Dr Bindu Ramdas Thirumalai | Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Dr Bindu Ramdas Thirumalai

Assistant Professor,
Mumbai Campus, Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education

Qualification

Ph.D. (TISS,Mumbai),
M.C.A. (Banglore University),
M.A. Education (Elementary) (TISS),
M.Phil. in Education (TISS)

Contact

bindu.thirumalai[at]tiss[dot]edu

Bindu Thirumalai is an Assistant Professor at the Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education(CETE), TISS, Mumbai. She has completed her PhD, MPhil and MA degrees in Education from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and a Masters degree in computer applications (MCA) from Bangalore University.

Her PhD from TISS is an action research study on Teachers’ Communities of Practice. Over 400 mathematics teachers teaching in government high schools in Telangana State participated in the online community of practice that she managed for over two years.

She teaches the advanced specialisation course - Teacher Education and the Education Research Methods course for the MA Education and BEd-MEd programmes at TISS.

Bindu has over ten years of field experience facilitating in-service teacher programmes operating at scale in government high school contexts. She co-conceptualised and coordinated the short-term certificate programme ‘Reflective Teaching with ICT’ (RTICT)' offered in an online or blended mode for teacher’s professional development from its inception in 2017 to 2020. She has designed and developed MOOC based courses on ICT and Education, Mentoring for Teacher Professional Development and Action Research as a part of the RTICT programme.

Bindu’s areas of interest are Teacher Education, Education Technology, Pedagogy of Programming Higher Education Pedagogy and Design Thinking in Education.

Through her multidisciplinary academic background in education and computer science, Bindu is keen to innovate scalable teacher professional development models leveraging ICT meaningfully.

She is currently part of the team designing and developing:

BSc-BEd (Mathematics & Computer Science) Integrated programme jointly with IIT Madras, Chennai.
Global Teacher Education Policies and Practices course jointly with , University of Sussex, UK, Ambedkar University, India, National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration, India & Jamia Millia Islamia , India.
Technology Enabled Learning Support for Teachers course for the new MA Ed Tech programme of the centre

My Phd through, action and design-based research methodology is a study of online teacher's communities of practice in the Indian context. I am keen to innovate and research (Social Network Analysis) teacher professional development models that can scale in the global south contexts.

My research interests are primarily around teacher education and specifically focus on higher education, pedagogy, ICT & Education for professional development as well as student learning. I am interested in research that combines my field experience with academic research. My research experience and fieldwork over the last three years have been focussed on in-service teacher professional development, particularly on building models and frameworks and developing related theories-of-action.

Articles:

Thirumalai, B. R., & Sarangapani, P. M. (2023). Designing a Mobile-Messaging App-Based Teachers’ Community of Practice in India. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/02704676231165652

Thirumalai,B.R.(2020). [Review of the Book Ordinary people, extraordinary teachers. The heroes of real India by S. Giridhar]. Contemporary Education Dialogue, 17(2) 251–255.

Book Chapters:

Thirumalai, B, Ramanathan, A, Charania, A, Stump, G (2019). Designing for Technology Enabled Reflective Practice: Teachers’ Voices on Participating in a Connected Learning Practice. In Teaching and Teacher Education. South Asian Perspective. Setty, R., Iyengar, R., Witenstein, M., Byker, E.J., Kidwai, H. (Eds.), Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783030268787.

Contributor – “Teacher Resource Centres in India: A Sourcebook” edited by Padma M. Sarangapani, Disha Nawani, Latha K. and Jyoti Bang, 2017, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Menon, S., Thirumalai, B. (2016). Curricular Materials in Early Language and Literacy Classrooms in Karnataka and Maharashtra. In Teaching-Learning Resources for School Education. Nawani, D. (ed.), Sage Publications.

Reports:

Sarangapani, P., Thirumalai, B., Ramanathan, A., Kumar, R., and Ramchand, M. (2021). No teacher, no class: State of the education report for India, 2021. UNESCO.

Seminars/Conferences:

2019 LeaP ITE Symposium. Thirumalai, B Panellist - Role of Teacher Professional Development within the context of fostering the approach of ‘Learners as producers’

2019 National Conference on Leadership Pathways for School Improvement NIEPA, New Delhi. – Thirumalai, B & Balli, O. Peer Leadership and Mentoring Course for Teachers Continuous Professional Development.

2018 Connected Learning at Scale - An International Symposium, TISS, Mumbai. – Thirumalai, B. Teacher Communities of Practice.

2018, CESI, Vadodara, India. Thirumalai, B & Sarangapani, P.M. Building Teacher Professional Communities in India: an examination of the APPEP experience of Teacher Centres.

2016 CESI, Tirupati, India. Thirumalai, B & Kumar, R. ICT enabled blended micro-course for Secondary School Mathematics Teachers: A large scale design experiment

2014 CESI, New Delhi, India. Thirumalai, B. Social Justice, School Mathematics and Knowledge in the Indian National Curriculum Framework [NCF 2005]: A Conceptual and Empirical Investigation.

Connected Learning for STEM (CL4STEM) see https://www.connectedlearningforstem.org/

Connected Learning Initiative (CLIx) see https://clix.tiss.edu

DIET Strengthening Programme with DSERT Karnataka

MPhil

- Action Research

MA Education | B-Ed MEd

- Teacher Education | Eductaion Research Methods

Short-term Programmes

- Certificate in Reflective Teaching with ICT & Contemporary education research and perspectives

Courses

- ICT and Education | Mentoring for Teacher Professional Development | Action Research |

Pedagogy of Mathematics | Design Thinking in Education for Learning with EdTech