Abstract
This article describes the educational innovation fairs (EIF), a large-scale collaborative action research initiative undertaken by an academic institution and the teacher-education department of a provincial government in India over a three-year period (2015 to 2017). The EIF initiative primarily sought to help teacher-educators in 26 sub-provincial teacher training institutes (STTIs) realize the potential of teacher-generated innovations to enrich the teacher training curriculum in the state-run schooling system. It required teacher-educators to identify and validate innovative teacher-generated work, that was then displayed for two days in a year in a public exhibition visited by a large number of teachers. Case studies of the displayed work were then sent to schools and used in teacher training programmes. The EIF experience indicates the importance of setting the political and academic context carefully if action research is to take off in the public education system. Second, the policy adaptation that is inevitable in such a system implies an understanding of the deviations that might be considered tolerable. Finally, the partners need to jointly reflect on and consciously plan their post-collaboration individual trajectories during the collaboration itself, for the outcomes of action research have to be embedded in an evolving research agenda aimed at continuous improvement.
Highlights
This article describes the educational innovation fairs (EIF), a large-scale collaborative action research initiative undertaken by an academic institution and the teacher-education department of a provincial government in India over a three-year period (2015 to 2017)
The theme that held the design phase together was valorization of teacher-driven innovations. The discussions on this theme were led by the academic partner and drew on the procedures developed by Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA) in its work with innovative teachers in another project (Chand, 2014; Chand and Amin-Choudhury, 2006; www.inshodh.org)
Each sub-provincial teacher training institutes (STTIs) targeted 60 innovations, but at least 60 per cent of these had to be from teachers who had not been selected for the first EIF
Summary
A variety of projects that would involve use of open-source material adapted to classroom use, use of technology (such as Plicker or Google Class) to monitor learning, creation of e-libraries from local language material or leveraging the access to mobile phones that some children may have Innovations in this group show a wide variety – most of them would focus on developing certain non-cognitive outcomes (such as self-confidence, motivation to learn, self-regulated learning and so on) through a range of student-centred off-class activities and group projects. Special focus Innovations to address the problem of girls’ attendance would be relevant on girls in villages dominated by communities with a poor record in women’s education This is a recent trend with teachers devising various mobile phone-based or other mechanisms to involve parents, most of whom would be engaged in agriculture or daily labour, in monitoring the progress of their children.
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