HOSHANGABAD SCIENCE TEACHING PROGRAMME
PERSPECTIVE
An effective intervention in the way science is taught in our schools has been perceived as an essential step towards achieving a society more capable of creatively developing and absorbing technology as well as giving a more scientific foundation to our cultural, political and economic fabric. The directive perspective of the HSTP has been formulated to overcome the gap between these expectations and the reality in our schools.
To remould school science education to fulfil universally accepted national goals and educational objectives. HSTP has attempted to base science education on the principles of ‘learning by discovery’, ‘learning through activity’ and ‘learning from the environment’ in contrast to the prevailing text-book centred ‘learning by rote’ method. The processes of science needs to be emphasized if we have to fulfil the constitutional goal of promoting scientific temper and make the child a confident self-learner for the rest of his or her life. In addition science curriculum must relate closely to science and technology experiences of everyday life.
Perceiving Innovation as an integrated whole. An effective innovation has to take into account all the factors that affect the teaching process in the class room. Thus the total package is concerned not only with curricular innovation but also with teacher training, kit for doing experiments, the examination system, school administration, extra curricular inputs, etc. In particular, examination reform has been seen as a crucial factor which really influences how the curriculum is transacted in the classroom.
Innovating in the Mainstream System. Rather than trying it out with a few well-equipped elite schools, the HSTP model has been evolved in Government schools in rural and semi-urban areas in close collaboration with and involvement of the district and state level education department.
Empowering the Teachers. The HSTP innovation has actively involved the teachers themselves in evolving the innovative package. Empowerment of the teachers academically, administratively and intellectually is an essential requisite for effective reforms at the classroom level. Technological aids can at best support the crucial role of the teacher.
Administrative decentralisation. Utilising and equipping the block-level higher secondary school to administratively and academically coordinate the programme has effectively decentralised the field level implementation of the programme. A limitation has been the inability to decentralise financial powers, a problem that needs to be resolved by policy decisions at the higher level.
Participation of Institutions of Higher Education and Research. HSTP group strongly believes that the effort to improve our school education system needs the involvement and commitment of the best scientists, researchers and academicians of our country.
Role of Non-Governmental Voluntary Groups. HSTP is an ideal example of close and complementary working of the State Education Department and Non-Governmental Voluntary groups. With the district level expansion of the programme, the day to day administrative and academic responsibilities were taken over by the State Education Department. Eklavya now has a coordinating role in further development of HSTP in collaboration with the SCERT and the State Education Department.
THE INNOVATIVE PACKAGE
The HSTP implementation structure is laid out in the accompanying organogram. The package consists of :

(1) The ‘Bal Vaigyanik’ books, one book each for classes 6, 7 and 8 :
- Based on the discovery principle, the books are in a combined format of work-cum-textbooks.
- the layout design of the book has been specially designed to make it attractive, and easy to read and follow for the children;
- the books have been prepared after intensive field testing incorporating feed-back from the teachers and children. Presently, the task of revising the books is in progress;
- the books are being published by the M.P. Text Book Corporation since 1978.
(2) Teacher training. Each teacher undergoes three trainings, each of three week duration for classes 6, 7 and 8 each. The training consists of :
- doing all the experiments and activities of the Bal Vaigyanik, and through analysis and discussion reaching conclusions and conceptual understanding expected;
- discussions about the educational and academic understandings, underpinnings of the programme and the administrative structure of the programme;
- training in evaluation methods and making new questions for open-book examinations.
(3) Resource Group. The quality, motivation and commitment of the resource group has been a crucial factor in the achievements of the HSTP. The resource group has played a key role in :
- development and improvement of Bal Vaigyanik books and teachers’ guides;
- training of teachers and resource teachers;
- conducting follow-up and monthly meetings;
- preparing test papers - both written and practical for annual evaluations;
- preparing evaluation guidelines;
- answering questions asked by children through letters to ‘Sawaliram’;
- conducting trainings, exposure workshops, etc. in other states.
