Invited Talk by Savita Ladage

start session okay uh good morning everyone uh welcome back to second day of epistem 10 uh I hope you are all uh a very productive and engaging discussions yesterday and let us continue such discussions today uh with a first talk by Professor Sav L it's my pleasure to introduce her uh Professor lad is currently the dean of hbcc uh she obtained her PhD in chemistry education from the same Center uh working in the same Center uh in fact she has been associated with hbcc since 1987 uh initially as a PhD student and later continuing her career as a faculty member and Professor L's primary research interest include chemistry lab education particularly at undergraduate lab UC lab undergraduate level and conceptual pitfalls in chemistry our contributions include several pedagogical articles book chapters books and also uh research articles published both in National and international peer reviewed journals she's currently a member of uh editorial Advisory board for Journal of chemical education uh which is an ACS American Chemical society's uh public ucation she's also has served as a member of international steering committee for international chemistry olympiads on several locations at hbcc she has been instrumental on uh instrumental in two major programs that is Indian national chemistry Olympiad inchu uh which leads to the selection of Indian team for international chemistry Olympiad and also the another program National initiative on undergraduate science n program in chemistry which organizes exposure come enrichment camps for students uh and also capacity building programs for chemistry teachers teaching at ug level uh for her contributions to the field of chemistry education she was recognized and awarded with prestigious Nomes uh price for Education from the Royal Society of chemistry uh United Kingdom in the year 2023 with this brief introduction uh I invite Professor L to deliver a talk which is titled as chemistry education research based uh capacity building programs for chemistry teachers at ug level what you thank [Applause] you so thanks saish uh thanks for that introduction and uh before I start with my talk I'm able to see alumina member here I can see G okay I can see sugra sugra is very much there where is she yeah yeah very much swapna also is there and I can also see some of the teachers whom we interact have joined today uh so thanks thanks for coming and uh I start with my talk so basically Satish has already mentioned the topic about which I'm going to uh uh I mean going to talk to you uh for next 45 minutes uh the rough outline of my talk is going to be you know I'm going to first give you a few facts which you may be aware but just for benefit of audience and which is important background information in context of what I'm talking today that will be followed by uh the discipline chemistry to which I belong and Associated learning difficulties and ultimately I'll be talking about the capacity building programs which we have tried our own conception implementation and our own learnings actually uh ug stands for undergraduate phase of Education that's just an explanation so let me now come to some important facts uh in the context of this talk uh see in last one decade the undergraduate scenario Science Education scenario within the country is changing and there are few changes which are very important so one of the first change which is important is that many colleges and particularly state colleges which are affiliated to University system today have uh kind of academic autonomy which gives them a freedom you know to innovate with their own curriculum that's one of the very important thing which has happened in last decade or last de and the process is still on along with that uh since 2015 there are National efforts which were done to basically introduce teachers who are teaching at the ug phase with the pedagogical Dimension okay and that has uh really you know opened up uh this group of teachers towards the pedagogical Dimension third important thing is that there are established uh you know institutions in the higher education segment which are now venturing into capacity building program uh especially for UG and all of us are aware that the new National Education policy there are many things there but the one which I want to say is that it has emphasis or it is saying that whatever education you will impart at ug level it needs to be Student Center so since the teacher Community the Science Education I mean those who are teaching Sciences at ug level have kind of you know gone through these experiences today they are much more receptive towards the pedagogical Dimension see what you need to cognize is otherwise the teachers who are entering in the ug phase do not come with a kind of a pedagogical degree like b or M that kind of a thing and generally often do not have experiences with the pedagogical Dimension and these efforts particularly the pmm Pandit Madam malvia scheme has really helped to open them up with respect to the pedal d so the stand which I'm taking is that this is perhaps the right time where we need to venture into uh chemistry education research based capacity building programs for the ug teacher and the sheer reason for that is that this is a kind of a less explor space okay and in in general term it can be said as a dber inir d stands for discipline in my case is chemistry but you can have biology physics astronomy so uh that's the point which I'm Mak think that is the right time that we should Venture into this area we and we require models in Indian context we require models for this and that is where we have ventured we have done some efforts so let me now come to the chemistry and uh Associated learning difficulties and what I'm going to do is that I'm going to look at this from three different perspective one is that nature of Concepts the second is problem solving and the third is lab education now why I'm discussing the nature of Concepts okay so personally I believe uh when you are in the realm of you know discipline informed kind of capacity the discipline is very Central to any conceptions of capacity building uh programs of this kind okay and especially the designers who are venturing into this field need to really familiarize themselves with the concepts you know and the kind of challenges they bring because ultimately you want to change you know the understanding that's the primary primary goal why you are doing Your Capacity building program okay so whether you deal with this often you will be dealing with this area perhaps indirectly which is absolutely must that we familiarize ourselves with the concepts and the problems associated with it and that's the reason why I'm going to spend some time and then I'll move on to other areas so I'm going to draw very heavily uh from a researcher K tabber and those who are familiar with the chemistry education research field they know he's one of the very wellknown and well established researcher uh in the field and he has