A Study of the Pedagogical Practices in ECCE Centres of District Dhanbad, Jharkhand

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 highlights a huge learning crisis at the foundational stage. It is essential for children to acquire Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN) competencies. The facilitation of FLN at the Foundational Stage starts from quality pre-schooling. Considering this, the present study adopted an exploratory research method to find out the pedagogical practices adopted in terms of development of FLN in the ECCE centres of Dhanbad district, Jharkhand. Stratified sampling method was adopted for the study. Ten ECCE centres from two blocks, namely Govindpur and Dhanbad were taken as samples. A total of 247 students and 10 ECCE teachers were part of the study. Observation and interview methods were adopted to collect the qualitative data. The findings show extensive use of conventional teaching methods, unavailability of adequate infrastructure and learning resources, and lack of professional skills among the teachers as major challenges in developing FLN skills among children.