MUTUAL COMPARISON RECEPTION MODEL (MCRM) OF CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT IN SCIENCE LEARNING AT SECONDARY CLASSES: A VARIATION TO THE BRUNERIAN THEORY

The paper is the outcome of an experiential learning episode encountered by a teacher educator (the author) with a group of student-teachers under his mentorship during a session of the practice teaching programme (2006-07) at the secondary school level. The crisis faced by a student teacher in connection with the development of a lesson template based on Brunerian theory of concept development and Joyce and Weil’s formulation of Information Processing Family of Models of Teaching turned out to be an occasion of Eureka to construct a new version of Concept Attainment Model (CAM) of teaching. Here the practitioners involved in the exploration proposes a twist to Concept Attainment Model of teaching, namely Mutual Comparison Reception Model of CAM, which seems to be highly suitable for the learning of those secondary level science concepts which are interlinked in the conceptual ladder. The field level experiences of the student teachers with the proposed model of teaching (2007-09) are also reviewed in the paper. The paper also annexes a selected lesson template developed by the student teachers based on the proposed model.