given a very nice discussion about you know the concepts their nature and how you should go about it I mean it's a very beautiful book who are interested can read that book and he has given what kind of Concepts you know what kind of categories of Concepts which are important when uh it comes to chemistry so there are concepts related to objects and ities I have given examples there I think they're self-explanatory then you have concepts related to events and processes and you also have concepts related to quantities or properties okay so these are kind of categories of Concepts which are important when you are teaching chemistry at any level I mean it is school or ug whatever it is along with this there is another important class of Concepts which becomes important and especially that becomes important at ug level and that is metac concept what he has called this as metac Concepts metac Concepts is something which refers to models or theories or laws basically uh dealing with the various concept I mean there are metac Concepts which connect different concepts and also metac concepts are used uh basically to provide explanations in the discipline as well as to do predictions okay uh so this is another important and at ug level the it of metac concept is quite High okay and we have to reflect very deeply about you know whichever area you want to take for discussion one should really do this kind of a synthesis what kind of a Concepts which we are dealing with and what kind of meta Concepts which we are dealing with okay now when you talk when you say something like model uh please also cognize that for a given concept and I'm given example there that of acid because most of you will be familiar with it for any given Concepts often there will be multiple models okay and the reason why I'm saying is that all those multiple models are introduced to the learner okay as they study chemistry from school to ugene so perhaps the very first model in case of acid which gets introduced to the student is the rnes one and that is followed by Bron laori and that is followed by LS okay it's equally important to cognize that these models some of these models have their Genesis in experimental observation so for example arenus model okay this this has like emerged from the experimental observations okay so some of the models have their Genesis from the experimental observation whereas if you consider something like ideal gas law okay that kind of a thing is a theoretical construct so you have models of two kinds one which have emerged from the experimental observation and one which are theoretical construct okay in chemistry models or model based uh I will say reasoning or generally the models are used for visualization and as well as for reasoning and this is used both at descriptive what I mean by descriptive something which you can feel sense for which you have perceptible experiences okay so the models are used both at the descriptive level and as well as the submicro submicro refers to to particulate model of matter which is a very powerful explanatory framework which is used in chemistry okay so models are used at both level it is not just the submicro level where the models are being used now when it comes to the capacity building program it's important that we have to think and this is more towards the designers okay that what kind of a teaching experience we need to present to the teachers okay which will help them to understand concept related learning difficulties now this is a very deep synthesis and unless we do this kind of a synthesis I'm not sure whether we will be able to do uh we will be able to conceptualize the CBP which is a kind of a good in the sense is it's presenting what it is supposed to present it now let me now come to the other area which is problems and problem solving and I'm not going to focus my attention on numerical problems I'm going to focus my attention on non- numerical problems and talent we has given a very detailed discussions about it whom you will be listening tomorrow okay so this what I'm saying is kind of drawn from his writings okay so let me focus on non-numerical problems and non-numerical problems often requires qualitative reasoning okay this is very different from the numerical problem and qualitative when you are in the realm of qualitative reasoning you need to work with symbolic representations which are used in the domain and they are used basically to communicate information about the structure of the components and the composition of the components and we need to deifer anyone who studies chemistry need to deifer this particular thing and when you are Deering you are actually connecting structure to the property you're looking at those linkages not only that you are also you need to interconnect that structure property relation to the behavior I mean a system is often complex there will be n components okay and these n components are affecting each other and each component has its structure it has its own properties but in the environment it will behave in a certain way okay so it's very important that you link the structure to the property to behavior okay and this is a large extent not done in our conventional teaching and we need to pay attention now let us understand this you know dealing with symbolic representation Point more in detail and for that I have taken a very simple example all these symbols which are shown there represent water okay and if you look at this symbol okay uh you will agree with me that just looking at the symbol you will be able to see some information which is called as visible information or explicit information and there are I mean examples given so you will be able to say ke which kind of atom is present okay type of bonds probably you will be able to say and connectivity okay uh the other important aspect is that there is some implicit information or not visible information and again I have given examples that when you are to give explanations you also have to worry about implicit information okay so something like atomic size number of valence electron electro negativity and so on and so forth okay now for explanations in chemistry you need to decifer you need to deifer the visible or explicit information as well as implicit information and you need to understand the interplay of this to come to the explain and this process is not easy okay I said that qualitative reasoning becomes important uh in non numerical problems and let us see another scenario where the qualitative reasoning becomes even more important so that brings me to the context problems or real world problems uh and also let us take a research situation at this juncture and again you will agree to me that when we say real world problem or research scenarios they are dealing with complex reality I mean the situations in the real life okay and often these situations are messy situations they are not like you know textbook well defined situation where you know the starting point kind of you know where you are reaching