Ms Ruchi Sunil Kumar | Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Ms Ruchi Sunil Kumar

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

Qualification

M.Sc. Botony (Delhi University),
M.Ed. CIE (Delhi University),
Ph.D. in Science Education (Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR),
Diploma in Software Technology, CMC Limited

Contact

ruchi.kumar[at]tiss[dot]edu

Ruchi S. Kumar

CLIx office, Library building, Main Campus, Tata Institute of Social Sciences

ruchi.kumar@tiss.edu

Ruchi S. Kumar is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Education Innovation and Action Research (CEIAR), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Ruchi holds a PhD degree in Mathematics Education from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai and a Masters degree in Education from the Department of Education, Delhi University.

Teaching:She teaches “Pedagogy of Mathematics”, " Science Pedagogy" and “Teacher Education” courses in Integrated B.Ed-M.Ed, MA Education (Elementary) and MA Education courses at TISS. She has also taken sessions for teacher educators in workshops/courses at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) and Digantar. She has been resource person for several organisations including Zonal Institute of Educational Training for Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, Delhi Public School Society, Tata Class Edge, Pondicherry Science Forum.

Course design and development: The courses are included as Math Pedagogy courses in Integrated B.Ed M.Ed course at CETE . The short term courses that she has designed include “Reflective Mathematics Teaching- part a)Geometric Reasoning and partb)Proportional reasoning”, “Assessment in Mathematics” as part of the “Reflective teaching with ICT” (RTICT) programme run by TISS for in-service mathematics teachers. She has also designed a course package for teaching mathematics at primary level in collaboration with Rishi Valley Education Consortium.

Field Action Research Projects: She has worked in several Field Action research projects at CETE. She has been the Math TPD lead in the Connected Learning Initiative (CLIx) which has won UNESCO King Hamad Prize for ICTs in Education. At CLIx, she designed and facilitated workshops for mathematics teachers and teacher educators in several states along with participation in design and research on learning outcomes for blended ICT based student modules for key topics like “Geometric Reasoning” and “Proportional Reasoning”. The scale-up of ClIx initative was taken up in IDRC funded CL4STEM project in which she mentored the teacher educators from Bhutan, Tanzania and Nigeria to develop modules on Geometry, Proportional reasoning and Algebra for newly qualified math teachers. She is Co-Principal Investigor for the Multimodal Approach for Teacher Professional Development (MATPD) funded by IDRC in Maldives, Nepal and Afghanistan which provides fellowship to 45 teacher educators from these countried to conduct action research in collaboration with teachers.

Publications: Ruchi has published and presented her research at several international and national conferences and has peer-reviewed publications in reputed journals. She is a member of "International Group of Psychology of Mathematics Education" and Mathematics Teachers Association, India. Her research interests are analyzing interactions between beliefs, knowledge and practice, identifying supports for professional growth of teachers and engaging teachers as designers.

She has experience of working as school teacher for more than 6 years and considers it as a source for reflection and inspiration for her work.

My research interests are around "Teacher education" and more specifically in "Math Education", "Science Education", "Use of ICT for teaching-learning process" and developing "Professional learning communities" or "Communities of Practice".

I am interested in researching the interaction between the beliefs and knowledge held by teachers and how they influence practice. In my PhD work, I found that just like beliefs can be central or peripheral, the practices engaged by teachers can also be central or peripheral depending on priority and consistent effort done by teachers to adopt a practice. These beliefs and practices can be identified at the level of an individual as well as at the level of a group, considering that the iindividual teachers be placed on a continuum with respect to beliefs held and practices preferred.

I am also interested in researching the nature of teacher leaarning and the opportunities of collaboration among teachers, teacher educators and researchers in the context of professional development. I have developed theoretical framework to analyse the role of task design and enactment in supporting teacher learning through teachers using their agency to participate in workshop based tasks. It was found that elements of design and enactment that support situatedness, challenge and development of community contributes to reflection on beliefs and development of shared knowledge in workshop settings. I have explored and developed case studies of teachers through collaboration in the their classroom. Recently, I am engaged in research on "Lesson study" to support collaboration among teachers and developing teachers communities of practice.

Technology can support the reflection on concepts for both students and teachers through interactive tasks that challenge their thinking. I have been engaged in researching the learning outcomes of the ICT integrated teaching and supporting teachers to develop knowledge and practice to integrate ICT in teaching. The development of an online blended course, student module and continuous interaction with teachers in mobile groups, engaging teachers in esign workshops are a few interventions of which I am a part for developing teachers' knowledge and practice.