The resource group consists of about 200 trained and motivated school teachers, backed and supported by a group of scientists and academicians from leading centres of research and education like Delhi University, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institute of Immunology, and Colleges and Universities of Madhya Pradesh.
(4) Kit. The kit designed for this programme is an activity kit for children to do their own experiments in groups of four. At present rates, a kit for an average school with 40 children in each class costs about Rs. 4,000. On an average about 20% of the kit needs to be replaced every year to make up the loss of consumable and breakable items. Thus Rs. 800 replacement cost needs to be provided annually which works to less than one rupee per child per month. In addition to the supplied kit, the children gather a lot of material from their environment to be used in various experiments.
(5) Monthly meetings and follow-up. In order to assist the teacher in the school situation and to encourage peer group interaction, a system of monthly meetings and follow-up school visits has been worked out. In the monthly meeting they share their experiences, discuss their problems and are also given a refresher or enrichment lesson by resource teachers. The resource teachers from all the sangam kendras come together with the Eklavya team on a fixed day for a preparation meeting to plan and prepare for that month’s monthly meeting.
Follow-up visits to schools are organised by assigning a school each to resource teachers to visit and guide the teacher in the school situation itself.
(6) Examination and evaluation. An evaluation system designed according to the objectives of the programme consists of :
- a written as well as a practical examination;
- the written exam is an open-book exam;
- this exam is designed to test analytical skills and de-emphasise learning by rote.
(7) Administrative structure. The decentralised administrative structure of the programme and its functioning has been codified in an administrative manual of the programme issued by the state education department. Main features of the structure are :
- block-level coordination through a designated higher secondary school (sangam kendra) with its Principal as in-charge, assisted by a senior teacher and a specially appointed assistant teacher;
- district-level coordination through a specially created cell, Vigyan Ikai, in the office of the District Education Officers;
- State-level monitoring and coordination through a representative Sanchalan Samiti under the chairmanship of the Commissioner of Public Instructions.
(8) Extra curricular inputs. To strengthen curricular achievement and to sustain children and teachers’ enthusiasm, a number of extra-curricular inputs have been inbuilt into the programme :
- creation of Sawaliram, a fictitious character. Each book has a letter from Sawaliram addressed to the children asking them to ask questions and much more. An arrangement has been made to reply to their letters. These letters are a rich source of feedback from the children and Provide a way of communicating with them.
- publishing of ‘Chakmak’, a monthly magazine for children, as well as small booklets containing interesting activities to do;
- publishing magazine ‘Hoshangabad Vigyan’ and journal of resource material ‘Sandarbh’ for teachers;
- encouraging teachers and children to participate in various science popularisation activities like jathas, bal melas, etc.

AREAS OF ACTION AND NEW THRUSTS
The diagram on the next page lays out the major action areas of HSTP :
(a) Implementation and consolidation of ongoing programme. Now in its twenty-seventh year, the HSTP has a comprehensive base of operation involving more than 500 middle schools spread over 15 districts of Madhya Pradesh covering over 2,000 teachers and annually 1,00,000 children working under the aegis of the Madhya Pradesh State Department of Education and the SCERT.
(b) Mainstreaming of the programme. We have been working at the idea of large scale adoption of the programme, eventually upto the state-level. Exercises have been carried out to plan the logistics and the financial implications of such a programme. Implementation of such a large expansion would be possible only with decision at the political level and active backing of the education bureaucracy. The Eklavya group hopes to feed into any such process to innovate science education over the entire state.
(c) Spreading the Innovative Spirit - our role as a Resource Agency. The People’s Science Movement has proved to be an effective means for spreading the ideas and sharing the experiences of the HSTP. We have been responding to invitations to send our resource persons in meetings and workshops of teachers and people’s science activists in various states from time to time. Contingents of participants from various states are a regular feature of our training programmes. Interaction with other groups continues to be important to our attempt for idea-level expansion of the HSTP.
