Annual Update2012-13

Wipro Applying Thought in Schools

A compilation of the annual updates from various partners within Wipro’s school education program

ANNUAL UPDATE - 2012-13

Wipro Applying Thought in Schools

Integrated Approach to Social Sciences, Vikramshila 19

Table Of Contents

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SeasonWatch 8

Nature Education, Nature Conservation Foundation 11

Earthian – Sustainability education program of Wipro 14

Green Schools Programme II, Centre for Science & Environment 16

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INTRODUCTION 6

ECOLOGY & EDUCATION 7

SOCIAL SCIENCES 18

Language Education using Multilingual Approach, Eklavya 23

Language Education using Multilingual Approach, Muskaan 26

LANGUAGE 22

5 Learning with Kabir, The Kabir Project 29

Standards for Social & Emotional Learning (SSEL) – Research Project by The Teacher Foundation 31

SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT & AFFECT IN EDUCATION 28

Goodbooks.in: A Children’s Literature Review Website, Good Books Trust 53

Contemporary Education Dialogue Journal, Education Dialog Trust 55

Chakmak, Children’s Magazine in Hindi from Eklavya 56

Tulika Books 59

Graphic Novel on Folktales from Assam 61

Book on Philosophy of Education 62

A Publication on Alternative Directions in School Education 63

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Vidyabhawan 37

Education in Dil Se Homes, Centre for Equity Studies 41

Teacher Education & School Interventions, CEVA 43

Courage to Lead, Disha-India 46

Language Learning Resource Centre, Shikshamitra 49

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HOLISTIC SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS 35

ORGANIZATION SUPPORT PROGRAMS 36

EDUCATION MATERIAL & LITERATURE 52

Quality Education Study, Educational Initiatives 65

PUBLIC ADVOCACY 64

10 GENERAL UPDATES 67

INTRODUCTION

Wipro Applying Thought in Schools is one of Wipro’s social initiatives and aims to build capacities for school education reform in India. This report is an annual update of all the projects within this initiative. However before we get into the details, here is a brief account of our vision, objectives and the focus areas that come out of this.

Our work in education is driven by the belief that education is a key enabler of social change. We believe in a social vision of democracy where each citizen is not only capable in an individual sense but also sees the ethic of equity, the essentiality of diversity, the ethos of justice, and is thus driven by social sensitivity. Schools have to be spaces that nurture these principles, capabilities & values.

This means a dramatically different kind of school and a significantly revamped education system. Schools and education systems do not change overnight. We believe that a sustained effort is required and our projects are attempts to bring about a change of this kind.

Towards this, we have identified three key needs in our education system:

lWe need organizations capable of bringing about quality education by working in different parts of India and in different knowledge areas

lWe need good quality educational material and literature to aid in this effort

lWe need educationists, parents, government etc to think and act in an informed manner to make this happen.

These determine our focus areas as below:

lOrganizational capability building and partnerships in the education space

nTo address the scarcity of organizations and peoplein this space

nFor sustainable impactnTo build a network of orgs that can learn and

collaborate

lDeveloping Educational material & Literature

nTo address the scarcity of good material for children and educators

lPublic Advocacy

nTo create greater awareness and understanding on important educational issues

We have also decided to focus on a few knowledge areas as themes: ecology and education, social sciences, language, affective education and the school environment. The reason for this is that while these areas are integral to the vision of a good education, they are often some of the most neglected areas within education.

These focus areas and themes increasingly determine the specific projects that we partner in. Our projects are implemented through partnerships with educational and knowledge-based organizations across India. In the sections below we have presented an annual update of our projects in the year 2012-13.

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ECOLOGY & EDUCATION

Our work in Ecology and Education is inspired by Wipro’s commitment to ecological sustainability. It started with a dedicated Partners’ forum on Ecology & Education in 2009. Our core concerns in this area have been previously articulated in “Our Concerns on School education in India” as below:

“The earth is made up of interconnected systems, cycles and processes. Ecological education should aim at following the trails and connecting the dots. It has to often be outside the classroom and span multiple subjects. This raises issues with the 40 minute period structure of schools today and demands interdisciplinary skills from teachers.

Further there is a tendency of environmental education to be bracketed with individual contributions like reducing plastic usage and recycling etc. Many of these conceptualize the child as a consumer but fail to bring out the aspects related to the child as a future citizen. A citizen’s contribution to society is not only limited to controlling one’s own consumption but also in participating in a democracy at various levels including the local level to influence the production-oriented organization of society itself.”

Over the last few years, we have expanded our work to 4

projects in different areas within ecology and education:

A project to instill the scientific spirit and connect with nature by going outside the classroom and being with trees: SeasonWatch with National Centre for Biological Sciences and Nature Conservation Foundation

A project that makes children aware and active about their ecological footprint on land, water, energy etc starting from the school campus: Green Schools Program with Centre for Science & Environment

A sustainability education program which awards entries from schools and colleges and takes the winning institutions through a three year engagement which aims to deepen sustainability education in these institutions

A project that tries to bring localized knowledge created through conservation activities into school education and also aims to answer questions on the effectiveness of conservation/environmental education. This is a project with Nature Conservation Foundation

The idea is to work on different but related areas within this theme and then slowly integrate these into a connected learning experience on ecology and education.

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SeasonWatch2.1Program objectivesSeasonWatch is a national Program in which volunteers (citizen scientists) collect information on the timing of flowering, fruiting and leaf flush for approximately 100 species of common trees. SeasonWatch has three clear and equally important objectives:

l To collect this data in a large scale manner across the country and make it available freely online so that patterns in these changes across geographies or time can be studied

lTo engage with schools using this as a platform to bring about more meaningful ecological education

lTo increase the interest and awareness levels of the citizen scientists (individuals or school children) who collect this data

Seasonwatch now has nearly 100 participants and over 200 schools observing more than 2,000 trees. Participants have made over 30,000 observations. So far, the bulk of activity in SeasonWatch has taken place in Kerala, through our partnership with Mathrubhumi and their SEED Program for schoolchildren. Starting in beginning 2013, we are making a concerted effort towards expanding SeasonWatch across the country, through partnerships with diverse groups.

SeasonWatch in KeralaLike last year, Seasonwatch continued to grow in Kerala through the Mathrubhumi partnership. The SEED Program that Mathrubhumi runs includes SeasonWatch as one of the core activities that schools are meant to do. In 2012-2013, Nizar, the SeasonWatch State coordinator for Kerala,

trained Mathrubhumi/SEED personnel about SeasonWatch in Kochi and trained schoolteachers directly during 38 different SEED workshops (attended by an average of 100 teachers each). SeasonWatch material was distributed through CDs to 5,000 schools. A second form of interaction with teachers and schools is over the phone and through personal visits. Nizar visited roughly 15 schools in each of Kerala's 38 education districts this year to promote SeasonWatch and to get feedback from teachers and students. Members of the SeasonWatch team also participated in evaluating SEED entries, and in SEED awards functions in different educational districts.

During the course of examining the level of participation, we saw that roughly 100 schools are regularly active in SeasonWatch. A newsletter was prepared and distributed to these schools.

Seasonwatch in Kerala – Key facts:l210 schools registered in SW project and uploading data

online.

l2,734 trees registered on the SW website; 30,839 observations uploaded for these trees.

lFrom 2011 onwards roughly 100 teachers from each of the 38 education districts have been trained on SeasonWatch. Copies of the SeasonWatch handbook (in Malayalam) have reached roughly 6,500 schools in Kerala.

lWe found that frequent visits to schools to talk about SeasonWatch leads to a higher chance that school will be active in the project.

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SeasonWatch elsewhere in the countryOur other main partnership is with the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a public interest research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi. CSE has an outreach program for schools called the Green Schools Program (GSP) that reaches out to 15,000 schools across India. The GSP program coordinators directly reach out to some 300 teachers/trainers in two day workshops held at 8 to 10 centers across the country. The trainers from the Centre include a one hour training session on Seasonwatch as a part of our partnership with the Green Schools Program on the second day. The teachers are given the Calendar of Nature handbook for conducting Seasonwatch. We are looking to invigorate this effort by following up with schools trained by CSE.

Ashish Shah, Program Manager of SeasonWatch since September 2012, is working from Delhi to extend Seasonwatch by forging various partnerships:

lSchools & Educational institutions through government agencies

lSchools & Educational institutions through private agencies

lAdults through corporate agencies

lAdults through public agencies and NGOs

Environment awareness programs of Government of India has two major initiatives, one curricular, which is managed NCERT and SCERTs, and the other activity-based program, managed by Ministry of Environment and Forests. The activity-based program is called National Green Corps and

it has about 1.2 lakh member schools from across the country. The program is administered by the Ministry through State Nodal Agencies which are State level government offices. This year Seasonwatch has forged partnerships with twelve state/UT departments (like Department of Environment, Forest Department etc), Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti and the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan.

Ashish will be training 3,900 school teachers through above partnerships during the next year.

Forest Department of Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh have shown keen interest in using Seasonwatch as an activity to engage people. Ashish has initiated the process to engage employees of WIPRO, Tata Steel and NTPC in different parts of India. WIPRO and Tata Steel have already agreed to participate in Seasonwatch, while the NTPC partnership is yet to materialise.

Website workThe process of creating a single consolidated website that can cater to the requirements of all types of users has been completed this year. The site has a unique visual design and offers an intuitive user experience. A volunteer is working on creating an Android application for SeasonWatch.

ProductsA brochure has been created, which is specifically designed to generate interest in the reader to want to learn more about the program and to sign up. The Calendar of Nature, a handbook for schools on participation in Seasonwatch has been produced, and is being distributed.

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Plans for the next yearIn Kerala, we plan to identify the 100-odd schools who participated enthusiastically this year and work more closely with them. They could potentially become SeasonWatch ambassadors to generate interest in their spheres of influence and to take the program to the next level across India. We intend to reach out to diverse audiences and to try and have the number of trees monitored to cross 10,000. As part of this goal, we plan to create more resources including a monthly email newsletter, and data visualisation tools. We will directly contact 13,000 CBSE and CISCE schools to tell them about SeasonWatch and invite their participation. In addition, we will approach private schools chains like DPS Society, DAV schools, Bharti Mittal Foundation schools, Birla Group schools, Eicher group schools and JUSCO schools. We would also like to work with Wipro education partners who have shown interest, as also Earthian schools and colleges, and district institutes of the Azim Premji Foundation.

Finally, our efforts so far have been to make SeasonWatch known, and to recruit as many participants as possible. In the near future, we plan to focus more on the education potential of the Program, so that the simple activity of observing a tree from week to week can be translated into a more meaningful engagement between the child (or adult, as the case may be) and the natural world.

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Nature Education, Nature Conservation Foundation2.2The Nature Conservation Foundation is a non-governmental organization with a focus on scientific research and on- ground action per taining to understanding and conserving wild nature. I ts headquartered in Mysore, but it has offices and field stations in various places, including Bangalore, Valparai (Tamil Nadu), Spiti (Himachal Pradesh), and Pakke (Arunachal Pradesh). In conjunction with its conservation implementation projects, NCF has done extensive work in nature and conservation related outreach and education, both to the general public, and targeting schoolchildren. NCF and Wipro have agreed to partner in a project to take the benefits of creative intersections of work at NCF and school education, to the school community and larger audiences. This work is carried out by the Education and Public Engagement Unit at NCF.

Program Objectives lConsolidate and make available existing content on

nature education and outreach available with NCF

lBuild on existing education and outreach activities at NCF

lFurther NCF's efforts in Public Participation in nature-related science projects, with an emphasis on school participation

lExplore how nature education can be effectively brought into mainstream school curricula

Work Done in 2012-13 Consolidating and making available existing content

lA consolidated list of all of NCF’s education and outreach related materials have been prepared. Soft

copies of most of these materials have been collated into a central database. The full list of material includes 5 books and booklets, 32 posters and pamphlets, 5 activity books and workbooks, 3 educational videos and films, 2 field guides, 28 reports, and 3 EcoQuest exhibitions (with posters, activities and games).

lThe NCF website is being completely revamped. Once this has been completed, the education and outreach materials will be sorted and those selected for making available to the general public will be uploaded on the new website.

lWe are in the process of discussing with India Biodiversity Portal about making some of our existing educational materials available on their website.

lSeveral of our out-of-print outreach materials are being considered for re-printing. The Himalayan Teacher’s Activity Handbook, which is used by our High Altitude Program in their education work, has already been re-printed for the coming school year.

lWe have been in communication with other organisations, including book publishers, regarding new channels of distribution for our existing as well as new outreach materials.

