently.
However, it again seems to use the „one-size fits all‟ thought. It is important to
address this issue, as any innovation that does not take care of individual student needs
cannot be truly child-centered. Further, it has been noted that the anti-detention policy,
where students are promoted to the next class whether or not they have progressed
cognitively, is adversely affecting the quality of education (EdWatch, 2008). In addition,
previous studies and the nation-wide Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER 2010)
have shown low levels of achievement among government school students. This has been
reported even in the state of Tamil Nadu where the educational innovation of activity-
based-learning (ABL) has been upscaled by the SSA through out the state. The results of
ASER-2010 contradict the reports of the evaluations of ABL done by the SSA (Nehru
and Raghupati, 2011). Many reasons could underlie these discrepancies in assessed
outcomes. These findings underscore the need for independent research to investigate the
quality of learning in our schools. Such research is of extreme importance as it can
generate specific evidence that can form the basis of effective educational reforms.
. This research proposal aims at studying the educational experiences of the
children studying in the ABL methodology and evaluating their learning outcomes
towards the end of fourth standard. It also attempts to assess the quality of learning
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outcomes in comparison to private schools reputed in the society to provide good quality
education.
As of now, educational commission reports and national debates form the basis of
education reform and unfortunately educational research remains an underutilized area.
Educational research is being undertaken by apex bodies of educational research such as
NCERT and NUEPA or by the government itself such as the SSA and there is less of
independent research in the field. Further, student achievements are studied more in
terms of low levels of attainment such as ability of class V students to read class I or class
II books (ASER, 2010). While it is disappointing that even at such low levels of
expectations the results are so abysmal, they also allude to the fact that low expectations
at all levels begets low quality at all levels. If after 93 amendments to our constitutional
law, two major centralized programs and so many innovations, we are still far from the
goal of high quality of education for all India‟s children, there needs to be a major
reconsideration of our philosophies and practices of pedagogy as has been pointed out by
educationists (Sinha, 2006).
It is the researcher‟s belief that if India must serve its children‟s educational needs
with high quality, the education system‟s reforms and innovations should be subjected to
rigorous research. The evidence thus produced must serve with greater weightage as the
basis for reforms in our education system. A shift in instructional methodology from
traditional to any other method will be effective only if the methodology attends to
certain important factors that can positively impact the education of the child and be in
the best interest of the child. A framework of „best interest principle‟ has been proposed
in the following section that can serve as a guide for any reform or innovation in the
education system.
Framework of „Best Interest Principle‟ for education of the child
The best interest principle for the education of all children can be conceived of as
one where students‟ have successful educational experiences in the class and school.
Here the class time should be used in fruitful and effective learning activities. This will
lead to growth of knowledge and skills resulting in all round development of our
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children. This can in turn create knowledgeable and conscientious future citizens who are
intellectually and economically productive and can contribute fruitfully to our society and
nation. Most important of all, such education should be accessible to all our children
irrespective of caste, social class, gender and ability.
To understand the educational experiences of the child, it is very necessary to
identify and understand the factors that influence the educational experiences of the child.
Three such important factors are philosophy guiding the educational system, ideology that
directs curricular practices and knowledge about the students‟ learning needs. Successful
educational experience for a child is like a three-legged stool that is supported by these
three factors as each leg or three vertices of a triangle with the successful education
experience of the child in the center (see figure 2). It can be achieved by making sure that
the curriculum, which includes the goals, instructional materials and methods and
assessments are all guided by these factors and they form the framework of „best interest
principle‟ for education of the child.
Figure 2: Framework of „Best Interest Principle‟ for education of a child
Critical Pedagogy is a science and art of the teaching learning process, which
enables development of attitudes and values of social consciousness, and responsibility
through development of cognitive skills of critical thinking (Panda, 2006; Ramesh Babu,
Philosophy of critical pedagogy to
guide the educational system and
curriculum development
Ideology of constructivist
pedagogy to guide instructional
practices
Knowledge of individual differences
among students to effectively address
each child‟s learning needs
Successful
educational
experiences
for the child
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2007). These skills are in the higher cognitive domain and include analysis, inferences,
application, revisiting and reconsider existing unjust and improper practices in the
society. Attitude of society reflects attitudes of people in schools and vice versa. In doing
so, education acts either as an agent of status quo maintenance or an agent of change
through social transformation. Since critical pedagogy, as a philosophy, has multi
dimensional potential, leading to creation of reflective and responsible democratic
citizenship, it has to be the main guiding philosophy in our education system.
Constructivism is an ideology that originated in the 1700s and has been shown to
be concerned with understanding of what is knowledge and how it develops. According
to constructivism, knowledge is constructed by the knower using the society and the
student‟s own experiences as the reference points for construction of knowledge. Such
learning leads to purposive solutions for meaningful problems (Aggarwal, 2007; Pandey,
2007).
Knowledge of individual differences has been increased owing to the increases in
information in the fields of cognitive developmental neuroscience (Munakata, Casey &
Diamond, 2004) and the realization that neuroscience research can actually help
education of children by understanding how the brain works at different ages and for
different activities (Goswami, 2004). Further theories of multiple intelligences (Howard
Gardner, 1983) and Universal Design for Learning (Rose, Meyer, Rappolt & Strangman,
2002) have shown that students actually vary in their intelligences and learning needs
respectively. Further, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds also predispose children
to differences in learning readiness and privileges, all of which contribute to individual
differences among students.
The framework of best interest principle proposed here is based on these three
fundamental factors that impact the successful educational experience for a child.
Research questions
This research project aims at studying the prevalent instructional practices at the
level of elementary education. Using the framework of „Best Interest Principle”
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constructed in the previous section, the research questions have been framed to address
two important issues – educational experiences and learning outcomes.
Part A: What are the educational experiences of elementary school students being
educated using the ABL methodology?
RQA-1: What kinds of activities are planned for in the ABL methodology to address
individual differences in learning needs?
RQA-2: How much time is actually spent on learning related activities in the classroom
in different subject areas?
RQA-3: What are the experiences of students with disabilities who are included in the
government schools?
Part B: What are the learning outcomes at end of class IV of students educated
using the ABL methodology?
RQB-1 What has been the progress of students in class IV in the ABL levels as the
school year progressed?
RQB-2: What are the learning outcomes of students in public schools in the learning
outcomes assessment test?
RQB-3 What are the differences in learning outcomes in basic and advanced cognitive
skills among the public schools and are there gender differences in these outcomes?
RQB-4 What are the differences between learning outcomes of class IV students in ABL
level four and private school class IV students in basic and advanced cognitive skills?
RQB-5 To what extent does ABL level effect learning outcomes in English and Maths?
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LITERATURE REVIEW
The present literature review will address the key issues that relate to
understanding and implementing effective instructional practices for elementary
education in India. First, the history of elementary education in India will be traced with
reference to policy, pedagogy and quality issues. Then, recent understandings about
individual differences will be reviewed. Third, the methodology activity – based –
learning will be reviewed. Fourth, learning outcomes at the end of class IV will be
reviewed to identify reasonable expectations of learning outcomes at that level. Finally,
the practice of inclusion of students with disabilities in regular education with special
focus on government schools in India will be reviewed.
History of elementary education in India
Education in India was through the Gurukul system up to a few centuries ago till
the beginning of British rule in India. During the British rule, the British brought in their
education system and started schools with the aim to prepare local Indian people for jobs
in the British government in India. In 1947, when India got freedom, the British left India
but left behind certain changes they had made in the country, one of them being the
education system. On January 26th
, 1950, our constitution was formulated and
educational goals for Indian people were rewritten. The first government of free India had
wanted to make sure all children in the age group 6-14 will be educated – Universal
Elementary Education (UEE) with in ten years. Since then, the goal to educate all
children in our country has been attempted in many ways but the deadline of „in the next
ten years‟ has somehow been elusive (EdWatch, 2008; Kingdon, 2007; Yadav, 2007).
Further, education has been confined to literacy and not gone beyond that to educate the
mind and therefore, for generations, our Indian society, is plagued with a multitude of
problems.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training report entitled “India:
Educational policies and curriculum in upper primary and secondary education levels”
details the processes that have gone into formulating revisions to the curriculum through
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out our country. Many processes such as committees and commissions, national debates
and consensus have been used to formulate our educational policies. Unfortunately,
research has not got a mention in being used to guide educational policy. Secondly,
although the National Curriculum Framework (2005) emphasizes development of skills
and knowledge development, our syllabus does not address skill development as primary
areas of focus in the elementary stages. The skills of literacy and numeracy play an
important role in individual productivity and economic productivity (Hanushek, 2005, cf.
Kingdon, 2007).
Table 1 summarizes the major educational policies and programs of the
Government of India. Initially, post-independence, education was put in the State list
while deciding whose responsibility it would be to plan the educational services. At that
time, it was observed that many problems existed in the way education was provided in
the different states. After the Education Commission (1964-66) and the report for the
National Policy on Education (1968), it was decided that education would be moved to
the Concurrent list from the State list so that both the Center and the States would take
the responsibility of providing education to its children (Yadav, 2007). Subsequently, the
National Policy on Education (NPE) Act was passed in 1975 and further revised in 1986
and then in 1992. At these times, education and employment for students and people with
disabilities was also getting increasing importance and in 1975, the Indian Government
passed Persons with Disabilities (PWD) Act. In spite of all these efforts, the goal of
Universal Elementary Education (UEE) and Education for All (EFA) seemed elusive,
Hence the Indian Government passed the Right to Education (RTE) Bill in 2010 with a
view to achieve our Constitution‟s goal of UEE and education for all (EFA).
In 1975, for the first time, a school curriculum framework was set up that would
guide the state education agencies in planning the curriculum, syllabus, instructional
methods and other schooling practices. This was the Ten-year school curriculum
framework and got revised in 1086, 2000 and 2005 subsequently. Presently, it is the
National Curriculum Framework-2005, which is the center‟s curriculum guide to all
states. Yadav (2007) has found that although the Nation Curriculum Framework (2000
and 2005) is the Center‟s guidance providing framework, its implementation varies
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largely among the States and Union Territories, regarding the subject areas, number of
hours of school, duration allotted to each class period, number of working days etc.
Table 1: Policy and programs guiding elementary instruction in India
Time Line Policy Practice
1950-1959 Framing of the Constitution of India, and
first five-year plan
1960-1969 Education Commission (1964-66),
National Policy on Education (NPE)
(1968)
Education moves from State list to
Concurrent list hence becomes the
responsibility of both the center and the
states.
1970-1979 Persons with Disabilities, Act (PWD) Ten-Year School Curriculum Framework
– 1975
1980-1989 NPE-revised - 1986
PWD-revised
School curriculum framework revised -
1988
1990-1999 District Primary Education Program
launched in 1994
2000-2009 Right to Free and Compulsory Education
Act – 2009
School curriculum framework revised –
2000, nation curriculum framework-2000
and 2005. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan – 2001
came into being to make operational the
goal for Universal Elementary Education.
initiation and pilot of ABL through SSA
in TN during 2005-6 and upscaled to
entire state in 2007.
2010-2011 Different states implement school
curriculum in a different way.
The need to improve access and quality of education was felt and hence the
District Primary Education Program was set up by the Government in 1994 followed by
the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), which was set up in 2001, and was considered as the
flagship program of the Government in order to realize the goals of UEE and EFA. Under
the SSA, many innovations in educational practices were being initiated.
The multifold goals of the SSA included quality improvements in infrastructure
and educational practices in schools. For example, improvement in quality through
community ownership, improvement in student-teacher ratio, teacher training, facilitating
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development of teaching-learning materials, and providing textbooks and introducing
innovative methods of instruction (http://www.indiaedu.com/education-india/elementary-
education.html). All the same, evaluation of the innovative programs is still at its infancy
and needs much more research based data, which is heavily lacking (Kingdon, 2007).
In 2005, a Mumbai-based NGO, Pratham, began an independent national level
rural education status survey called the ASER (Annual Survey of Education Report).
According to, Nehru and Raghupati (2011) the latest ASER report (2010) shows that
primary education standards have not shown many improvements in learning outcomes in
reading and mathematics in spite of the many innovations and changes brought about by
the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan since 2001. There have however been improvements in
enrolments, reduction in drop out rate, improvements in infrastructure facilities in schools
but there has also been a reduction in already low standards due to the well-intentioned
anti-retention practices followed by the RTE Act, 2009. The need for clear delineation of
learning outcomes and better pedagogical practices and assessments has been emphasized
by educationists (Kingdon, 2007; Yadav, 2007).
Pedagogy, the science of teaching, involves instructional methods, materials and
learning activities directed by these. Just as the national policy and programs have been
constantly reviewed to improve educational services to India‟s children, the pedagogical
practices too have undergone radical transformations recently. Traditionally, the lecture
methods of teaching were in use at all stages of schooling where the teacher was
considered the giver of information and students as the passive recipients of information.
The major instructional materials were textbooks that were written for specified age
groups and for particular subjects. The major learning activity was listening and writing
from the textbook or from the blackboard.
This paradigm has been changed in the newer methodology of activity – based
learning which was piloted in a few schools in Chennai and in now being implemented in
the entire state of Tamil Nadu. Here the teacher is considered as the facilitator and the
students are self-learning through the medium of a detailed array of learning cards
(Anandalakshmi, 2007). Other methods such as cooperative learning have also been
suggested as alternatives to lecture method (Sirohi, 2006). Insights into the developing
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brain‟s learning processes and the growing child‟s learning needs provides great potential
to create effective pedagogical practices.
Quality issues in our education system have been raised by many educationists
(De et al., 1996; Kingdon, 2007; Yadav, 2007). These include poor infrastructure
facilities, motivation and commitment of teachers, respect for the child‟s time in school.
In addition, the philosophies that guide our pedagogical practices also need to change.
According the Ramesh Babu (2007), presently, conformist pedagogical practices are
being followed and these just reinforce a status quo among the younger generation. What
is needed for education to be an agent of social change is a philosophical change from
conformist to critical pedagogy and this can improve quality of education.
Individual differences and cognitive needs
Individual difference among students in a classroom is a well-known fact.
Understanding of these individual differences has increased tremendously due to
advances in the fields of psychology and cognitive neuroscience. In addition, cultural
backgrounds and socio-economic backgrounds pre-dispose students to different
privileges and create differences in academic advantages. Some of these factors are
parental education, attitudes towards education, and parental support to academics, all of
which determines student‟s time spent on academic activities at home and influence their
overall academic achievement. It has been shown that students from „other‟, „OBC‟, and
„SC‟ categories differ in their learning achievement at each of the elementary grades
using ABL methodology (Vijay Kumar, Venkatesan, Kannappan & Sekhar, 2009).
