Vijnana Vahini — A science education program of the tribal community

Yesterday our Prime Minister spoke about prioritising science education in the tribal areas and making science education more accessible by offering it in the mother tongue. (Source - The Hindu)

Personally, I can’t agree more and have been a witness to a silent revolution in science education at the school education level in the tribal and rural areas of the Mysuru district. Here are some notes -

H D Kote & Science Education in the 2000s

The Heggadadevanna Kote (H D Kote) taluk has a population of over 2.6 lakhs with 90.2% of people living in rural areas and only 9.8% living in urban areas. The taluk has a sizeable population (est. 18,000) of forest-based tribal (indigenous) groups namely Jenu Kuruba, Kadu Kuruba, Yarava, Soliga and Paniya. The tribal settlements are called haadis and the 127 haadis of the taluk are sparsely located along the fringes of the Bandipur and Nagarahole National Parks.

The taluk is one of the most backward taluks of the state of Karnataka and continues to perform poorly as per the Human Development Index (HDI) and other development indicators.

In 2010, about 2800 students from over 30 schools (Govt and Private) took the SSLC (10th std) board exam in H D Kote, however, only 114 students (4%) joined the pre-university course in a science stream. Two years later, only 49 of these students completed the course i.e., 1.75% of the students who took the 10th std exam were completing the pre-university education.

Considering the drop-outs during school education and after senior secondary education, the taluk produced a negligible number of science graduates and the taluk itself offered hardly any jobs!

Vijnana Vahini: Science activities of SVYM — A photo-journey

Started with an aim of promoting scientific temperament among the community, the program initially just focused on the students in 20 Government High Schools of the H D Kote taluk. Using hands-on sessions on curricular science as an opportunity to demonstrate a “good” science classroom along with providing access to equipment which was otherwise unaffordable for a Govt school. Each of the sessions would repeatedly emphasise the students asking questions.

Vijnana Vahini — 1st Mobile Science Lab

The mobile science lab was also complemented by the science exploratory park setup at Saragur. The park was the first of its kind at the block level in the state of Karnataka and was supported by the Karnataka Science & Technology Promotion Society (KSTePS, Govt of Karnataka). Annually, the science park attracts over 3000 students from the local areas. The learnings from this pilot have been replicated in 23 other mini-science resource centres across the state.

Teachers in the schools slowly took over the hands-on sessions of the mobile science labs. Though the Vijnana Vahini was just a goods carrier, the vehicle brought excitement into the classrooms and increased attendance in schools (if the session was announced in advance).

Teachers taking over the sessions in schools. A crucial first step

The program focus shifted from the students towards the teachers after the early years. Along with organising formal capacity-building programs, the program helped a community of practice among them. Using WhatsApp (long before it was cool or the default communication tool), the group of teachers would meet virtually on weekends to discuss and clarify their conceptual doubts with some assistance from a moderator. British Council and Central Square Foundation recognised this as one of the most innovative uses of technology in education. (Page 22 of the Report)

The camaraderie among the teachers was crucial for the success of the teachers’ group. Teachers here cook for an evening dinner at one of the schools.

After the initial success of the teacher capacity-building programs, Neocortex -an SMS-based Q&A program was launched. Teachers were encouraged to send their questions/conceptual doubts based on curricular science and the answers were sent back to the teachers within a day over SMS or a phone call. This program was called off within a month as we just couldn’t keep up with the inflow of questions from across the state and the promise of responding within 24 hours was not feasible. This was our most enlightening failure as this highlighted the scale of the need.

The capacity-building programs were also expanded to include teacher trainees from the local areas with an aim of creating a group of motivated teachers willing to work in resource-limited settings. At this point, the program also focused on highlighting that science education was not about learning curricular science but about learning the method of science → science education was subject agnostic and even a language teacher could conduct an exploratory, activity-based learning class.

A teacher trainee from the local community — an arts stream student, popular for his activity-based classes.

Hands-on science activities were introduced in the 5th — 7th std from the 2nd phase of the program.

The community, especially the SDMC, always remained an important stakeholder and enabler in expanding the program beyond curricular science. With community participation, issues like achieving learning outcomes in schools, follow-up of students out of school, and teacher shortages could be handled.

In GHS Mullur, the SDMC facilitated a sky watch session that went on late into the night by arranging dinner and safe transport for all the students.

Science awareness/science education programs should make use of every possible avenue to reach the community. Observation days like National Science Day, National Mathematics Day, Pi Day, etc. were opportunities (excuses) to have more public outreach programs and bring the parents into the schools and also promote a competitive spirit among the students.

