Thursday, June 11, 2015

Primary Education: Brief History of National Policies- 2

Note: This piece is in continuation of Primary Education: Brief History of National Policies- 1

What are the challenges?

            One of the biggest challenges I can see is to take all stakeholders on board, help everyone see what the problem is, and how the proposed solution (policy reform) addresses it. For example, looking at the national level enrollment data by gender, policymakers prescribe schools to “engage with their local community and emphasize on education for girls”. What if the state administrators, teachers, parents or community members in a particular social context do not even see lower enrollment of girls as a problem? How do you ensure buy-in from all stakeholders? If the change agents (people at different administrative levels, teachers and school staff) do not believe in what they are asked to do, the policy intervention fails.

            In addition, this one small piece of information (less girls enrolled on average) could be due to a broader social issue of gender equality, school infrastructure, safe commute to school, or even skewed ratio of boys to girls. While the intent of the policymaker could be correct, the proposed solution is too simplistic, vague (terms like engage, local community, emphasize remain undefined), and loaded with assumption of gender bias. Moreover, the causes for fewer enrollments of girls could vary across social contexts. This brings me to the second challenge: generalization of proposed policy intervention. One-size-fits-all way of policy intervention may not work at macro-level. The intervention needs to be sensitive to the local social context.  

            Continuing with the same example, several studies in India have indicated that access to toilets for girls in schools is significantly related to high dropouts in girls. Accordingly, building separate toilets for girls in schools could be more effective than asking teachers to spread awareness about gender-equality for raising enrollments of girls. This point highlights the importance of systematic empirical research across various social contexts prior to policy formulation. Unfortunately, India’s educational sector is highly understudied empirically. There are too few educational research institutes and very little interaction between researchers and the policymakers.

            Fourth challenge deals with highly centralized decision making structure. Because, the proposed policy interventions often lack grass-root level buy-in (due to reasons mentioned above), the state/centre administrators use their position of higher authority to muscle down implementation. Rather than the system supporting the teachers and school staff in serving children, the entire system has to support the administrators to implement their proposed interventions. In the educational administrative hierarchy, teachers are at the very bottom. Bossism is very explicit and people at higher level of administration display their power unapologetically. Accordingly, instead of catering to the students, teachers’ cater to the principal and the administrators at the level above. In fact, the entire machinery caters to people at the level above and exercises power to shut down voices from below. The IASs often do the same and cater to their political masters and shut off any complaints coming from levels below.

            Finally, the macro-level policy reports talk a lot about all-round development of children, but the focus has been limited to the literacy-rates, enrollment and dropout rates, physical infrastructure of school, and reading and math outcomes (that too very recently). The challenge is to expand this policy focus and to include physical and mental health outcomes of children. Sports, music, performing arts, social cohesion, prevalence of bullying and teasing, relations between teachers and students and among students, psychological support to students, and many vital interventions have remained side-notes in policy drafts and have not found their worthy place in the grass-root level practices. One big reason for their neglect could be that these interventions may not have direct relations with the academic outcomes. However, these interventions are more likely to have positive effects on children’s physical health (e.g., age-level benchmarking of stamina, muscle strength, and flexibility by gender; and medical screening) and/or mental health (e.g., depressive symptoms, anxiety, and screening for more prevalent disorders). If we can integrate clearly defined health outcomes (physical and mental) as an integral part of national educational policy and develop measures for their systematic evaluation, the field practitioners (administrators at various levels, teachers and school staff) would employ interventions which are important for children’s overall wellbeing and not just for their academics. Perhaps, we may provide our children a more fulfilling school experience.   

            Current government’s emphasis on decentralization of policymaking is encouraging. The fourteenth finance commission gives relatively more economic autonomy to the states than before. However, the states do not have any premier research-driven think tanks to guide their policies. There are SCERTs, but one cannot find any link between production of policy relevant empirical research and policy formulation across states. The central government states that the Niti Aayog will assist states with policy formulation. However, India is too big and complex for any single institution. Also, Niti Aayog, at best, could assist with economic policies, because it does not have any human resource of researchers from the fields of education, psychology, psychometrics, or sociology. Perhaps a more apt approach would be for all states to develop their own multi-disciplinary Niti Aayogs (or make sure SCERTs play that role), and Niti Aayog in Delhi could then coordinate policies across state-level Niti Aayogs. I share some ideas regarding the functioning of these state-level research bodies HERE-Mechanism for Educational Excellence in India: Towards Solution

I welcome your comments/questions/rebuttals...

Primary Education: Brief History of National Policies- 1

This article discusses: 1) a brief overview of national policies in primary education, and 2) the challenges (obstacles) associated with such centralized national policies. For convenience, the article is divided into two blog posts.  

