 We get this afternoon session and we have three lectures, one after the other. So, the first is by Swati Mehrudra and Swati is the product of Homi Baba Centre for Science Education. In fact, she was a student of Prasap Chitra Mitrajan and Pratsap Subrachana Hala. Subra here. So, I am really happy that Swati is here, Swati is currently in Singapore all the way from there. She has done a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Education in Singapore and currently of course as a freelancer she is continuing with her research and she would be talking to us on teacher alimnas in the uptake of technology in classroom, a case of game-based learning in Singapore classrooms. So, Swati, please. Good afternoon everybody and hello. I feel fortunate to be here on this occasion at HBCSE location that has been planned in memory of Professor Chitra Mitrajan who was my former co-mentor while I was a research scholar at HBCSE between 2001 to 2008. Is that better? To your view. Is that better? So, Professor Mitrajan was my co-mentor while I was a research scholar at HBCSE from 2001 to 2008 and she has a big role in who I am today and my identity as a person in a professional world. I met Chitra for the first time in the year 2000 when I joined HBCSE as a project assistant and thereafter we worked closely in the design and technology group. So, when we came to, when we, when I say we, I mean the research scholars who came with me at HBCSE Chitra was a person to always go to for anything. She always had an office door open and we could walk in to discuss anything. Surprisingly, she always had answers to our queries. She always had suggestions and opinions about everything that we would ask her for. We've had discussions, long discussions with her on our, of course, our research work, how to frame our research proposals, how to write research questions, how to write our papers. So, we've gone to her for things like, where can we get our glasses made in a chamber at a cheap rate. And she's always, I remember at one time she's also given a long talk to me and my fellow Ritesh on how we should be financially prudent and how we should balance our savings with our expenditure. So, Chitra not only was associated or touched our academic spheres but she also our personal, our emotional spheres and that's why she has probably a very special place in our heart and we missed her. It's said that those who have the profoundest impression of you become the fabric of your life and so has Chitra's role being in many of her students' life. Many of our first at HVCSE were experienced with. We were the first students with whom the design and technology group started, the research group started at HVCSE which Chitra spearheaded. It was with Chitra and Dr. Chunawala that we wrote our first journal paper, an academic milestone in any research scholar's life. Again, I can recall it was with them that we first undertook our first international trip to present our paper in Hong Kong way back in 2006 and which is another milestone. And like that there were several milestones that I can recall in my life, in my academic life specifically where Chitra was closely involved. So, as she is not here and her ideas still resonate in us, especially in my work and when I reflect especially on today's presentation, I think there is a lot of flavor of what Chitra always talked of and unintentionally those are the ideas that we end up working on. So, this talk of mine today can be considered as so-called, to put it crudely, as some of Chitra's ideas into action and also some of the ideas that the earth stopped off in the morning of weaving the theory with practice and identity and issues of curriculum and teaching professional development in the area of science, technology, mathematics education. So, kind of this talk has a very different flavor, but however it seems like almost an instantiation of those ideas into action and a talk of a very specific context. The work that I present here is the work that I did as a research fellow while I was at National Institute of Education in Singapore but I thought this was relevant to share at this meeting because this has a lot of ideas that Chitra strongly believed in like things like going across the subject boundaries, things like collaboration, communication, things like negotiation and multi-lingualism and multi-perspective. So, I thought this was apt to share and this is a very specific context of game-based history we did in Singapore schools though what I'm talking about is tried in the Singapore school context. However, it has relevance, it has implications for any context such as where educational innovations are being attempted and teacher professional developments are being planned to support those innovations. So, in that sense it has relevance to the Indian context too. Some may be aware of what game-based learning is but for those who are not just a very simple idea, game-based GPL is an approach to balance subject matter with the gameplay and the whole idea is that the subject matter must relate to real life. And game-based learning, these are some of the fundamental characteristics of game-based learning that it has defined learning outcomes. It offers situated practice. As in the students or the players that engage in a context which mirrors the real life and they gain skills, competencies to play the game and that is how they learn by doing which is do is mantra. So, in that sense it offers a place for situated learning in which teachers and the students collaborate. It's not that the games are working to make students learn, it is the teachers and the students who collaborate to find depth and perspective to the gameplay and experience that works, that adds to the learning. So, one very special kind of game-based learning is the digital game-based learning which involves engaging learners with educational content through video games. And with the advancement of technology, these video games could be played from anywhere. Now you have mobile video games which could be played on your iPads or your iPhones where the location of the player is in material. So, in that sense these digital games offer the advantage of learning beyond the classroom boundaries. The digital games can be used in education more so in the last decade of the 10th, 20th century and the results, the research has shown mixed results. Most of the games are for science. In the very few games for social studies they have shown mixed results. They have found to be engaging and motivating for all ages and the games transcend such boundaries. One of the major advantages again of using game in classrooms is they help the players experience the real life in a safe environment which is why there is increasing emphasis on integration of digital games in the classroom. When we talk of games in use of games in education and then made it into paradigms or two kinds of games one are games to teach. These are the games which are where these games are realized that students are bored or disengaged with their learning and to engage them you need to have something interesting. So, why not engage them through games in their educational content? These kind of games are basically a marriage of educational content and computer games and the other kind of games are games to learn from which are more literacy oriented and which aim at developing the inactive capacities of the individual through role taking. So, in the first form of category serious games of games to teach it is more about where the students learn the content. Games are used as a vehicle for content transmission and instructional interview purposes and the students learn about something through playing games. They may learn about chemistry, they may learn about astronomy, they may learn about cricket, swimming, they learn about something and the focus of these games is on the right answers. Students or the players are drilled to an extent through in-game consequences that they are motivated to learn the right answer or they learn the right answer through practice central. And in these kind of games the technology is very important they are designed in such a way that you know these kind of iterations can happen and these games work very well within the existing school norms and practices. Whereas the other kind of games are where we take up where we focus more on developing capacities of the individual where the learners learn to be chemists, they learn to be astronomers. A very different notion from learning about learning about something and learning to be something is very different which is more of a first-person experience through role-taking. The games to learn with, learners and teachers collaborate to learn and make sense of these games. They call it basic and now I move to the content. I worked in the context of a game called The State to X Game which I rewrite TM there because the game has been commercialized and it has gone out of the lab and has been tried by