BESC 134 Solved Guess Paper 2026: IGNOU Education as a Practice for BAG and BAM

Inclusive education: concept and barriers

Question: Explain the concept of Inclusive Education. Describe the barriers for imparting inclusive education with suitable examples.

Meaning of Inclusive Education

"Inclusive education is an education given in an ordinary school with other students, following the same curriculum at the same time, in the same classrooms, with the full acceptance of all, and in a way that makes the student feel no different from other students."

Booth (1996) views it as an ongoing process of increasing the participation of students in the cultures and curricula of mainstream schools. NCFTE (2009) describes it as a philosophical position and an arrangement of facilities that ensure access and success for everybody, including those at the margins.

Thus inclusive education is much beyond enrolment. It is a feeling of equal belonging among all learners, irrespective of background.

Barriers in Inclusive Education

1. Attitudinal barriers: Societal norms, prejudice and old beliefs lower acceptance of children with disabilities; teachers may be reluctant to admit them or adapt the curriculum, leading to dropout.
2. Physical barriers: Architectural problems, such as the absence of ramps, disabled-friendly toilets and accessible rooms, keep children with disabilities out of school.
3. Financial barriers: Local governments lack funds or persistence to provide financial help for accessible infrastructure.
4. Curriculum: A rigid, non-flexible curriculum and a fixed evaluation system do not allow varied teaching methods, contributing to dropout.
5. Teacher-related: Teachers unacquainted with inclusion, lacking knowledge and skills, are unwilling to plan for diverse learners and individual needs.
6. Policy barriers: Gaps in implementing legislation and policy obstruct the agencies that deliver inclusive education.

Example: A wheelchair-using child denied admission because the school has no ramp (physical), or teased by peers (attitudinal), shows how these barriers combine to exclude learners.

Conclusion: Inclusive education brings all learners together with full acceptance; realising it requires removing attitudinal, physical, financial, curricular, teacher and policy barriers.

Approaches and steps of action research

Question: Describe the approaches for action research with suitable examples and explain the steps involved in conducting it.

Meaning of Action Research

"A deliberate, solution-oriented investigation that is participant-driven, collaborative and reflective, especially adopted for improving the teaching-learning situation."

The term was coined by Kurt Lewin. It bridges the gap between theory and practice and treats the teacher as the best judge of her educational experience.

Approaches to Action Research

Calhoun (2002) suggested three approaches based on the level of operation:

1. Individual: A single teacher studies and improves her own classroom problem, for example tackling absenteeism in her class.
2. Collaborative: A group of teachers works together on a common classroom or school problem.
3. School-wide: The whole school addresses a problem affecting the entire institution.

Steps in Conducting Action Research

1. Identify a problem: Collect information about the classroom event or learner to be studied.
2. Specifying the problem: Pinpoint and clearly draft the problem in question.
3. Listing probable causes: Note all possible reasons behind the problem.
4. Hypothesising: Select the most potent cause and frame a tentative solution.
5. Action plan: Develop a detailed plan of strategy, resources, time and evidence.
6. Interpretation of the result: Analyse outcomes and conclude whether the intervention worked.

Conclusion: Action research follows a cyclic process, through individual, collaborative or school-wide approaches and six clear steps, to solve real classroom problems and improve practice.

Nali-Kali as an innovative project

Question: What is the 'Nali-Kali' project? In what ways was it an innovative project?

Meaning of Nali-Kali

"Nali-Kali means joyful learning: a UNICEF-assisted project started in 1995 in Mysore District to revitalise education in selected primary schools."

The project responded to student absenteeism caused by farm and domestic labour, loitering and seasonal migration, and to teacher-centred chalk-talk teaching with few learning materials.

A group of 15 motivated teachers studied multigrade pedagogy at Rishi Valley, Chittoor, and experimented in Mysore schools. Scaled up under the DPEP, it reached 13,691 schools and, by 2009-10, all government Kannada-medium schools of Karnataka.

Innovative Features

1. Joyful learning: It replaced chalk-talk teaching with a joyful, child-centred process.
2. Multigrade pedagogy: Its pedagogy was most appropriate for multi-grade teaching in primary schools.
3. Learning materials (TLMs): Readiness cards, content cards, practice cards, application cards and evaluation cards were developed.
4. Pedagogic principles: Materials followed 'known to unknown', 'concrete to abstract' and 'simple to complex'.
5. Activity banks and ladders: Activity banks and learning ladders in language and mathematics aided self-paced progress.

Conclusion: Nali-Kali transformed teacher-centred rote teaching into joyful, child-centred, activity-based learning suited to multigrade classrooms, making it a landmark educational innovation.

Skewness and kurtosis

Question: What do you understand by 'Skewness' and 'Kurtosis'?

Skewness

Skewness measures the symmetry of a distribution. In a perfectly normal distribution skewness is zero, because mean, median and mode coincide. When the spread is not equal on both sides, the curve is skewed.

Positive skewness occurs when scores cluster at the lower side and the spread is towards the right; negative skewness occurs when scores cluster at the higher end and the spread is towards the left. It is calculated as Sk = 3(Mean − Median) / Standard Deviation.

Kurtosis

Kurtosis refers to how pointy a distribution is, that is, whether data are heavy-tailed or light-tailed relative to the normal curve. The NPC is mesokurtic. A leptokurtic distribution is relatively peaked with heavy tails (positive kurtosis); a platykurtic distribution is relatively flat with light tails (negative kurtosis).

Conclusion: Skewness shows the lack of symmetry of a curve, while kurtosis shows its peakedness; both measure how a distribution deviates from normalcy.

Quantitative vs qualitative data

Question: Differentiate between quantitative and qualitative data.

Meaning

Quantitative data are measurable and expressed in numbers, figures or values (size, length, scores, percentages); qualitative data are descriptive and explain how people experience the social world.

Conclusion: Quantitative data capture the measurable 'what', while qualitative data explore the 'why' behind behaviour; together they give a realistic understanding of a research problem.