Further, different learning behaviours such as active, passive and off-task have shown
differences in learning achievements at different grades (ibid). In addition, there are
natural attentional and learning ability variations in the developmental stages of 5-11
years of age. The cumulative effect of these factors leads to differences in individual
needs for learning effectively.
It has been shown that there are sensitive periods in learning during development.
During these times, learning is high. It is important to be able to provide rich learning
environment during this period. Howard Gardner (1983) has described that students differ
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in their intelligences and that there are at least seven different types of intelligences.
Further, according to the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST, Inc), students
belong to a range of abilities for learning different skills. This understanding was based
on information gleaned from the fields of neuroscience and psychology. Based on this,
the center promoted the paradigm of universal design for learning, which asks
educational planners to proactively plan for this wide range of learning needs. They say
that by doing so, it is possible to include students with disabilities and also serve the
individual needs of the student population (Rose, Meyer, Strangman & Dalton, 2002).
The process of learning comprises of three components – information input,
information processing and expression of information or knowledge. In each of these
components, students show differences. For example, in information input, which also
means the way students receive information to be learnt, some students could be visual
learners while others could be auditory or kinesthetic learners. In terms of information
processing, some students may use top-down processing or bottoms-up processing. This
depends both on the learner as well as the nature of skill or knowledge to be learned.
With respect to expression of knowledge or skill learned, some students may be better at
writing, some at drawing or verbalizing (Rose, Meyer, Strangman & Dalton, 2002). It is
important that the instructional methodology proactively plans for such differences to
achieve high quality educational experiences and learning outcomes for all students.
Activity-based-learning
According to the Wikipedia, “learning is acquiring new knowledge,
behaviour, skills, values, preferences or understanding, and may involve synthesizing
different types of information”. Further, it is a ” process that brings together cognitive,
emotional and environmental influences and experiences for acquiring, enhancing or
making changes to one‟s knowledge, skills and world view (Illeris, 2000; Ormorod,
1995)”. For learning to take place, it is necessary that the student understands and
engages with the information to be learnt. It is also important that the student processes
the information with higher level thinking such as comprehension, analysis, synthesis,
application, and metacognition. When this happens, the student is able to relate the
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information to any life situation, connect it with past learning, build his or her own
knowledge (Garner, 1987) and become a knowledgeable and contributing citizen as an
adult.
One important method of facilitating such engagement with information is
through activity. The dictionary definition of „activity‟, especially for elementary school
students is „work that involves direct experience by the student rather than textbook
study‟. Thus, activity-based learning, should allow students to engage with and process
information in such a way that he understands and builds his knowledge about a
particular subject. An outcome of successful learning would be that the student has
acquired the basic literacy skills and is able to apply this knowledge or skill learnt in a
relevant situation.
The idea of activity-based learning follows the constructivist educational
theory and is child-centered pedagogy. Activity-based learning may be defined as a
method of instruction, where activities of different types, suitable and relevant to specific
subjects are integrated seamlessly into the regular instructional materials and methods to
involve students in the teaching – learning or instructional processes and engage them
fruitfully (Suydam and Higgins, 1977).
In the state of Tamil Nadu, the activity – based learning method of instruction
in elementary schools was introduced as an innovation by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan of
Tamil Nadu to improve the quality of teaching in government schools and promote
universal education in India. It began as a pilot project with 13 Chennai corporation
schools in 2003, was extended to 264 corporation schools in Chennai in 2004 and then
upscaled to nearly 40,000 government schools in the state of Tamil Nadu
(http://www.ssa.tn.nic.in/CurrActivities-A.htm). This method proposes to enable students
to learn at their own pace and engage in self learning, group learning and mutual learning
to a greater extent.
Traditional classroom practices have been known to have many limitations
such as large student-teacher ratio, teacher‟s role as giver of information rather than as a
facilitator of learning, fear of the teacher‟s rod, problems due to student and teacher
absenteeism, heavy schoolbags, central role of textbooks as the source of information.
Further, many rural and urban schools function with just one teacher so all students have
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to be combined into a single or few numbers of classes resulting in multi-grade
classrooms. This inadvertently posed major challenges for the teacher as to which groups
of children would she teach and when and how.
The ABL methodology has been able to overcome many of these barriers.
Initial studies by SchoolScape and SSA (2008) have shown the physical, emotional and
social environment of the schools have improved compared to prior to ABL introduction.
Improvements were also seen in the ways students were assessed and given feedback
about their academic work periodically. It is also expected to modify the role of the
teacher from that of a giver of information to facilitator of learning. It is expected to
allow teachers use their time judiciously for students in different learning levels so that
all types of learners are equally benefited. This method has been tried out in certain other
states such as Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh
In this method, the textbook is replaced by cards. These cards are prepared
from units in the textbooks. There are cards for introducing the topic, learning it,
reinforcing it and testing it. These cards include activities, both individual and group.
(Anandalakshmi, 2007). The cards are arranged in order of milestones. Four sets of
milestones have been grouped into four ladders called levels 1-4 and each ladder or level
is colour coded. Each milestone and each activity within it is represented by icons. Each
ladder for each subject is displayed on a chart in every classroom. Students are expected
to know which card they are on and get the appropriate cards from the card boxes, which
are systematically arranged with the relevant icon labels, in the classroom. Students work
either individually or in groups. Sometimes, students in higher levels help students at
lower levels. The teacher-student ratio is reduced to 1:1 where the teacher attends to only
one child at a time. A teacher-student ratio of 1:1 was found to be most beneficial for
students in summative achievement tests as compared to conventional instructions with
1:30 and mastery learning method which also has the same ratio but a more aggressive
formative evaluation regime (Bloom, 1984). Students who are absent need not worry
about portion missed during their absence since they can continue from where they left
when they return to class.
This methodology has been much appreciated and largely implemented
within a short span of time and its effectiveness on student learning needs to be studied
ABL Methodology
21
more extensively. Further, although the impact of this method on students‟ learning has
been reported as successful (Anandalakshmi, 2007; SchoolScape, 2008), certain problems
were seen to exist. Some of these were that teachers were not able to give enough time to
slow learners, and class management (V. Vasanthakumari, Dr. S. S. Rajagopalan and Dr.
R. Jayakumar, 2008).
Activity based learning entails different types of activities in different subjects as
the nature and types of learning differs for different subjects. For example, science
instruction at elementary level has been shown to involve direct experience and
observations and these have been called „activity‟ (Bredderman, 1983). But in our
system, traditionally and recently, the same methodology is used for all subjects. Before
it was textbooks and the lecture method while now it is cards and the ABL method. TO
what extent do the activities specified in the ABL methodology address the individual
differences in learning needs of students, however, has not yet been studied.
A research project was undertaken as the need for independent research in ABL
was felt by the SSA-TN (Prema, Subbiah, Ramnath & Subramanian, 2009). In this study,
the different aspects of the ABL methodology have been investigated using percentage
analysis from questionnaire that aimed at investigating the overall impact of key
dimensions of the ABL methodology. Student, teachers‟ and parents‟ views about the
merits and demerits of the method were also analyzed.
According to the study, the main tenets of the method, which were to make the
classroom more student-friendly and reduce the intimidation and domination of the
teacher, were fulfilled most of the times. The study reported on logistic aspects such as
students' frequency of replacing cards, knowledge of their card and level in the ABL
chart, learning levels, sitting according to cards, and knowing their group. It reported that
rote memorization was discouraged and children learn happily. It also found that students
were singing well and were able to dramatize well. The study applauds ABL
methodology's requirement of making students sit on mats as "Most of the children sit on
mats. Thanks to ABL approach which has helped in providing this simple cost-effective
seating arrangements.” The skills assessed through an observation schedule were
reading, writing, narrating stories, dramatization, singing, collecting information, using
low level black board, indoor and outdoor play activities, general personal hygiene and
ABL Methodology
22
knowledge on weather condition. The study also raised important concerns which were
that nearly 46% students did not perform at their grade level, memory of student's
learning was less, dull students don‟t get attention of the teacher, advanced mathematical
abilities are not given enough attention in the method teachers found it difficult to sit on
the floor all day.
Another research study on time spent by students and teachers on specific tasks,
conducted by the SSA-TN (Vijay Kumar, Venkatesan, Kannappan & Sekhar, 2009),
showed that 63% of teacher's time was spent on interaction with students and 50% of
their time was spend giving individualized attention, one third of their time was spent
with group of children and about 10% of their time was spent address the whole class.
Teacher's time was categorized as student-centric activities and this included - 'replying
questions and providing clarifications‟, „asking questions, providing feedback to
individual students', 'demonstration and use of TLM/TLE materials and helping students
with 'project work/creative work'. Of the 57% time students spent on the student-centric
activities, only about 6-7% of the time was spent on learning related activities of
demonstration and use of TLMs and help on project and creative work. Rest of the time
was spent on all other activities mentioned above. This, according to the authors was in
line with the specifications of the ABL methodology. The authors classify 'observing and
supervising student activities', 'lecturing and explaining verbally', 'writing on the
blackboard and explaining' and 'giving dictation' as 'teacher-centric activities' however it
is not clear why these would be teacher-centric as they are as important in students'
learning as „demonstrations and projects‟. The study showed less time being devoted for
the 'teacher-centric activities'. Supportive instructional activities were 'correcting
homework or test papers' and 'giving homework or assignments'.
Student activities were classified as active, passive, mechanical, class
management and off-task activities. Of these maximum time (57.91%) was spent on
active learning activities. These activities included - studying on their own, doing
assignments, peer learning, seeking clarifications, use of TLE/TLM materials and project
and creative work. Of these, only 0.5% time was spent on project and creative work and
most time (24%) was spent on studying n their own. Based on composite score of grade
level, number of milestones completed in the ladder, current milestone and percentage of
ABL Methodology
23
marks in the latest milestone, student achievement was evaluated. A satisfactory score
was decided to be when a student achieved at least 50% score on the composite score. It
was seen that progress of learning was not much in grade one but improved tremendously
in grade 2,3 and 4 and was best in grade 4.
Learning outcomes at end of class IV
Learning outcomes has been a very unclear area and it has been studied
differently in different studies. While the National Curriculum Framework, 2005,
specified that assessment of language must be skill based and not syllabus based, it also
points to the need for national benchmarks for language proficiency. The skills
mentioned in the NCF-2005 are reading, writing, listening and speech. Similarly, in
mathematics, the narrow aim is to develop „useful‟ capabilities relating to numbers and
numeracy e.g. operations, and measurement. The higher aim is to develop mathematical
thinking and reasoning ability, for logical problem solving using appropriate assumptions
and to develop the attitude for problems solving.
In order to be more specific about learning outcomes, our education system came
out with specific Minimum Levels of Learning (MLLs) for each subject, at end of each
class. In the ABL methodology, learning outcomes have been conceptualized based on
amount of instructional material covered using a composite score as a function of card
and milestone reached in the ABL methodology (Vijay Kumar,Venkatesan, Kannappan
& Sekhar, 2009). The Annual Survey of Education Report, however, considers ability to
read class I and class II textbooks as the benchmark for learning achievement (ASER,
2007). Assessments done by EdInitiatives are by far the most skill based and well tested
assessment of learning outcomes so far (Education Initiatives, 2006). But this is not free
hence is mostly used by private schools in different parts of the country.
ABL Methodology
24
Inclusion of students with disabilities in regular education
Inclusion of students with disabilities is a relatively new idea in India and
although it has found place in the nation‟s law (National Policy on Education, 1992),
efforts at many levels need to be undertaken to make it a reality for students with
disabilities. All the same, for students with cognitive disabilities, inclusion has been the
automatic (Mani, 2005) partly due to ignorance of such problems and partly due to
existing low standards of public education.
Inclusive education basically refers to inclusion of students with disabilities in
general education classrooms. In inclusive education, the education system and the
school makes adaptations in the educational practices to include the student with
disability whereas in an integrated education system, the child is mainstreamed into the
regular classroom and expected to make adaptations to learn there (Swarup, 2006). An
example of how learning difficulties can be addressed by adapting instructional materials
is in reading difficulties. Different adaptations such as providing shortened passages,
more detailed passages and graphically organized text can help students with different
types of difficulties in reading (Dyck and Pemberton, 2002). Further, assistive technology
can be used in different ways to address the varying difficulties in reading in the
classroom (Edyburn, 2003).
The concept if inclusive education originated in west and has been brought to
India through international laws and presently forms an important aspect of education of
students with disabilities in our country (Das and Kattumuri, nd). According to Das and
Kattumuri (n.d.), an educational service for students with special needs in inclusive
settings requires one special education teacher per school. All the same, the concept of
inclusion seems to be very different in our country and not properly understood by all the
stakeholders of our education system (Singal, 2006).
ABL Methodology
25
METHODOLOGY
The present research study was conducted in order to understand the ABL
methodology used in Tamil Nadu government schools with respect to the nature of
activities, nature and use of classroom time for children and teachers, inclusion of
students with disabilities in the classroom, and learning outcomes. It also aimed at
studying the learning outcomes in relation to the traditional methods of instruction at
elementary school level used in private schools.
Research questions
Part A: What are the educational experiences of elementary school students being
educated using the ABL methodology?
RQA-1: What kinds of activities are planned for in the ABL methodology to address
individual differences in learning needs?
RQA-2: How much time is actually spent on learning related activities in the classroom
in different subject areas?
RQA-3: What are the experiences of students with disabilities who are included in the
government schools?
Part B: What are the learning outcomes at end of class IV of students educated
using the ABL methodology?
RQB-1 What has been the progress of students in class IV in the ABL levels as the
school year progressed?
RQB-2: What are the learning outcomes of students in public schools in the learning
outcomes assessment test?
RQB-3 What are the differences in learning outcomes in basic and advanced cognitive
skills among the public schools and are there gender differences in these outcomes?
RQB-4 What are the differences between learning outcomes of class IV students in ABL
level four and private school class IV students in basic and advanced cognitive skills?
RQB-5 To what extent does ABL level effect learning outcomes in English and Maths?
