Child-centred and progressive education

Almost every CTET pedagogy question has a hidden test inside it: can you tell a child-centred option from a teacher-centred one? "Child-centred and progressive education" is a line in the CDP syllabus, but its ideas decide answers across all sections. If you understand what progressive educators were reacting against and what they proposed, many options sort themselves.

What the terms mean

Child-centred education places the child's needs, interests, experiences and pace at the centre of teaching. Progressive education is the broader movement, strongest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that pushed schools in this direction.

It was a reaction against traditional schooling, which was built on:

• a fixed curriculum handed down by authority;
• the teacher as the source of knowledge and the child as a passive receiver;
• memorisation and recitation;
• strict discipline and physical punishment;
• examinations that tested recall.

Child-centred does not mean the teacher stands aside. It means the teacher plans around the child rather than around the textbook alone.

The roots

John Dewey

The American philosopher John Dewey (1859–1952) is the central figure of progressive education. He ran a Laboratory School at the University of Chicago to test his ideas and wrote, among other works, The School and Society and Democracy and Education.

His main ideas:

• Learning by doing. Children learn through meaningful activity and by reflecting on the results, not by listening alone. Experience plus reflection is what teaches.
• Education is life itself. In his words, education is "a process of living and not a preparation for future living".
• The school as a community. Dewey wanted the school to be a small, simplified community where children practise cooperation and democratic life. This is often summarised as "school as a miniature society".
• Learning begins with a problem. Genuine questions that engage the child start inquiry. His account of reflective thinking moves from a felt difficulty, to defining it, to suggesting solutions, to reasoning them out, to testing them.
• Interest and effort go together. Work connected to children's interests draws real effort.

Dewey's student William Heard Kilpatrick developed the project method, in which children plan and carry out a purposeful project, often linked to real life.

Dewey himself later warned, in Experience and Education (1938), against progressive schools that dropped structure altogether. Not every experience educates; the teacher must choose and organise experiences that lead to further growth.

Indian educators

• Rabindranath Tagore started a school at Santiniketan in 1901, where children learnt in the open, close to nature, with emphasis on freedom, creativity, music and art.
• Mahatma Gandhi proposed Nai Talim (Basic Education), presented at the Wardha conference in 1937. Learning was to be centred on a productive craft, in the mother tongue, linking hand, head and heart with community life.
• Gijubhai Badheka set up the Bal Mandir in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, and pioneered joyful, child-centred pre-primary education. His book Divaswapna describes a teacher trying these methods in an ordinary school.

Child-centred and teacher-centred classrooms

What Indian policy says

These ideas are now in law and policy.

• The RTE Act, 2009, Section 29(2) asks that the curriculum and evaluation provide for learning through activities, discovery and exploration in a child-friendly and child-centred manner, free the child from fear, trauma and anxiety, and use continuous and comprehensive evaluation.
• NCF 2005 set five guiding principles: connecting knowledge to life outside school; moving away from rote methods; enriching the curriculum beyond textbooks; making examinations more flexible and integrated with classroom life; and nurturing an identity informed by caring concerns within a democratic polity.
• NEP 2020 calls for experiential learning and less rote memorisation.

See the guide on RTE, NCF and NEP for more.

Worked classroom questions

Scenario 1

To teach Class 4 about what plants need, which plan is most child-centred?

(a) Dictate notes on the needs of plants
(b) Children grow seeds in different conditions, record what happens and discuss results
(c) Show a chart and ask children to copy it
(d) Read the textbook chapter aloud

Best answer: (b). Children find out through their own activity and reflection. This is Dewey's learning by doing.

Scenario 2

A teacher allows Class 3 children to choose any activity they like all day, with no planning, because "the child is at the centre". This practice is:

(a) ideal child-centred teaching
(b) a misunderstanding: child-centred teaching still needs planned, purposeful experiences
(c) Montessori's method exactly
(d) required by the RTE Act

Best answer: (b). Dewey himself criticised progressive schools that dropped structure. Montessori's freedom works inside a carefully prepared environment.

Scenario 3

A Class 5 class plans and runs a small school garden, keeps accounts of seeds bought and records plant growth. This is best described as:

(a) the project method (b) the lecture method (c) programmed learning (d) drill

Best answer: (a). A purposeful, real-life project planned and carried out by children, linking several subjects.

Practice MCQs

Q1. "Learning by doing" is most associated with:

(a) John Dewey (b) B. F. Skinner (c) Sigmund Freud (d) Alfred Binet

Q2. In a child-centred classroom the teacher mainly acts as a:

(a) lecturer (b) facilitator (c) disciplinarian (d) examiner

Q3. The kindergarten was founded by:

(a) Montessori (b) Froebel (c) Pestalozzi (d) Rousseau

Q4. Nai Talim is linked with:

(a) Tagore (b) Gandhi (c) Gijubhai Badheka (d) Aurobindo

Q5. Which practice is most child-centred?

(a) Copying notes from the board
(b) Memorising answers
(c) Discussing questions children raise about a topic
(d) Silent reading of the textbook

Q6. The project method was developed by:

(a) Kilpatrick (b) Dewey's critics (c) Froebel (d) Piaget

Q7. Which is NOT one of the NCF 2005 guiding principles?

(a) Connecting knowledge to life outside school
(b) Moving away from rote methods
(c) Making the textbook the only source of learning
(d) Making examinations more flexible

Answers

1. (a).
2. (b).
3. (b).
4. (b). Gandhi's Basic Education.
5. (c). Children's own questions drive the learning.
6. (a). William Heard Kilpatrick, Dewey's student.
7. (c). NCF 2005 asks to enrich the curriculum beyond textbooks.

What to do next

• Make a card for each thinker in the roots table with one classroom practice they inspired.
• Learn the five NCF 2005 guiding principles in order.
• Rewrite one lesson you remember from school in a child-centred way.
• Read how these ideas connect to constructivism.