An Election Manifesto for Education

Its time for the next General Elections in India, and I think it is also about time that citizens put together an education manifesto for all parties, given that they have been notoriously lax in laying down a concerted vision for the education system in their manifestos!

India is an amazingly diverse country and its strength is literally its people. An election manifesto that democratizes education in India, is the need of the hour.

Let me explain. I call the current systems of education educracies – basically a combination of the terms education and bureaucracy. Our systems are educratic – top down, hierarchical, role based and asymmetrically organized. As a social system, they exhibit feudal behaviour, rigidity, discrimination, nepotism and many other ills. But, as a mode of organization, at scale, they likely have no “design” parallel (insofar as mass organization and adaptation cannot just be designed, it emerges based on consensus of certain principles).

Our educracies need democratization of thought, leadership and action. In thought, we have to focus on research, knowledge and innovation, an area where we are gloriously under-served. With 10 million teachers in India serving just school and higher education, and just a handful of researchers and innovators across fields such as pedagogy and education technology, we do not have the design power that a country of this scale needs. Investing in these areas, is the foremost priority. If, without scientific R&D, there cannot be economic development, then, without R&D in our educracies, we cannot leverage the demographic dividend. This is evident from our failures to implement play, discovery, new age assessments and so many other scalable practices.

Our educracies need infrastructural transformation. The only way India can apply large scale effective practices in its educracies, is to build enabling infrastructure – whether physical (like connectivity and computing) or intellectual (like in knowledge stores and training). We need this infrastructure, just like we need electricity, because there is no way to achieve rapid transformation and growth, unless we can effectively propagate content and enable communications for learning and managing in an agile manner. Keep in mind that this transformation is not only for our schools and colleges, but also for centers of educational research and training and our boards of education.

Our educracies need to reinvent themselves to adopt new models of teaching and learning, governance and credentialing. At the very basic levels, our educracies are rotocracies – education practices and curricula based on rote teaching and rote learning. They still treat technology with grave suspicion. They are still trying to scale uniformly, rather than by decentralizing and empowering. These require re-invention at a very basic level in policy as well as systems of education. Perhaps we need to begin anew – maybe create and empower district level boards of education rather than national or state level boards, build a large cadre of change agents, re-scale and re-skill our teacher educators and administrators to face different compelling realities, influence social perceptions of other ways of education and consistently restructure our learning pathways for lifelong learning.

These changes are here and now changes we can make to our educracies to reap long term impact. If we can enable knowledge, infrastructure and new age practices, our educracies can transform and reinvent our collective futures. This is a national emergency, an imperative for political parties and a call to action for all of us. Step up! Write your manifesto for the next government today.

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India’s syllabus haircut

The HRD Minister is advocating a syllabus haircut for India. Following on the heels of the initiative by the Delhi AAP government in 2015 (“Delhi’s Syllabus Haircut“), which apparently went nowhere, the BJP government has tried to give it a populist national character by inciting NCERT to trim the syllabus by 50%. Subsequently NCERT, the apex education council that designs and manages the curriculum for the nation, has issued a public appeal for suggestions. The tenor is the same as that espoused by the Delhi government – the move towards more sports, life and experience learning and away from “bookish learning and writing mugged up answers for the examination”. They want to remove the “curricular burden” and to encourage all-round development. They also make textbooks thinner, interpreting the “burden” very literally as the physical weight of the textbooks.

Obviously, there have been vociferous arguments on either side. Those supporting the change make arguments like:

• Textbooks are heavy to carry
• 100% syllabus is not really negotiated anyway
• An overweight syllabus encourages rote learning
• Most of the syllabus cannot be applied, will not be retained or isn’t going to be useful later in life
• Rote precludes experiential learning and the building of 21st century skills in students
• Supporting assessment systems are not geared to judge true abilities of children and place undue stress on them
• Rote learning has a flip side – rote teaching – and that must also be transformed
• Ethics, values and life skills are really important to emphasize

Those against worry that:

