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Teacher’s Glossary Educational terminology
| A | |
| Ability | An inherent or acquired faculty for doing or achieving something. In typical educational practice, the terms ‘abilities’ and ‘aptitudes’ are used interchangeably to denote an individual’s potential for acquiring and applying new knowledge or skills. |
| Academic year | The annual period during which students attend courses or take final xaminations, not taking minor breaks into account. It may be shorter than 12 months but would typically not be shorter than 9 months. It may vary for different levels of education or types of educational institutions with in a country. This is also referred to as the ‘school year’, mainly for the pretertiary level. |
| Adolescent learners | Adolescence is a distinct stage that marks the transition between childhood and adulthood. The Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget described adolescence as the period during which individuals’ cognitive abilities fully mature. According to Piaget, the transition from late childhood to adolescence is marked by the attainment of formal operational thought, the hallmark of which is abstract reasoning. Advances in the field of neuroscience have shown that the frontal cortex changes dramatically during adolescence. It is this part of the brain that controls higher-level cognitive processes such as planning, metacognition, and multitasking. Adolescent learners thrive in school environments that acknowledge and support their growing desire for autonomy, peer interaction, and abstract cognitive thinking, as well as the increasing salience of identityrelated issues and romantic relationships. |
| Achievement standards | A means of defining levels of performance that can take a variety of forms. In some contexts they are used to mark a minimum level of acceptable performance. In other settings, more general descriptions of 5 performance that sort learners into achievement levels, such as basic, proficient, and advanced, are used. They provide teachers with targets for instruction by specifying what, and how much, learners must be able to do in order to demonstrate mastery of content standards and the achievement level that is called for. They provide clear directions to developers of tests about the kinds of performance situation and tasks that will be used to make judgements about learner proficiency. They help to clarify for the public what it means for a learner to be classified at a particular level. To test developers and psychometricians, an achievement standard is represented by the point on a test score scale that separates one level of achievement from another, e.g. a passing score from a failing one. To educators involved in the development of curriculum, the term can mean a description of what a learner knows and can do to demonstrate proficiency against a standard. |
| Adult education | Education specifically targeted at individuals who are regarded as adults by their society to improve their technical or professional qualifications, further develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge with the purpose to complete a level of formal education, or to acquire, refresh or update their knowledge, skills and competencies in a particular field. In many contexts today, competencies acquired in non-formal or informal education – including different forms of adult education – are increasingly recognized as part of lifelong learning. |
| B | |
| Basic education | The foundation for lifelong learning and human development on which countries may build, systematically, further levels and types of education and training. Basic education typically comprises primary and lower secondary education, and increasingly one or more years of pre-primary education. It usually encompasses compulsory schooling. |
| Basic learning needs | Needs which comprise both essential learning tools (such as literacy, oral expression, numeracy, and problem solving) and the basic learning content (such as knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes) required by human beings to be able to survive, to develop their full capacities, to live and work in dignity, to participate fully in development, to improve the quality of their lives, to make informed decisions, and to continue learning. The scope of basic learning needs and how 8they should be met varies with individual countries and cultures, and inevitably, changes with the passage of time. |
| Basic skills | The fundamental knowledge (i.e. declarative and procedural) as well as operational aspects of knowledge needed for learning, work and life. Within the curriculum, literacy and numeracy are normally considered as foundational, essential or basic skills. The term can include a range of skills that individuals need to live successfully in contemporary society. |
| C | |
| Child-centered approach | Placing the child at the notional centre of the learning process in which they are active participants. Involves giving children choices of learning activities, with the teacher acting as facilitator of learning. |
| Child-friendly environment | A supportive educational and community environment that is inclusive, healthy, friendly, protective and rights-based. The Child-Friendly School model, developed by UNICEF, promotes inclusiveness, gender-sensitivity, tolerance, dignity and personal empowerment. |
| Classroom-based assessment | Assessment carried out by teachers based on the learning that has taken place within the context of a classroom, without reference to assessment being conducted in other classes or groups. It offers feedback to teachers and students on the quality of the learning performance supporting its ongoing improvement. Also referred to as ‘classroom assessment’ and ‘teacher-based assessment’. |
| D | |
| Didactics | Term originating from the Greek noun ‘teaching’ and stemming from the German tradition of theorizing classroom learning and teaching. It is a singular noun spelt in the plural form, indicating that connotations to the somewhat pejorative English word ‘didactic’ (e.g. text overburdened with instructive matter or oversimplifying way of teaching) are not intended. Didactics serves as a major theory in teacher education and curriculum development, especially in the German-speaking and Scandinavian countries, as well as in the Russian Federation. In French, German, and Scandinavian educational contexts there is a marked tendency to include educational practice as part of the concept of didactics where the term is viewed as the theory and practice of teaching and learning. In a simplified way, the concern of didactics can be described as follows: what should be taught and learned (the content aspect); how do we teach and learn (the aspects of transmitting and learning); and to what purpose or intention should something be taught and learned (the goal/aims aspect). |
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