Blended Learning in Early Childhood Education

Sneha Rathor, Chief Executive Officer, Sanfort Group of Schools

The National Educational Policy, 2020 has brought up many changes in the education sector and the major change that is being seen is in the education of early years because during this age 80% of child’s brain development takes place which directly affects their education later in life. To bring the change and to make these foundational years strong blended learning is recommended. During these years student engagement in the classrooms is the major issue faced by many teachers because the attention span of kids is very less, so to get them engaged and to enhance their learning is very difficult during early years. To overcome this issue blended learning will be very helpful for the teachers and for the enhanced learning of children.

Technology is advancing day by day, in the education sector too if we can blend technology along with various teaching methods like play-based learning, constructive learning or experiential learning, then the teaching and learning will become effective and efficient for both kids and the teachers. According to various researches also blended learning has been proven effective in the classrooms and has shown positive results on children.

With the help of blended learning teachers can provide flexibility to the students and the lesson plan can be tailored as per the need of the topic as well as the individual needs of the child. When teachers pay individual attention to the children’s needs and tailor the lessons accordingly with the help of blended learning, children are supposed to pay more attention, hence they will be actively engaged.

Child who is not active or interact very less in the classrooms, technology or blended learning gives them a chance to interact and children starts engaging with the lessons. Blended learning was being used from quiet a time in middle years and higher classes and it has been proven effective also in the classrooms, but now it’s time to take the blended learning model to early childhood education also in order to enhance the teaching learning process keeping in mind how crucial these early years are for the child. For successfully implementing the blended learning in early childhood education, teacher’s training is imperative, because if teachers are not trained effectively then they will not be able to implement the teaching process through blended learning, so schools should provide the timely trainings to the teachers.

NEP 2020 has also focused upon teacher’s training to improve the education as teachers are the foundation of a country and have the future in their hands i.e. children.