We have committed ourselves to providing close and extensive collaboration to groups attempting to develop innovative programmes in their states. The prime examples are the Adhyaita Kendri (Learner Centred) Science Teaching Programme in Gujarat and the Upper Primary Programme of the Lok Jumbish Parishad in Rajasthan. The objective primarily is to mobilise and establish an independent resource group in those states which gradually takes on the task of developing innovations on its own. This has been detailed out in the proposal.
(d) Academic innovations in the curriculum material. Continuous innovation is an accepted norm in the HSTP group. The central concerns of the present round of innovations are twofold:
- the accumulated feedback since the last revision more than five years ago indicates that curricular material needs to be presented in a still more attractive and child friendly form. Another area of concern is the efficacy of conceptual development and the ability to articulate it directly or through use in problem solving tasks.
- A common criticism of the HSTP curriculum has been that while duly emphasising the ‘process’ aspect of science, the ‘product’ aspect or content is underplayed. Acknowledging this criticism, an attempt is being made to develop materials presenting new areas of content through innovative methods combining activity with narration that emphasises understanding rather than rote learning.
The material prepared is first being tried with teachers and then with children at various levels to establish its effectiveness and appropriateness. In order to arrive at a larger consensus on the issues, we propose to involve persons concerned with curricula design and development at various levels in this process through a series of workshops. We have sought collaboration with creative artists and designers for layout design and illustrations.
(e) Moving towards High School - Classes IX and X. With the implementation of 10+2 system, the years of general education were specified upto Class X instead of class VIII. Ever since we have been under pressure to extend the HSTP approach to cover High School. Recently we have initiated some tentative steps in this direction by organising interactions with high school teachers to understand their problems with the present curricula, etc. We are also preparing a critique of the present curricula and curricula materials. These will be shared with a larger group to evolve a framework for intervention at this level.
(f) Comprehensive Evaluative Studies and Documentation. The nature and expanse of the HSTP offer an ideal situation for a comprehensive comparative evaluation of the academic, administrative and social impact of such an innovative effort. While some piecemeal evaluations have been attempted from time to time, the expressed need for a comprehensive effort and documentation remains unfulfilled. Such an evaluation requires a complex exercise of selection and development of evaluation tools and their standardisation before the actual evaluation and analysis. We are looking for a suitable group or agency which can take the major responsibility of organising such an exercise in collaboration. This would have to be undertaken as a separate project with independent funding.


MAINSTREAMING OF AN INNOVATION - THE HSTP
Reforming the administrative and academic back-up systems is a prerequisite for mainstreaming an educational innovation. Within this framework the main objective of the proposal was to overcome bottlenecks in the large scale implementation of the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme. This necessitated trying out and developing systems continuously to respond to the academic and administrative feedback from the field area.
The central question for review is - is the programme more likely to be adopted by the mainstream today than it was three years ago? We feel the answer is a definitive yes. This is so because at least on two major fronts, kit procurement and monthly meetings, we are on stronger grounds now. Similarly on other administrative fronts major breakthroughs have been made, though some fine tuning remains to be done.
Yet we understand that increased fine tuning is not all that is necessary for mainstreaming an innovation. The mechanism of implementing the programme in a larger area has yet to be fully understood.
A series of brainstorming sessions in the group, analysing the experiences till now have led to a more precise articulation of our understanding of ‘mainstreaming’. Its meaning and its content is gradually acquiring a multi-dimensional richness. Major points of the evolving perspective for the future are :
• It should not be assumed that mainstreaming would mean government-supported implementation of the programme on an increasingly large scale, eventually covering the entire state. Firstly, the mainstream tends to react adversely to radical departures from the prevailing thought and norms, generating a sharp backlash. There seems to be a psychology of reacting to what is perceived as ‘imposed upon’ programmes. Secondly, development and consolidation of new systems and norms as well as human resource is often a slow and painstaking task which cannot be rushed beyond a point. Undeniably, since these elements are crucial to consolidation of an innovation, undue haste can only result in a large scale failure adding to the prevailing cynicism. Thus we shall continue to find ways to shape government programmes and cooperate with them.
