epiSTEME 10 is jointly organized by HBCSE along with the Mathematics Teachers’ Association (India)
with financial assistance from The Mathematics Teachers’ Association (India), The Association of Chemistry Teachers (ACT), India, The Association of Teachers in Biological Sciences (ATBS) and The Indian Association of Physics Teachers (IAPT).
Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University and Leiden University
Adjunct Professor, TIFR, IIT Bombay and University of Hyderabad
Prof. Bhargava is recognized internationally as one of the foremost mathematicians of our times and one of the leading experts in number theory, a branch of mathematics in which he has made several pioneering breakthroughs. His research includes foundational contributions to arithmetic statistics and to the theory of quadratic and higher degree forms, number fields, class groups, and ranks of elliptic curves.
Bhargava is the recipient of numerous awards for his mathematical contributions, including the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize and the Clay Research Award in 2005, the AMS Cole Prize in Number Theory in 2008, the Fermat Prize and the Infosys Prize in 2012, the Fields Medal in 2014 and the Padma Bhushan in 2015. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2017) as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society (2019).
Bhargava is also well-known for his contributions to the public popularization of mathematics, and held the first Distinguished Chair for the Public Dissemination of Mathematics at the National Museum of Mathematics in New York in 2018. He is the co-chairperson of the National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) that is tasked with developing school syllabi for Classes 3 to 12 in line with India's National Education Policy 2020.
We discuss recent work in making the teaching and learning of science and mathematics more hands-on, integrated, interdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary, by making use of the multitude of beautiful patterns that exist all around us and in our daily lives. We'll discuss specific examples from mathematics and beyond mathematics.
Professor, Department of Chemistry Education
University of Potsdam
Amitabh Banerji grew up in Berlin. He studied chemistry and computer science for teaching at grammar schools and completed his legal clerkship at the Herder-Gymnasium in Berlin Charlottenburg. From 2009 to 2012 he received his doctorate in the working group of Prof. Michael Tausch at the University of Wuppertal on the experimental-didactic indexing of organic light-emitting diodes. He then worked for two years as a lecturer and specialist coordinator at the Junior University of Wuppertal. In 2014 he joined as an Assistant Professor for chemistry education at the University of Cologne. Since 2019, Banerji has been a University Professor in Chemistry Education at the University of Potsdam where his research focuses on Curriculum Innovation & Research-Based-Implementation and Digital Tools in Science Education in Chemistry.
He has won several awards including the "Highly Commended" Project (OLEDs) at the European Science On Stage Festival, Debrecen (Hungary) and Brandenburger Innovationspreis Cluster Kunststoffe & Chemie 2021 awarded by the Minister of Commerce and Energy in Brandenburg for the project boXperiment.
Highlights of German Chemistry education Research on Curriculum Innovation
We have been working for more than 10 years on the implementation of future technologies into the curriculums of high-schools and universities. In 2017, we organised together with the TIFR and HBCSE a three-day hand-on workshop on Organic Electronics (Image 1). This was realized with our fully equipped material-kit, which allows you to build OLED and OPV devices without any clean-room facilities or expensive vacuum-techniques (Banerji, 2017). For more information on our material-kit “boxperiment OPE”, please visit our website: www.boxperiment.de [2]. In my experimental-lecture on the epiSTEME10-conference, I will present two new topics from our current research program.
Image 1: Three-day hand-on workshop on Organic Electronics, 2017
Low-cost hydrogen technologies
In the first part of my talk, I will introduce you to our new boxperiment Hydrogen [3]. In this unique approach we use small TicTac-boxes, which we functionalize as low-cost cells for water-electrolysis and hydrogen fuel-cells (Meggyes & Banerji, 2023; Banerji-Lab Website).
Teaching computer science in chemistry classes
In the second part of my talk, I will focus on a titration-robot, which can automatically conduct an acid-base-titration. For this, we use the LEGO Spike system, which allows to introduce computer science in chemistry classes without the need of textual programming.
Distinguished Professor of Physics
University of Pittsburgh
Chandralekha Singh is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Founding Director of the Discipline-based Science Education Research Center (dB-SERC) at the University of Pittsburgh. She obtained her Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics from the University of California Santa Barbara and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, before joining the University of Pittsburgh. She has been conducting research in physics education for more than two decades. She co-led the US team to the International Conference on Women in Physics in Birmingham UK in 2017. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Association of Physics Teacher. More information about her can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/professorsinghswebpage/
I will discuss, using my research in physics education, how research can be used as a guide to develop curricula and pedagogies to improve student understanding of introductory and advanced concepts as well as for making physics learning environments equitable and inclusive. For example, we are developing research-based learning tools such as tutorials and tools for peer instruction to improve student understanding of quantum mechanics. I will also describe our research studies that provide guidelines for how to enhance physics by making it inclusive. For example, I will discuss how a field-tested short intervention was implemented at the beginning of a physics course and how it improved the performance of traditionally underrepresented students in introductory physics classes compared to the comparison group.