independent company. So this game, State to X Game, is a game that maps on to the unit of principles of governance in Singapore or public schools at the secondary three level. Secondary three is roughly about for 15-year-old students. And this game is played by the students who go into the Apple iPhone which is the number 6 classes and it is a multiplayer client-server game. Each game session supports 20 players so the class size in Singapore classrooms is about 40 so there are two parallel game sessions running. The curriculum that accompanies the game is based on inquiry and the pedagogy is the performance pedagogy which I will just explain through this diagram. So it is called performance played dialogue model of learning where the students play the game outside of the class hours. So that's the game world. The students play the game outside of the class hours and they interact with their peers on their phone or through person-to-person talk of governance. In the game they are supposed to take up the role of governance in performing certain tasks mirror the so-called real world situations to which they are supposed to react and their in-game consequences to those events. They form the role of the governor. And when they come to the teacher facilitates a dialogue with the students and so teacher takes up the role of a facilitator to help students make connections between the game world and the real world. It is the teacher who distills students' talks and connects them to the curriculum points that exist in the textbook. So which is where the dialogue comes so students are interacting amongst themselves within their groups, across their groups and the teacher helps to facilitate these dialogues. And then students make sense of the real world and their feedback in terms of in-game consequences, in terms of what the teacher has to tell them. So students learn through role-taking and the teacher has access to a web-based administrator through which she or she manages to monitor what is going on. Often we observe that the teacher used that data as a springboard for initiating a dialogue in the class. And when I use the word dialogue I mean dialogue in the Lithuanian sense as opposed to a topic question where there is an opening of conversation space where there is a negotiation of ideas where there is an opportunity to understand others and new ideas abroad as opposed to a socratic question which converges to the right answer or one right answer. So that's the differentiation I wanted to make here. This is just a picture of the game interface. This game could be played on iPhones or even on computers where the students need to choose their gender, etc. This is the partial view of it which has a lot of real-life characteristics like housing, it has issues anyway. So of course this is a very insensitive sort of a viewpoint but the fact is they did bring in these considerations when they talked about the technology. At level 4 issues related to ethical premises may be debated. So the controversy is related to I mean at this level is related to lack of consensus between the parties on ethical premises. Like for instance there was a student in my study who was very troubled and he said that Saragasi actually amounts to trading the body and you cannot commodify a body in that manner. And he actually used an analogy he said that it's like you're buying a fish from a shop. But then of course others weren't able to see that viewpoint and they had a lot of disagreements on this. And of course there are also other questions like do we really have I mean students may also raise questions like do we really have the right to have a child. Given that there are so many children put out for adoption. And so do we really need a genetic family when they can very well be a social family and technologies of this kind they tend to reinforce patriarchal institutions such as families based on genetic links. At level 5 issues related to concepts I mean conceptual indeterminacy may be raised. So here the controversy between parties involved may be due to different interpretation of concepts involved. So like for instance you know students may raise questions like and of course this is related to level 4 thus lending genetic material amount of role of a surrogate as a parent. And of course one may also talk about adoption at this level and wouldn't a social mother also be a mother. The other questions that could be raised is are the surrogates making a choice to rend their wombs and students actually said that yes I mean it's their choice and they're getting money for it. So what is wrong? But then the question is is a choice made by poverty a free choice because there's clearly a lack of transaction. Surrogate mother being exploited and can a person actually choose to be exploited if she deems it you know necessary. At level 6 the controversy might be due to differences in perspectives that arise due to difference in interest positions. So it depends on how the participants may approach the issue and what sort of sides they may with the people involved in the entire arrangement. For instance if participants look at commercial surrogacy from the interest position of commissioning parents they may see it as justified because of course they're going to get their own biological child but if they look at the perspective of the surrogate mother they may not really see it the technology is actually running on someone's need for money. So I mean how do they approach the issue and what kind of interest positions do they take with regard to it. At level 8 the controversy is due to the controversy might be due to different total experiences of the people involved. So I mean a person who has a personal experience with adoption may see IVF very differently a person who has no experience of adoption. So like for instance I mean there was a student in my study who just refused to engage with the question of whether this technology is acceptable at all because you know he just said that you know why do you actually need a genetic family. It's really not needed you can always treat someone as your own family. So I mean I am thinking that perhaps he has a personal experience which makes him approach the issue in this particular manner. At level 9 the controversy might be over whole frameworks of understanding relevant to judgment this is the way it's been phrased. So it's primarily differences over world views and the premises of arguments. So like of course there was one student so here religion might play a role and there was one student for example who said that you know Islam may not permit IVF because we have to be satisfied with what God gives us. So he actually felt that infertility is also something that is God given. So you know why would one need to go for this particular technology. So I mean it could happen that other students may disagree with him on this and you know this is a potential source of controversy. Now I mean of course this is very complicated and you can actually pass the issue into multiple dimensions. What is the role of the teacher when teaching these issues and how is this framework helping them. So of course the teacher needs to take students through these different levels. Like for example at level 1 and 2 which is related to evidence teachers need to understand that science and socio-scientific issues are contentious, conflicting and value-led. So there needs to be a certain understanding of nature of science. And of course it's very much different from what is presented in the textbooks which is generally ready-made science involving concepts, principles and procedures. So this is something they need to understand. And the teacher needs to help students sift through different sources of evidence and also of course help them understand nature and reliability of evidence and of course potential bias in different sources of evidence. Now when you come to levels which involve values, worldviews and personal experiences it's much more tricky because it might be very difficult to get them to achieve consensus on these matters. So merely using a certain kind of logic co-scientific argumentation at this level may not help. So what is needed according to Ralph Levinson is to establish communicative virtues where students are likes and willingness to listen to one's open ends. He also talks about something known as empathetic conceptual imagination where a student is actually encouraged I mean is made to see another person's viewpoint by standing in his or her shoes. So they say that personal narratives can actually play a powerful role in effecting this. Like for instance I do remember that a participant in my study she had read this powerful narrative in a newspaper article which was talking about surrogate mothers who were confined in this house and they were of course living in very deplorable conditions and somehow that influenced the way she was reasoning about it. And of course one could also make use of other