Meeting Education Leaders
On Friday afternoon I met with Vyjayanthi Sankar the Founder & Executive Director of CSSL which stands for the Center for Science of Student Learning.
What an audacious title but they are serious about it. She described the scope of her work designing assessments that reveal how students are think. We had a far ranging discussion about using data to inform instruction, identifying student misconceptions and even ways to assess if students have developed empathy. Vyjayanthi challenged me to go further than elite private schools and into the government schools, to make efforts to translate some of the student videos into Hindi and Urdu. Suffice to say it was a lot to think about. I was way out of my league in terms academic research and social science, but able to hold my own when discussing actual classroom practices (at least I tried!)
A quick look at the web pages associated with Vyjayanthi’s CSSL and the other company she started Educational Initiatives will give you a sense how cutting edge this educational research and advocacy is.
http://www.cssl.in/our-work.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_Initiatives
We’re planning to meet again and I agreed to prepare a presentation for her staff to better understand how they can help support my project. Fascinating to see this aspect of education, because there is a national plan and curriculum, projects like might not be met with the same resistance or even suspicion US teachers have when we hear buzzwords like data driven instruction and accountability. Lots more for me to learn here.
The next morning I was fortunate to get a meeting with Dr. Chong Shimray, Associate Professor at the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). http://www.ncert.nic.in She met me at my guesthouse and while I am a clumsy host and it was a cool morning, the hours flew by for me.
NCERT is the organization that writes all the textbooks and teacher training manuals for the entire country. It was my first choice for affiliation for the purposes of getting a research Visa, but bureaucratic delays got in the way and I ended up being affiliated with the National Science Centre which has worked out great. After she left, I spent the rest of the day downloading all the science textbook chapters, available for free (but somehow I couldn’t locate while in the US). Reading the textbooks gives insight into the culture and helps me focus on finding useful resources to share. Here is an example of a chapter if you’re interested. I’m going to make the rest into another post so if science textbooks are not your thing, move on to the next post!
Prof Shimray and I discussed many topics in education, including positive and negative effects of technology. I asked for an example of a negative effect of technology and she cited the Pokemon Go phenomenon, which I thought was a mostly harmless fad that at least got some gamers off the couch. But I understood her concerns about by how easily students are distracted. I probably geeked out again about VR, it feels like I know this special secret I want to tell everyone. Another reality check for my project. The passion project videos will resonate with children for sure, but the teachers under the stress of preparing students for upcoming exams and the parents who want nothing but whatever they see as best for their child to do well on these exams- they will resist what might be viewed as a “frivolous” project, giving students too much freedom and distracting from the studies they are tested on.
