By Mushtaq Rather

Textbooks for sure are indispensable tools to realize the curricular goals and objectives. The designing of textbooks therefore needs to be meticulously organised and crafted to render them more effective and penetrative. So, the job to compile text books in different subject domains requires expertise of the highest order, both, in terms of having mastery over the content matter and clearly defined in-built pedagogical framework. Previously the essence of classroom teaching –learning was central to the nature and type of text book and teacher usually was restrictive and limited in his /her approach while imparting black and white information to the learners and he/she would hardly trespass beyond textbooks to further explore and refine the concepts of the by-gone era learners. The rigid and non-flexible approach on part of the teacher by totally relying on text books in content transmission has fostered the skill of rote-learning and cramming up of the information by the end user.

NCF 2005, NCF( Foundational stage) 2022 and NCFSE 2023

Education sector has made immense strides over the past couple of decades and has therefore opened new contours and channels in disseminating learning content to the modern day learners. All the National curriculum Framework Documents, be it NCF 2005, NCF 2022 for foundational stage and National Curricular Framework for School Education (NCFSE 2023) have unequivocally laid down procedural framework on how to effectively achieve the curricular goals and aims by empowering learners as co-creators of knowledge rather than mere recipients of black and white information.

NCF documents, although extend a great deal of emphasis to textbooks, strongly discourage a teacher to be entirely dependent and text book centric. NCF documents, as rightly referred to as Bible of Indian Education is a guiding document for all the relevant stakeholders, especially the teachers and empowers them to move beyond textbooks while exploring the learning horizons and subsequent fine –honing of concepts from the learner’s perspective.

The NCF entrusts a degree of autonomy to teachers to judiciously make use of all available resources at hand and even come out of the four walls of the room , when it come to execute constructivist approach of teaching –learning by letting students to construct new knowledge based on their prior experiences , rather than blindly trusting and relying on a single book. Text book is just a guiding path for the teacher and he/she holds absolute discretion to explore requisite ways and means to consolidate the concepts of the modern day learner.

The........

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