Abstract
The perception of separation between school and home/community is related to diminished achievement in school and lack of motivation to learn STEM subjects. The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is among many research organisations that have strongly recommended that schools bridge the disconnect between school-based knowledge and learners’ everyday knowledge. We designed the SPIRALS (Supporting and Promoting Indigenous and Rural Adolescents’ Learning of Science) curriculum to bridge this gap between formal science and students’ everyday lives. SPIRALS helps students explore community-based practices to learn about science, environmental sustainability and systems thinking. We implemented the SPIRALS curriculum in a private, urban, English medium school in Western India with approximately 315 students and their four teachers, 214 (or 68%) of whom also participated in the research from which our conclusions are drawn. Our findings about program impacts rely upon analysis of interviews with teachers and students, as well as student work, and conference participation assessment surveys distributed after a capstone experience at which students present their work. This chapter describes our findings about how students learned science, environmental sustainability, and systems thinking through engagement with community-based practices. We also discuss the process of how the SPIRALS approach worked in India and how it could be expanded into a broader learning model across different socio-cultural contexts within India.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Awasthi, M., & Agarwal, R. (2013). An analysis of various aspects of environmental concern present in NCERT science textbook of class VIII. Shaikshik Parisamvad, 3(2), 49–57.
Bang, M., & Vossoughi, S. ( 2016). Participatory design research and educational justice: Studying learning and relations within social change making. Cognition and Instruction, 34(3), 173–193.
Banks, J. (2010). Regulating hate speech online. International Review of Law, Computers & Technology, 24(3), 233–239.
Banks, J. A. (2015). Cultural diversity and education. New York: Routledge.
Barry, J. (1994). The limits of the shallow and the deep: Green politics, philosophy, and praxis. Environmental Politics, 3(3), 369–394.
Blum, A. (1987). Think globally, act locally, plan (also) centrally. Journal of Environmental Education, 19(2), 3–8.
Bouillion, L. M., & Gomez, L. M. (2001). Connecting school and community with science learning: Real world problems and school–community partnerships as contextual scaffolds. Journal of Research in Science Teaching: The Official Journal of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, 38(8), 878–898.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2004). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school (Expanded ed.). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Carley, M., & Christie, I. (2017). Managing sustainable development. London: Routledge.
Demarest, A. B. (2015). Place-based curriculum design: Exceeding standards through local investigations. New York: Routledge.
Dhar, S. (2012). From outsourcing to cloud computing: Evolution of IT services. Management Research Review, 35(8), 664–675.
Feinstein, N. W., & Kirchgasler, K. L. (2015). Sustainability in science education? How the Next Generation Science Standards approach sustainability, and why it matters. Science Education, 99(1), 121–144.
Field, C. B., Barros, V. R., Dokken, D. J., Mach, K. J., Mastrandrea, M. D., Bilir, T. E. … Girma, B. (2014). IPCC, 2014: Climate change 2014: Impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability. Part A: Global and sectoral aspects. Contribution of working group II to the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Folke, C., Biggs, R., Norström, A. V., Reyers, B., & Rockström, J. (2016). Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability science. Ecology and Society, 21(3), 41. Retrieved from http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol21/iss3/art41/.
Gough, A. (2002). Mutualism: A different agenda for environmental and science education. International Journal of Science Education, 24(11), 1201–1215.
Guha, R. (2017). India after Gandhi: The history of the world’s largest democracy. Pan Macmillan.
Harmon, A. (2017, June 4). Climate science meets a stubborn obstacle: Students. New York Times. Retrieved July 5, 2017 from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/us/education-climate-change-science-class-students.html?_r=1.
Hawkins, M. (2014). Ontologies of place, creative meaning making, and creative education. Curriculum Inquiry, 44(1), 90–112.
Hestness, E., McDonald, R. C., Breslyn, W., McGinnis, J. R., & Mouza, C. (2014). Science teacher professional development in climate change education informed by the Next Generation Science Standards. Journal of Geoscience Education, 62(3), 319–329.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2013). Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change.