At the time of independence, India’s literacy-rate was close to 18%. Amid great external and internal socio-political conflicts, extremely limited resources and responsibility of a large population, the entire focus of national/provincial policymakers landed on raising literacy-rates. Governments across states built schools and one of the greatest mass-education systems started expanding. However, policymakers soon realized that mere building schools do not necessarily result into increase in enrollment-rates, and it is not easy to retain students into schools. Moreover, malnutrition in children was severe and widely prevalent. To address these multiple challenges, Kamraj’s government in Tamil Nadu implemented a midday meal scheme (1962-63) in which children were served meal at their schools for free. Enrollment rates increased while dropout-rates and malnutrition started decreasing. Gujarat and Kerala followed soon; and by early 90s twelve states had emulated this successful scheme. Later in 1995, Narsimhma Rao’s central government made it India-wide. After 1990, the economic liberalization helped generate more liquidity for school building. Rao’s government also launched District Primary Education Programme (DEPE) which had a prime objective of universalizing primary education. DEPE rolled out in several phases and was implemented in about one third of Indian districts. Later in 2001, Vajpayee’s government launched Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) which was basically a more comprehensive form of DEPE and was implemented throughout India. Access to within-village school with free meals resulted in increased enrollment from mere 22.3 million students in 1990 (Govinda, & Josephine, 2004) to more than 193 million in 2010-11 (Mehta, 2012). The basic education system, which consisted of around 200,000 schools in 1950, expanded to more than 1.1 million in 2010. As of 2011, India’s literacy rate was around 73% (which was 18% in 1947).

School buildings in neighborhood and free meals were great, but what about learning? Policymakers realized that pupil to teacher ratio (PTR) was skyrocketing (national average of 50.2 in 2000) because teacher recruitment lagged far behind the rapid infrastructural undertaking. Building a school was primarily perceived as onetime expense, and works great politically. Politicians could tell the voters – “we gave you this school!” However, teacher-recruitment was often perceived as a permanent burden on the state budget, and all state (and centre) governments were struggling with high fiscal deficits. To solve this, states started implementing the para-teacher policy (contract-teacher), where teachers are hired on contract bases and on meager salaries. At present, almost all state governments have adopted this policy; and direct teacher-recruitment has been abandoned. There are passionate (and valid) criticisms of this policy especially from educators and teacher unions, but this policy helped bring PTR down (national average of 30.15 in 2010) fairly cheaply.

Now there were school-buildings, teachers, and meals, but policymakers learnt that economic inequality gets translated into educational inequality. Those who can afford, send their kids to private schools. Because the quality of education in public schools is perceived to be of low levels, the percentage of students going to private schools is steadily rising (18.7% in 2006 to 28.3% in 2012 according to ASER Centre, 2012). Low performing government schools are likely to have students from lower socio-economic status and high performing elite schools often have all students from higher socio-economic background. In response, Manmohan Singh’s government introduced Right to Education Act in 2009 that guaranteed free public education to all children between ages 6 to 14 and mandated that even the private schools must have 25% of students from low socio-economic background.   
Moreover, there has been a wide-spread concern about the quality of education in the past couple of decades. Many large-scale studies have indicated poor learning outcomes of students across states. To address this concern, Modi-government recently introduced a sub-scheme of SSA called Padhe Bharat Badhe Bharat which is aimed at improving reading and mathematics outcomes. Sample based yearly educational assessment by SCERTs in their respective states and by NCERT on nationally representative sample as prescribed by this scheme seems doable. Standardized academic outcomes should help evaluate existing educational programmes and decide future course of policy-action. This may help compare average learning outcomes across years and across schools/blocks/districts. Scientific identification of top performing schools/blocks/districts could help unpack specific components of best practices which can be emulated in other similar social contexts. This scheme also underscores the role of block and cluster administrators and involves them in monitoring and implementation. However, it goes into micro issues and prescribes specific classroom processes that the teacher and school staff need to follow – that seems over ambitious and difficult to gauge. Nonetheless, it is too early to comment on the effectiveness of this scheme. 
  
Based on the above discussion, we can say:
·         Policymakers need well defined outcomes for evaluation of the existing policies. Measurable clear outcomes also provide future policy directions. As we saw in the discussion above how various policies were basically proposed solutions for prevalent critical problems for respective times.


·         We can also conclude that some of the school-education outcomes that are of interest to the policymakers are: 1) number of schools, 2) enrollment-rates, 3) dropout-rates, 4) malnutrition in children, 5) PTR, and 6) math and reading outcomes. In addition, there are numerous sub-indicators like student enrollment and dropout by their background (various socio-economic categories/ gender/ region/ standard), teachers’ educational level and background characteristics, school infrastructural indicators and so on – which the policymakers often use.

Note: The second part of this post is: Primary Education: Brief History of National Policies- 2

I welcome your comments/questions/rebuttals...

Monday, April 13, 2015

Teaching Future Physicists

What if you realize that some of your students have the potential for becoming great physicists? What if you know that if you nurture their interest in science and help them develop knowledge and skills, they will extend human knowledge in future? They may work with the finest of universities and research labs and come up with breakthroughs for the problems that we are facing today. What can you do as their physics teacher to help them succeed as physicists?

