The
question of measurement is considered to be the most vital one in science, even
after the recent stupendous scientific and technological advances in its manifold
aspects. Similar attention to measurement is now being given in the fields of
social science and education. More and more research workers are trying to adopt
and/or develop scientific techniques in order to sharpen the process of measurement.
Although human behaviour is extremely complex and is considered likely to escape
all the means of measurement, it is very pertinent to focus attention on analyzing
this behaviour as analytically and scientifically as possible.
The crux
of the matter in studying, explaining and predicting educational achievement is
evaluation-a more comprehensive term than measurement preferred by the social
scientist. Educational achievement seems to defy all attempts of measurement and
evaluation. As soon as one starts defining it and then searching for evidences
in terms of human behaviours-essentially verbal behaviour-one is intrigued to
find that both in the process of learning and in the process of evaluation of
learning out-comes, in one way of the other, language as a medium of communication
plays the most vital and significant role. One cannot think of educational achievement
in the absence of language. Therefore, he development of language skills should
become the first and foremost goal of educational institutions, particularly of
the nursery and primary schools, and it is very important that they put their
best efforts to develop these skills in young children. If
one examines the conditions in Indian schools, particularly at the primary stage,
one is appalled to observe the neglect of the development of language skills in
the mother tongue. One of the reasons for this neglect is that an average teacher
tends to under-estimate the need for any formal training in the mother tongue.
He seems to believe that since it is his mother tongue, the child is capable of
using it, even without cultivating it. It is not an exaggeration to say that the
whole bias in our schools is towards promoting the achievement in subjects rather
than in language and whatever precious little is done in language teaching is
heavily oriented towards the teaching of literature instead of the development
of language skills. Although a history of more than a century is behind the controversy
of medium-the mother tongue or English-through which an Indian child should be
given education (Wood's Despatch, 1854), it has taken a dramatic turn after the
independence of the country. Since then zealous efforts have been made in certain
quarters to insist on an immediate change of the medium of instruction from English
to the mother tongue at all levels of education without ever talking cognizance
of the state of affairs in the teaching of the mother tongue in educational institutions.
Those who are acknowledgeable about researches on the National and International
levels I both areas-academic achievement and language learning-are more grieved
to see that the enthusiasm over the change of medium of instruction is not accompanied
by making similar vigorous attempts for improving the teaching of the mother tongue.
The switch-over will be detrimental to the standard of achievement at all levels
if it is not reinforced by substantial efforts for raising the attainment in language
skills of students in general and particularly of those opting for the mother
tongue as the medium of instruction at the university education. Since, either
for positive or negative gains, the switch-over to the medium in general at primary
and secondary levels is complete, the problem relates at present to the switch-over
to the mother tongue at the collegiate level. The questions being raised at this
juncture are not of controversial nature but of purely academic nature such as
(1) Are our students and teachers ready for the change? (2) Are they equipped
with necessary language skills to benefit from this change? (3) Do we know anything
about their language attainment? (4) Even if students are ready, what about their
teachers and their ability to teach, the availability of books, materials and
so on, in the mother tongue?
Answers to questions such as these necessitated the investigation of this problem
and related issues. Hence, this project was undertaken to develop instructional
and evaluation materials in Kannada for college entrants at the pre-university
stage and then trying them out empirically to study :- (1)
their levels of language attainment,
(2) various correlates of language attainment,
and
(3) the relationship between language and educational attainments.
A Theoretical Framework As
it can be seen from the discussion above, the central issue is the promotion of
education achievement. As a result, this project had to be planned as an experiment
in language education. In order to understand its research strategy and later
its findings and their implications, it is pertinent that the reader is acquainted
with the theoretical framework within which the entire project was carried out.
The field of educational achievement has been very extensively investigated both
in Indian and in Western countries, but its intricate and intensive analysis has
just been started. Recently, researchers have come to realize that an apparently
simple looking concept of educational achievement is far more complex and needs
much more systematic and scientific analysis than has been done so far. As a matter
of fact, it is surprising to note at this juncture that some fundamental questions
regarding the development of achievement tests were not raised before. Since these
questions have some relevance to this investigation, a brief description and discussion
would not be out of place.
