Centre for Education Innovation and Action Research

About Us

The Centre for Education Innovation and Action Research (CEIAR) is an independent research centre at TISS Mumbai. It was established in February 2015 to engage with and promote innovation in school curriculum, teacher education and higher education curriculum and pedagogy. The Centre provides incubation and promotion of innovations that address the needs of Indian education, and engages with innovative use of new technologies and media to raise relevance, quality and standards of education. Towards this, the Centre collaborates and engages with research, development, teaching and field action.

The Connected Learning Initiative (CLIx) is a key field initiative of the CEIAR. It is seeded by the Tata Trusts (India), with Tata Institute of Social Sciences and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge, Mass., USA) as founding partners. CLIx has been created to provide young people from under-served communities opportunities for participation in quality education offerings through the meaningful integration of technology. It works in four Indian states, namely Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana in government high schools of select districts. Research activities and collaborations around CLIx aim to nurture a pool of professionals from the fields of education, technology and science. (http://clix.tiss.edu).

Ecosystem Partners:

CLIx’s initial development and implementation partners include:

• Centre for Education Research and Practice
• Eklavya
• Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education
• National Institute of Advanced Studies
• Govt. of Chhattisgarh
• Govt. of Mizoram
• Govt. of Rajasthan
• Govt. of Telangana
• Tata Class Edge
• UNICEF Chhattisgarh
• SCERT, Telangana
• The University of Mizoram.
  
  

Integrated approach to Technology in Education (ITE)

The Integrated approach to Technology in Education (ITE) is an initiative of the Tata Trusts in eighteen mostly rural locations in Eastern and Northern India that had reached over 17,000 underserved children by 2015 and continues to grow. Initiated in 2012, the central concept of ITE is to integrate digital technologies into the curriculum and instructional plans of teachers in government schools and other learning centres participating in the initiative. Adopting a largely constructivist pedagogical framework, the initiative seeks to improve teaching and learning processes and foster authentic and project based learning for the older children and adolescents in some of the most underprivileged geographies in India. The students, mostly first time computer users, create learning artifacts such as weather charts, jute production in India, or population density in different cities to deepen their learning of content in the school syllabus. In this way, technology is embedded within the design and pedagogy of the teacher’s lesson plan and curriculum. For more information on the existing ITE program and learning artifacts made by students please visit tatatrustsite.org

ITE has been established, scaled and now at the consolidation stage where the teacher capacity building workshops will be developed as a blended learning courses for teachers, consolidate research data on impact, and document best practices. These tasks as resource support to ITE implementation will be now taken over at the Centre for Education Innovation and Action Research at TISS. The project will commence from September 2016.

ITE Resource grant at CEI&AR

Is an attempt to consolidate and scale the impact, efforts and learning from the grassroots to global platforms and knowledge in the areas of education technology.

Coverage:

Resource support for the existing partners using the ITE approach, presently covering 17,000 students and 500 teachers. This will increase to 29,000 students by the end of the third year and reach about 6 lakh students through a nested model of teacher professional development for 250 teachers directly, who will prepare about 6,000 teachers in their local areas with the help of ITE resource personnel.

Outputs

Drawing from global expertise:

• Invite global expertise to steer research, training and educational exchanges across cultures. Collaborate with top professionals in the field of educational technology. The Trinity College, Dublin and Arizona State University, and other global experts have been factored in the proposal for international exchange seminars and workshops and evaluation by the experts.
• Seek opportunities to tie-up with other internship program and universities for global exchange.
• An international workshop for the core group members to augment and enrich their knowledge and skills in educational technology.

Mainstreaming and scale:

• Scale and mainstream existing implementation on ground using government resources and existing ITE core group.
• Tie-up with district and state education departments to mainstream ITE in the government schooling system.

Research and documentation:

• Disseminate data findings in national and international journals; publish a book of case studies on best practices written by teachers and the core group.
• Showcase findings and knowledge at academic and practitioners platforms.
• Consolidate data from the partners.

Capacity building, monitoring and resource support for the Trusts’ ITE partners and direct implementation unit in Eastern UP:

• Conduct regular capacity building, continued education through online portal and platforms, and monitoring for ITE components of all ITE implementing partners of the Trusts.
• Develop and nurture a cadre of action researchers in the field of education.

Certificate course for 250 teachers:

• Three credits course on technology integration, about 36 hours of face-to-face contact and 10 weeks of assignments and feedback through distance learning.
• 250 master trainers/teachers will be enrolled for this course and they will, in turn, commit to training at least 25 teachers in their block in the ITE approach.

Collaborations

1. Pedagogic Content Knowledge
   The Centre is involved in a research study in collaboration with R.V. Educational Consortium, Bengaluru to develop a Pedagogic-Content Knowledge (PCK) approach in science teaching. The project is funded by NCERT, New Delhi and aims to develop understanding of novice teacher’s approaches to science teaching and also develop a reference handbook.
   
   
2. UGC- UKEIRI grant for collaboration between Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Azim Premji University, and King's College, London (2014-16)
   The work focuses on the theme "Changing Nature of the Public and the Private in School Education". With the help of the grant received, faculty and student awards have been given for travel to UK and India by the partnering institutions. Workshops have also been conducted for research scholars pursuing their M.Phil and Ph.D in relevant fields. A summer school with a special focus on Regulation in Education was conducted from 15th- 20th June 2015 at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru where research scholars from various universities in India and UK participated.
   In November 2015, a course on Conducting Research in Developing Countries was offered at King's College, London which involved use of data and engaging with thematic case studies. The course material used is available here for reference .
   
   
3. UNESCO International Thematic Report on Teachers (July 2015-March 2016)
   The commissioned work involves preparation of the India Country Report on the status of teachers using SABER tools. This report will contribute to the international synthesis of UNESCO International Thematic Report on. The report is due to be completed by March 2016. (http://saber.worldbank.org/index.cfm)
   
   

Academic courses to be launched soon

• Post Graduate Certificate Course on Contemporary Education
  Perspectives and Research (blended mode) in collaboration with R. V. Education Consortium, Bengaluru. The 16 credit course will be offered in partnership with the state governments for teacher educators, education administrators and education practitioners (to be launched in July 2016 for teacher educators and education administrators in Karnataka.
• Bachelor of Education
  The Centre is anchoring the development of a new programme for pre-service teacher education and integrated B.Ed. - M.Ed. which will be offered across the campuses of TISS.

Faculty List

Adjunct Faculties:

1. Amina Charania
2. Mythili Ramchand
3. Suchi Srinivas