New content and activitieslA new booklet on fungi of the southern Western Ghats

has been published. The PDF is free to download and hard copies are available for sale.

lWith partial funding from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, an exhibition was set up on the lesser known species of the Western Ghats at the Society for

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Conservation Biology, Asia chapter conference in Bangalore 7-10 August 2012. For the exhibition, titled Hidden Treasures, we developed forty-eight static panels on various lesser-known species groups occurring in the Western Ghats, five interactive games and activities. The conference was attended by over 350 students, conservation scientists and practitioners from over 15 countries.

lIn partnership with Siruthuli, a Coimbatore NGO working on urban water conservation we established a new branch of EcoQuest (a series of nature interpretation centres), which was inaugurated on 1 October 2012.

nIn addition to existing materials, five new activitiesand games were developed for this centre.

nSiruthuli is currently organising school visits to thsicentre. Between October and December 2012, over4,000 students from both urban and rural schools inand around Coimbatore attended the exhibition.

nOver twenty volunteers from city colleges helpedconduct these visits. NCF conducted a day's trainingfor these volunteers in interpreting the exhibition.

l The EcoQuest centre in Ooty has been upgraded and 18 new exhibits have been printed and set up at the centre.

lIn March 2012, NCF tied up with The Hindu to run a weekly column in the school edition of their newspaper. To date, we have published over 40 articles in the column with subjects ranging from rare and endangered wild species to natural processes, as well as

conservation issues and dilemmas. The Hindu has offered us extra space in the edition for weekly wildlife activities for children. We have identified activities from existing sources (old NCF publications such activity books etc.), and are working on the first draft of the weekly activity with writers and illustrators.

Citizen SciencelOur Citizen Science projects are gaining momentum.

The details about SeasonWatch, which is a part of this, have been covered in the earlier section.

lMigrantWatch participation is picking up. In the 2011-12 migration season, 4,134 records were contributed, compared with 2,857 the previous season. In the first three months of the 2012-2013, the number of records is more than double that of the first three months of the previous season. To better communicate with participants, since June 2012, we send out a full-html monthly newsletter. We have prepared a 5-year summary report of MigrantWatch observations. The PDF is available for download and hard copies are also available for interested individuals and MigrantWatch participants.

lWe teamed up with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) to provide technical support for their Citizen Sparrow project to collect information on sparrows. The project has gathered more than 10,000 observations from over 5,000 people across the country. A popular report has been prepared, and is available online as well as in the form of an attractive poster. A detailed report of the findings is being prepared.

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Other activitiesl

effectiveness of conservation education and outreach print materials in village schools located in the Western Ghats.

lNCF made its presence felt at COP-11 at Hyderabad, 13-14 October 2012. Senior Scientist Suhel Quader spoke about citizen science efforts at the International Conference on Biodiversity Conservation and Education for Sustainable Development, organised by CEE on the sidelines of COP-11. He also spoke about the scope and potential for public participation in generating biodiversity information the Panel Discussion on Biodiversity Informatics, organised by the Foundation for Ecological Security on 18 October.

What is planned for the next year?lOnce the new NCF website is functional, educational

materials such as books, booklets, activity books, posters and others will be made available for the general public.

lNew education and outreach related materials are in the pipeline with many of NCF’s thematic Programs.

lThe partnership with Hindu In School is going to be strengthened with the launch of weekly wildlife activities for school children. Plans are afoot to compile all these into an activity book in the future.

lNew distribution channels are being identified to reach a wider audience.

A new survey is being designed to evaluate the We are exploring a reorientation of focus to a more research-based set of activities, asking questions like: What attitudes do people at large hold towards nature conservation, and do these attitudes vary across different strata of society? What causes some people to care more about nature than others? How can nature education, interpretation, and outreach be made more effective?

There is very little empirical information based on careful research on these questions from India. We are in the process of assessing what crucial information gaps need to be filled and what expertise would be required to conduct research on these sorts of questions. We are thinking of making a start with a small workshop of select attendees from across India who have done something about evaluating the effects of nature education programs.

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Earthian -Sustainability education program of Wipro2.3Earthian is a sustainability education program of Wipro’s. While the program is for both schools and colleges, this update is limited to the schools part of the program. In the first phase of the program schools submit an entry on a theme within sustainability and the 10 best entries receive awards. Subsequently earthian and its partners engage with the winning schools as a part of the Continuous Engagement Program (CEP) to increase the space provided to sustainability education within the school.

15 schools have received the earthian awards till now. The 5 schools that won the award in 2012 have commenced their CEP. As a part of CEP, in 2012-13, schools received a bouquet of programs from the earthian partners. These provided school teachers with rich and diverse experiences within sustainability. A brief idea of the 4 partner organizations and what they covered is below:

lOne of the partners is ATREE, which is an organization that does research and grassroots work with local forest communities that combine livelihoods mainly deriving out of the natural resources with conservation efforts. ATREE’s Community-based Conservation Centres provide a platform for such engagement in forest and rural locations. The rational of the module with ATREE is to understand the human-nature and other interconnections across water, biodiversity, agriculture, climate change etc better and also learn some research

methods in the process. This is an experiential learning module that was attended by teachers of the 5 winning schools. This was transacted through workshops, visits, few lectures and exposure to research work at their field academies.

lCentre for Science & Environment is another partner. Schools are brought on board their Green Schools Program. The Green Schools Program (GSP) is an ‘inspection’ or ‘survey’ of the school done by its students on its environmental practices. It is like an audit of the environment. The students form teams and go around the school on an exploratory journey and find out what’s happening – to the water, energy, land, air and waste in the school. This activity facilitated by teachers will help them understand the footprint of their school on the local ecology better. Many of the winning schools are already GSP certified. So, our engagement on this was customized as per the schools current standing. For schools which not are GSP certified yet, we organized a workshop to help them join GSP. And for schools already into GSP, we facilitated the next steps along the lines of GSP, which takes the footprint reduction activities within the school further. In future we will also try to make this a more widely participated and educative activity within the school, possibly by integrating this with the curriculum.

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that has practiced a radically different curriculum and pedagogy for ecological education, which can be called “place based education”. The focus within this is on connecting to the locale around the school using an interdisciplinary approach that looks at land, biodiversity, geology, agriculture, people, livelihoods etc. The rationale of this workshop was to provide teachers and educationists an exposure into this way of teaching and learning.

lBangalore Little Theatre is another partner that is working on bringing ideas within Theatre in education within sustainability education in schools. As a beginning a few schools worked on the production of a play. The work on the theatre in education related activities is being discussed finalized as of now.

In February 2012, another set of 10 schools have won the earthian awards and they will commence their CEP engagements in the coming year. Meanwhile in the coming year, we will give more shape to the CEP program by trying to integrate the different experiences that the 4 partners provide into a coherent whole that makes sustainability education transacted in their schools more meaningful.

Centre For Learning (CFL), another partner, is a school

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Green Schools Programme II, Centre for Science & Environment2.4Program objectivesl

enable them to identify environmental practices within the school campuses that need to be changed for better management of environment.

lTo build capacity amongst the group (representative students, teacher and management of the school) to bring about the identified changes in practice.

lTo set a mutually convenient deadline and explain how to record and document the entire process and share the learning with the larger school community (other students, teachers, management members, parent and neighbourhood community)

Overview of the programme so farThere is a common thread that runs among the schools in terms of the tasks chosen, and the areas they would like to focus on. The following issues are most popular:

lHow to manage water wisely

lHow to manage solid waste

lHow to experiment with alternative energy source

lHow to nurture and replenish biodiversity

lHow to stem surge of private vehicles and adopt a more sustainable commuting policy

An issue that has been identified in the course of GSP II implementation is the need to build up a database of resource people, especially the technical professionals, who are available locally to guide the schools and help

To conduct customised workshop for 20 schools to them to implement the changes on the ground. This is urgently required to respond adequately to the enterprise and enthusiasm displayed by the GSP II schools

What has happened over the last year?Schools from Delhi, Sikkim, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Pondicherry have been selected for the year 2012-13.

September 2012 - The criteria for identification of schools to participate in the Green Schools Programme II (GSP II) workshop remained the same as last year. i) The school is a part of the Gobar Times Green Schools Programme (GTGSP) network. ii) It has conducted the GTGSP audit – assessing the status of natural resources within its own premises, and thereby, evaluating the role played by the school community as environmental managers – at least once. iii) Most importantly, the students, teachers and the management staff must be enterprising and committed enough to take up the task. iv) Finally, the selected group of 20 schools will have to be a balanced mix of all categories of institutions – Government, Aided, Private, Rural, and Urban.

October 2012 - 30 schools were short listed by CSE from a list of around 100 schools which had won the top 20 GTGSP awards during the years 2006 to 2011. Next, detailed discussions were held with the Principal and Coordinating teacher of each selected school. Purpose was to gauge their willingness and ability to participate in this initiative. Then letters were sent to the schools, seeking a written consent of the authorities. They were spread out in 7 states and 1 Union Territory of India.

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December 2012 – 20 schools made it to the final list. CSE planned to conduct customised workshops in each of these schools. It would help them to identify their weakest points in policy and infrastructure (as per the data collected and analysed during the GTGSP audit exercise) that needed immediate attention. This year the teachers-in-charge advised CSE to begin work at the start of the new session, instead of December. This way the trained students would not be bogged down with examinations, and would be able to focus on bringing about the changes that they pledge to make at the GSP II workshops. Hence April to June, 2013, was decided as the best time to launch GSP II in selected 20 schools for the year 2012-13

January, 2013 – GSP II workshop for Anubhuti School, Jalgaon, was conducted in the month of January. Anubhuti School is also an Earthian Award Winner.

All schools have entered into an informal agreement with CSE, planning to complete the tasks identified by the end of November 2013 and to submit report by December, 2013. Meanwhile, CSE will consistently support the schools in the form of contacts, information and expertise required.

What is planned for the next year?May, 2013 - GSP II workshop for 2 Delhi schools will be conducted in the month of May 2013 which also marks the beginning of a new academic year.

June, 2013 – Nine GSP II workshops will be conducted in the month of June. World Environment Day is very important for Sikkim schools as Green Schools Awards ceremony is organised on that day. Hence GSP II workshop for 2 Sikkim schools will be conducted in the month of June 2013

around this day. GSP II workshop for 3 Jamshedpur schools, 1 Gujarat School, 1 Madhya Pradesh schools and 2 Maharashtra Schools will also be conducted in June.

July, 2013 - GSP II workshop for 3 Pondicherry Schools is being planned. Schools in Pondicherry had longer summer vacation due to the scorching heat. Hence the workshop is planned at the beginning of the new session. 5 more workshops will be conducted in Delhi and Chandigarh.

August, 2013: Follow-up with the selected 20 schools for report on progress. Supporting the schools with documentation of their success stories in terms of data, objective and measuring achievements. CSE will also follow-up with schools that were trained in December 2011 (first phase of GSP workshops) to gauge progress made and changes initiated.

December, 2013: 20 selected schools will document their reports. CSE will evaluate and measure their achievements by comparing last year’s data with the current report.

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SOCIAL SCIENCES

This is a new area of work for us, though Social Science has been an important part of many of the earlier. We have articulated our basic concern within this theme as follows:

“Unlike Natural Sciences, matters here do not fit into formulas nor is any one theory able to explain across time and space any significant aspect of societies. There is a multiplicity of ways of seeing the world and this can be very confusing and needs an attention of a different kind. In line with the NCF 2005 social sciences education has to shift out of either a nationalising frame alone or as a tool of narrow identity formation and accommodate the ‘multiple ways of imagining the Indian nation’.”

This is of course just one of the more important concerns. However, it is also true that it tends to be a neglected

subject in many schools compared to Mathematics or English. We also held a Partners’ forum on History and education in 2010 and it brought out the various aspects of History as a discipline and how this can be learnt in schools.

The work we began in partnership with Vikramshila last year was keeping in the mind the concerns and limitations mentioned above. As part of this, Vikramshila has been able to consolidate on what they have done in the past in Social sciences and come out with tangible curricular material which is interdisciplinary and project-based.

We intend to expand our work in this area in the coming years.

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Integrated Approach to Social Sciences, Vikramshila

Program Overview: Vikramshila firmly believes that quality education should help children to develop as responsible and transformative citizens so that they can work towards establishing a just and peaceful society. India is a young democracy and it is important for our children to be alert of the negative social forces that tend to threaten the basic tenets of democracy. They should be helped to experience the concepts of equality, justice, freedom and participation in authentic learning situations in schools. This means that they must experience critical analysis of controversial issues through a process of sharing. This will teach them to respect diversity and other perspectives. The NCF 2005 has emphasized that the main purpose of teaching Social Science is to help develop a just and peaceful society. But the current approach is to teach Social Science in a compartmentalized manner with textbooks that are packed with information that is far removed from the social realities of the learners. This does not help to develop the kind of social, political awareness and critical thinking that is needed to fulfill this avowed objective. There have been attempts to fill this lacuna by introducing separate subjects such as Environment Education, Life Skills Education, Peace Education, etc. each adding to the burden of the learner but not adding up together to help students develop a comprehensive world view and engage actively with issues that are relevant to their lives. The Social Science Project of Vikramshila was conceptualized last year in collaboration with Wipro Applying Thought in Schools’ against this background with the objective of developing a Social Science curriculum that would adopt an interdisciplinary approach. Given below are some notewor thy accomplishments of the year:

Text Book AnalysisIn its attempt to incorporate the changing perspectives of social science in West Bengal curriculum, Vikramshila has undertaken intensive analysis of text books of History and Geography at both national and state levels. This analysis enabled Vikramshila to identify the existing gaps in the light of NCF 2005. Beside text book analysis, feedback from the students and teachers of government schools were also taken into account as it gave a deeper view of the direct beneficiaries of the process.