• But mainstreaming need not be interpreted only as a bureaucratically ordered large scale expansion of a programme. Though because of its centralised nature, our education system does not have the confidence to let teachers or school authorities deviate from the prescribed syllabus and curricula; yet we keep coming across teachers, headmasters or even parents wanting something different for the children. The possibility of ‘innovating by choice’ needs to be established as an acceptable norm in the system. Similarly we need to explore other possible avenues for spreading the programme.
• The question of larger acceptability of an innovation is closely linked to proving it to be a better alternative to the existing system. The questions of comparative evaluation methods and impact analysis need to be developed further in order to settle this debate. Then only will a larger acceptability in the system be possible.
Thus while we shall give priority to concretising the changed perspectives on mainstreaming, the task of consolidating the continuing elements will remain important. The review has outlined important challenges in this regard.
• Kit supply mechanism to schools through private shops and Eklavya outlet has led to a vast improvement in the situation. However limitations of demand seem to be a constraint in making the shops viable. This constraint needs to be addressed in the next five years and we have planned some initiatives to popularise individual purchase and use of kit.
• Through the preparatory monthly meetings of resource teachers, their confidence level is going up. This confidence needs to be directed to improve follow-up visits to schools which continues to remain a weak area. However, we need to provide much more effort, leadership and organisational skills to accomplish this than we have been able to provide till now.
• In the field of content enrichment training of resource teachers, the review brought forth that the teachers needed to maintain continuity in their process of learning science. Efforts will be made to meet this need both through our journal, Sandarbh and through publication of other supplementary materials.
• We also need to continuously communicate through the local media. This was done earlier only when an adverse campaign was mounted against us.

WORK PLAN
While in the first phase we largely concentrated on consolidation of the present programme, in the second phase we shall concentrate on two crucial dimensions which would acquire a concrete form over the next two years. These are ‘Social validation of HSTP approach’ and ‘Expansion and Dissemination’ through committed schools. The detailed proposal of specific work areas follows.
I. CONSOLIDATION OF THE PRESENT PROGRAMME:
i. Kit material supply and replenishment management:
Many initiatives have been undertaken in the last three years to create a sustainable system for convenient and affordable access to science kit material. They have now reached a crucial stage and it is important now to aim for the consolidation of our efforts in this direction. Thus strengthening of work done would be the main focus in the immediate future.
Ensuring easy replenishment of science kit material in schools has been a critical objective in our work plans. A major breakthrough in this direction was made in 1996 when the state govt. allowed schools to collect fifty paise per month from every student as science fee. This made available with schools a somewhat adequate local fund for purchase of kit material. The next logical step was to create a sustainable kit material supply and replenishment management system that would make available to schools quality kit material at reasonable prices. For the last three years a considerable effort went into creation of such a system. This effort was unique in a way as an attempt was being made to create a sustainable market where none existed before. As happens in every new innovation our efforts have yielded mixed results.
Things we have been able to do :
1. Disseminate in schools information about the government order about science fee, prevalent market rates and availability of kit items.
2. Identify a network of shops to stock and sell science kit material in small towns of the programme area.
3. Getting the state government to allocate and disburse funds for purchase of kit fornew schools.
Taking off from the work accomplished so far, efforts in the next three years would entail consolidation of the progress already made in the following directions :
Strengthening the network of shops selling science kit: Owing to persistent efforts over the last few years a healthy demand now exists for kit material among the school community. Hence, the work would now be primarily focused at strengthening the supply side of the science kit market. Our experience over the last few years shows that this would entail straightening a few systemic bottlenecks that bedevil the nascent marketing system. The bottlenecks and the steps needed to rectify them are as follows:
(i) The present volumes of sale of kit material in almost all shops are not enough to sustain shopkeepers’ interest. Thus steps need to be taken to increase the volume of sales. This can only be done by enlarging the demand to students as well. If the information about kit item sale outlets is available to students at large, we feel that there would certainly be a demand for items like magnets, hand-lenses, magnetic compass etc.
