Teachers' Concerns about Adopting Experiential Pedagogy under NEP 2020: A CBAM-based Study

In Indian education, NEP 2020 focuses on the integration of experiential pedagogy as a core component of curriculum reform. The success of any innovative pedagogy practice depends highly on the readiness and preparedness of teachers to understand it, internalize it, and implement it in their classrooms. The present study was conducted to measure teachers’ stages of concern in the context of experiential pedagogy and also identify the dominant concerns of its adoption, which may either hinder or facilitate it. The Concern-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) was used as a guiding framework. The data was collected through a quantitative descriptive survey design from 55 secondary school teachers working in government and private institutions of Uttar Pradesh. Hall and Hall (2011) developed the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SOCQ), which was linguistically adapted to suit the experiential pedagogy, while maintaining the original structure of seven concern stages: awareness, informational, personal, management, consequence, collaboration, and refocusing. Descriptive statistics were used for the data analysis. A distinct Early-Phase Concern Profile was revealed in the findings. The findings showed that teachers had moderate awareness, high informational, and high management concerns, indicating that they were interested in understanding experiential pedagogy, but at the same time, they felt unsure and anxious about how to implement it in their classrooms. A moderate level of personal concerns of teachers reflected their low self-confidence and mixed feelings about role adequacy. However, consequence and collaboration concerns were low, indicating teachers had not yet reoriented their focus towards student impact or teamwork. The refocusing stage was observed as the lowest concern, signifying minimal inclination toward innovation or pedagogical refinement beyond policy expectations. Comprehensively, Teachers were in the early phase of innovation adoption, reflected by the concern pattern under the CBAM. Though they were operationally constrained, but conceptually optimistic. Teachers understand the concept of experiential pedagogy, but they are struggling with its actual implementation in their real classrooms. So, Teachers are enthusiastic but inexperienced. The study concludes that to help teachers progress towards higher and impact-driven stages of concern and to realize NEP 2020’s experiential learning vision in practice, they need focused orientations, continuous mentoring and resource support from institutions.