Kishore Bharati presented a paper on the topic ‘Extending Community of Practice (CoP) beyond Institutes to Inculcate STEM Habits in Society’ in 12th International CESI Conference at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, 9th-11th December, 2022.
The paper included example of Kishore Bharati-CUBE Home Labs where community of practice of science is created from across different Home Labs across country which interact everyday in an online Chatshaala platform as well as using social media applications. The scientific practices which take place in this community interactions were the focus of the paper. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Habits are essentially habits which are needed for developing scientific attitude. The study focused on what all STEM habits are being developed in community of practice and how they are essential for shaping the scientific temper in students. The study essentially uncovers and describes what actually Scientific temper means and demonstrates possible environments which can help to develop those habits in order to culture scientific temper.
A list of STEM Habits were developed at Gnowledge Lab, HBCSE, TIFR based on the practices and habits which scientists follow, the list of STEM Habits can be found here: https://metastudio.org/badges the list was employed in the study to characterize which all STEM habits are developed in CUBE community of practice. Examples from CUBE social media interaction, CUBE Chatshaala interactions and inscriptions as well as Case studies were used to understand STEM habits developed in the community, the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu of Cultural Reproduction was used in order to demonstrate reproduction of STEM habits as a culture in CUBE community. The link of the abstract and presentation can be found here: Extended Abstract and Presentation
The presentation received good response from audience and some points for more reflection. Below are some of the pictures of Mr. Jaikishan Advani who presented the paper in collaboration with Mrs. Shraddha Ghumre from Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR.
The conference had several other presentations on various topics from policy levels analysis, cultural aspects of education, privatization and its implications, access to education, teacher education, alternative methods in education, technology in education, impact of digitalization on education, comparative education in different contexts, etc.