Development of Resource PackageAfter text book analysis Vikramshila concentrated on development of exemplary material for curriculum planners, teachers and students. After much brainstorming and discussion with academicians and experts it was decided that the best way to take the project forward was to develop resource packages for both students and teachers from classes 6-8 of both government and private schools on selected themes of ‘livelihood’, ‘market’, ‘media’, and ‘government’, as these themes have been highlighted in NCERT textbooks on Social and Political life and the West Bengal Government had also proposed to include these themes within its curriculum framework. Chapters from the NCERT books on the above thematic areas were translated and contextualized. These were then used to undertake a series of small projects with Vikramshila’s school in Bigha and the Nabadisha centres to understand the pedagogy of social science based on student interaction. The chapters on livelihood and media were reworked on the basis of classroom experiences. Based on these chapters, a resource package including activity cum resource book for students and teachers' guidebook were developed for class 8.

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Trial in schoolsThe third step was teaching the new chapters in schools and recording the perception, participation and response of students. The chapters on livelihood were tested in Khelagar, Nipendra Nath Girls’ High School, Brahmo Girls, Konnagar Rajendra Smriti, Kishore Bharati and Hare School. Through these chapters the students were given an insight into the different forms of livelihood being practiced around their locality and the factors that cause a variation in the forms of livelihood practiced. The chapter on media was tested in Nripendranath Girls High, Hare School , and Kishore Bharati. The chapter touches upon various aspects like the definition of media, existing forms of media, the impact of media, the role of government in influencing media, how media is influenced by power-politics and big corporate houses, etc. The classes were a wonderful mix of academic learning, activities with class cards, group work, interview of stakeholders etc. These classes enabled students to develop a critical understanding of their society. The project has reached out to 696 students. The table below shows the number of children reached through the project, the different backgrounds of the students and the wide array of topics covered:

School Name Type of School Number of Students

Khelaghar Residential 15 Tribal and underprivileged VI Suburbanchildren Livelihoods

Nabadisha Learning 30 Underprivileged children III-V Urban Livelihoodssupport centre in urban areaof Vikramshila

Bigha Experimental 48 Upper and lower middle IV-V Rural LivelihoodsSchool of class in rural areaVikramshila

Sir Nripendranath Government 150 Upper and lower middle VI UrbanGirls High School aided School class in urban area Livelihoods

108 VIII Media

Konnagar Government Upper and lower middle VIRajendra Smriti aided School 67 class in suburban area Urban livelihood

Student Profile Class Topic

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Bramho Girls Government 37 Mainly upper middle VI Urban livelihoodsaided School class in urban area

Hare School Government 74 Mainly upper middle VI Urban Livelihoodsaided School class in urban area

80 VIII Media

Kishor Bharati Private School 58 Lower middle class in VI Rural Livelihoodsperi-urban area

29 VIII Media

The social science project that was carried out in various schools in and around Kolkata got a very good response from the students and head masters whereas teachers by and large were lukewarm and most remained passive observers. Contrary to what we were told by the teachers, the students in all the schools were lively and energetic during the classes, specially the group activities and debates. Their participation revealed that they were quite perceptive about what was taking place in the world around them, but were conditioned to give typical ‘school answers’. They started opening up towards the end and when they did, we found that they had greater understanding of social issues than what their teachers would acknowledge or admit.

The response that we received from the teachers was mixed. Many teachers felt that the topics are too tough and complex for children. Since teachers are the key to any transformation, we plan to work more intensely with the teachers in the coming months and engage with them continuously at several levels. Over and above the text chapter and activity book for students, we plan to provide teachers with additional resources and knowledge support to enable them to facilitate similar sessions with ease and confidence. Short term training workshops would also be organized for teachers to deliberate on these matters. DIETs and other institutions who work with teachers will also be involved to build up a larger discourse on the pedagogy of social science.

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LANGUAGE

Over the years, we have supported a number of language education related projects run by our partners. However, recognizing the severity of the challenge in this space in terms of both the capacity of actors involved in language education, as well as the dearth of high quality content, we have made language education one of our key focus areas. We have articulated our basic concern within this theme as follows:

“India is a country with diverse cultures, educational contexts and languages. To be able to create a good learning environment, it is imperative that children are able to engage with the language (not just spoken in class but also the environment in the school). Multilingualism is seen as one possible method to overcome this issue. There could be other pedagogical methods too.

Beyond this, there are issues with the politics of languages and the dearth of good literature on any subject in languages other than English. This politics is something a school faces on an everyday basis. And these have implications not only in teaching language but in other subjects also. How do we engage with these problems in the school and in the classroom?”

To explore ways of addressing some of these concerns, we have begun focused work in this area in partnership with Eklavya and Muskaan on a multilingual language education program based in Bhopal.

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Language Education using Multilingual Approach, Eklavya4.1BackgroundThis project is based on some of the key understandings emerging from work in education within language and multilinguality over the past two decades like:

Human mind is inherently multilingual, it is in a sense programmed to learn not just one language but more than one languages;

Learning of one language does not necessarily ‘interfere’ with another if it is introduced and worked on properly; in fact multilingual learning gives the opportunity for enhanced language awareness and increased cognitive ability if done appropriately;

It is possible to construct classroom situations in which languages of all children can be used meaningfully and effectively in a way that no child feels alienated and left out.

This project intends to develop a bilingual education program in elementary schools in the essentially multilingual context of the city of Bhopal. Eklavya and Muskaan are collaborating on this project. As part of this work, there is also an effort to create children’s literature, contextualized materials and other activity materials. Work done this yearThe work done on this project in the past year can be broadly classified into the following categories:

lPreparation of materials for orientation in Language: Materials to be used in workshops, on language learning, morphology, phonetics and introduction to syntax were prepared in Hindi under the guidance of resource persons. Team building and orientation of

team: Two people joined the team on 1st September to work on the project. This is a partial team –we’re still looking for 3-5 people to join.

lA 6 day capacity building workshop (Sep10-Sep 15) was organized which concluded with a planning meeting on the last day to discuss and chart the course of action for the project. This was a first in the series of workshops on structure of language and aimed at introducing the basic concepts of linguistics to the potential language group. Since this workshop was an introductory workshop which aimed to lay the ground for the project, it was conducted by a group of academicians from diverse disciplines (linguistics, psychology and education), thus building a holistic perspective on the importance of language in education. The resource persons were Prof. Ramakant Agnihotri (Retd. Professor, Department of Linguistics, University of Delhi; Prof. Minati Panda, JNU; Prof. Kathleen Heugh, University of Australia and Ms. Indrani Roy). The workshop participants included members of Eklavya, Muskaan and Samavesh. The main issues dealt with in this workshop are outlined below:

1. Understanding of sounds (phonology), structure ofwords (morphology) Multilingualism and its impactacross the curriculum, politics of language

2. Language, mathematics and mind

At the end of the workshop a report was preparedoutlining the main discussions and the learning thatemerged from the workshop. Background reading for capacity building is happening alongside.

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l

charted; which included using both primary as well as secondary sources of data. DISE reports formed the base for basic selection (criteria- teacher-pupil ratio, quality of infrastructure, compliance with RTE norms laid out in the School schedule) as outlined in the methodology. This data was collected for the government schools (22) where Eklavya´s library programme is running at present. After this preliminary short listing, selected schools were visited and primary data was collected by observing the processes in the school, both inside and outside the classroom. This included observation of pedagogy of language teaching in the classroom and observation of varied use of language during peer interaction, teacher-student interaction and teacher-teacher interaction. Further, the team gathered data about teachers´ qualifications and demographic details of students by examining school records. Along with this visits, were made to all the potential sites - Government schools, 3 Muskaan centres (Harshvardhan Nagar, Ganga Nagar-Gond community and Banjara Basti Kolar Road-Pardhi community) with the objective of getting a preliminary feel of the schools.

lA second workshop (for 5 days) was organized in December, which was in continuation to the first workshop; it focused on syntax (sentence structure) and how it varies in different languages, thus building on the already developed understanding of morphology and phonology. This was attended by Eklavya and Muskaan participants. It was conducted by Dr. Tanmoy Bhattacharya, Department of Linguistics, University of

Following this, methodology for school selection was Delhi. A first draft of this report is ready.

lWe also organized a workshop for selection of writings by children from Eklavya’s library programs.

lPresently, preparation for intensive data collection of linguistic repertoire of classroom, teachers, community and students (spanning 20 -30 days) is underway. This preparation phase includes development of methodology, creation of tools for data collection and orientation of the team which would carry out this process.

lPreliminary language survey was done in two schools of contrasting nature one being Maharani Laxmi Bai Government higher Secondary School and other being Muskaan Centre operating in Kolar road Basti, which is inhabited by Pardhi community.

lA series of meetings were organized in Delhi to review progress and plan further. The data collected was shared with the resource group (Ramakant Agnihotri, Minati Panda, AL Khanna, Mukul Priydarshini), to get their feedback on the kind of data collected and its relevance for the project and what other things need to be probed further.

lThe criteria for school selection were discussed and six schools were finalized. The criteria proposed and used was geographical location of the school, infrastructure facilities, teacher’s attitude and support, and basic idea about communities as per prior experience of the people in the library program.

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List of schools selected1. Government. Primary School, Banjari Basti – A Co-ed.

Primary school which is infrastructure wise low end, and is geographically situated on periphery of Bhopal; it lies within the community of Banjaras settled here after migration probably from Rajasthan Gujarat border.

2. Govt.Primary and Middle school Maharani Laxmi Bai (MLB), Barkheda - it is a primary and middle only girls school, infrastructurally well maintained located within BHEL township thus children come from varied ethnic backgrounds across the states of India.

3. Government Higher Secondary School Habibiya-, infrastructure wise similar to MLB, Co-ed, situated near the station within the Muslim dominant, gas affected area.

4. Govt .middle school Narela Sankari-, Co-ed, infrastructure wise well maintained and located in semi- urban area.

5. One private school will be chosen out of three of the Mahila Chetna Manch schools where Eklavya has worked earlier in school development.

lA meeting was held with A L Khanna to discuss the module for English language proficiency training for the teachers from the participating schools.

lDecision was taken to establish community centrespresently in two communities, tentatively communitynear Banjari Basti School and MLB or Ankur.

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Language Education using Multilingual Approach, Muskaan4.2The Muskaan project is also part of the language education project with Eklavya (refer previous update).

Key Activities during the yearlCapacities of the team members of this program were

built through three rounds of trainings organized by Eklavya.

lTwo workshops were conducted with members of different adivasi communities living in the city’s slums. The workshop was a sharing and documentation of people’s journeys over the past generations and the changes in life through these years.

lVisits to bastis for collection of stories and anecdotes.

lChildren from two slums have begun studying regularly in education centres started in the bastis and at another centralized venue.

Material Development for use in classes lA set of 4 short stories were translated into Pardhi. Eight

stories have been translated to Gondi.

lCards of small texts (of about 4 to 7 sentences each) in children’s first languages have been prepared to use in promotion of literacy.

lReading materials for elder students and youth have been translated in Gondi so that there is a continued engagement with their own language through text. So far, four stories have been made ready. Three of them have been written by an author, Rinchin whose stories have been published in Sandarbh and one is a story by Mahashweta Devi (The Seed).

l

history from ancient times to present date. The text was developed through community discussions and by researching secondary data. Some of the illustrations were drawn from descriptions by the community (e.g. what kind of turban they wore, to place them on a bullock and not a donkey, the size of the net for the rabbit, etc.). The matter and illustrations were again shared and corrected by the community members. It has been empowering for people to link how law (Criminal Tribes Act, 1851 and the Protection of Wildlife Act) has invaded their life situations.

lOne booklet on ‘deer’ was prepared in Hindi – Gondi to be used as a source of reference.

Observations during the yearlStudents and parents are happily surprised to see and

read materials in their own language and/or depicting their own stories. They find it unique that their life experiences can also become published history.

lSome children who had gained literacy in Hindi initially were now introduced to texts in their first language, but using Devanagari script. They found it difficult to read and write their first language using Devanagari script and were also reluctant about it. However they overcome this within weeks.

lWhen children are given a dictation or are read out a story in their first language, the student’s retention and grasping power is much higher and s/he is able to handle larger chunks of information together.

A wall poster was prepared documenting the Pardhis’

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l

than the pace at which it is being produced.

Plan for the next yearlTraining of team members on observing and

documenting classroom behaviours and processes

lExpand and strengthen classroom activities from current two centres to four centres.

lFinalize reading content with exercises for developing literacy in first language.

