Globian Perspective: December 2013

As discussed in blog-post entitled, Indian Education: Macro-level Systematic Problems, India needs a mechanism that connects national educational objectives with policy formulation, educational field practices and their continuous evaluation for course correction in policies. In this post, I briefly present a mechanism which may help establish such linkages while gradually decentralizing policy making. Note that the mechanism is not a solution in itself, but a means to collectively find solutions for in-numerous educational problems through informed inquiry.

The Mechanism

Education is primarily a state issue. Therefore, each state may like to set up a team of world-class interdisciplinary researchers for examining effects of potential interventions, evaluating current social/educational programs, and producing policy-relevant research. A trans-disciplinary approach in solving educational issues may help devise interventions and policies which in turn may drive holistic social transformation of communities. In addition to this prime responsibility of knowledge production, this team has three other duties: 1) regularly briefing state-level administrators and working closely for policy formulations; 2) engaging with the media and communicating educational issues, interventions, study-results, policies to the common citizens; and 3) developing next generation of researchers who get posted in district-level research teams.

Also, the university faculty members may be encouraged to contribute to this knowledge production through tenure-track that encourages empirical research. The present practice of most Indian universities looking only at the seniority of the faculty member for promotion needs to be re-examined. Furthermore, the present leadership structure in Indian universities is ill-fitted for the pursuit of excellence and knowledge production. In his lecture on the higher education systems around the world, Prof. Heyneman (PennGSEVideoLab, 2013) made an excellent point explaining the difference between the top ranking American universities and the universities in the developing nations. The leadership structure in top ranking American university is very conducive for continuous pursuit of excellence. The board of visitors (mainly, donors and alumni) appoint the president of the university on contract-bases and pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars. In order to get this lucrative job, the highly-skilled candidates have to present institutional goals and action plans for the same – how the institution will achieve and maintain excellence, increase research output, generate required resources and take all stake-holders on board. Therefore, from the day one, the president has a mission and s/he is highly accountable. On the other hand, the appointment of Vice-Chancellors in most of the universities in developing nations (including India) is based on job-seniority, personal influences, or even political loyalties. There is hardly any vision or action-plan presented for the institutional growth. In total, neither the institution leaders nor the faculty members face any negative consequences for not contributing to the knowledge production even at premier institutions.

In the subsequent phases, the research capacity can be developed at district-level and cluster-level to address more specific local issues. Also, states may design policies which encourage districts to develop data-systems and capacity for carrying out data-driven reforms. It may take at least a couple of decades to establish this entire mechanism at cluster-level, but we can eventually have a self-correcting mechanism where research informs policy, which is well connected with the field-practices; and these practices are continuously evaluated. Decentralization could help devise policies which are sensitive to the needs of local context. Note that the centre needs to play an important role in establishing national educational priorities, funding and coordinating various intervention programmes and research, and maintaining uniformity across educational curriculums and minimum standards across states.

In conclusion, a lot of research has already been done in the world. What works elsewhere should never be directly implemented in India, but definitely be considered as a hypothesis for experimental/quasi-experimental studies. Many major interventions like – voucher programme; performance-based teacher pay; designing effective tenure-track for teachers, principals, district administrators; professional development programmes; interventions promoting learning through inquiry in students; counselling services and special-education programmes; technological interventions; and interventions to encourage parent-involvement – all need to be studied in various social contexts across India. The country is so diverse that what may work in one context may produce absolutely disastrous results in another. A few educational research institutions that the country is relying on at present are simply incapable of lifting this massive load of improving its mass-education system. India needs to put development of an indigenous pool of policy-relevant knowledge on high priority. If it succeeds in establishing the linkages between knowledge production, policy formulation, and field practices as shown in the Figure 1, it will be one of the major transformational phenomena of this century.

DO SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THIS.

The following video talks about the above mentioned self-correcting mechanism in more detail. Presented by Kathan Shukla (Author of Education in India: A Globian Perspective; & Blogger, Globian Perspective)