Educational Planning

EDUCATION 

Different philosophers and educationists have defined education differently. Froebel defined education as ‘the unfoldment of what is already enfolded in the germ. It is the process by which the child makes internal external.’ For Swami Vivekananda, “education is the manifestation of the divine perfection already existing in man”. According to Mahatma Gandhi, “Education is an all round drawing out of the best in the child and man - body, mind and spirit”. However, for the purpose of educational statistics, education, according to UNESCO, “is understood to involve, organized and sustained communication designed to bring about learning”. Here, the words organized, sustained, communication and learning need to be explained. 

Organized: 

means pianned in a pattern or sequence with explicit or impies aims. It involves a providing agency (person or persons or body), which sets up the learning environment and a method of teaching through which the communication is organized. The method is typically the one that is engaged in communicating or releasing knowledge and skills with a view to bringing about learning. It can also be indirect or inanimate, e.g. a piece of computer software, a film or tape, etc. 

Sustained: 

means that the learning experience has the elements of duration and continuity. No minimum duration has been stipulated. The appropriate minima differ from course to course and program to program.

Communication: 

Communication is a relationship between two or more persons involving the transfer of information in the form of messages, ideas, knowledge, strategies, skills etc. Communication may be verbal or non-verbal, direct/face to face, or indirect/remote, and may involve a wide variety of channels and media. 

Learning: 

Learning is any improvement in behavior, information, knowledge, understanding, attitude, values, skills etc. 

TRAINING 

Training is learning experience that leads to the acquisition of a skill.. It is a process for preparing people for different jobs enabling them improve their job-capacities and potentials. 

Culture 

Culture comprises values, beliefs, customs, behaviors, institutions and artifacts of a group of people or of a nation. ‘In the Oxford dictionary (Vol. II), culture has been defined as ‘cultivation, tending, training, development and refinement of mind, tastes and manners- refinement by education and training. It is the intellectual side of civilization.’ 

Concept 

‘Concept is an idea or representation of the common element or attribute by which groups or classes may be distinguished; it is any general or abstract intellectual representation of a situation, state of affairs or objects; a thought, an opinion, an idea or a mental image’ It is an idea or aggregation of ideas that has been acquired as a symbol or generalization for an intangible, i.e., of square, circle, soft, ten, fast, long, over etc. 

Compulsory Education 

Compulsory Education refers to the number of years or the age-span during which children and youth are legally obliged to attend school for a specified number of years. That which must be attended or undertaken by the law of a particular country or state. The legal requirement may be education from a certain starting age to a certain school-leaving age or it may be education to a certain standard. 

Basic Education 

Basic Education refers to a whole range of educational activities that takes place in different settings and that aims to meet basic learning needs as defined in the World Declaration on Education For All (Jomtein, 1990). It thus comprises both formal schooling (Primary and sometimes Lower Secondary) as well as a wide variety of non-formal and informal public and private educational activities offered to meet the defined basic learning needs of groups of people of all ages. 

Basic Education according to UNESCO is education intended to meet basic learning needs; it includes instructions at the first or foundation level on which subsequent learning can be based; it encompasses early childhood and primary (elementary) education for children as well as education in literacy, general knowledge and skills for youth and adult; it may extend into secondary education in some countries.

Education System 

Education System is the overall network of institutions and programs through which education of all types and all levels is provided to the population. 

Comparative Education 

The study of educational systems of different countries is defined as comparative education. 

‘Comparative Education’ and ‘International Education’ are often confused. The former refers to a field of study that applies historical, philosophical and social sciences theories and methods to international problems in education. Its equivalents in other fields of academic study are those dedicated to the trans-societal study of other social institutions, such as comparative government, comparative economics, and comparative religions. Comparative education is primarily an academic and inter-disciplinary pursuit.” 

General Education

General Education is mainly designed to lead participants to a deeper understanding of a subject or group of subjects, especially, but not necessarily, with a view to preparing participants for further (additional) education at the same or a higher level. Successful completion of these programs may or may not provide the participants with a labour-market relevant qualification at this level. These programs are typically school-based. Programs with a general orientation and not focusing on a particular specialization should be classified in this category. 

Knowledge: 

Knowledge is the aggregate of facts, information and principles that an individual has acquired through learning and experience; formal education seeks to raise levels of knowledge systematically. 

Intelligence: 

Psychologically, there are different technical meanings of intelligence, such as verbal reasoning, quantitative thinking, abstract analysis etc. but intelligence in popular understanding is mental abilities enabling one to think rationally, learn readily, act purposefully and deal effectively with one’s environment.

Conscience: 

Conscience is moral sense of right and wrong. A faculty developed at home and in school from early childhood, functioning as the center of awareness for an individual’s moral and ethical beliefs; similar in some respects to what Freudian psychoanalytic theory terms as superego.’ 

Vocational Education 

Vocational Education is designed mainly to lead participants to acquire the practical skills, know-how and understanding necessary for employment in a particular occupation or trade or class of occupations or trades. Successful completion of such programs can lead, but not necessarily to a labour-market relevant vocational qualification recognized by the competent authorities in the country, like Ministry of Labour & Employment, Education etc. 

