Course-5 Understanding Disciplines and School Subjects pmd

Overview of the Course
This course will enable you to reflect on the nature and role of disciplinary
knowledge in the school curriculum, and the paradigm shifts in the nature of
disciplines. This course will help you to understand that disciplines and school
subjects are not ‘given’ but are products of history and geography and they
emerged in particular social, political and intellectual contexts, especially over
the last two centuries, and have been constantly redefined and reformulated .
There have been attempts towards redefinitions of the school subject, also with
concern for social justice.
This course will introduce you to the content, processes, organizational
approaches of different school subjects. It is increasingly recognised that for
teachers to know a school subject they must know the ‘theory of content’ –
how the content was selected, framed in the syllabus, and how it can be
transformed so that learners construct their own knowledge through it.
Apart from the content, it is important to know the history of a subject
because it helps to deepen the understanding of the content. It tells us why
something was included or not included in a particular subject at a point of
time. Understanding the processes of different disciplines through which the
school subjects have been deducted, will help teachers to decide the pedagogic
approaches. This also helps teachers to understand that there is a close
relationship between the nature of knowledge and the pedagogical processes.
This course also helps you to understand why some subjects existed and some
did not, at one time in school curriculum. Through this course, you will realise
that, in the present context, there is a need to incorporate some new approaches
while teaching different school subjects.
The above issues have been discussed in two blocks. The concept of
discipline, school subject, academic discipline, their inter relationships and
differences, aims of schooling, history of emergence of disciplines, formation
of school subjects and their importance, nature and content of school subjects
have been discussed under block 1. The different classification of disciplines,
inter disciplinary and multidisciplinary concepts, nature and curricular aspects
of different subjects like Science, Social Science, Math, as well as the issue of
social justice in relation to school subjects have been discussed under block 2.
Understand the concepts presented and discussed in this course thoroughly
well and develop the competencies required of a classroom teacher to the
maximum level and prove to be a good teacher.
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