Igniting Students� Potential through Viable Instructional Strategies-A Roadmap for Excellence in Education

Abstract

The emerging educational horizons in the 21st century world have opened up new vistas of education especially in our country. The global era that we are passing now has undoubtedly its own imperatives on all aspects of education. The schools and colleges are demanding environments because so many different personalities gather together in a confined area where they are expected to interact according to established rules of accepted emotional and social behavior. The purpose of teaching is to increase the capacity to develop new configurations of knowledge grounds to the teacher as well as the students. Each learner has a different process and may not proceed linearly through the teaching learning process, instead makes loops or zigzag. Only an effective teaching methodology can create such loops in the cognitive domain of students. The teaching methodology should be strong enough to craft numerous neural connections which can ensure learning assimilations. It is far more important that students explain their thinking to teachers than teachers explain their thinking. In this research the investigator has used Brain-based Learning as innovative teaching methodology. The Brain-based learning is an interdisciplinary answer to the question of, “What is the most effective way of the brain’s learning mechanism?” Brain-based learning is an effective teaching technique that represents abstract or complex content matter in to simple and meaningful scaffolds and it has the potential to delay the learning platue since it provides great scope for interaction among and between students and teachers. The present research focuses on the ‘Effect of Brain-Based Learning on Academic Achievement in Biology, Stress and Study Habits of VIII Standard Students’. The study carried out with the following objectives; i) to develop instructional material based on the principles of brain-based learning’. ii) To compare experimental and control groups on pre-test scores of a) Academic Achievement b) Stress c) Study Habits.iii) To compare experimental and control groups on post-test scores of a) Academic Achievement b) Stress c) Study Habits. The present study has formulated the following null hypotheses: 1). There is no significant difference between experimental and control groups on pre testscores of a) Academic Achievement b) Stress c) Study Habits of students .2) There is no significant difference between the experimental and control groups on post-test scores of a) Academic Achievement b) Stress c) Study Habits of students. The study reveals that brain-based learning is a constructive, domain specific strategy to holistic education. It has the potential to stimulate the optimal learning among students in very relaxed and enriched learning environment. The article discusses on the major effects of Brain-based Learning on the academic achievement, stress and study habits of students and the implications of these research outcomes to the benefits of students and teachers as major stakeholders.