Director, National Centre for Biological Sciences
Professor of Biology, IISER Pune
Honorary Professor, Ashoka University
Shashi did his undergraduate and post-graduate studies at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, India and Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, UK.
Shashi specializes in Genetics, Molecular Biology, Evolutionary biology, and cancer biology. He is known for his studies on how various organs are positioned precise locations in our body and the precise control mechanisms by which our organs grow to specific size. An outcome of his work has implications to understand cancer, which is a disease caused by the uncontrolled growth of body cells. For the past 7 years, he is working very closely with clinicians on ways to improve outcomes of cancer treatment.
Shashi is a SSB Prize Awardee, an elected fellow all three Science Academies of India, an elected member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). Prof Shashidhara has served in the past as Vice-President of Indian National Science Academy (INSA) and Secretary General of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS). During 2019-2023, he served as President of IUBS.
Shashi has also been involved in the promotion of science and science education. He has facilitated training of more than 10,000 school and undergraduate teachers in India on inquiry-based teaching and learning. At IUBS, he is closely involved in policy research on global change and zoonosis. Shashi conceived and initiated the TROPICSU project of IUBS, which is an international project on Climate Change Education.
It is vital that both the current and future generations are better equipped to address the problems of rapid urbanization, degradation of natural habitats and impact of climate change on food, nutrition, health and environment. Research-integrated science education aimed at deeper understanding of living systems across scales and its innovative applications is key to provide sustainable solutions for those problems.
The New Education Policy (NEP) of India envisions transforming India into an equitable and vibrant knowledge society, by providing high quality education to all. The NEP sets itself a high goal to prepare our youth to meet the diverse national and global challenges of the present and the future. But students (and their parents) want education that helps them to acquire skills and thereby get lucrative jobs. It is unethical to force students to learn an imposed curriculum only aimed to achieve certain national interests. The balance act requires adopting appropriate pedagogical methods aimed at helping students to (i) develop analytical and critical thinking abilities to generate and verify knowledge/solution to a problem, (ii) innovation skills to connect knowledge to solve real-life problems and (iii) self-learning ability to continually improve their knowledge and acquire necessary skills to address newer problems of their time and/or better and sustainable solutions to perennial problems.
Learning is more effective when students are challenged to identify the cause and effect of a problem that they can relate to their life. For example, climate change is both a problem to be addressed and a problem that can be adopted for more effective teaching. As any biological phenomenon manifests diversely depending on locations/contexts or impact of climate change varies from place to place, innovative educational resources should be locally rooted in their context, but globally relevant for their science.
With this background, I will discuss a few ideas on how, what and how much to teach biology.
My talk emphasises:
Teaching Professor
IIT Gandhinagar
Manish Jain spends most of his time investigating the science behind simple (and complex) toys and is passionate about sharing his insights and excitement with people. He is an Associate Teaching Professor at IIT Gandhinagar, and heads CCL whose goal is to bring back the gleam in the eyes of students and children. Before founding CCL, Manish worked at IUCAA’s Science Centre in Pune, with Padma Shri Arvind Gupta. In his previous avatar, he spent 19 years in the area of chip design at Synopsys (Bangalore & Mountain View), serving as a Director of R&D. Manish has a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur (1993) and has also finished a few courses at Stanford University.
The biggest challenge we face today is student engagement. To address this, the Center for Creative Learning (CCL) at IIT Gandhinagar has dedicated the last eight years to transforming STEM education into a hands-on, engaging experience. We've created over 700 innovative models, games, and activities, reaching more than 5 lakh teachers across India, 6 lakh subscribers on Youtube/Instagram, 10 crore views and inspiring students to return to classrooms.
In this session, we'll explore the fascinating world of toys, machines, and games that reveal complex principles underlying everyday phenomena. We'll delve into the Enigma Machine, the stability of bicycles, and the 75 uniform polyhedra, uncovering the beauty and mystery in each. We'll also highlight notable moments in sports—like Neeraj Chopra's gold-winning javelin throw, PT Usha's near-bronze finish, and Jadeja's precise catch—demonstrating the interplay of mathematics and physics in our lives. Join us as we share our journey, showcase unique learning tools, and discuss the impact of experiential education on fostering curiosity and joy in learning.
