Through a labyrinth of thought
Developing the skills of analytical thinking among school students for better comprehension has moved from being an integral part of education to a dedicated skill imparted through activity-based instruction.
The My Thinking Program introduced by the Delhi-based Mind Edutainment Pvt Ltd (MEPL) aims at bringing method to the randomness of thoughts to develop and deliver cognitive, social and emotional thinking processes among students.
“The method to academic thinking has to be developed before academic content is fed to the student.
Unless I teach the child to think along the lines of dimensions where there are multiple variables, related to each other, it is unfair to start teaching Algebra,” says Ashutosh Khurana, chief executive officer and one of the founders.
MTPL aims to create an environment of thinking based on outcome through activities and allow for the child to test the process of thinking in real time.
“When the learning is based on outcome, the attitude of thinking develops easily,” says Khurana.
My Thinking Program has been in existence for four years now and schools from Chandigarh, Jaipur, Kochi, Bangalore, Dehradun and recently Hyderabad and Chennai have woken up to the initiative.
The programme spread over the academic year is based on activities delivered by trainers who help teach the method of thinking and evaluating a thought process.
“We have designed the programme as a part of the time-table for classes UKG to standard 8th.
For higher classes in 9th, 10th and 11th, the programme is conducted as a workshop of an hour duration,” says Khurana.
The method falls in the line of the Higher Order Thinking skills (HOTS) programme which has been adapted by CBSE board to judge the analytical ability of students taking the board examinations.
The present cost of implementation is `1100 per child per annum, the reason it has been picked up only by schools which can factor it in their fees.
“With larger number of schools subscribing to it, the average cost will come down, wherein it can be a part of larger cross-section of education programmes,” observes Khurana.
He adds that the process can help students better their performance in Mathematics and tests measuring the analytical skills.
The CEO of MEPL also says that the rankings of students improved by almost four positions in Mathematics according to a study carried out with MIT Sloan School of Management.