Good morning everyone. We will begin now and I would like to welcome the chair for today's seminar. Prasapradhan, who needs of course no introduction. I should rather introduce myself and Subramanian from Omibaba Center. I work in maths education. Prasapradhan was the center director. Omibaba Center was also the dean who was here for a long time. We have pioneered many programs at the center and it's wonderful to have him as the chair for today's seminar. So let me ask him to come and resolve name and marks. Thank you Dr. Subramanian. As the chair of this one day seminar on Namukta Zing Science, Technology, Mathematics, STEM education for all for life. That's going to be a topic but seminar is on basically our road ahead in science and technology, mathematics education in India, the road ahead. And first of all let me kind of let you go first. I am very sorry for womanizing the seminar and in particular inviting me. We shall begin with the proceedings of the seminar in a short while. It is not needed to say that it's a very very important topic. In fact it was very dear, it's a topic very dear to Chitra's heart. As all of us remember Chitra, she was energy personified. Her work at HBCSE, I did several new dimensions through HBCSE and in particular with respect to STEM education. I was just thinking of a few fields. Environmental education, the project based education, design and technology, science and technology studies in general. Critical thinking combined with communication, especially the Tatsun project. Equality studies with emphasis on gender and later on other aspects of equality. And I may say that HBCSE's contribution to the thought process regarding STEM education in the country was a great deal to Chitra. Chitra was the force behind the STEM education thinking process in HBCSE and thereby in the whole country. It is a very appropriate tribute to her memory that we are arranging this seminar. And I think that is the way to carry forward her work. Chitra's loss to us was irreparable, definitely irreparable, not only to HBCSE but to all of us and to STEM education in the country. But then we do have to carry forward what she stood for. And I think the seminar is a very, very important event in that direction. And I wish the seminar is held every year and leads to contributing to the thought process of what STEM education is. Especially these times when STEM education is critically important in the country. I am really happy to participate in this. And once again, I compliment Raj Gopal and HBCSE, like Jayashree, for arranging the seminar. And I am sure that the deliberations of the seminar will be very, very fruitful. The kind of debate that usually goes on in recent countries about any new ideas is probably not there in our country. And I think such seminars are very important for us. And I think all of you, I am sure, will contribute to it. We have very distinguished speakers today. Prasadita Rampal is there. One of the leading rights of education, especially from the military quality in this country. We shall have Jayashree. We shall have Dr. Subramanian himself. And then students of, this is Pranatrajant Swathi is there. And we also will have Ashwati. And we will end with Alun Kumar, a very distinguished scholar, especially in STEM education. Besides, of course, in physics. So I shall request Jayashree now to start the proceedings. And once again, I compliment you all. I expect all of us to participate in the discussions and lay the seminar very fruitful. Thank you. Dr. Pranatrajant, I am Dr. Alita Rampal. My colleagues at the Munikawa Center. Several friends and colleagues of Chitra, some visitors. I am sure many more people will join us as the day proceeds. It's really fitting that we are having this seminar in memory of Professor Chitra Nantrajant. It is, as Dr. Pranatrajant said, an opportunity for us to pay tribute to her contribution to science, technology and mathematics education in the Munikawa Center and in the country. And the talks today I think will bring out the intellectual debt that we owe to Chitra. So although she is best known and remembered for design and technology and project-based learning, which were her latest kind of areas of work, many of the programs which she started from the mid-90s have continued in one form or the other, perhaps not even in her person, but in the ideas which she introduced to the Munikawa Center. For example, through Tatsun, the idea of science, technology, society and critical thinking. So even today we have students who are not, perhaps some of them did not directly work with her or she did not even write them. But because she introduced those ideas in the Munikawa Center, they remained in the discourse of the center and quite a lot of research came out of it. Similarly in terms of our teacher orientation programs, so a session on critical thinking which is now part of most of our programs is there as a legacy of the Tatsun project. I was fortunate to work with Chitra and Sugra quite early on in the deletes project, the diagnosed in learning in primary science. And Chitra's really a passion in that was to work with students from tribal backgrounds and to really establish and to show to people that they had a knowledge of living things and of vegetation which was far beyond what was there in the curriculum. And the reasons why the curriculum did not gel with this knowledge base which was there for the asking and yet in schools these students were disadvantaged. But the work which she did you know finally it found its way whether the Tatsun work or the deletes work found its way into the national curriculum framework. Again physically she was not there on the NCF committees but she had generated these ideas and they then went into NCF. And now looking back you know there is some distance between that time and the time that she worked on these programs. And then the NCF after that I can see that the ideas which went from NCF to the state curriculum frameworks and into teacher education programs which I have witnessed. Had they seen it somewhere in what she generated so this is something which one can see only over the longer term. It's not something which is I think obvious to people. She was involved in the talent nurture program at the plus to level and her subject being physics you know at that time we had the talent nurture program. So Pratham was involved in it. Sir Abhin Kumar initiated this program. So this talent nurture program then built up a you know a basis for us to go into the Olympiad program. And then you know of course there was a laboratory development which also happened around with it. And you know afterwards her name was not associated with these programs. And yet her intellectual debt that we owe to her I think is quite immense. And we will see some reflections of that in today's seminar. So I look forward to listening to the speaker. The first speaker is Prof. Anitha Nampal. And I again welcome all of you and invite Anitha to speak. It's difficult to be here and especially to be talking here without Chitra around. I can almost imagine her sitting with her sparkling eyes and her smile and very reassuring presence. I think we talk more in the evening but this whole sort of journey that I present before you in terms of our understanding of STM education at least in the last 40 or 45 years is in a way embodied by embracing lives and chasing passions. Because many co-travelers and allies and friends who have been with us in this journey have come with different kinds of dispositions. Mostly a scientist who don't engage the heart too much and suddenly don't talk about questions or justice. But Chitra who I may not have spent as much time as I may have with other people resonated, I mean I just resonated with her similar concerns. Quite unusual amongst her fraternity of people who work in science and technology and maths education. So it is in her memory that I talk of some of these things and in solidarity with the kinds of passions that we share. I will talk about and thinking more on these lines now especially because now at this juncture when we had curriculum renewal we have been working on teacher education renewal in the last 2-3 years. And I find more and more that when we are working with teachers who may be coming out of much better resourced institutions they had done science and maths, they had studied in institutions. Today resourced even in terms of the internet resources that are at their disposal which we had struggled with I still remember even to look at one publication but to find out what was being written about in the world was I mean there was a kind of hunger that we could never associate and today with the press of buttons people in universities can have access to these things. And yet I find that people are not looking at sort of areas of work not looking at thinking beyond this very narrow discipline which they call their discipline. And that is why what we may have read as undergrads and masters out of our own interests not necessarily out of what we were being guided by in terms of our education system because those things are available as paperbacks whether it was reading about issues about science controversies in science, issues about democratization of science in the large framework history, sociology about sciences, about science I don't find our students doing that and that is worrying. So more and more when I am dealing with say M.H. students I find that even in the early 80s when I have introduced for the first time a course which was on the sociology and philosophy of science for science teachers studying in Javna not much has happened since and today even when we are redesigning teacher education courses we have now very consciously brought in a course which is an introduction to science studies we are talking about curriculum studies, we are talking about understanding a discipline before you jump on to just some facets about that subject that you think has been there all along without even questioning where that subject has come from and where it is going and children of course which children are now coming into schools dealing with those subjects I think these questions today seem much more significant I start with an image here which we just saw someone's back don't normally use points too much but I thought it will sort of help me bring in many different strands of things that I wanted to put in including a little film clip but there has been some mismatch between the systems I start with this image which speaks volumes but it also makes us think what is happening in terms of what we are doing especially for science and maths and this father who was actually jailed for a night for taking his child tied up on a motorcycle has this to say what is happening to maths and science now more than ever before and they are becoming gatekeepers not just in the national system but in a global system and with the kinds of pressures on just trying to see what achievements are being made by children in maths and science and it's amazing I mean any country study, any international study any economist who wants to study what's happening to a system somehow tends to look at of course literacy and maths not so much science and especially in primary school you pick up studies by people looking at different countries and they just pick up class form, literacy, language and maths and these become then indicators and markers of what's happening to education but more so more problematically what's happening to the national systems of economic production and in the last couple of years we even heard of Obama exerting his country and steering it to out-educate India and China in science and maths and we wonder because we've never heard of this work before we've never heard of out-educating anyone, we know education but it out-education almost was totally contrary to what education means for us so what is happening and this aggressive ranking and pushing and measuring of children's learning divorced even from the kinds of processes of their learning what kind of environments do they have is narrowing this whole concept of what science and maths should really be doing and in our context today more than ever in how sort of people's beliefs and people's cultures what they eat, what they wear, how they meet others their own sensibilities are under threat and for us STM education is about challenging all of these things I go back a bit in history to understand even science as it shaped what kind of science we have before us which we teach and which we sort of out-educate other countries for and we look at say about 500 years back even before what we think modern science is really preshaming and we see voices, we see voices we're talking about people's knowledge and people's science I'm saying this because the latest 2015 sustainable development goals and the world seems to be bent on targeting 2015 was the MDG goals target to achieve a lot of things which we are nowhere near but the pressures on trying to push children into schools and measure them take us back in some of these aims which I will again remind us of which we have worked for in the last many decades so for the younger generation I think it needs reiteration because they just won't be seeing these pressures of what STM means daily and even at that time whether it was Kavir who was saying that I say, if you see your eyes, you say in his context where he was questioning beliefs he was questioning institutions which nurtured those and furthers who believed and or it was someone like power sensors and people who've been talking about the history of science are not just saying look at this look at how this scientist discovered this but are looking really at the histories and social histories and connections of people's understanding also and how does people's knowledge really come into the context of understanding and shaping one body of knowledge as I said today sustainable development goes more and more on the one hand talk about understanding indigenous knowledge and alternative frameworks understanding traditional ecological knowledge if you really want to talk about sustainability but that voice remains on the margin and the stronger, corporate voice just talks about major, major, major achievements to acknowledge artisanal epistemology as people have written in terms of understanding the history of STM and the active role of even anonymous artists or blacksmiths or carpenters women in fact a lot of feminist studies have reminded us how the shape of science and mathematics has its masculine edges because a lot of contributions from others have not really been acknowledged in