Towards this we plan to assemble and develop kits for individual purchase at reasonable prices. As mentioned in the four month work plan we are at present in the process of developing a low cost prototype science kit box which would enable a student to perform all the experiments of class VI to VIII at home. We also plan to develop smaller kit boxes devoted to illustrating a particular science concept.
The idea is to develop these prototypes and then convince commercial scientific kit manufacturers to manufacture them in bulk volumes. A few science kit manufacturers, like Low Cost Teaching Aids, Third Wave Instruments, already anufacture and market small single concept-focused science kits. So, parallel attempts would also be made to persuade them to manufacture and supply kit boxes specially tailored for science students of the programme area. We feel that by spreading awareness among parents and astute marketing a reasonable sized market can be created for such kit boxes in the programme area. This would help increase the volume of sales of kit material. Besides, such efforts would encourage parents to help their wards set up small labs at home. Till now parents feel at a loss about the ways in which they can help their children in the science subjects at the middle school level. This will not only enable parents to help their wards understand science but also help students pursue their queries at their leisure.
(ii) A related nagging problem that has beleaguered our efforts is the instability in our marketing network. We have found that after responding enthusiastically in the beginning to our marketing proposition, many shopkeepers after a few months completely lose interest in selling kit material. Of course, steps to increase volume of sales would do much to remedy the situation, but a few other measures are also, in our opinion, needed to stabilize the incipient network. These are : (a) Better and a more careful selection of shopkeepers. Since profits would remain a bit on the lower side till size of the market crosses a critical threshold, shopkeepers selected must be those who have the capacity and inclination to view it as a long term option. Besides, market availability of kit material being a critical input to the quality of science education, we need to approach shopkeepers to the extent possible who are ready to look beyond monetary aspects of this enterprise and are keen to appreciate and support the cause of ensuring good education in schools. (b) Our experience has shown that such an enterprise needs monitoring and marketing support from the seeding agency for far longer duration than hitherto assumed. Thus, continual and more intensive time and person-power support to the venture from Eklavya is planned in the coming years.
Utilization of Science fees in non-HSTP schools: The science fee is being collected from students in all schools of Madhya Pradesh for the last three years. However, the money collected is seldom used to purchase kits for experiments in classrooms in the non-HSTP schools. The main reason for this is inadequate orientation and training of teachers because of which experiments are rarely resorted to in classrooms as a pedagogical tool. Also, as there are no guidelines from the state government, most of the schools would be hesitant in using the collection. Hence an effort should be made so that the education department issues a flexible guideline for use of the science fees fund to all the middle schools of the state.
Storing the kit: Maintenance of the kit is a major problem in schools. This is primarily because the kit has more than one hundred items and it is quite a task to store them properly in an ordinary almirah. Hence there is a suggestion that Eklavya should get an almirah designed for this purpose keeping two constraints in view:
- It should not be very expensive.
- The design should be such that the regular production facilities at places like Indore and Harda should be able to make them without too much effort.
This design can then be circulated amongst all the programme schools, so that wherever the funds are available and there is a desire to maintain the kit material properly, they should have an option.
Enabling schools of Tribal Welfare Department to collect the science fee: Even though three years have elapsed since the state government issued the science fee order considerable confusion exists among the schools of Tribal Welfare Department regarding this collection. Some tribal welfare department schools have started collecting the science fee with the understanding that orders issued by school education department pertaining to academic matters also apply to them. However, there are still a number of tribal welfare department schools which refrain from doing so on account of a government circular which prohibits collection of any fee from children from tribal areas. In normal course, such a confusion would have been sorted out by now. Our efforts have revealed that the resolution of this impasse entails important policy level ramifications, and hence the delay. We will continue to work towards resolution of this problem to the extent possible by pursuing the matter with the relevant authorities.