and the path to reach it okay those kind of problems in literature in the Science Education literature are called as well defined problem whereas the problems where these trajectories are not known starting point may be known little bit but the end is surely not known those are IL defined situation and when you have such a situation at hand the way to start thinking is qualitative reasoning okay you have to start attacking the problem or start thinking or reflecting on the problem with from the realm of qualitative reasoning so in the when when you talk about context problem qualitative reasoning again become very important and this is even important and those who are familiar with the chemistry education research literature there is a very powerful notion which is emerging and which is going to take center stage stage in the years to come in chemistry education we cannot ignore this this particular uh idea that teach chemistry with system thinking approach okay so what you're able this figure is trying to replace present it represents a tetrad and basically the bottom of this okay indicates the three different major components of chemistry Modern Chemistry which we teach in the school this is proposed by Alex Johnston who was another pioneering CR researcher in the field so there is a descriptive part of the dimension to teaching chemistry there is a submicro dimension of teaching chemistry and there is a symbolic dimension of teaching chemistry but what is important is that we need to teach chemistry in context and in context to humans because if you want them to take informed decisions is so very important that you teach chemistry with its complexity and its connectivity to the uh to human activities or whatever where the humans are involved okay so what it means is that you present chemistry with its complexity to the Learners rather than kind of you you know presenting only this perspective which is which is kind of a filtered I mean I'm just saying it to understand uh so basically a filtered approach and this is going to be very crucial and my personal feeling is this is very important idea even in India in context of NEP if the kind of shifts the chemistry courses have to make is pay attention to system thinking okay so here again the uh qualitative thinking and the context problems become important so so it goes without saying that if you're in the realm of CBP uh it's good to uh you know think about this idea area and perhaps you may want to venture into it that brings me to the lab education and in C literature what has been critically looked at is the learning in the conventional lab see when I say this I mean often you know um please don't look at conventional lab education in a derogatory way it it is still an economical way to do things actually and it achieves many things okay but what has been critically looked at is the learning okay and let us consider a chemistry lab situation which is like must be there for biology or must be there for physics also okay so look at the learner the learner is receiving various inputs okay there is a theory okay which which may be coming verbal or written form there are chemicals instruments okay glass wees okay the operations to be performed all this is happening in that 2 and 1 half hour or 2 hours or 3 hours period okay now this has been contested and contested from cognitive load Theory perspective so what is the argument the argument is that the working memory of the learner which is equivalent to analogically it is equivalent to Ram of the computer this comes this term has come from information processing Theory basically but this is a ram of the computer if this Ram is filled with too much of a information okay then there is no space available for processing okay because information is kind of occupying that space and if you want students or Learners to reflect it's very difficult because there is no space in other words it's putting a load on the cognitive load on students and this situation and this scenario needs to be considered and there is a very important notion which has emerged from this which I will be talking about now there's a lot of work done about lab and I'm not going to touch upon various things but I'm going to go to another uh influential researcher and perhaps some people may be aware of him he is Michael Siri okay who has done significant amount of work when it comes to learning or Ed chemistry lab education particularly at ug level okay so one of the fundamental question Siri has tried to ask and also answered is what is so different about learning in the chemistry lab and he's asking this question as against Theory okay and he chooses a term which is a term by educational psychologist okay that lab is a complex learning environment and by complex learning environment he is explaining what he means by that he says the learner has to engage with the process of Integrations of different component now these different components can be skills you know operations or Theory or explanation those are different components okay but a learner needs to integrate the necessary components and get to you know and apply it to the situation which is at hand and this process of integration is not easy for Learners and he takes the stand that this process of integration needs to be supported well and I completely agree with that stand that if you do not really support the process of integration here in in his word but just extrapolate this to your you know capacity building program if you want teachers to cognize okay what you are saying you need to support it well okay there are enough scaffolds to be provided so that they get the idea which is basically which you are trying to communicate and that's very important and this becomes important when you are developing the instructional materials which are going to use for the capacity building programs for teachers what he has done very nicely and I really appreciate that he looks at the learning prior to the you know Learners entering to the lab and he has given very good guiding questions I'm not going to read those uh those who are interested can read the paper which is at the bottom and he these questions according to me are very important for any instructor for any DP designer so he talks about learning when you focus you have to focus on learning prior to the students entering the actual doing of the lab okay and these are some of the questions which he has mentioned then he talks about questions which are when the students are doing things in the lab okay so he has given another series of questions which are very important and which acts as a good starting point okay to reflect uh for us and to think deeply about when you are designing uh any kind of a lab activity or if you want to venture into chemistry lab education CBP okay so he talks about learning in the lab and then he talks about learning post lab after the lab okay so there are questions which are given and these are very again I again and again repeat that these are very