the way we shape it today especially the way we bring it into schools and so even for instance we talk about we might find a little box somewhere in a textbook about what we call history of that scientist or history of that discovery I'm saying this underlining these words because that's not really either the way that that history was arrived at or it was not that person it was not an iconographic understanding of that discovery it was not an individual struggle or an individual discovery which is a misrepresentation in the way we present that idea and that misrepresentation has a lot of impact on the way we involve and we ensure participation of the knowledges of people in a classroom or so so there are hierarchies there have been hierarchies there have been hierarchies between the understanding of what is science and what is technology and the myths continue even today you ask any teacher of science what is science and technology and you see the kinds of responses you get invariably technology is an application of science which we know is not true so why are these myths propagated and why are then this is the way it is taught so even in terms of historically why did these separations happen why did natural philosophers define themselves as scientists what did they include in this whole pursuit of what they thought was science and what did they exclude and keep in the domain of what they called this vulgarities of practical knowledge as people now look at it and why did that become technology and even though we know whether we take a simple example of how pumps were made and why pumps were made and by whom they were made not so called educated up in the hierarchical structure without the theory at that time having been understood so we have documented work in terms of trying to understand how these developments are happening before industrial revolution and in South Asia for instance developments happening in medicinal science which were never acknowledged so we say vaccination was first discovered somewhere else whereas hundreds of years before that people were using techniques which were empirical knowledge but why is that never acknowledged and how did this separation of science and technology also bring with it a separation of social responsibility questions of social relevance how did they also get sideline similarly contestations over school science what actually came into the school in England it is documented how when in 1860s a curriculum for the first time to bring it into the elementary schools was called science of the common things working with working classes a curriculum designed on engagement with the field people's lives was kept out even though it was ready and it was going to be introduced people felt including scientists like Faraday and many others how they felt that this would threaten the social order and so this should not really come in and for 20 years it was not there was no science in schools and then when it came in it came in in its very abstract avatar and came in with a specific purpose of selecting those few who had some so called talent those few golden grains from among the sands the purpose also was selective as is documented in the histories of disciplines in histories of subjects so in 1990 again the world and including India's final declaration which to many of us working in education was enabling because it talked about an expanded vision of education and it said not narrowed by the current understandings of subjects or the current availability of resources or the way these are actually transacted in schools or in institutions and it spoke about for every child youth and adult education for every child youth and adult that was in fact that linked with the about the time when in our country we saw quite a major intervention in terms of the national literacy campaign where for the first time we saw a decentralized engagement in time in terms of making curricular materials for the first time we saw books being made at the district level curricula being decided even the language in which you want to work in being decided at the district level which hadn't happened earlier and there was work that happened there was work that happened even in terms of understanding people's mathematics and numeracy some of us wrote a book called Zindagi Ka Hissaab and a lot of that understanding I must confess actually then came in even to the NCF and to some of the new work in primary maths that we did but what science and maths for all what every child youth for every youth child and adult and for life is still a question have we addressed this even in the process of addressing this and how do we do this or are we still fragmented and there is no connection between what we do in primary what we do at higher levels what we do in the university and forget about life and what we do between these which science, technology, mathematics we really integrate this who are the people who understand what integration does mean and can mean where do we work on these things who is working on these that question remains and I also want to just remind ourselves of some of the very enabling policy moments that had happened in the last few years I mean for us right to education was an historical juncture was a culmination of a long, long struggle of many, many people working on the field saying that if it is really why do we need education as a fundamental right and what is happening in terms of education system is actually marginalizing people actually even stratifying a public education system even government schools have got completely stratified in terms of whose studies where and what and how and so how do we bring this back and specially to strengthen the fabric of democracy the supreme court had to remind us that even a clause like 25% reservation for the economical weaker section is not patronizing and doing good for the poor but it's actually meant for the privileged I mean the supreme court had to remind private schools also that this was really an education for the privileged an education in social realities and what democracy means and we didn't work on curricular reforms we didn't so much on how classrooms can change not so much on teacher education with teachers and certainly not on assessments and that is the vain today because we did not really work so much on what is continuous and comprehensive education even though states I had seen how Kerala had done it much before the right to education had come in but in DPP in SSA most states had not they were still in a very traditional format just asking pat answers definitions recall of information that is what exactly exams are and CBSE did not understand what CCE was so the man was with CBSE was bringing in and asking states to follow was clearly not in line with how assessments should have been done so limiting teaching learning even further with no exploration observation, critical thinking innovation or improvisation certainly not cooperation or empathy how does this come into science maths learning and how do they assess it even though after the NCF as part of NCRT and HRD we had worked on devising learning indicators for children not for every grade as today the refrain is a very damaging refrain as actually sort of brought into the media and now even to the international domain of understanding and measuring learning extremely damaging but what was said at that time was broadly look at grade 3 and grade 5 let us look at the fact that when we have a diversity of children coming in what kinds of ways are we going to help teachers to be looking children in what ways will they look at children and observe children what indicators will they be and before setting indicators for learning we need to set indicators for the learning environment countries do that they don't jump on to children learning before saying what kind of environments have we provided giving indicators for that giving indicators for the kinds of tasks that we have given for even doing ensuring that learning and then for assessing learning because if you are not doing it through those kinds of tasks you defeated the purpose we didn't do that and as I said even for the more intangible ways of understanding how do you bring in empathy and cooperation sensibilities into the learning of areas of maths or anything this is just an example of the existing system an exam from Delhi for class 8 which continues to ask questions like this and an exam from Kerala many years back more than 10 years back which was asking questions differently which was in fact because the ministry had asked me to really requested me to do a study of how they were doing their their assessments and one found that they had this complete commitment to ensure that every evaluation activity which was even a question in the exam was a learning activity it was not just put in there it was a learning activity and before even tackling that there was a non-evaluatory activity specified in even the exam question that this will be done you will have a discussion on this you will have a song on this you will do something you know this has to be done before students start working on this because that first bringing in a non-threatening environment but engaging children into the kinds of assess to the activity that you want them to do as part of an exam and one could see how that actually influenced the way they understood these things and related to their lives so I go back very briefly to Ushagavad Science Teaching Project which is where many of us really that's how we came into education grappling with some of these issues and importantly also saw what critical agency meant both for teachers working in the program how they could actually question the status quo and also for children so there is a how do I use this clip you need my pen drag so maybe I should I leave it or I can I had put in something here with this change in the systems just a 2-3 minute clip to say that how many of you here are familiar with HACP many people will be almost everyone just to remind us with a 3-minute clip on that if we aim for learning science in a different way where do children get a chance today to be working in groups to be talking tentatively amongst each other guessing, thinking, talking the language is important before concepts are there this is what we do this is what we actually do this is what we actually do this is what we actually do this is what we actually do that summer kids were alarmed by the sudden confusion of white snake-like patterns of the leafy vegetables that they ate real answer is these tokoblaskas chopped loads rotten questions raised upon them no one had an answer I just saw me a student from this very school decided to investigate I do not know what it was but just her saying that I don't think it's a rumor was enough for the child to use her own agents I don't learn with the same mind they do other songs including things that are not this girl was I don't learn in class A and I, they gather something, including things that are not. This girl was in class 8 and these younger students from the same school were again in the field when they talked about it and the teacher reminded them of her. And she then, this was of course, she finished school, she had already been married at the age of 11, Sony, but she had not been sent to her in-laws house and during the filming she actually used the camera almost like a jury and she made her mother promise because she saw these people from Delhi and from Bombay coming in filming and she saw this camera and she used it and she told her mother, will you promise that you will let me study further? Because she was from a Dalit family and she was the youngest daughter amongst four daughters. The mother came here invited the mother also and the mother claimed that they had to marry her off with the older daughter and even the agency of the child, you don't get many collaborators and allies who help you in your journey. So she used this opportunity and the mother said yes, we will. And when she finished class 10, I got a postcard from her saying that for the first time my father has told me that you should become something. Because my dinner failed the Seetha Kanchi. So even not failing and reaching class 10 for a child helps her in her aspirin. So the first time someone tells her that you become someone. And she went on she said she couldn't get into the police which she tried for. Even in this film she had said I'll try for the police. She said may you with us. So I just said one line I said there are other things to do. Why just the police? You wanted to do other things. On her own she went, she was far from Indore, she was in this small village, she was near Divas. She went to Indore, she took the exam, got into nursing, finished her nursing and joined one of the best hospitals in Indore. They've got medical, government medical coverage. I'm just saying that this was one example of someone who fought against all odds. I mean someone coming from her background would not, we know all statistics would not be able to reach there. And just saying do our aims for science education still acknowledge that this is one of our aims? Do we still acknowledge the thinking like this even though the teacher doesn't know? And when I got a call even I didn't really know what were these white lines. But we just rushed there because we got a call saying children have found out something. And when I asked the colleges in the Divas area and I went to the students doing science education and I asked them have you heard about this? They said yes, but I said did you try out something? How are our labs not operatives madam? That was the answer I got from college students, BAC students. So what is the difference? I'm asking in terms of the way science can be taught at school, that children can go beyond. I mean here's this child who's almost on a whole doing a campaign. She's going around the Gahi and telling people don't throw vegetables. See what I've seen, see what I've seen in a little microscope which was there as part of the school kit. So just these questions even in the context of today where I'm underlining that I think we need to be addressing these things much more as part of how we do science. Of course you all know what it is deeply and you know the story but much before that even in 85 there was a time when it was almost closed. It was almost closed because of this example which in the board exam there's a question on gambling which actually asked whether and school teachers had said that and it asked whether you can find out the proposition of losing or winning in a SACTA game because we had consciously