I am also interested in doing summer camps with school students and teachers to work on hard and challenging concepts by exploring peagogy though building on research based ideas and connecting to students' everyday contexts.

Peer Reviewed Journal Publications:

Kumar, R. S., Subramaniam, K. & Naik, S. (2015). Teachers’ construction of meanings of signed quantities and integer operation. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education. 20(6), 557-590. Springer: Netherlands.
Kumar, R. S., & Subramaniam, K. (2015). From ‘Following’ to Going Beyond the Textbook: Inservice Indian Mathematics Teachers’ Professional Development for Teaching Integers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 40(12). http://dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2015v40n12.7

Peer reviewed papers in Conference proceedings :

Agarwal, A., Kumar, R.. & Bansal A. (2022) An exploration of domain and topic specific PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) among teachers educators. R. Marks (Ed). In proceedings of BSRLM day conference, 42(1). Retrieved from https://bsrlm.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/BSRLM-CP-42-1-02.pdf
Agarwal, A., Bansal, A. & Kumar, R. (2022) An exploration of Professional noticing and Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) among teacher educators from low resource countries. D. Chari & A. Gupta (Eds.), In proceedings of EpiSTEMe conference, pp. (177-183). Retrieved at : https://secure.hbcse.tifr.res.in/epi9/epi9-conference-2022-proceedings.pdf
Thakur, S., Bose, A. & Kumar, R. S. (2020) Missed opportunities: Instances from geometry lessons. In K.K. Mashood, T. Sengupta, C. Ursekar, H. Raval & S. Dutta (Eds.). Proceedings of EpiSTEME-8 International Conference to Review Research on Science, Technology and Mathematics Education (pp. 308-318). Mumbai, India: HBCSE.
Kumar R.S., Srinivas, S., Bose, A., Rahman, J., Thakur, S, & Bapat, A. (2019) Examining Knowlege demands for teaching class inclusion of quadrilaterals. In M. Graven, H. Venkat, A. Essien & P. Vale (Eds.). Proceedings of the 43rd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 2, pp. 504-510). Pretoria, South Africa: PME.
Srinivas, S., Rahman, J., Kumar, R. & Bose, A. (2019) Analysing role of language in students conception of parallel lines. In M. Graven, H. Venkat, A. Essien & P. Vale (Eds.). Proceedings of the 43rd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 3, pp. 327-334). Pretoria, South Africa: PME.
Bose, A., Rahman, J., Kumar, R. Thakur, S., Bapat, A. (2019) Fostering proportional reasoning using an ICT blended module. In M. Graven, H. Venkat, A. Essien & P. Vale (Eds.). Proceedings of the 43rd Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 4, pp. 14). Pretoria, South Africa: PME.
Kumar, R. S. (2019) Core and peripheral beliefs and practices of teachers in context of curricular reform. J. Subramaniam (Ed.), Mathematics Education and Society conference, Hyderabad.
Kumar, R. S. (2018) Teaching fractions with meaning: Moving beyond part-whole interpretation. Ladage, S. & Narvekar, S. (Eds.). epiSTEME 7 International Conference to Review Research on Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, Conference Proceedings. India: Cinnamon Teal.
Thirumalai, B. & Kumar R. S. (2016) ICT enabled blended micro-course for secondary school mathematics teachers: A large scale design experiment. Comparative Education Society Conference, Tirupati.
Kumar, R. S. & Subramaniam, K. (2013) Elementary Teacher's belief about teaching of mathematics. G. Nagarjuna, A. Jamakhandi & E. M. Sam (Eds.). In proceedings of epiSTME- 5 conference held at HBCSE. (pp. 247-254). Mumbai. Goa: Common Teal Publishing.
Kumar, R. S. & Subramaniam, K. (2012). Understanding teachers' concerns and negotiating goals for teaching: insights from collaborative lesson planning. In Proceedings of 12th International Congress of Mathematical education held at Seoul, Korea. (pp.5157-5166, Seoul, Korea: ICME.
Kumar, R. S. & Subramaniam, K. (2012). One teachers struggle to teach equivalent fractions with meaning making. In Tso, T. Y. (Ed.). In Proceedings of the 36th conference of the International group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. (Vol. 4, pp. 290). Taipei, Taiwan: PME.
Kumar, R. S. & Subramaniam, K. (2012). Interaction between belief and pedagogical content knowledge of teachers while discussing use of algorithms. In Tso, T. Y. (Ed). In Proceedings of the 36th conference of the International group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. (Vol. 1, pp. 246). Taipei, Taiwan: PME.
Bajaj, R. & Kumar, R. S. (2012) A teaching learning sequence for integers based on real life context: A dream mall for children. Kharatmal, M. Kanhere, A. & Subramaniam, K. (Eds.). In Proceedings of National conference on Mathematics Education. (pp.86-89). Mumbai: HBCSE.

