Classroom Cybernetics: an Approach for Effective and Efficient Classroom Teaching

Cybernetics is not a new invention but its potential for application has not exhausted even after nearly seventy years of its origin. It started with idea of automation and control in the electrical and mechanical systems, but later on extended to biological, social systems and learning systems. Present paper is about application of cybernetics in education systems and discussion has been limited to only classroom situation. Cybernetics means ‘to steer’, ‘to navigate’ or ‘to govern’ for taking the system to desired goal. Here in classroom teaching-learning process is a system and the goal is success of the learner and learning process. Classroom cybernetics is constituted by Constructivism, Conversation theory and a feedback system. Constructivism resulted in five E’s namely- Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate. Conversation theory necessitatesinteraction between teacher and learner which passes through three levels of language namely-natural language, subject language and meat language. Feedback is another essential element of cybernetics which is an instrument for controlling the system to maintain equilibrium, move forward or even reverse it. Problem with the conversation theory is that it is applicable only for one to one correspondence between teacher and learner, thus can’t directly help in classroom situation. To make it applicable for classroom situation Ashby’s Law of requisite Variety has been applied which necessitates that teacher need to be hugely better equipped than the learners and should be skilled enough to visualize the learners’ state of mind. Thus effective use of constructivism, conversation theory, feedback loop and Ashby’s law of requisite varieties makes comprehensive Classroom Cybernetics.