Equipment library and lab development : Kutuhal, an organisation based in Maharashtra tried out a different kind of library. Instead of issuing books they issued science equipment used for experimentation in the schools. The initial deposit to become a member is high but the regular fees quite nominal. They kept most of the equipment which are part of the school syllabus and some others as well. The response to such a lending library was tremendous.
Since Eklavya already has Adhyayan Kendras at all its field centres, it was felt that we should also try out a similar effort especially because this is what the Hoshangabad Science Teaching programme tries to do - to initiate students to do experiments, to discuss the results and to draw inferences.
We plan to start initially with stocking kit equipment which can be used for experimentation for classes 6th to 12th at one or two of our field centres. Initial choice would be between Pipariya, Hoshangabad and Ujjain which have well functioning libraries and a large enough back up pool of HSTP personnel. To begin with we will need to work out what equipment are to be kept, and the system of deposit and issuing will need to be worked out. This will entail an initial investment during the first year, for the storage and for equipment.
With the consolidation of the HSTP person-power in Hoshangabad, a need for a make-shift lab has also been felt, especially because most of the material development including book revision is mostly handled from Hoshangabad centre. It is felt that we should have a facility wherein in addition to the existing middle school experiments, most of the high school and higher secondary experiments can also be tried out. This will feed into the efforts towards creating material for the higher classes. Equipment collection and facility building will be spread out over the three years. At the moment availability of appropriate space is a major constraint in the current premises. So, the beginning will have to be quite modest which can be later expanded as and when Eklavya develops its own infrastructure. While it does link up with the mainstreaming efforts this component could be supported under the MHRD project hence is not being budgeted here.
ii. Academic Back-up Systems
a) Monthly meetings and preparatory meetings :
As in the previous years monthly meetings with teachers will be held in all the eleven Sangam Kendras and fourteen School Complexes between August and February. Some of the September and October monthly meetings might be affected due to elections and Dushehra/Diwali. Preparatory meetings of resource teachers are convened before the teachers meetings during the current session. Venue for this meeting for the erstwhile Hoshangabad division would be Hoshangabad. The meeting for the Malwa region might be shifted from Indore to Dewas or Ujjain as the existing staff in DIET, Indore does not provide conducive atmosphere and infrastructural support needed for such a gathering.
It is planned that the monthly meetings will attempt the following this year:
1. Chapter training focusing on difficult conceptual areas and complex experiments. These will be identified through questionnaires to teachers during previous monthly meetings.
2. Additional enrichment material, discussions/experiments or testing of new chapters on one specific area every month.
3. Issues arising from feedback reports and classroom experiences.
4. Prepare Laghu-Prashna to be used during the follow up in schools by teachers. Also analyse some of the answer scripts from the previous months follow up.
5. Administrative matters.
b) Follow-up, Feedback & Monitoring Systems :
HSTP endeavours to support and aid teachers throughout the year. This is achieved through monthly meeting of teachers backed by continual follow up in schools by resource teachers. Preparatory meetings of resource teachers are also organised every month. Follow up in schools is done by resource teachers who visit pre-assigned schools to aid and support the teacher in the classroom situation itself.
Besides providing valuable academic support to the teachers this component of the programme also serves as an important feedback and monitoring system. By providing continual critical insights of the ground realities, the feedback not only enables the programme to stay firmly rooted, but also indicates new directions for further improvement and innovation.
In the concluding project period, prepatory meetings with resource teachers and regular monthly meetings at sangam kendra level are scheduled in the proposed work plan. The school follow up system needs to be strengthened further. Following measures are planned to make school follow up more meaningful:
(1) Steps are planned to improve the quality of information gathered during school follow-up. With the help of resource teachers a detailed proforma would be designed. This proforma would help the resource teachers doing follow-up to seek and cull out relevant information about the school and classroom situation and thus also lend overall uniformity to the feedback collected from the schools.
