CLIx Participation in epiSTEME Conference (05.01.18 – 08.01.18)
The epiSTEME series of biennial conferences is a series of international conferences to review research on Science, Technology and Mathematics Education. The seventh conference in the epiSTEME series took place from 5 to 8 January 2018 at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mumbai. The theme of this year’s conference was discipline-based education research (DBER) at the undergraduate level.
Indian and foreign experts gave plenary talks and reviewed the active areas related to science, technology and mathematics (STEM) education. Deborah Ball (USA) gave a talk on ‘Teaching Mathematics in Ways That Disrupt Patterns of Inequity Predominant in Classrooms’, John Bencze (Canada) on ‘Altruistic Uses of Socioscientific Capital: A Pro-ecojustice Pedagogy’, Arvind Kumar (India) on ‘Some Observations on Discipline-Based Educational Research in Science, with Particular Reference to India’ and David R. Sokoloff (USA) on ‘Interactive Lecture Demonstrations: An Effective Active Learning Strategy for Lecture’.
The papers submitted to this conference were blind reviewed. Out of the total 87 submissions, 32 papers were selected for oral presentations and 22 for poster presentation. The proceedings of the conference are available here: https://episteme7.hbcse.tifr.res.in/proceedings/. The participants to epiSTEME-7 come from nine countries in addition to India. These include Germany, Iran, Mauritius, Nepal, Rwanda, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden and the US.
Six members of CLIx participated in the conference. Two gave oral presentations: ‘Teaching Fractions with Meaning: Moving Beyond the Part-whole Interpretation’ (Ruchi S. Kumar) and ‘Additive Model of Language Policy and Hybridity: Glimpses from Numeracy Learning in Early Grades in a South African Province’ (Arindam Bose co-authored by Nosisi N. Feza). Other were involved in poster presentation: ‘Zone of Proximal Development in the Era of Connected Computers’ (Amit Dhakulkar, Rafikh Shaikh and Nagarjuna G) and ‘Astronomy Education: A Case for Blended Learning’ (Sheetal Chopde and Shamin Padalkar). CLIx also showcased its material during one of the sessions. Several conference participants enjoyed the interactive digital activities prepared by CLIx and interactions with the participants was fruitful in providing feedback to CLIx.
Shamin Padalkar, Assistant Professor, Science Team, CLIx