Students participating in an inter-school competition

Lekkada Katte — a 180-episode radio serial drama was produced and broadcast on community radio. This program was launched with the aim to engage students, in schools without sufficient teachers, in learning activities on mathematics (5th — 7th std) through a family drama. All the episodes were scripted and recorded by amateur artists from the community. This series also included local art forms like Hari Kathe to tell the story of Indian mathematicians.

A Hari Kathe recorded at the Janadhwani — Community Radio Station of SVYM

A science drama by the Kalasuruchi team. SVYM works with like-minded partners to take science to the public through multiple means including drama, podcasts, e-magazines, etc.

The Vijnana Vahini program continues to conduct diverse activities along with innovations from time to time to respond to the changing needs of the community. During the pandemic, the program conducted “Community Learning Clubs” in over 100 villages in the state along with a series of webinars titled Guru Manthan.

Cumulatively, the activities under the Vijnana Vahini have contributed to increasing access and enrollment into the science streams at the pre-university level. Presently, nearly 30% of the students now pursue science and 74% of these students complete their senior secondary education — a significant improvement from 2010. This is in addition to the increase in students pursuing vocational courses. We now have more students participating in the NTSE, NMMS, PRMO, VVM, etc. and also progressing to higher education with top honours.

While there is no disagreement about the perceivable improvement over the years and there are hundreds of individual stories of change, we haven’t been able to quantify the number of teachers we have been able to reach directly and indirectly, their motivation levels and the improvement in the learning levels of students in their respective schools.

I am hopeful that we aren’t very far from the day when our students would do well in PISA or be able to represent India in the International Olympiads. I only wish we had olympiads that valued local and traditional knowledge systems and we would have had no competition!

In hindsight

Starting from a straightforward mobile lab, the program had organically expanded both in a variety of activities and the audience.

A few things which we got right are -

1. Start early! Students already built a perception that science was tough by the time they entered High School (8th std). An exploratory science program for students in 5th — 7th std went a long way in reducing this perception and we actually found that it was the adults’ opinion that the students were carrying. Good language learning at an early age also positively influences science education in High school and later.
2. Teachers were the heart of the matter and start early again! Every year, there was a new batch of students in each grade and we had to repeat all the activities all over again. Sustainability wasn’t even imaginable and funding wasn’t perennial. Teachers were the only constant factor and in the ‘remote’ H D Kote, being a teacher was an unpleasant first posting that would end in 4 years. Research across the world has indicated that the formative years of the teaching profession decide how the teacher shall perform for the rest of his/her career. A strong peer group during these years will go on to create great teachers and technology is an enabler. (Also read the McKinsey report on The Best Schooling Systems of the World)
3. Labs should be barrier-free and equipment-free. Visualise a lab — we think of granite-topped tables, washbasins, equipment arranged in powder-coated / wooden cupboards, whizzing exhaust fans, separate rooms for physics-chemistry-biology-mathematics-computer etc. The most used labs had no furniture or locked cupboards, no seating arrangement, and no manuals but provided access to simple exploratory tools like magnifying glasses, test tubes, safe & easily available chemicals from the kitchen, some wood and lots of old magazines. Ultimately, understanding the method of science is more important than achieving the result in a neatly written lab record. Setting up such a lab would again depend on a motivated teacher!
4. Career counselling should be for the family, not the student only. Continuity of education depended on multiple non—academic parameters like gender, access, financial implications and role models in the community. Information about the diversity of career options along with locally relevant information about hostels, course options, transportation and scholarships was key in ensuring continuity of education. Working with the Education Dept to start new course options while identifying the critical number of students to make it viable also went a long way in achieving the desired results.

The program has concurrently worked on building awareness (need generation), increasing access (addressing barriers) and then hand-holding support to realise their potential and aspirations. Built on the 4 pillars of community need, academic research, field experiments & experience and Swami Vivekananda’s call to build scientific temperament, SVYM’s Vijnana Vahini program of H D Kote has grown beyond creating STEM professionals and has slowly snowballed into a catalyst for community development.

Today, the program has grown beyond the geographical boundaries of the H D Kote & Saragur taluks and is reaching over 40,000 students across the state of Karnataka and a network of over 2,500 science & maths passionate teachers — a customisable and replicable model for the scale and diversity of India.

A short video on the Science Education Initiatives of SVYM

Community Learning Clubs run by SVYM

Photos Courtesy — SVYM

Thank you — All the stakeholders in this project over the years — students, teachers, donors and most importantly the SVYM team.

It is a humbling learning experience to start from believing that I can “engineer a solution to the problem” to understanding the multiple facets and participating in “exploring a solution to the challenge”.