Nupur

Methods of teaching
There is large number of methods for teaching of 'Elements of Commerce'. Harma and Stehr has laid down more than a score of methods for teaching 'General Business', e.g. in 'Elements of Commerce' we find such methods as 'Whole Method'; 'Part Method'; 'Traditional Method'; 'Functional Method' etc. Any method involves a great deal of 'why' and leaves much of 'How' to the individual teacher. Method is a procedure by which the teacher meets the learner at his level starting with his interests and with his problems, and then establishes conditions that enable him to proceed to reach set goals in as effective manner as possible. For teaching "Elements of Commerce' most useful suggested procedures are: 1. Lecture Method, 2. Lecture - blackboard Method, 3. Question -Answer Method, 4. Problem-solving Method, 5. Demonstration Method, and 6. Discussion Method All these methods have been discussed in detail in separate chapter on ' Methods of Teaching'. Approaches of teaching 1. Cyclic Approach For achieving teaching objectives of teaching 'Elements of commerce cyclic approach is considered to the most effective. The cycle may be broadly divided into following three divisions: (i) How the business serves, (ii) How different systems promote business activities, and (iii) How the business is influenced by the environment. The students gets an overview of business in the part (i) of cycle, learn about business services and how to use them in part (ii) and gets a more complete understanding of business system in part (iii).

(i) How the Business Serves In this part of the cycle the students becomes aware of the following: (a) His personal business transactions, (b) How the business serves consumers, (c) How the business is organised to produce and distribute goods and services, (d) How the business is organised and managed, and How Business is influenced by the Environment It is the final phase of the cycle and in it students feels more concerned about advanced business principles and issues rights and duties of labour, management and government. Keeping the above three cycle an experienced teacher can plan his units of instructions and develop them accordingly. It will be quite helpful to the students in learning of different facts and concepts in 'Elements of Commerce'. 2. Role Playing It is another technique used for teaching It is also known as 'psychodrama' when it refers to deeper personal emotional problems, encountered by the individual in his own life. This is the most appropriate technique for high school students. In it the students are assigned the actual role like the roles in a drama. They play the roles with interests. It is an unprepared, unrehearsed dramatisation. This technique helps in developing a democratic attitude among students. The values of the technique lie in the spontaneity of presentation. In this technique the individual makes full use of his creative experiences. For the role-playing there are three perquisites. These are as under: 1. The class must have a cooperative group feeling and common interest on the issue in mind. 2. The participants should have the issue in mind 3. The experience should be regarded as a means of learning and not-entertaining. Following are the steps involved in role-playing: 1. Selecting the situation, 2. Choosing the participants, 3. Setting the stage, 4. Preparing the audience,

5. Acting out the situation, and 6. Follow up. 3. Team -Teaching For teaching 'Elements of Commerce' is a preferred This is so because this subject is intermingling of various concepts of business world and thus the students and commerce teachers must realise the importance of team work. It is better to allow the students to work in small groups before teaching them the concept of team teaching. For the successful execution of team-teaching plan, the teacher has to select the topic and outline the outcomes. He has to organize committees and provide for supervision, help and coordination of the work He should contain the students to show a more responsible behaviour in planning and executing the activities. Each team should have limited members and the membership should not be large. In this approach some problems may arise because of the following reasons : (i) Shyness of the students, (ii) Lack of supervision, (iii) Poor planning, (iv) Poor execution, (v) Lack of motivating force for all the members, and (vi) Variance in teachers efforts. Truly speaking team teaching is the modern refinement of committee technique. It involves specialisation and departmentalisation in Education. In it we assume that no single teacher can do justice to all the topics and team of teachers work with a team spirit, each taking up various aspects of same problem. For success of this technique team members should be selected to complement each other. All teachers must have equal authority and equal recognition. Advantages of Team-teaching Following are the advantages of team-teaching: 1. In it a specialist provides the instructions. 2. It helps in better utilisation of staff-members. 3. It helps to eliminate boredom of one teacher approach and motivates students to learning through variety of approaches from different persons. 4. It helps to solve the individual problems of the students. 5. It provides occasions of learning to teachers from each other.

Disadvantages of Team-teaching 1. In the absence of proper adjustment of schedules this type of teaching is not possible. 2. It is an expensive approach. 3. Sometimes it leads to personality conflicts amongst teachers. 4. Special trained teachers are generally not available in some institution.