CH-1 INTRODUCTION

The Educational Innovations Bank (EI Bank), implemented by the Ravi J Matthai Centre for

Educational Innovation, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (RJMCEI-IIMA) is a

repository for effective educational innovations developed and implemented by elementary

school teachers working in the public system. Teachers in the public system continue to play

an important role in ensuring education for the marginalized sections of our society. In spite

of the increase in the share of private sector enrolment, the precariously-placed socio-

economic strata will continue to depend on this system in the foreseeable future. However,

the quality and other educational outcomes of the public system have often been criticized for

their less than desirable levels. This project assumes that top-down reform is necessary but

not sufficient: learning from those who have performed in spite of constraints that are

common to many teachers, valorising and supplementing their work and converting this work

into a resource, will expose teachers to a solution-augmenting approach to local educational

reform, and motivate them.

 

The EI Bank is designed to act as a hub for a decentralized peer-driven professional

development network and as a tool for developing a culture of innovation in the public

system. It is a grassroots innovations resource for teachers, administrators and policy makers

which cancomplement top-down reform initiatives .Though the project was being

implemented on a small scale for some time, an award from HP Sustainability & Social

Innovation and the Education Innovation Fund for India 2012, and the India Council for

Integral Education, helped scale up the project over the two year period 2013-2015.

Innovations are really necessary for the betterment of the education sector as it gives better

ways of teaching and learning which can help increase the efficiency of the teaching-learning

process and thereby improve the result.Innovations bring new opportunities for both-teacher

and student. 

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CHAPTER 2 ABOUT THE ORGANISATION

The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM Ahmedabad or IIM-A) is

a public business school located in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. It is the second Indian

Institute of Management (IIM) to be established in India and is consistently ranked as one of

the best business schools in India and the Asia-Pacific region.

Established in 1961, the institute offers Post Graduate Diploma Programme in Management

and Agri-Business Management, a Doctoral (Fellowship) Programme and a number of

Executive Training Programmes. Its programs are accredited by EQUIS.

The project -“Educational Innovations Bank: Decentralized Professional Development &

Quality Enhancement” amongst many is being implemented in Ravi J. Matthai Centre for

Education Innovation (RJMCEI).

The Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation (RJMCEI) is established in memory

of Professor Ravi J. Matthai (1927-1984), the first full-time Director of the Indian Institute of

Management, Ahmedabad. From an initial focus on institution building and higher education,

the mandate of the RJMCEI has gradually expanded to include primary education, literacy

and secondary education. The common thread running through the Centre’s various activities

is a focus on innovations and innovative approaches to countering problems in education.

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CHAPTER 3 THE PROJECT

3.1 SCOPE OF THE PROJECT

The scope of the project is the teaching innovation of state run primary schools in

Gujarat.

3.2 OBJECTIVE OF THE PROJECT

The objective of the project is to identify teachers who have experimented with

positive results, sharing their work, building a platform around such innovations for

developing other teachers and provide decentralized training to teachers.

To verify & document such innovations with its implementation status & outcome

3.3 ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT

To identify innovative teachers,a multi-pronged approach was followed.At the

District Innovation Education Training Centre (DIET) level,various writing

workshops were organized where teachers identified by the DIETs,Block Resource

Centres'(BRC) and Cluster Resource Centres’(CRC) were invited. In these

workshops,the teachers were guided to write about innovations implemented by

them,in a pre-defined format.

Further,follow-up field visits were conducted for innovations identified through the

writing workshop.Extensive field visits were also done to scout for innovations not

covered through the writing workshop.

A process for submitting innovations online was also put into place and modules on

how to do so were made available to DIETs,BRCs,CRCs as well as the teachers.

An Online Discussion Forum was started to encourage peer-based learning amongst

teachers.On this Forum,cases of teachers were put up for discussion to add value to

the existing innovation as well as to help teachers think about ways to implement

these innovations in their schools.

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The following are the activities carried out by me:-

1) Data entry of records

2) Translation of these records from Gujarati to English

3) Interpreting the data of the records and writing the data in brief in own language

4) Categorizing the data into different groups and coding them

5) Compiling the data consisting of study material, photos and videos of the

innovation sent by the teacher

6) Ranking innovations of a particular category

7) Taking appointment from teachers through phone-calls

8) Field visitdetails as per follow:-

Panchmahal-1(Vinod P. Trivedi, Devalia Varg Primary School)

Amreli-1(Rishita P. Ukani,Shri Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidhyalaya)

Jamnagar-2(Pankaj A. Parmar, Shri Vadvala Primary School

(Mungra Arabi,Mota Itava Taluka School)

Somnath-2 (Tejas R. Mehta, Shri Khirdhar Pay Cente Primary School)

Porbandar-3 (Jalpa Gadhecha, Shri Odadhar Pay Centre School)

(Vishalpuri P. Gauswami, Shri Rajpur primary School)

(Dilpa J. Joshi,Shri Narsang Tekri Primary School)

Surendrangar-4 (Ashwin B. Patel, Shri Bharada Pay Centre School)

(Dhanesh D. Sheth, Shri Virendragadh Primary School)

(Bharat A. Patel, Shri Kanya School)

(Umesh D. Trivedi, Shri Vivekananda Vidhyamandir Primary School)

9) While in field visit, interacting with the teachers and verifying the innovation done

by them Eg. Reason for innovation, Innovation description, Innovation Evaluation,

Innovation Result, Innovation’s current position, etc., taking pictures of the

innovation, doing video-recording of the innovation and of the interview given by the

teacher and also undertaking an activity to check whether the innovation is really in

practice and is fulfilling the purpose of doing the innovation

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3.4 ANALYSIS WITH INDIVIDUAL REFLECTIONS

The teachers need to be made aware of the need to make innovation, executing it

properly and sharing it with other teachers so as to spread the message about the

necessity to bring change in the teaching methods.