Department of Biology
University of Alabama at Birmingham
Dr. Sami Raut is an associate professor of biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). In the past, she has served as an Interim Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs at the Graduate School and Global Affairs and currently serves as a director of joint degree program – Genetics and Genomics with the School of Medicine and College of Arts and Sciences. She holds a PhD in Environmental Toxicology from UAB. She has taught majors and non-majors’ students for nearly 15 years. After embracing realms of scientific teaching, she immersed herself in several biology education research projects. This led to mentoring of nearly 40 undergraduate students and several master’s students at UAB. She has won several awards for her teaching and mentoring endeavors. Her primary area of research includes enhancing science literacy in societal topics of interest including climate change, sustainability, evolution, and vaccine hesitancy.
The future of biology education hinges on the integration of innovative teaching strategies, inquiry-based learning, and interdisciplinary STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) approaches. Key developments and milestones in biology education, highlights the shift from traditional lecture-based from traditional lecture-based instruction to more student-centered approaches such as active learning, course-based undergraduate research, experiential learning and the integration of digital tools. Several studies have demonstrated that these changes lead to improvements in student engagement, retention, and conceptual understanding. Additionally, interdisciplinary approaches, particularly the integration of biology with other STEM fields, have become more prominent, reflecting the interconnected nature of modern scientific challenges. In the light of these advancements, it is therefore, imperative to understand the role of professional development for educators, institutional curricular reforms, and the increasing use of data-driven strategies to meet the changing needs of the student population. Despite these advancements, challenges such as resource disparities, institutional barriers and the need for equitable access to quality education persist. This talk, therefore, focusses on ideas and strategies to help advance and contribute to the growing field of biology education by leveraging on India’s National Education Policy, 2020.
Dean HBCSE Faculty & National Coordinator, NIUS
Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education - TIFR
Prof. Savita Ladage, has done her Masters in Analytical chemistry and Ph. D. in Chemistry Education. Her primary research interests are chemistry lab education at undergraduate (UG) level and conceptual pitfalls in chemistry. She is involved with various Chemistry education research and developmental activities, and programmes associated with the same. She closely interacts with chemistry teachers, especially those teaching at UG level, to orient them about research based innovative teaching-learning practices. Prof. Savita Ladage has chemistry/chemistry education related publications in terms of papers in peer reviewed national and international journals, pedagogical articles, book chapters and books. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Journal of Chemical Education (JCE), an ACS publication. She has also served as Co-opted member of International Steering Chemistry(ISC) for International Chemistry Olympiads (IChOs) on several occasions.
At HBCSE, she has been associated with two major key impact programmes for more than two decades, namely, the Indian National Chemistry Olympiad (INChO) programme and National Initiative on Undergraduate Science (NIUS)programme in Chemistry. The former leads to selection of Indian teams for the IChOs whereas the latter conducts chemistry/chemistry education activities for motivated UG students and teachers teaching chemistry at UG level across India respectively.
For her contributions to the field of Chemistry education, Prof. Savita Ladage was awarded the Nyholm Prize for Education by Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), UK, in the year 2023.
Since its inception, the field of Chemistry Education Research (CER) has been addressing issues at the intersection of teaching and learning of chemistry at various levels of education. With primary aim to understand and improve chemistry learning, the work done in the CER field provides valuable insights to teachers, curriculum planners and policy makers engaged with chemistry education.
In Indian context, for chemistry teachers entering into the teaching profession at undergraduate (UG) level, it is not mandatory to have educational degrees like Bachelor or Master of Education. Thus, even though they are content experts, their exposure to pedagogical dimension and related areas is often limited. For innovation in classroom practices, assessment methods and development of instructional material, orientation of chemistry teachers teaching at UG level to research and development work in CER is required and will be useful. Thus, the Capacity Building Programmes (CBP) for chemistry teachers teaching at UG level needs to integrate dimensions such as teaching-learning challenges associated with chemistry as a discipline, key ideas associated with domains like chemistry lab education, problem solving and conceptual understanding in chemistry. It is important to critically reflect about such dimensions that can be included for CBP at UG level, as this is relatively less explored area in Indian context.
In the recent past, due to national efforts like Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching (PMMMNMTT), there is relatively more sensitisation about the pedagogical dimension among chemistry teacher community teaching at UG level. Various higher education institutions (e.g. IISERs) are venturing into CBP for chemistry teachers teaching at UG level. Additionally, the well-established global bodies associated with chemistry education like Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) and American Chemical Society (ACS) are venturing in CBP and STEM education scenario in India. In addition to institutions like IISERs, IITs, academic autonomy is now also being granted to several state colleges affiliated to university systems. Thus, currently, the faculty members from diverse institutions have more freedom w.r.t. designing curricular content, its implementation and innovating the classroom assessment practices. The chemistry teacher community teaching at UG level in India today is more open and receptive towards innovations related to teaching-learning processes and associated aspects. Additionally, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasises learner–centric approaches at UG level.