• It will be pretty difficult to implement, at scale, and may end up diluting the academic rigor, setting us back in terms of national and international competitiveness even further. This, in a time when we have the largest young population, could have disastrous consequences on the well-being of future generations.
• It may take too much time to roll out. Aren’t there here and now, simple measures we can take?
• Are our teachers really equipped to handle this shift?
• Do we have the necessary infrastructure?
• How do we really decide what is “superfluous” and can be cut?
• Conversely, how do we decide what is important to be included? Are we going to use this as a ideological weapon for mass education using non-secular and subjective interpretations of knowledge?
• This initiative is populist – demagoguery has no role in education systems – and we should steer clear of it.
• Is this an experiment? Like CCE or ABL and other initiatives, will this be conceived imperfectly, implemented even more badly and then removed from public consciousness one fine day?
• How will this affect other downstream educational options – vocational, higher and further education? How will this affect competitive exams, admissions to foreign institutions, career choices, policies for standardized exam setting and result moderation and virtually every aspect of the system?
• What is really the “burden”? Aren’t there other smarter ways to mitigate it, if it really exists?
• Are we confusing “syllabus” with “curriculum”? The two are different things altogether.
• How are we sure that making textbooks thinner, cutting syllabi and promoting experiential learning will really make a difference to learning outcomes and help children achieve grade level proficiency and our nation achieve leadership in research and development?
• Aren’t there other models we could use? After all, it is a fairly non-unique problem and other countries have perhaps far more experience in these ideas and a closer look at their histories could reveal pitfalls.
• Is this concept really very new? Even Indian curriculum designers, in the National Curriculum Framework (2005) document and earlier as well, recognize the “burden” and have been taking steps to resolve it.

I think we are about to create a mass national disaster – not because the intent of promoting experiential learning is bad – but because we are really ill-equipped to deal with changes of this sort – both from a design and implementation perspective. There aren’t enough experiments on the ground that have scaled well (look at Activity based learning methods) and there is too much diversity to flatten with one-size-fits-all solutions. My worry is that we are clueless as to the real implications of what our demagoguery or abject opposition to this change can be. There are core systemic improvements, committed to in a stage-wise manner, that shall radically transform the country’s education system. If I were to choose the top 3 pillars of that transformation, they would be:

1. Infrastructure & education Technology: At the very basic level, required equipment and resources need to be made available. This means that the resources necessary for transforming the classroom have to be somehow made available. I suggested local and rural entrepreneurship, aside from state provision of these materials and the encouragement to use locally available indigenous materials, as a possible solution. An important component is going to be basic electricity provision to classrooms and technology enablement.
2. Empowering Teacher and Education Leaders: Side by side with infrastructure, the greatest asset we have is our teachers and the administrators of the institutions. We have to purposely design a system that incentivizes change to new methods (and I am not talking salary increases). New certifications and links to career progression, tracing a more direct link between new teaching & administration methods and outcomes  and systematic changes in curricula at all levels, are really important to institute.
3. Community participation: The weight of nation-building by education, similar to other areas like health, cannot be borne or be the prerogative of a handful of agencies. Rather a more democratic and concerted effort by citizens has to underpin the transformation.

The great news is that India is a treasure trove of great ideas, gifted educationists and concerned citizens. We have diversity at a rich scale that leaves the world gasping. But we are choking on our own potential.

Perhaps we will leverage this opportunity to arise, awake and stop not!

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Imagining another future: Teacher Cooperatives

Let us for a moment imagine a future where schools are run by teachers’ cooperatives. That is, instead of an administrative and financial superstructure of wealthy philanthropists or businesspersons or trusts, political muscle, non-academic leadership and all the trappings of modern world schools, teachers would cooperate to teach, learn and administer the school.

The Amul cooperative in India posits a model for cooperatives in the Dairy sector.

The then Prime Minister of India, Lal Bahadur Shastri decided that the same approach should become the basis of a National Dairy Development policy. He understood that the success of Amul could be attributed to four important factors. The farmers owned the dairy, their elected representatives managed the village societies and the district union,  they employed professionals to operate the dairy and manage its business. Most importantly, the co-operatives were sensitive to the needs of farmers and responsive to their demands.

In Education, this is not new (Avalon, SUPAR, Woodland Park). In Can Teachers Run Their Own Schools, Charles Kerchener talks about how such schools lack closed structures, promote open-ness and put greater responsibility on students to manage their own learning.

Advisor Kevin Ward, writes that students who come from a traditional school think, “that an open environment is
the equivalent of an unsupervised study hall and act accordingly. They wait for bells and whistles and detentions and plenty of assignments.” “Parents may expect to see immediate success,” but “learning to become an independent learner takes not only time but a good measure of failure.” These students become successful over time, Ward asserts, because students create their own rules. That struggle can take a long time, sometimes two years before a student understands that success is primarily a function of what they put into it as opposed to how well they play by someone’s rules. Contrast this with scripted teaching, frequent teacher-led drills,
and frequent testing that characterizes some charter schools recognized as successful.

…But regardless of the hours put in, students must design projects that meet all the state standards.

…The credit system—perhaps the most enduring structure of American high schools—is relegated to a bookkeeping function

It is interesting how these cooperatives are organized and how do different stakeholders react to shared leadership and open ecosystems. It is important to note that the exact shape and form for these cooperatives is not something that is designed. Rather it is emergent, based on the dynamics of the people, context and tools.