techniques such as role play and then of course use documentaries as a resource for making them see multiple viewpoints. So what the framework has I mean the framework actually helps in understanding issues in a structured manner and it is useful for teachers as well as researchers. The good part is I mean social justice concerns can be raised and discussed as we saw in this particular example. Scientific evidence is not privileged in resolution of the controversy though recognized as important and of course this is the kind of framework that I have been sympathetic to and it also recognizes other domains of knowledge such as ethics, cultural worldviews and personal experiences. Now next we come to the question of are we really ready for socio-scientific issues in the Indian science curriculum. Now there is an articulation of a need for STSA outcomes in the NCRT position paper on the teaching of science. So what is mentioned there is when deciding on gradation of science curriculum it must be born in mind that a majority of students learning science as a compulsory subject up to class 10 are not going to train as professional scientists or technologists in the later years. Yet they need to become scientifically literate since several of the social, political and ethical issues posed by contemporary society increasingly revolve around science and technology. Currently the science curriculum up to class 10 should be oriented more towards developing awareness among the learners about the interface of science, technology and society sensitizing them especially to the issues of environment and health and enabling them to acquire practical knowledge and skills to enter the world of work. So here there is clearly an STSA emphasis at least for students I mean up to class 10. But at the same time the position paper also points out that facts, principles, theories and their applications need to and applications to understand various phenomena are at the core of science and the science curriculum must obviously engage the learner with them appropriately. So what the sense that I get is there are pressures on the curriculum to balance both disciplinary interests as well as incorporate STS content and this is something that is very complex and difficult to resolve I am guessing. Now if you look at how the science curriculum has been organized at different levels at the primary level there is an emphasis on environmental science and of course where there is a fusion of science and social science and of course NCIT textbooks have also done a very good job of bringing in a lot of critical content where students can be made to think of social justice concerns but then what we find is from the upper primary level onwards curriculum prescriptions and textbooks begin to emphasize content knowledge and there are disciplinary pressures and of course at the high secondary level I mean you know it gets only you know co-curricular status. So I mean my concluding thoughts I mean that I would like to leave with are I would say that there is definitely a need to introduce socio-scientific issues at the school level and the undergraduate level is part of the formal curriculum. Now the science curriculum a lot actually needs to be debated like so that is something that we really need to think about because given that there are a lot of disciplinary pressures on the science curriculum. So one possibility is that it could be introduced at the school level and in the form of integrated themes and projects that cut across subjects and you know you could have in teachers involved in cross disciplinary collaboration in teaching these issues that is one possibility and of course the other thing is that you know the pedagogical skills needed to teach these issues also need to be in place and I talked about the complexities regarding that yeah so I mean there are also several other research scholars in the centre who are working in STSE education and some of them are here and there are others as well you know like I haven't mentioned Rossi and Amit were working in inclusion disability studies called Sugra ma'am to accompany me she wanted me in this area as well well a very good presentation I don't think you know it's not that no no I do not know about it excellent and I think the subject is open discussion now so we'll have few minutes of questions yes Mahajan ma'am I like your presentation very much thank you I'm slightly worried about the choice of your example that is of surrogacy and you try to say that is the age standard and CRT takes more than test tube baby I don't know I may be wrong but please correct me test tube baby is not equivalent to surrogacy yes it is not surrogacy is an extremely complex procedure and you are perhaps exposing the kids for the first time to this very complex issue you might be worried that perhaps you could have chosen more simpler examples of technology to fit in your 8 or 9 levels which you were trying to put your technologies against and one thought which came to my mind which is a burning issue in India and touches all of us is mobile tasks touches all of us health is there environmental aspect is there and it fits beautifully in your STM scheme I respond to your concern that the issue is very complex I mean when I introduced students to this particular issue I may ensure that I describe the technology very thoroughly it was done with high secondary students so I mean they understood the nuances of the issue and progressed until they made sense of the issue very thoroughly and of course I also needed to bring in social justice concerns and I felt that those issues were inherent in this particular issue I am not very sure whether this I mean the mobile our example that you gave me would have these concerns regarding inequality and I know it sounds very opportunistic but then yeah we have to say we have to answer all of these and touch everyone it is a very good presentation thank you you are good to see you hi Ashu thanks for the nice presentation I wanted to ask what kind of suggestions you could have for teacher professional development because if the teacher has to engage all these different layers to understand that all these things are important but if a science teacher takes up this kind of discussion in the classroom and she also needs to value all these different layers equally if you have any suggestions for teacher professional development I mean I had a slide when I was talking about what are the basic concerns that a teacher would be faced with if she had to deal with these issues but I don't know if I have the expertise or the knowledge to talk about what exactly should go into their training because I myself well through a process understanding these issues that I would have to perhaps make it explicit perhaps write it in the form of a diary or something so that I can also be more clear about what it means I think the way you have made this presentation itself made us all aware of this different layer that are there in the issue which we would not have been seeing if we were just reading those media reports so an analysis of an event in this manner itself is quite illuminative It is fair to say that all scientists themselves are quite aware of the practice but from scientific training what that means some sort of a knowledge is to be brought in the risk of increasing course work of the role of the students courses like history of science and the science application of society definitely deserves to be introduced whether this curriculum system would allow extra load So it's not as though that it's unknown among science professionals not saying that Hello very nice and teaching the same topic in standard A in school number 2 I am working over there and same topic this year only I taught but 3 years I am teaching the same topic particular that lesson and every time I introduce all the aspects of the idea to baby as well as Sarugasi and I am teaching in 8th standard So every time I introduce every aspects you also talk about Sarugasi I am introducing that it is not in the syllabus I make a point that you introduce all the aspects related to that topic and children are very much interested and they come forward for discussion and all So I didn't know that you were doing research on this topic but in the classroom environment I feel very much encouraged to teach personally I am a biology teacher so I teach in the classroom So I like your topic Thank you Ashwati, thank you very much I think we have to move on and I would like to request to come here and of course present to us the history of science and science education I need not to this audience introduce Saranakumar he was the center director from 1994 to 2008 and he has been exceptionally good physics teacher and of course an authority of there on science education as well it's my pleasure to unite Thank you Prasapradam I would say great honor and great it's a very nice step and I am able to participate in this seminar that has been