ABL Methodology
26
Since the research questions seek to investigate experiences of children in the
classroom implementing a prevalent instructional methodology and the learning
outcomes of students in class IV, both qualitative and quantitative research methods have
been used in this study. Therefore this research study uses a mixed method approach.
Qualitative methods used are classroom observations, study of instructional materials,
collection of achievement data from school records, and case studies (Morse and
Richards, 2002). Learning outcomes were measured by constructing a simple oral and
written test designed to evaluate specific skills and knowledge levels. The scores
obtained from these tests were used to conduct ANOVAs to test differences and
understand the patterns of learning outcomes (Maxwell and Delaney, 2004).
Sample selection
A sample of 10 Panchayat Union Schools under one cluster resource center
(CRC) of Thondamuthur Block in Coimbatore District in Tamil Nadu was chosen for this
study. The researcher acquired required permission to conduct the research study from
the State Project Director (SPD) of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan – Tamil Nadu, Chennai and
subsequently from the Chief Education Officer, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan – Coimbatore
(see appendix A).
Data Collection
Demographic data
Demographic data regarding school, teachers and students was collected from
these schools in the month of October. During this visit, the researcher introduced herself
and the research project to the school heads, gave a copy of the letter of permission from
the SPD, and planned a schedule for classroom observations and tests.
Classroom observations
In the month of November, classroom observations were started. Five sessions of
45 minutes each, one for each subject, were done in each school. Initially, three
classroom observation sessions for the whole of one class session was done. One ABL
class was from 9.40 – 12.40 with a ten-minute break at 11.00. During this time, the
different activities in the class were noted and it was observed that these activities were
repeated throughout the ABL class. A study conducted by SSA (Vijaykumar,
ABL Methodology
27
Venkatesan, Kannappan & Sekhar, 2009) used a duration of 40 minutes for classroom
observation, which was broken down into ten 4-minute blocks during which observers
were asked to observe for 2 minutes and note down observations for 2 minutes. This was
a highly structured way of observation but couldn‟t gather data on the subjective
experiences and phenomenon in the classroom. Hence, the researcher decided to make
three – four slots of 15 minutes each, during which she would observe and note down
essential data as well as note down other processes in the classroom. The duration of the
observation session reduced for another five sessions to one hour and then to 45 minutes
as it was reasoned that one session of three 15-minute slots would reasonably capture the
happenings in one ABL class. The activities in 45 minutes of a two and half class period
would be representative of educational experience of the child in these classes. So if
students are not attentively working on their learning activity for even 15 minutes during
a 45 minute period of their class, then their active engagement in learning in their class
would be questionable. As a corollary to this, if on average, students spend more time
being distracted in a 15-minute period, this would mean that the method used is unable to
keep students actively engaged in learning for even 15 minutes. A detailed description of
the method of classroom observation used in this study follows.
Each classroom observation session of 45 minutes was divided into three 15-
minute slots. Three columns were made such that one column was for each 15 minute
slot. Here, the number of students who were working with cards (reading from cards,
writing in their slate, notebook or blackboard from the card), number of students who
were keeping the card in their hand but not working with it, the number of students who
were not working with cards at all (talking, walking around, fighting, sitting simply
without doing any thing), the number of students who were at the card stand for a long
time, the number of students who were with the teacher, the number of students who
were waiting for the teacher‟s attention were noted. With regards to the teacher‟s
activities, teacher‟s attention to students who needed her guidance, to students who were
away from her but were making noise and being distracted, or not attending to their
cards, the methods used by teachers for class control were noted. In addition, the use of
group time as per the ABL ladder charts and supplementary readers provided by the SSA
were also observed.
ABL Methodology
28
A total of 50 classroom observations were planned out of which 43 were
completed and 7 could not be done due to scheduling conflicts. The data analysis was
done for data from the 43 sessions, which is 86% of the planned observations.
ABL level progress data
In the month of October, the researcher visited all the ten schools and obtained the
distribution of class IV students in each ABL level in each subject from each school. This
data was collected again at the end of January and finally at the year end (end of April).
This data was from the achievement records that the teachers maintain as per the ABL
methodology. It is in the form of a huge chart that has the milestones in the columns and
a set of four rows for each child, each row for each ABL level. Teachers have to make a
tick mark in each corresponding square for a child and the milestone completed by that
child in the row corresponding to the ABL level he or she is in. The levels are indicated
by using different colours - red is for level 1, green for level 2, blue is for level 3 and
yellow is for level 4.
ABL materials data
The data for analysis of ABL materials was made by analyzing the instructions
and activities in 10 cards each in milestones 0-5 in ABL ladder or level 4, milestones 6 –
10 in level 4, milestone 11 and above in level 4 for each subject. These activities for
information input, processing and expression for each card were identified. These were
then analyzed to find the pattern of types of activities used for each stage of learning
Learning Outcomes assessments
An oral and written test was administered to all students in class IV who have
reached ABL level 4 in at least one subject. The same written test was also administered
to class IV students of two private schools following the CBSE syllabus and who were
using the traditional methods of instruction to a large extent. In addition, the private
schools were chosen because these schools offer syllabus and curriculum, which has a
reputation in the society as being the best in our country.
The learning outcomes assessment oral test was for Tamil and English and written
test had separate sections for each subject – Tamil, English, Maths and Environmental
Science. Each section carried a total score of 24 points (inclusive of orals in the
languages). The questions were made such that they were to assess specific skills. In the
ABL Methodology
29
oral tests (Tamil and English) the skills tested were reading words, simple sentences and
speaking skills of questioning and sharing ideas. In languages, in the written tests,
vocabulary, simple and higher-order comprehension and writing skills were assessed. In
maths, number concept, basic arithmetic and advanced maths in terms of word problems,
application of arithmetic to time and money were assessed. In environmental science,
basic and common knowledge in science and social science were assessed. The tests were
prepared in Tamil and in English. The Tamil version was for public schools and the
English version was for the private schools. While evaluating the test responses, care was
taken to make sure the skill tested in each question was kept in mind.
The test was first created and piloted with two public school students from
another block and the tests were shown to their tuition teacher and one public school
teacher from the block where study was conducted. The test was revised based on the
pilot responses and inputs received from the teacher and tuition teacher.
Oral tests were conducted in Tamil and English in the public schools. These tests
were not conducted in the private schools due to time restrictions, but a random sample of
five children from both the private schools were given the oral test just to see how these
students do in these tests.
Case studies
In order to address the research question on inclusion of students with disabilities
in regular classrooms, five case studies were conducted. Of these, four students attended
government schools and one student attended a private school. Of the four students two
were diagnosed with mental retardation (MR), one with Down‟s syndrome and the fourth
with muscular dystrophy. The one student in private school had visual impairment. Data
from records, if available, was obtained for each of these students. Informal interviews
with the regular education teachers in schools, special education teachers at the Integrated
Education Department (IED) center, peers and parents where possible were done.
Data Analysis
Research questions in part A were analyzed using qualitative research methods
while those in Part B, were analyzed using quantitative methods. The analyses and the
results are presented in the next section.
ABL Methodology
30
DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
Analysis of demographic data obtained showed that 80%y percent of the schools
in sample that participated in this study were rural and 20% were urban. All of the
schools served students from lower socio economic backgrounds, few of them including
students from lower middle socio economic backgrounds. The caste-wise distribution of
the student population in the sample in this study was BC-43.78%, MBC-21.12%, SC-
20.19%, ST-1.55% and DNC-0.3%. On an average, about 55% of the total number of
students in the schools, availed of the mid-day-meal scheme while about 68% of students
in class IV availed of the mid-day-meal scheme. The average age of students in the
sample was 9years.
Parental education levels on an average were upto 6th
standard for both mothers
and fathers. It must be noted here that there were few cases where students were not able
to provide their parents‟ levels of education. This has been treated as missing data and
hence those cases were excluded for obtaining the averages. Further, on an average, 23%
students in class IV attended preschool programs of LKG and UKG, while most of the
rest attended balwadis and directly went to class I.
The research questions in this study address two major aspects of our education
system in relation to the ABL methodology. These are educational experiences in the
classroom and learning outcomes.
Part A: What are the educational experiences of elementary school students being
educated using the ABL methodology?
Classroom time constitutes the most important time for a child in the classroom.
Learning experiences in the classroom are therefore extremely important experiences for
the child as they directly and indirectly influence their learning and their motivation and
ability to learn. The direct influences of classroom experiences are those facilitated by the
instructional methods used while the indirect influences are the social, emotional and
psychological aspects of the classroom that influence learning in the classroom. Part A is
addressed using a set of research questions that seek to understand the educational
experiences in the classroom through analysis of the instructional materials used by the
ABL method and direct observations of the ABL classes.
ABL Methodology
31
RQA-1: What kinds of activities are planned for in the ABL methodology to address
individual differences in learning needs?
For this research question, first, activities in ABL cards were identified, for e.g. „do‟,
„read‟, „talk‟ or listen‟ etc. Since learning is understood as comprising of three essential
aspects, information input, information processing, and skills/knowledge expression, the
activities were categorized into which aspect they fell. Thereafter, percentage analysis
was done to study the types of activities that supported each aspect of the learning
process.
Each milestone has a group of 9 – 14 logos each of which represented a particular
type of activity and is given in a ABL card. These logos were repeated in the milestones
and new logos were introduced as the milestones proceeded upwards. A chart for each
ABL ladder or level for each subject was hung on the walls of the classroom. In these
charts, the ladder began from the bottom, with milestone 0 or 1 and went upwards using
the logo icons with the last milestone on the top of the chart. The total number of
milestones in each ladder in each subject is given in Table A1-1. There are totally about
260 milestones and a corresponding approximate 2600 ABL cards.
Table A1-1: Number of milestones in each ABL ladder or level in each subject.
Subject ABL level 1 ABL level 2 ABL level 3 ABL level 4
Tamil 16 16 16 18
English 12 12 12 12
Maths 12 16 19 17
Science 13 13 13 14
Social Science - - 14 15
The activities in each level or ladder incorporated games, drawing and colouring,
and interesting stories, which could help engagement of students in the learning activity.
Students and teachers in eight of the ten schools sat down on floor mats while in two of
the schools there were little tables and chairs for students (donated by some people or
agency) and chair and a table for the teacher. In one of the eight schools where students
ABL Methodology
32
sat on the floor, short tables were provided for writing and the teacher had a table and
chair.
In order to understand the types of activities that supported and facilitated
learning in each subject, the activities in level 4 were categorized into according to the
those that supported receiving information or information input, processing information
and expressing information. This is shown in table A1-2 below.
Table A1-2: Activities in the ABL methodology according to how they support learning.
a. Tamil
0.00
10.00
20.00
30.00
40.00
50.00
60.00act
do
dra
w
liste
n
not
observ
e
pla
y
read
searc
h
see
show
talk
thin
k
write
Tamil
input activity percent
processing activity percent
output activity percent
Subject Activity
Input activity
percent
Processing
activity percent
Output
activity
percent
Tamil act 0.00 3.33 0.00
do 0.00 16.67 0.00
draw 10.00 10.00 7.50
listen 10.00 6.67 0.00
not clear 0.00 0.00 5.00
observe 0.00 0.00 0.00
play 3.33 0.00 2.50
read 56.67 20.00 12.50
search 0.00 3.33 0.00
see 20.00 3.33 10.00
show 0.00 0.00 10.00
talk 10.00 16.67 37.50
think 0.00 13.33 0.00
write 3.33 10.00 2.50
ABL Methodology
33
b. English
0.00
10.00
20.00
30.00
40.00
50.00
60.00
70.00
80.00
90.00
act
do
dra
w
liste
n
not
observ
e
pla
y
read
searc
h
see
show
talk
thin
k
write
English total = 31
input activity percent
processing activity percent
output activity percent
c. Maths.
0.00
10.00
20.00
30.00
40.00
50.00
60.00
70.00
act
do
dra
w
liste
n
not
observ
e
pla
y
read
searc
h
see
show
talk
thin
k
write
Maths total = 29
input activity percent
processing activity percent
output activity percent
subject activity
input activity
percent
processing
activity percent
output
activity
percent
English act 0.00 0.00 3.23
total = 31 do 0.00 3.23 0.00
draw 0.00 0.00 0.00
listen 6.45 6.45 0.00
not clear 0.00 0.00 3.23
observe 0.00 0.00 0.00
play 3.23 3.23 3.23
read 80.65 45.16 0.00
search 0.00 0.00 0.00
see 16.13 12.90 0.00
show 0.00 0.00 0.00
talk 0.00 6.45 54.84
think 0.00 19.35 0.00
write 0.00 3.23 35.48
subject activity
input activity
percent
processing
activity percent
output
activity
percent
Maths act 0.00 0.00 0.00
total = 29 do 34.48 20.69 34.48
draw 0.00 0.00 0.00
listen 0.00 34.48 0.00
not clear 0.00 0.00 0.00
observe 0.00 0.00 0.00
play 0.00 0.00 0.00
read 41.38 3.45 0.00
search 0.00 0.00 0.00
see 20.69 0.00 0.00
show 0.00 0.00 0.00
talk 0.00 0.00 0.00
think 3.45 41.38 0.00
write 0.00 0.00 65.52
ABL Methodology
34
d. Science
0.00
10.00
20.00
30.00
40.00
50.00
60.00
70.00
80.00
90.00
act
do
dra
w
liste
n
not
observ
e
pla
y
read
searc
h
see
show
talk
thin
k
write
Science total = 29
input activity percent
processing activity percent
output activity percent
e. Social Science
0.005.00
10.0015.0020.0025.0030.0035.0040.0045.0050.00
act
do
dra
w
liste
n
not
observ
e
pla
y
read
searc
h
see
show
talk
thin
k
write
Social
Science
total = 30
input activity percent
processing activity percent
output activity percent
Data in the tables (a-e) in Table A1-2, have been collated to present the activities
in the decreasing order of occurrence as shown in table A1-3. In table A1-3, the activities
in italics are those that occur less than 10.5 percent times which amounts to 3 to 4 cards
subject activity
input activity
percent
processing
activity percent
output activity
percent
Science act 0.00 0.00 0.00
total = 29 do 0.00 27.59 10.34
draw 0.00 0.00 0.00
listen 0.00 0.00 0.00
not clear 0.00 0.00 0.00
observe 0.00 6.90 0.00
play 0.00 0.00 0.00
read 82.76 37.93 0.00
search 0.00 0.00 0.00
see 13.79 13.79 0.00
show 0.00 0.00 10.34
talk 0.00 0.00 55.17
think 0.00 10.34 0.00
write 0.00 0.00 20.69
subject activity
input
activity
percent
processing
activity
percent
output
activity
percent
Social Science act 0.00 0.00 20.00
total = 30 do 23.33 16.67 0.00
draw 0.00 6.67 0.00
listen 0.00 0.00 0.00
not clear 0.00 0.00 30.00
observe 0.00 0.00 0.00
play 0.00 0.00 0.00
read 30.00 0.00 0.00
search 0.00 0.00 0.00
see 16.67 13.33 0.00
show 0.00 0.00 16.67
talk 16.67 43.33 26.67
think 0.00 6.67 0.00
write 0.00 3.33 3.33
ABL Methodology
35
in this sample of 29-31 cards per subject at ABL level or ladder four. The activities that
occur between 10.5 and 50% times (about 4 to 15 cards out of ~30) are shown in regular
font. Activities occurring between 50% and 75% (about 22-23 cards out of ~30) are
shown in bold font and those occurring more than 75% times are shown in bold and
underlined fonts.
