Teaching Aptitude
Teaching Aptitude tests whether a candidate can connect child development theory to classroom decisions: stages of development, learning theories, motivation, assessment, inclusive education and the RTE Act. Questions are usually short classroom situations, so the theory must be recognised from behaviour rather than recited.
Core frameworks
- Piaget: sensorimotor (0–2), pre-operational (2–7), concrete operational (7–11), formal operational (11+). Conservation, classification and reversibility appear at the concrete operational stage.
- Vygotsky: Zone of Proximal Development, scaffolding, social interaction and language as tools of thought.
- Kohlberg: pre-conventional (punishment/reward), conventional (approval/law), post-conventional (universal principles).
- Learning theories: Pavlov (classical conditioning), Skinner (operant, reinforcement), Thorndike (laws of learning), Kohler (insight), Bandura (observational learning).
- Assessment: formative assessment is for learning and happens during teaching; summative assessment is of learning at the end. Bloom's revised taxonomy runs remember → understand → apply → analyse → evaluate → create.
- RTE 2009: free and compulsory elementary education for ages 6–14, PTR 30:1 at primary level, no detention or expulsion, School Management Committees.
Worked example
A five-year-old insists that the taller, narrower glass holds more water than the wider, shorter glass, although both hold 250 ml. The child centres on height and ignores width - a failure of conservation, the signature limitation of Piaget's pre-operational stage. The teaching response is concrete demonstration (pour the water back), not verbal explanation, because the child cannot yet reverse operations mentally.
Traps that cost marks
Do not label every hands-on method as Vygotskian - discovery learning is associated with Bruner. Do not place conservation in the sensorimotor stage. "Assessment for learning" always means formative.