organized in memory of the very most precious colleague of ours in Omivar center lost about six months ago having said that I must say that I am quite unprepared for this talk and basically I agree to give this talk because of my affection and respect for Chitra I thought I must speak in this seminar that has been held in the memory so please pardon me for lack of professionalism this talk is not going to be this talk is not going to be I mean this talk I have prepared for general sense and most of you will find it a repetition most of it is a repetition of what I spoke several years ago here for February national science day right so there was a lecture there I prepared this talk in connection with that it is not really a professional educational talk but more for students on the importance of history of science I think it may be a bit redundant for this audience most of these are early LBCC members and they are already convinced about it so I don't need to belabor too much start with this is the content outline I do not think I will have quite a long talk so I do not think I will have time to go through all this in detail and maybe I will leave most I should quickly finish the talk and leave the floor for discussion anyway let me begin as I said scientists and science teachers do have interest in history of science usually talk about it superficially in our classrooms but this spraying into history almost always taken as a digression from the main business of teaching that is the usual situation places around 1960s or so there was this content with the existing curriculum for a number of reasons and some of the people curriculum reformers all but some were beginning to think that HOS could be given a more important role in science education and at that time also there were some developments in philosophy of science which connected philosophy to history mainly because of work etc HOS and history of science and philosophy of science and what it implies for science education a kind of field emerged which has since been quite an active area of science education research I must it is not from 1960s the importance of history has been emphasized it has been there for a long time in fact very imminent scientists have emphasized their own for a long time the names have come to one's mind of for example Mark great physicist who wrote the book on mechanics in fact it seems to me after reading some of his the treasure that after the first world war there was a lot of interest in humanizing science and history of science was taken to be a way of humanizing it spent a lot of books in physics as well as chemistry were written around that time once again post second world war there was again renewed interest there was interest in strengthening the discipline the content part of it there was also interest in this so two parallel strands sort of emerge after the second world war plus that we should the scientist should be the discipline pressure as somebody referred and the other thing was that after the world war there was a feeling that science should be humanized and so on when I said I said all this because this sentence might give a long impression that it all started in 1960 the only thing probably what has happened is the kind of community has grown around this field and earlier they were more or less you know isolated scientists and so on educators who emphasized this field has many dimensions it's the types it's relevant to all subjects it is relevant to all levels middle school, high school probably at the primary level it may not be may not be more than some inspiring narratives but from middle school it can be done my personal feeling is that it is within the Indian context it is best done at the higher secondary level but that's my feeling it could be wrong people may not may not agree if you know it's a higher secondary curriculum it is exceedingly content oriented currently I think this orientation is given historic orientation might be a good idea at the secondary level at the higher secondary level and from 1960s a lot of work has been accumulated over this field and this handbook on this subject by Matthews is an exceedingly good reference on this subject I will give you reference at the end and this handbook I think our library doesn't has not yet acquired it's a very costly book apparently but it's a bold mind of references it's a huge I think three volume work and very nice articles by leaders in this field so if one wants to start the discussion I think this handbook is a good thing to start on as many people have emphasized probably earlier that nature of science has become an important bold science and smaller it's everybody accepted and in year 2005 also accepted but as far as HOS is concerned at least as far as I can I know it is not in any noticeable way influenced but if something has been done I would please correct me as far as I know at least at the higher secondary level I am quite sure nothing has been done, I may have been done little bit so one of the aims of this is to educate this whole field for science education research I think in India there has been no substantial research in this field HPS and in fact that huge volume has not a single article by except in a culture study or something by an independent person but the mainstream research has no article by any Indian in that it's a bit of a it's interesting many other countries China, Japan, many other countries have good programs in this field already one would not have thought China would have good programs they have still I mean HPS has always been thought to be something which is sort of humanized as science and bring scientists everybody together so it's a kind of bridge can be a bridge the divide that exists between so called content experts and science educators etc there is some potential to bridge the divide two kinds of groups can come together develop this character so I would like to reflect at this point so what point do you want to especially at the high secondary level there are content experts and you know a lot of experts professional experts in education cognitive science and science education and science they can come together and develop this high secondary science curriculum so it's never going to be accepted in India that kind of thing because it will be it's bound to be at the cost of content and it's very hard to at this level with all kinds of exams and so on sharing with the students it's going to be very hard to implement the HPS oriented curriculum at the high secondary level where I believe it's a good spoke to you know to develop that's the proper level and probably everywhere as the situation being what it is it's not an easy thing to implement but still as a as just as a it's an exercise of curriculum making which will have some effect perhaps it's a good idea to develop this curriculum so with that let me just tell you that I mean I just noted listed a few points now when I say positive points I should put in the bracket supposedly positive points I'm not claiming there is research evidence for this or anything that's not there seem to be positive points like this and I'll run through this list which is entirely pedestrian for most of you so motivation historical narratives generate interest and motivation so obviously obvious points stories of great scientists in their work can be a source of inspiration and so this does happen to many students wanting to do well in science however I mean I personally also came what exposed to a history of physics much much later in my career and when I first got exposed all over the entire it was just mind boggling and it was so exciting but it's amazing that in my whole career at university in Delhi I never had any exposure to so all content and nothing else so I mean this it just generates a lot of interest in the subject it's an obvious point de-mystification of science it de-mystifies science you see that scientists even the great scientists can go on and if you really go through the history in some detail you no longer think that the scientific enterprise is done by some other people and that you are just a spectator you feel that you can also be part of it propagating science related propagating science related values this is of course very debatable but I don't want to enter that debate I think all of you are probably better informed than I am this history of science some scientists feel can propagate science related values such as this etc but most the current philosophy of science completely I mean it debates this in fact rubbish is this point most specialists of science they don't think that scientists follow all these values so it's a debatable point take it or leave it metro-perfect is on it this certainly is true this is what is known as the nature of science sorry use of the choice for nature of science it is dynamic open-ended etc also you view science as a social endeavor that transcends boundaries of class, religion, country etc and so