Iyer, R. B. (2015). Blending East and West for holistic education. Educational Research and Reviews, 10(3), 244.
Jackson, M. G. (2002). Effective environmental education needs ‘new’ science. Indian Educational Review, 37(2), 22–38.
Jackson, M. G. (2003). From practice to policy in environmental education. Southern African Journal of Environmental Education, 20, 97–110.
Kern, A. L., Honwad, S., & McLain, E. (2017). A Culturally relevant teacher professional development for teaching climate change to Native American students. Journal of Education and Training Studies, 5(10), 1–17.
Kingdon, G. G. (2017). The private schooling phenomenon in India: A review. Centre for the Study of African Economies. Retrieved from https://www.csae.ox.ac.uk/materials/papers/csae-wps-2017-04.pdf.
Kohtala, C. (2015). Addressing sustainability in research on distributed production: An integrated literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 106, 654–668.
Lotz-Sisitka, H., Wals, A. E., Kronlid, D., & McGarry, D. (2015). Transformative, transgressive social learning: Rethinking higher education pedagogy in times of systemic global dysfunction. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 16, 73–80.
Lozano, R. (2008). Envisioning sustainability three-dimensionally. Journal of Cleaner Production, 16(17), 1838–1846.
Mochizuki, Y., & Bryan, A. (2015). Climate change education in the context of education for sustainable development: Rationale and principles. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, 9(1), 4–26.
Muttarak, R., & Lutz, W. (2014). Is education a key to reducing vulnerability to natural disasters and hence unavoidable climate change? Ecology and Society, 19(1), 42. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06476-190142.
NCAER. (2005). india science report. New Delhi: National Council of Applied Economic Research.
NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next generation science standards: For states, by states. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Pande, A. (2001). Environmental education in rural central Himalayan schools. The Journal of Environmental Education, 32(3), 47–53.
Pande, L. (2002). Our Land, Our Life: An innovative approach to environmental education in the central Himalayas. Education and Sustainability: Responding to the global challenge. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK: International Union for the Conservation of Nature, 65–73.
Penuel, W. R., Harris, C. J., & DeBarger, A. H. (2015). Implementing the next generation science standards. Phi Delta Kappan, 96(6), 45–49.
Ramadoss, A., & Poyyamoli, G. (2011). Biodiversity conservation through environmental education for sustainable development-a case study from puducherry, India. International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education, 1(2).
Ramasami, T. (2009). India’s rocky road to scientific success. Interview by Joerg Heber. Nature Materials, 8(5), 362.
Resnick, M., & Wilensky, U. (1998). Diving into complexity: Developing probabilistic decentralized thinking through role-playing activities. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 7(2), 153–172.
Schultz, K., Kumar H & Gantleman J. (2017, November 8). In India air so dirty your head hurts. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/world/asia/india-air-pollution.html.
Sharkey, J., Olarte, A. C., & Ramirez, L. M. (2014). Developing a deeper understanding of community-based pedagogies with teachers: Learning with and from teachers in Colombia. Journal of Teacher Education, 67(4), 306–319.
Siddiqui, T. Z., & Khan, A. (2015). Environment education: An Indian perspective. Research Journal of Chemical Sciences, 5(1), 1–6.
Smith, G., & Sobel, D. (2010). Place-and community-based education in schools. New York: Routledge.
Sobel, D. (2005). Place-based education: Connecting classrooms and communities. Barrington, MA: Orion.
Sonowal, C. J. (2008). Indian tribes and issue of social inclusion and exclusion. Studies of Tribes and Tribals, 6(2), 123–134.
Stevenson, R. B., Brody, M., Dillon, J., & Wals, A. E. (2013). International handbook of research on environmental education. Routledge.
