Dr Kasturirangan: Make science education multi-disciplinary
We need to overcome current mindset, says former ISRO chief.
BENGALURU: In the backdrop of the national education policy taking its final shape, the panel responsible for the final draft, chaired by Dr K. Kasturirangan, took part in a colloquium on integrated science education at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Monday.
Dr Kasturirangan, chairman of national education policy, asserted that the strong inadequacy in the current approach of education needs to be addressed with priority. “Bringing in multi-disciplinarity in the field of science education is turning essential at present,” he said.
Giving an insight into the discussions the panel recently had at the city, he said that the importance of introducing value education in the curriculum aiming to make a responsible citizenry was discussed and looked into.
Stressing on including inter-disciplinarity into the educational systems, the former ISRO chairman said, “We need to overcome the current mindset of the system, which follows a set academic hierarchy.”
He also referred to the conflicting thoughts academicians from the fields of pure sciences and social sciences possess while considering the other. He added that the panel would keep up the expectations of the government by offering a pragmatic approach while drafting the new education policy.
The event, organised by the Centre for Contemporary Studies (CCS), also saw the release of ‘Breaking the Silo: Integrated Science Education in India’, a collection of proposals of different methods and novel approaches to the sphere of science education in India articulated by 19 renowned academics from the realm of science education.
IISc Director Prof Anurag Kumar urged the policy makers to look carefully into the configuration that takes place in universities, higher education institutions and different silos of education giving importance to the development of science in the context of applying the knowledge widely, avoiding them being misquoted.
Presenting the attempts of CCS at IISc to bridge science and humanities, Prof Raghavendra Gadagkar, chairman of CCS said, “Our experiment to utilize the opportunities of using humanities to create the context in which students learn science turned out to be successful. This novel method in turn also helped professors like me to approach science in a different manner with a total transformation in the style of teaching,” he said.