brought in the topic of probability as part of science. This was a conscious mediation because the maths curriculum was not open to reform at that time. So as part of science we had said what are those things which in any case need to be integrated within the science curriculum which are going to be impacting life much more for many people who may leave school after class 8 which was happening there. So this had been brought in and what was interesting is probably for the first time that I have heard of there is a long paper by one legislature one person from the one Emily who actually came who came read up things came and talked to some of us looked up the history of probability and wrote a long paper and submitted it to the legislature assembly saying that probability itself is born out of the game of gambling. That's how this theory has evolved and he gave examples. I hadn't seen that so carefully. I looked at it again recently some time back. He gave examples from textbooks in the UK, US, USSR saying they all have examples in mathematics about poker problems. What is so problematic about giving this in an exam and then he said this gambling can be stopped through science education not moralizing. He actually quoted the global history of political interference in science starting from Galileo and even earlier. He quoted this and he said that legislators should not decide on science and math policy. They should first educate themselves. This becomes even more significant today when I read these things and he said what about the state lottery because the state government is to run a lottery and he says is that not gambling and he's questioning this and we know even today these debates come. We know that there are in courts it has been fought today whether a state government running a lottery is gambling or not. So these questions I'm saying are in today in our history of science education but they raise more potent possibilities. Today I'm just sort of briefly reminding us about the national literacy campaign and the kind of work that we learned through people's mathematics. How do we bring it unconsciously brought it into the primary textbooks. This is just one sort of glimpse of mobilizing the village for metric math mela. So what does it mean by mobilizing people for even an activity that is mathematics. This was part of the way this was being run in some of the districts and bringing in humor, bringing in people's guesses, bringing in the learners themselves. The neurologists were the learners were actually running the stalls. So the learners themselves run a stall what does it mean to them when they do this. What does maths normally mean to a neo-literate or a non-literate person just the word mathematics or metric or whatever it is and what's doing this yourself through your agency and involving so called even the educated challenging them. What can that do to your own understanding and your own confidence. Same kind of things I just end with some examples from what we have been able to do in primary mathematics. The challenge remains also to see how these connections go right up to high school which has not happened and in fact even in terms of integration. So what does it mean in what way do we understand these issues through a pedagogy of empathy. Whether we are talking about food or we are talking about hunger or we are talking about water or we are talking about numbers or wages or probabilities or sex ratios anything whatever we are talking about. Where do the questions of power the dynamics the politics of life where do those questions come in to whatever we are teaching and how does it enable the teacher and more so how does it enable participation of all children. Of course using diverse genres and this was done in the maths book using these kinds of genres not just the transactional and totally sort of heartless kind of way in which any maths text reads like and why does it do so. Even today decades after the kinds of interventions and work and learning and insights that we have had in our own context why are they still sounding like that removed from any engagement. So humor fantasy recipes biographical notes actual true life protagonists coming in there a junk cellar a chapter on a junk cellar who runs a junk shop in Patna what is the significance of that. So these kinds of context thematic units deliberately not just in terms of concepts but themes which allow you this kind of treatment and this is just an example from a challenge before us to do things which we looked at sort of textbooks from the world across the world and we looked at themes we said even you know Japan Korea countries which are known for their maths education are they looking at some of these things from a cultural context what does time mean in a given cultural context and we tried to do it from what we think was our context of how time also means labour. Time also means how much time is someone taken to knit a sweater for you or make a pot for you it means dignity. So what does how do you look at that and it also means not infantilizing the curriculum that often happens. We look at things through cartoons and caricatures at best through very westernized I'm using this very consciously because it's a homogenized it's not westernized it's a homogenized kind of caricaturing you know even the visual representation is very homogenized it doesn't have any characteristics so not doing that but bringing in difficult lives harsh realities and harsh questions. So what does mediating reform in the real world and this is my last sort of plea to all of us that there is much that we need to do. I mean some things have changed some things have become even worse. The way teachers the kinds of teachers we find in Delhi half our school teachers are contractual.  This is the state of an ordinary government school. It's stratified you might have very good kindergarten we find that kindergarten as are some of the best kinds of schools in terms of children's aspirations and teachers understanding of how even a poor child can sort of and must learn should not be labeled as a slow learner with minimalistic minimum levels of learning. We have to get away from the ghost of MLL because the way we look at MLL and the way we then transact and then assess is damaging. So how do we do this and more important what about the university system? What is the understanding of these disciplines in the university system? Because ultimately that then comes as a hurdle as an obstacle to anything that you do at high school system. Because you would say no this is not that you have to teach valency in class six how you do chemistry later or whatever. Everything gets pushed down we saw it even when we're doing it ten years back but this is the struggle that many of you had to take forward. So what do we do and how do we stop working against the valorizations of certain knowledges, certain voices that actually get defined and how do we understand STM for social justice and equity. Thank you. Thank you Anita for the most wonderful beginning and making us aware of the real problems and of course what we achieved. I would like to have some questions from the floor because I think she's there and we can definitely have a few minutes of question and answer session. Good morning ma'am. I'm Dr. Vinita Badaban and I'm neither a teacher nor am I affiliated with any of these STM education programs. I'm an MD in biochemistry from VHU. I used to work in heart cancer research on breast cancer and I'm attending this entire seminar because my daughter is a fifth standard. And of late I have been teaching her because my husband is in BRC, scientific officer there. So we have the responsibility of teaching her considering that there are a lot of issues going on. So I'm just going to offer my observation as a mother and as an educator of a very young and a difficult to teach child in the sense that all children are difficult to teach they feel that they know best. So when I was listening to your comments on how mathematics can be used as a tool for initiating a socially, relevantly social, revolutionary thought process and because I have already taught her from first standard to fifth standard with the NCRT book, I somehow found it difficult to explain to her that why a young seller story should be in a math textbook. Because it's a very socially relevant topic, we do go around recycling our junk and when we were talking about it, the teacher in the school was only concerned about giving the selling price, cost price, profit loss. And in the same chapter there was a problems about loans, a person going to the money lender and to the bank. Because she had been accompanying me to the bank, then our first question was, did you take a loan? I said no, I somehow haven't. Then she asked my husband, did you take a loan? Unfortunately we had not taken any loan but we created a story for her and then she asked me, but why did he go to a bank? He could have asked daddy for it. He could have given you money and no interest would have been paid to him. Then I had to tell her that every time it is not easy, the amount of money might be too much, we were not able to afford it. In that context, these people who are getting loans from money lenders, they don't have access to banks, including corporate banks. For her, a city bread child, this is an idea which is totally out of context. She has never seen a money lender, she would never know what it means to go to a money lender. So when a textbook is designed, talking about problems which are unpredictable to the child, they become slightly self-defeated. They are slightly self-defeated in this context. I just wanted to offer you my opinion. Regardless, because even I have come from a small place in Azerbaijan, so I have a fairly good idea about the rural background. But for her, coming to Mumbai, that too living in such a rarefied atmosphere of a VRC colony, it's an impossible reality to imagine.  There is no correlation in her world and theirs. So when that subject, those topics introduced in mathematics, which she associates only with number and magic and logic, in her definition, if you understand it is logic, if you don't, it is magic. So keeping that definition in mind, neither of these topics fit into one or the other. So for my points, I just wanted to ask that, is it really important to bring these topics in a subject where children are unable to appreciate it, rather than take them towards a more socially relevant like EBS or maybe English or Hindi languages? The teachers are not doing the job that I assured you. It is challenging for me also to justify that why you need to know this. That's all. Should I take a few comments and then respond? Okay, maybe I'll do a quick response. I think you answered your question yourself, because when you say that, you know, why bring in something, this is not a part of my life, but it's a part of the majority children. So if we didn't have these things earlier, we didn't even address their lives. She's from an environment where she's asking these questions which the purpose is served. If she's even asking you, what is a money lender, why can't you take loan, that's the purpose. And the purpose is not just to bring in some people's lives, because our textbooks have always looked at only a very special class of urban families and only addressed them. And that's not our universe. That's not the people that we want to relate to. So if she, even through this, and this also reminds us of what the Supreme Court said, that this is not just to bring in something for the poor child from Bihar, so that she knows that someone from Patna has been talked about. It's for this child from Bihar, see to know that there is someone sitting in Patna who's actually taken this step and that from her life, we can learn a lot. And it's an inspiring life. So this is the purpose of bringing this even to a max. Max cannot be divorced from many, many inspiring or difficult or challenging lives. And the MCRT textbooks are meant for across the country. State textbooks are meant to look at more issues in the state. But yes, even within the state, even within a city, even within a city like Bombay, you have lives which span a very, very vast spectrum, a very disparate spectrum.  And especially those who are privileged to be your children need much more to understand and empathize with other lives. And that is the purpose. I just wanted to say a confusion that is from some of the things you said. You mentioned at one point that the definition of technology is not applied to science and that maybe technology can be the result of traditional knowledge. And then you said something about the reason it's different is that it's based on empirical knowledge which implies that it is being different from science. So I have a little problem with this emphasis. Traditional knowledge is being different from science and efforts to validate traditional knowledge because it can lead people to do things like the magic snake which is causing some kind of casting spells on the vegetables. So I think this is a real risk. What we really need to do is to recognize the science that is done by oppressed people and by people and see it as being something different from magic or some kind of knowledge based faith. I think you've read me completely wrongly and I think I didn't talk about definitions of anything. But yes, I said if people look at that technology only as applications of science that is problematic and I was trying to see where those distancing had happened in history. But there are empirical knowledge. I call it people's science that's why. And how do we look at these different kinds of knowledge is obviously there is a need to validate the question and there is certainly a need to understand the difference between quackery or between what was happening in terms of traditional uses of dealing with smallpox even in South Asia. So there is absolutely no question about this. Yes, certainly. Certainly there has to be a distinction between science and non-sense. I thought you were going to use that from traditional knowledge. Yeah, no. Obviously traditional knowledge is to be seen within the lens of what is science and non-sense. What is that's why I said with and that's why the example of the snake example was taken up in that context also. What is the teacher currently? And my observation has been that the RTA is all good and ideal. The kind of work that is currently being done to train teachers, yes it is undergoing. A lot is being done for teachers and students before 8th standard. But for me as I say it the failure happens after that because as till 8th standard you do not have exams to give. You are being trained in a way that was more in sync. At least many people are trying to be in sync with what you showed as an example from Kerala. But then in two years you go to give your SSC that's only the beginning of what's going to happen in the next 10 years for a student. Where he's going to be examined on ways that he has never been exposed to previously. And then he starts failing. All the teachers and parents are scared that he's going to be failing after that. And hence nobody wants to pursue the kind of technique that you are showing as an example from Kerala. As a teacher I know that yes that's a much more effective way of teaching from every senses. But as a parent nobody wants their children to fail in SSC even though that might not make their child an extremely educated person in the way we mean education.  