The extent of material consumed in a class is much more l

developed as bilingual content.

lDevelop articles in Gondi and Pardhi on current issues for reading materials for elder students in the community.

lDevelop a guideline of simple grammar structures in 4 languages (Gondi, Pardhi, Hindi, and English) to aid learning of English.

Discuss and decide topics of social sciences to be

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SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT & AFFECT IN EDUCATION

Our school education reform work has significantly focused on bringing about changes in the school environment, be it making the environment more safe and friendly for the child, bringing about a sense of responsibility in the child for the matters at school etc. Our concerns on this span a wide array of issues:

“The most important issue is that of the freedom that the school system provides to all stakeholders.

lHow much free time does a child get to play, read or just “be” within our education system? How often does the child choose what she should learn or do and the pace of learning? …

lHow much freedom does the teacher have in shaping the curriculum, teaching approach and assessment?”

“Do democratic values like the children engaging in open dialogue on some topic happen often enough in the school? Is it integral to the environment of the school?”

Equally important is the area of affective education. This covers a wide range of elements that are different from the subjects like science and mathematics: attitudes, beliefs, values, feelings, emotions, interpersonal relations etc. There are many ways in which such areas can be dealt with and we are currently working on two different approaches. The Teacher Foundation is working on a research project that draws on existing literature/work in this area and attempts to arrive at a framework and learning standards in this area. In a radically different approach, there is also work going on which draws on the Kabir project (a project to document mystic poets and poetry) and create resources for teachers and schools to bring the richness of this mystic poet to the classroom.

We find school environment and affective education to be closely tied to each other much more than any other specific subject. This is the reason to have a combined theme for these two areas.

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Learning with Kabir, The Kabir Project5.1The Kabir Project team had suspended work on many fronts during the last year to focus its efforts entirely on the hugely ambitious online web duniya dedicated to mystic poetry and music, called Ajab Shahar. Hence the work of taking forward the education initiatives with the support of Wipro Applying Thought in Schools has primarily focused in this last year only on the creation of the web section within this archive called "Ajab Classroom" (earlier called "Ideas for Educators"). All other initiatives (the books, CD, poster series) remain currently on the back burner.

For Ajab Classroom, the navigation and content flows within this website have been completed and a good visual design has come together. The content has been organized into the four sub-sections of Experiments | Ideas | Reflections | Materials.

The Experiments section will share school and college experiments done by Vishakha Chanchani, the Kabir Project and other schools/educators exploring through very diverse media and forms, various ideas emanating from mystic poetry. This section would actively invite teachers to contribute their school projects or classroom experiments in this space so that the ideas can travel and resources can be shared with other keen teachers.

In the Ideas sections we would share the three lenses of "Boond Samoond", "Ghat Ghat" and "Ulat Pulat" which would invite teachers to experiment with these ideas in their classrooms, as follows:

Boond Samoond: A collection of stories, parables, poems, songs and more to inspire ourselves and children with the idea of discovering the infinite in our own selves. Inviting classroom experiments which share through mystic poetry and other related resources the idea that love can dissolve our small egos and help us connect with the community, with the earth, with a reality larger than the world of me-myself.

Ghat Ghat: Many mystic poets were also weavers, potters and cobblers and since they worked with their hands, they understood the nature of things… that they do not last. This section shares materials to connect ourselves and children with this wisdom, by stepping out of our minds and into our bodies to realize this simple truth.

Ulat Pulat: Mystics often speak an upside-down language or nonsense verse, trying to evoke something that lies beyond the rational, beyond language itself. Perhaps there is freedom in not having our worlds so ordered and sensible all the time. This idea would share stories, parables, poems, songs and materials that give us and children a hint of the wisdom that lies in this seeming “play”.

The Reflections section would share thoughts on pedagogy and the challenges of taking mystic wisdom into classrooms. Contributions to this section may come from teachers and educationists or other people in the field.

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All the documentation, materials and research references have been culled and collated. The work of uploading these stories and content will begin after the entire Ajab Shahar site is coded and uploaded. The work of Ajab Classroom will unfold in tandem with that of the larger web project of Ajab Shahar.

Regarding the other books, CDs and poster series, the ideas, artworks and research has been completed. However the final production work of design, layout and writing to bring the experiences and insights alive in these forms has yet to begin.

Vishakha Chanchani's work in the space of Ulat Pulat and exploring creative ways of working with the ulatbansi and beyond-rational poetic and literary traditions took an exciting new form in the shape of a Hindi play mounted by the children of Valley school on Dec 18th, 2012. Her script exploring connections between Dr. Seuss and Kabir were developed further in collaboration with teachers at Valley School to mount this play. The Kabir Project team did a video documentation of the event, and the film is edited and almost ready for upload in Ajab Classroom with the permission of Valley School.

The project team expects to be in a position to start work on the education materials in earnest by August 2013 and complete it by early 2014.

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BackgroundDuring the period 2009-2012, The Teacher Foundation started the Safe and Sensitive Schools (SASS) initiative, a pilot action-research project with the objective of making the selected schools safe and sensitive through embedding policies, spaces and interactions that are positive, constructive, nurturing and collaborative for all – students and staff alike, using the Whole School Quality Circle Time structure developed by Jenny Mosley Consultancies, UK.

We now believe it is important to broaden the current base of SASS - we need to move away from a feel good augmentation of the weekly time-table to truly help embed the approach as a way of enabling children to grow socially and emotionally.

Most countries give equal emphasis to cognitive, affective and psychomotor development of learners – the head, heart and hand, so to speak. This is well articulated in the form of learning standards as well as adequate inclusion in the curriculum.

In India, despite NCF (2005) making detailed references to a policy of inclusion, nurturing an enabling environment and good behavior through participatory management, there is lack of focus on the importance of the social and emotional development of children. CBSE as part of their Continuous

Comprehensive Evaluation has identified Life Skills and Attitudes and Values that need to be assessed in every student. However neither are these defined as learning standards for social and emotional development nor are teachers equipped to teach for such standards.

According to Dusenbury, Zadrazil, Mart and Weissberg (2011), learning standards create uniformity and coherence in education by establishing and communicating priorities, and providing a common language and structure for instruction within subject areas. Thus without articulated standards the affective domain becomes disregarded by schools and teachers.

The SSEL project is a 2.5 year long exploratory study, looking at the field of social and emotional learning in Indian schools and its global prevalence, and thus designing and developing affective learning standards for children in these schools.

ObjectiveslIdentifying the Key Social-Emotional Skills that need to

be developed in each child

lDefining outcomes/ indicators for each skill age-wise

lDeveloping Standards for these skills across age bands(6-8 years; 9-10 years, 11-13 years, 14-15 years, |16-18 years)

lEstablishing the framework that will enable the teachersto develop and assess the outcomes against predefinedstandards

Expected OutcomeslA comprehensive literature review and research report

on existing understanding of educating for the affectivedomain in schools

lA comprehensive set of learning standards fordeveloping the affective domain amongst Indian children

Standards for Social & Emotional Learning (SSEL) - Research Project by The Teacher Foundation5.2

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l

compilation of best practices on SE development inschools from across the country

l Design of Guides for Assessment of these learningstandards

An outline of the work carried out so farI. A Literature Study has been completed. It includes

lAn understanding and definition of the affectivedomain, social and emotional skills

lEstablishing a need for having these standards in schools

l Study on models from other countries which haveadopted the social – emotional standards and areimplementing them

II. Compilation of the theoretical underpinnings of SEL

The structure of the Framework for Social and Emotional Learning hinges on some major theories developed in the area of Cognitive Development and Social Learning. Some of the key theories that we looked at are:

1. Cognitive TheoriesPiaget (Reorganisation of mental processes)Vygotsky (Culture and Society)

2. Social Learning TheoriesAlbert Bandura (Modeling and self efficacy)

3. Theories of IntelligenceWorks by Daniel Goleman and Howard Gardner

Publications stemming from the project including a 4. Neo Piagetian theories and conceptsConcept of Meta cognition and Kohlberg's work on moral reasoning

III. Compilation of an Integrated Western FrameworkA comparative study was done on 3 widely acclaimed SEL frameworks – CASEL (Collaboration of Academic Social and Emotional Learning, USA), SEAL (Social and Emotional aspects of Learning, UK) and WHO (Life skills program). CASEL's 5 competencies were found to be comprehensive and reflecting in the other frameworks. The 5 competencies are Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision Making.

The Illinois SEL framework, which is based on CASEL's competencies, was adopted as a base to work on. The different components of the framework included learning standards, benchmarks and indicators. All components of the 3 SEL frameworks were compared to identify common elements which were then absorbed into an integrated framework so as to make it more comprehensive and representative.

IV. Indian Framework Study – Phase 1The rationale behind this study is to understand the Indian perspective since the literature search has not suggested any formal studies on learning standards for social emotional development done so far in the Indian context. More over there are no significant SEL milestones to serve as a baseline in the Indian context.

The study looked at gathering inputs from 2 groups: specialists (psychologists, child development specialists

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and school counselors) and school practitioners (teachers) on their perspectives regarding the age-wise prevalence of certain social and emotional behaviors in children. The development of the questionnaires stems from the Integrated Western Framework explained in step 2. The line items for both these questionnaires were taken from the benchmarks identified in the integrated framework. Care was taken to ensure that the line items in both A and B were mapped to each other and stemmed from the original benchmark.

2 questionnaires were used for the study

Questionnaire A (Milestones) examined the ages at which certain social and emotional behaviors begin to naturally appear in a child

Questionnaire B (Learning Standards) examined the ages at which certain social and emotional skills can be learnt as part of a SEL curriculum

The premise here is that learning standards for any competency can be implemented only after the corresponding milestones has been achieved.

The questionnaires were administered to around 200 respondents (teachers + specialists) across locations. Analysis of Questionnaires A and B involves mapping the results on to each other to ascertain when children are developmentally mature to learn different social and emotional skills. Results will indicate the age groups at which SEL skills can be taught in an Indian context. These age bands will further be revised in phase 2 of the study.

Our Way Forward

1. Analysis of the Phase 1 study, the findings of which willfeed into designing of one aspect of the tool for thePhase 2 study.

2. Implementation of Phase 2 which looks at

lCorroborating the age bands that emerge fromPhase 1

lStrengthening the framework by looking at thefollowing constructs

nAwareness – Current definitions and knowledgeof social and emotional skills amongst practitioners. This will indicate the existing gap and thus focus on training teachers in thisdomain.

nSEL framework – Revision of the existing framework based on: prevalent behavioral issues within the schools; contextual adaptation of the age bands based on the development of an average healthy child as observed by teachers

nPractices – Current practices adopted by schools to develop and assess Social and Emotional skills in children. This will contribute towards developing a compendium of best practices in SEL across schools.

This will include a larger group of teachers representing both Private and Government schools spread across 5 regions: North, South, East, West and North East.

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3. Integrating culture and values into the framework

l Integrating Values into the FrameworkCulture and Values are essentially intertwined. Culture assigns meanings to values and defines 'good person hood' relevant to the context. On the other hand, values form the core in any culture and serve as a common thread that binds people, despite religious, social and economic differences. The Indian SEL Framework is aligned to core values reflecting in different national documents like the Constitution, National Curriculum Framework (2005) and Education for Peace (2006), without them being limiting. The framework also takes into account the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child (UNCRC) which respects the right of a child to practice his/her culture and the rights and duties of the parents to provide religious and moral guidance to their children. By using these documents as the base, the framework aims to capture the values that cut across various cultures and contribute towards the overall well-being of the individual as well as the society.

l

Phase 2 of the study whose findings would feed into the framework, looks at gathering views and opinions of teachers from different parts of the country through both quantitative and qualitative tools. Thus, the study aims to ensure maximum representation of its sample and hence come up with a framework that is broadly applicable and free from any bias.

Addressing cultural diversity

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HOLISTIC SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT PROGRAMS

We started working on Holistic School engagement programs to build capacities and understand school reform work better. 7-8 years back, it was a move away from high-scale teacher workshops to engaging with all stakeholders in a school and at a lower scale, which meant deep engagement with a few schools. Through the years, we have worked with many organizations to engage with schools (ranging from one in some cases, to even 50 or 100 in a block) holistically to bring about change in curriculum, teacher practice, school environment and so on. Different projects worked at different scales and with different approaches and focus areas. If some projects were one or a few schools, some others have been with a block or even a state board.

Most of the projects initiated in this phase have concluded. Two last remaining projects from this phase concluded in 2011-12 and were included in that year’s annual update. While the idea of holistic school engagement continues in the current projects too, the focus now is more on specific subjects or knowledge areas as opposed to the idea of whole school transformation. Hence, this section is being discontinued from this year onwards. All projects updates will be covered under the corresponding themes or other sections as appropriate.

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ORGANIZATION SUPPORT PROGRAMS

One of the core purposes of Wipro Applying Thought in Schools Wipro Applying Thought in Schools is to support organizations working in education in building and expanding their capabilities and expertise in different areas within school education – be it curriculum development, pedagogy, content development, teacher training, assessment, advocacy or community/other stakeholder involvement in the school system. Over the years, we have supported a network of organizations engaged in this work.

