INSPIRING FUTURE GENERATIONS
Prof L. Prasad

Acting as “Leaders,” every teacher should proactively develop a positive vision of the future that is comprehensive and detailed, as well as challenging and inspiring. This should be shared with their students, and inform their everyday learning and thinking.
Using Joel Barker’s video “The Power of Vision,” the session encouraged teachers to examine and redefine their roles in the larger context of becoming active participants themselves in the dynamic process of education.

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“It is just as well, my pitcher is shattered-
I’m free of all that hauling water!
The burden on my head is gone”
(- - - - Kabir)

Re-shaping anything, including the form or structure of schooling, the content or substance of the curriculum and re-defining purpose or direction of learning is never easy, always contentious and needs the conscious act of generating freedom by the deliberate breaking of forms and patterns. Using the taunting lyrics of the Sufi poet Kabir as starting points this paper argued that educators with a serious and long term interest in re-shaping learning in India and elsewhere must seriously engage with the slow crises created by the metahistories of change. Located within her own practice as a scholar and teacher and using specific examples drawn from the work of the Project Vision Design and Research Collective, Bangalore, Geetha argued for a pedagogy of learning in the middle school- one that blends primary, analytical and designerly ways of knowing thereby creating sustainable, synchronistic and synergistic learning communities in the middle years classrooms.
This paper was the fourth in a series of papers published by her on the theme of Crafting Change

Plenary - The Humanities: Relevance in Perpetuity
Ramachandra Guha and Sathish Jayarajan

Ramachandra Guha and Sathish Jayarajan had discussed the state of humanities and social science teaching and learning at the higher secondary levels and beyond. Their conversation were situated in the larger context of social science and humanities education in India and the need to make these disciplines more central to teaching and learning. Ram drew on his experience as a historian, biographer and visiting faculty member in universities worldwide. Sathish drew on his experience as a social sciences teacher, college advisor and principal. The conversation envisaged active participation from the audience.

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The Evolving School - Where Context and Pedagogy Meet.
Dr Shekhar Sheshadri

The kind of learning experiences that schools should provide, can create future citizens who are better equipped to deal with ambiguities, who have a receptive, compassionate and productive approach to life. There is a case here for the evolving school to conceptualize itself as a large collaborative community where classrooms are spaces inside which vibrant debates take place on all kinds of topics and issues and contexts. There is, equally, a case for exploring pedagogies other than the traditional didactic ones. This presentation had covered the background, basis, contexts and methodologies for such life skills centered work in schools.