            To explore these questions it is important to understand the critical elements of scientific inquiry. The development of science relies heavily on the following:

Empirical experimentation
A critical first step here is developing hypothesis(es). Basically, based on the things that we know, the idea is to take a step forward and make an educated guess about the scientific phenomenon, and the relation between various study variables. To test this hypothesis, experiment is designed, data are collected, and results are reported. Replicability of the experiment is one of the most important elements of scientific inquiry. It means that the results should be consistent under the same experimental conditions, irrespective of who conducts the study. Therefore, scientific experiments need high-levels of methodological rigor and transparency. Finally, the inferences are put in context of the existing scientific literature and the entire work is shared with the scientific community for further scrutiny. 

Theoretical development
A theory is basically an attempt to make sense of the results of a set of well-tested hypotheses often related to a particular scientific phenomenon. Clear rationale, logic, and mathematical computations often serve as corner stones for theoretical development. One critical utility of theoretical work is its predictability. It explains and predicts how nature behaves in given physical conditions.

            It is important to note that both theoretical and empirical works may develop simultaneously and/or sequentially, and there is no particular order for scientific development. Though professional researchers often specialize in a particular approach (theoretical or experimental), both approaches are heavily interdependent. Theoretical development provides direction for experimental work, which in turn, validates (or rejects) theoretical work. Both approaches collectively advance scientific knowledge. 

            Now, the critical question for teachers:
·         What kind of teaching approach (or learning experiences) in physics classrooms could help nurture the required skills for empirical and theoretical developments of science?

Let’s say a teacher wants to employ this teaching approach for the chapter – Lights, Shadows, and Reflection (Class VI, CBSE). The class is divided into smaller groups (3-5 students/group).

Steps for scientific inquiry
How the teacher can organize the lesson
Experimental tools
Flashlight, balls of different radii (ping-pong ball, tennis ball, and football), cardboard with small hole, vernier calipers, 1 meter ruler 
Experiment
·         Allow students to play with flashlight through cardboard and balls. See if any groups are coming up with any patterns (e.g., as the ball is closer to the flashlight, the shadow gets bigger)
·         Help students identify study parameters (e.g., radii of different balls, distance between balls, and between flashlight and balls)
·         Guide students to more specific inquiry:
o   When you put a ping-pong ball between the cardboard and a tennis ball, what happens when the ping-pong ball is moved closer to (or away from) the cardboard? Follow this up with more precise hypothesis.
·         Establish experimental conditions:
1)      For five different distances between the ping-pong ball and the cardboard (e.g., 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 cm), ask students to observe the point at which the shadow of the ping-pong ball completely covers the tennis-ball. And note down the distances between the tennis ball and the cardboard, and the tennis ball and the ping-pong ball.
2)      Repeat the above experiment for the condition where the tennis ball is between the ping-pong ball and the cardboard.
·         Discuss the results. Let students explain why the second experimental setup becomes redundant.
·         Let students write the procedure in their own words.
Theoretical work
Students write a summary of their understanding of light and shadows, and relation between distances between spheres of different radii and light source.
·         Give students a formula:
R1/L1 = R2/L2,
where R1= radius of smaller ball
L1= distance between smaller ball and cardboard
R2= radius of bigger ball
L2= distance between bigger ball and cardboard (Note: L2>L1).
The above formula holds when the shadow of smaller ball completely overshadows the bigger ball.
·         Ask students to measure the radius of the tennis ball and the football.
·         For a given distance of the tennis ball (e.g., 20cm) from the cardboard, ask the student to predict the distance between the cardboard and the football.
Follow up experimentation
In this step, students empirically test their theoretical predictions.
Sharing and discussion
Once the students have empirically tested their theoretical predictions, all student-groups present their work with the rest of the class.

Clearly, the lesson presented above will not fit into a traditional 35min class and may demand a 2-3 hour laboratory session. In addition, students may need time for writing the entire exercise in their own words. My personal experience and observation suggests that we do not emphasize enough on scientific writing in our schools. Writing in science is very different from writing in languages/liberal arts. One needs to be concise and lucid. The objective is to present your work to scholars, and you would not like to waste their time with unnecessary words or complex and/or unclear language. In addition, there is absolutely zero tolerance for plagiarism in scholarly work. Therefore, it is highly desirable for the students to get training in writing their scientific work in original language with appropriate citations right from the beginning. 

In conclusion, it is high time we treat physics (and science in-general) as a way of thinking and learning through systematic inquiry. As per UNESCO’s Science Report 2010, one of the biggest challenges for India in the coming years will be to revolutionarily improve both quantity and quality of scientists and researchers to become an influential participant in the global knowledge economy. We can no longer afford to segregate the subject-content from the fundamental dimensions of scientific development if we want to nurture scientific minds. I hope the ideas and the example presented in this article help educators integrate theoretical and empirical components of inquiry in their physics classrooms.  

[Note: This piece is also published in the Teacher Plus magazine.]


I welcome your comments/questions/rebuttals...