In the case of established organizations, this has helped them gain new experiences in working with schools or with issues they have not previously engaged in or to improve or build competencies within a team. We have also supported newer organizations doing work aligned to our strategy in establishing themselves in the initial years and gaining field experience. The organization support programs don’t always stick to the focus theme areas like ecology or language alone. However, a commitment to the ideas and sensibilities reflected in National Curriculum Framework 2005 is something that we look for in the projects and organizations we work with.

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Vidyabhawan7.1Project Overview: The focus of the project is to further the work of holistic school development. This has various parts which include pedagogical transformation, teachers’ capacity building, institutional vision building, financial viability and work beyond Vidya Bhawan schools.

The objectives of the project for the period starting from October 2011 to September 2014 are:

lWork with Vidya Bhawan Schools in a holistic manner

lCarrying out studies related to issues in language andmathematics education in schools; Sharing the findingsof the studies with others engaged in similar work

lMaterial development and dissemination of the samebased on the studies and intervention; Using thematerial in the field not just in Udaipur but in otherstates as well where VB is working

Objectives for this yearlIncluding more teachers in leadership roles

lOrganisation of capacity building workshops for VB teachers

lCompilation of worksheets in Mathematics for primaryand upper primary classes.

lInitiating a research study on the conceptualunderstanding of teachers in Hindi and Mathematics

Key activities

Intervention in Vidya Bhawan Schools

1. Including more teachers in leadership rolesTo encourage leadership and ownership in a larger group of teachers group discussions with heads and school staff have been conducted frequently. In the last year ten such Principal-Teacher forum meetings were organized. Apart from the heads from each school 3 teachers have attended the forum. Main points that were discussed in these meetings were planning for vacation, preparing an action plan for upcoming session and share and review the progress and steps for further work.

In these forum meetings Vidya Bhawan schools decided their individual targets and the action plans. Based on this a comprehensive action plan format for Vidya Bhawan schools was designed.

2. Organisation of capacity building workshops for VB teachers

lFrom 27th February to 8th March 2013 different meetings were conducted to discuss textbook selection criteria with all VB teachers. Vidya Bhawan being one of those schools where textbook selection is not a centralized exercise, thus it becomes important that as a group we review the available books in the market and agree upon a criteria for book selection. The workshop did not lead to a consensus on book selection but opened various discussion fronts. These discussions have a direct implication on what do we consider worth

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teaching, objectives of teaching a particular subject and classroom pedagogy. The issues emerging in these meetings have been consolidated.

l Owing to a lot of new recruitments in different Vidya Bhawan institutes (especially schools) an orientation, to understand Vidya Bhawan philosophy and critically examine issues related to education at different levels, was organized on 13th and 14th January 2013. This workshop also resulted in furthering the team spirit across VB institutes.

l Four One day UPS math concepts (Algebra and Geometry) workshops were organized in December to March 2013. These were attended by VB teachers, Basti facilitators and government and private school teachers.

l Vidya Bhawan schools have been working with developing different models of libraries; School Libraries, Mobile Libraries and class libraries. We have also tried out various approaches for their effectiveness. Based on this experience we are now developing a course for Library workers with support from SRTT.

3 Compilation of worksheets in Mathematics for primary and upper primary classes.

lFor last many years Vidya Bhawan school teachers and resource centre have been working together to develop worksheets supportive of developing conceptual clarity. There has also been the struggle of getting all the

teachers to see the value in using worksheets. Worksheets are primarily self learning material which is sometimes used with partial guidance from the teachers. Over the years more and more teachers have started seeing the value worksheets add to the pedagogic process and this year to ensure better results in the external and internal assessments and to promote independent work it was ensured that Weekly two worksheets were done with each class.

l An intensive workshop (27-29 March 2012) was conducted with VB teachers to design and select worksheets according to the specific needs of their students. They were theme based and were taken from different textbooks. Some of these worksheets were for teachers and they were used for organizing activities in school. These worksheets were used in the month of April for revision of last years learning and also given as assignments for summer vacation. Around 30 worksheets in each subject were selected, which were used in different classes.

New worksheets in Hindi and Mathematics were developed to

lBe used in the bridge course/ residential learning camp organized by Vidya Bhawan

lFill the gaps identified in the worksheet compendiums.

lBe used in schools as per needs identified by teachers or midterm assessment.

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These worksheets were clubbed for different classes: 4. Initiating a research study on the conceptual understading of teachers in Hindi and Mathematics

Vidya Bhawan has this year taken up a research study on ‘subject competency of teachers in upper primary language and mathematics’.

The study will focus on both conceptual and pedagogical understanding (including their attitude towards children and learning process) of the teachers.

The scope of the study will be 300 teachers in and around Udaipur city.

The tools for the study have been designed and will be piloted now.

Hindi Mathematics

II and III 18 16

IV and V 17 16

VI and VII 18 13

Worksheet compendiums for Hindi and Mathematics for Primary and Upper Primary classes have been collated. These compendiums have been sent to all the VB schools and government and private schools.

In Hindi two compendiums were prepared: for primary classes and for upper primary classes.

In Mathematics six compendiums were prepared: 5 for primary classes (place value, number sense, addition, subtraction and multiplication-division) and 1 for upper primary classes (fraction and decimals). The worksheet compendiums/ collections will now be refined to make two resources:

lWorkbooks for students. These workbooks will be aligned to the class syllabus but focus on areas which pose difficulty in learning.

lResource compendium for teachers. This compendium will help them in understanding the learning levels and difficulties of their students and also select from it the kind of work possible for them.

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Plan for the coming year 1. Including more teachers in leadership roles: The

principals’ forums will continue this year and will focus on developing and reviewing action plans. The plans will be segregated according to sections in the school (i.e. Primary, middle and senior school).

2. Organisation of capacity building workshops for VB teachers: A workshop for developing a Library module will be organized in April 2013. During summer vacations i.e. May-June 2013 two rounds of comprehensive workshops will be organized for Vidya Bhawan school and college staff. Mathematics capacity building workshops will be organized with small groups of teachers every month.

3. Compilation of worksheets in Mathematics for primary and upper primary classes: In the month of May and

June the workbooks and teachers compendiums for primary classes will be finalized. In July-August workbooks and compendiums for upper primary classes will be finalized. Construction & compilation of existing worksheets in EVS will be done September onwards.

4. Initiating a research study on the conceptual understanding of teachers in Hindi and Mathematics: Finalisation of tools by June end and data collection will be done in august & September. After analysis First draft of the study report will be prepared by first week of January. Based on the feedback from academic advisors the final report will be prepared by March 2014.

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BackgroundDil Se Homes are homes for street children in Delhi, run by Centre for Equity Studies. There are 3 homes under this initiative – Khushi, Kilkari and Ummeed. These homes provide residential care for children from the street who are ready to move into these homes and enable them, through holistic care, to enter the mainstream society. Education is one of the important means through which Dil Se tries to achieve this objective. The project with Wipro Applying Thought in Schools is to strengthen the education and life support that the children receive in the Dil Se homes.

Work done this year2012-13 has been a year of great learning and consequent re-envisioning of education at Khushi, Kilkari and Ummeed. With the view of providing the children good education, most children were admitted in English medium private schools in Delhi at the beginning of the year. However, it was soon realized that this approach had a number of limitations such as, children being put in lower than their age-appropriate classes on account of their lower learning levels compared to peers in private schools.

There were other issues that emerged as well. Children from the homes had difficulties adjusting to the schools. They felt a sense of being ostracized and separated from other children. This kind of exposure was damaging the self esteem of children. Most seriously, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) wanted all children in the homes to be registered online and none of the private schools were acknowledged by the SSA online data entry systems and therefore, the children going to these schools could not be registered.

Education in Dil Se Homes, Centre for Equity Studies7.2

Though it is an ongoing debate in the organization currently, we feel that government school education with strong reinforcements in the home in school support, English, computers, extracurricular activities and exposure visits would be able to provide an enabling education. Government school education also is important when children are repatriated.

Co-curricularThe extra-curricular activities at each of the Homes are a part of a larger framework of education for the children. The weekly activities with various organizations such as Music Basti, The YP Foundation, Bless the world inculcate varied sets of skills and values in the children. They focus of bettering communication skills, personality building, increasing self motivation and self esteem. The children are also exposed to values of equality and non-judgmental attitudes, respect and care for animals, respect and awareness for the environment and other social issues. The celebration of various festivals attempts to foster a secular attitude towards all religions and religious sects. The celebration of the Independence and Republic Day fosters a sentiment of nationalism and teaches our children to value the work and struggles of others.

Life SkillsThere has been a pressing need for an approach to educating children on the manner of managing their lives that would develop in them skills and attitudes that children naturally imbibe in normal homes. Jaya Aiyer, an eminent social activist engaged in processes of conflict resolution and peaceful co-existence with extensive

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understanding of children’s developmental needs and wide experience in inculcating active citizenship among children, has been working with a the Dil se team of Teach for India faculty in order to develop a relevant, meaningful life skills education curriculum. This process started in October 2012 and the curriculum framework has been developed. The content development is going on and it is expected the first draft will be ready to be shared before a consultative panel for feed back by the end of July 2013.

Bal Sabha CommitteesBAL SABHA, conducted every fortnight at each of the homes, is a forum for the children to express their views and opinions as well as enable participation in the decisions of the home. Children raise and discuss their concerns and decisions on child-related issues are taken in these meetings. The progress and achievements of children are also rewarded in the Bal Sabha meetings. This mechanism helps to ensure greater participation of children at the level of decision making and makes them feel more involved.

Mental Health ProgramKilkari Rainbow Home has an in house counselor, Noori who has been able to create a rapport and relationship with the girls living here. Noori has created a safe and cozy nook in Kilkari, where girls can walk in freely and fearlessly. She has been a great symbol of influence, strength, fortitude and happiness for the girls.

7.2Khushi Rainbow Home has an in house counselor, Huzaifa who joined about 6-7 months ago. The girls enjoy sitting in her room, engaging themselves in art, craft or music. This has ensured a safe space where girls can express themselves through whichever medium they find most suitable.

The counselors have been undergoing weekly sessions with an external resource person, who is providing them guidance regarding planning and implementation, documentation, interpretation and intervention in case of severe and more serious individual issues. The counselors have also successfully managed to enroll girls with learning disabilities into an institution that works primarily with children who have learning difficulties and allow them to train in vocational courses. The girls in each of the homes have shown great progress, not only in the academic field but have also become more confident, compassionate, patient and happy.

We are currently in the process of hiring a counselor for our boys at Ummeed Aman Ghar.

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Centre for education and voluntary action, (CEVA) is a non-commercial registered society. The main focus of CEVA’s work is to initiate and carry out dialogues and conversations within communities for mutual education, communication and empowerment.

In its education programs the organization works with the belief that every Indian child and young person/adult deserves a learning environment that is physically and emotionally safe, intellectually stimulating, engaging as well as collaborative, and one in which they can acquire the capacity to appreciate the wholeness of life.

Changing Tracks at Rayat and Bahra College of Education, Sahauran PunjabThe project “Changing Tracks” went into its fourth year starting July 2012. A definite outcome we were working towards was ‘sustainability’ of the program in the coming years. We aimed to facilitate the College staff both the teaching and the support staff, to acquire the capabilities of running the Change program with minimal help from CEVA in the years to come.

New teachers: At the beginning of the year, the College was to conduct the recruitment process for taking in several new teachers. The process of taking in new teachers was designed by CEVA to reflect and prepare for the oncoming needs of the College. The candidates were required to participate in a hands-on workshop before they were called in for a conventional interview with a panel of experts.

Training for Mentorship: The teacher training program notched to a higher level, wherein after undergoing the second level in their own training designed to prepare the

Teacher Education & School Interventions, CEVA7.3

participating teachers as ‘mentors’ for the new teachers, the teachers designed and conducting a ‘level I’ training workshop for their new colleagues. They also utilized their mentorship skills during the year to smoothen the change process for the new teachers as well as deepen the scope and extent of the program.

Project-based teaching: The year 2012 – 2013, saw an extension of the change process as we went beyond the six-weeks of interactive, workshop based approach in the classroom. With the help of the Mentor teachers, the college experimented with project-based teaching to teach some part of the curriculum. The student presentations of their point of view of the topics they had prepared took the form of panel discussions, role-play, work-shop space activities as well as the conventional use of visual material for ‘teaching’.

Plans for 2013-2014The next year, will see a shift in the process. CEVA is to be there in the background only as emergency support. The ‘beginning of the year preparations’ phase which includes the next level of teacher training, preparation of time-tables and designs of the lesson plans based on last year’s experience will all be done by the ‘mentor teachers’. The support during the different phases – the interactive classrooms and the project based teaching, will be mentored and facilitating by them. CEVA will be at call only when needed.

