Biology Education Research in India: Integrating education, research and practice

In the recent past, there has been an increasing emphasis on improving the quality of higher education in the country. Several reports have suggested adoption of research-based active learning methods at the undergraduate level to bridge the gap between theory and practice. However, there appear to be concerns around the preparedness and willingness of the college teachers to adapt to such a change. In the last few years, my professional association with teachers of Mumbai University to develop evidence-based teaching practices has given me an insight, rather a glimpse, of the viewpoints and concerns of this very important stakeholder group – the college teachers. The interaction has furthered and fuelled my belief to engage college teachers, natural science researchers and education researchers as partners in discipline-based education research for bringing about a sustainable change in the teaching learning process in the country. I have had the opportunity to be engaged in some endeavours aimed at addressing biology discipline related issues at the tertiary level: The talk will discuss my explorations, challenges faced and some observations.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Deepti Bhushan Gupta completed her Ph.D from National Institute of Plant Genome Research, New Delhi in Plant Biotechnology in 2007. Thereafter, she served as an Assistant Professor at TERI school of advanced studies, New Delhi for 8 years. Her disciplinary research has been focussed at studying exogenous elicitor modulated signalling in plants under abiotic stress using a proteomic approach. Her interest in science education research led her to join HBCSE, Mumbai, in 2016 where she was involved in projects aiming at improving undergraduate biology education. Currently, she is a visiting faculty at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai and is also working towards initiating college teachers into education research.