In India, I have yet to come across a similar vision. Doubtless, there exists someone doing it, but it is an idea not yet discussed or explored in policy or other academic circles, at least from what I know.

However, there is merit in discussing this model if it leads to increased stakeholder trust & respect, higher quality learning, diversity and autonomy. What if there were a significant proportion of cooperative schools in India catering to local needs, responsive to local community, and creating environments where students could really take responsibility for their own learning? Such cooperatives could be served by other cooperatives as well – for needs ranging from administrative/professional services to even needs such as teacher education and leadership development.

Can such a future be?

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What openness means for Indian education

I believe we have to seriously think about what open-ness means for Indian education.

There are many dimensions to being open that extend beyond merely making data available for public accountability and transparency. For example, if we do not provide appropriate redressal of grievances that emerge from an analysis of the data, we are not truly open.

The thing about being open is that it threatens to disrupt tightly closed systems. In our schools, for example, the dominant mindset seems to be to stifle and restrict the voice of students and parents; and in most cases even teachers. Free unrestricted communication aided by technology threatens the image of the school, it seems. This is because the school no longer has control over opinions being aired publicly or even within closed school networks. This is for fears that are sound (for example, obscenity), but even more deeply because it unites parents in opinion making and acts of dissent. However schools do not appreciate (or simply ignore) the virtual back channel of conversation and collaboration that open social tools have enabled. It is almost as if what they cannot see or control, does not exist. For schools to allow open communications is almost taboo. And this is not about Facebook pages either.

The other dimension is teacher-student interaction. So long as the school maintains secrecy about what transpires between a student and her teacher, it protects itself from scrutiny and accountability. For example, the open text-book assessments, which is a graded case study based approach for grades 9 and 11, mandates that there be proper reflection and discussion on the case study prior to the assessment – something that I have not witnessed happening. Perhaps schools may not like to expose shortcomings in their teaching learning processes or the abilities of their teachers to communicate effectively in open online environments. The latter is a particularly sad testament because what are teachers without effective communication skills whether online or offline.

Another dimension is the responsibility that students and parents have in an open environment. Each school may collaboratively build a culture and community that adopts its own model code of conduct. This is not easy so long as there is mistrust or irresponsible behaviour on the part of any stakeholder. Being a cultural shift, this is not going to be a one time activity, but there are responsible parents, teachers and administrators who can lead this on an ongoing basis – they just need empowerment. There are also issues that are specific to online networks that need attention in order to protect the interests of the community itself. Essentially, the community has to self-govern if it also wants to be open.

Yet another dimension transcends the individual institution to reflect in practices of school chains, consortia, unions and even organized governmental policy making. Is CABE or mygov.in truly open? Or is the CBSE, UGC or AICTE? Practices behind closed doors often mask incompetence and intention. In most part, attempts at open-ness are really half-hearted (at least at scale, in online collaborative environments). Perhaps it is policy that leads the way. But then perhaps it is better it does not – that the change happens in a more organically emergent manner, from local to global.

Will these challenges to open-ness (not merely restricted to India, not merely to schools and colleges) stifle the growth of social collaborative learning? Will they ultimately stifle India’s equity and growth aspirations?

I believe they absolutely will.

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Whither Indian MOOCs?

Today, India is at an important crossroad when it comes to MOOCs. Much has been written and spoken about the potential of MOOCs in this country. Unfortunately, most of the conversation has been around platforms. It has also centered around xMOOCs or XBTs as I term them, ignoring the rather rich discourse around the cMOOCs. And it has centered around who gets to own them (from a public resource perspective). This confusion has led to inevitable delays in the launch of a mainstream MOOCs implementation and accompanying policy. Is there a way out for us?

I think there probably is a way out. But first our educators and policy makers must fully understand core aspects of this revolutionary development in online learning and decide their strategy for the future.

The very first thing to note is that MOOCs are not (or should not be seen as) traditional eLearning. Online courses do not equate with MOOCs. The point of confusion is that bit about “online” and “courses” that confuses many people and leads them to conflate the two things. The distinction between what is meant by online and courses in MOOCs is really important to establish.

In MOOCs, “online” does not only just imply accessibility to digital resources using the technology behind the Internet and multimedia. Online implies the social, the neutral, the connected and the collaborative online practice of learning. Rather than focusing on the message, the focus is squarely on the medium. More than the content, the focus is on the connection and the “dance of conversation”.

