IGNOU B.Ed key terms

The theory and practice of how teaching is planned, delivered and assessed, including the choices a teacher makes about methods, sequencing and learner support.

A candidate's natural and developed readiness for teaching, shown in attitudes toward learners, patience, communication, problem-solving in class and willingness to keep learning.

A way of teaching that starts from what learners already know and need, giving them active roles in activities, discussion and assessment rather than only listening to the teacher.

Assessment carried out during teaching to find out what learners have understood and to adjust instruction, usually with low stakes and quick feedback.

Assessment at the end of a unit, term or course that judges how much learning has been achieved, often for reporting, grading or certification.

A school assessment approach that spreads evaluation across the year and covers both scholastic subjects and co-scholastic areas such as attitudes, values and skills.

Information given to a learner about the gap between current performance and a goal, with guidance on what to do next so it can actually be used.

Temporary support a teacher provides, such as hints, models or steps, so a learner can complete a task just beyond their present ability, with support withdrawn as competence grows.

The range of tasks a learner cannot yet do alone but can manage with guidance from a teacher or a more capable peer.

A teacher's habit of reviewing what happened in lessons, asking why it worked or failed, and changing plans accordingly instead of repeating routines unexamined.

Small-scale systematic inquiry by a teacher into a problem in their own classroom, cycling through planning, acting, observing and revising to improve local practice.

Schooling in which learners with disabilities, different languages or disadvantaged backgrounds learn together in ordinary classes with the support they need to participate.

Planning one lesson at several levels of difficulty, pace or mode so that learners with different readiness and interests can all work on the same core objective.

The central point a passage makes, which the other sentences support or explain; identifying it is different from picking a single interesting detail.

A conclusion drawn from evidence in a text rather than stated directly, for example working out a speaker's attitude from the words they choose.

The writer's attitude toward the subject as conveyed by word choice and phrasing, such as ironic, sympathetic, critical or neutral.

A sentence, usually early in a paragraph, that announces what the paragraph is about and is then developed by the remaining sentences.

A word with a meaning close to another word's, though rarely identical in use, connotation or formality, as with 'begin' and 'commence'.

A word expressing a meaning opposite to another's, such as 'scarce' for 'abundant'; some opposites come in graded pairs rather than strict either-or ones.

A fixed expression whose meaning cannot be worked out from its individual words, such as 'to let the cat out of the bag' meaning to reveal a secret.

Two ways of presenting the same event: active voice makes the doer the subject ('The teacher marked the papers'), passive voice makes the receiver the subject ('The papers were marked').

Reporting someone's words either verbatim in quotation marks or by shifting tense, pronouns and time words, as in 'She said, "I am late"' becoming 'She said she was late'.

A formal change to the text of the Constitution made under the procedure in the relevant article, requiring special majorities and sometimes ratification by states.

Enforceable rights guaranteed to individuals by the Constitution, mainly in Part III, covering equality, freedom, protection from exploitation, religion, culture and constitutional remedies.

Guidelines in Part IV of the Constitution directing the state toward social and economic welfare; they are not directly enforceable in court but inform policy and lawmaking.

A formal written order of a court commanding or forbidding an action, such as habeas corpus, mandamus, prohibition, certiorari or quo warranto.

The 2009 law making free and compulsory elementary education a legal entitlement for children aged six to fourteen, with norms for schools, teachers and admission.

India's current national framework for education, restructuring school stages, broadening higher education, and emphasising multilingualism, foundational literacy and teacher education.

A deductive argument with two premises and a conclusion, valid when the conclusion must follow if the premises are true, regardless of their actual truth.

In logic, the property of an argument whose conclusion follows necessarily from its premises; validity concerns form, not whether the premises are factually true.

An unstated premise that must be true for a given argument to hold, and which a question asks you to identify or test.

A diagram using overlapping circles to show how sets relate, widely used to test whether a categorical conclusion follows from the stated premises.

A sequence of numbers generated by a rule such as adding a constant, multiplying, or combining previous terms; the task is to find the rule and the next term.

A puzzle in which letters or words are transformed by a consistent rule, such as shifting each letter by a fixed number of places, and the same rule must be applied or reversed.

Reasoning puzzles that state family connections in words or symbols and ask how two people are related, requiring careful tracking of gender and generation.

The process by which green plants use light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into glucose, releasing oxygen as a by-product.

The release of energy from glucose inside cells, with or without oxygen, producing carbon dioxide and water in aerobic respiration; not the same as breathing.

Any number expressible as a fraction of two integers with a non-zero denominator, including integers and terminating or recurring decimals.

A real number that cannot be written as a fraction of two integers, so its decimal expansion neither terminates nor repeats, such as the square root of two.

In a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides, used to find unknown lengths.

Meeting present needs without undermining the ability of future generations to meet theirs, balancing economic growth, social equity and environmental protection.

First-hand evidence created at the time of an event, such as letters, official records, photographs or artefacts, as opposed to later commentary.

An account that interprets or summarises primary evidence, such as a textbook, biography or review article written after the event.