there is some kind of sociological dimension about science does get if not explicitly implicitly developed where you look through history of science perspectives on the nature of science the methodology of science emerges implicitly we also learn that as science progresses our ideas on the so called scientific method also change so this discipline called philosophy of science history of science is a good most natural context for bringing all the philosophical underpinnings of science yeah now this is something that that would interest scientists also understanding the content of science better this is the point that will sell HOS for science otherwise the other points may not in the curriculum makers especially in India may not get so much of respect this is an important point that historical approach to science education can actually improve and deepen students and this I know from personal experience it is indeed true and so I mean to get evidence for this is very very hard and some you will find that handbook large number of articles with done proper studies of these matters it is definitely true but if you do the historical approach seriously it does deepen your understanding of science a significant observation in this regard is that several areas there are interesting parallels between students spontaneous conceptions and their history of conceptions so this is one thing but this is not the only thing I find this is even more important critical understanding of science when you look through the conceptual trajectories of various content topics it is only then that you realize the the the importance of those historical breakthroughs and so on when you go through when you see alternative models and alternative viewpoints and then one of that succeeded then your critical understanding of the concept itself improves this is most important and I think to people who want to do science it is also important as well as people who want to be science education so both of them examples from history of science now this will take too much time to go through it since I don't have much time another 10-15 minutes right so I will just tell you I prepare these skepticism what are they called when it's when it's so it's not exactly the final form it's more for speaking to students but this kind of there you know various things come through in this so let's see this is a very well known topic I think a lot of physics education research numerous dozens scores probably hundreds of articles on this concept of force that is started in so we can call this material from both research papers as well as good books later on that and we can prepare capsule found out that such capsules will give a better impression of the motion of force and also the other related matters of nature of science so for example I start with that widely prevalent students notion is that force is always required to keep a body in motion the greater the velocity this motion is of course rooted in our experience of bodies I'll run through this because I want to say that I want to say that I want to say that how to do that this you see this insight that came in physics why do students make this mistake the obvious point is it is not an easy matter and for 2000 years people believe it to be so and it's an extremely revolutionary insight given by Gedeonita compared to speaking that rest and uniform motion are equivalent it's a huge insight and it was not it was not had by even a great man in history Aristotle so now the capsule goes through the historical physics which I don't have time to go through and I think most of you know about it Aristotle physics had this category the natural movement and the violent movement which is no longer there in physics anymore and the natural movement is a spontaneous motion towards its natural place and the this is the natural motion Aristotle concluded that the bigger strokes will fall and the bigger is violent movement for which you can roughly say he said forces proportion to pass in velocity though he did not say it in so explicit terms but we may say that this is what he meant and this exactly agrees with the spontaneous ideas of children so what happens is if you go through detail you go to the nuances of this and then you see that this force proportion to velocity syndrome is not just pure it is totally but there is hidden in it another motion most students have that motion and I have devised some I mean we have these problems and we have put this in NCRT textbook also it's a very interesting problem which immediately I mean if most students go wrong except except the ones who have been alerted on it if you broke the students then you might feel it is an Aristotelian notion that force you know the students say that the force is in the direction of the incoming ball and so on which therefore we might conclude it is an Aristotelian thinking but actually it is not so which is not Aristotelian and students are more likely to carry notions which are known as impetus theoretic motions so after Aristotle there was an impetus theory notion which held sway for a long time and this is a typical response of a student and this was exactly the idea of impetus theory during the upward journey the question is what happens to the ball when it is thrown up during the upward journey there are two forces acting on the body one due to gravity and the other force needed to throw it up the second dominates in the upward journey the upper most point the initial force has spent itself out the body that was into gravity now this is actually if you tell this to a physics teacher you will tell the student it is absurd but actually it is a very very natural response and it allows in this case I told you in the Middle Ages when impetus theory notions came to replace Aristotelian notions very interesting for Aristotle the violent moment had to have an external force the whereas for impetus theory people it was an internal force motion is due to internal and you know now when you when you go to Newtonian mechanics you see this tremendous insight it is agreeing with Aristotle the notion in that motion is due to external so Newton had to correct from the internal force to external force a huge huge conceptual transition so when you go through history then you realize but if you start the chapter of motion with Newton's second law you cannot possibly realize what a huge conceptual change change it needed and what a huge mind soaked was Newton said that it is in proportion to acceleration so something that is told in one line in a book in a class 11 book actually has so much of you know conceptual termos in history if you go through that then you realize the importance of that and in fact even Galileo was not free from certain pitis theory notions we feel Galileo discovered the law of first law and so on actually Galileo's early writings showed wrong flawed reasoning and in fact this quote is nothing but impetus theoretic motion and it is almost the same as what a student is writing to say so this is a capsule which is the importance of going through history so that just where the innovation was just where the milestone was gets clear in the process of course science gets demystified you know that the great people also made mistakes and etc etc so there are many things another capsule which again I will run through very quickly is early 30s of vision and children's ideas now this capsule I have taken almost completely from that beautiful book on physics the human adventure by brush it is a beautiful book and at least physics students and chemistry students in fact everybody should read that book because it gives you historical context to the content of physics and the concept of chemistry so this capsule actually is taken from that it is there were two theories of vision the exhibition theory and the information theory exhibition theory means eyes ends out light and information means the present theory current theory there are many ones as I won't go through them but the exhibition theory when I you know a person like Euclid says it he gave a very convincing argument for exhibition theory to see a needle you must see it directly else you cannot see it you must actively send race from the eye in the alternative information picture the needle is sending always then you should be able to see it as long as your eyes are open whether or not you are looking at it directly so the idea behind this capsule is that wrong theories also had very very convincing arguments the point that is that I think students in terms of physics chemistry students that they should not feel that whatever is the correct thing that is being taught was it was not so it was one of the alternatives and the other alternatives were also equally appealing then what happened then what was the clinching argument so when you understand that there are many attractive alternatives and then there was a clinching argument or an experiment then of course your criticality about that