Traditional eLearning was constructed within an older paradigm of the Internet that has completely revolutionized in the past few years. In that paradigm, putting WBTs (or web based training) on the web and then monitoring activity and scores with the occasional discussion forum, is the norm. Being predominantly an expedient, factory approach, we had to worry about packaging (SCORM/AICC), interoperability (LMS, Common Cartridge) and rich media (usually Flash/Flex) for interaction. Content factories had sprung up in countries like India to service the huge demand to create vanilla WBTs. These WBTs stereotyped learners, had self-contained learning (I don’t want to use the vitiated term “self-paced”) and were produced in low cost locations for budgetary reasons (cost cutting on face to face training and offshoring advantages). Content development is expensive and most organizations created page turners at scale. Few organizations spent large amounts on advanced eLearning development, such as for serious games and rich interactive WBTs. Return on investment in terms of learning was difficult to demonstrate, but the return on investment in terms of being able to “train” much larger populations at a fraction of the cost was demonstrable.

But the Internet changed. It became writable, connected, social, open and interoperable. However eLearning remained woefully the same, rooted in the old Internet. And when cMOOCs came along, powered by the new Internet, eLearning folks had no tools in their armory to adapt to them. So they ended up interpreting MOOCs as just very large eLearning courses. In fact, if you were to compare a xMOOC to an eLearning course, many people would not be able to tell the significant difference in approach.

With cMOOCs, however, George Siemens (who brought in the theory of Connectivism) had quickly realized that the Internet had changed, and eLearning needed a new approach (often called eLearning 2.0) in the face of supra-abundant information and connectedness. With Connectivism, learning is the process of making connections and knowledge is really a network (Stephen Downes). This meant that the role of the teacher (or instructional designer) had to change to someone who could “model and demonstrate” paths to learning and the role of the student had to be to “practice and reflect” through a greater connectedness. In that sense, learners had to become more heutagogical in nature with a deeper sense of and skill for learning.

The second difference is in the term “course”. The “course” in cMOOCs was a journey of way-finding and sense-making, with minimal facilitation. It is a bit of a stretch to use normal definitions of what a course is, in the cMOOC context. To take an extreme viewpoint, cMOOCs are a bit like learning on the tap, like learning to be, episodes in a continuous stream of learning that you can access by connecting to others. In cMOOCs, both structure and content are loosely defined, with the community determining the nature and the contours of learning (community as curriculum). This “un-course” definition flys in the face of standard understanding of the term “course” which has rigid membership, duration, curriculum and outcomes.

To take an example, in a “course” , the teacher would draft a course outline, supply readings and references, provide a tightly designed progression for learners (read this first, take a test, move to the next topic) and so on. Students are particularly dependent upon the teacher and work in a closed group. In a cMOOC, people form a loose network (open, no membership bar) based on interest, the community members decide to engage on a theme/topic, they supply (as it goes along) the resources that interest them and those they think will interest others, engage freely on certain ideas, contribute to and document/reflect upon their learning and use a plethora of tools they are comfortable with.

The cMOOC platform enables the conversation by aggregating the member contributions, making them accessible, remixing and repurposing them in forms that are useful to search/consume and feeding them forward to members and into newer directions not anticipated when the cMOOC was conceptualized. In this sense, learning becomes an emergent phenomenon with ever changing contours. And learners learn to adapt to these chaotic conditions and to self-organize in ways that are meaningful to them. This is what happens in real life as we learn and evolve. As Stephen Downes remarks:

“What happens,” I asked,”when online learning ceases to be like a medium, and becomes more like a platform? What happens when online learning software ceases to be a type of content-consumption tool, where learning is “delivered,” and becomes more like a content-authoring tool, where learning is created?”

Most people would say that the “course” has value in its traditional format. I do not dispute that. Instead what I am saying is that cMOOCs provide a real alternative to learning in that manner and so instead of ignoring that value, we should embrace this plurality.

The other part of the term talks about another two misrepresented terms – “massive” and “open”.

In popular terms, xMOOCs are known to be massive in terms of the number of students attending one course. However, this is only a conventionally acceptable meaning of massive. What massive also really means in the cMOOC context is to do with how connected the members of the network are (density), how quickly messages reach the members (speed), what is the consumption (flow) of messages in the network and how easily are connections formed and abandoned (plasticity).

To take an example, whenever new information or opinion reaches a node in that network (a member), if that node is disconnected or loosely connected to the rest of the network, the speed of the new information in reaching other nodes will be low, and the information may die before it reaches the rest of the network. In a world where our skill is dependent upon gaining  knowledge of things as they happen, this could be disastrous. Being disconnected or loosely connected with networks that bring us new learning and knowledge will only impair our education.