important good starting points our work had started before 2019 but this when this paper came it's a very it has helped us in a tremendous trendly you know to reflect on things which we are doing so uh Siri texts about this and the of course it goes without saying that CBP uh I mean the chemistry lab is yet another domain uh for CBP okay at the ug level so that brings me to our work which is the work done by the chemistry education Group which is located at hbcs and that's a website where you can go and read about our work uh we have collected various things at that website it will be nice that if you will visit visit the website okay so which are the areas which we have ventured into okay so we have ventured into chemistry lab education that's one of the important area and why we picked up that area because I think uh all of us come are connected to teaching learning profession and this is one area which is less innovated when it comes to curriculum revisions and all that and that is why we decided that we will venture into this area that's a prime reason okay the other thing which we have ventured is problem and problem solving which has this emphasis on context problem that's one part but apart from that we have also introduced teachers to what is called as guided inquiry learning approach and particularly the material which has been designed or developed using this approach so under problem solving we have two different uh categories about which we interact with the teacher when it comes to assessment assessment is a huge area and there is absolute need to have you know CBP related to assessment but we have not ventured into it as a separate domain rather than that we deal with assessmentmental kind of aspects when we are discussing experiments or context problems okay our work has been done at the ug level as well as for the teachers who teach at what is called as higher secondary or class 11th and 12th but as far as the stock is concerned I'm going to focus my attention only for the ug our effort which are done at the ug level okay so before I tell you what we really do about Labs let us once again reflect on the system okay so in India you currently have BC courses and you have kind of integrated Ms or bsms courses okay the BC courses currently are threeyear courses which with NEP are likely going to be 4year courses okay which which are like currently under transition okay and if you look at the there are differences between these two kind of assisting so when it comes to faculty okay there is a difference uh in the faculty which are teaching in the BC courses they are not generally not engaged with highend research domain okay whereas if you look at the faculty which are teaching in bsms courses they are often kind of engaged with the advanced research areas okay the BC kind of a you know the college system where the BC courses are implemented is a very massive National gigantic system and it comes with a lot of diversity okay and one of the point is that is why this issue becomes what you know how we should um structure things so that we have assurance that things do work or things do happen in such a massive system which with diversity okay that's an important question in the bsms system projects is already integral part of your um I mean education and fifth is a completely Pro uh uh is a completely project and what I understand through my interactions with teacher that with any there is an expectation that when BC courses will become fouryear courses even they are supposed to offer projects okay so that brings us the next set of questions which we have been deliberating throughout our conception implementation and we keep revisiting so so now some of the questions related to you know system what we have kind of Tred to understand is that in what way really the lab courses are innovated and please understand uh it's very easy for us to say innovate okay but there are ground realities all right and one of the ground reality the most important thing is the infrastructure and the finance the budgets which are available and that becomes an important constraint when it comes to Innovations to the lab curriculum okay this need to be cognized okay then what are the content areas of course what is the dominant instructional practice that has been followed and I just want to put this question to the audience here in the BSS bsms system what is the purpose of offering project what is that we want to achieve okay and again through uh interactions or the way I have understood it and I'm very happy to hear the counterarguments is that the purpose is that you want to really you know uh engage students with research domains okay you want to en culture them into the research domain that's the main purpose and how do you go about it often there are interaction with senior PhD students you know initially there's an apprenticeship model there you set your hands you know you understand then there is a intuitive knowledge which you try building up by Hands-On experiences but ultimate goal is to en culture students into research domain okay now the question is when we want this to happen in regular syst okay where we do not have research facilities okay where the faculty is not involved with the research domains is this purpose the same or achiev that's achievable that's the kind of thing which I'm I'm going to leave that there and are there any alternatives okay and even um people I mean including me okay who are designing the project what is our own conception about project okay what is that we value or what is that we want to uh you know do we critically reflect on the way we design the projects okay so that's equally important and these are kind of questions which get discussed within the group again and again from time to time when we are designing and implementing the cbps okay the other important questions which we have worried about is the what are the C ideas which we want to take okay take to the system okay if you select certain ideas us how do we really uh structure our CBP what kind of instructional material we need to develop about it okay and what what kind of content areas we need to select all this in a context of chemistry lab okay and of course we have come a way uh this is more than decade we have been implementing these kind of courses we are still evolving uh it's because you know the system realities are changing and you should be open to those realities and you should find in your cbps okay you cannot say ke you know this model which work today will work tomorrow also when the ground realities in the system are changing so what are the kind of ideas which we have picked up so one of the most important idea which we have picked up is introducing teachers to preab lab and postlab concept which is a which this particular idea has come up from cognitive load Theory perspective and which is a very powerful idea and very much implementable in the Indian context okay of course the CR literature also tells us that we should introduce inquiry based