UPHESC Assistant Professor Education 2025 PYQs

Concept: Educational guidance helps students with choice of subjects, courses, schools and study problems.

1. Vocational guidance – choosing, preparing for and entering an occupation.
2. Personal guidance – emotional, social and adjustment problems.

Short trick: Subjects/courses → Educational; jobs/careers → Vocational; emotions → Personal.

Concept: Skewness = lack of symmetry: scores pile up on one side and the tail stretches to the other.

1. Positive skew – scores bunched at the low end, tail to the right (hard test).
2. Negative skew – scores bunched at the high end, tail to the left (easy test).
3. Symmetric/central concentration describes a normal curve; even spread is a rectangular distribution.

Short trick: Skew = lopsided; tail tells the sign.

Concept: Comparing scores of two independent groups (boys vs girls) needs a two-sample difference test – t-test or its non-parametric equivalent, the Mann-Whitney U-test.

1. Chi-square tests association/frequencies of categorical data, not difference of mean scores.
2. Product-moment r measures relationship between two variables, not group difference.
3. One-way ANOVA is designed for comparing three or more groups; for exactly two independent groups the U-test (or t) is the appropriate test.

Short trick: 2 independent groups → t / Mann-Whitney U; 3+ groups → ANOVA.

Concept: In the NPC, area between mean and $1\sigma$ = 34.13%, so between $-1\sigma$ and $+1\sigma$ = 2 × 34.13 = 68.26%.

1. $\pm 2\sigma$ → 95.44%.
2. $\pm 3\sigma$ → 99.73%.

Short trick: 68.26 – 95.44 – 99.73 (the 68–95–99.7 rule).

Concept: In stratified random sampling a heterogeneous population is divided into homogeneous strata (e.g., gender, locality) and units are drawn randomly from each, so every subgroup is represented.

1. Convenience and quota sampling are non-probability methods – not representative.
2. Cluster sampling selects whole groups; it suits populations spread over a large area, with clusters themselves heterogeneous.

Short trick: Heterogeneous population → make strata → Stratified sampling.

Concept: Only the experimental method manipulates the independent variable and controls extraneous variables, so it can establish cause-and-effect.

1. Survey/descriptive methods describe ‘what is’.
2. Historical method describes ‘what was’.
3. Experimental method tells ‘what will be’ when a variable is changed.

Short trick: What was → historical; what is → descriptive; what will be (cause-effect) → experimental.

Concept: Action research (Corey, 1953) is done by practitioners to solve an immediate local problem; its findings apply to that situation only.

1. It improves school practice; teachers are the researchers; it gives real solutions for real classrooms.
2. Small, non-random samples and local focus mean the results cannot be generalised – that is the job of fundamental research.

Short trick: Action research = local, immediate, no generalisation.

Concept: Qualitative research seeks participants’ meanings and experiences, so it relies on in-depth, open-ended (unstructured) interviews, observation and documents.

1. Survey and correlational research use structured questionnaires/tests yielding numbers.
2. Open-ended data are analysed thematically, not statistically.

Short trick: Open-ended, in-depth = words not numbers = qualitative.

Concept: W. Edwards Deming (14 points, PDCA cycle) and Joseph M. Juran (quality trilogy) are the pioneers who gave TQM its comprehensive philosophy and strategy.

1. Crosby – ‘zero defects’, ‘quality is free’.
2. Ishikawa – fishbone (cause-effect) diagram, quality circles.
3. These are later contributors; the founding philosophy is credited to Deming and Juran.

Short trick: TQM gurus: Deming (14 points/PDCA) + Juran (trilogy).

Concept: Luther Gulick (with Urwick, 1937) coined POSDCORB – Planning, Organising, Staffing, Directing, Co-ordinating, Reporting, Budgeting.

1. Henri Fayol gave POCCC (plan, organise, command, coordinate, control).
2. F. W. Taylor gave scientific management.

Short trick: POSDCORB = Gulick; POCCC = Fayol.

Concept: F. W. Taylor, ‘father of scientific management’ (Principles of Scientific Management, 1911): time-and-motion study, standardisation, differential piece wage.