It can be seen from this table that „reading‟ is the most used activity for input of
information for English, Science and Tamil and is used moderately in maths and social
science. Most of the activities are used moderately for processing while for output of
information, „talking‟ and „writing‟ are mostly used activities.
Table A1-3: Activities in descending order of occurrence for the three processes in
learning in each subject.
Subject Input activity Processing
activity
Output activity
Tamil Read, see,
draw/listen/talk*,
play/write.
Read, do/talk,
think,
draw/write,
search/see
Talk, read,
see/show, draw,
not clear,
play/write
English Read, see, listen,
play
Read, think,
see, listen/talk,
do/write
Talk, write,
act/not
clear/play
Maths Read, do, see,
think
Think, listen,
do, read
Write, do
Science Read, see Read, do, see,
think, observe
Talk, write,
do/show
Social Science Read, do,
see/talk
Talk, do, see,
draw/think,
write
Not clear, talk,
act, show, write
Note: * activities occurring in the same percentage are separated by „/‟. Activities that
occur less than 10.5 % times are shown in italics, 10.6% - 49% as normal font, 50% -
74% in bold font and those more than 75% times are shown in bold font and underlined.
ABL Methodology
36
Many times, the output activities was „not clear‟ and this was because the card
required the student to read and understand the card and did not have any specific
expression of learning. Many cards related to the life experiences of the children and the
milestones included drawing and story dramatization cards etc that supported engagement
of students in the learning activity.
RQA-2: How much time is actually spent on learning related activities in the classroom
in different subject areas?
This research question was investigated using classroom observations. The ABL
classes were of four student compositions. In the first one, all four classes (I-IV) would
be combined. In the second, classes I and II would be combined and classes III and IV
would be combined. In the third, classes I and II would be combined and classes III and
IV would be separate. In the fourth composition, one and a half classes would be
combined into one ABL class. That is, class I and half of class II, second half of class II
and half of class III, second half of class III and class IV would be combined together.
Although the plan of composition of ABL classes would be done based on the number of
teachers and the class strengths in classes I to IV, many times this composition would
default to students from all classes in one ABL class due to teacher absence.
A total of 50 classroom observations were planned such that five observations,
one in each subject, could be done in each of the 10 schools. But due to scheduling
conflicts, only 43 observations could be done, which is 86% of the total number planned
(see table 2A-1). The data presented here, comes from this 86% of classroom
observations conducted. The general classes observed were done, as at that time, teachers
were absent on account of census and election duties.
Table A2-1: Number of classrooms observations done in each subject area.
Tamil English Maths Science Social
Science
General Total
Number of observations 9 8 10 9 7 2 45
ABL Methodology
37
The ABL classes were similar in all subjects except in one case where the
students worked on math games in math class. In general, the phenomena seen in the
ABL classes were that of student independence and teacher guidance to single or small
groups of students. It was expected that the students would note down in their notebooks
the logos for a milestone at the start of that milestone. Then the student would go up to
the card bins shelves and pick the appropriate card, and work on it. The student was
supposed to study the card himself or herself first. Teacher‟s help could be sought if the
student needed it. Then, the student was supposed to write what he/she learned in the
slate first and show their teacher. The teacher corrected the students‟ work and then they
wrote it on the black board and then the notebook. Students showed their work in their
notebook to the teacher. After the teacher checks and signs the notebook, the student
would move on to the next card. The class strength of the observed classes ranged from
14 to 36,which typically included at least two classes.
In seven of the schools, the students sat on the floor on mats, in one school there
were only short tables for the students who sat on the floor and in two schools, there were
small tables and chairs. Either way, they sat in groups of 3 to six or seven students spread
around in the classroom. The group closest to the teacher was always the younger ones
who were in the initial milestones while those at the corners of the class were the students
who were in the higher milestones. The assumption was that at the higher milestone
stages, students would be able to work and learn independently.
Student related phenomena
In any ABL class, a typical 45-minute observation saw on an average of about
one-third of the students „working‟ on their cards and engaged in learning, either directly
or indirectly for about 10-15 minutes. Very few students, (about 2-6) per class were seen
continuously writing from their card during most of the 45-minute session. This
„working‟ was either, reading, reading to peers, listening the card being read by peers,
writing from the card to a slate, or notebook or blackboard, listening to the teacher
explain the card either individually or with a group of peers or writing in their workbook.
Some students, (about 3-5) in most classes observed, were continuously searching for
their card. When the student takes more than 5 minutes to nearly 15 minutes, it was seen
that the reason was that the required card was missing from its place. So, the student was
ABL Methodology
38
searching for it. When the student had taken more than half hour at the card stand, it was
learnt from the teacher that the student was one of slow learners, who showed no interest
and had to be reprimanded and reminded to start his or her work. It was seen that
sometimes the teacher was able to notice such students while sometimes the teacher
would not notice them. Yet other times, the teacher would notice, yell at such students
and then both would just continue what they were doing.
A third category of students would keep the card in their hands, but would be
doing some other things instead of learning. A look at the students‟ eyes and actions
would indicate that the student was not at all engaged in card. These actions were looking
around, looking at the neighboring student‟s work, fiddling with the card, speaking to a
friend or two in extremely low voice, drawing in note book, slate or work book even if
the card didn‟t say to draw. The fourth category of students would be standing and
walking around trying to get their cards from friends, get some stationary etc, or waiting
for the teacher‟s attention. In some classes, it has been observed that a queue of at least
10 students were waiting for nearly 10 – 15 minutes for the teacher‟s attention. While in
queue, they tend to get distracted and they tend to distract other students who work with
their cards. At such times, the general noise in the class was observed to increase and
needed the teacher to intervene.
About 5-7 students write on the blackboard and a similar number of students write
on their slate. These students were seen to be typically copying from the cards. On a
couple a sessions, when such students were asked by the researcher to read out what they
wrote, the students were not able to read. This was seen especially in English. Sometimes
it was seen that the teacher reprimanded and told the student to rewrite what he or she
had written on the blackboard just because it was small and not visible from across the
room. Often students (about 1-3) were found at the ladder chart, writing down the logos
for the milestone they were to start. This would take them between 5 – 15 minutes.
Many times, during school visits, it was seen that students were tasked with
sweeping the corridors and classrooms, watering the plants, cleaning the premises after
short break or lunch break, washing of teachers‟ lunch boxes and even washing urinals
and water tanks. Other distractions for students that were seen was bad smell from
urinals that were close to the classroom, due to which the windows would be kept closed
ABL Methodology
39
reducing the light in the class. This was difficult especially as there would be power cut
in the middle of the school day. Sometimes, the smoke from the kitchen was blown
towards the classroom filling the classroom with smoke, making it difficult for the
students to concentrate. Yet another time, there was a college function held in the school
playground, which was not very big and was in between the classrooms. The mikes were
loud and the teacher got called to be an audience for the function. Hence the class went
without any lesson and the students were all looking out of the window.
All of the schools in the study had supplementary readers but they used them in
different ways. Some teachers would give the books during the blank card time, some
after lunch before the start of the afternoon session, some would give when ever
convenient. There seemed to be no specific pattern of use followed although the teachers
claimed that they give them to the students. At certain times, the students read out the
books to the researcher. All the books were colour coded according to the ABL levels. In
Tamil, students could most of the time read according to their level but in English,
students in level 4 were not able to read even level 2 or sometimes even level 1 book.
The social values supported in the ABL classrooms seen were ability to
communicate with peers and teachers. There were incidences of class control and lack of
tolerance for simple chatting noise in the class, but on the whole, the class seemed to be
more of a lively enterprise were all students could talk to express their needs to peers and
the teacher. The students seemed to be free with their teacher and friendly in most cases
although corporal punishments such as hitting the child with a stick were also present.
Psychologically, the students seemed to be engaged in learning activity when in a group
than individually although few students always worked from their cards continuously.
Whether this is more than in the traditional method used before is hard to say, as there is
not data from the latter to compare with.
Students who were in ABL level IV cards also were seen to seek help from the
teacher to read and understand instructions especially in Maths and the Sciences. This
indicates that their reading abilities were not ready enough to expecting independent
study from them. Many students who were idling in the class seemed to be disengaged
except when the teacher would call out to them or ask them some question. This is
indicates a lack of challenge or interest or sense of direction and motivation that is much
ABL Methodology
40
needed for learning. At the emotional level, the students seemed to be happy to be in
school. Some students were playing throughout the time of the observation session. At
the elementary age level, student‟s love to play and when there is not much restriction
from the teacher (for a variety of reasons) they get to play continuously, they are happy.
Teacher-related phenomena
The teacher would typically be seated on the floor on a mat as the students, except
in three schools where the teachers also had desks and chair. The teacher was seen to
attend to one or a small group of students at a time. In some classes, it was seen that the
teacher was repeatedly teaching the same thing to many students. The teacher seemed to
be aware of the queue of students waiting for her attention but due to time taken for each
student, she was not able to immediately address each student‟s query. Further, the
teacher was mostly occupied with students close to her and was not able to give attention
to students in the back of the class. In some observation sessions, it was noted that for the
whole 45-minute period of observation, the group of students at the back, who were busy
playing or making noise went unattended.
Distractions that were noted for the teachers included being called by another
teacher for some collection-related matter, any other lesson unrelated matter, cell phone
calls and subsequent phone conversations, clerical work required to be completed in
limited time. Many times the teacher would be busy with some clerical work to be
completed and attend to students on an ad hoc basis. Whenever the classroom got noisy,
which was a common phenomenon, the teacher would try and control the class by
yelling, beating the child who gets caught and in some cases threatening to send the child
to the principal. The different activities and phenomenon that were observed in the
various classrooms observations were classified into three categories of (i) directly
learning related activities, (ii) indirectly learning related activities, and (iii) learning
unrelated activities (see table A2-2).
ABL Methodology
41
Table A2-2: Types of activities and phenomenon observed in the ABL classrooms
Activity Directly learning related activity Indirectly learning related activity
Learning unrelated
activity.
Student Reading, writing in slate, note
book, black board, work book,
activity in the card such as
counting, observing picture,
drawing, reading
supplementary reading
materials.
Talking with teacher regarding
card, talking about the card
related topic, motivated to learn
in class, searches for card, gets
the correct card and follows the
steps of completing each card
and moving to the next by
oneself, reading supplementary
reading materials.
Searching for card,
talking, looking around,
talking with friends,
fighting, standing and
walking around, sitting
simply,
Teacher Teaching or instructing one
student or a small group,
teaching a topic.
Speaks nicely, and welcomingly
to students, makes students feel
comfortable, asks students about
what breakfast they had, doing
group activities, quizzes before
beginning the class.
Shouts, hits the child,
bangs desk, speaking on
the phone, speaking to
another teacher about
something unrelated to
the class, doing clerical
work.
RQA-3: What are the experiences of students with disabilities who are included in the
government schools?
Here, the accounts of experiences of students with disabilities will be presented
through the case studies that were conducted. Each of the case studies includes informal
interviews of parents, students them selves, siblings where possible, peers, and teachers.
Four students‟ case studies were conducted. The details of students are shown in table
A3-1.
Student 1, who attends private school, was identified with severe visual impairment when
in kindergarten. She belongs to the middle class household. She had had a sudden retinal
detachment that went undetected and was not operated in time due to which she lost her
vision. She can only see extreme shades of light now. Since she went to a private school,
she was referred to the Avinashilingam University Department of Special education and
ABL Methodology
42
went to the special school there for some time. Here she learned Braille and to use screen
readers. She returned back to private school at class V and had a scribe help her with
homework and studies at home. At school, she has a friend who is always by her side and
she pays attention to everything that is being taught in the class. She has above average
intelligence and a good memory according to her teachers. She is included in the
classroom activities and her teachers and peers are very supportive of her. Her parents are
able to help her come to school and return home everyday and also support her studies in
a variety of ways at home.
Student 2 attends a public school. He was studying in a private school. He belongs to a
lower middle class household. His education in the private school was supported
financially by his grandmother‟s pension money. When his grandmother died, the money
stopped coming and therefore, he started attending public elementary school from class 3.
He was identified by the teachers as not being normal in his walking and was referred to
the Integrated Education Department (IED) at the block center of the SSA. There he was
diagnosed with muscular dystrophy (early stages) and was recommended to come to the
center two times a week for physiotherapy treatment. He attends school in class V during
all days except two days in the afternoons when he goes to the center for treatment. He is
cognitively normal and is able to understand and learn well. His parents, teachers and
peers are very supportive. His peers help him in school by sharing with him notes and
other information he misses when he goes for treatment.
Student 3 started attending public school from age 5. She belongs to a lower class
household. At birth, she did not cry and was kept under observation in UV box for about
2 weeks. Then after a lot of medication, she started crying. Her mother feels that the
many medicines that she was given just after birth has caused some problems in her
brain. She was identified as not have the normal course of development during her first
and second standards and was referred to the IED. Here, she was diagnosed as having
mental retardation and recommended to go for two days to the block IED center every
week. Due to lack of direct transport facilities for the students and as the parents have to
go to work daily to support the family; she is not able to go to the center. She gets special
ABL Methodology
43
education services from special education teacher only when the special education
teacher for her school visits her school once in two or three weeks. Nevertheless, due to
counseling provided by the special education teachers to the regular education school
teachers and peers, she has started talking properly, communicating her needs. But she is
unable to read and write. She can copy and write letters but she cannot even write the
alphabets of the language in the correct order on her own.