Resource teachers while doing follow-up also interact with the students in the classrooms. Students get a much prized opportunity to benefit from small impromptu sessions by experienced teachers from outside. The resource teachers in the bargain get an equally valuable first hand account of the class room situation. We plan to harness these interactions for gaining a better appreciation of the nature and level of understanding among students of crucial science concepts. Appropriate testing methodologies would be developed which would enable resource teachers collect desired data during follow up. This data then would be collected, collated and analysed to yield in-depth reports on students understanding of key concepts.
(2) The work books used by students in the programme are being revised currently. During the revision process, proposed changes in the work books are first tested in the schools before incorporation. We propose to enliven school follow up further by dovetailing it to the revision process. Resources teachers would be strongly motivated to test revised chapters in schools they visit during their school follow up. Such meaningful academic challenges would do much to invigorate the programme’s feedback and monitoring system.
(3) To further improve the present follow up system, trialling of some changes in the system in a chosen block is envisaged. These changes involve rigorous selection of a smaller group of motivated resource teachers for school follow up. These teachers would be actively supported by the Eklavya field group in their task. Further, members of the group would be assigned specific schools in need of external academic support.
(4) Members of the Eklavya field groups would also undertake intensive follow up in schools of a chosen area at regular intervals. Weak schools would be identified during these visits so that resource teachers may devote special attention to such schools and help their teachers catch up with the rest.
(5) Efforts would be made to involve more science teachers of higher secondary schools in the school follow up programme.
c) Sawaliram :
Under the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme children are encouraged to ask questions, not only to their teachers and peers but they can also share their experiences and queries with a fictitious character called Sawaliram. Every letter addressed to Sawaliram is responded to individually. There is always a backlog of unanswered letters because of two reasons. In itself the task of digging out information on the varied questions that children come up is quite time consuming and difficult. Even after that one has to pitch the answers at a level that children can understand. Secondly, the quicker you respond to the child’s query the rate of incoming letters also increases accordingly. A kind of chain reaction sets in.
While 'the character' has been around for almost twenty years now and usually there is one person responding to children’s queries and coordinating the effort, this aspect of HSTP did not fare very well during the year 1998-99 because of some reshuffling of responsibilities. The new system of relying only on the resource group did not work very well. Since then we have been looking for a suitable person for this task. There has been a partial breakthrough in the sense that at the moment we have a new person with a time commitment for six months. But we will need to build a team of at least two academic personnel for the task of answering the queries and building a database which could be used for faster processing. While the resource group does help actively in looking for the relevant information whenever necessary, but very few can write the answers at children’s level.
d) Hoshangabad Vigyan Bulletin :
The Hoshangabad Vigyan Bulletin is an in-house newsletter for all the teachers of HSTP as well as for the resource personnel from other institutions. It fulfills the need for exchange of ideas amongst teachers and also provides them a forum for airing their views regarding various aspects of HSTP and education in general as well. In addition it also makes available information regarding the various relevant government orders.
The Bulletin has existed as a slightly irregular feature of HSTP for the last twenty years. After a gap of 3-4 years it was recommenced last year and three issues have been taken out in this period. It is planned that we should try to bring out at least four issues of bulletin every year.
iii. Resource Group Development:
In the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme it was felt that teachers who had imbibed the methodology of the programme and were translating it into the classroom situation should be further supported academically so that they develop into full-fledged resource personnel. Towards this they were given the responsibility of training other teachers with proper back-up support in early nineties. To take this effort further, resource teachers' trainings were conceptualised in 1995-96 so that they are exposed to specific subject areas and get an in-depth understanding of these. Most of the resource teachers did not have a formal training in sciences and hence were often hesitant in handling open-ended discussions in the training situations. It was felt that content enrichment training will help them overcome this limitation. They were held regularly during the last three years. These will continue during the next project phase. In addition to the existing aspects new modules will be developed during this phase.
