The Implementation part of National Education Policy 2022 focuses on joyful pedagogy. The joyful pedagogy brings sparkle in the eyes of students and excites and empowers them to engage with learning experiences in fun-filled and playful manner. Joyful pedagogy is a positive intellectual and emotional state of learners. This state or experience is achieved when an individual or a group is deriving pleasure and a sense of satisfaction from the process of learning.
Joy comes when a child feels a sense of achievement as if she/he has created something new, on her/his own. It could occur after completion of a lesson on realising that she/he has understood the concept clearly and can see how it links to real life.
The modes to joyful learning can be many; ranging from integrating sports in educational activities to integrating story-telling and drama in classroom transactions.
Integrating drama with science pedagogy can do pretty good things. Science drama can engage , motivate and provide opportunities for students to discuss with reason the scientific ideas.
One of the main concerns of science educators is finding teaching strategies and methodologies that can improve students learning and experiences in science. Over the course of science history models have played an important role. Dramatizing the scientific idea is a particular type of modeling. Drama is a powerful strategy that can change the traditional view of science class from being rigid and boring to being lively and entertaining.
On November 1, 2022 Divisional level Science Drama contest was held at State Council of Educational Research and Trainings, Srinagar in which 80 students from class 6th to 10thfrom all the districts of Kashmir valley participated. The event was a part of ‘National Science Drama Festival’ held every year. The main theme of this year’s drama festival was“Science and technology for the benefit of mankind.”
During the event, the students displayed their talent by performing different characters according to their roles. The participants dramatized the main theme and other sub-themes like Pandemic: social, economic, humanitarian and scientific issues, story of vaccine and the sustainable development.
The students performed the given characters very passionately. At the beginning it was a kind of puzzle that how science can be scripted and how the themes can be dramatised. The audience witnessed two different worlds: non- science world full of miseries, diseases, greed, war, conflict, chaos, dogmas, rituals and ignorance and the modern scientific World that is full of hope, inventions, discovery, critical thinking, falsification, scientific temper , peace, prosperity and hope.
The humanitarian crises of the COVID-19 era led to the emotional outburst and the deforestation and pollution of the current times displayed in the drama was enough to show our vulnerability.
It was a perfect display of the blessings of science and how science always rescue us from the hardships of different types. How it has rescued us from the worst pandemics and humanitarian crises at different times through the vaccines and how it has reshaped the life and it’s standards through the timely interventions in agriculture, horticulture, medical sciences, space research etc etc.
The drama as pedagogy can easily be applied in the schools and it can do wonders not only in making the concepts easy to understand and joyful but it can also motivate the students to opt the sciences for future studies and inspire them for the innovations and to serve humanity.
Bottom line
Let science teachers avoid rote learning techniques which children find difficult to sit through. Let the teacher devise her/his own teaching modules for content enrichment and pedagogical approaches in such a way that students have to design, paint, act and perform what is happening at the atomic, molecular or cellular level.
For example let the students consider a living cell as a factory and it is evident from the work culture of a factory every worker plays its part without noticing what others are doing. Let them understand how to differentiate between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell by role playing i.e. arrange students in a circle, two lines (representing double layered semipermeable membrane), similarly arrange innermost two circles (representing double layered nuclear membrane). The same process is represented for other cell organelles. Form another circle of students with single layer, inside the circle represents the students in diffuse form.
This role playing method clearly visualizes that Eukaryotic cells are bound by double layered membranes, while as Prokaryotic by single layered membranes: there are definite membrane bound organelles in an eukaryotic cell and no such organelles in prokaryotic cells.
At last, have you ever thought about using drama to teach scientific concepts? Using role play to embed content makes sense. Role play is active, creative and engaging which require significant investment from the student. So why not use this innovative approach to spark children’s motivation and enrich their learning in Science.
Masood Ali Mir & Javaid Ahmad Dar
(Masood Ali Mir and Javaid Ahmad Dar are Sr Academic Officers at SCERT-KD Srinagar)