Student 4, also diagnosed with mental retardation, joined a public school in class I. When
she was in class II, she was identified as requiring assessment by the teachers and was
sent to the IED. Presently in class V, she has been in IED for three years now. She is the
class the entire school day, she talks to other children, writes in Tamil. She writes the
alphabets when seen but when asked to reproduce on her own, she is unable to do so. She
can communicate her needs. She has a brother in her same class but different division and
he helps her with her homework. Her parents married with-in the family. Her major
cognitive problems are in attention & concentration, command & request, memory and
eye-hand coordination.
Informal interviews with the peers, teachers and parents (when possible) revealed
that the students were supported to the extent possible. The special education services
provided by the IED was during two days in the week when the students identified with a
disability were recommended to visit and spend their day. Here, the special education
teacher would work with the student or physiotherapy would be provided as needed.
Presently, there are five special education teachers for the entire block, which has nearly
55 schools. With two days to be spent in the IED center, the teachers have three days for
school visits. Thus one special education teacher visits one school‟s student/s once a
month or once in fortnight.
ABL Methodology
44
Table A2-1
Student Type of school
attended
Nature of
disability
Present age
group
Educational
services
availed
Student 1 Private Severe visual
impairment
9-12 Yes, privately
Student 2 Public Muscular
dystrophy
9-12 Through IED
center, SSA
Student 3 Public Mental
retardation
9-12 Through IED
center, SSA
Student 4 Public Mental
retardation
9-12 Through IED
center, SSA
Part B: What are the learning outcomes at end of class IV of students educated
using the ABL methodology?
In order to assess the learning outcomes at the end of fourth level or ladder of
ABL, first, the progress of students to ABL level four during the academic year was seen
using three time points of October, January and April (research question B-1). Then,
learning outcomes in specific skills and knowledge areas was assessed using a learning
outcomes assessment test (see appendix B) and the results in this test was analyzed to
study the patterns on achievements of students public schools (research question B-2 and
B-3). The test was also administered to students from two private schools that followed
the CBSE syllabus and are considered among the best schools in the area. This was done
to understand how students in ABL level four achieved in comparison to private-CBSE
board students and the results are studied in research question B-4. Finally, in order to
study the effect of instruction in the different ABL levels on the learning outcomes in
English and Maths, the differences in scores of students at each ABL level found in this
population of students who took the test were studied in research question B-5.
Research Question B-1 What has been the progress of students in class IV in the ABL
levels as the school year progressed?
ABL Methodology
45
To address this question, data on distribution of class IV students across the four
ABL levels (ladders) in each subject was analyzed to see the trend of progress of students
from one level to the next at three time points during the academic year. Teachers keep
records of student‟s progress in ABL cards from milestone to milestone and ladder to
ladder at the end of each month. Table B1-1 shows the percentage of class IV students
(N=317) who reached ABL ladder or level at three time points in the year – October,
January and April. The percentage of students in ABL level four at these three time
points was calculated and compared to see the progress of students to ABL level 4. It
must be mentioned here that most of the students who were reported to be in ABL level
four had just began level four or were in one of the first few milestones (out of nearly 12)
even at the end of the year.
Table B1-1:
Subject Boys (n=148) Girls (n=169) Total (N=317)
Oct Jan* April Oct Jan* April Oct Jan* April
Tamil 50.68% 64.57% 64.86% 57.40% 68.79% 71.01% 54.26% 66.79% 68.14%
English 22.97% 36.22% 37.84% 18.93% 33.33% 42.01% 20.82% 34.70% 40.06%
Maths 42.57% 62.20% 56.08% 29.59% 63.83% 55.62% 35.65% 63.06% 55.84%
Science 55.41% 70.08% 66.89% 47.93% 70.92% 72.78% 51.42% 70.52% 70.03%
Social Science 51.35% 70.08% 60.81% 39.64% 69.50% 65.09% 45.11% 69.78% 63.09%
* - Data for one school (n=49 – boys 21, girls 29) was not available hence the
percentages have been calculated on the total number of boys, girls and total for that time
point.
Figure B1-1 is a graphical representation of the progress in the number of students
reaching level four of ABL. Here, the blue bars represent percentages of boys, pink bars
that of girls and the green bars show the percentages of the total numbers of students.
Light, medium and dark shades for each of these colours are for the time points of
October, January and April respectively.
ABL Methodology
46
Figure B1-1: Graphical representation of progress of students to ABL level IV at three
time points of the year 2010-2011.(blue bars –boys, pink bars – girls and green bars –
total)
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
80.00%
Tamil English Maths Science Social Science
Boys Oct
Boys Jan
Boys April
Gilrs Oct
Gilrs Jan
Gilrs April
Total Oct
Total Jan
Total April
It can be seen from this data, that the numbers of student in ABL level IV is
increasing steadily for the languages from October to January to April. In general, the
percentage increase reduces from Jan to April as compared to Oct to Jan. Secondly the
initial percentage of students in level IV is low for English as compared to Tamil. For
Maths, however, it was seen that, while the percentage of students in ABL level IV
increased from Oct to Jan, it reduced during Jan to April. This pattern was also seen for
science and social science although for girls, the percentage did not drop in science.
Research Question B2: What are the learning outcomes of students in public schools in
the learning outcomes assessment test?
The overall sample size with respect to school type and gender is shown in table
B2-1 The number of students in each of four ABL levels in each subject at the time of
testing are shown in the table B2-2. This is the sample of students who were tested
because they have reached ABL level 4 in at least one subject.
ABL Methodology
47
Table B2-1: Distribution of students by gender and school type.
Boys Girls Total
Public 84 117 201
Private 55 25 80
Total 139 142 281
Table B-2: Subject wise and ABL level wise distribution of students who took the test.
Table B2-3 shows the mean scores for each area of learning outcomes tested.
Here it can be seen that the highest mean score was in Tamil, followed by environmental
sciences and then Maths. The least mean score was in English. The percentage of grand
total for all public school students who took the test was 49.33%.
Table B2-3: Mean scores and standard deviation for each subject and total on learning
outcomes assessment test for public school students.
Tamil total
(out of 24)
English total
(out of 24)
Maths total
(out of 24)
EVS total
(out of 24)
Grand total
(out of 96)
N 201 201 201 201 201
Mean 14.08 8.38 12.14 12.75 47.36
Mean
Percentage
58.67% 34.92% 50.58% 53.13% 49.33%
Standard
Deviation
6.1 5.63 6.39 8.71 23.5
ABL
Level
Tamil English Maths Science Social
Science
B G T B G T B G T B G T B G T
1 5 1 6 2 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
2 0 4 4 8 19 27 0 2 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
3 5 9 14 33 52 85 13 23 36 9 17 26 13 34 47
4 74 103 177 41 46 87 71 92 163 75 100 175 71 83 154
Total 84 117 201 84 117 201 84 117 201 84 117 201 84 117 201
ABL Methodology
48
RQB3 What are the differences in learning outcomes in basic and advanced cognitive
skills among the public schools and are there gender differences in these outcomes?
Since it was seen that each public school differed in the ways they implemented
the ABL methodology, the achievement patterns in the schools was analyzed to see it
there was any significant differences among schools. Gender differences were also tested.
The sample used for data analysis in this research question was students in public schools
only. Further, for each subject area, only the test scores of those students who were in
ABL level 4 in that particular subject were used. The mean scores for each skill category
and their standard deviations are shown in table B3-1
Table B3- 1: Learning outcomes of ABL level 4 students in each skill area tested
Skill N Mean Total score Mean Percentage
Std. Deviation
Tamil_BRS 177 8.901 12 74% 2.9257
Tamil_AVS 177 1.12 4 28% 1.310
TAM_WR 177 1.60 4 40% 1.544
TAM_SP 177 2.93 4 73.25% 1.291
Eng_BRS 87 6.48 14 46.29% 4,36
Eng_ARS 87 0.44 2 22% 0.831
Eng_Wr 87 0.28 4 7% 0.67
Eng_Sp 87 1.33 4 33,25% 1.420
Maths_BS 163 8.51 14 60.79% 3.920
Maths_AS 163 3.54 10 35.4% 3.232
SC 167 6.37 12 53.03% 4.619
SS 149 7.25 12 60.42% 4.437
There were 177 students in ABL level 4 in Tamil out of a total of 201 students
who took the tests. The mean score in basic reading skills in Tamil (reading words,
simple sentences, vocabulary and simple direct comprehension) was 8.901 (+/- 2.93) out
of a total score of 12. In advanced reading skills (inferential comprehension) the mean
score was 1.12+/-1.31 out of a total score of 4 (table B3-1). To analyze these learning
outcomes further by seeing if there is any difference between boys and girls and between
schools, two way ANOVAs, first with Tamil-BRS as dependent variable and then with
Tamil-ARS as dependent variable were performed.
ABL Methodology
49
Figure B3-1. Graphical representation of mean scores basic reading skills in Tamil of
boys and girls in each school Estimated Marginal Means of Tamil_BRS
Non-estimable means are not plotted
PU School code
10987654321
Estim
ate
d M
argin
al M
ean
s
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
GENDER
F
M
P U School code
Table B3-2 shows the results of the two way ANOVA using gender and school as
the two factors and score on Tamil_BRS as dependent variable indicate that there is a
significant interaction of school and gender indicating that the differences in mean scores
for boys and girls is statistically significant across the schools (F8,158 = 2.56, p<0.05).
Table B3-2: Two – way ANOVA for Basic Reading Skills in Tamil
Source
Type III Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Partial Eta
Squared
Corrected Model 483.117(a) 18 26.840 4.144 .000 .321
Intercept 7611.808 1 7611.808 1175.163 .000 .881
PU_SCHOO 253.821 9 28.202 4.354 .000 .199
GENDER 14.546 1 14.546 2.246 .136 .014
PU_SCHOO * GENDER 132.481 8 16.560 2.557 .012 .115
Error 1023.403 158 6.477
Total 15530.250 177
Corrected Total 1506.520 176
a R Squared = .321 (Adjusted R Squared = .243)
ABL Methodology
50
Analyses of learning outcomes in advanced reading skills in Tamil showed that
the interaction effect of gender and school and the main effect of gender are not
significant. This is shown in table B3-3 and also graphically in figure B3-2.
Figure B3-2: Graphical representation of mean advanced reading scores of boys and girls
in each school.
Estimated Marginal Means of Tamil_AVS
Non-estimable means are not plotted
PU School code
10987654321
Estim
ate
d M
argin
al M
ean
s
5
4
3
2
1
0
GENDER
F
M
PU school code
Table B3-3: Two – way ANOVA showing main effects of gender and school and
interaction effect of gender*school on advanced reading skills score in Tamil.
Source
Type III Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 179.525(a) 18 9.974 12.880 .000
Intercept 185.018 1 185.018 238.926 .000
PU_SCHOO 91.435 9 10.159 13.120 .000
GENDER .029 1 .029 .038 .846
PU_SCHOO * GENDER 6.667 8 .833 1.076 .382
Error 122.351 158 .774
Total 522.250 177
Corrected Total 301.876 176
a R Squared = .595 (Adjusted R Squared = .549)
ABL Methodology
51
The main effect of school was significant (F9,1=13.12; p< 0.05). The adjusted R squared
was 0.549 ~ .55 indicating that school accounts for 55% of the variance seen in advanced
reading skills even when students have reached ABL level 4 in Tamil.
Similar results were seen for writing and speaking skills in Tamil and are shown in tables
B3-4 and B3-5.
Table B3-4: Two-way ANOVA table for means scores on Tamil-writing
Dependent Variable: t-wr
Source
Type III Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 218.983(a) 18 12.166 9.585 .000
Intercept 340.227 1 340.227 268.059 .000
GENDER 1.388 1 1.388 1.093 .297
PUSCHCD 151.513 9 16.835 13.264 .000
GENDER * PUSCHCD 15.922 8 1.990 1.568 .138
Error 200.537 158 1.269
Total 872.000 177
Corrected Total 419.520 176
a R Squared = .522 (Adjusted R Squared = .468)
Table B3-5: Two-way ANOVA for mean score on Tamil-speaking
Dependent Variable: T_SP
Source
Type III Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 38.224(a) 18 2.124 1.316 .184
Intercept 815.641 1 815.641 505.451 .000
GENDER .072 1 .072 .045 .833
PUSCHCD 28.870 9 3.208 1.988 .044
GENDER * PUSCHCD 7.676 8 .960 .595 .781
Error 254.963 158 1.614
Total 1815.000 177
Corrected Total 293.186 176
a R Squared = .130 (Adjusted R Squared = .031)
ABL Methodology
52
Two-way ANOVA analyses on means scores for specific skills in English, Maths
and some basic content knowledge in science and social science showed that in all the
areas except advanced reading and writing in English and advanced maths skills, the
effect of school was statistically significant (see table B3-6, 9,10, 12 and 13). This effect
is highlighted in the respective tables. In the advanced reading and writing skill in
English and in the advanced maths skill (see tables B3-7, 8, 11), there was significant
gender by school interaction, which indicated that boys and girls scored differently across
the ten schools.
Table B3-6: Two-way ANOVA table for mean score on eng_basic reading skills
Dependent Variable: E_BRS
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 1126.317(a) 14 80.451 11.399 .000
Intercept 2047.277 1 2047.277 290.087 .000
PUSCHCD 672.651 7 96.093 13.616 .000
GENDER 5.687 1 5.687 .806 .372
PUSCHCD * GENDER 34.298 6 5.716 .810 .566
Error 508.137 72 7.057
Total 5284.250 87
Corrected Total 1634.454 86
a R Squared = .689 (Adjusted R Squared = .629)
Table B3-7: Two-way ANOVA table for mean score eng-advanced reading skills
Dependent Variable: E_ARS
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 43.425(a) 14 3.102 13.977 .000
Intercept 7.181 1 7.181 32.361 .000
PUSCHCD 13.221 7 1.889 8.511 .000
GENDER .621 1 .621 2.799 .099
PUSCHCD * GENDER 3.801 6 .633 2.854 .015
Error 15.978 72 .222
Total 76.000 87
Corrected Total 59.402 86
a R Squared = .731 (Adjusted R Squared = .679)
ABL Methodology
53
Table B3-8 Two-way ANOVA table for mean score in eng-writing
Dependent Variable: E_WR
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 36.407(a) 14 2.600 96.317 .000
Intercept 1.552 1 1.552 57.494 .000
PUSCHCD 7.553 7 1.079 39.964 .000
GENDER .223 1 .223 8.249 .005
PUSCHCD * GENDER .793 6 .132 4.896 .000
Error 1.944 72 .027
Total 45.250 87
Corrected Total 38.351 86
a R Squared = .949 (Adjusted R Squared = .939)
Table B3- 9 Two-way ANOVA table for mean score on eng-speaking
Dependent Variable: E_SP
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 90.674(a) 14 6.477 5.641 .000
Intercept 162.287 1 162.287 141.359 .000
PUSCHCD 78.781 7 11.254 9.803 .000
GENDER 1.166 1 1.166 1.015 .317
PUSCHCD * GENDER 4.897 6 .816 .711 .642
Error 82.660 72 1.148
Total 328.000 87
Corrected Total 173.333 86
a R Squared = .523 (Adjusted R Squared = .430)
Table B3- 10 Two-way ANOVA table for differences in mean score in maths – basic
skills.