concept improves and you understand it better then you don't take it for granted whatever that is so that's the idea I won't go through it it also brings in multicultural this capsule brings in the multicultural all did not happen in Europe for example optics was a very strong point of Arabian science and some very beautiful arguments both on the side of extramission and an intramission were done by Arabian physicists I mean other scientists at that time but I have no time to do this very very interesting and then what happened but that's the point why did intramission succeed extramission had a number of problems but a very key step was taken by Alhazan see the earlier idea was when they said intramission they thought that the object is sending out its three dimensional copies of the just one point which now we take for granted which was a huge huge breakthrough he said no no it's not three points of a small region of radiance in our direction just this little difference and intramission succeeded so when you understand that then you understand the importance of one particular what a breakthrough it was of course once that breakthrough was there still he could not still he could not complete the picture because there will be a jumble of rays so many rays are coming from the light how do you get the object please then it was combined by Kepler with the then knowledge of lens the point is the knowledge of lens lensing as an optical property was not known to even these earlier people so Kepler's what started with Alhazan was completed by Kepler so it also gives a very nice multicultural view of how science progresses so so anyway then once again this capsule tells you how the ideas spontaneous ideas of children often match this thing and in fact in this particular topic there has been work by Jayashree Ramakrishna resident driver several decades ago so which clearly I mean children have very interesting ideas one of the interesting ideas I found was this that interestingly vision is explained differently depending on whether the object is self luminous or not this is very very natural it's a very natural idea the self luminous object information theory you see information theory will not make sense self luminous object so children spontaneously change their ideas depending on the situation a bright object I mean who would say that the eye is sending out obviously the slap is coming so children are adopting the extra mission theory whereas an object which is not self luminous eye is sending out so very very spontaneous it's very nice this work which explains how children change their theories depending on the situation spontaneous conceptions it's not that all of it will be replicated in history but a lot of it is one thing the third piece that I prepared recently was this Floddiston theory I think you had a lecture at least I see people so I won't go through it this once again this capsule tells you points first of all at least some of the great chemists refused to accept the new theory and they stuck on to their old theory so you know conservatism of scientists despite the contrary evidence etc prunian ideas and so on but this unfortunately I don't have time it almost reminds you of current physics where things are fixed if you don't get the data you put in something else in the theory somehow to fix to I mean it goes on I'm not saying it's an early thing I think goes on of course until a better theory comes up so Floddiston theory there were so many things to be explained why does the volume of air decrease when it burns and so on and the Floddiston supporters gave very very interesting they fixed the problem very interesting innovations and so of course ultimately a sort of paradigm change had happened because Lavazer looked at some other problem he was not talking about he looked at the weight problem so sometimes the resolution comes via by something entirely different so Lavazer get the weight problem and then the difficulties seem to disappear students have a similar point of view I mean if a matter of a thing burns then the natural spontaneous idea is to think that something is going to decay breakdown see burning means some decay this is spontaneous idea chemistry now modern chemistry says just the opposite burning is synthesis rather than position so once again the modern theory is against what you would naturally think chemistry so these are some of the capsits I would suggest if you have time some time later go through that and once again the final point that it's not that Lavazer this he fixed the problem but in a certain framework and his although he solved the problem of burning and oxidation etc he still was within the old framework of so you can make innovations even when some of your other frameworks it's not that everything has to be perfect just as the second law of thermodynamics was discovered in a completely wrong view point the caloric view also found out you know basic insight of second law without even properly knowing what heat is so these ideas give you a little better feeling about the content of your subject apart from of course all the other users have told you now teaching nature of science through history now I have explained to you the capsules tell you content and a few other things but it is supposed to play when I say it plays I once again must say that I don't know if there is evidence there is there are a lot of articles saying that it does improve and there has been evidence on Walton's book that it has it did improve students' perception of physics and so on and enrollment improved in physics and etc etc so there has been some evidence but I am not quite sure how much is the evidence but it really does intuitively one feels it would do so nature of science is part of philosophy of science etc and ideas about nature of science implicit in science textbooks these ideas often portray my idealistic view of how science is actually done in particular they do not take into account the more mature perspectives of philosophy of science so anyway to cut the long story what should we do instead of my telling you the or talking about the aspects of philosophy of science in a recent article in fact I have written on this topic so but the preference is not there anyway so this more recent article is a little improvement on what I have written here but let's go with this this debate I found in this tailor hand a fairly good compact summary of what we should tell about the nature of science you know the science curriculum see it's a very debatable topic and there are opinions ranging from one end to the other so obviously all those controversies and difficulties controversial points now some people have been saying that there are some issues within the classroom but perhaps it's not as practical so practical might be possible to some extent so in any case about nature of science being a philosophical topic we can't import all those philosophical complexities in school classrooms but what people are thinking that still something can be there is some irreducible consensus despite the range of opinion irreducible that can be told and that should be told that should be cultivated that should come out there and some people are saying that should be they should be so that's the sort of thing meaningful observation is not possible without the pre-existing so this is what is known as theory-ladenness of observations etc nature does not give evidence simple enough to allow one and ambiguous so for example first point about one is I don't think good content good field students know about this point are aware of this point this is a great contribution of philosophy of science to to improving the content to improving improving understanding of our own quantity I personally don't take these things each other that philosophy of science one thing and content is another is nothing like that I mean you can use it to improve the understanding of your content some scientists sometimes may have this impression but this is unnecessary ok we should do it but first let us focus on the content I think that point is somewhat I don't personally agree with that content of science itself can be improved to both philosophy of science understanding the content definitely gains by now how to put it how much you should do that's a matter in my personal opinion you should norm off the content quite substantially to allow for such things this is my personal opinion but of course one there will have to be some basic content so since I have received a body I think Swathi it said two things that you should have nature of science but also you should have you should improve the core content should also come through I think we have to strike balance of this there is no doubt about and that balance the medium to me seems like the history and philosophy of science which can strike a balance and I think it has also possibly of acceptance by the states, older scientists and policy makers so I really have a very very