Because what classes did you teach? So I'm a teacher for India fellow so currently I teach class 7 students. But then it's only a two year fellowship so I'm not like a proper person to teach. I'm not a teacher in that sense. I'm a biologist otherwise. Okay should I respond to this or should I take? Okay. I mean since you said you're a teacher for India fellow I underlined you're not a teacher. Because I see this program as actually problematic for the way teacher education and the school quality has to be improved. We know what Teach for America has done. It's been documented. And this is a major problem. We need good volunteers. We need people who will come and support teachers but they cannot replace teachers. And doing that is extremely damaging. And that is a worry we have right now with the Delhi government. In fact that's exactly what we've been trying to confront them with. Because Teach for India is then only so-called NGO which is helping them in terms of teacher education. But what you said is the RT does not ban exams. That's a myth. Let me finish. You said you cannot take exams till class 8. That's not true. The RT says please take all the kinds of exams but they have to be local exams. They cannot be competitive exams. So they cannot be the board exam. Because there is a difference between a local, a decentralized exam at the school level or at the block level. And there is a difference between a competitive exam. Both in the way you frame the exam and in the way the person who's taking it takes the exam. And so a person who's doing a more local exam even the teachers understand the child's context, understand her background, her knowledge, what has been done in the class and can engage with that much more differently. And the threat and the psychological threat of taking a competitive exam. We know there are enough studies which tell us what that does to the performance of even the so-called high performing students. So that is what the RT said. Don't take a selective competitive exam. When it's been misused, it's been misinterpreted. People say you cannot take exams even a recent Times of India article. Completely misinterpreted RT. Because our system has not understood as I said. We have not understood that if we teach differently and by teach I mean if the learning process is different, the environment is different and assessment is tied to that process. Closely tied. However, through an exam, through continuous observations, through activities, through group activities, because assessment should be done through all these things. Then you give eight years to a child coming from any kind of disadvantage background, any background. And then you allow children to be able to deal with any kinds of different kinds of selection purposes also. That is the educational reason for the class in RT. It's just not understood and implemented well. We can have a longer discussion outside but I would request others to, yeah. Please. Hello ma'am. I am working as a teacher here inside BRC school number two. And I want to share some of my experiences that I go through in the class. What class? I am teaching now 8th to 10th standard. And I am fortunate that I also taught previously in the lower section. From standard to fit standard also I have taught. So during teaching, after this CC pattern was introduced, it is all activity based and introduced in the child to different areas, different kind of experience. So while doing that, I also enjoyed, children also enjoyed but some children they asked one, used to ask me question ma'am, is this coming in the exam like that. So some children are not, they are only concerned about whether this thing is coming in the exam or not. Suppose teaching mathematics or science concept while showing some activity or something. Last, whether it is coming in the exam. So whatever is coming in the exam, I have to teach that question. I understand. But it's not. It's not just children who are concerned about it. It's the whole system. Why did the children pick this up? Because everyone else says that is the problem. The question pattern also that comes. The teacher has to concentrate what questions we have to teach like that only. True. So ultimately these areas are getting neglected. True. So we have to follow that system. Absolutely. So we have to struggle with that system. How do we change that? That's what I was saying. We did many things that happened but that system of how we assess right now becomes like a news on everyone's neck. And how do we change that without understanding that it can be done. It has been done in some places. But why do we continue with that? And everyone is happy. No one asks what kind of meaningless questions were asked. We only say so and so got 99% or so and so got 70%. We don't even ask in what does anyone have a question? What was the kind of question that children were asked? Yeah. Small observation actually. It's always frankly amuses me when you talk about science and all sorts. Long time back several years ago Richard Feynman said that a scientist is more important to learn the pedagogy of ignorance more than pedagogy of science. Because the percentage of science itself through the last 40 years has passed through the pedagogy of ignorance more than pedagogy of science. Just one example. We have two land masses here. One is Bangladesh and one is Kuttanadi in Kerala. There are only two places where baddie in the world is grown on high solid water. There are only two land masses where sea encroaches into the spaces and state baddie is grown on extremely solid thing where baddie can never be grown. For the last 35 years agricultural scientists, soil scientists, ecologists and everybody connected with soil and cultivation practices they were trying to break this state. Where we go wrong? Where is our science gone wrong? Why are we not able to understand this Feynman? When both these places produces some of the best rice possible and still we are trying to understand how we really understood this pursuit of scientific inquiry problem still in major debate across the world. Like this there are several things in habitat in many areas where the practice of scientific inquiry as we are taught so far has not even penetrated. It's been a major issue today because very important defines the modern societies. We have lots of understanding about interfaces of discipline than the discipline itself. And that's where I see the last 15 years and forcing the next 15 years many drawbacks in terms of teaching and capacity building for students to resolve this conflict which shows the changing social technology to transform it. Thanks a lot. Actually you bring me back to the question that Karen had asked and then you sort of resolved it by saying yes we can differentiate between science and non-science and our head but it's not so easy. And in fact for instance alternative medicines. I mean scientists still call homeopathy non-science most of them doctors do. Though many universities are right now opening where they have both branches or many medical colleges have homeopathy and that so these questions are there to even go further. And paracensis is one of the people who was using even alternative medicines or something which was close to homeopathy. So I'm just saying that these questions I agree are not so simple and what is it we will have to pursue to understand science but yes in what kinds of alternative world use do we validate or question or even ways of validating need to be re-looked at. Thank you Anita for the wonderful talk. We really came to know about a lot of questions that you are raising which I want to focus here and not complaining but it's a focus which I want to bring about is the conditions that the teachers face in a school. I've been a teacher and I've recently happened to visit one of the schools here. The problem that they present and also which I face is apart from teaching there's a lot of other work which you have to do. Maybe even during the recess hours you have to monitor what the children are doing. The teaching teams are asked to fill up the registration forms on the board exam. So what essentially teachers are complaining is that apart from the actual teaching job there's so much other work that they have to do that they get bogged on and the real purpose of them being there is kind of losing it's losing it. So are we addressing these issues whether teachers are facing in a real school and how are we going to tackle it how are we going to on one hand we are saying that the teachers are not good they are not teaching properly on the other hand we are saying the curriculum is needing a lot of reform or we are saying the system isn't functioning well but apart from all these problems this also is a problem which we need to address and how far are we addressing these. Certainly people are addressing these and we when we work in teaching education that is a crucial question. RTE addressed it also said except for these volatile things in terms of which every government servant has to do other things will not be done but I'm saying is that even as a body of teachers and recent years engaging with teachers associations even as a body of teachers I mean I was in Rajasthan and the teachers association had come and questioned the state which had actually amended RTE and for the first time said but the first thing on their list of priorities was their own transfer policy why it is not a child and children's what they are doing and how children are learning why doesn't that come ever on the teachers spectrum of priorities even teachers organizations never seem to be engaging with it so I'm saying it's not this or that we are struggling to whether it's the planning commission and even now the ready government questioning and saying teachers will have their promotion will be linked to children's achievements which we find extremely problematic but I'm saying on the other hand why don't teachers and I hear a teacher's voice why is a teacher only talking about I have so much work to do I have this to do why doesn't that come within a larger question of what are my children where are they coming from what do they know and how will they learn differently and better and then what kind of conditions do I need to be able to address this but what are the learning conditions within which my children are operating and then yes the learning conditions which I am learning do I get opportunities to learn beyond what I am doing I'm just asking for linkage and a larger framework within which the teacher's voice also comes up please the first person in the menu because he hasn't yet spoken my question is basically related to assessment when we see the results coming in terms of 99% being not good enough or 95% not being good enough where are very default lying somewhere there is a failure of the assessment system as I see it a mark above 90% means everybody very happy parents are happy that the children have got more than 90% teachers are happy that they are teaching very well the boards are happy that all these studies and everything is very well but then we still find serious problem in the education we are learning of the challenge this is just pure inflation to show lesser failure I know states who did it consciously they would just give the signal that you know give liberal marking 20 marks more and everything so that you show less failure that's the biggest question that's what we are addressing I mean there is no simple answer the whole question is that what is happening inside the classroom how do you think you are teaching and learning how do you assess that is there any link between the kind of exam that you are doing and it's absurd to be saying that I am giving 99% because you give a false image to everyone the child thinks I know everything which is then when you when they actually come into the real world it's a shock to them so it's damaging the system but no one seems to be asking that we are only saying exam go or nay go we are all very happy with 99% once again we are not happy with 99% that's the question coming back to the theme of assessment I had the business my own daughter's heaviest textbook is in fifth standard she is following that and I read the beautiful preface which the thematic division of the curriculum and how the form of syllabus has to be abolished and make it more child friendly and among them there is a definitive box which tells the indicators to assess the assessment of the child the heaviest textbook not in any other subject so what I am seeing is those indicators are wonderful I am in hypothetical speaking in a perfect title environment there are the best indicators being a science graduate myself being a scientist myself I do have to deal with a lot of people coming for training and even I have to sit and interviews and talk about an issue with them they can easily explain a concept in Hindi or any other Varanasi whichever they want but the point come is that when I am assessing them when I am asking them an insightful question they still fall short first of them do and in this textbook also I really loved it the way each and everything was highlighted group activity assessment about the innovation the thinking, the analysis but we are not taking the real issue here the teacher ratio student ratio is really not in favor of these kind of individual assessments and coming to the group level activity mostly the births of same feather will flop together regardless of my attempt to be a democratic person I cannot force my daughter to collaborate with a person whom she regards very critically as weak student and in fact in the classroom the teachers have used this term that my dear I cannot explain because there are weak students in the class when she tells me this I said the teacher