Professional Education 

Professional Education is all that education which has direct value as preparation for professional calling or employment in life. It is differentiated, on the one hand, from vocational education which relates to those employments of social grades not recognized as profession and, on the other hand, from the general or so called ‘liberal’ education which has no specific practical application in view. 

Inclusive Education 

Inclusive Education means that all students (disabled and non-disabled children and young people) in a school/college study together, regardless of their strengths or weaknesses in any area and become part of the school/college community. 

Recurrent Education 

Recurrent Education is an approach that rejects the concept of education as a preparatory front and/or apprenticeship process at the beginning of working life but seeks to make learning experience available flexibly throughout a person’s life according to choice, interests, career, social and economic and job relevance. It has points in common with adult education, continuing education, permanent in-service training and life long education but places emphasis on ready availability and access on relevance to individual needs and on an autonomous learner situation. Recurrent education calls for a radical reshaping of the educational system rather than the mere provisions of second chance institutions. 

Tertiary Education 

Tertiary Education is that education which follows the completion of secondary education or its equivalent. Thus, tertiary education includes higher education and the more-advanced parts of further education though the term is more often used in the UK in a sense excluding higher education. 

Technical Education 

Technical Education designed at upper secondary and lower tertiary levels to prepare middle level persons (technicians, middle management etc.) and at University level to prepare engineers and technologists for higher management positions. Technical education includes general education, theoretical, scientific and technical studies and related skill training. The component of technical education may vary considerably depending on the types of personnel to be prepared and the education level. 

Formal Education 

Formal Education refers to intentionally organized full time learning events with fixed duration and schedule, structural hierarchy with chronological succession of levels and grades, admission requirements and formal registration; catering mainly to the population of 5-25 years old, which are held within established educational institutions and use predetermined pedagogical organization, contents, methods and teaching/learning materials. 

Educational Innovation 

Educational Innovation refers to an idea or practice new to a specific educational context that meets specified needs. It is the introduction or promotion of new ideas and methods that are devised in education or school practices which have a substantial effect on changing the existing patterns of behaviour of a group or groups involved. Innovative strategies imply the development of new ideas which are disseminated and utilized; these usually occur in response to particular problems. 

Educational Program 

Educational Program is a set of organized and purposeful learning experiences with a minimum duration of one school or academic year, usually offered in an educational institution. 

Course 

A course is a planned series of learning experiences in a particular range of subjects or skills, offered by an institution and undertaken by one or more learners. 

Data 

Data is the plural form of datum. A datum results from the reduction of information to a single recorded unit. For instance, ‘Radha is 16 years old’ can be reduced to age, sex or both, depending on what is of interest to us. The only requirement is to classify into meaningful and mutually exclusive categories. Data collection is the process of allocating to categories and counting and data thus collected are presented as a data matrix. This matrix can have any number of dimensions. 

Information 

Oxford Dictionary defines information as the act of informing; communication of knowledge or news of some fact or occurrence. Knowledge communicated concerning some particular fact, subject or event etc. “Information Science is sometimes equated with the study of information and communication systems of all types including mechanized data, computerized information and documentation of all types. 

Variable 

Generally, any quantity which varies. A variable is a quantity, which is susceptible to continuous change while others remain constant. US Deptt of Education, Office of Research & Improvement have defined Variable’ as a quantity that may assume any one of a set of values. 

(a) Dependant Variable: A dependant variable is that which depends for its value on another variable. 

(b) Independent Variable: An independent variable is a variable arbitrarily assumed as one on which other related variables shall be regarded as dependant. 

(c) Exogenous Variable: Variables for which the values are determined outside the model but which influence the model. 

Questionnaire 

Questionnaire is a group or sequence of questions designed to elicit information upon a subject or sequence of subjects from informants. 

Schedule 

A Schedule is a specialized series of a group or sequence of questions designed to elicit data/ information upon a subject. Usually, it is completed by an investigator on the basis of data/information supplied by the particular member of the population chosen for inclusion in the sample but sometimes it is completed by that member himself/herself as in postal enquiries. 

Distracters 

A number of options are presented to a testee as the possible right answer to each item in a multiple-choice test. Only one is correct. The other options are called distracters, since they are intended to be plausible answers unless the person has confidence in his choice of the correct answer. 

Domain 

The everyday usage of the word refers to an area of land or territory, which has clear boundaries. In educational parlance, the term also refers to an area of educational interest, which is defined and bounded. However, educational domains are not like that. Intelligence is a good example of a domain where boundaries are not well defined. 

Project 

A Project is a combination of non-routine activities that must be completed with a set of resources and within a set time interval, e.g. 

(i) construction of a school building of a specific design, 

(ii) design of a training program for a specified group, 

(iii) production of textbook. 

Audio-Visual Aids 

Audio-Visual Aids use the senses of both sights (seeing) and sound (hearing) collectively or sometimes individually. These aids include Sound Films; Filmstrips; Tapes/Slides, Broadcast Television, Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), Video-Recording etc. Recently, microprocessors have also been used in computer-assisted learning/ training.