approaches for the labs but what we have done we are we have taken a stand that when we are introducing inquiry it needs to be introduced slowly okay so we have not gone to the higher levels of inquiry like open or authentic inquiries but rather than that we have restricted ourselves to what is called a structured inquiry or guided inquiry which which is which is lower which involves you know which is kind of termed as lower levels of inquiry and the sheer reason for that ultimately we want teachers to make shift okay and making shift in incremental manner is perhaps a better trajectory that's our hypothesis or conjecture and that is why we have kind of restricted to the lower levels of inquiry of course we are also thought about some Alternatives and this word investigatory project is I'll be explaining this in in sometime but we have tried to develop these kind of projects which are actually revolved around the experimental methods which are integral part of the ug syllabus okay so in terms of domain we are not going to highend domains okay however students do not have an idea how the current knowledge or the how the current methods which they are dealing you know how they have been arrived at you know how does this knowledge uh really we reach to this stage so what we are doing is that we are opening up this established knowledge and we are designing projects you know around that okay in a way I will use what gohard had said we are kind of a make making a shift from research inform to research like okay so basically they what they know is the knowledge which is generated by the research done years back but we are kind of creating research situ situations basically which is like mimicking the research thing and uh we are building projects about that and Concepts about it okay there is another thing which is from the literature which is mini project mode now this is a little different concept what you do is that you give everything what is going to be available to the student in the lab so you give the list of chemical glassware instrument there is no flexibility with respect to that okay but you don't give procedural details kind of okay and they have been asked to design the procedure so it is giving a planning opportunity but in a very restricted limited sense okay and you can adopt this idea even as a part of your course so if you do three titration acid base kind of a thing you take the fourth one and convert it into many project which is like two lab periods Max to Max three you don't require three you require only to okay but what you're doing that within the curriculum or within the lab you are creating a a situation or a scenario where students are going to use what they learn and kind of revisit it okay which will help them to consolidate or to understand what they learn in a better way so that's the notion of course learning needs to be supported and this we have paid attention when we are developing our own materials and still in Indian context lab is not a group work so that's another important thing I mean the teachers also do their work as a group as a pair okay in our camps so when it comes to our instructional materials one of the K which distinguishes it from perhaps from other but it's it's characteristic of our work actually whenever we develop anything we have always field tested it with the ug student and we have this National initiative on undergraduate science camp for chemistry and there we test this modules whenever time permits or opportunities come we take it to regular colleges also but it's kind of test this is an integral feature of you know our nius scam experiments they are selected closer to what is there in the syllabus not exactly it can be exactly from the syllabus or closer to what is the thing and so what happens is that classroom data is very much available the problems the difficulties that are going to be faced by the students are very much known to us and we take this to the uh teacher camp and please understand teachers perform these experiments by hand in the uh in their uh I mean when the camps are on okay we conduct these camps uh at hbcs and most importantly outside hbcc in regular colleges okay towards pedagogy U there are reflect pedagogical reflective s about design decision making the likely difficulties and likely challenges which will be faced so these are the thing these are some of the photographs and uh the one which is this is our lab but this is outside and you can see that teachers are engaged in doing the discussions this is a feedback and what have been our learnings okay so basically pre-lab postra is certainly a format which is appreciated uh when it comes to experiment modification with the actual lab experiment is more appreciated by teachers rather than you know uh the new experiment inves security project is a challenging idea for teachers but they like it very much okay for teachers see there is so much dinking between observations in the lab okay and the theory I mean even physic Ally we have segregated them but that is why you know looking critically observing things in the lab and you develop or you advance your argument based on this observation this is something very difficult I mean one of the difficult areas for teachers there are of course conceptual difficulties and when it comes to design okay designing the purpose of prelab question is something we have to deliberate considera with the teachers and often there is a tendency to design postlab questions which are theoretical in nature rather than you know relating or connecting it to the experiment which they have performed so that is another problem let me now narrate one of the collaboration which we did with teachers and the please note down the duration it's 2 and2 years and we wanted to see whether we can interact with teachers and really uh you know like Design Lab experiment with pre and postlab thing and all details are there but let us see how how did we proceed okay how did we go about it actually okay so what we did was that we invited the teachers to participate in our nius camps and they initially witnessed when hbcc people were implementing these models modules and then they were given opportunities to implement okay so basically it really help them to get U experiences about process of uh implementation and they also witness what happened to the at the students end this really helped them to build their confidence and most importantly uh after some time Gap we started something called as online study Circle okay this is a weekly study Circle which happens and the purpose of this this still goes on but at that juncture the the area which was picked up is the literature related to lab education okay and those kind of papers were discussed and deliberated along with the example where you know things have been really implemented so that go and these teachers were attending all these 10 teachers where they did not miss a single session of those kind okay then of course after 2 months the idea of writing the experiment