is like a potter when you are like a clay some clay is meant to be a beautiful pot and others can be used as more recudences it is a job of the teacher to assess the clay and give it the right direction so you better don't tell me come back and tell me this then she is cruel she gets battered from both the ends like a tennis ball the students have to be made we have to keep certain realistic parameters a teacher cannot be expected to look at the end and most importantly the teacher who is teaching science to you in first and second standard is absent for the next 2 years and suddenly comes in the 5th standard so that assessment of continuous comprehensive assessment gets totally gone I think we will have to cut this short a bit and we will continue later this is very interesting when I must say I must confess that the kind of answer you gave her was as problematic as what the teacher was saying I mean when you said that the potter is a teacher is like a potter and there are different kinds of clay and some clays become this and some clays become that that is as problematic as a teacher saying that someone is a slow learner who cannot because this is not this is what our system has become that we already label children the teacher is not a potter and the teacher and the child is not a blank slate or a raw clay which the teacher is shaping and there are different kinds of clays that is what we have to fight against and this is how we think this is what the system is doing it's already labeled people it's given different hierarchies of some being better, some being slow and that is not what education can be about but we need to talk about this later outside thank you, thank you very much thank you Anitha thank you for the most wonderful presentation and of course very insightful answers and thank you all for of course I mean asking challenging questions and I think I agree with Anitha that things are not easy definitely not easy but then because they are not easy we should not be up I think that is probably the idea with which all of us have come here so we should now break for tea for 15 minutes maybe 20 minutes thank you so many questions it's very important this is the video Anitha, do you want to ask the final answer thank you it's very important also the final answer is this this actually is from 2006 I think this is a presentation let's turn this off for a while because there is a big problem let's turn this off let's turn this off let's turn this off for the speaker this is fine fine for example this is the best thing I mean it's not bad it's not it's not it's not it's not it's not for example I'm gonna open it it's not it's not If you got this idea, also I want to know some kind of response to the question. How do you think it is? How do you think it is? I think it is a good question. So what? Now we are going to go through some kind of advice. I think we have to make a change this, I think. All these things. So I am saying, I think it is what I meant by, I think we have to make a change this. That is what we have to do. Then what are the tips? In which direction? In which direction? That is very difficult. Enjoy those, that is the right direction. So it is not 100% the same? It is 70% the same. And how do you think it is? Water actually, no I am talking about liquid sticks. That is also important. So what do you think it is? Jayashree and then, but it is a joint Combined presentation. Any specific. In the international, it is something. No, because what I said in the abstract is that there are kind of two conceptually distinct, but in practice actually they may be together. One is discipline-based educational research and the other is participative action research. So, the participation, collaboration. I thought that. So, can they listen to you? Yeah, shall I close this? I think shall we begin. The next speaker according to the schedule, unfortunately not well and therefore will not be here. We definitely miss her presence and her talk and therefore I'm going to request Jayashree Ramdas and it was a case where we knew to proceed with their talk which was the next on schedule. Jayashree Ramdas of course, all of you know is the center director of Komi Baba Center for Science Education and in that sense the only interaction she is in fact the host of the program. Same with Professor Subramanya who is the dean of this center and they are going to together present on weaving theory and practice together in science and mathematics education. So, may I request Jayashree Ramdas to begin. The topic of the presentation, the connection between theory and practice and the metaphor of weaving is very close to Chitra's heart. And then you know Ravi and I spoke about this. We thought that this is something we are writing on it along with Chitra and you know Arupa Center, Komi Baba Center and it's something that we has been exemplified in several of the programs of the center and particularly Ravi will be presenting the work of the mathematics education group. But this connection between theory and practice like I said you know or Chitra you know she could go quite easily between you know in technology education. She used to read and talk and write about the philosophy of technology. She could go very easily from philosophy of technology to machine drawing which she learnt as a scientist in VRC to paper craft. So, till her last days you know she was actually doing paper craft you know so this technology was very close to her heart and she thought of it on a sort of wide spectrum from abstraction to the very concrete and she taught us all also to do that. So you know it and she was very concerned about linkages you know she is I think her entire intellectual effort was in finding linkages and showing linkages where often people did not realize that they existed but she would say oh it is all connected in my mind you know project based learning, design, technology, critical thinking and you know various different things that people thought of as different ideas she put them together. In this talk you know I will begin broadly with the education scenario the science and maths education scenario in India I mean in old times it should be limited to science and mathematics education and look at what it consists of and if you see post independence then there has been we have always had the school system which is a real scene of action which is where kids come, teachers come the teaching happens and which is what we all focus on you know we all say look what is happening in the teacher student interaction in the classroom and what is it that we can do to improve it. In school education you know most of us who have been working on science and mathematics education either from within the system or from outside of the system either from institutional setups or non-institutional setups. The initial focus was on government schools but like Anita pointed out in her talk you know the government school system has been changing quite fast and the I mean there has been a stratification that has been introduced in the government school system and that it is kind of widening the poles of the school system. So we will come to that a little later but along with state schools there are elite schools you know low cost private schools which are now getting more common and the elite schools and whatever we are saying about school education applies to all of these but in particular to the government let me say to the majority of students in India who happen to be not well endowed in terms of facilities so the government school system has if you leave aside the kentium within a system the government school system suffers from lack of facilities so that is the context. Now that is the university education and here I mean behind what I am saying is the theory practice connection and my claim is that the theory of science and mathematics education is kind of located in the university sphere which has to do with academics so we are talking about the science and mathematics as subjects so facts, relations and practices of science and mathematics and then the humanities and the social sciences so philosophy and sociology of science and mathematics we look into psychology, we look into teaching students so there is you know we look into young children how they developed and what age they developed cognitive science how they think reason and educational theory which includes sociology of education so these are the academic subjects where the theory of education is developed what this leaves out is the part of education that you know Anita talked more about which is which comes from the local cultural practices but you know these need to be part of education so my claim is that the theory of education gets developed here there is a curriculum development enterprise which is done by NCRT so curriculum is developed here but often the development of the curriculum remains isolated from school education and from university education that the knowledge is actually created and then further beyond that is the professional education of teachers and what we call educational research often happens in that context because the B. Ed. Emmett courses as part of Emmett there is educational research of PhD education and PhD education requires you to do a B. Ed. or M. Ed. so there is something called educational research which happens as part of the professional educational institute where teachers are certified to teach all of these are different locations different communities and what one finds is that the links between these communities are missing the links which are so required to frame our view and our action of science and mathematics education comes from these different these are totally different sort of locations and places where this happens now this as I said was traditionally when the Omibama Centre was launched this is what we thought of the educational scene as but post 1990s the scenario gets more complex and Anitha pointed out that the education for all documentaries in the beginning of the 1990s but many more changes happened so there was a world bank loan to India and the B. P. P. programs started under time and today's in-service education programs are a legacy or a continuation of these programs which are carried out by I think people here who know this are also called SSAs and there are the district resource centres block resource centres cluster resource centres in that order the clusters will be produced in schools so these are the locations where the in-service programs get planned and they are carried out so there are various stakeholders what I am trying to say is that and the number of stakeholders has multiplied from the 1990s upwards there are NGOs which develop material and one of the first NGO which began with developing material for some before 1990s was the Abhishek of HSCP and Eklavya but now there are many more which are concerned with local interventions in small groups of schools sometimes they are running schools and there are the teacher associations of various kinds and at the school level at the university college levels and I am referring to Olympians here because the subject teacher association in science were formed in the context of the Olympian program so there are the physics, chemistry and biology teacher associations which are quite usually involved in running of the Olympian program which is of course coordinated by the universe centre but teacher associations are very important and there are private service providers I call them service providers because they function more on a commercial basis because the most prominent of these would be the coaching classes the almost fabulous school system that we have which is focused on science and mathematics education but there are also smaller enterprises often run by XIT and IM students but also a lot of students who have learned science and now they want to feel that science should be taught better they can do something to improve science education so they may not run on as much of a commercial basis that more of it may vary and then there are the science outreach efforts so CSR, the council of scientific and industrial research every CSR lab has an outreach program and from what I hear I don't actually know these programs firsthand I know the EFR program firsthand but from what I understand these are quite active programs I have been told that these are continuous programs there is a group of scientists who are interested in taking science to people in general and school students in particular so all of these communities I would say are concerned with improving the quality of science and mathematics education however most of them are still divorced or isolated from the location of creation of knowledge so the enterprise of the universities and the theorization about education and in the sciences happens somewhere and the connection with education happens somewhere else except I mean of course I am not saying one should not take this too far because there are exceptions but there is a divorce between theory and practice which happens and at the homicogas center what we are trying to do is has elements of each of these so there are a lot of commonalities between what we do and what each of these communities are doing but yet what we do is distinct and I will try to see how what we do is distinct and how our approach is distinct and then we will come to some examples so our quest from the beginning from the inception of the homicogas center we could put it this way it has been practice based research and development in science and maths education from the earliest times and Vijay Kulkarni was our first director this is how we put it and this was said at a time when homicogas center took up several field or action research projects in various parts mostly of Maharashtra rural as well as urban parts where we put it was the aim of HBCAC to identify sociocultural, linguistic and pedagogic factors that hamper the progress of first generation learners that is the focus in schools and force them to drop out and to develop and test remedial measures to overcome these difficulties now even in those days and in those times I used to find this statement quite problematic in fact I used to continuously debate Vijay Kulkarni isn't this too ambitious, too bombastic are we really doing that you know if this is I mean why don't we say exactly what we are doing rather than some really ambitious things like this so for example I mean are we looking at first generation learners versus second generation learners how many factors can be identified and we have to look at I mean this is such a multi-factor and