Dependent Variable: M_BS
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 804.993(a) 16 50.312 4.361 .000
Intercept 4662.991 1 4662.991 404.156 .000
PUSCHCD 445.626 8 55.703 4.828 .000
GENDER .692 1 .692 .060 .807
PUSCHCD * GENDER 141.933 7 20.276 1.757 .100
Error 1684.490 146 11.538
Total 14301.960 163
Corrected Total 2489.483 162
a R Squared = .323 (Adjusted R Squared = .249)
ABL Methodology
54
Table B3- 11 Two-way ANOVA table for difference in means score in maths –advanced
skills Dependent Variable: M_AS
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 1078.618(a) 16 67.414 16.028 .000
Intercept 801.431 1 801.431 190.543 .000
PUSCHCD 724.830 8 90.604 21.541 .000
GENDER 7.026 1 7.026 1.670 .198
PUSCHCD * GENDER 87.175 7 12.454 2.961 .006
Error 614.081 146 4.206
Total 3738.750 163
Corrected Total 1692.699 162
a R Squared = .637 (Adjusted R Squared = .597)
Table B3- 12 Two-way ANOVA table for difference in mean score in science
Dependent Variable: SC_TOT
Source
Type III Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 2350.740(a) 16 146.921 18.504 .000
Intercept 3054.775 1 3054.775 384.739 .000
PUSCHCD 1842.368 8 230.296 29.005 .000
GENDER .019 1 .019 .002 .961
PUSCHCD * GENDER 21.114 7 3.016 .380 .913
Error 1190.979 150 7.940
Total 10308.000 167
Corrected Total 3541.719 166
a R Squared = .664 (Adjusted R Squared = .628)
Table B3-13: Two-way ANOVA for mean scores on social science
Dependent Variable: SS_TOT
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 1532.439(a) 16 95.777 9.149 .000
Intercept 3892.564 1 3892.564 371.828 .000
PUSCHCD 1403.865 8 175.483 16.763 .000
GENDER 1.283 1 1.283 .123 .727
PUSCHCD * GENDER 28.073 7 4.010 .383 .911
Error 1381.873 132 10.469
Total 10742.500 149
Corrected Total 2914.312 148
a R Squared = .526 (Adjusted R Squared = .468)
ABL Methodology
55
It was observed that in some schools the girls to boys ratio was very high and
could have resulted in the gender differences observed in the significant interaction
effects. Since school was a factor that showed significant differences in most learning
outcomes, it was decided that the overall mean scores of all ten schools would be
compared to find which ones were significantly different from each other. It was hoped
that this would allow finding out if the differences among schools was random or
specific.
Table B3-14: Shows the mean grand total scores of each school for students who have
reached ABL level 4 in at least one subject.
School significantly
different from
Mean grand total
(with oral)
Std Error of mean School
1 62.275 4.661 2,3,4,6,8,
2 41.750 4.041 1,3,5,6,7
3# 48.372 2.704 1,2,5,6,7,
4 42.579 4.433 1,5,6,7,
5 63.406 5.211 2,3,4,6,8
6 30.838 3.032 1,2,3,4,5,7,10
7 80.133 8.788 2,3,4,6,8,10
8 36.406 5.211 1,5,7,
9 * 68.667(a) 9.826 -
10 50.000 7.768 6,7 a Based on modified population marginal mean.
Table B3-15: Schools in the sample categorized as high, average and low performing
schools.
* School 9 had only three students and therefore was not compared statistically. But the
mean score falls in the range of higher scoring schools.
It can be seen from tables B3-14 and B3-15 that there was a clear pattern of
difference in learning outcomes among the schools tested and these schools could be
Higher scoring schools Average scoring schools
Low scoring schools
1,5,7,9* 2, 3, 4,10 6,8
Mean score ranges from 60 – 80 out of 96 (62% - 83%)
Mean score ranges from 40 – 50 out of 96 (41% - 52%)
Mean score below 37 out of 96 (38%)
ABL Methodology
56
categorized as high scoring, average scoring schools with 40% schools in each of these
categories and low scoring schools with 20% schools in this category.
Further, if the proficiency in each skill area can be considered as constituting
four levels – very low (0 – 25%), low (26 – 50%), medium (51 – 75%) and high (76 –
100%), then the percentage of students falling in each proficiency level in achievement of
basic and advanced skills in reading in the languages of Tamil and English and in Maths
are different. This is shown in Table B3-16.
Table B3-16: Percentage of students in each proficiency level in basic and advanced
skills in languages and maths
Proficiency Levels
Skill Area Very Low (0-25%) Low (26-50%) Medium (51-75%) High (76 – 100%)
Tamil BRS 6.21% 11.86% 25.99% 55.93%
Tamil ARS 63.28% 18.08% 7.34% 11.30%
Eng BRS 29.89% 29.89% 16.09% 24.14%
Eng ARS 78.16% 0.00% 0.00% 21.84%
Maths BS 13.50% 15.34% 39.88% 31.29%
Maths AS 43.72% 17.79% 19.02% 14.11%
It can be seen from the above table that in Tamil, most of students in ABL level
IV have acquired basic reading skills which include reading words and simple sentences,
simple vocabulary and direct comprehension and are in high proficiency level. All the
same, most of them have not been able to acquire advanced reading skills with include
higher order inferential comprehension and are in the very low proficiency level. In
English, while half of the students in ABL level IV are below – medium proficiency
levels (below 50%) in basic reading skills, most of them are at very low level in advanced
reading skills. In mathematics, the highest percentage of students are at medium level in
acquisition of basic mathematical skills which include number concepts and arithmetic
operations but in advanced skills, which include word problems and application of
operations to money and measurement, most of the ABL level IV students are at very low
proficiency level.
RQB4 What are the differences between learning outcomes of class IV students in ABL
level four and private school class IV students in basic and advanced cognitive skills?
ABL Methodology
57
In our country, education, which is a fundamental right, has been stratified based
on socio-economic status of the students to such an extent that even basic education of
good quality, one which enables students to acquire and develop important cognitive
skills is denied to those belonging to lower socio-economic strata. While stratification of
education should ideally be based on needs of students, such a social-economically
mooted stratification results in maintaining status quo of the socio-economic hierarchies
in the society. While hardships and struggles for progress are an inevitable part of life,
the deliberate processes contributing to the same through inequitable educational services
by our schools need to be removed. Education of high quality must be provided in our
government schools irrespective of the socio-economic and cultural background of the
student. Such a good quality education can be conceived of as one where the student, at
the end of class IV has acquired high levels of proficiency in basic and advanced reading
skills and mathematical skills.
Private schools, which cater to the middle and higher socio-economic strata of
student population, subscribe to CBSE board syllabus and offer better infrastructure
facilities and government schools that subscribe to state board and may or may not offer
adequate infrastructure facilities all have to finally help their students build cognitive
skills and abilities. Research question B5 was written and analyzed keeping in mind the
vast differences in public or government schools and private schools.
The rationale for this question was that although it is a well-known fact that these
schools differ in so many ways, it is important to quantify and compare the educational
achievement of students in these schools. To address this question, scores on written test
on particular subject for private school students and public school students who were in
level 4 in that subject was compared. In languages, this over all score was broken down
into basic reading skills, advanced reading skills and writing skills from the written test,
in maths the scores on basic math skills and advanced math skills and in content
knowledge of EVS, knowledge in science and social science will be analyzed.
Tamil:
The total number of students who were in ABL ladder or level IV at the time of
testing was 177. There were 80 students from the much sought after private schools in the
same locality who took the same exam. Hence the total number of students in this
ABL Methodology
58
comparison was 257. The total score on in Tamil, which included basic reading skills of
vocabulary and simple direct comprehension, advanced reading skill of indirect
inferential comprehension and writing skills were assessed. The mean scores for these
two groups of students on the total score in Tamil and in each of the skill areas is shown
in Table B4-1
Table B4-1: Mean scores obtained in Tamil – overall and skill areas for public (ABL
level IV) and private school students.
School Type Tamil-total Tamil_BRS Tamil_ARS Tamil_Wr
Private 12.55 +/- 3.12 7.07 +/- 1.43 2.76 +/-1.45 2.75 +/-1.18
Public 8.2 +/- 4.41 5.48 +/- 2.38 1.12 +/-1.55 1.60 +/- 1.54
The pattern of differences in mean scores for the overall score in Tamil and in the
specific skill areas tested is similar as can be seen from the above table. In addition, it can
be seen that there is a higher variability of score in public schools students than in private
school students. One way ANOVAs for each of the above scores were performed using
school type as the factor of interest. All the ANOVAs showed that the differences in
scores between the two groups of schools were significant. The ANOVA for total Tamil
score is shown in Table B4-2 below.
Table B4-2: One way ANOVA test for effect of school type on total score in Tamil in the
written test. Dependent Variable: TW_TOT
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 1040.355(a) 1 1040.355 63.279 .000
Intercept 23727.714 1 23727.714 1443.224 .000
SCHTYP 1040.355 1 1040.355 63.279 .000
Error 4192.398 255 16.441
Total 28701.410 257
Corrected Total 5232.753 256
a R Squared = .199 (Adjusted R Squared = .196)
It can be seen that the school type has a significant effect on the total written score
in Tamil (F1,255 = 63.28, p<0.05). The similar result was obtained for each of the specific
skills for the individual one way ANOVAs performed. In order to test if there were
gender differences in the total Tamil scores, a two-way ANOVA was performed using
ABL Methodology
59
gender and school type as two factors of two levels each and the total score in Tamil
(written test) as the dependent variable. This test showed that there was no effect of
gender on the differences in mean scores seen in Table B4-1. The result of the two way
ANOVA including gender as a factor is shown in Table B4-3.
Table B4-3: Two-way ANOVA on total Tamil score with gender and school type as
factors.
Dependent Variable: TW_TOT
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 1134.648(a) 3 378.216 23.349 .000
Intercept 21089.441 1 21089.441 1301.974 .000
SCHTYP 1016.445 1 1016.445 62.751 .000
GENDER 44.322 1 44.322 2.736 .099
SCHTYP * GENDER 12.424 1 12.424 .767 .382
Error 4098.105 253 16.198
Total 28701.410 257
Corrected Total 5232.753 256
a R Squared = .217 (Adjusted R Squared = .208)
This table shows that there is no interaction between school type and gender and
that only the main effect of school type is significant (F1, 253 = 62.75 , p <0.05). This is
shown graphically in figure B4-1.
Figure B4-1: Graphical representation of the mean total Tamil scores of private and
public school students. Estimated Marginal Means of TW_TOT
SCHTYP
PublicPrivate
Estim
ate
d M
argin
al M
ean
s
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
GENDER
F
M
ABL Methodology
60
School Type
English:
The total number of public school students who were in ABL ladder or level IV in
English at the time of testing was 87. The number of students in private schools was 80
and there were a total of 167 students who were included in this analysis. The mean total
scores in the written test in English of students in public and private schools are shown in
table B4-4. These scores are those of total score, and skill-wise score. The performance
on advanced reading skill in English is given as a percentage of students who score 0 and
2 on the only question that sought to assess this skill. These percentages are shown in
table B4-4b.
Table B4-4a
School Type English-total English-BRS English-Wr
Private 13.07 +/- 3.34 8.47 +/- 2.17 2.93 +/- 1.17
Public 5.08 +/- 4.50 4.50 +/- 3.47 0.28 +/- 0.67
Table B4-4b
English_ARS score 0 English_ARS score 2
Private 8.38% 39.52%
Public 40.72% 11.38%
It can be seen from table B4-4a that the mean total and skill-wise scores of private school
students was higher than those of public schools. In addition, the mean scores for public
schools showed a wider variation than the mean scores for private schools. A one-way
ANOVA was performed with school type as the factor and total score in English as
dependent variable to test the significance of these differences. This test showed that the
difference in total score was significant (F1,165 = 167.45, p<0.05) as seen in table B4-5.
One-way ANOVAs were also performed similarly to test the significance of mean scores
on basic reading skills and writing skills. The results of these tests too showed that the
differences seen in table B4-4a were significant.
ABL Methodology
61
Table B4-5: One way ANOVA to test effect of school type on mean total score in English
in written test. Dependent Variable: EW_TOT
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 2659.503(a) 1 2659.503 167.436 .000
Intercept 13728.030 1 13728.030 864.285 .000
SCHTYP 2659.503 1 2659.503 167.436 .000
Error 2620.809 165 15.884
Total 18529.750 167
Corrected Total 5280.311 166
a R Squared = .504 (Adjusted R Squared = .501)
In order to test for added impact of gender, a two-way ANOVA was performed
for total English written score with school type and gender as two factors. The results of
this test are shown in table B4-6. It can be seen in this table that there is no significant
interaction of gender and school type nor is there a significant main effect of gender.
There is however a significant main effect of school type (F1,163 = 161.72, p<0.05) as
seen before.
Table B4-6: Two-way ANOVA testing effects of gender and school type and their
interaction on total score on written English test.
Dependent Variable: EW_TOT
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 2701.670(a) 3 900.557 56.926 .000
Intercept 12784.810 1 12784.810 808.148 .000
SCHTYP 2558.377 1 2558.377 161.719 .000
GENDER 37.807 1 37.807 2.390 .124
SCHTYP * GENDER 1.860 1 1.860 .118 .732
Error 2578.641 163 15.820
Total 18529.750 167
Corrected Total 5280.311 166
a R Squared = .512 (Adjusted R Squared = .503)
Similar results were obtained for score on basic reading skills and writing skills.