In this context, chemistry group at HBCSE has been conducting CBP with ideas derived from CER studies. The current talk, while reflecting on discipline specific challenges associated with chemistry, will also present our learnings based on the CBP experiences. These learnings give perspectives that can be useful for meaningful and required changes in existing curricula, assessment methods and teaching-learning practices in Indian context.
Professor in Physics with specialization in PER, Head of PER
Head of the Astronomy and Fundamental Physics Unit
Uppsala University
Sweden
Urban Eriksson is a full professor at Uppsala University in Sweden. Uppsala University is the largest and oldest university in Sweden. He works at the department of Physics and Astronomy where he leads the research division on physics and astronomy education research. He is also deputy Head of department and Head och the Astronomy and fundamental physics unit. Prof. Eriksson is also instigator and chair of the biannual Astronomy Education Conferences (astroeducon.org) and instigator and Editor for the international Astronomy Education Journal (astroedjournal.org). He has been engaged in the IAU Commission C1 as vice President and leader for the working group for Astronomy Education Research and Methods.
Prof. Eriksson has a background in physics and astronomy but also in teacher education and has spent +30 years in educating students in all teachers programs about physics and astronomy. During this period he turned to physics and astronomy education research (PAER) and got his PhD in 2014. After a Postdoc at Lund University he developed his research and formed and led a PAER group at Lund University, Sweden, as associate professor, before getting the present position as full professor at Uppsala University, where he leads the research by the division, with colleagues, postdocs and PhD students. The division's four main focus areas are 1) Developing the theoretical framework for teaching and learning called Social Semiotics, 2) Investigating upper-division physics students reasoning and problem solving skills, 3) Embodiment in physics and astronomy education and, 4) AI in teaching and learning in physics and astronomy.
Discipline-based education research (DBER) takes the theories and methodologies of education research and applies them in the context of a specific discipline, in this example, astronomy. Research in the teaching and learning of astronomy has an extensive history; astronomy education research (AER), as its own separately defined field, is relatively new, stemming from the early to mid-1990s, as a separate track from physics education research (PER). By using a mixed-methods approach to textual analysis considering 2085 English language publications in the field, this paper paints a picture of the landscape of AER over the timespan of a century from 1898 to 2022. This paper finds that AER authors started regularly publishing around 1970 and took off significantly in the 1990s. AER, in its early era, was largely a USA endeavour dominated by ASTRO101. This has changed over time and in recent years, the USA has dropped below 50% of the worldwide AER publication production. It is found that “Celestial Motion”, “Instrumentation/Techniques”, and “Planetary Sciences (not Exoplanets)” are the most common content foci while a significant lack of local galactic and extragalactic education research is identified. Also, AER has been heavily focused on “Content Knowledge”, “Affective”, and “Engagement”. It is found that most articles tend to be general reporting of approaches or results rather than full empirical research, while there is very little theoretical or historical research in AER yet.
This overview provides a resource to researchers, educators, and other interested stakeholders allowing efficient ascertainment of previous research. This supports both researchers, allowing them to develop research questions at the cutting edge of the field, as well as practitioners, to inform their pragmatic approach based on latest research findings. I also present a set of recommendations and future outlook of the field of Astronomy Education Research.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721 US
virtual
Vicente Talanquer is a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the UA. His research focuses on undergraduate chemistry education. He has published over 150 peer reviewed and invited papers where he has explored the conceptual difficulties that students face when learning chemistry and the effect of different teaching strategies on student understanding. He has also investigated prospective science teachers’ reasoning and practices. Dr. Talanquer has applied the results of his educational research to the development of innovative curricula for undergraduate chemistry education.
He has received various awards during his academic career, including the James Flack Norris Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Teaching of Chemistry by American Chemical Society, and the Educational Research Award by the Council of Scientific Society Presidents. In 2015, he was named Arizona Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation. In 2019, Dr. Talanquer received the Education Research Award from the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, and he has recently been awarded the 2021 ACS Award for Achievement in Research for the Teaching & Learning of Chemistry.
In recent years, there have been numerous calls to reform science courses to address the needs and interests of diverse students and the societies in which they live. However, progress within educational institutions worldwide has been slow, and the impact of these reform efforts has often been limited. These calls highlight the need to reconceptualize learning objectives, instructional strategies, and assessment practices to ensure students develop the knowledge, higher-order thinking skills, attitudes, and values necessary to understand and responsibly address global challenges. To achieve these ambitious educational goals, we must examine the challenges students face in developing and applying the knowledge and reasoning skills we value. The findings from such investigations can provide valuable insights into the curricular, instructional, and assessment practices that best promote student learning. In this presentation, I will summarize findings from our research on student reasoning in chemistry, which highlight challenges in conceptualizing and integrating central concepts and ideas in chemistry and applying them to analyze relevant problems. Additionally, I will discuss evidence-based educational strategies we have developed and implemented to enhance student understanding.