The teachers who want to do something better for the education, schools, students and

other teachers should be supported by the senior authorities of the sector and should

contribute by all the means possible.

There are teachers, principals and the school officials of some schools in the state who

are aware of the importance of quality education and have taken responsibility for

improving the same while on the other hand there are school officials of some schools

who are not even aware of how the school functions.

There are teachers in the state who sacrifice their personal lives in order to give more

time for the students and their study Eg. There are teachers who have not committed

themselves to marriage so as to completely dedicate their time towards making

teaching and learning process effective.

There is politics involved in decision-making process at different levels of primary

education and the teachers and top-level authorities of the system should unite and

find a way for solving this issue.

In most of the cases, the parents of the students themselves are not aware of the

importance of education that the children are least encouraged from their home to

concentrate on studies while on the other hand in some of the cases, there are students

who have to compromise on their studies only because of lack of financial assistance.

The teachers teaching in schools that are located in villages need the support of

villagers and people like Sarpanch, CRC coordinator, etc. as it becomes easy for them

then to go ahead with their work without difficulties created by some people because

of silly misunderstandings.

All the teachers working in a school should work collectively and stand for each other

in difficult times rather than bringing their personal interests in way of their duty

towards the society as it sometimes becomes the reason behind failure of an initiative

taken by some innovative teachers.

Out of the 12 teachers I met, 9 teachers said that their innovation is used by other

teachers while the rest of the 3 said that it only them who have used their innovation.

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CHAPTER 4 LEARNING OF THE INTERNSHIP

1) Innovations

Learnt that the innovations done by the teachers in one or other corner of the world

need to be recognized and the teachers should be rewarded for the same and that

nothing goes useless if one tries to put effort for the betterment of others and that

recognizing the innovation and making it available to other teachers can inspire,

encourage and motivate them to take the initiative and try to make education as

efficient as possible even if it is on a smaller scale.

Observed that there are many teachers of primary level in the state who are putting

extra efforts to make the learning easy for the students, trying to learn new things that

are being used in the world, through technology and social media and are applying the

same in one way or another in making learning and understanding easy for the

students.

I also met teachers who focus on issues like tobacco consumption, cigarette smoking,

etc. and take initiative to guide students in the right direction and preventing them

from doing things that can prove harmful for them.

Interacted with teachers who not only try to improve the academic performance of

the students in the school but also strive for developing the personality of students by

making them capable of doing all the things that a student should Eg. Public speaking,

active participation in group discussions,etc.

2) Teachers-Innovators’ Experiences

Also observed that there are teachers who are putting extra efforts from their side be it

giving more time in preparing teaching material, staying at school longer for teaching

students or doing expenses from their own pocket, trying to find some innovative

ideas or create some for the betterment of the students and that students also

appreciate the ideas of the teacher and work towards it with full dedication.

Not to forget that there are teachers who are trying to work for betterment of students

amidst politics and are making sure that the students are least affected by the issues

that arise at the administration and management level,

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Moreover I came across teachers who view issues like girls’ education seriously and

strive to improve the situation by any means possible even if it takes to put their

career in jeopardy.

3) Institutional Issues

I got to know that there are many teachers in the state who have a sense of

commitment and dedication towards their job, are determined to justify their role in

the education system by constantly putting in hard work to make study easy for the

students as much as possible but don’t get a chance to go further in improving the

impact of the innovation because of the reason that they are replaced by other teachers

and are required to teach in other classes of school. Also, because of this other

students don’t get to benefit from the innovation done by previous teacher while there

are also issues like politics in primary-level education system which hamper the

growth and development of students, school and primary-level education system in

various ways.

4) Societal Responses & Issues

I came to know one harsh reality that sometimes it takes too much of patience and

tolerance even if one wants to do something good for the society because of many

reasons like unawareness amongst people, unwillingness of people to understand

something and cooperate, etc. Eg. In one of the field visits, I got to know that one

teacher took an initiative to encourage girls to come to school and began convincing

their parents but some parents didn’t take it in the right way and protested against the

initiative taken by the teacher.

5) Knowledge Management

During the internship, I learnt that when verifying any innovation in the field, one

needs to have an idea of undertaking some activities related to innovation that can

show us whether the innovation is really in use, whether the innovation helps the

students and whether the innovation can help other teachers of the state in improving

the quality of education in the schools, also one needs to be constantly alert in

analysing the response of the teacher, their approach towards the innovation, their

body language and their way of interacting with the students.7

I also realized that it is very important to maintain documents of anything that might

be needed for reference later on and that one can only verify something if the other

party claims to have done that thing.

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ANNEXURE

PHOTOGRAPHS

Photo of students in school

Girl students in school explaining an innovative science experiment

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Photo of an innovation done in school

Photo of an innovation undertaken by teacher

Banner of one of the schools

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Interaction with teachers in the field visit

Students sitting in prayer session

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Token of welcome given by school authorities

Addressing the students

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Meeting with teacher and parents

Group photo with school authorities, teachers, parents and students in the school

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REFERENCES

Webliography:-

http://www.teachersastransformers.org/

http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/

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THANK YOU

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