positive feeling about history and philosophy of science playing a very important role in improving the curriculum especially at the high security level anyway nature does not give evidence simple enough to allow one to understand the under determination of theory as they say scientific theories are not inductions but hypothesis which go imaginatively and necessarily beyond observations so this most so the great scientist have said that which is not science is not just induction from experiments scientific theories cannot be proved the falsifiably poppers falsifiability ideas scientific knowledge is not static and convergent shared training is an essential component this is school's idea shared training is in a school separately paradigm compliance is done through our graduate schools so this is saying that yeah this is the way it's done it's not that all scientists would otherwise agree it's almost smacks of idea you know they're washing students to but there's there's an element of truth in that yeah in our graduate schools you the way students are trained they have certain views about the content as well as it's philosophy scientific reasoning is not itself compelling without appeal to social, moral, spiritual and cultural sources scientists do not draw incontestable deductions to this expert judgment this point number definitely lay public especially in our country needs to be sensitized too I mean some people have very strange ideas about science at will there's a problem science will tell you what to do and so on so very naive views about science science on any complex system can never give you very clear cut reductions to scientists expert judgments sometimes science is almost three lines you know equated to just logic especially in lay public science means logic you don't understand that it's not a logical deductions expert judgment and because of which point number nine disagreement is always possible so these are some of the points I found this summary very nice I sort of took on this summary and then next how should we communicate these ideas so one strategy that I usually prepare but now my current thinking is that you know these minutes also don't really help the proper book should be there complete content because if you tell these few capsules where people find it interesting so the entire whole curriculum at high secondary level I locate or I suggest that should be sort of historicizing you know should make history of science and philosophy of science and content and the plus two level which will be very nice and so that is better than of course you should not have there now I conclude by some criticism of this there are some opinions about this these are sort of not these are not quotes this is something I have abstracted from my reading of this book especially Michael achieves this handbook and most people may be their opinion may be ideal combinations with differing coefficients of these three opinions so one opinion is that the opinion of purists in science who will sort of debunk this idea of history of science scientific knowledge especially of physical sciences is completely a storm this means we can explain the scientific's concept or theory by request to logic mathematics and the present experiment there is no need to dig up history to each conflict and raw ideas and confuse the students in fact some of the people who have this curriculum also warn you against this that you know too much of doing that may not make confuse students you have to be very judicious but purists in science says what has science to do with history and science is a historical discipline physics we should start from modern things and teach the logic and say what is the experiment evidence for it a very dehumanized version of science but what many people say can the pragmatists say even if historical approach may have some merit there is simply no time in the science world there are too many important topics to be covered and any history based is bound to be at the cost of this it's more important to teach modern rapidly growing body of knowledge than prayer dwell on old and outdated ideas all one can do is this is the approach of ncrt class 11 books and perhaps this is not really a joke as inspired at all this is all right you put some photographs of scientists etc and give this this fragment is my solution to this problem is as I told you that much of the content of present plus through in India can be shifted to undergraduate level because in any case at the undergraduate level we do redo those things a little better so it's a bit of a and especially in our country the syllabus is much more than elsewhere I mean especially in USA the syllabus is much more so it's very content heavy it can be reduced and it can be because much of all that you do in plaster is done a little more mathematically in physics a little more in detail at the undergraduate level what is undergraduate physics curriculum plus two curriculum expanded that's all it is so why not why not shift in some of the things at the undergraduate level and this because a large number of students this might attract students to science at the plus two level and so on and so I think this is important in history of science I have a very different criticism they say actually you are spoiling the history of science by teaching such things your history in the service of science is a prejudiced history because what happens history is very rich and you are just picking up the antecedents of what turned out to be the correct idea and this is not history this is bad history they say I don't think there is a strong community strong I think the voice the first voice is not strong despite the criticism of this learning and teaching can improve we go beyond mere tokenism in regard history of science as an important resource for science for the purposes of cultivating interest in science anticipating and addressing students so I am summarizing whatever I said developing critical understanding of the subject and developing mature perspectives on the nature of science I will just quote one author of course these benefits are it is a very difficult English sentence I won't read it the simplified English sentence is the problem in simple words at VS approach can be used provided to sensibly choose topics that are amenable to this approach but as I told you my more recent thinking is that this is not so in fact you should somehow properly integrated all topic on a kind of modern version of Alten and Alten and Christian although a great book still is two verbose for Indian students it will be two verbose and so a little more compact book and that book is only for physics and bit of chemistry but you should have physics, chemistry, biobox of that kind so the NCRT authorities here I suggest to them humbly that they should go in for a revision of the curriculum based on this at VS thank you these are the references this is that on Tuesdays I handbook my given the CR this reference 6 is very very important it's full of very nice articles it is a whole ton brush, physics the human adventure thank you very much professor Lukumar I think Domiya Dhanigal of Thailand will have a few questions actually throughout the talk he kept saying higher secondary and I can see that's the material you're covering but to my experience I can say that it's actually especially if you look at the kind of introductory concepts that go into middle school and maybe even upper primary that it's really history of science as a way of teaching science is extremely useful and I'm coming at it from this concept of change framework where if you are actually making a transition from the concept you cover misconceptions I'm picking up on this one and because of that I don't really see this tension at least at this early schooling in the middle school level of content versus history of science I don't see that at all as it is a way of teaching science which is hugely successful one of the references you quoted that also talks about psychologically why this is important I just wanted to comment on that I agree saying that you see how you actually the lower level tension is much less because you are not obliged to go through much it is when you go into little more thorough detail of history of science that is where the tension what will happen to the content if you go up to this so at the higher secondary level and the UG level it's well not impossible because I don't think anybody would agree to replace the standard subject so I'm being practical I can always say something that you should be done but is it at all practical the UG curriculum which entirely is historical it should be a great idea but there is just too much of content but at the higher secondary level in any case there is a feeling in our country that it's too much to students of burden there was very used to be some a little out of touch a bit but several years ago we used to be there was a moment in India I felt to reduce the content