UPSESSB TGT/PGT key terms

The study and practice of how teaching happens, covering lesson planning, classroom methods, assessment choices, and the reasoning behind why a particular approach suits a particular group of learners.

The natural and trainable capacity of a person to understand learners, organise content, communicate clearly, manage a classroom, and adjust instruction so that learning actually takes place.

A specific, observable statement of what a learner should be able to do after instruction, written so that achievement can be judged through performance rather than through vague claims of understanding.

A hierarchical classification of cognitive objectives moving from remembering and understanding through applying and analysing to evaluating and creating, widely used to frame questions and set the level of expected learner performance.

Assessment carried out during teaching to gather evidence about learner progress and to adjust instruction immediately, usually low stakes and followed by feedback rather than by grades recorded for promotion.

Assessment conducted at the end of a unit, term, or course to judge overall achievement against stated standards, typically graded and used for reporting, certification, or selection decisions.

The principle that intended learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks must all point at the same objective, so that what is taught and what is tested do not drift apart.

The set of routines, rules, seating arrangements, and responses a teacher uses to keep a class orderly, engaged, and safe, so that instructional time is protected from disruption.

Temporary support a teacher provides, such as worked examples, prompts, or structured steps, which is gradually withdrawn as learners gain competence and can work independently.

The gap between what a learner can already do alone and what the learner can achieve with guidance from a more capable person, marking the range where instruction is most productive.

A view of learning holding that learners build new understanding by connecting it to prior knowledge and experience, so teaching should create situations for active exploration rather than pure transmission of facts.

Planning lessons so that content, process, or product vary according to learner readiness, interest, and profile, while the same core objective remains in view for the whole class.

An approach in which children with disabilities, disadvantaged backgrounds, or varied learning needs are taught in the same regular classroom, with the environment and methods adapted to remove barriers to participation.

A school assessment scheme that spreads evaluation across the year and covers scholastic as well as co-scholastic areas, using multiple tools instead of relying on a single terminal examination.

A scoring guide that lists criteria for a task and describes levels of quality for each criterion, so that judgement of open-ended work becomes transparent and consistent across students.

The cycle in which a teacher or peer gives specific information about a learner's performance, the learner acts on it, and the resulting change is checked again to guide the next step.

The habit of a teacher systematically reviewing what happened in a lesson, why it worked or failed, and what to change next time, often recorded in a diary or discussed with colleagues.

An instructional approach in which learners investigate a problem or set of materials largely on their own and infer the underlying rule or concept, with the teacher guiding rather than explaining first.

Teaching organised around learner-generated questions and investigation, where students gather evidence, reason about it, and build explanations rather than memorising a finished body of content.

The 2009 Indian law guaranteeing free and compulsory elementary education for children aged six to fourteen, setting norms on pupil-teacher ratios, school infrastructure, and a ban on screening at admission.

India's National Education Policy of 2020, which restructured school stages into a 5+3+3+4 design, emphasised foundational literacy and numeracy, mother-tongue instruction in early years, and multidisciplinary higher education.

The NIPUN Bharat mission launched under NEP 2020 to ensure that every child attains foundational literacy and numeracy by the end of Grade 3, with state-level targets and classroom-level tracking.

The Unified District Information System for Education Plus, an annual national data collection on school enrolment, infrastructure, teachers, and learning indicators used for planning and policy monitoring.

An integrated centrally sponsored scheme covering pre-primary to senior secondary schooling, combining earlier programmes for elementary and secondary education and funding school infrastructure, teacher training, and equity interventions.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training, an autonomous body that prepares model textbooks, national curriculum frameworks, and teacher-education materials used as reference across Indian schools.

The National Curriculum Framework, a document issued by NCERT that sets broad aims, subject-area guidelines, and pedagogical direction for school education, most recently revised in line with NEP 2020.

Small-scale, systematic inquiry by a practitioner into a problem in their own setting, cycling through planning, acting, observing, and reflecting in order to improve local practice.

The phonological joining of two adjacent sounds in Hindi, where the final sound of one word and the initial sound of the next combine or change, as in विद्या + आलय becoming विद्यालय.

Hindi compound formation in which two or more words combine into a single unit, such as राजपुत्र, with the relationship between the members classified into types like तत्पुरुष, द्वंद्व, and बहुव्रीहि.

A bound prefix added before a root or word in Hindi to modify or extend its meaning, such as प्र in प्रगति or अनु in अनुशासन, drawn largely from Sanskrit.

A suffix attached to a root or word in Hindi to form a new word or mark grammatical information, as in लिखना से लेखक, and distinguished as कृत् or तद्धित depending on function.

Two categories of Hindi vocabulary: तत्सम words retained from Sanskrit in nearly unchanged form, such as अग्नि, and तद्भव words that evolved from Sanskrit through Prakrit and changed shape, such as आग.

In Sanskrit and Hindi poetics, the aesthetic emotion evoked in a prepared reader by a literary work, classified into nine kinds including शृंगार, करुण, and वीर, each arising from specific भाव.

A poetic figure or ornament in Hindi literature, divided broadly into शब्दालंकार, which depends on sound such as अनुप्रास, and अर्थालंकार, which depends on meaning such as उपमा and रूपक.

The metrical system of Hindi poetry, specifying syllable counts, pauses, and rhythmic patterns for verse forms such as दोहा, चौपाई, and सोरठा.

Two rapid reading strategies: skimming moves quickly over a text to grasp its general idea, while scanning hunts for a specific detail such as a date, name, or figure.

A reading or listening skill in which a meaning not stated directly is drawn from textual clues and background knowledge, as when a reader concludes a character is anxious from described behaviour.

The way sentences in a text are tied together by devices such as pronouns, conjunctions, repetition, and lexical chains, so that the passage reads as a connected whole rather than isolated statements.

An exercise in which words are deleted from a passage at intervals and the candidate supplies the missing items, testing grammar, vocabulary, and sensitivity to surrounding context.

Two ways of presenting a clause: active voice makes the doer the subject, as in the teacher explained the rule, while passive voice makes the receiver the subject, as in the rule was explained.

Two ways of reporting an utterance: direct speech quotes the exact words inside quotation marks, while indirect speech reports the content and shifts pronouns, tense, and time references accordingly.