was floated and they were very much willing and the choice of experiment you know was left to them so we did not intervene into that okay this is now published as a book okay and uh what is nice is that these teachers kind of followed the same process when they develop they also field tested it uh with the nius camps in the regular College because some of the inservice teachers were there so in their own setups they did the things actually and along with that we also tried out these we wanted to hear uh you know uh how other teachers look at it okay so they have been tried at CBP both at hbcc and iser Pune conducts such major activity and uh we are thankful to them that they have allowed us to you know uh test this in their thing so that is how we have done anybody's interested this book is very much available on Amazon so what are the key key takeaways okay so key takeaways for us is I'm not going to discuss the first one but the trajectory I mean the I'm I mean what what appears works better is that you start with the kind of a Content or you know Hands-On experiences which is like a more a concrete Dimension okay and then you start slowly taking them towards you know reflective or pedagogical thing that appears to be a better trajectory we have tried various things but this seem to be working better when it comes to the teachers okay of course certainly the uh including teachers with CR literature and since the study Circle still continues okay it is at that juncture it has helped and teachers have kind of now they read the paper rather than hbcs members reading so there is a distribution investigatory idea is very much appealing to the people but I think what we need to do is that to understand this idea you know how to really convert things into project okay it's it's important that we collaborate with teacher we sit with them we take up an idea convert it into project okay have reflection and that Dimension we have not yet done but there is a need to do that which will kind of give again will help to build their confidence uh that's what our I mean all these are our keyle so now I come to problem and problem solving and again I'm going to reflect bit on the chemistry education in Indian context if you look at the uh chemistry education from school tool to UGI level uh you will agree with me that in the syllabus very early the abstract concepts are introduced like concept of atom and all that is being introduced we have not given opportunities to students to deal with materials to understand them you know differences and all those patterns but very soon we introduce this model okay so abstract concepts are introduced very early in the syllabus class 8th or something like that and our syllabus is kind of a spiral syllabus so you go on expanding this okay when you are com from school to ug level okay unfortunately in this journey there is at least I have not seen uh you know the situation where there are efforts being made to relate this to real world okay so what happens is that we are kind of working in isolation this we are having a conceptual trajectory but how does really you know works in the real situation is something completely dealing and that's why I'm making a statement that context problems is not an integral part of chemistry education in India I'm not very wellers about what happens in iits uh but uh some input says probably there also maybe it's not happening but I don't know I'm not the person who can say about it okay now when we are venturing into what are our credentials okay why we are competent people or we are the people who can really Venture into it so please understand hbcs has another program chemistry Olympiad which is very well known but I think we should should look at this program from a educational perspective rather than just considering it as a program which leads to the selection of the team that's a separate mandate okay but we have been designing context problems and this is again deliberate stand which we have taken okay to indicate this Luna and uh one of the person whom you should meet is anush uh he is uh anush Gupta who really W you please uh okay so you can have discussions with him and uh he will it will be PL to hear him uh when we I mean about this thing okay so again how do we go we again uh go I mean we take these problems which are quite u i mean they're large thematic problem this is not just one bit or two bit of a problem there are series of questions those kind of problems we take we have also chosen consciously to introduce areas which are less represented in such kind of problems or overall in designing of problems that is qualitative thinking visual special reasoning taking real situations and analyzing them or taking a real complex data and making meaning out of it numerical calculation and along with all others but this is a kind of a conscious choice of our group and extended family who interact with us actually and the way we start again is that teacher start solving these problems okay please look at our numbers uh and on the pedagogy side we discuss about the context of the problem we also have a uh cons considerable discussion about Concepts which are involved okay the likely wrong answers and reasons for that difficulty level and overall design of the problem of course teachers are very much invited to criticize it it's not that it's an Olympiad problem that doesn't mean it it was I mean it's absolutely perfect problem nothing of that part and teachers can opine on that okay so very quick examples of this I'm not sure whether you will be able to read it but you have something called uh there is alum everybody knows th the one which is uh used at home also for purification of water so there is an historical Alum production it's a very beautiful work and very meaningful if you look that read I mean that and which is also used as a monant in dying so this question is related to that and then you have aquaculture which has been developed at many places in India and if the water quality there is a problem then you know the whole aquaculture suffers those who want to look at this please visit our Olympiad website and there are quite a few significant number of examples there which are put in public domain you can use it for your own teaching learning if you want to get in touch with us feel free to write to us okay so that brings me to the other aspect with which uh I mean we introduced this aspect to the teacher which I told you about guided inquiry learning the reason why this is a form part of problem and problem solving is this is another for way you do problem solving or it involves basically problem based learning and you give a kind of a context or a model is given to the learner to explore okay and there are series of critical there are series of questions very carefully crafted okay which follows a learning cycle which is shown on the right okay so initial questions are basically you know help you to explore okay which through this exploration you will kind of arrive through self-directed