Book Chapters:

Kumar, R. S., Subramaniam, K. & Naik, S. (2015). Professional development of in-service teachers in India. Sriraman, B., Cai, J., Lee, Kyeong-Hwa, Fan, L., Shimizu, Y., Lim, Chap Sam, & Subramaniam, K. (Eds.). First sourcebook on Asian research in mathematics Education. (pp. 1631-1654). Information Age publishers.
Kumar, R. S., Subramaniam, K. & Naik, S. (2013). Professional development of in-service teachers in India. Sriraman, B., Cai, J., Lee, Kyeong-Hwa, Fan, L., Shimizu, Y., Lim, Chap Sam, & Subramaniam, K. (Eds.). Abstracts of the first sourcebook on Asian research in mathematics Education. (pp. 207-211). Information Age publishers.
Kumar, R. S. Dewan, H., & Subramaniam, K. (2012) The preparation and professional development of mathematics teachers. In Ramanujam, R. & Subramaniam K. Mathematics Education in India: Status and Outlook. (pp. 151-182). HBCSE, Mumbai.
Kumar, R. S., Subramaniam, K. (2016). Constraints and affordances in bringing about shifts in practice towards developing reasoning in mathematics: Case study. Kaur, B., Kwon, O. N., & Leong, Y. H. (eds.) Professional Development of Mathematics Teachers. An Asian Perspective. DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-2598-3_10

Reports:

Sarangapani, P., Thirumalai, B., Ramanathan, A., Kumar, R. and Ramchand, M. (2021). No Teacher, No Class: UNESCO State of the Education Report—India, 2021. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379115
Kumar, R.S. & Bhaduria, S. (2019) Report on NMMC School Synergy Meet, TISS, Mumbai
Kumar, R. S. (2019) Report on Roundtable on In-service Teacher professional development: Perspective and Possibilities
Kumar, R.S. & Stump, G. (2019) Report on Connected Learning Initiative (CLIx): Results of the Learning Outcomes Study

Presentations in conferences:

Kumar, R. (2021) Analyzing Challenges in the Practice of a Math Teacher Educator for Developing Community of Math Educators [Conference Presentation]. Fourteenth International Congress on Mathematics Education. Shanghai, China.
Kumar, R.S. & Roy, A. (2020) Understanding Learning Behaviour of Students Using Geometric Reasoning Digital Game-Log.Open Conference on Computers in Education. Mumbai, India.
Kumar, R. S. & Subramaniam, K. (2012). Interaction between belief and pedagogical content knowledge of teachers while discussing use of algorithms. In Tso, T. Y. (Ed). In Proceedings of the 36th conference of the International group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education. (Vol. 1, pp. 246). Taipei, Taiwan: PME.
Bajaj, R. & Kumar, R. S. (2012) A teaching learning sequence for integers based on real life context: A dream mall for children. Kharatmal, M. Kanhere, A. & Subramaniam, K. (Eds.). In Proceedings of National conference on Mathematics Education. (pp.86-89). Mumbai: HBCSE.
Bapat, A., Khanna, S., Srinivas, S., Thirumalai, B., Kumar, R., Rahaman, J., Chougale, S., Bose, A. (2017). Facilitating geometry learning through blended curriculum. In B. Kaur, W.K. Ho, T.L. Toh, & B.H. Choy (Eds.). Proceedings of the 41 st Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education, Vol. 2, p. 5. Singapore: PME. ISBN: 978-981-11-3742-6.
Kumar, R. & Domadia, T. (2017) Digital interactive tools for mathematics and astronomy, Transforming Education for Humanity -2017. Vishakhapatnam: Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Education and Peace.
Kumar, A. & Bapat, A. (2018) Teachers’ engagement in an online blended course: Interaction between beliefs, knowledge and practice. Connected Learning at Scale: An International Symposium. Mumbai: Tata institute of Social Sciences.
Bapat, A., Bose, A., Kumar, R., & Rehman, J. (2018) Revisiting proportional reasoning trajectory using a blend of technology and discursive practice. Connected Learning at Scale: An International Symposium. Mumbai: Tata institute of Social Sciences.
Bose, A., Rehman, J., Kumar, R. & Bapat A. (2018) Design based approach to ICT enabled proportional reasoning module: An analysis. Mathematics Education in Digital Age- fifth ERME topic conference. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen

