Department of Educational Psychology and Foundations of Education
The department has been working towards strengthening psychological bases of school education and teacher education since its inception. Providing psychological knowledge and perspectives to educational theory and practice through research, development, training and extension programmes in guidance and counselling, value education and education for peace, and educational psychology has been its major focus.
Thrust areas of the Department
A. Educational Psychology: The department also extends its resources and collaborates in providing psychological perspectives to different aspects of school education, such as curriculum planning, textbook writing, teacher training, assessment, etc. The department has also been engaged in bringing out Psychology textbooks for thesecondary stage. It has also initiated work to promote awareness among students, parents, teachers and school administrators on the importance of studying Psychology at secondary level. Several other activities carried out by the department in this area are:
- Organizing consultations, workshops for optimizing use of psychological knowledge in theory and practice.
- Conducting researches/interventions in different applied areas of educational psychology.
- Training teachers/teacher educators in psychological foundations of teacher education.
- Extending library services for use of researchers and professionals across the country.(Catalogue of Psychological Test)
B. Guidance and Counselling: Guidance and counselling, the applied area of educational psychology, has been a key concern in terms of research, development of resource materials, training of professionals, and capacity-building at the state level since the past six decades. To begin with, a full-time (nine months) Diploma Course was offered at the national level by the department. In 2002-03, the department initiated an International Diploma Course in Guidance and Counselling for Asian and African countries, which was later revised and is presently offered through distance/online mode in collaboration with Commonwealth of Learning (COL) since 2009-10. This course is conducted from the department at NIE as well as at the five study centres at the RIEs of Ajmer, Bhopal, Mysore, Bhubaneswar and Shillong. Other functions of the department in this area are as follows: -
- Capacity building of guidance personnel at state level.
- Developing materials - print, audio and video for training in guidance and counselling.
- Maintaining database of NGOs/Organizations/State departments for implementing guidance and counseling programmes/ services.
- Conducting status surveys/researches/ follow up studies.
- Strengthening of Guidance and Counselling Resource Centre for extension activities.
C. Value Education and Education for Peace: The work on value education was taken up in the department following receipt of the report of the Eighty First Parliamentary Standing Committee, forwarded by the MHRD for implementation to the NCERT. During the year 2000, NCERT put forward the agenda for value education. The Committee of Experts on Value Education in MHRD Recommended that NCERT may be made a nodal centre for strengthening value education at all levels in the school system. The task visualised were to plan, coordinate and implement programmes for value orientation of education all stages of schooling. The Council decided to set up the National Resource Centre for Value Education (NRCVE) in the department. The Reference Library on National Resource Centre for Value Education (NRCVE) serves as a treasure house of materials related to the value education. The collection includes around four thousand books, journals, training packages, audio and video cassettes and CDs related to value education. A database of various organizations working in the area of value education has been developed for the NRCVE. Journal of Value Education was a significant activity to provide a forum for exchange for academicians and practitioners.
Organisation of the national consultation followed by regional consultations by the four RIEs of NCERT provided a forum for exchange of insights, experiences and innovations in the area of value education. the department also organised extension lectures on value education and related themes by eminent educationists and experts. Supplementary reading materials, based on the stories and parables available in the literature of Jainism and Sikhism, were prepared for children. Simple reading materials on value education for parents were also developed. The department has developed and published a handbook for teacher entitled ‘Ways to Peace’ also translated in Hindi as ‘शांतिकीराहें’ to convey skills, attitudes and values needed for peace and another document ‘Education for Values in Schools- A Framework’ which is also available on our official website.