MINDTREE SCHOOL, AMBALACEVA is conducting a program for bringing in process-based teaching at Mind Tree, Ambala. We have been working with the teachers on actual classroom processes,

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written lesson plans and evaluation all of last year such that the science teachers

lHave during the last year, always had a lesson plan, for each of the lessons that they have taken in classes IV to VIII.

lEvery plan has been created by the teachers themselves in the several workshops that were designed and conducted by CEVA so that they not only created the plans but also picked up the skills necessary to design and conduct a hands-on process based lesson in a classroom. They are getting used to online research for ideas, typing out the plan (in some cases this is by itself a challenge) working out the necessary instructions, logistics, time required, wrapping up, understanding what it takes to empower students to think through an idea and begin to have faith in their own thinking.

lIn the workshops, we have a chance to take the teachers through what went well and wrong. They are beginning to feel safe in discussing mishaps. This also gives us an insight in what next is required in their training.

LEVEL II Training – personal development: At the end of the teaching sessions, we organized a 5 day (full days) workshop focused on creating a personal space for the teachers. We felt that the teachers needed to have a safe space to talk about themselves as women, as teachers and see the connection between the decisions they take for themselves in their lives and the decisions they take in their classrooms. And this process needed to be unfettered by the lesson planning that had been taking up a lot of time and energy. The team that conducted this workshop was

7.3different than the team that works with them on classroom designs. We decided that what was shared in the workshop stayed in that space.

Workshop on Processing Skills: After the personal development workshop the teachers seemed to be much more comfortable in the ‘change space’ which was being created. After several lesson design workshops and a full-fledged workshop on ‘Processing learning in the classroom’, the teacher’s classrooms are looking transformed. This workshop went into the skills required to take the initial output from the children and build on their basic knowing, through skillful asking of questions, validation of students ideas, creating space for ‘trying out’ and testing ideas and creating thinking cultures in the classroom.

Language development through theatre: We have conducted several workshops (theatre, story-making, poetry writing, and creating story-boards) outside the classroom space as well as classroom workshops to demonstrate teaching of the course content through hands-on interactive techniques.

Future plans in Mindtree – continuation of the Change process:Cultural Clubs: To reach out to other areas, apart from science in the school, the Director and Principal of the school wanted to organise different clubs (art and design, heritage, music, life skills etc). We saw this as an opportunity to put in place a culture of openness, dialogue and to initiate a holistic approach in school organization. The program is being run by an agency that we introduced to the school. We are excited about the change opportunity.

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Brand new Math Program: JodoGyan has started working on Mathematics, in the school. An initial workshop has happened. The facilitators from JodoGyan will be working closely with the teachers through 2013-2014.

In the science program, we are moving on to deeper changes in evaluation. The next Teacher Training workshops are to be focused on training of teachers for authentic formative and summative evaluation techniques.

Overall, we are excited about the turn of events in the Mindtree School. Several different organisations, the participation of whom has been facilitated by CEVA are contributing to the Change process in the school. We are looking forward to see deep seated change in the years to come.

7.3

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Courage to lead is a learning expedition for present and future school leaders who would like to experience the power of experiential learning. The idea is to understand what it takes to be an experiential learning school and develop leadership capacity for re-inventing schools based on principles and pedagogy of experiential education. The learning expedition helps participants in understanding and questioning their own beliefs about teaching, learning and education as a whole. The purpose is to re-define learning and education for school leaders through a challenging and engaging experience. If we can change the way children learn in classrooms, the structure of the whole schools will change. To make this happen in schools, the school leaders and educators need to experience the power of experiential learning at the personal level.

Learning outcomes of the expedition are:1. To understand how children learn from experience and

theory of experiential learning

2. To understand how to design and implement theexperiential curriculum and pedagogy inside theclassroom/school

3. To understand how to build the culture of care,craftsmanship and excellence in the school

4. To understand the larger purpose of school educationand the role of schools in society

5. To understand personal learning and leadership styleand what does it take to be a flexible learner

6. To understand how to initiate, manage and sustainchange in schools and the role of a school leader

Courage to Lead, Disha-India7.47. To design a school re-invention plan

8. To develop systems thinking habits and how to see andact systemically

9. To discover personal vision and create a selfdevelopment plan

The Expedition DesignCourage to Lead is a 12-day learning expedition where school leaders go through integrated real-life experiences for developing the required understanding and skills. It comprises of two expeditions of 6 days each. Both the expeditions are fully residential. The second expedition builds on the experiences and learning of the first one. The expeditions will be supplemented and reinforced by project work and one-on-one coaching. The purpose of one-on-one coaching sessions is to assist school leaders in developing a systemic plan for re-inventing their respective schools based on the principles of experiential education.

We do one ‘Courage to Lead’ program in a year.

The work done so far and the impact…a. Four programs done so far –90 principals, vice-

principals and program coordinators have participated so far. We have already launched the fifth program for year 2014.

• Around 10 schools have been truly impacted by the program. And the impact has been in terms of building of the critical mass of positive change agents in the schools. More than two members of the leadership team have participated in the program from these schools. This has helped in building the

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shared vision and understanding on experiential learning and how to bring the desired change in the schools.

• These schools have started work on designing the experiential curriculum and its implementation inside the classroom through project based learning.

• As part of the program, Disha India helped them in creating a school improvement plan and how to implement it.

• Disha India through workshops helped these schools in developing the teachers’ capacity for project-based learning.

b. Last year we did our second Courage to Lead site seminar where school leaders and educators who have been part of our earlier programs came and shared their experiences of implementing the experiential learning inside the classrooms. Around 20 school heads and educators from 10 schools shared their work. The objectives of the seminar were:

• School head/educator to share their journey so far i.e. what all they have been able to implement in the area of experiential learning in their classrooms and school, how they went about, their challenges, success stories, etc. What has worked for them? What are some of the challenges they are facing?

• The middle program educators from the Heritage School, where Disha India has been working for last 4 years on how to use projects and expeditions as pedagogy of teaching and learning, shared their experiences and work, key projects, their flow, the end products, etc with all the school heads. Children

who have been part of the projects also shared their learnings and experience.

• Disha India shared the expedition design framework and process with all the participants.

• There was also a session on how to bring change in schools.

c. Disha India has designed KHOJ–a learning expedition for children through which we model how to use experience as a source of teaching and learning and how to design and facilitate expeditions for children. Last year, we implemented it in the middle program of the Heritage school and Delhi Public School, Surat - leaders from these schools have been part of Courage to Lead. This is really working out to be an effective strategy.

d. Disha India is doing a research project on creating a theory of experiential learning for K-12 education in collaboration with Experience Based Learning System (EBLS). EBLS is a research organization founded by Dr Kolb. The objectives of the research are to:

• Re-design and adapt experiential learning cycle for K-12 school education domain.

• To work on the Educators role profile (ERP) for school educators i.e. what is the role of an educator in facilitating the experiential learning cycle inside the classrooms.

• To work on creating the classroom learning cycle based on the theory of experiential learning.

We have done LSI and ERP assessment for around 50 school heads who have been part of Courage to Lead programs.

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e. Last year we also did our third ‘Courage to Teach’ program for school educators. So far 75 school educators have been part of this program. We encourage school leaders who have been part of Courage to Lead program to nominate teachers from their schools for Courage to Teach program. This has been working very effective. Most of our teacher participants are from schools who have been part of Courage to Lead. It is a 12-day residential program.

f. Disha India has designed a school re-design framework for re-inventing schools. We shared it with the Courage to Lead participants last year. We used it to help participants make a school development plan.

Action-plan for next three years a. To further strengthen the network of schools which

have been part of Courage to Lead programs by having yearly site seminar for sharing of their success stories, planning and challenges. This year we are having the seminar in the month of October.

b. To work on program documentation i.e. documenting the experiences, questions, challenges, dialogues, case-studies, project work, action-plan, reading material and assignments.

c. To build the scholarship fund for the deserving participants/schools.

d. To have 20 to 25 percent participation from government public schools

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Language Learning Resource Centre, Shikshamitra7.5Overall objective of the Project:• To evolve effective curricula, methodology, materials to teach Bangla and English, especially under difficult circumstances

• By working in government high schools and with other NGOS

Language Learning Training and Dissemination: Bangla

Govt Schools/Orgns 11 Government High Schools (HS), 1 Madrasah and 2 MSK in N 24 Parganas, West Bangal along with Swanirwar intervention

Duration; for Jan - Mar 2013 (and beyond) for classes V-VI

Objective To teach basic Bangla reading and writing skills in a short time

Numbers 21 teachers from 14 schools oriented by a 3-day workshop followed by 12 visits (till Mar and 9 more till May), benefitting ~580 children out of ~1500 in Class V of 11 schools (3 schools have not applied)

Outcomes lTeachers, including the de-motivated ones, became very enthused

lStudents await the class eagerly and are picking up reading and writing

l9 out of the 11 schools have done well

Special lOther teachers, including some from other subjects, are interested in learning this

Outcomes lSwanirvar team got trained and can look after this in future

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With Marfat (NGO) Sujata Devi Vidya Mandir (HS)

Duration: for Mar 2012 - Apr 2013 for Class III-IV Feb 2013 onwards for Class V-VI

Objective(s) Accelerated Reading Writing Programme lAccelerated Bangla programin Bangla lHow to read a text and deal with textbooks

lCreative writing in Bangla

Numbers 6 teachers, 6 supervisor, 1 coordinator and 2 Need assessment conducted for 14 studentsstaff trained by 2 workshops and 1 visits (also in class Vneed assessment), benefitting 65 children

Outcomes Major improvement in children’s performance Training to follow in Apr 2013

With Khelaghar (NGO) and other schools Mahila Seva Samiti

Duration; for Sept 2013 for Classes III-VIII Aug 2012 for teacher and caregivers of agirls’ home

Objectives Creative writing in Bangla Management of adolescent girls in a fosterhome

Numbers 9 teachers from 3 schools benefitting ~400 12 volunteers, 1 counselor, 1 teachers and children 1 house mother benefitting ~40 girls

Outcomes lKhelaghar did the best work Teachers got motivated, started working the girlslOne teacher got highly motivated, tried the accordingly and sent us a detailed report out on

methods and also improvised various worked and what had not, but they have not classes in touch with us since then

With Development Action Society (NGO) Anjali

Duration: for Jan 2013 for members of SHG Nov 2012 for facilitator at a mental hospital

Objective functional literacy for women in SHG to empower the facilitator

Numbers 13 teachers and staff attended 3-day 1 facilitator benefitting ~20 inmates

Outcomes 2 out of 4 centers are doing well patients have responded well to our Banglamaterial and learning methods

what been

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With Mukti (NGO) Sujata Devi Vidya Mandir (HS)

Duration: for Jan - Oct 2012 for classes V-VI Feb 2013 onwards for Class V-VI

Objective To pick up the foundation course and more To make English interesting and effective

Numbers 17 teachers in 8 centers benefitting ~220 Need assessment conducted for 14 students in children Class V

Outcomes Teachers learnt the language through this Training to follow in Apr 2013training

There is room for improvement in implementation

Language Learning Training and Dissemination: English

With Praajak (NGO) Parichiti (NGO)

Duration: for May 2012 for classes V-VI Feb - Jul 2012 for teens

Objective To audit the education program in 2 Drop in To conduct a series of art classesCenter (DIC) culminating in an exhibition

Numbers ~30 boys in 2 DICs in near 2 railway stations 15 teenage girls

Outcomes Notable change in the behavior of the boys Girls are using art in various acitivies

Other Involvements

New Recruitment: Proma Basu Roy (MA in Education, TISS) joined in Jan 2013 and will take the initiative to shape the interactive center

Plans for the next year:• Training - help and orient groups working with hard-to-reach children and youth, especially in language learning,

math and self-development • Developing and publishing materials, texts for students and teachers• Developing and starting an interactive center

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Education Material & Literature

Quality education literature helps create an environment conducive to thinking about good education and the ability to weave better activities in schools around children’s books and thus take education beyond just the textbook. Our initiatives in this area have been very diverse like supporting development of a new children’s book by Tulika containing mythological stories on the theme of water from around the world or supporting the Good Books Trust to review and publicize good children’s books. We had earlier supported publishing of a book (‘What did you ask in School today’ by Kamala Mukunda) that draws from contemporary literature on child psychology and presents this to practitioners. Work is also on to translate the book into two other languages.

A series of visually rich book introducing basic concepts in science has been brought out by Tulika last year. A graphic novel based on folk stories from Assam, a book on Philosophy of Education and work on documenting the stories of some alternate schools across the country are some of the projects currently in progress.

Apart from supporting work on good books, we also support other medium of content for children, parents, educators and researchers in education. We support the educational journal Contemporary Educational Dialogue, a bi-annual publication on various areas related to education. From the last year, as part of our work with Eklavya, we have also started providing partial support to the Chakmak, the children’s magazine in Hindi brought out by Eklavya.

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Background The Goodbooks Trust has, in the past, worked towards

increasing the availability of children’s books produced in India. Together, Wipro Applying Thought in Schools and The Goodbooks Trust have created a website that will serve as a database for good children’s literature by using the archives procured from The Book Review. TBR is a literary journal that has since the 1970’s, published reviews of children’s books in its special editions. While these archives will serve as the backbone, the site will also feature reviews of new books being published in the market.

