Working for Change: Reflections on the Issue of Sustainability and Social Change

Abstract

Reading George Glasson’s paper, I was transported back to the days when I used to work in a science education reform effort in India. This effort, known as the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program (HSTP), developed, sustained, and disseminated an innovative inquiry-oriented, place-based framework of science teaching at the middle-school level. It was a collaborative effort that brought people on the ground – the teachers, students, and activists – on a common platform with educators and scientists in universities and research centers – quite like the effort so well-documented by George Glasson. And just like what George Glasson and his intrepid colleagues have initiated in Malawi, HSTP too started small, though in 16 schools and not one, and not recently but way back in 1972. By 2002, the program had grown to cover about 1000 middle schools in Hoshangabad, and 14 other districts of the central state of Madhya Pradesh in India. However, as often happens with reform efforts in education, the program was unceremoniously shut down in 2002, and the schools that had been successfully teaching science through an inquiry and place-based curriculum for decades quietly went back to teaching ­science the traditional way. Now when I look back at this unique effort in the history of education in India, I find that HSTP was largely successful in developing an alternative way to teach and learn science. However, even after a long run of 30 years, the program’s accomplishments in terms of its ability to sustain itself and influence the dominant paradigm in science education were comparatively ­somewhat muted.