About
two decades ago Bloom and his associates (1956) made an attempt to build a taxonomy
of educational objectives with an intention to help teachers, administrators,
professional specialists and research workers in framing curricula and constructing
evaluation tests and tools. This document is considered by many educationists
to be an extremely valuable to the field of education. With many of its limitations,
it seems to hold as a theoretical framework a great potential for developing an
educationally biased theory of cognitive learning. Dave (1972) has presented a
set of arguments for the above model as follows "….Although
many psychological theories have been tried out, the success in terms of predicting
educational achievement, if not altogether discouraging, does not seem to be too
encouraging either. The main reason for this failure may be found in a discussion
of the relationship of the WORLD, the MODEL, Prediction and Data by Coombs and
his associates (1970). According to them the MODEL is 'an abstraction of the WORLD,
a MODEL of the WORLD which is tested by comparing its consequences to the observed
data.' The psychological theories perhaps do not approximate the real WORLD of
cognitive Learning in humans, as they are essentially built-up on the basis of
evidences derived from controlled experiments in the laboratory. This suggests
that the conceiving of a learning model will have to be done keeping in mind the
conditions in the WORLD from which eventually the data has to be derived in order
to evaluate and validate it." Bloom
et. Al (1963) have evolved their theoretical structure of evaluation from the
analysis of learning products as they emerge as a result of day-to-day learning
situations in a normal classroom. This is indeed a very realistic way of looking
at the WORLD of educational achievement, contrary to the one followed by the learning
psychologist in the laboratory. The
Taxonomy has assumed that a learning process can result in producing six hierarchical
levels of educational objectives [Knowledge (K), Comprehension {C}, Application
(A), Analysis (ANA), Synthesis (S) and Evaluation (E)], the criteria of classifying
them being complexity and difficulty. In their discussion of these hierarchical
learning outcomes, they have used consistently, and quite explicitly, the role
of communicative skill of the learner for attaining a certain level. In fact,
there seems to be some sort of confusion in expanding the rationale behind the
theoretical hierarchy of the categories. They explain that KNOWLEDGE level is
more or less dependent on a basic mental process of memory, i.e., recall. This
is essentially related to subject matter aspect of an objective; for example,
there call of a specific term, a method or a principle seems to be directly related
to a specific content. In this instance, it looks as though the ability to use
language does not seem to play much role. Put differently, in a testing situation
the elicitation of a correct response does not depend upon the ability to communicate.
When they start explaining higher levels of objectives, they realize that the
ability to communicate becomes fundamental to reaching these levels. In other
words, whereas the learner can show certain attainment in the KNOWLEDGE category
without depending much on the ability to use language, he may not show any higher
level of attainment in the other categories unless and until he is in a position
to use language effectively. It is quite clear from this that while a sort of
direct link between KNOWLEDGE and CONTENT is possible, the links of higher levels
with content can be attained only through the medium of language. This factor
obviously has created some difficulty for them in developing a convincing explanation
of the hierarchy of the objectives. And this is one of the reasons why they have
in their explanation of the remaining objectives, excepting one, made consistent
and explicit reference to communication only, and not to content and language.
It seems that they have integrated these two aspects in the term communication,
and the hierarchical arrangement of the objectives means the hierarchy of communications
or different levels of communications. The following examples taken from their
book (1963) indicate this dichotomy clearly. While they give illustrations such
as the recall of specific and universals, or the recall of methods, processes,
principles, theories, etc., under knowledge, they state examples such as "….the
individual knows what is being communicated", under Comprehension, "The
breakdown of a communication…..", under Analysis, "Production of
a unique communication", under Synthesis, and "Evaluation of the accuracy
of communication" under evaluation. The jump from recall to communication
does not seem to be logical, and even the usage of the term communication has
not helped the development of the explanations of their system and the underlying
hierarchy perfectly, for, neither of them could be made use of in explaining the
Application category. In
order to understand the present theoretical curriculum schema and its modified
version later, it is necessary to raise a few questions at this juncture and give
clear answers for the benefit of the reader. What is an educational objective?
What is content? What is behaviour? What is communication? Are they interrelated?
If they are, in what way? As this is no place for examining critically the taxonomy
of Bloom, the above terms will be defined for the sole purpose of communicating
the ideas developed and presented in this book. A statement of objective consists
of two parts, one, content and the other, behaviour. These two terms, of course,
need no definition, for they are self-explanatory. Objectives are classified as
general and specific. Both of them are in vogue, but a distinction is made here.
