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EducationGender Reports PUBLIC SERVICE DELIVERY

Bihar Mentorship Project: Curriculum Linkages

13 Feb 2019


Author: CBPS

Funding Partner: Malala Fund, USA

Abstract

The overall goal of the Bihar Mentoring Project (BMP) funded by the Malala Fund was to develop an empowerment-based mentoring model based on an action-research study of three years in ten urban and rural schools in Bihar. Focusing on adolescent boys and girls, the mentoring model introduced a new form of pedagogy that prioritised critical thinking skills to the existing curricula within the government schools. The idea was that the mentoring model would allow adolescent boys and girls to examine and change their perception and knowledge of themselves and their aspirations and enable action related to themselves, their families, and their communities.

The BMP module was based on a pedagogical approach that consolidated and concretised our ideas of education and empowerment. By strengthening the pedagogical processes of delivery through mentoring, we developed a module to not only improve literacy and numeracy skills of children with varied abilities and interests, but also enhance their abilities to critically think, reflect, empathise, question and act. The mentoring process, therefore, was to ensure that the children were able to use the module as a way to engage with their own lives, especially taking into consideration their resource constraints. A major aspect of this was to ensure that children were able to connect different streams of information and use it to produce their own knowledge systems. Part of this process was to ensure that the mentorship module had linkages, both direct and indirect, with the knowledge they were gaining in school. Using the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) and the 6th, 7th, and 8th class Bihar Board textbooks as guideposts, we conceptualised the activities in such a manner that the mentorship module would build on, provide context to, and enhance the learning in classrooms as well. This report documents these linkages and provides examples by which the BMP module can be incorporated within regular classroom teaching to foster critical thinking skills amongst children. The report maps linkages between the module and the curriculum concerning geography, history, natural science, political science, mathematics, and English.

Centre for Budget and Policy Studies. (2019). Empowerment based Mentoring Model for Adolescent Girls: Curriculum Linkages. Centre for Budget and Policy Studies. Bengaluru.

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