multi-variable situation so is it really practicable to identify these factors so these doubts had been in my mind and in all of us there was some degree of skepticism that was there so you know slowly I think we evolved something which seemed to represent what we were doing so now I am citing from one of our brochures of 1990s I have edited this diagram slightly and so my introduction to this talk is going to be mostly about how we are visualizing and so on we had field work projects where we were interacting directly with teachers and sometimes students this was in some cases leading to research and science education and at some point in the mid 1990s the policy makers at HBCC decided that we must focus on outcomes and must focus on material development field work and research needs to lead to development of materials and that was the most important thing to do even at that time the way that we represented it there were these arrows and they were not dotted arrows I think they were all solid arrows so it was more sort of visual thinking that we want these connections to happen we think that there should be reverse connection from to the field work and the material development should feed back to improve our field work and our research however it was more of a something that we wished for rather than something which actually happened but at least we had put down what we wanted to do West as I have said before has been practice based research and development in science and mathematics education and let's see how it evolved through the 2000s our span of programs increased quite widely so then we had we were not only working at primary, middle school, secondary level but we had translated that up to a negative level and the other span was from education of disadvantaged and underperforming students to talent nurture for the Olympics so it was a very vast span these were the two main dimensions of the variations that we had and in this context how does one look at these linkages between the theory and practice so the span of practice had increased a lot how does the theory connect to it these remain linked we were trying to establish these linkages and I am not saying that in fact we didn't explicitly in our minds but somehow we were groping towards it that we need linkages so we need to link our programs with the R&D mandate of the sector and we need to link practice with theory at that time sometimes I came across this visualization which which was like a circle with research materials and training outreach on three sides then we modified this and this is what we used to present and this is what we said so this idea was always there that we need to connect research with what we called at that time training or outreach programs but it was really an inadequate description however it was a journey that we were on to try to understand what we ourselves were doing given the large diversity of programs so how do you look at this quest for practice-based research and development in science and mathematics education and now we are during this time science education research had also become part of the TI for Indian University there was a PhD program which was quite strong so this is the next sort of evolution of this diagram which several of us were involved in making and so there is something between a triangle and a circle but what are the parts that we are linking together so there is research and innovation basically generating of new ideas in a sort of very generalized way so new ideas can come through research or it can come through just being creative but based on an understanding of understanding of the subject area understanding of students these parts understanding of society these parts need to be there for ideas to be generated and there is developing of materials so we are translating these ideas into practical and usable parts and then implementing the ideas on a small or on a large scale this came out through our self-review exercise which we carried out and which we talked in the last year you notice that the outreach has got replaced by mentorship and advocacy so we are still trying to find the right words for what we are doing I think this is all still abstract so you have to wait for Subrahmanyam to actually present an example even yesterday our annual research meet has been going on and yesterday there was a talk by Savitha Latge and Pushputta which I think that it was illustrated some of these connections in the chemistry education group Tarnukya Danyu's chemistry group and we will look at the connections as they are found in mathematics education Karen had a more Indian looking version of this diagram which which we will look at so how do these connections come about and I would say that conceptually there are two different kinds of ways towards it one is discipline based educational research so you focus on the discipline and like we will take mathematics as an example and look at how mathematics education research has developed in the centre and the other is participatory action research so here we are talking more about the collaboration which happens between researchers and teachers and which is there in most of our programs so we have evolved from ourselves saying that look this is what should happen in schools and here are the teachers and they will implement it towards the teachers being collaborators in designing of the programs and in deciding what should be there so although these are conceptually distinct so discipline based educational research and participatory action research these are conceptually distinct ideas but often in programs they are used together and you can detect them in the way that now about 2 or 3 months ago I visited a conference in Beijing and I heard someone say show this diagram and say that this is what Lillian McDermott who is a physics educator she she had started physics education group at the University of Washington which is a very interesting group because it is a physics education group which is located in the department and this diagram was attributed to her so I got interested and I looked for it on the net Lillian McDermott is a well known physics educator she is the pioneer of discipline based education research in the US and has influenced many programs so let me read out the physics education group at the University of Washington conducts a coordinated program of research, curriculum development and instruction learning in physics from kindergarten through graduate school and they have been doing it for more than 40 years so you see I mean this vast span I mean it is even bigger than our span we go only from primary to undergraduate and then these people have been going from kindergarten to graduate school students who are doing their PhD in physics differences of course they are focused on the subject of physics but there is a lot of similarity between what they do and what they do and you know when we are trying to understand what we do in a holistic sense it is it's nice to look at peer groups and see what they are doing so having looked at this you know Paula Heron who currently leads the group and she was a member of our Center's so I asked her is this something which you still follow or you know what is the history of this and what has it evolved so she told me we found this too simplistic to deal with even what we do and so she sent me this visualization, this picture which they are currently using and it basically talks about curriculum development and curriculum development in physics and there are four different models each increasingly more evolved so there is a traditional model of curriculum development where you develop a curriculum you teach it and then you disseminate it you try it out and then you disseminate it or you can infuse some research into it which could be secondary research and develop the curriculum and disseminate it or the further stage of that is you take the secondary research you develop curriculum you carry out an assessment and then disseminate it but she said finally what we found was that infusing primary research not just in the developmental stage but at every stage so not just in the developing of the curriculum but also in the instruction also in the assessment and also in the dissemination and getting a feedback from this to to guide a research so she said this is the model my purpose of giving this introduction is to say that conceptualizing what we do is important it is not simple it's a process which happens over years because often you are carrying out programs and yet you don't know what is their significance only when you get some results when you make changes you realize that this is what we are doing and it is a more final detail so I will hand over to my colleague from this department who will illustrate some of these abstract ideas because I am not sure whether I make it little more concrete or little more abstract so let me try anyway to respond to this difficult task of conceptualization of what we do in education and in education research and I think it's quite right that the relation between theory and practice is somehow central to that's more central to education in all its dimensions whether it's the practice of educational education research and it's quite right to address so I am going to look at that issue in context of what we are doing the relation between theory and practice I must say that it is sort of an argument which is still developing still in progress as you will say and so it may not be very coherent but I hope that it's at the same time not too garbled so let me say these things and try and connect some of these complex dimensions together so what I am sort of fighting this part of the presentation as is this theory, practice and identity now you might wonder what identity has to do with theory and practice so let me say some preliminary things firstly I think issues of identity come up in work and education it's necessarily the case and these issues often relate to is one particularly for a center like home give our center which is doing R&D work is one has the identity of which is close more closely as affiliated with theory or does one have an identity which is more closely affiliated with practice so that's one way in which the issue of identity comes up the other thing is that you see often in education more generally theory is seen in some sense as knowledge knowledge which is out there and disembodied so it's subject matter knowledge why practice is grounded in the person what the person does is practice so identity is more closely aligned with practice while theory is something which is impersonal depersonalized or something different from the person so it's something that I find out there so these are I think issues which begin to be questioned and I myself have become acutely aware of this problem because of working in education and I come from a background in philosophy where these things are treated in some standard way and I've been grappling with how does one look beyond these dichotomy as we see from the practice of education so and I think the notion of identity is somewhat central and so what I do is I'll try to articulate that through this talk and when I in the course of doing that I hope to make connections with what I think is the core of part of the core of what Chitra and I also hope to touch on some issues that were raised by Anitha and of course I'm continuing in what J. H. Shree presented so let me begin with some kind of background to the work in mathematics education which is done in the center this will be of interest I think to both people within HBCC and people from outside and if you see that right from the 1970s I mean it is something in mathematics education has been there right from the beginning in the center it has always been a dimension although it's become it acquired in its own HBCC and teachers and so as you can see both involved work in mathematics of over time so at least there was interaction with teachers of B. M. C children of district schools centers where such interaction took place between HBCC and teachers and so as you can see both it involved work in mathematics education like in science education involved at the practical level working as a practice dimension working with students and working with teachers right from the very beginning so you had talent nurture of first generation learners in B. M. C schools so this was to work with a group of students and to improve their performance their achievement levels and there was also associated with teacher training following that so this was the period of the 1980s again there was work with students although it was restricted I think to working with first generation learners but those who showed more potential and working with teachers sometimes using the cascade model that is you train master trainers and then who will be done the training teachers now in the 1990s which is when I joined the center which is called orientation teacher orientation of teacher trainer and this was done intensively with the group of teachers the material production also led to development of the curriculum and I think the emphasis shifted a little bit from working at the secondary level large school teacher program was largely at the secondary level it shifted to working with middle school teachers and also with primary school teachers and there was development of the primary in the late 1990s and 2000s so this was the time when research also began to in the 2000 decade research began to intensify and some of the research focused on learning trajectories in the middle school topics like algebra fractions etc some of the research focused on in fact the later research increasingly focused on how to work with in-service teachers what kind of models do we have a teacher professional now of course in these last 5 years there is a closer focus in mathematics education research on how to school mathematics learning trajectories and to make connect in terms of practice the new dimension is to connect the pre-service education I must say that there would be other dimensions of maths education work done by other such as for example use of technology in mathematics education which probably does not fit well in this time but I must mention that also exists in this example ok now the of course in some sense research at HBCSE by its very nature aligns with research trends worldwide with the larger community international community of mathematics education and this notion of teacher knowledge that's needed or specialized knowledge that's made it by teachers who teach mathematics to become a large area of research and we've also