This is a sharp deviation from traditional eLearning, where these questions are not asked, because the network is the new Internet and eLearning still is stuck in the old Internet age. This implies that we will see the long tail in xMOOCs (where a large number of learners stay disengaged or minimally engaged with their learning, while a few exhibit intense activity) just as we did in traditional eLearning. And this is being evidenced by its high dropout rates.

The last term is “open”. Open-ness is interpreted in different ways in cMOOCs – free or fee, groups vs. networks (closed vs. open), no restrictions on membership, copyleft, diversity, unrestricted sharing, degree of engagement (yes, legitimate peripheral participation is also in evidence), risking public performance of learning (however incomplete), altruism, capacity to change, and ability to take criticism (or barriers to public display of learning). However, the major discourse around xMOOCs has been limited to just one or two of the dimensions listed above.

Hopefully, this understanding of the MOOC phenomenon is the first step that we in India can take while building a long term strategy. It’s important for us to appreciate the differences between traditional eLearning/xMOOCs/XBTs and step away to carve our own interpretations for our needs. If we are able to negotiate the transition successfully, an entire generation of learners will benefit. India has scale and that affords great opportunities for architecting powerful learning systems and for engendering better learners. Let us hope that this happens, rather than us aping the xMOOCs.

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EdTech Policy for Higher Education: XIIth Plan – India – Community Project

I had the occasion to put some thoughts into what a national policy for Education Technology/ICT for the XIIth Plan (2012-17) should look like. This is purely a personal effort at visioning, planning, putting an operational plan and budgets in place. I am hoping that the EdTech community will want to contribute to these ideas (or suggest alternate approaches).

Link to the web version.

In summary, the main areas of the document are as follows.

Approach

The approach to any policy on EdTech should, IMHO, embrace the following key principles.

1. Democratization of Education: In addition to thinking of Education as for the people, a democratic view of education also considers education to also be by the people and of the people
2. Leverage Scale to meet Scale: Rather than trying to impose more structure, we should invert the challenge and allow our very large and diverse scale to meet its own challenges through the power and scale of a very large number of intersecting networks.
3. Dis-aggregation and Decentralization: The need of the hour is to unbundle the formal constraints of the educational system by dis-aggregating its tightly packed structure. The need of the hour is also to decentralize, in a manner that is integrative – aligns to local, regional and national goals – and in a manner that respects autonomy and individual creativity.
4. Capability not just Capacity: At the root of any system lies capability, not just capacity.
5. Glocalization – Go Local, Go Global: Our educational system must understand and adapt to local conditions while staying connected with global networks.

The Vision Statement

Educational technology must enable in every Indian who wants or needs to learn or teach the capability to shape and be shaped by the Education System. This education system must be democratic, equitable, scalably networked, dis-aggregated, decentralized and glocalized.

Mission

The achievement of this Vision will require:

1. Infrastructure: Provide energy, network and computing infrastructure, access and support at scale to all stakeholders
2. Community: Enable every stakeholder with the capability to build their network of people, information and resources
3. Content: Strategic identification of content and digital formats to be developed, instead of a blanket approach to content development (all courses, all subjects).
4. Education Technology and R&D: Create the technology systems for extremely efficient creation, integration and deployment of learning resources
5. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Engender the growth of micro to large scale entrepreneurs and NGOs to support the mission and generate employment opportunities
6. Policy: Create structures and accountability mechanisms to support this vision

Goals, Outcomes and Budgets

The rest of this document outlines the major goals, expected outcomes, an operational structure and a summary of possible budgets for the XIIth plan. It is important to call out my recommendation to set up a National Learning Corporation head by a Chief Learning Officer for India.

Contributors

If you are interested in contributing, please let me know and I will provide access to the Google Doc for your comments. Thanks!

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The Travails of Teacher Education

Particularly in Higher Education in India, I have long been bothered by a systemic gap in Teacher Education. The gap lies in the preparation of teachers for HE. Today the minimum entry criteria for an Assistant Professor in HE is the National Eligibility Test (NET) or the State Level Eligibility Test (SET/SLET) [UGC Regulations 2009, and the most recent one UGC Regulations 2010], a good academic record and 55% marks at the Master’s level. PhD holders are exempt from the NET requirement.

The norms of Indian Council for Agricultural Research (faculties of agricultural and veterinary sciences), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (medicine, dentistry, nursing and AYUSH), National Council of Teacher Education (faculty of education), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE, Engineering and Technology, Pharmacy and Management) and the Rehabilitation Council of India (rehabilitation and special education) will supersede these regulations. Of these, the most striking exceptions are for education and those under the AICTE (which excludes perhaps 30% of the HE institutions in the country).