For advanced reading skills in English there was only one question, which had a correct
or wrong response. A correct response got a score of 2 while a wrong response got a
ABL Methodology
62
score of 0. Hence the numbers of students in public and private school, who got either a
correct or wrong response was counted and their percentages were compared and this is
shown in table B4-4b. It can be seen in this table that private schools have much lower
percentage of students with score 0 and much higher percentage of students with score 2
as compared to public schools.
Maths:
The number of public school students who were in ABL level IV in maths at the
time of testing was 163 and the total number of students was 243 including 80 students
from the private school. It can be seen for the table B4-7 that the mean scores for total,
basic and advanced mathematics skills is higher for private school students than for
public school students.
Table B4-7
School Type Maths-total Maths _BMS Maths _AMS
Private 19.17 +/- 3.77 12.33 +/- 1.81 6.77 +/- 2.61
Public 12.06 +/- 6.59 8.51 +/- 3.92 3.54 +/- 3.23
To test if these differences are statistically significant, one way ANOVAs were
conducted with school type as the independent variable factor and total score, score on
basic maths skills and scores of advanced maths skills separately.
Table B4-8: One-way ANOVA for effect of school type on total maths score.
Dependent Variable: M_TOT
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 2667.482(a) 1 2667.482 78.868 .000
Intercept 52110.369 1 52110.369 1540.715 .000
SCHTYP 2667.482 1 2667.482 78.868 .000
Error 8151.149 241 33.822
Total 61045.960 243
Corrected Total 10818.631 242
a R Squared = .247 (Adjusted R Squared = .243)
ABL Methodology
63
The ANOVA showed that the difference in mean total score in maths is
statistically significant (F1,241 = 78.67, p<0.05). The results obtained for the total scores
(table B4-8) were replicated for the basic and advanced skills in maths.
In order to test if there were significant gender differences also among the mean
total scores of private and public schools, a two way ANOVA was performed with school
type and gender as the two factors and total math scores as dependent variable. This test
showed there was no significant interaction between school type and gender, which
means that the gender differences in mean total math scores for public and private
schools, was not statistically different. In addition, there was no significant main effect of
gender, which means that boys and girls don‟t differ significantly in their mean total
maths score. However, as before, there as a significant difference in mean total maths
score between public and private schools (F1,329 = 72.59, p<0.05).
Table B4-9: Two – way ANOVA testing effect of school type and gender on total maths
scores. Dependent Variable: M_TOT
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 2676.829(a) 3 892.276 26.192 .000
Intercept 46945.046 1 46945.046 1378.057 .000
SCHTYP 2472.925 1 2472.925 72.592 .000
GENDER 8.907 1 8.907 .261 .610
SCHTYP * GENDER .342 1 .342 .010 .920
Error 8141.802 239 34.066
Total 61045.960 243
Corrected Total 10818.631 242
a R Squared = .247 (Adjusted R Squared = .238)
Environmental Science:
Content knowledge is taught in elementary school as the subject of science and
social science and is collectively referred to as environmental science. The mean total
scores in each of these subjects for private and public school students is shown in table
B4-10. It can be seen here also, that the mean total score in the subjects is much lower for
public schools than for private schools.
ABL Methodology
64
Table B4-10: The mean total scores in subjects of science and social science. (sample
sizes re indicted in the brackets).
It can be seen, here again, that private school students fare higher than public
school students with show a lesser variation than the latter. Table B4-11 shows the one-
way ANOVA that was performed to test if these differences in mean scores was
statistically significant. It can be seen here that the differences were statistically
significant as F1,245 = 25.19, p<0.05.
Table B4-11: One-way ANOVA showing the effect of school type on total science score. Dependent Variable: SC_TOT
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 402.672(a) 1 402.672 25.108 .000
Intercept 12926.275 1 12926.275 805.987 .000
SCHTYP 402.672 1 402.672 25.108 .000
Error 3929.265 245 16.038
Total 17311.250 247
Corrected Total 4331.937 246
a R Squared = .093 (Adjusted R Squared = .089)
Similar results were obtained for social sciences and here too, the differences in
mean scores between private and public schools was found to be significant (F1,227 =
13.81, p <0.05) as seen in table B4-12. In both thee cases, there were no significant
differences in mean scores among boys and girls (results not shown).
School Type Science
(N=247)
Social Science
(N=229)
Private 9.09 +/- 2.22
(n=80)
9.26 +/-2.66
(n=80)
Public 6.37 +/- 4.62
(n=167)
7.25 +/- 4.44
(n=149)
ABL Methodology
65
Table B4-12 : One-way ANOVA showing the effect of school type on total social science
score.
Dependent Variable: SS_TOT
Source Type III Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 211.172(a) 1 211.172 13.807 .000
Intercept 14189.862 1 14189.862 927.789 .000
SCHTYP 211.172 1 211.172 13.807 .000
Error 3471.800 227 15.294
Total 18163.500 229
Corrected Total 3682.972 228
a R Squared = .057 (Adjusted R Squared = .053)
Research Question B5: To what extent does ABL level effect learning outcomes in
English and Maths?
Since the ABL methodology is created in such a way that students move along the
ladders developing their skills and competencies, there should be significant differences
in learning outcome of students in each ABL level. This reflects the discriminatory ability
of the instructional methodology. Further, in the population of students tested, the subject
in which there was maximum variability in ABL levels was English (table B5-1)
followed by Mathematics (B5-3). Hence, in this research question, the effect of ABL
level on learning outcomes is tested.
Table B5-1: Means scores and standard deviation of total score in English for students in
each of the four ABL levels who took the test. Dependent Variable: E_TOT
EngABLlvl Mean Std. Deviation N
1 .000 .0000 2
2 8.352 5.1419 27
3 8.582 5.1564 85
4 8.391 6.1731 87
Total 8.383 5.6312 201
ABL Methodology
66
Table B5-2: one-way ANOVA for test of effect of ABL level on total score in English.
Dependent Variable: E_TOT
Source
Type III Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 143.959(a) 3 47.986 1.525 .209
Intercept 1144.674 1 1144.674 36.383 .000
ENGABLLV 143.959 3 47.986 1.525 .209
Error 6198.044 197 31.462
Total 20467.500 201
Corrected Total 6342.002 200
a R Squared = .023 (Adjusted R Squared = .008)
Figure B5-1 Estimated Marginal Means of E_TOT
EngABLlvl
4321
Estim
ate
d M
arg
ina
l M
ea
ns
10
8
6
4
2
0
Table B5-3: Mean and std dev of total score on maths for students in different ABL levels
in Maths. Dependent Variable: M_TOTAL
MathsABLlvl Mean Std. Deviation N
2 12.500 4.9497 2
3 12.472 5.6175 36
4 12.056 6.5862 163
Total 12.135 6.3881 201
ABL Methodology
67
Table B5-4 One way ANOVA for effect of ABL level in math on total math score
Dependent Variable: M_TOTAL
Source
Type III Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Corrected Model 5.382(a) 2 2.691 .065 .937
Intercept 2567.979 1 2567.979 62.340 .000
MATHSABL 5.382 2 2.691 .065 .937
Error 8156.274 198 41.193
Total 37759.710 201
Corrected Total 8161.656 200
a R Squared = .001 (Adjusted R Squared = -.009)
Figure B5-2 Estimated Marginal Means of M_TOTAL
MathsABLlvl
432
Estim
ate
d M
argin
al M
ean
s
12.6
12.5
12.4
12.3
12.2
12.1
12.0
The results of this analysis indicate that the progression of students along the
ABL levels or ladders in English and Maths is not clearly related to attainment of
learning outcomes. Nevertheless it points to an aspect of the methodology, which needs
to be explored further.
ABL Methodology
68
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The pedagogical innovation of ABL methodology and its implementation has
proved many things. First, when the government has a will to create a large-scale change,
it can definitely do so. Secondly there are ways to solve the socio-culturally related
problems faced by government school students such as absenteeism due to variety of
reasons and increase and improve access and quality of education. All the same, it is very
important to realize that there could be more than one ways to address these problems.
The research findings about the educational experiences and learning outcomes as
revealed in this study have been discussed below.
Educational Experiences
The main aspects of educational experience that have been focused upon in this
study are the nature of activities in the ABL methodology, nature of activities in the ABL
classroom and the experience of students with disabilities in the ABL classrooms, which
are supposed to be inclusive in nature.
The activities in the ABL instructional materials that support learning in all three
aspects of the learning process appropriately were analyzed in research question A1. Here
it can be seen from table A1-3, that reading was the predominant activity used for
information input and information processing while talking and writing are the most-used
activities for expression information. This does not seem to take adequate consideration
for the individual differences in each of these learning processes.
Classroom observations in this study were done in about 80% of schools in the
same location which is a more denser sample size as compared to previous studies that
covered larger areas but only 20 to 40% of schools in the total area covered. Such a
denser sampling allowed the study to capture variations in implementation of the ABL
methodology and study the benefits and challenges of the same. The data obtained from
classroom observations showed that the major learning related activities was students
studying on their own which reinforces the observations by Vijay Kumar et al. (2009).
However, this was seen to be done be very few students for the entire observations
session of 45 minutes while the majority of students were actively engaged in their own
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learning activity for a period of even lesser than 15 minutes. Further, during the self study
time of all students – both those who consistently worked on their own cards and those
who inconsistently did so, the major activity was writing. They were writing in their
notebooks, slates, workbooks, or the blackboard. Whenever, after an observation session,
the researcher asked the student to read out what the student had written, the student was
not able to read it. Only one or two of nearly 10 students who were asked were able to
read what they had written. This is a cause of concern as it shows that students are using
direct copy for writing rather that reproducing what they can read and needs to be
attended to.
It was found that a good proportion of time during a 45-minute duration was spent
on looking for ABL cards. This indicates that expecting students of 5-11 age group to be
systematic about 2000 odd cards is probably not very realistic. This is the age group
where the interest to play supercedes self control and self direction and discipline has to
be nurtured judiciously rather than just thrust them with the enormous responsibility of
arranging so many cards properly at the end of each class session. Ideally, this re
arrangement is not a big problem as if each student replaces their card properly, but in
reality, this has not been seen to happen. Sometimes, the smaller children keep the cards
in the wrong box and yet other times, students drop the cards in just any bin to run out of
class during break time. This is not a very uncommon phenomenon for this age group and
can definitely be seen even in traditional classrooms although in the latter the number of
items to be kept properly is much lesser and hence the chaos. Another problems faced by
students sometimes is that two students reach the same card and one has to wait for the
other and waste time.
Most of the students in the sample observed were found to begin looking in their
cards initially and then drifting away into other learning unrelated activities. Some of
these students seemed bright while others seemed dull or slow. The former probably lost
the challenge for learning while the latter probably found the card too difficult. There was
always a group of students who evaded the teacher‟s attention throughout the 45-minute
session. Whenever the teacher would attend to this group, they would attend to their work
for a few minutes and revert back to their previous activity. It was observed that the
teacher was always preoccupied with one student or a small group and was not able to
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pay attention to the students at the back of the class. This seems to be just similar or
probably worse than a traditional classroom where teachers were at least able to see the
backbenchers and direct them to some work and include them as the teacher had the
opportunity to be more responsive to the entire class. Unfortunately, there is no data on
such matters in a traditional classroom.
All schools had supplementary reading materials but they were seen in use very
few times during the course of observations. When the teachers were asked, they
mentioned that students were given the books after lunch hour, during blank card time,
when they had to wait for their card or after the last ABL class was over. However,
during the few times that supplementary readers were used that were observed, it was
seen that most of the students in a particular ABL level were not able to read readers of
that level. This again is a cause of concern regarding development of independent reading
abilities. Certain other though-provoking observations are enumerated below and need
reconsideration.
- A lot of blackboard writing is emphasized in the method. It was seen that students
spend a lot of time on rewriting in response to the teacher‟s instructions to write
big but at the end of it, they cant even read whey write. This is because they write
by directly copying from their card. This phenomenon questions the extent to
which writing on the black board as it is done now, supports learning. It also
questions to the way the black board for students should be used. Is it to be used
for students to write for the sake of writing on the black board like the teacher or
is it to be used a s means for enabling learning? It is imperative that the purpose
of blackboard writing is revisited as a lot of student time is spend more
productively.
- Although the ABL methodology intends to de emphasize rote learning, by making
students write repeatedly in slate, then blackboard and then note book and yet
again in the workbook, it actually promoted copy writing which is probably why
when students were asked to read out what they have written, they were not able
to read.
- A lot of time was found spent on searching for cards. Teachers typically give the
last five minutes of the class for students to arrange the cards in their bins
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properly but invariably this does not get done. Due to this, many times class time
is spent searching for the card. This raised the questions, is it justified to expect
that children at the elementary age group should keep track of nearly 200 cards
for each level in each subject? Isn‟t this the age when they learn to be systematic
and would loading them with such mechanical expectations be appropriate?
- It was observed that there was in general more order and better focus on work in
the classes that had small tables and chairs for children rather then when they
were seated on the floor (see photos section). It seemed on observation that sitting
on the chairs and having a work place on a table (albeit shared space) seemed to
have a motivating and engaging effect on the students and relieved the teacher of
the physical trouble of having to sit on the floor continuously which is a difficulty
thing many times at the middle age. Even teachers seemed to be better engaged
with their student‟s progress and able to give attention for all students when the
class was had tables and chairs (see section on photos).
- A lot of student time is spent on activities for keeping the school clean and
serving the teachers. It was observed in the course of this study, that many times
students are instructed to sweep the classrooms, corridors, clean urinals, water
sumps and washing teachers‟ lunch boxes. Why should students have to do all
this? Shouldn‟t all this time should be ideally spent for learning activities. While
clean-up activities have their value and should be inculcated, the way the public
school students are made to work is akin to child labour.
- Many times it was observed that teachers were busy with clerical work and being
able to only partially attend to the students. This calls for the need to revisit
teacher‟s duties and their expectations.
Inclusion of students with disabilities in the regular or general education classes
has progressed under the SSA through the Integrated Education Department of the Block.
This department has been instrumental in bringing awareness of the importance of
sending students with disabilities to school in the community. This has resulted in higher
number of students with disabilities joining schools rather than stay at home. However,
the very high school to special education teacher ratio is counter-productive to its
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effectiveness. Most of the students with mild disabilities are educated in the regular
school itself. The special education teacher visits the school periodically and counsels the
teacher and the peers to support and on how to help the child with disability learn.
