Research activities to address issues in TN school education

In a bid to address the issues in school education, the Tamil Nadu government has undertaken core research activities, including the impact of social media and mobile apps on learning habits among students.

Accordingly, the Tamil Nadu State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), a wing of the School Education Department, has been entrusted to form a high-level panel to continuously monitor the research activities and to give guidelines to districts' education offices to carry out detail studies.

A senior official from the School Education Department told DT Next that about 10 core research activities have been undertaken across all the districts.

"The research activities include to see the impact of social media and mobile apps on learning habits among high school learners," he said adding that based on the inputs, the learning methods will be improved.

Stating that there will be research to monitor the effectiveness of QR codes incorporated in the new textbooks in all subjects for the students from Class 1 to Class 12. "It was also decided to do research on the effect of physical exercises and yoga practices among obese children," he added.

Research on the teacher's front, the official said the effectiveness of using the multimedia approach in improving graphical and geometrical skills of all the teachers especially in government and government-aided schools. He said detailed data would also be taken on the impact of training among primary and upper primary teachers.

"A thorough analysis of new higher secondary textbooks with reference to competitive exams will be done so that in future new contents will be included for the benefit of the students," he said adding that another research to enhancing the speaking skills for improving communicative talents of students to face the interview boldly.

Pointing out that analysis to find the effectiveness of counselling on mental health among the parents of children with special needs in the health centres would be done for better inclusive education, he said a detailed study on educational issues of migrant children will also be undertaken as a part of research activities.

"Similarly, research on the impact of Kalvi TV videos and impact of student's laptop video content will be done," he added.