Coordinator: Dean's Office
Ayush Gupta and Tathagata Sengupta
Monday and Thursday (11 AM to 1 PM)
Starting from August 23, 2021
09Thu
Coordinator: Dr. Mashood K. K.
Dr. Reema Mani, HBCSE, TIFR
https://zoom.us/j/94058085713?pwd=QjY3TWpKUC84TFhldkdlS01ScnVGdz09
940 5808 5713
967696
In educational research and interventions, we often deal with teachers who have come from ossified preservice education programs. We apply theoretical frames and philosophies of teaching of which most teachers are either unaware or have been unable to internalise. We then grapple with making sense of the observable classroom behaviours to fit into known frames, often creating a judging or deficit perspective.
In addition, academic research within an implementation project has to fit into ground realities of projects and funding. For me, this has meant, tuning the process to explore and identify what data I can work with and how I can contribute towards institutional and professional commitments. So in my postdoctoral work, I have been observing classrooms, building some relationships with teachers and school heads to conduct research; some of the data may have preceded questions and tools of analysis.
We have had to understand how some of our observations are useful to project work. During school visits, we observed diversity in implementation and also in our reportage within this large project. These observations inform our interactions with teachers and also our initiatives. For example, while working with Learning Units we sometimes witness students’ engagement with unanticipated processes that teachers may not pay attention to. Explicit documentation of such instances is useful in choosing the direction in our initiatives and aiding teachers’ cognisance of her own abilities to facilitate such processes is required to redesign discourses for educational interventions.
In this talk, I share snippets of my journey so far, mainly focused on the work in Vigyan Pratibha at HBCSE.
I have a PhD in Education from the University of Mumbai. Prior to being a research scholar, I worked as a teacher in IGCSE and ICSE sections of a school. I have also worked as a research associate in CLIx, TISS, Mumbai. In October 2018, I joined HBCSE as a post-doctoral researcher. Since then, I have worked mainly within the Vigyan Pratibha project and my presentation aims to highlight this aspect of my work.
Following a Montessorian belief that environment facilitates (or hinders) learning, my research focus has been on observing student interactions with the teacher, the material, peers, and the environment. I work towards finding knowledge in these observations that will contribute to my growth as well as to the community of fellow researchers, teacher educators, and teachers.