iv. Administrative structures:
A number of new initiatives will need to be taken and processes of setting up new structures will have to be initiated as there have been major changes in the governance as well as administration at the state level:
a) Local Governance: During the last one year the State decided to decentralize governance and it handed over most of the responsibilities to the district government. The process is still on and the amount of freedom and power that the local district government can exercise, or the aspects which do not fall within the purview are some of the issues which will take some time to clarify. Accordingly we will need to set up new structures and/or will need to involve the district government in the existing fora.
b) Disbanding Joint Director offices: Till now most of the services were administered through divisional offices. The field area of HSTP was spread out in Narmada, Indore and Ujjain divisions covering fifteen districts and the programme was administered through the Joint Director offices located at the divisional headquarters. In another major administrative decision the State Government disbanded all the divisions and closed down the Joint Director offices.
Vigyan Ekai specially created to look after the implementation of the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme was situated in the Joint Director office at Hoshangabad. Now we will need to modify the concept of Vigyan Ekai possibly to a district level unit and get the present posts relocated between Hoshangabad and Harda districts where HSTP covers the entire districts. In case of school complexes, system of administration of HSTP will need to be worked out as every district has only one school complex comprising of 8 to 12 schools, and hence it will not be meaningful to ask for new posts at the district level.
II. SOCIAL VALIDATION OF HSTP APPROACH
i. Media Advocacy :
At the present, issues of science education unfortunately hardly get a space in public fora. In the absence of enlightened and informed public discussions and debates in media and elsewhere, policies impacting quality of science education throughout the state get formulated in a vacuum, disjointed from ground realities, and the public opinion remains stilted and stereotyped. This not only has a direct bearing on the programme and its future, but also, and more importantly, severely circumscribes the scope and extent of future innovations in science education. Needless to say, a pressing need exists to provoke and enlighten society, including policy makers, on all important issues of science education.
Eklavya proposes to bring out science education issues in the foreground of public consciousness. This work is planned to proceed along three dimensions which are as follow:
1. Ensuring greater coverage on science education issues in print media.
2. Audio-visual documentation of teaching of science in schools. Cooperation of Audio-visual Resource Centre at Indore and similar other agencies would be sought in this work.
ii. Comparative Evaluation Impact Studies:
As narrated in the background to programmes section, the nature and expanse of the HSTP offers an ideal situation for a comprehensive comparative evaluation of academic, administrative and social impact of such an innovative effort. This is an urgent need for social validation of HSTP approach. We have put this on our agenda of research studies.
III. HSTP - EXPANSION AND DISSEMINATION:
The idea behind school programmes carried out by Eklavya is that they should affect the mainstream education in the country. Towards this goal we have adopted a three pronged strategy:
1. Enhance our role as resource agency by intensive and extensive inputs to other such efforts within and outside Madhya Pradesh. This aspect has been discussed in detail in the resource agency section.
2. We have been working at the idea of large scale adoption of the programme, eventually upto the state-level. Exercises have been carried out to plan out the logistics and the financial implications of such a programme. Implementation of such a large expansion would be possible only with decision at the political level. The Eklavya group hopes to play a participative role in large scale expansion of this effort to innovate science education over the entire state.
3. Over the years we have had queries form individual schools from various regions of Madhya Pradesh enquiring whether they can adopt the HSTP methodology and workbooks in their schools. We now feel that this could be another mode of spreading the programme amongst schools/groups who are already interested in trying out a new approach in the science teaching and hence, would be willing to commit resources and enhance person power capabilities. In this phase we plan to actively search for such schools especially in the Malwa region where we already have the person power resources to back up any such effort. Towards this end we will need to approach the education department offices to see what kind of permissions are possible for these interested schools.



EKLAVYA
2001.