learning you will arrive at the concept okay you are kind of inventing a concept and this is given as a grouper and then a new different situations are given to you so whatever you learned you apply so this is a concept consolidation okay this is a very different approach and this is something which we have uh tried out in our camp and this is one quick example uh please visit this fogil if you Google if you type this you will get all the details this is one example uh it's very carefully very carefully crafted material okay now I just come to another work which we have done teaches and please note down the duration which is 4 years that was 2 and a/2 year and this is 4 years okay okay and where we wanted to develop guided inquiry learning kind of a based material with the teachers and again how did we proceed this is a smaller group than the first group and teachers were introduced to this there was a conference uh held at HSC about chemistry education International Conference was held and there where they came to know about this approach okay but these teachers were bit hesitant and they were not sure whether they can use and they were asked to get engaged uh with the with the real implementation of such material and uh they tried it out and this was in three different colleges and they witnessed the issues and the challenges but the whole thing was encouraging and there where they decided to take up this work okay then of course there was a developmental phase where there was a sustain interaction physical interactions with the teacher and the preliminary drops were prepared again these drops were field tested and that is how the drops were modified and the fin the work was hit by pandemic okay and uh final drafts were arrived at on through online discussion now this is also being published as a book and you can have a look at it but one of the major challenge which was faced by the teachers in this whole process is taking the role of facilitator okay and this was very difficult for them and for that what was done was poil sessions were conducted at hbcc where one teacher used to teach and other used to sit and listen and post this there used to be detailed discussion about the process of facilitation okay and we had an expert fortunately who was visiting hbcc at that juncture from USA who is a poil expert okay and you see this so what are our learnings so basically one of the most important thing uh you know what I want to say is that teachers do take time to differentiate between concept and information and it is not their problem these kind of discussions are not done with them and it's important that we do this and we give enough time that's one of the things which we have to understand and teachers even though they like the context problem they're very unsure whether they can Implement and again this happens it's very natural that this happens because context problems are not integral to your syllabus or this things so there is no uh I mean one should not get surprised of course the guided inquiry learning and this is very much appreciated I think we have yet not evolved with the problem and problem base kind of a that kind of a CBP and perhaps it will be good to start with short context problems first it is still a reductionist approach but no problem we can do that I mean the integrated has to be done but just to get an idea and better to choose problems related to qualitative reasoning visual facial reasoning and interpreting the real situation and it gives them enough time to understand the concepts and the difficulties associated with the concept and that will help them and motivate them to take this to their livs but of course we have to come to the Thematic one so just to I'm little late but just to tell you what is my overall summary so one of the main argument which I'm trying to build is that discipline is very Central if you're calling something as deeper informed or Deber based CBP okay you cannot ignore discipline is structure when you're are designing this kind of a uh CBP okay equally important Dimension is the pedagogical content knowledge and within chemistry also you have to reflect very deeply how when you're dealing with Quantum and when you're dealing with stomry or reaction mechanism the pck is going to be different and you need to reflect very deeply okay there is a merit in conducting CBP related to lab in authentic colleges because it's more convincing teachers do see kids working in their own setups and they appreciate that okay engaging teachers with CR is certainly advantageous and whatever we have done till now please understand they are short exposure models okay we have not done something longitudinal okay and this is the last slide where I leave for you there is a need to have longitudinal models okay which will have thrust on implementation because without sustain interaction you cannot I don't take this stand that there will be changes in the system and neither our group members take that stand the things which you have to worry about this kind of a CBP you have to worry about content Dimension you have to worry about the pedagogical content Dimension and there is a general pedagogical Dimension so these three you need to really reflect on how will you build this okay and how you will progress with all these uh three dimension in the Lo longitudinal how much flexibility do you keep to finding your thing all these questions become important and last point is more important in this whole journey it's important to give ownership to the teachers okay and if possible action research it may be too early for ug kind of a dimension but that's why I put it as ownership it's important to give ownership because whatever said and done when it comes to the CBP it is always the top down approach which is the most dominant and which has a notion of uh knowledge transmission mode okay rather rather than participatory way of generating knowledge that's the that's the dominant uh perspective and I leave you there so these are my [Applause] acknowledgements okay thanks uh for the wonderful uh talk ma'am uh but uh we have five minutes for taking questions uh yeah please one thank you for your lecture ma'am so uh please be seated and you can ask question so you already mentioned about the abstract Concepts and the experimental thing so we are also facing in training teachers in the abstract Concepts and designing experiments even we are observing some uh cognetic dissonance and Alternate conceptions among teachers so how are you designing experiments for those Concepts like mole concept quantum chemistry something like no we are not designing experiment for the concept what you are doing is that you're making a concept and designing activities or experiment for that concept we are not doing that okay we are picked up the experiment which are part of the syllabus okay then we synthesize what are the concepts and then we talk about what kind of questions or this has to be the so this is not a separate the approach which you have