UPHESC Assistant Professor Education 2025 PYQs

Concept: Tylor: culture is ‘that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’.

1. Culture is the social heritage – transmitted from generation to generation and enriched over ages.
2. Technology, scientific temper and values are only parts of culture.

Short trick: Social heritage = Culture (the whole), others are its parts.

Concept: Education is an agent (instrument) of social change, not a barrier to it.

1. Fear of the new, cultural inertia (attachment to old customs) and isolation of groups resist change.
2. Education spreads new ideas, awareness and mobility, so it promotes change.

Short trick: Odd one out: the only ‘agent’ among the ‘barriers’ is education.

Concept: Education’s cultural functions are preservation, transmission, development (enrichment) and integration/assimilation of cultures.

1. Education promotes cultural harmony and understanding, removing prejudices.
2. Creating differences among cultures is the opposite of its role.

Short trick: Education: Preserve – Transmit – Develop – Integrate (never divide).

Concept: E. George Payne (New York University) organised the first department and wrote ‘Principles of Educational Sociology’ (1928) – he is called the father of educational sociology.

1. Auguste Comte – father of sociology.
2. Durkheim – founder of sociology of education (education as socialisation).
3. Max Weber – bureaucracy, social action.

Short trick: Comte → Sociology; Payne → Educational Sociology.

Concept: Rationalisation = giving a socially acceptable but false reason for one’s failure to protect self-esteem.

1. Blaming the hard paper instead of poor preparation is a ‘logical-sounding excuse’.
2. Compensation = making up for a weakness by excelling elsewhere; withdrawal = escaping the situation; substitution = replacing an unattainable goal.

Short trick: ‘Sour grapes’ / excuse = Rationalisation.

Concept: Dyslexia is a specific learning disability in reading (decoding words, spelling).

1. Dysgraphia – writing; Dyscalculia – mathematics/calculation.
2. Dysphasia/aphasia – speech and language; auditory processing disorder – listening.

Short trick: Dys-LEX-ia: lexis = words → reading.

Concept: Piaget: conservation (number, quantity, mass) is acquired in the concrete operational stage (7–11 years), not the formal operational stage (11+).

1. Formal operational stage: hypothetico-deductive reasoning, abstract/reflective thinking, propositional logic.
2. Pre-operational child lacks conservation; concrete operational child masters it.

Short trick: Conservation = Concrete (both start with C).

Concept: Thorndike’s theory of identical elements: transfer from one task to another occurs to the extent the two share identical elements (content, method, attitude).

1. Other transfer theories: formal discipline, generalisation (Judd), transposition (Gestalt), ideals (Bagley).
2. Bi-factor = Spearman’s intelligence theory; need theory = Maslow/Murray (motivation); contingency = leadership (Fiedler).

Short trick: Transfer: Thorndike = identical elements, Judd = generalisation, Gestalt = transposition.

Concept: Children with intellectual disability need individualised instruction – small steps, own pace, repetition, concrete material (IEP).

1. Enrichment, acceleration and advanced coaching are strategies for gifted children.
2. Hence individualised instruction suits the slow/mentally retarded learner.

Short trick: Gifted → Enrich/Accelerate; Retarded → Individualise (IEP).

Concept: Rorschach (1921) uses 10 ambiguous inkblot cards; the subject projects unconscious needs and conflicts into the responses – a projective technique.

1. Other projective tests: TAT (Murray), CAT (Bellak), sentence completion, word association.
2. Inventories (MMPI, 16PF) are self-report; rating scales are judged by others; situational tests observe behaviour in set situations.

Short trick: Ambiguous stimulus → Projection.

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.