Since the student is in regular school all day, the student just loiters or stays in the
class without actually learning much as the teacher‟s attention in the ABL class is
devoted to repeated individual instructions, attention to students to come to seek her help
and is unable to attend to the slow learners as well as students with disability. Secondly,
teachers, naturally, out of care, come up with ways to address the students‟ presence in
school and might not be receptive to the special educators‟ counsel as the latter is a rare
visitor to the school. This would be on the premise that what would the special education
who sees the child once in a month or fortnight advice a teacher who sees the child
everyday? The resulting non-cooperation contributes to the reduced effectiveness of the
IED center and is probably a reason for the slow progress of students with disabilities in
inclusive classes as one special education teacher for one school has been shown to be
more beneficial for inclusion of students with disabilities in general education classes
(Das and Kattumuri, n.d.).
In one of the five cases in this study, it was seen that the student got individual
attention and was thus able to progress well cognitively. Further, Das and Kattumuri
(2010) showed that when one resource teacher is present in a school for the students with
disabilities in that school, the students were benefited as they could spent a lot of time
during the week with the resource teacher. This indicates that reducing the ratio of special
educator to school would be a necessary step to make inclusive education and education
for students with disabilities effective.
Learning outcomes
In order to study the learning outcomes of students at elementary school, first the
percent of students‟ progress of class IV students with respect to reaching ABL level four
was tracked using three time points during the academic year – October, January and
April. Then, the students who were in ABL level IV were assessed for their linguistic and
mathematical skills and content knowledge in EVS using a simple, commonly
administered independent test. Using these scores, the learning outcomes of students in
class IV in public schools were studied in three major ways. First, the variations in basic
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and advanced skills were studied with in the population of public school students tested,
then the variations among schools included in the study were analyzed and then, the
learning outcomes were studied in comparison with similar outcomes for students in
private schools. Finally, as English and mathematics have been shown to be the most
underachieving subject, the effect of ABL level on learning outcomes in these areas have
also been studied.
The percentages of students who have reached ABL level four in class IV at the
year end, on an average is 59.63%. The individual percentages of students in ABL level
IV for each subject at the end of the year, in April, are Tamil - 68.14%, English - 40.06%,
Maths - 55.84%, Science - 70.03% and Social Science - 63.09%. The percentages of
students in ABL level IV in Tamil, Maths and EVS are similar to the percentage of
students showing satisfactory levels of achievements in a previous study by Vijay Kumar,
Venkatesan, Kannappan & Sekhar (2009). This satisfactory level of achievement was a
minimum of 50% on a composite score obtained from the milestone levels and marks on
latest test. This shows that the progress in achievement is in line with the sequence of
cards planned for in the ABL methodology. However, whether this picture of
achievements also reflects achievements of specific cognitive skills is not clear and needs
to be seen.
Further, it can also be seen from table B1-1 and figure B1-1, that progress to ABL
level 4 in each subject during both durations from October to January and from January
to April was different. While the changes seen in languages was positive but reduced, in
Maths, the percentage of children in ABL level IV actually reduced in the second
duration. Similar trend was seen for science and social science was seen but to a lesser
extent. Some reasons for this could be that during the months of February, March and
April, the teachers got busy with census duty and later with election duty. Due to the
respective trainings followed with the actual work for these duties, the teachers had to
manage running the school by sharing classes and by sharing the work. All these could
have resulted in some attrition of learning. There was also long and frequent absentees in
the second half of the year and therefore, these numbers, which reflect the number of
students attending school as of the dates when data was collected did not include them.
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In the learning outcomes assessment in this study, the percentage of mean score
overall was 49.33% (out of a total of 96). In Tamil, Maths and EVS, the percentages was
58.67%, 50.58% and 66.56% (table B2-3), which is all above the 50% satisfactory level
of the composite score in the Vijay Kumar, Venkatesan, Kannappan & Sekhar (2009)
study. When the overall mean percentage in Tamil was broken down skill wise, it was
seen that students scored above 50% in basic reading skill, and speaking while their score
in advanced reading skill and writing was below 50% (table B3-1). Similarly, in
mathematics, mean score percentage for basic skills was above 50% while that for
advanced skills was below 50%. In EVS, the scores for science and social science were
both above 50% (table B3-1).
This shows that while basic reading skills and speaking skills in Tamil have been
developed satisfactorily, advanced reading and writing skills have not. This indicates that
instruction using the ABL methodology in Tamil and Maths was able to facilitate
learning of basic reading skills and basic maths skills while not able to help them build
the advanced skills in these cognitive areas. This possibly is due to the fact pointed out by
Prema, Subbiah, Ramnath & Subramanian (2009) that the many teachers found that
students‟ memory was not very good as they learned from the cards because advanced
cognitive skills require retention of information obtained through basic cognitive skills
(Garner, 1987).
Learning outcomes in English were not studied in the previous studies but were
analyzed in this study. Here, the mean score percentage for all the component skills tested
– basic reading, advanced reading, writing and speaking, were all below 50%. These low
outcomes in English are cause of concern. And factors causing them and that can
alleviate them need to be explored.
English and Maths are two subjects where students‟ scores were least. It was seen
that among the population of class IV, ABL level IV students tested, most variation in
ABL level was seen in English and Maths. That is, there were students in ABL levels
1,2,3 and 4 who took the English test on the learning outcomes assessment test because
they had reached ABL level 4 in any one of the other subjects. This therefore provided an
opportunity to analyze whether ABL level had any significant effect on learning
outcome. This analysis, shown in research question B5 showed that there was no
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significant effect of ABL level on learning language skills in English. Similar results
were seen for mathematics. This probably relates to the finding that ABL materials were
not including enough lessons on advanced mathematics (Prema, Subbiah, Ramnath &
Subramanian, 2009).
Deeper analysis of learning outcomes across the gender and schools were
conducted to understand the factors that had an effect on acquisition of these skills
beyond that of the methodology. It was found that basic reading skills were significantly
different for boys and girls across different schools while for advanced reading skills,
writing and speaking skills, boys and girls‟ learning outcomes were not very different
from each other but there were differences across schools. These results indicate that
some sort of implementation differences exist across schools that can result in better or
worse outcomes in reading abilities in Tamil. A second reason for this could also be that
in some of the schools, where the teachers conducted the test, the teachers had helped the
students to different extents. One example of help rendered was the teacher would read
the paragraph, and questions and explain the meaning of them same, elicit appropriate
answer from the students and help them translate the answer to English. A third possible
reason for this is that some schools were more liberal than the others in moving students
to the ABL level IV at the year end and this could have been reflected as poor
performance in the test.
The present study shows that basic and advanced levels of learning outcomes in
languages and mathematics are low for government school students a compared to private
school students in the same geographical location. Some reasons for these could be the
reduced levels of scholastic advantage afforded to government school students due to
reduced levels of parental education, higher age of beginning schooling and lack of
support for academics at home. It was seen from the initial demographic data collected
that while most of the students in private schools went to pre-school, LKG and UKG
before entering class I, very few of the public school students had that experience.
Further, many of the public school students went to balwadis or anganwadis. But these
are centers for child care and hence have not bee providing much cognitive support as the
pre-school to UKG programs outside. Further, the private schools used traditional
methods of instruction and also sometimes activities and audio-video which along with a
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more challenging curriculum of CBSE, could be putting the students at better advantage
for development of cognitive skills.
Limitations of the study
One limitation of the study, which could have played a role here is that the tests
were conducted by the teachers themselves and in some schools, they did report that
students needs some guidance or extra time for completing the tests. Therefore, the test
needs to be strengthened, teachers and students need more awareness of its importance
and the need for integrity during testing.
Another limitation is that the skills and knowledge were analyzed in this test
through only about two items. A more rigorous test would include more items to test for
development of the cognitive skills tested. Here, due to time constraint, this was not done
but it has nevertheless been able to show differences in learning outcomes of cognitive
skills.
Conclusion
The ABL methodology has been an instrument for change in many ways in our
current elementary education system. It has been able to create ways to allow students
progress in these levels at their own developmental rate, not suffer from absenteeism and
make the classroom more child-friendly. However, due to the restrictions of the way we
define primary education classes at the end and beginning of the school year, students are
being promoted to each successive class at the end of the school year, irrespective of the
ABL level they are in. This creates a problem at the end of class IV and for class V as
nearly half of the students are not able to read, do basic mathematics at class V.
It can be seen from the results of research question A1 that in most of the
subjects, reading is an important activity for information input. But the learning outcomes
analysis in research questions in part B shows that the basic and advanced reading skills
of students in level 4 in the languages, especially Tamil, is not developed to the extent
that they can independently read and comprehend what they have read. Since this
comprehension is critical to understanding the material that is to be read, it determines to
a great extent whether the student will engage with his learning independently from the
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cards or not. Research question A2 shows from classroom observations that most
students did not spend even 15 minutes on an average working attentively to their cards
in any subject. This indicates that although the methodology of ABL plans for a variety
of activities for learning at each stage of input, process and expression o information, and
even makes it interesting many times, something more is needed to make learning
outcomes more effective.
It is important to understand that the goal of universal elementary education of
high quality is the major focus while the methodology adopted is only a means to the end
or the process for attaining the goal. To this end, it is important to glean the merits of
different methodologies of instruction at elementary level and use them judiciously to
achieve the goal of high quality elementary education for all our country‟s children.
Towards this end, the following recommendations that arise out of this study have been
made.
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RECOMMENDATIONS
The following major recommendations arise out of this study.
1. Provisions for appointment of maid and administrative assistant in proportion to
strength of the school.
SSA has made many efforts to ensure that every school has infrastructure
standards of classrooms, buildings, kitchens and toilets. In addition, each school needs
one or two cleaner person/s (maid or aayamma) and at least one administrative assistant
so that the students can be relieved of spending a good deal of time on manual labour
which is akin to child labour and the teacher can be relieved of too much administrative
work. This way more time by teachers and students can be spent on education related
work and improve quality of learning in the public schools.
2. Strengthen the balwadi and anganwadis to nurture early cognitive development.
Most private school students have the advantage of attending pre-school
programs that are cognitively supporting while the public school students do not.
Balwadis and anganwadis need to be strengthened the with respect to their pre-school
programs and support staff. This will help make good use of the critical period of
language and cognitive development and put the students entering class I at a readiness
advantage and make their elementary education more successful. This will also facilitate
early detection of any learning problems that may be faced by any child. This relates to
operationalizing Section 11 of chapter III of the RTE Act, 2009 (early childhood care and
education).
2. Redefine curriculum in elementary education.
We know due to research in cognitive neurosciences and psychology that
students differ in their cognitive development levels and abilities at the ages 5-10.
Elementary education curriculum needs to be skill focused rather that focused in
completing particular number of units as mentioned in the National Curriculum
Framework, 2005. Further, the RTE Act, 2009, also specifies that good quality
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elementary education must be provided by the central and local authorities (Chapter III,
section 8(g) and section 9(h)). To make this possible, first of all, we need to have a set of
learning outcome benchmarks for elementary education.
In classes I and II, more stress should be laid on development of reading,
writing, listening and communication skills. In classes III and IV, this should be
continued with more materials and opportunities for development of these skills at
advanced levels. Instructional methods should be wholesome as to address different
learning needs and optimum levels of challenge.
Each method, lecture, ABL or any other method have their merits and
limitations and they must be judiciously used to attain the final goal of high quality in
education through successful educational experiences and outcomes. Supplementary
reading materials must be used within the classroom to increase reading and listening
opportunities. Subject relevant activities need to be implemented to a much greater extent
to bring about cognitive development in each area.
3. Student‟s time in school must be respected by each aspect of the education system.
(figure 1).
At the education system level, efforts must be made to ensure teachers do not
have to compromise on their classroom time. Training programs and meetings should be
planned such that sudden and frequent absence of teacher from the class is avoided. At
the level of the schools, teachers and school heads must ensure that under no
circumstance, the school time of the students is compromised. Further, teachers must be
made aware of the deleterious effects of their frequent absenteeism on student‟s
motivation in class.
Further, students must not be made to do jobs such as sweep the corridors and
classrooms, clean the water tanks, wash teacher‟s lunch boxes etc as a routine impinging
on classroom time. While such activities have a value for cleanliness as a lesson, their
overuse in government schools is testimony of the government‟s stand on child labour
and child‟s educational rights and need to be removed. There can instead be a clean up
time at the end of the school day when students tidy up the classroom and the school
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premises about once a week or so and this should be instilled in all schools irrespective of
school type.
4. Progress monitoring and responsive instruction.
Provisions have been given in the RTE Act, 2009 for assessing the ability of the
students and tailoring instruction accordingly (Chapter IV, section 24(1)(d); Chapter V,
Section 29(2)(h)). Further, the system of detention and that of anti-detention have both
shown to be detrimental to improving quality of our education system in their own ways.
Further, although continuous progress monitoring is being implemented in some schools
through regular periodic tests, instruction does not respond to their needs based on their
performance. Hence we should have a continuous progress monitoring and responsive
instruction in classroom and appropriate supports should be provided at the level of the
schools and education system.
5. Provide student-friendly seating facilities to classrooms.
It was clearly seen in this study that classrooms where students and teachers were
seated in floors had more chaos and less order than classrooms that had small chairs and
tables for students and a big table and chair for teachers. In the latter, it was also seen that
teachers were able to pay better attention to all students in the class (see photographs in
photos section.)
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APPENDIX
Appendix A: Letter of permission from SSA-TN - See attached pdf document –„Letter of
permission from SSA-TN‟
Appendix B: Learning outcomes assessment test - See attached pdf document – „CRY-
NCRRF – ABL project – Learning Outcomes Assessment – English Version‟, „CRY-
NCRRF – ABL project – Learning Outcomes Assessment – Tamil Version‟ , „Tamil oral
test‟ and „English oral test‟
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PHOTOS
Photos a& b
ABL classes with students and teacher seated on the floor
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Photos c & d
ABL classes where there were small tables for students to write on and the teacher had a
table and chair
ABL Methodology
86
Photos e & f
ABL classes where students had small table and chairs and teacher had her table and
chair. The teacher was able to sit with the students in different tables to address their
needs.
ABL Methodology
87
Photo g
ABL card stand that needs to be maintained by the students at the end of every class and
invariably does not, due to which a lot of time is spent on searching for cards.