Articles in magazines:

Kumar, R. & Thomas, J. (2018) Integrating ICT in schools: Designing Interventions for Scale. Teacher Plus, July 2018 issue.

Newspaper articles:

Operation digital board: Platforms like clix can help change school learning from teacher-led to student- led one. https://www.google.co.in/amp/s/www.financialexpress.com/education-2/operation-digital-board-platforms-like-clix-can-help-change-school-learning-from-teacher-led-to-a-student-led-one/1278650/lite/
https://www.freepressjournal.in/education/how-india-nepal-and-maldives-adapted-to-education-post-covid-experts-and-teachers-provide-insights (16 july 2022)

Multimodal approach for Teacher professional development (2021- ongoing)
CL4STEM (2020-Ongoing)
Connected Learning Initative- 2015 - ongoing
Research Study of Learning outcomes for CLIx modules as Principal Investigator- - 2018- 2019 ( Completed)
Lesson study for continuous professional development ( Minor Research grant by CEIAR) 2019- Ongoing
School Synergy initative - 2018- ongoing
TEMP ( Afghanistan)- 2018-2019

Teaching in Courses

4 courses on Pedagogy of Mathematics for Integrated B.Ed- M.Ed- 2021-2022
"Mathematics education" and "Teacher Education" course for MA in education 2019-2020
"Mathematics pedagogy" course for TEMP students from Afghanistan 2018-2019
"Mathematics Education" and "Teacher Education" course for MA in Elementary Education students 2018-2019
Faculty for Blended course on " Reflective mathematics teaching" in RTICT program (2018-2019
"Mathematics Education" and "Teacher Education" course for MA in Elementary Education students 2017-2018
Faculty for Blended course on " Reflective mathematics teaching" in RTICT program (2017-2018
"Mathematics Education" course for MA in Elementary Education students 2016-2017
Faculty for Blended course on " Reflective mathematics teaching" in RTICT program (2016-2017
"Mathematics Education" course for MA in Elementary Education students 2015-2016
"Mathematics Education" and "Science Education" course for MA in Elementary Education students 2014-2015
"Science Education" course for MA in Elementary Education students 2013-2014
"Science Education" course for MA in Elementary Education students 2012-2013
Took 3 day workshop in Jaipur for candidates doing “Certificate program in foundations of education” for the introductory course on “Perspectives of learning” in hindi language in 2011. This involved producing materials and article summaries in hindi for students.

Masters Students Guided

Tejaswini, MA Education, Response of Educational Policies to Mathematics Phobia, 2022
Arushi Bansal, MA Education, Response of Educational Policies to Mathematics Phobia 2021
Nikita Dhokale, MA Education, Response of Educational Policies to Mathematics Phobia 2021
Saurabh Thakur, MA Education, Teachers understanding of Nature of mathematics, Ma in Elementary Educaiton, 2020.
Md. Humayoon, TEMP, Teachers knowledge for teaching fractions, Teacher educator Masters programme for Afghanistan. 2020.
Ms. Arezo Qayoumi, TEMP, The difficulties of learning early Algebra among grade 9th students, Teacher educator Masters programme for Afghanistan, 2020.
Ms. Hasina Hakakzada, TEMP, Students' Difficulty on Learning Geometry, Teacher educator Masters programme for Afghanistan, 2020.
Asmita Saini, MAEE, “Grade transition and mathematics curriculum”, MA In elementary Education, 2019.
Pooja Gajbhiye, MAEE, “Fear of Mathematics”, MA in Elementary Education, 2017.
Sanjay Kumar Sen, MAEE, “Connection of Science with Student’s Life in a Rural Alternative School”, MA in Elementary Education, 2016