done work on that ok I just want to emphasize a little on this idea and I'll just come back to it later on actually if you look at mathematical knowledge of teachers or subject knowledge in some sense what I'm saying also applies to science education now this has been as I looked back it has been constantly on the agenda and in the focus in the forefront in fact of work done at HBCSE although it's something has become a research focus more recent what is the specialized mathematical knowledge that teaches so even the take so let me take something like evolution of number systems this is a specific topic that I remember in fact lectures by in the ashram school project to teachers this was one of the important inputs that important sessions that we did with teachers and which was to look at how numbers evolved from natural numbers to integers to rational numbers and real numbers and so one would ask why is this important for primary middle school or high school teachers this would form a component of all of that and today I think that the concept that captures that is in content knowledge that is teachers need to know something about how what they are teaching currently links has backward and forward linkages in the current now the another session that I remember which is used to be taken often by Ramu is how do you do multiplication of fractions using something like an area representation now this has been a part of since this would be called today as part of content knowledge that is how do you work with specific representations of mathematical concepts and here the mathematical concept being represented as a fraction and you are using an area representation so how do you actually model multiplication using this area so this was something that we did and there would be many other examples of this kind how do you model addition of whole numbers subtraction of whole numbers then there is there was a lot of work done in fact has a publication with our own on common student tell us that is what is the kind of errors that students typically make for these errors what is the underlying student thinking and this is a part of what researchers called pedagogical content sometimes they call it knowledge of content than students so each of these is knowledge recognized to be a part of the specialized knowledge that teaches me so this is meant to give you the flavor of the work done at HBCC I think I will skip the next slide but let me say something about what this the recent research that Genshin was also referring to how do we identify or characterize or describe the kind of what teachers see now this involves working with teachers and recognizing that there may be gaps in the teachers what teachers need to know in order to teach mathematics effectively and this of course does not mean that we test teachers and say that they do not know these things so it may involve in order to evolve a common of what is needed and what gaps exist so often the research takes the form of working teachers and researchers working as a community as a collaborator community and this is the sort of research that Rache Kumar who is doing a Ph.D. from Bihar or Sikha Takadu so they work with teachers as collaborators in order to develop some kind of characterization of what this knowledge is okay so now some kind of background to the work that we are doing in mathematics education very briefly now some issues that we run out against are that is what I talk about in the next few minutes that is the theory practice relation runs into questions of identity one is of course the identities and roles within HDC itself and what the identity of HBCSE within education within the field of education and finally teacher identity so they seem somewhat disparate and not real but I will try to show that they are questions which are very closely linked okay one is within Phomeba center so what is it that what kind of identities should be developed and how do we in the identities that we develop how do we combine theory and practice how do we bring about the synergy between these different dimensions of our work which is research development of materials as well as the actual work of mentorship or perhaps of advocacy so I think that there are HBCSE although it is an R&D institution there is a mixture of identities that people develop and it might be something very needed because of the nature of work in education so it is not that we develop only one kind of identity although each of us individually may have some primary identities like I believe that the identity that I myself have is primarily that of a research but it involves other dimensions for instance you know research in education is involves sort of integral some dimension of practice it is very difficult to say that I will just go collect some data and analyze the data that amounts to education it is a part of education but I think for an institution as a whole to make a difference to make a contribution it must involve some dimension of practice some dimension of intervention actual work with students or working with teachers so that is the reason why the issue of the kind of identities that we grow in HBCSE somehow is connected with this gap between HBCSE and practice okay but let me focus a little more and this is really the main thing which is what is HBCSE's identity in the field of education and what I am going to do is to look at how education is organized at the field of education as a discipline or as an interdisciplinary area and try to say something about what is HBCSE's identity and also ask the question does HBCSE actually bring the work at HBCSE's a different organization of the field of education okay when you look at the field of education there are three in relation to the work at HBCSE there are different levels at which the theory practice comes up one is the question of what is the underlying science of maths education research so this is I have tried to put down some questions here which are perhaps more theoretical questions because education is not only about education research it is not only about practical research it is just finding effective ways of teaching or learning but also how is that research informed by and so not only is education research practice based but it is also theory informed theoretically informed so this is the word that this is the other side of the formulation that the relation mentioned so the word that we use is theoretically informed practice based science education so these are some theoretical questions given the broad and specific aims of education and our understanding of science and mathematics what should the science and mathematics curriculum include what should it explain and some of our research at the centre is actually addressing questions of this kind another kind of question is how do theories of cognition help developing effective pedagogy so this might be another way of thinking about how theory interacts with education research and how it informs the practice of education another kind of question is what implications does history of science and mathematics have for the curriculum for pedagogy so these are issues I mean this is the way in which we think of theory informing the practice of science education or even research in science education or mathematics education from within the work with HVCC because it is from the researchers perspective however I would say that it is a little more important to look at the theory practice relation and how that is organized in the broader field of education ok so let me say something about education as it is and which sometimes in HVCC we do not fully recognize so this is quite important to I think bring interview so one is that there is a very demarcated field of education across in the country as well as across the world and this is built around the central activity and this activity is the preparation of school teachers the entire discipline of education is organized around this so called so to speak practical education and therefore it has a predominant practical orientation the practical orientation is actually the preparation of teachers so if you see education departments in fact the primary the primary work of education departments although they may be working at a high level is to give guidance and structure and it is a very very vast activity and it requires not just the university departments but hundreds of tens of thousands of institutions but this is the practice which organizes the entire field and this is something that Krishna Kumar often points out and it is something that we need to recognize ok now teacher preparation since the early 20th century has taken place through professional degree based certification programs in the university this is another thing that we need to recognize it was not always the case in fact in the early 19th century even in the early 20th century teachers became teachers not by doing any university based certification they just acquired a license there were inspectors who could award these licenses and it was in some sense fully practice based but however it became a university based so university based programs of teacher education developed and it acquired the status of professional education and we got this definite location within the university along with that arose the need to have so this was a part of the professionalization of teaching and so there was also the development of the corresponding professional knowledge base so you could say that when teacher education moved to the university it became necessary to structure it in some sense like an academic discipline with components of theory and components of practice and so that is the legacy we have today and if you look at the curriculum for teacher preparation and this curriculum for teacher preparation drives the way education as a field is organized at all levels what I have shown on the slide is the B.Ed. curriculum something that in fact Anita was the chair of this committee and I also worked on this committee and this drives not only but also the M.Ed. curriculum and I research so this understanding this organization is quite important you see that there is three areas here and more or less the same areas appear here so one is called perspectives in education which earlier was called foundations of education in this curriculum and pedagogic studies then there is school internship and there is something called engagement with the field and practice what I want you to focus on is that this organization of the curriculum reflects some understanding about what constitutes theory in education and what constitutes practice and what is the relationship between theory and practice and this is it is both important to look at the question okay so what is now can you guess what areas of this would correspond to theory and what would correspond to practice I mean this looks like a theoretical area right and school internship certainly looks like practice and engagement with the field and practicum seems to be also part of practice and we have curriculum and pedagogic studies which one is not very sure at the outset whether it constitutes theory or practice so you can see some kind of distribution of what is understood as theory and what is understood as practice and of course I am not talking about how these things are conceived by those who design the curriculum framework etc but how these things get implemented in the actual practice and in the organization of education perspectives in education and one might think of this as theoretical ideas or theories which inform education and those might be theories about childhood, childhood development adolescence, content to India in education, philosophical social perspectives in education theoretical foundations of knowledge and culture, teaching and learning gender, inclusive education equity in society etc so these are listed as the kinds of curriculum components or courses course components that might form might give perspectives in education ok now where would HBCSE figure in all this, this is the question at the back of my mind and perhaps one may say that this is something that relates to the work done at HBCSE which is theoretical foundations of knowledge and curriculum which is what whether it is science or mathematics is a discipline what are the theoretical foundations of knowledge so this is something like the epistemological nature of science and mathematics and how what implications does it have for curriculum now let us look at curriculum and pedagogic studies so courses might be communication understanding of a discipline a social history of a school subject its pedagogical foundations with a focus on learner theoretical perspectives on assessment for learning now I will highlight some of those in red to show some kind of overlap with what are the interests or what are the concerns of people at HBCSE which we are all about which works in science and mathematics and so these might be some things which are which might globally ok of course there is this dimension of engagement with the field and practicum which includes two dimensions one is that you do tasks and projects with the community, the school the child in school and out of school which will help in substantiating perspectives and theoretical frameworks studied in teacher education classroom this is the dimension which connects so to speak what you learn from perspectives and theories and what you encounter in the field so you try to these are dimensions of practicum within the courses themselves which relate the theoretical perspectives of frameworks that you acquire in the classroom with your readings with what you actually observe in the field another aspect of this practicum is self-development that is enhancing professional capacities of a student teacher in terms of language and communication drama and art self-development, self-discovery enquiry about oneself, one's interests and so on and some ICTs are also included in that and when it now of course there was a directive also to include things like yoga which is also included so this is self-development so the purpose of this is to communicate use a flavor of what roughly looks like the theory practice distribution in the way education is organized so ICTs information and communication technology that's okay it's supposed to be the skills that teachers acquire part of that is this alright so this is the argument that I am making and this is what I will in the next few slides I will offer a sort of counter perspective now now this organization of education and the understanding of pedagogy is still embedded in the standpoint of what