said is a little different and it's a very well established approach in CR literature which is you know designing experiments or experimental activities for conceptual enhancing that's a separate approach this is a separate approach yeah so so you you mentioned triangle Johnson triangle right so so we have difficulties in touching the macro things uh okay I think we can discuss this uh thing with the actual examples I think I'll be able to give you more input surely we can discuss okay uh good morning I'm bhra working with the Ministry of Education Royal government ofran um in one of your slides uh you have talked about uh bringing human element to chemistry education so anything with human Centric approach to education I always get interested and then we are also coming up with gfu mindfulness City where education is going to revolve around human Centric approach actually so can you tell us what is this human element how do you bring that element to chemistry education thank you ma'am yeah yeah so it's nice to hear that I think what I will do is that I will pass on an a website which is a very good website which is constructed by maafi only the person who has propagated this idea and which gives you actual examples about how they have developed and there is a commentary about that actually I think going through that website and going through those examples will help you to you know do plan activities in your thing in your own uh you know because we have to pick up the context which is local context we cannot pick up a context which is more familiar to students in Canada or UK or USA or something like that we have to pick up in your case it has to be context in Bhutan which you have to pick up and design but there is a website which which really uh will help you and I can have discussions about that okay yeah um this is a non- chemist take on what you I one of the points that that was made and it gets often discussed in school level or college level discussions is about these various ways of looking at aets and bases yeah the arenus Lori bronstad and Lewis ways of looking at it but what I often find is that uh it rarely gets discussed that these are three ways of looking at the same thing I mean it it often seems like they are compartments correct uh and this puts students in a very you know confused state where they think that you know there are three kinds of assets or I know something like that no I completely agree with B so one of the major I mean this you have said in context of chemistry but let me tell you this is one of the things because what happens is that for a given system you know there are always n possible explanation or n ways of looking at it okay and to uh the way I will put it it's little different but the way to understand observe Behavior you know expert often makes a choice okay the model or the explanation which that kind of a thing doesn't happen or we do not give situations where students are given this opportunities to pick up you know uh the the models and the model based reasoning and to see why this is more better than you know other that kind of a thing and I agree with you that this is taught as you know absolutely separate things they do not connected why there was a need of other model all those Dimensions do not get discussed that's absolutely so is there some way one can you know bring this yeah so there is a I can again discuss and I will tell you there is a I think if I remember correctly there is a very nice paper on this I think the it's by Cil arudam okay which she has kind of developed particularly about acid and bases I'll try to look for that paper but I'll discuss with you sure yeah um yeah there uh thank you very much ma'am for your nice presentation uh one question and what in your opinion is the possibility of incorporating sustainability green chemistry and lab safety in undergraduate teachers education which can then be followed so basically this idea of system thinking is very much in very much related to Green chemistry if you see go and see the IUPAC website okay you will be able to see green chemistry all this is kind of linked to system sying so system thinking is equally important and essential okay to teach concepts of green chemistry or or sustainability kind of a thing okay that is why I said this is going to take a very center stage when it comes to chemistry education and you must in fact you should even though you know it is like it will take time to percolate this idea it's important to discuss these ideas with the ug teachers that's the standard yeah we'll take thanks yeah we'll take last question from Jam uham more Global question related to science education um is in these capability assessment I mean capability enhancement programs for teachers uh what about assessment of lab work U does that fit in as a specific category and you know what does research have to say and do you see it in relation to practices in our colleges because uh I mean it's very different from Theory and both students and teachers know and that also affects the way lab work gets done and very often that has nothing to do with all the experimentation and all those so how do you see that and in this experience and yeah yeah I perfectly understand your question and your position and we there is a need so in CR literature there is a work done about assessment and particularly in the lab domain okay there are templates develop I mean when people have talked about introducing inquiries and all that how the lab report should be written you know there are critical Reflections on that and one of the things which you may be aware about is science writing juristic kind of a you know template okay and there is another person um 1 minute he's I'm not he's from Israel who has also done a lot of work I'll get the name just kind of thing so this is a kind of a research area in the thing in the in the domain of Science Education in fact lot more work has been done in a context of biology also okay where they have critically look about the assessment methods which have to be adopted there are you know protocols developed and all those things and uh I think a bit we have touched upon bit in I mean there is a student who did a PhD with me and she has worked on problem based learning but she touched upon this uh you know lab uh I mean the lab report dimension in a limited sense but in in Science Education there is work done about this I think yeah I will I will surely I'll share that thing with you yeah sure okay uh so thank again ma'am thanks for your detailed talk uh detailing about nature of chemistry as a discipline particularly uh as a uh particularly for teaching and learning process and also giving insights on how chemistry education research uh informed uh capacity building programs are crucial for improving chemistry education in Indian context with that uh I'd like to thank uh please join me in thanking uh [Applause] okay there is a break te break at you can have a a tea just outside the auditorium be back at uh 1055 thank you