Essentially then, these regulations are majorly for Arts, Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences, Commerce, Education, Languages, Law, Journalism and Mass Communication programs across HE in India, not really affecting professional education in most part.

The selection process include advertising at a national level and a Selection Committee that is formed on the basis of the guidelines laid down by the UGC (typically university nominees, college principal and governing body member, a couple of subject experts, college Head of Department and so on).

For the direct qualification at a Professor level, the requirements include 10 years of high quality work, atleast 10 publications, atleast 10 years of teaching/research experience including guiding doctoral candidates, (surprise) contribution to educational innovation (read innovation, design of new curricula and courses, and technology mediated learning process) and a minimum score in the Performance Based Assessment System (PBAS) indicator called Academic Performance Indicator (API)  [must read: Pratiksha Baxi on Kafila : The UGC Dictates]. A Professor could also be directly recuited if her credentials prove that she is an outstanding professional with established reputation in the given field, having made significant contributions.

A college principal, on a side note, is expected to have 55% score in her Masters Degree, a PhD, must have been an Associate or Full Professor for 15 years and must have a minimum API.

An Associate Professor must have 55% score in her Masters Degree, a PhD, atleast 5 publications, atleast 8 years of teaching/research experience with evidence of having guided doctoral students, significant contribution to educational innovation  and must have a minimum API.

Norms in the 2010 UGC regulations also vary slightly in other disciplines such as Music and Performing Arts. Regulations in professional programs like Management/Business Administration at the institution level include a focus on past work experience and credibility in the industry, but let go of the more rigorous requirement of being an educational innovator.

Which brings me to the subject of this post. What does it take to teach vs. what does it take to become a teacher?

I strongly believe that domain expertise is really crucial, but coupled with that must be some amount of knowledge/skill/passion for teaching. The regulations sort of assume that you are born a good teacher or that you have become one through experience. The regulations attempt to quantify in the PBAS what constitutes quality in research or innovation in education (but fail miserably, IMHO). For example, educational innovation is thought to be:

Participatory and Innovative T/L Process with materials for problem based learning, case studies and group discussions etc., with points given for interactive courses (5 points), participatory learning modules (5 points) and case studies (5 points). If the teacher uses ICT (Powerpoint/Multimedia/Simulation/Software) in addition to chalk and board, she is entitled to 5 more points.

The PBAS provides a maximum score of 20 for “use of participatory and innovative teaching learning methodologies, updating of subject content, course improvement etc.” in an overall score of maximum 125 and a minimum required of 125.

Similarly, if you look at Paper 01 of the National Eligibility Test, called General Paper on Teaching Aptitude and Research [samples here], there is some attempt to gauge whether the test taker is a good teacher or not (atleast in the limited manner of a multiple choice question diagnostic test). The test covers analytical reason, math, english, data interpretation, general knowledge, basic IT knowledge, and a bit of knowledge around education and our education system. I am guessing some intrepid test preparation institutes would have a good amount of printed course material and question banks already around these to help students get past this death-defying assessment.

And in typical style, someone in the bureaucracy decided they want a review and have posted an undated questionnaire online which seeks to “elicit the views of a cross-section of the society regarding utility, effectiveness and continuity of UGC-NET”. The questionnaire (and you will miss it if you don’t click on the link to the MS Word quiz labelled “questionnaire” in the last paragraph) is a multiple choice quiz of 4 survey (Yes/No) questions. There is no mention of the results so far though the NET has been running since 1989.

There are perhaps better ways to elicit views.

Directly impacting these issues is really the availability of technology (hardware, software) and content at the institutional level given the scale and diversity of the Indian HE challenge (now 33000 institutions, 600+ universities and about 20+ mn students). I am hoping that over time, these conditions will evolve and improve – the existing resources being Sakshat-NMEICT, InfLibNet, Journals access etc. – to embrace OERs and low cost hardware riding on the National Knowledge Network itself which is being now extended to private institutions as well. Infrastructure is required in order for a teacher to teach.

Other direct impacts are can be derived through focus on areas such as

• providing an ecosystem (and infrastructure) at the institutional (or group) level that encourages innovative practices,
• the building up of a community of teachers, facilitating their interactions through techniques such as peer coaching, peer conferences, awards and recognition
• devising a program for teacher educators for HE,
• devising programs for pre-service and in-service teachers that are embedded, not in the traditional system, but in precisely the new age education systems that they will seek to further
• embedding appropriate andragogical and heutagogical techniques in the curriculum and building teacher skills to adopt these in their own learning
• investing in open and distance learning at the institutional levels
• providing a more rigorous system of assessment and evaluation for teachers at the entry level without acting as a bottleneck

So what is the UGC doing in the area of HE teacher education and training. According to the UGC website, it has established 66 Academic Staff Colleges. It is interesting to read through the Refresher Course rules and regulations. They lay down career progression linkages through the Career Advancement Scheme which stipulates the number of refresher courses that must be taken in order to considered for the next higher level. At this point, it seems that they have to attend at least one orientation and 1-2 refresher courses.