I call generalized pedagogy pedagogy is something general and you develop pedagogical skills of a teacher you develop the sensitivity of a teacher through teachers to be sensitive to social issues thinking to the way children feel the way they grow up etc and then there is the subject and the subject is quite different from these and in some sense it is the teacher's job or the work of the teacher when she becomes a teacher herself to relate these sensitivities and these concerns and the kind of pedagogical skills that you have got with the knowledge of the subject that you are okay so this is something like a generalized product now what I am going to suggest is that there is a completely different viewpoint and I think that is the kind of viewpoint that I see developing in Homibaba center and it is related to some other developments which are happening in the field of education so I would like to draw your attention to Lee Schulman who introduced this term which has now become quite popular called pedagogical content knowledge which is supposed to be an amalgam of pedagogy and content and so it is a perspective which says do not see pedagogy and content as different but see the as connected so this is a quote from somebody who follows Schulman's work the central contribution of the work of Schulman and his colleagues was to reframe the study of teacher knowledge in ways that included direct attention to the role of content in teaching this was a radical departure from research of the day which focused almost exclusively on general aspects of teaching such as classroom management time allocation or planning and my claim is that such a generalized pedagogical approach still drives education and it may be time to rethink this in a very different way I will skip this slide this has got something to do with what kind of work has been done in knowledge so it is not true so the argument that I am making is that Schulman's intervention in teacher education actually brings subject matter to the center now what does this imply for education and how important is this for education in general so I would say that it is quite important because the identities that teachers develop are primarily subject identities so teachers have the identity of being a subject teacher this may not be true at the primary level but certainly when you go beyond the primary at the new school level or the high school level you teachers have quite strongly the identity of being a subject teacher might be a science teacher a maths teacher sometimes it might be science and mathematics or teacher or social science teacher now what I am saying is that the way education is organized and the way the education curriculum is organized in some way does not foster the development of these are orthogonal teacher the development of teacher identities as subject teachers and the organization of education which by and large leaves the subject perspective out of its spectrum and talks about only generalized spectrum so I am saying that if you think that the subject matter standpoint is central to education and how would it reshape or how would it emerge in education okay now it is I think I just have one more slide but this is really the central point that I am trying to understand that we need to move to a standpoint which is a subject based standpoint now does that mean that we only focus on you know science teachers only focus on how to teach science or how to teach mathematics I am saying that this is not the case science teachers and mathematics teachers need to develop from their own standpoints understanding of the general issues in education this is really the argument that I am trying to make so what you need is a standpoint so let me see that it is not as though subject matter is something like knowledge this is the way teacher education is organized you have content which is knowledge which is different and these two are separate now the standpoint approach would say that content at practice are in some way linked to each other it is not correct to think of these as something totally different and in fact Lee Schulman's article the title of the article which introduces this notion of PCQ is called I think those who understand knowledge, growth and thinking in teaching the word understand I think is very important inclusion understand is quite different from knowledge and practice understand in some sense brings together you must know as well as you must know how to act on the basis of that knowledge ok so understanding and standpoint are somehow related and so can we view education as organized in such a way that the subject matter standpoint is at the heart and from that code you understand the larger issues of education and if you see Chitra's own work I think she had a standpoint and the standpoint is one of science education but in her work she brought together not only some kind of an interdisciplinary perspective but I think she looked out from working within science education at society at the way science is linked with technology with society and try to bring that kind of an understanding into her own work and I think this gives a certain paradigm of looking at education and this is perhaps the significance of a place like Omibaba center in the field of education as a world I think what this work at HVCC brings to education is what I call a standpoint standpoint education that they have a standpoint pedagogy and which is subject standpoint so education from the subject matter standpoint so how does subject education relate to general aims of education how does science education relate to the general aims when we teach science in what ways are we fulfilling the general aims of education which is to say critical reflection, empowerment of the citizen and so on and this is the kind of work which is being done at HVCC how sensitivity to social issues reflected in subject education how do children construct knowledge of science and mathematics this is very different from constructivism in from a purely cognitive standpoint or from a purely psychological standpoint but it's from the subject matter standpoint and I think that's very central and what do teachers need to know and do to facilitate such construction and this again would be from starting from the subject matter standpoint so I believe that this gives this offers a different perspective and something that's really not been taken into account in subject matter subject matter I think we are running out of time so I will ask subject matter's permission whether we can go on for a few minutes because the lunch was supposed to be at 12.45 yes I think we will take 10 minutes and 10 minutes sharp so we will have some questions yes shall I Anita had a question for us so where are we sir, Jaishri and Ravi a brief kind of question which maybe we need to talk more later talk more later especially this thrust that you are talking about in terms of subject matter standpoint seems to worry me a bit because we think that in education we are trying to move away from this over-focus of subject matter right now our teachers are just steeped in what they think their role is some subject some discipline which comes from somewhere and it's integrating that so we may be using different words and since we work together on this structure so I don't understand why you are focusing again on this you know the kind of terminology that you are using because we really look at our job there is something to move away from this you know over-emphasis on just a discipline or subject matter I understand when you sort of delineate it and say that these are the kinds of issues that engage us that's why if you remember we had tried to even move away from this traditional be-ed at least on paper I don't know how much is happening we ourselves are struggling with how it's getting translated in our own institute but this thing about school internship and this thing about theory and practice the way they have been understood to move away from that but when you again talk about this it worries me a bit but I need time to understand later correct so I think that what we think is a problem I completely agree with that that the problem is that you tend to become sort of isolated within the subject and you don't see the larger issues and also perhaps the interaction between subjects and disciplines however how do we get around this does this mean that we can so I mean at the work I think that we did in terms of reforming or taking the be-ed curriculum forward in a certain direction I think that's fully that's very welcome of course I'm a part of it also and I support it and I think it's a step forward but these questions I'm raising are something for us to think about I'm not sure whether it lead to a solution for the sort of problems that you say but I think that even in the reorganization of this curriculum what happens is that the the role of the subject let's say it's science or mathematics is fairly small and you say perhaps one in the reform curriculum that's even under emphasized a little more however this is the identity that teachers develop in their practice why is it that teachers develop this in their practice can that be changed I'm not sure but I think that is something which has a historical institutional legacy I mean it's the way higher education is organized and it might be for good reasons I'm not sure and it is bound to continue I don't think I don't see that changing in education unless there are changes in higher education as well but I think that if you adopt the subject standpoint and begin to look at the larger world rather than in your subject that's the kind of thing that I'm arguing for whether it's larger social issues or philosophical issues aims of education etc can we look at it from the standpoint of the subject and can be related to that I think that would facilitate integration in a better way I think that's the kind of thing that I'm saying see I think the idea is to establish the linkages and what is happening today is that teachers have done the subject separately the methodology separately the philosophy of psychology etc all of these remain de-linked so do you bring them together and how do you make that consistent with the task of the teacher the task of the teacher is to you know get the students from novice to expert I mean I would still remain with that kind of traditional formulation that students need to learn science, maths, geography history but they the teacher has to be aware of the broader social and psychological context I mean without the awareness of the teacher this enterprise of education will not succeed but the enterprise of education is finally awareness of the subject yes please go Yeshree which are the changes in the subject model takes place over a period of time it needs a longer time span while all the areas under which this is position happens too fast too radical sometimes happens too catastrophically fast unless we understand the terminology of transactional process transformation which takes place in the peripheral area how do you actually relate and move the disconnect with the subject standpoint model outside so that's my body too I'm talking totally from outside and looking, tracking this area of education models closely for last 20 years it's important for us and it's actually affecting a lot of things which happens in the so called innovation platforms so one of the I don't know whether this is a response, it's an adequate response one of the disjunctions which is happening is the, or the disconnect is between school education and higher education so although education is supposed to be another subject in the university the university has departments of education the departments of education rarely interact with the other departments of the university so and that's because their education is conceived of as generalized pedagogy and that subject matter or content is something quite different just is something that has to be packaged and the business of education is to tell you about how to implement this pedagogy independent of content now if you think of a different model for instance if you think of the standpoint model what does science education mean what is the understanding of science that is empowering to citizens what is the understanding of science in relation to other subjects now these questions are quite central to education but they are not central to university departments of subject that is they are not they are not completely beyond the purview or the horizon of departments of science because that departments, subject departments in the universities are not really concerned with education except at the tertiary level but if you think of knowledge itself and I think this is also at the heart of Shilman's paper knowledge is not simply acquire and research but knowledge is also pedagogy it is also about passing this to the next generation about growing their understanding so when university departments of science begin to take responsibility and interest in pedagogy even at the school level I think that some of these concerns about how knowledge is constructed how knowledge is related to the real world to live the experience how knowledge is related to other disciplines these will become I think more centrally the concerns of those higher education communities of knowledge and so that is another reason why I think a standpoint pedagogy approach to education is worth looking at I completely agree with what Ravi said and as far as science education is concerned HBCSE brings brings this subject standpoint to it apart from the Shilman or anybody else the center was started by a group of scientists who were interested in improving science education and these scientists tried to learn what the discipline of education is and tried to bring about the connection so somewhere the connecting has to begin and it cannot happen if you drop one or the other so for example you know looking at science education as a field to be investigated in the same way that you look at any other area of science as something to be investigated and then an approach that came from science education and I think it has enriched the area of education so one needs I mean it's these linkages that one needs to establish and finally you know what practically happens on the ground in teacher education colleges and in beginning student teachers who are actually listening to lectures or doing the practicum that's another field altogether I mean if you really see what the college is and all these ideas are very far from the practice of teacher education but the idea in us discussing these and connecting it