at the higher secondary level and so on so at the higher secondary level my common intuition tells me it has some trance of success at the secondary level but you are not really able to you know the real real uses of history of science is where the deeper content level is also assimilated better through history that comes a little later and we have to so I'm opposed to the feeling that you know it will be at the expense of content and that is best demonstrated at the higher secondary level to begin with so it's a very practical project I think people should understand I would also like to just sort of one of course I agree with what Tulsna was saying that I think right from the beginning even when we are looking even in environment to studies and we tried some of those things even when we were writing this that it must really be integrated and incorporated to wait for that stage but my second sort of question is that when you are it's very crucial that you are saying that we should really rethink of how history is being thought and I agree with what you are saying but I say that this still doesn't look at the social forces of what was really happening in detail even in terms of the contributions that were being made and we are still looking at only the different kinds of contested theories but not so much in detail in terms of the social conditions under which those were happening for instance, Brunowski's treatment is different from what many others might treat because he is really looking at the social pressures on the scientists and the scientists were located within a time, within a society and that's how it air-gunned so I think that added to that also its crucial that's an excellent idea that is the kind of thing I had meant see what what I have done is some capsules you know written in two or three days what you are saying is absolutely important and only then would the nature of science come out properly its connection through society and so on the importance of social cultural norms which which enable science to grow and all that that way that can come only if not just this what I have done is just content and alternative theories regarding content but it should be in the social social cultural belief there should be there should be description of that so it needs a lot more work I hope you would sort of initiate that and I'd be so very happy to work on that that project my favourite is Homiwa Centre all these younger people should do it because it has content expertise as well as such a good educational and cognitive science expertise philosophy of expertise I think there is more than I'm sure in Delhi there may be there are some very standing people in Delhi but institution why there are many this institution is best so that just in addition to that I was just wondering whether to bring in of course the social industry of science into the teaching of science but also the sociology of science because we get the sort of shy away from shy away from the sociology of science thinking that you know its very critical of science but I think at the school level and at the community school level high secondary level its very important because we don't need sociology as a discipline in the schools but I think it would be important also for us to start engaging in the sociology of science along with the history of science I was just wondering what you think I thought that was the point which I think there was a point basically I agree I mean the social aspect you know instead of seeing these the moment you say sociology of science philosophy of science then these are sort of words that frighten some people especially science scientists they frighten a little terror by such so better to say that where should say the sociocultural norms that enable science to grow and they you know moment you have these high funding subjects then they scientist response is well told and they take another make another topic in high secondary curriculum called sociology and includes sociology of science that is response and being very practical I totally agree with you in an ideal unrestricted environment I will say it is definitely true but we have the operating and practical environment where we have to do things which are at least which have some chance of accepting that is why we have to try the dynamics because if you start in sociology of science and then you know various and even go to radical sociologies say this this kind of thing where will you stop when they mention that the book will have to take a neutral they take some central centrist position in these matters because any radical position will not be accepted Thank you for Sir Will Kumar and I think a good agenda for the young scientists of HBCSE I think I am going to skip much of my summing up but I think the day was very very interesting and very instructive to me and I was very fortunate to chair the sessions we began with Samitha Rampal presentation she spoke I mean she touched on many issues but they are all connected with science education for all science and math education for all and science and math education for life and in that sense I think she really referred to the advertising of STM education she also then referred to certain enabling developments especially the Right to Education Act the NCF National Political Framework and then continuous and comprehensive evaluation and then I went on to talk about her personal involvement in HSTP the Ho-Sentabad Science Act then the NCRT primary mathematics and EVS programs and then of course she discussed the challenges in front of us next to that was Professor Desha Ramdas and Professor Subramanand's presentation and they really talked about putting together practice and theory and especially Subramanand added the identity element to it to say briefly he said that and rather than the generalized pedagogy which is normally taken to be independent of the subject one would really have a subject-based pedagogy next to what we had the presentation by Swati Swati Mehrotra and she talked about her own work which was a case of game-based learning in Singapore classrooms it was a digital game that she talked about and of course she had the point to make that innovations in generally are not taken up by teaching community very easily but of course there could be variety of reasons as we can learn from the discussion we had then Swati talking about science, ecology, society and environment education she reviewed the current things and then talked about her own research especially in relation to what students think about commercial servicing and how she analyzed that to nine different levels and I think it was quite an instructive presentation and I think it is very she also suggested what could be done to incorporate such issues in the presentation lastly it was Prasaran Kumar who as usual in his inimitable style talked about history of science and its relevance to teaching science in fact he has been advocating that this has to be incorporated in our curricula and made a very very positive case for it and he gave very very interesting examples the Aristotelian concept of force how we see things and so on and of course he presented key ideas about the nature of science so on and on I think it was a very interesting day we had also lot of participation from the flow and I think that was very interesting because I think it really added to the discussion and I wish more such seminars organized more often and I must compliment Hormibaba Centre for Science Education for arranging this seminar and Dr Rajagopal to take for having to initiate you in this respect so thank you thank you all of you for being part of this important seminar Dr Subramanian has to make some announcements thank you so much Prasar Pradham I think so excellent sessions with excellent discussion and nice signing up couple of small announcements this is volume which has come out feminist and science and the volume 2 which is going to be released soon contains a contribution by Chitra and Subrat what I just shared it to you Swab is one of the last publications as far as I know and this second volume is coming up and the first volume is already available more details of it outside on the board I think this Anupas mode and that is the title of the article which will come out in the second popular percussion popular percussion is the problem sorry it will be distributed available through thank you second thing is that during the lunch break we had a small sapling planting session and these were Tulsi plants I believe of 9 different varieties and that is very nice it is to give a a small medicinal patch patch of medicinal plants that we are planning and this is very much I think after Chitra's heart and so thank you for the initiative Raju Dr. Raj Gopal I took the initiative and thank you very much for helping us then I invite you to have tea and biscuits outside and return quickly we will have the release function starting at 5.15 followed by 5.15