ENHANCING PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS OF STUDENTS THROUGH ACTIVITY BASED SCIENCE TEACHING: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

The classroom learning should be such which may develop the required skills and fulfil the needs of the 21st century learners. Our education policies are aimed at achieving these need-based objectives of the society, favors the development of skills which are essential for the future, though they are not effectively implemented in our classroom. UNESCO has also identified the essential skills which are required in the 21st century. Problem solving skill is one among them which has become not only important but also has grown more and more imperative for our society. This study tried to fill the gap between what is needed and what is happening in the development of such an important skill. For this an intervention program was developed that was Problem Solving skill embedded taskbasedclassroom activities. The aim of the study was to show the effect of an intervention program that includes classroom-task based activities on the development of problem solving skill among elementary class students. This study reveals how to develop problem solving skill with the help of activity-based science learning. The study was conducted on 70 students (35 experimental group & 35 control group) belonging to 8th grade studying in an English medium public school in Ghaziabad district. The study was conducted in the year 2018-19. It was a quasi-experimental design with nonequivalent groups and pretest- posttest design, where two intact sections were taken as a control group and experimental group. The experimental group was taught through the intervention program and the control group was taught through the traditional teaching method. After analyzing the data, it was found that activity-based science learning positively effects in developing problem-solving skill among students of elementary class. It was also found that gender doesn't create any differences in the development of problem-solving skills.