Hitesh Kumar Gulati 
Paradigm Shift in Education Management and Child Development
In the past two decades, numerous reforms and initiatives globally have been designed to change education and promote new learning concepts to prepare the new cohort for the future. This involved a study of the world’s best-performing educational systems by researchers in the education arena. There has been a major paradigm shift in education management systems and child development techniques in the last two decades and schools are using them to develop a holistic approach to manage education systems, teachers and finally planning for the sustainable professional development of the children.
A holistic approach for sustainable growth of the child seeks to concurrently address the physical, emotional, relational, intellectual, and spiritual aspects of a child’s life. The Child Development programs designed by numerous schools now incorporates a diversity of approaches to facilitate, educate and develop children into healthy, sustainable adults ready and eager to serve the Society.
The school systems have now enabled children to develop in five major categories:
- Physical Development — Children need nutritional support as well as hygiene training to ensure healthy development.
- Emotional Development — As a result of the epidemic diseases, war, starvation, poverty, and natural disasters, many children live with the scars of emotional trauma. Finding them a local supporting family and a loving, caring sponsor helps them to heal and grow. Helping children to understand what emotions and feelings mean, how and why they happen, identify one’s own feelings and of others, and build up valuable ways of managing them.
- Relational Development — Learning to work and play together, while discovering the wisdom and strength of individuals, helps children build strong and lasting relationships to value and serve humanity.
- Intellectual Development — Gaining an education develops minds/ intellect and provides opportunities for employment/ self-empowerment that will benefit the children throughout their lives.
- Spiritual Development — Primary goal is to help children gain a genuine experience of deliverance through prayers and meditations, helping them grow and mature into faithful disciples.
The variety of co-curricular activity (Functions & Events, Open House, Story Telling, Olympiads, Visits to Traffic Park & Orphanage Homes, etc) designed by the schools are now helping the child to unleash and develop the latent talent along with the development of life skills and empowering them to be confident, competent and harmonious individuals.
The 360-degree approach followed by most of the schools in child development also recognizes and encourages the significance of family in the life of the child.Parents’ participation in the development of children is very important and child development program strongly encourages parent participation in all aspects of the development of their children.
With the fast-changing education systems and philosophy to support child development, it is very important for us as a Researcher/ Principal/ Teacher/ Parent to adapt ourselves and learn/ explore new ways of developing the latent talent of the children, thus helping in holistic development of the child.
Stephen Covey quotes that “The key to success is dedication to life-long learning”
To understand and contribute in this paradigm shift whole heartedly and succeed in holistic and sustainable development of our child, we all have to be continuously involved to evolve with the changing education systems and the accomplishments in our life are dependent upon the learning curve we design for ourselves.
Mr. Hitesh Kumar Gulati is an Organisational Development Facilitator. He is Founder & Executive Consultant at DiversityAce Business Consulting and a Certified PPA Practitioner in Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) & Human Job Analysis (HJA), by Thomas International. He could be reached at hitesh@diversityace.com
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