The curriculum coverage is as follows:

The content of the Refresher course will have essential percentage of the core material in the subject discipline along with required percentage of areas of emergence and priority, (both national and global), essential laboratory and practical component, computer application and I.T. Contents, if required with relevant advancement to the subject discipline.

The Orientation Programme provides opportunities for newly appointed teachers as well as for in-service teachers to make them familiar with the use of tools (software) and “Internet Literate” as Orientation Programme has I.T. based contents and about one week time will be devoted to I.T. based contents and training.

The curriculum for the Academic Staff Orientation Course may have the five components with 144 contact hours, i.e., 6 hours daily for 4 week programmes and 3 week Refresher Courses may have a minimum of 108 hours as already communicated to the UGCASC/ RCC. In addition, computer awareness and application of computers in teaching and research in different areas as relevant for the subject disciplines. All UGC-ASCs and UGC – RCCs have been requested to take steps to implement the programmes/courses accordingly.

If you take a look at the responsibilities of the ASCs, the overwhelming focus seems to be on subject and (assuming very basic) IT skills. Teacher participation is all paid for by the government. The detailed list of Orientation programs in 2009-10 gives very little reason to cheer. Organizations like JNTU, Hyderabad and MANUU, Hyderabad are actually talking workshops on effective teaching and open source software in education, but the vast majority are definitely not. One thing that may be good is that I see a lot of focus on principals and administrators based workshops.

Of course, none of these are in any way open or visible. Like much of Indian education. Which is not to say that innovation does not exist, that  there are not people with cutting edge thinking in education and that the future is grim – just that those dark corners need to be illuminated soon.

In school teacher education, however, the situation is richer with the National Council for Teacher Education (which has been although recently superseded by the government for 6 months on account of malpractice). NCTE has come up with many publications and I would suggest that they are worth a look, particularly the National Curricular Framework which has good ideas such as the Teacher Learning Centre. They have also got a Teacher Education Institute evaluation and accreditation mechanism.

It also has developed a Central Teacher Eligibility Test to select teachers fit to teach in schools for Classes 1-8 (essentially for BEd students). Please do look at the curriculum and sample tests – it will be an interesting exercise for teacher educators around the world to contribute and critique these.

Of related interested is how organizations like the Distance Education Council address the problems of faculty development and certification for blended programs and those offering academic (tutor) support online. This is something that is quite important to address as well.

In summary, it remains a challenge for us to figure out a more effective system for teacher education in HE today. The existing mechanisms need to be reviewed and the hidden dialogues around this issues needs to emerge.

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The quality of educational administrators

I think this is a key challenge, not only in India, but across the world. It is every bit as important as the quality of educational technology and content in our classrooms.

I am, so far, largely untouched by what I see in India (and maybe I have limited experience).  The first problem, and the most important one that I see, is the lack of open dialogue. Yes, we have conferences, retreats and closed door discussions where people sit together and make policy or strategy. But these are only that – closed and non-transparent.

We need a system that encourages dialogue. But not in the way handled traditionally viz. by stating platitudes like comments are always welcome and it is a big challenge and we need all the help we can get. We need a concerted effort to create academic and professional spaces for educators which brings down barriers and allows at least the new generation to explore the issues, deliberate on them, propose specific solutions and generate consensus.

The starting point will be to do a volte face and state that we do not understand the problems, far less the solutions. The mindset today is that everyone is an expert in educational matters in India (and some probably can hold this claim). But like in all crises, there will be key influencers who, through popular media, will shape the popular opinion.

Today’s news provides a lucid example of what I am trying to say.

The piece on the left talks about a group of 200 central and state university vice-chancellors pulling their weight on the implementation of a semester system and an assessment of teachers by students. The writer’s opinion, substantiated, h/she claims by the HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal, is that these suggestions were lofty and the minister recognized the difficulty in implementation of these ideas.

The writer also expressed another shared (with Sibal) surprise. Sibal had to remind the VCs about their big miss on recommendations on the reform of the examination and admissions processes.

I think the first audit that must be immediately done is of the skills of our educators, their credentials and contributions – whether in government or outside. Apparently leadership is lacking. The VCs in the news report are making this statement in the midst of anti-semester system protests by a large number of teachers.