ObjectivesThe Goodbooks website hopes to fulfill the following purposes:

?Create a space that is a one stop for educators and parents to find good books through the reviews

?Make information about children’s books and the issues involved accessible to all interested trough articles

?Encourage discussion, debate, and sharing on children’s books amongst all those interested- parents, publishers, academicians, writers, illustrators, and anyone else

?Influence the quality of children’s books being produced by providing critical feedback and review

Work Progress Last Year The review archives obtained from The Book Review have been organized and uploaded by year and genre in order to make the material accessible to the reader. Metadata for each book reviewed include Author, Illustrator, Publisher

Goodbooks.in: A Children’s Literature Review Website, Good Books Trust8.1

a n d Pu b l i s h i n g Ye a r. A r e a d e r c a n c l i c k o n Author/Illustrator/Publisher data on a Review page and view more titles written/illustrated/published by the entity concerned in the fly-out.

The articles archives obtained from The Book Review have been organized and uploaded by tags i.e., common themes and year of publication.

In response to the communication from Goodbooks to publishers requesting them to send us recent releases for review, a number of children’s books from age-group 3-16 years was received. These books have been reviewed by the team of reviewers identified by Goodbooks according to the Review Guidelines framed. Half of these reviews have been uploaded and the rest will be uploaded as content updates in the months to come.

Goodbooks reviews have been uploaded according to age-group, publishing year, genre, and subject categories. Metadata for each book reviewed includes Cover, Author, Illustrator, Publisher, Publishing Year, Price, Pages, and ISBN. A reader can click on Author/Illustrator/Publisher data on a Review page and view more titles written/illustrated/ published by the entity concerned in the fly-out.

The Goodbooks blog with posts relevant to children’s publishing has been set up.

Author, Illustrator, and Publisher directories have been created. The Author and Illustrator directories are currently a plain listing of the names of all authors/illustrators whose works have been reviewed on the site. The Publisher directory carries the names of Indian children’s books publishers and foreign publishers with Indian imprints.

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Future plans

?Fixing pending technical issues with the site and website launch

?Generating new content for the website by engaging with publishers and reviewers

?Developing the blog and ensuring that it covers the current news in the world of Indian children’s books.

?Firming up the partnership with TBR and exploring more possibilities

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1. The aims and objectives of Education Dialogue Trust (EDT), are the following:a) To publish our Journal, Contemporary Education

Dialogue (CED), for a dialogue among researchers and practitioners to engage with each other’s ongoing work so as to promote a critical engagement with issues which are of concern to Education in general and to Indian and South Asia education in particular. The Journal would serve as a space for discussion for groups and individuals to communicate with each other.

b) To promote publishable writing and reporting of research and field innovation in education through activities such as workshops, seminars and fellowship and grants for this purpose.

c) To engage in any activity that will further the development of the discipline and practice of education.

2. Our Activities in 2012-2013Contemporary Education Dialogue CED 9 (1) and CED 9 (2), which was a special issue on Gender and Education, edited by our guest editors, Prof. Sadhna Saxena and Prof. Nandini Manjrekar, were successfully published by Sage in the months of January and June, 2012, respectively. The special issue on Gender and Education carried five papers, one ‘classics with commentary’, one report, three book reviews and one end page. Besides the papers published in CED 9 (1) and 9 (2), we have received eighteen papers, out of which, thirteen were rejected as these papers either do not suit the standards of our journal or were not concerned with the areas our journal is interested in.

Contemporary Education Dialogue Journal, Education Dialog Trust8.2

During this period, we had not been able to hold any meetings, editorial or trust, as most of editors were extremely busy with their academic work. Prof. Rama Kant Agnihotri has resigned from the role of President of Education Dialogue Trust (EDT) in May, 2012 and Prof. Padma M. Sarangapani has been appointed as the new President. Prof. Sadhna Saxena continues to be the Managing Trustee.

3. Plan for the Next Year:In the next year, 2013-2014, we plan to get CED volume 10 (1) and 10 (2), published, as per the usual Sage schedule. There might be some changes in the editorial board of our journal, CED and authorized signatories of the EDT.

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Chakmak, Children’s Magazine in Hindi from Eklavya 8.3We, in Chakmak, treat children at par with adults. They are considered as individuals who have their own individuality. They can think, understand, and can make opinions. We firmly believe that children have their own dignity and it has to be maintained. We use the same language with them as is used with an adult. Though we are conscious about the vocabulary bank they must be having at that age, while introducing new subjects to them we resist the easy but harmful path of over simplification. They are exposed to various art-forms, cultures, languages with a variety of flavour of styles. Be it a fiction or a non-fiction piece – diversity in language and style is maintained all through.

Major focus areasDuring the last one year our main focus areas remained: ?Language

?Art

?Social Sciences

?Environment

?Literature

Looking backWe see art, language, social sciences, environment from a holistic perspective and feel they are inseparable from each other, hence are mentioning all of them together in the following points. Though at certain points more emphasis is given to one than another:

?We believe there is nothing like a standard language. Nothing is fixed in a language – Neither in terms of meaning nor usage of words. But it is sad to see the over emphasis in schools to use of standard language.

To break this, we maintained diversity in the kind of texts published in Chakmak. Picture story Biksu in Chhota Nagpuri language, Folktales in Haryanvi, Dundari, Malvi, Bundelkhandi, Chhatisgarhi etc. were given. Where the language used is very fluid. These languages are from the larger Hindi belt. Hence it gives readers an opportunity to guess meaning of certain new words in the text through the context. This can be a very meaningful and fun activity.

?Diversity in text material was maintained by Vinod Kumar Shukla’s story Main Kya Karun…, Priyamvad’s travelers’ tales Ektara Bole, Meri Diary by Ankush, Mera Pasandida Chitra by Ashok Bhoumik, Raja Mohanti, Nidhi Saxena, Mera Panna, Poetry, Travelogues, Folklores. Different genres bring different styles with them. And also if story of an Assamese girl is given then it is bound to have certain terms, words of her language. Such words are well accepted by other language speaking children and are like a small letter written by that girl to others.

?Standard language makes language static. It gives so much importance to purity of language that it becomes stagnant. For those who consider language as one Shabdon ka safar can be an eye-opener. This series takes us to various journeys undertaken by a word – From today’s popular meaning of its origin. It shows that in language change is the only constant. Purity of language is a futile concept. In fact it is the impurity (if it can at all be called so) in language that makes it richer. When it assimilates words from other languages, it becomes livelier. Even Hindi is not one language. There has always been a give and take relationship between

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languages for years. It is interesting to see how words from one language are accepted in other languages even with a different meaning. Even script is not a constraint.

?Often poetry is considered to be a factory of language. Here, new words are coined; new meanings are infused with old words. Poetry breaks age old meaning words are carrying. To expose children to different types of poetry, we tried giving poems with and without rhyme (tukant aur atukant kavita), translation of poems written in Marathi, English, Malyalam and Bangla. Often only rhyme-poetry is written for children. The logic being it is easy for them to grasp and mug up. And it is expected of children to replicate it. But the problem with such poems is this that one becomes so much engrossed in choosing the right rhyming word that the main element of poetry – thought – takes a back seat. An activity Kavitaoon ke ande was given in which first few lines of some poems were given which was to carry forward by the readers. An overwhelming response was received on this from children of almost all age groups. Selected poems were published in Chakmak.

?Direct-indirect symbols are used to create imageries and metaphors in poetry. Poetry is considered to be a form of art. In our education system poetry is limited to the literal meaning of words. But poetry through language using metaphors and symbols takes you on a journey. But since in classroom mostly there is no room for this journey, children are not able to go in the depth of this and remain at a shallow level. Needless to say here poetry loses its essence. Keeping this in mind a new column of poetry orientation is started in Chakmak.

This is akin to Mera pasandide chitra where art orientation is the main consideration. In poetry-orientation column along with a poem various meanings emerging out of it are given. And children are encouraged to decipher their own meanings as well.

?In Poetry and idioms/proverbs meaning rests not in the words used but somewhere else. Like when it is said – Naach na jaave aangan teda. This has nothing to do with Naach (dance) or Aangan (courtyard). Rather it means blaming others for your shortcomings. Likewise in this line of a well known poem by Nagargun – Kai dino tak chulha roya, Chakki rahi udas, poet wishes to depict a miserable scene of famine. Famine, poverty are social issues and whether raised in an article, poetry or a painting, they evoke the same emotions in us. When seen through a painting of Vincent Van goug – Potato Eaters – struggle of society is so clearly visible, how can we limit ourselves only on the colours used, style, strokes, light and shadow shown in the painting? Yes, we do appreciate all these and many more artistic and aesthetic dimensions of the painting but what remains in us long after we stopped seeing it is the emotions it has evoked in us. After reading a sad novel, or watching a very intense film we say we loved it. Actually what we loved is the work of art.

?In prose beauty is created through the words and in a painting this responsibility is borne by colour, strokes and the whole visible artwork. But as in prose meaning is situated elsewhere, in a painting too, its emotional dimension is not in the visual scene. It goes into the arena of society. It is at the core of art to question the discrimination, stereotypes seen around. It is the core of

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art and literature to paint a picture of a just world, a world we all aspire to. And while doing so an artist creates his/her own world. A world which is not restricted by the realities of the world as we see. She can paint sun in blue, a dog in orange and a in tree red.

?In our series Ektara bole ten travelers’ accounts were given who visited India in different point of time. Usually in textbooks information on travelers is given but their writings are missing. By going through such accounts children can see what important role they play in making of history. This series was much appreciated equally by our younger and older readers. Some of the teachers used it as reference material in their teaching.

?Literature plays an important role in breaking stereotypes. Unfortunately many a time it is created by the media or political people to fulfill their interior motives. Travelogues like Mera terath, Pakistan ki Diary, Ek dost desh - Afganistan, Malala ki Diary, Radio (personal experiences of partition by Varun Grover), Jana ek judwa desh… reinforce this feeling in us that people in Pakistan and Afghanistan are also like you and me. Normal, peace loving. And , there are brave hearted chidren like Malala who are taking stands against terrorism.

?Social and environmental issues like displacement, eve teasing, out casting were raised through articles, stories and memoires l ike Bandaron k i jalsamadhi (displacement), Ismain meri koi galti nahi (eve teasing), Sitaron ke bina ek duniya (on children born in jail).

?Art orientation remained a main thrust in the last one year in Chakmak. Mera pasandida chitra, Chitron ki Bhasha continued. A series Kala ke ird-gird was given on the elements of art. Some art forms like films, photography, Sculpture are visual in nature and poetry is more textual, we could express them in words but since music is appreciated more by hearing it, we faced difficulty in writing about it in Chakmak. But we did try to give something on this. Like through Lata Mangeshkar’s interview in which our focus was on such questions where she talks about what is considered to be a good song, how to bring expressions in a song, elements of music were touched upon. A good song is also a good poem. And children enjoy singing them. So have given some songs in the past few issues. Now we have contacted Yatindra Mishra a well known name in this field to write on music appreciation. He will begin from today’s music and will go till classical music.

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Tulika Books 8.4BackgroundWipro Applying Thought in Schools has supported Tulika in bringing out books in the past. “The Water Stories from Around the World” and “Why the Sky is Blue” are some examples. We continue to collaborate on opportunities of mutual interest to bring out books for children.

The ‘first look science picture books’ is a series of picture books on science that came out of this collaboration last year.

First look science picture booksby Shubhangi Goel, Sankhalina Nath, Rajasee Ray, Anushka Kalro

The fantasy adventures of Bhoomi, Boondi, Dhooli, Gitti and Beeji, draw young children into science and introduce basic concepts about the world we live in. The stunning pictures convey the beauty, vastness and mystery of nature, enriching the storytelling experience. At the end of each book is a summing up of science facts related to the stories.

Bhoomi’s Story: SpaceBhoomi the gentle planet plays games with her friend, Moon, traces star patterns, watches blazing comets whizz by… It’s exciting to live in Space!

Boondi’s Story: WaterPlayful Boondi is a little drop of water who rolls and tumbles in the river. One hot day he feels himself being lifted up, up, up into the sky into a big, heavy cloud. What now?

Dhooli’s Story: AirDhooli, a tiny speck of dust, flits and floats in the air with her friends. She flies past clouds and birds and aeroplanes.

She watches rainbows in the sky. What else does she do in the air

Gitti’s Story: EarthGitti the rock is very old. After a long, long journey that started from the boiling hot centre of the earth, he now sits quietly on a mountain, watching the sun rise and set. What is his story?

Beeji’s Story: Earth’s SurfaceSuper-seed Beeji is off on a super-ride! Zooming over icy lands and hot deserts, swooshing down a river… she’s a tough little seed who loves adventure but is happy to be back on soft soil. A Beeji-eye view of different landforms.