The example of 'recall' under Knowledge can very well explain this distinction,
and the later is a more comprehensive term. Specific objectives are usually stated
in terms of BEHAVIOURS and labelled differently in different systems, although
the terminology for the major six categories has been accepted as it is the world
over. They are designated as Specification in the NCERT system (1969), Expected
Behavioral Outcomes (EBOs) in the RCEM system (Dave and Anand, 1973), and learning
outcomes in the American usage. Attention needs to be drawn that originally there
was reference to implied mental processes for specific objectives (some times
referred to as abilities or skills) which have been retained in the Modified Version
of Curriculum Schema (MVCS), although in different forms. For example, they state:
"The knowledge objectives emphasize most the psychological processes of remembering".
Likewise, several examples such as 'interpretation' (Comprehension), 'formulating
hypothesis' P(Synthesis), 'predicting' (Application), 'judging'(Evaluation), can
be found in abundance throughout the book, supporting thereby the assertion regarding
the implicitness of mental processes. Thus, an educational objective states both
what behaviour is intended to be developed (curricular aspect) and what actual
behaviour is developed and tested (evaluation aspect). Communication, unlike the
usage in Bloom, is simply interpreted as language, the layer or barrier which
has to be penetrated to either develop or test an attainment of a particular objective.
In this way, content, behaviour and language are inter-related in the system which
is used as a frame of reference in this book. The
point of immediate interest and concern is that of separation of content and language
in communication. As mentioned a while ago, an educational objective is stated
with reference to a specific portion of content as well as specific behaviour
of an individual learner. The question which, from the point of view of this project
intrigues us is, that in a particular communication, in what way is language related
to content? In simple but precise terms, what significant role is played by language
in enabling an individual learner to reach a certain level of attainment in any
subject? Does high proficiency in language facilitate the attainment of higher
learning outcomes and low proficiency hampers the same? Is it perhaps not true
that one requires to master language as well as subject matter as independent
disciplines? Is it also not true that language learning precedes content learning,
and no attainment in the latter is possible without a certain minimum attainment
in the former? If so, is it not necessary to conceive two types of learning, however
inter-linked they may be? This discussion open up the possibilities to think afresh
about educational objectives of language teaching and content teaching, hierarchy-independent
or integrated for both the sets of objectives, and the precedence of the hierarchy
of language objectives over the hierarchy of content objectives. This line of
thinking has helped in further analyzing the term communication as used by Bloom
and his associates. This being a project on language education, it was but imperative
that this subtle discrimination between the two major components of educational
achievement should have been thus brought out. Now
coming back to the main point, Dave (1972) has argued for converting Bloom's model
into a theoretical framework for research in instruction and evaluation. While
discussing the possibility of an integrated approach towards developing a cognitive
model of learning, he has examined the potential of Bloom's model along with the
two others developed by Flanders (1963-65-70) and Skinner (1954) for this purpose.
He believes that the most productive approach in developing and predicting educational
achievement will be to integrate the best elements of these three approaches into
one model. Thus, he has proposed the strategy for conducting research in this
area by raising a fundamental question: "Should any teacher has a right to
evaluate a product which is not purposefully developed and in all probabilities
might not have been developed?" Anticipating a reply in the negative, it
is suggested that one must start with the identification of instructional objectives
of teaching a subject mater, the analysis of content with reference to these objectives,
the selection of a method on the basis of its proneness to give full scope to
interaction process, and then the evaluation of the products. The following paradigm
depicts the strategy: FIG.
1
INTEGRATED
LEARNING MODEL
| The
Input X | The
Process | = | The
Output | Analysed
content into instructional
objectives, i.e., K-E preferably into Expected
Beha-vioural Outcomes
EBOs | Methods
scaled in terms of scope it lends for INTERACTION among
students and between
the
teacher and the
pupils
| = |
Real
learning
outcomes (RLOs)
| The
paradigm is self explanatory. It assumes that the attainment of an objective will
entirely depend upon its proper identification at the time of imparting instruction
and the selection of suitable method for behavioral development. The symbol X
indicates constant to and fro interactions between an objective and a method,
and thereby their mutual interdependence. It is further assumed that the quality
of an RLO will be equal to (=) the quality of an EBO and the Learning Experience
provided to students by the method selected for interaction with and among them.