Pitroda, Chairman, Innovation Council, India, in the clip on the right, distils his experience and wisdom by saying “Only technology and innovation can save (obsolete) higher education in India” and thinks incubation centres and longer working hours are the key to success.

If we don’t have good leaders manning the institutions, we are cutting off our legs and trying to run. Just wondering if anyone has studied how many educational administrators India really has. Off the cuff, about 30,000 would be heading universities and colleges; at the district level, across the 600 districts, there should be 8-10 key people; add about 100 per state others in and across boards, councils etc. (say) 3000 and add in another 5000 in other key positions – that should make it close to 50,000 educational administrators. I think that would be an understatement, but like the number of crows in the city of Akbar and Birbal’s Agra, this is just a guess.    

We must build an open and structured dialogue that acknowledges inputs globally and presents a cogent forum that represents both problems and possible solutions. It is immediately critical to evaluate between competing Educational Futures for India. Rhetoric will see us missing the boat once again, creating far higher unemployment and divides.

There is only the difference of an “i” between “running and ruining” our future. Let us subsume the “I”.

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Higher Education Survey – India

Another news item provokes a sense of deja vu. As part of the EDGE2011 report, I had pointed out the dismal state of affairs in collecting and analyzing educational data in India. In Higher-Ed specifically, the HRD ministry is undertaking a unique, first of its kind survey to collate data and to update it on an annual basis. The task has been entrusted to NUEPA.

I am sort of hoping it won’t be the same as DISE. Yash Aggarwal, NIEPA (why does this exist at all if NUEPA exists or vice versa?), has an undated (I am presuming less than a decade old) report on the Revitalisation of Educational Statistics In India.

The 2008 Sathyam Committee report, constitued at the behest of the MHRD (another good initiative), goes so far as to state about DISE that:

DISE makes substantial use of the technological advancements. But its main weakness has been inadequacy of M.I.S. staff.

Imagine that! The system is broken.

I am wondering though what would happen to the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) reports on Higher Education? They have an elaborate review system that include peer review and an appeals system.

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CBSE schools to go vocational

When I wrote We don’t need no education in mid-2010, I urged:

cut down school content, start school later, end it earlier, focus on growing the mind, building teamwork and other “21st century” skills, enabling our children to become responsible and knowledgeable citizens with a global perspective, reshape the assessment tools and frameworks that we have today to evaluate richness and variety of expression in our young minds, build new avenues and focussed curricula to strategically align with what we really need, get industry to recognize vocational education on par with regular degrees – basically – give our children a break, they don’t need this education.

Little did I know that our government would move so fast in this direction with regard to the introduction of vocational education curricula in schools. Kapil Sibal, the HRD Minister, has done it with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) schools in India. He plans to introduce vocational curriculum from grade IX to XII (ages 15-18).

There are many possible reasons and implications of this move. Vocational education in IT and other sectors has traditionally been addressed by private sector and government schemes at largely the class 10+ or 12+ levels. With 2-4 years of vocational training at the school level, these post school training courses will become more or less obsolete.

For the employability issue that India faces with the kind of demographic dividend that we have, this will also reduce the number of students that need to be trained to become employable through these courses at the +2 level.

The language that Kapil Sibal is using also targets sectors like Automobiles, which if you look at the National Skill Development Council reports, is among the largest skill requirement sector for the next 10 years. This shows a clear alignment between different parts of the government and the hope that there is increasing cohesion among decision makers today.

That it will also be instrumental in providing students specifically from economically weaker sections (EWS) to pursue non-academic careers that result in direct employability post school, also seems part of the strategy. It is perhaps a pacifist act as well given the non-cooperative attitude of the private school system towards the Right to Education law.

But vocational training will require infrastructure provision that schools are not equipped to achieve. This will require them to invest on acquiring new set of skills and adapt to the new requirements if they want to remain affiliated to the CBSE. Like the Right to Education, this will thus, be also subject to delays and obstructions adding to the general chaos around the Right to Education Law implementation.

Some interesting possibilities may ensue. OEMs, private training companies and public vocational training bodies may be called to play a greater role in the new curriculum. The same organizations may then be better placed to exercise influence over the rest of the school curriculum and this presents great opportunities. At the same time, they would have to update their existing programs to provide a curricular path post the 4 years of vocational training and this is has its attendant problems in infrastructure provision, availability of instructors, new vocational degrees etc. 

I would have also like a bridge system for students who would want to cross-over between pure academic and vocational streams at some point of their education or work, like in Australia. This does not seem to be addressed.

But meanwhile, Mr. Sibal, please read this blog post and give in to my other demands as well :)!

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