1. Administration as management – Henri Fayol.
2. Bureaucracy – Max Weber.
3. Time study is only one tool of Taylor’s scientific management.

Short trick: Taylor → Scientific; Fayol → Administrative; Weber → Bureaucratic.

Concept: PERT (Programme Evaluation and Review Technique, 1958) is a time-oriented network technique.

1. Steps: define objective → work-breakdown into activities/events → network → three time estimates (optimistic, most likely, pessimistic) → critical path → review.
2. Cost estimation/time–cost trade-off is the feature of CPM, not PERT.

Short trick: PERT = Time; CPM = Cost.

Concept: As printed, two options are both standard answers for the decision-making theory of administration, so no single option can be chosen.

1. Herbert A. Simon (Administrative Behavior, 1947) founded the decision-making approach: administration is essentially decision making under 'bounded rationality'.
2. Daniel E. Griffiths (Administrative Theory, 1959) gave the decision-making theory of educational administration – decision making is the central function of administration; educational-administration texts teach it as 'Griffiths' decision-making theory'.
3. Jesse Sears is linked with the administrative-process view, not decision making. So both (C) Griffiths and (D) Simon are correct – the question has two right options.

Short trick: Decision making: Simon (general administration) + Griffiths (educational administration).

Concept: Classical (traditional) management stressed rules, compliance and close supervision; the modern approach (systems, contingency, human-resource) emphasises the growth and development of the organisation and its people.

1. Compliance with rules and supervision of managers = traditional/bureaucratic control.
2. Modern approach is dynamic, open-system, participative and development (growth) oriented.

Short trick: Traditional = control & compliance; Modern = growth & development.

Concept: Tannenbaum, Weschler and Massarik (1961): ‘Leadership is interpersonal influence, exercised in a situation, and directed through the communication process toward the attainment of a specified goal or goals.’

1. Terry: leadership is the activity of influencing people to strive willingly for group objectives.
2. Koontz & O’Donnell: influence/art of inducing subordinates; McGregor: Theory X and Y.

Short trick: ‘Interpersonal influence … in a situation’ = Tannenbaum (also of the leadership continuum).

Concept: Affective domain (Krathwohl, Bloom & Masia, 1964): Receiving → Responding → Valuing → Organisation → Characterisation by a value.

1. Coordination belongs to the psychomotor domain (e.g., Dave: imitation, manipulation, precision, articulation/coordination, naturalisation).
2. Note: ‘Organisation’ is affective, ‘Coordination’ is psychomotor.

Short trick: Affective = R-R-V-O-C (Receive, Respond, Value, Organise, Characterise).

Concept: Michael Scriven (1967, ‘The Methodology of Evaluation’) coined the terms formative and summative evaluation (and also goal-free evaluation).

1. Formative – during the programme, for improvement.
2. Summative – at the end, for judging/certifying.
3. Criterion-referenced testing was introduced by Robert Glaser (1963).

Short trick: Scriven = Formative + Summative; Glaser = Criterion-referenced.

Concept: Test-retest: the same test is given twice to the same group after an interval; the correlation is the coefficient of stability.

1. Parallel/equivalent forms at the same time → equivalence.
2. Parallel forms with a time gap → stability and equivalence.
3. Split-half, KR-20, Cronbach’s alpha → internal consistency.

Short trick: Same test, two times = Stability.

Concept: Intelligence tests are validated against later school achievement (the criterion); a correlation of .74 shows how well intelligence scores predict achievement – predictive validity.

1. Correlation between two different tests is a validity coefficient, not reliability (reliability = same test/forms).
2. Intelligence → achievement is the classic predictor → criterion pair, so it is the predictive validity of the intelligence test.

Short trick: Predictor (intelligence) vs criterion (achievement) → predictive validity.

Concept: Measures of position (partition values) locate a score’s relative place in a distribution: percentiles, deciles, quartiles, percentile ranks.

1. Mean and mode are measures of central tendency.
2. Kurtosis is a measure of peakedness, so option B is not a measure of position.

Short trick: Position = P, D, Q (percentile, decile, quartile).