The above model is worth trying. It is easily adaptable for the development of
the Bridge Course in Kannada which aims at making very specific changes in language
skills in order to promote better learning (educational achievement). The following
scheme is the conversion of the above model. FIG.
2
SCHEMA FOR DEVELOPING AND EXPERIMENTING THE
BRIDGE COURSE IN KANNADA
(MOTHER-TONGUE)
| The
Input
Analysed content
of different subjects
into instructional
objectives of
language
Language Skills
1.
Listening Comprehension(LC)
2.Listening and Note taking Competence(LNC)
3.Reading Comprehension(RC)
4.Guided Composition(GC)
5.Epitomizing(EP)
| X
X
| The
Process A detailed
Teacher's Manual containing step-by-step operations for
continuous INTERACTION with students
A sequential arrangement
of graded passages with reference to each skill as well as the operational steps
|
=
=
| The
Output Evaluation of developed skills by: a.
Pre and Post tests
b.Administering
tests at the end of teaching each and every passage for each skill
c. Reinforcing
the right responses by providing results before the new lesson |
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THE
PROJECT
Preliminary
Meeting The
project was conceived At the instance of D.P. Pattanayak, Director, Central Institute
of Indian Languages, Mysore and A. Chari, Principal, Regional College of Education,
Mysore. As they were convinced about the need and use fullness of such a project,
they decided to launch it with the help of experts from both the Central Institute
of Indian Languages And the Regional College of Education. On November 19, 1969,
the first meetings of a committee of five Experts from both the institutions was
convened to discuss thoroughly all the aspects of undertaking such a project.
There emerged a consensus After a long discussion on the following points:
1.
There was a real need for undertaking such a project for developing language skills
of college entrants with respect to the mother-tongue (Kannada).
2. The project
would certainly herald on epoch of research work in the mother-tongue which is
extremely scant in the regional languages of India.
3. Since it was the first
attempt in this area and direction, absolute care should be taken to plan and
execute it as systematically and scientifically as possible.
4. This being
a project involving both language and education (Language Education), it was desirable
to draw the talents having language competence and research competence in education.
In fact, it was realized that the success of the project would depend entirely
upon its initial careful plan and design and later execution which would require
the talents from both the disciplines. As the RCE had previous experience of planning,
designing and conducting a bridge course in English for developing the language
skills of its own college entrants in different educational courses, the full
responsibility of working out the details of the development of the bridge course
and a full-fledged experimental design for testing its efficacy should be taken
by the concerned experts of the RCE.
5. An expert Advisory Committee of eminent,
creative text-book writers, linguists, professors of Kannada and Education should
be constituted (see Appendix I-A) TOP
Meeting
of the Expert Advisory Committee (E.A.C.)
At the meeting
on December 16, 1969, the members of the Expert Advisory Committee -eminent linguists,
scholars, writers and educationists working in Colleges, University Departments
and Language Institutions in Mysore State-were presented with two working on papers
prepared by U.R. Ananthamurthy and P.N. Dave. After the presentation, several
points raised in the papers with respect to the aims and objectives of developing
a bridge course, the need for it, the problems of conducting such a project, the
present levels of language attainment of P.U.C. students, the selection of instructional
and evaluation materials for the course, the training of thoroughly by the group
and the following consensus was arrived at: 1.
Such a Bridge Course was a real need of the time and the project should be launched
immediately.
2. At present it should be confined to reaching the objective
of improving language skills of students with the medium change in the background.
3. The members of the sub-committee (see Appendix I-B) appointed by the E.A.C.
should help scanning and screening the materials pertaining to their areas of
specialization and then select appropriate and suitable passage which lend scope
to the development of language skills. The selection should be made keeping I
view the level of attainment of the P.U.C. college entrants. The passages for
all subjects included in the syllabi of Science, Humanities and Commerce should
find place in this selection.
4. The Bridge Course would be conducted at the
colleges selected randomly from the three University areas in Karnataka State.
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Objectives
As
discussed in the previous pages, this being the first attempt of undertaking both
the research and the training in that area ofmother-tongue teaching, the Project
encompassed within its scope a large number of objectives. They were:
1) To prepare
a test that can be used as a pre- and post- test for evaluating language skills
(LC, LNC, RC, GC and EP) of college entrants. 2)
To analyse the data obtained through the pre-test in order to determine the levels
of attainment in language skills of college entrants with respect to Kannada.