Published November 201228 pages, 7’’x8.5”, full colour, soft cover, English, Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, 6 years and above, Rs 95

PROMOTIONS• Preview video on YouTube

• Blogpost on Tulika blog

REVIEWS Interview, Mid Day, February 18, 2013 review

...A long and meticulous process! Visuals had to be attractive, and we had to spin an appealing story for young children, while all the time communicating science through simple language and in an accurate way.

Senior Editor,Tulika, Deeya Nayar

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Featured in Time Out magazine, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi, February 2013

The beautifully illustrated series were developed as part of a classroom project at the Bengaluru-based Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. The stories are simple; ... they are not didactic or apocalyptic. They couldn’t have come at a more suitable time – India celebrates National Science Day this fortnight, on Thur Feb 28.

Bijal Vachharajani, Time Out magazine

Water stories from around the worldedited by Radhika Menon and Sandhya Rao, illustrated by Nirupama Sekhar

The book was selected for the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) Recommended Reading list, 2013 (Pg. 5, no: 82). A paperback edition was brought out in 2013.

WHY THE SKY IS BLUE? By Dr. C.V Raman, Chandralekha and Dashrath Patel

Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation (RRLF) made a bulk order of the Hindi edition in May 2012. External Affairs Ministry made a bulk order for the Tamil edition of this book for Government schools in Tamilnadu, July 2012.

The book was reviewed by various reviewers (including parents and children) on popular online forums. The following events were conducted around the book last year:

?Conducted a session on National Science Day, February 28th 2013, at Kids Central, Chennai, for 30 children between the ages of 7-9 years. The session was conducted by science teacher and theatre professional, Varun Aiyer.

?Conducted a blogathon on the Tulika blog page based on the book

This book was reprinted in 2013

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Graphic Novel on Folktales from Assam8.5BackgroundThis project was initiated for the creation of a graphic novel for young adults. The objective was to work on folk stories from the Kokrajhar region of Assam, and produce a graphic novel that would touch upon the various issues that children in a forest village in Kokrajhar during the 1990’s would face. Along with a strong ecological concern – that of dwindling forests, man-elephant conflict etc. The book is also influenced by the political turbulence of 1990’s Assam. The protagonists of this novel, two young people, in this environment of political instability and adversity, take the help of various characters from folklore and the traditional and current day stories, in their search for solutions and survival.

Work done this yearAfter original story line was dropped, a Tangkhul Naga folktale was selected for retelling as a graphic novel. The storyline and artwork was completed. Multiple rounds of editing was done including modifying the story line further. A complete draft of the book with graphics and text is now ready. Discussions are on with publishers.

Plan for next yearIn the next year, the plan is to:

?Wrap up the discussions with publishers

?Do any further changes based on publisher/editor feedback

?Get the book published

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Book on Philosophy of Education8.6IntroductionThis is about writing an introductory book on philosophy of education within a period of two years. Vishwambar, who is the editor of Shiksha Vimarsh magazine and works for Digantar, Jaipur is working on this book. The idea is to mainly write an original book on the basic problems of education. This book can be used to introduce education and the various issues within education mainly for educational practitioners and field workers in education. This is not to be a book for scholars and academics. It will strive to introduce the educationist to the basic problems in education. Towards this there will be a brief introduction on the nature and kind of thoughts on these problems till now.

Reason to focus on Aims of educationIt is commonly understood that education is necessary for all. It is also commonly thought that the aim of education is to teach reading and writing, basic mathematical operations (addition, subtraction etc) and environmental studies. Most educationists do not think beyond what needs to be taught within the classrooms. They do not often think that what is taught in the classroom is to achieve larger objectives and so aren’t complete in themselves. Due to this educations remains limited to merely teaching some subjects in the classroom.

When people talk about aims of education they talk about it in simplistic terms like the aim of education is the holistic development of the child, or the child’s mental or physical development etc. Often there is no clarity on what these mean and even if we accept for a moment that these are the aims of education, then on how we can achieve these or what the relations of these are to classroom practices or how the relations can be established. This is the reason to have this book on Philosophy of Education focus on Aims of Education.

Contents of the BookThe book will cover the following:

?What is the need for aims of education?

?Explore the debates in Western literature on the aims of education being the development of rationality, critical thinking, autonomy, creative thinking and physical development.

?It will also try to unravel the accepted aims of education and their relations to classroom practices

UpdatePlan for next yearThe draft of the book will be written and completed during this year.

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A Publication on Alternative Directions in School Education 8.7Background:The alternative schools, each in their own individual ways, are expanding the envelope of the educational discourse in India. The term 'alternative' indicates that unlike the 'mainstream' schools they do not propagate the outdated and increasingly stressed factory model of schooling. Although they vary widely in their core philosophies, a common thread appears to be their agreement that learning should be a joyous experience for children. Yet these schools, in spite of the wonderful work they do, are not very well known outside their immediate small circles. The reasons could be manifold, the most obvious being that they are so busy creating and walking on their new paths that they have no time to tell their inspirational stories. This project aims at telling the stories of some of these pioneering practitioner schools in an attempt to increase the space they occupy in the popular imagination. These will initially be put on a blog till project completion. The material collected here could later be published as a book.

ObjectiveThe purpose of this project is to document the inception-to-present journeys and the philosophy and practices of some alternative schools across India. As part of the project, two types of documentation shall be created for each school studied.

a. Short write-up: The main objective of this newspaper-article-like narrative will be to get the reader interested enough in the school and its journey to want to read the second more detailed write-up.

b. Detailed write-up: The interested reader would find detailed information about the school here. This would include school philosophy, administration and classroom practices, links to all online material etc

Status:List of schools to be covered was tentatively finalized. They are from different parts of the country – Bangalore/ Karnataka (10 schools), Delhi NCR (5 schools), Ahmedabad/ Gujarat (3 schools), Mumbai/Maharashtra (1 school), Andhra Pradesh (2 schools), Indore/Madhya Pradesh (1 school), Tamil Nadu & Pondicherry (3 schools), Rajasthan (2 schools) and Kerala (2 schools).

So far, 10 schools have been visited and interviewed. 5 of these schools are in Bangalore (Valley School, Center for Learning, Parikrama, Poorna and Bhavya), 3 (Mirambika, Muni International, Heritage) in the Delhi/Gurgaon region and 2 (Anand Niketan, Eklavya Model Residential School) from Gujarat.

Next year’s plan:The plan for next year is to finalize the list of schools, visit all the schools on the list, revisit schools where needed, research all school details, complete all the write-ups and upload them on a blog. Further, the question of whether to publish the stories and data in a book format will also be decided.

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PUBLIC ADVOCACY

Educational thinking is driven by various ideas that are held by educationists, parents and the public in general. Different segments of people may hold different views and sometime there isn’t enough interchange of ideas or original research that challenges current understanding.

With this in mind, we take up significant advocacy projects to advocate the cause of good education. These projects also provide means to schools, educators and educationists to understand a specific area and how it could be dealt with in schools.

Our objectives in this area are:?To provide radical stimulus to public thinking on

education by

?To address lack of awareness on important educational issues

This is achieved in different ways including:?drawing on the knowledge and experiences among our

partner organisations that have worked in school education for decades and

?generating new knowledge through original research on matter of importance to school education

The Quality Education Study was completed in 2011. A large scale public advocacy initiative was launched in 2011-12 to take the findings and learning from this study across the country. This active campaign has ended in 2012-13, though the study continues to inform research and debate.

We plan to intensify regular outreach with media and will focus on that in the coming years. We will also take up studies as well as other advocacy initiatives that inform the debate and public opinion on good education.

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Quality Education Study, Educational Initiatives9.1Background: The Quality Education Study (QES) was conceptualized by Wipro and Educational Initiatives (EI) in a partnership mode. This is planned as a multi-year study that will expand the meaning of ‘quality’ in education to include educational outcomes beyond cognitive learning and study the attributes of quality learning environments. In 2010-11, a large scale study of 89 schools, 54 Principals, 790 teachers and 23,000 students was carried out to systematically collect evidence towards understanding quality in education.

Key Findings from the Study:1. Students in the ‘Top schools’ of our country exhibit rote

learning. Further, there is a dip in student performance compared to a similar study 5 years back and they are behind international averages on questions which require conceptual understanding.

2. Students exhibited diverse thinking on questions on gender equality, acceptance of cultural and religious d ivers i t y, c iv ic , c i t i zenship and ecologica l responsibilities. Some of them indicate a bias which might over time grow into prejudices.

3. Different aspects of learning environments such as Principal’s instructional leadership, teacher beliefs in constructivist teaching learning practices, Principals’ feelings of self efficacy are associated with better student achievement.

4. Classrooms where teachers and principals do not believe in physical punishment, students feel involved

in the classroom practices and believe that their teachers’ treat everyone equally are also associated with greater student performance and more inclusive student attitudes.

5. A majority of Principals think that co-scholastic areas are important for student’s holistic development. Data reflects that there is no major emphasis in the school curriculum on these areas.

Objectives: in 2011-12b. Completing the short videos to further disseminate the

findings from QES

c. Launching and maintaining a dedicated website for QES

d. Exploring further research/advocacy based on QES

UpdatesNational School Le

The year 2012-13 focussed on

a. Completing the school leadership seminar series on QES startedadership Seminars (Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore)

?3 seminars were organized, one in Mumbai, one in Delhi and one in Bangalore in 2012-13. These were in addition to the 2 city seminars organized in Chennai and Kolkata in the previous year in February 2012.

?Printed copies of the study’s Main report as well as the ‘QES Misconceptions and Common Errors’ report were shared with the participants.

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?The seminars had a session on why Wipro did this study, a presentation on the study findings, a question hour and a panel discussion.

?In all seminars, invited speakers, panelists and participants shared and discussed their views on quality in education.

A series of short videos about the study and the findings?5 short videos about the study and its findings were

completed.

?This includes one summary video and four more videos focusing on some of the key and interesting findings from the study.

A dedicated website for Quality Education StudyAlthough a preliminary website was in existence, this idea has been temporarily been put on hold due to various reasons.

Further research based on QESMultiple ideas were considered to take forward the understanding from QES. However, the team could not converge on a plan. Hence this has been dropped for now. A study may be taken up at a later time to further our understanding on quality education

Engagement on other foraFindings from the study were shared with students and faculty from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad and Kings College, London at a seminar course on Quality and Education, coordinated by Padma Sarangapani (TISS) and Christopher Winch (Kings College).

Future plansThe short videos on the study have not been publicized online. This needs to be taken up. However, since the website idea is currently on hold, other options will be explored including publicizing these as part of a larger resource distribution plan within Wipro Applying Thought in Schools to consolidate and disseminate the resources and learning from all projects across the years.

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Overall, 2012-13 was a year of consolidation within Wipro Applying Thought in Schools. Work had started on many new projects within the focus theme areas. Over the last year these projects made significant progress. We had formed three new partnerships over this year in the areas of Organization Support, Language and Ecology.

13th Wipro Partners’ Forum on Assessment and School education was successfully organized at the Centre for Learning (CFL) in December 2012. The Partners’ Forum is an annual gathering of all the organizations that Wipro partners with in its work in school education. The participants included around 80 people from civil society educational organizations, science-based organizations interested in education, academia etc. The knowledge sharing sessions included the following:

?A Historical survey of assessment models in India

?Various school-level experiences in doing assessment differently

?A session on Teacher Assessment & another on assessing social & emotional learning

?Sessions on the role of Large-scale assessments

?Sessions that delved deep into the Conceptual issues behind assessment including the philosophical and sociological issues

There were quite a lot of discussions and sharing of work and experiences that happened outside the sessions as the

Partners’ Forum is as much a space to connect and reconnect with others in the education space as it is a space to share knowledge and learning. This has been a conscious effort of Wipro’s to build and nurture such a unique network of organizations and people to strengthen the cause of systemic educational reforms in India. A set of short video documentaries on the sessions and the Proceedings are being developed.8th edition of the Digantar Certificate Program in Foundations of Education, supported by Wipro, was held successfully. The course included 4 workshops that cover a wide set of areas within school education. They include the different perspectives like philosophy, sociology and psychology and the nature and pedagogy of different subjects like language, mathematics, sciences and social sciences. Along with enabling more people to attend this course, an objective of these scholarships is also to enable people from our partner organizations to benefit from this course. However, the participation from the partner organizations is limited and we hope this will improve over the years.We are commencing work on a new project with Digantar based in Phagi. This is in some ways a continuation of our work in Phagi block. It aims at using reflective portfolio writing and some other collective processes at the teacher level to identify and address problems teachers face and thus build their capacities. We are also supporting NEEV on a new project which aims to help schools bridge the gap between primary and secondary education, and enable

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more children to enter secondary education as the country also begins to focus on secondary education through Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA). The details of this project are under discussion. We have commenced a new project with Shiksharth which will work towards developing courses, learning material and building a “learning collective” engaged with the ideas of progressive education and more specifically education leadership and management. Over the last year, our team has also significantly involved in developing a better understanding of sustainability education through work in the earthian program and more specifically within the Continuing Engagement Program phase.

GENERAL UPDATES

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