5 Education Buzzwords Every Teacher Should Know

The past year has been a roller coaster ride for teachers, students, and parents owing to the pandemic. From switching to digital classes to picking up new buzzwords like asynchronous learning, blended classroom, hybrid learning, and so on, teachers accepted the challenges sportingly. In today’s rapidly changing educational landscape, one needs to stay ahead of the latest trends. Here are 5 new educational buzzwords that are catching up fast and will rule in 2022:

1. Growth Mindset

Growth mindset revolves around a learning theory based on the belief that intelligence and performance can be improved. This is in contrast to the ‘fixed mindset’ belief that a person’s talents or intelligence cannot be altered. Research has shown that encouraging a growth mindset among students helps them learn more effectively. Such students are more confident about themselves, strive for self-improvement, seek challenges, and demonstrate academic excellence.

2. Data-Driven Instruction

Data is king. Corporations run on data. Technology runs on data. Now, data is helping education by enabling better learning outcomes. Data-driven instruction is the approach where teaching is improved based on information and data obtained from students. The data is gathered during and after the learning process and analysed to make informed decisions about how to proceed with the lessons in class.

3. Makerspaces

A makerspace is a separate zone where students can work on projects using STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) skills. It can be a workspace inside a class, library, or school where raw materials like craft supplies and equipment like 3D printers are available. Students can use the workspace under a teacher’s supervision to build something using their creativity and imagination. The idea of makerspaces is catching on quickly and many schools are devoting large spaces for these.

4. Personalised Learning

Every student learns at a different pace. This calls for a personalised approach where instruction can be tailored as per individual needs. This approach is called personalised learning, and it’s one of the most trending buzzwords of the year. Through personalised learning, the unique strengths, skills, and interests of a student are leveraged to make learning effective. At the same time, the instruction is customised to target the students’ weaknesses and to help them overcome these.

5. Design Thinking

Design thinking is an approach that focuses on finding ways to solve tough problems. In general, design thinking involves the use of experimenting and prototyping, learning from mistakes, and finding solutions. In education, the design thinking approach exposes students to real-world problems. It gives them the opportunity to collaborate with each other to define the problem, brainstorm ideas, design a prototype and then test it. Through this approach, students get a taste of the real-life applications of their education. For example, a particular locality has the problem of unclean drinking water. The students can be given an opportunity to identify the cause of the problem and come up with different prototypes to test and solve the problem.

These are the educational buzzwords that are likely to trend in 2022. But they are more than just ‘words’. Emerging buzzwords give us a glimpse of the future. They hint at new approaches that are proving to be effective across the globe. Teachers can pick up such approaches and find out ways in which they can integrate them into their daily instruction.

SuperTeacher aims at empowering teachers with tools to succeed in the digital age. It doesn’t just help them go digital, but also supports their endeavour to upskill and progress in the education industry.