3)
To prepare a Bridge Course of 100 hours with respect to the above mentioned five
skills:
(a) To develop graded instructional materials of 100 hours with respect
to all the skills,
(b) To construct tests for evaluating the continuous progress
of students during the conduct of the Bridge Course, and
(c) To prepare the
Teacher's Manual for guiding teachers in their teaching and testing procedures.
4)
To train a selected group of lecturers in making use of instructional and evaluation
materials in the conduct of the Bridge Course. 5)
To test experimentally the effectiveness of the Bridge Course. 6)
To investigate the relationship between the Content Input (Instructional material
in the Bridge Course: analysed language content in terms of skills), the Process
(Instructions given for teaching passages), and the Output (Learning outcomes
indicating the level of attainment of language skills). 7)
To examine the possibility of existence of an independent hierarchical structure
in language attainment. 8)
To study the relationship between language skills and variables such as sex, parental
education, parental occupation and parental income. 9)
On the basis of experimental findings, to modify the working curriculum scheme
(see Figs.1 and 2)
TOP The
Experimental Design
If the development of the Bridge Course was the major task of this project, the
testing of its effectiveness was another equally important task. From the very
beginning, it was strongly felt that the prepared material should be tested as
systematically and scientifically as possible before it was put to general use.
I order to accomplish this task, the first step taken was to formulate the following
hypothesis :- Hypothesis
: College entrants in the Pre-University courses trained through the Bridge
Course in the mother-tongue (Kannada) will show greater improvement in their language
skills and academic performance than those who are not.
In addition to the above major hypothesis, the following minor hypothesis regarding
the hierarchy of language skills (related to objective 7) and the relationship
between language skills and sex as well as socio-economic factors (related to
objective 8) were also formulated. 1)
Language skills are hierarchically related.
2) Significant differences exist
in the language skills of students coming from homes having different parental
incomes, parental education and parental occupations.
3) Significant differences
exist between the language skills of males and females. In
order to test the above hypothesis, a group of 730 P.U.C. students were selected.
These students were studying in different colleges of four major cities of Karnataka
State, i.e., Bangalore, Mysore, Dharwar and Bijapur. They were administered a
specially prepared pre-test for determining their initial level of attainment
in language skills (Kannada). Whereas a majority of them had studied through the
medium of the mother-tongue (Kannada), a small minority had preferred to study
through English medium in their S.S.L.C. course.
A selected group of College teachers-one or two from each College-was given orientation
by conducting two courses of one day and three-day durations. The former course
was conducted to train them in administering the pre-test to their P.U.C. college
entrants. The latter was conducted to orient and train them in conducting the
Bridge Course. The first day was spent on familiarizing them with the purpose
and the conduct of the course. The second day was spent on giving demonstration
lessons in teaching passages in all skills. Critical discussions were held on
all instructional and evaluation aspects of those lessons. The final day was spent
on reviewing, reciprocating and clarifying doubts of the participants and taking
final decisions regarding the procedures to be followed uniformly by them in carrying
out the task of training students.
Originally it was planned to conduct this experiment on a large group of students
selected and then divided randomly into experimental and control groups. However,
it was found neither feasible nor practicable to do so at the time of selection
of subjects, although the control group was selected randomly from among those
who had taken the pre-test from the same institutions.
The obstacles to randomization were human. The college teachers reported that
their expectations had gone wrong, and while in general a minority of students
thought that they did not require any such training in the mother-tongue, a majority
of them having conceded the usefulness of the training, was reluctant to undergo
training in the vacation. A decision, therefore, was taken to offer the course
on a voluntary basis. Finally, 84 candidates from the colleges in two cities,
viz., Mysore and Bijapur, volunteered for the intensive training in improving
their language skills through the Course given during the Dasara vacation, 1970.
At the end of the course, the same pre-test was administered as the post-test
to both the experimental group and the control which were randomly selected from
among those who did not undergo training. The data obtained were thoroughly analysed
with the help of the following statistical tests: Analysis of Variance and Covariance,
Analysis of Variance by Ranks and t test. In order to test the prediction regarding
the improvement in their academic performance, the frequencies of passed and failed
students of both the groups in the final P.U.C. examination were examined by the
Chi Square test.
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