Thomas, B., & Watters, J. J. (2015). Perspectives on Australian, Indian and Malaysian approaches to STEM education. International Journal of Educational Development, 45, 42–53.
Wildschut, D. (2017). The need for citizen science in the transition to a sustainable peer-to-peer-society. Futures, 91, 46–52.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Appendix
Appendix
How to Use SPIRALS in the Classroom
The SPIRALS curriculum is composed of nine activity-based lessons or ‘spirals’ that guide learners on an investigation into the concept of sustainability. The details of how to implement each of these 9 spirals can be found at http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spiralsintro.shtml.
The overall spirals curriculum is structured around three main parts: (1) Sustainability and Community, (2) Examining a sustainable practice, (3) Telling a story.
Through the SPIRALS activities, mentors guide learners in selecting a community practice that the learners are curious about and believe is sustainable. The nine units of the curriculum can be divided into three parts: the first part centres on introducing the concepts of sustainability and community, the second part focuses on learners’ researching a sustainable practice, and the third part emphasises telling a story about the sustainable practice the learners researched.
Sustainability and Community
Spirals 1–3 combine an exploration of personal and community sustainability. During these first spiral units, the learners begin to think about what sustainability means and are introduced to the four system conditions of sustainability, which will help guide them in conceptualising the topic. Additionally, groups begin to think about community practices that they might like to investigate in more detail.
Investigation of a Sustainable Practice
During spirals 4–7, groups select a community practice that they feel is sustainable and feasible to study. Groups create maps detailing everything they already know about the practice as a system of interrelated parts. As part of this process, learners reflect on identifying the sources of their knowledge about their selected practice. Next, they create a plan to collect more information about their practice. Once they have collected some data, they carefully re-evaluate the practice by using their definition of sustainability and the four system conditions of sustainability. To help learners appreciate and recall what they have learned, they create a second map of their practice as a system of interrelated parts to display the ways in which they feel their chosen practice is sustainable.
Telling a Story
In spirals 8 and 9, the learners create a digital project and then share what they discovered about their sustainable practice with members of the local community (e.g. school, community centre or library) in the form of a story. In addition, groups are invited to share their stories with family, friends and university scholars at a UNH-sponsored conference specifically for the participants in the SPIRALS program.
The details about each of the spirals can be found listed below:
Spiral 1: What is in My Everyday? (http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spirals1.shtml).
-
Objectives:
-
Learners reflect on their community and identify features that they feel are significant to them.
-
Learners create ‘My Everyday Maps’ to explore the interactions between themselves, the people, places, and things that they feel are important to their everyday experiences.
-
Spiral 2: What Sustains Me? (http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spirals2.shtml).
-
Objectives:
-
Learners reflect on how their everyday activities keep them going or sustain them.
-
Learners reflect on what could be considered a ‘need’ and what could be considered a ‘want’ with regard to their life.
-
Learners may consider how different features of their everyday help to sustain them in different ways such as emotionally, physically, spiritually, mentally.
-
Spiral 3: Understandings About Sustainability in My Community (http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spirals3.shtml).
-
Objectives:
-
Learners explore the concept of sustainability.
-
Learners identify several practices that they may like to explore further for their group’s SPIRALS project.
-
Learners use the ‘four systems conditions’ of sustainability (listed below) to discuss the sustainability of the practices they are considering.
-
1.
Does the practice support reducing energy use?
-
2.
Does the practice contribute to lessening man-made waste?
-
3.
Does the practice reduce destruction of the natural environment?
-
4.
Is there fairness to all living things (human and non-human)?
-
1.
-
Learners reflect on identifying the sources of their knowledge with regard to the practices they selected through the discussion of traditional ecological knowledge/local knowledge.
-
Spiral 4: Deciding Our Project Together (http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spirals4.shtml).
-
Objectives:
-
Learners come to a consensus on which sustainable practice is of interest to the group.
-
Groups select a sustainable practice that they can explore.
-
Spiral 5: Mapping our Sustainable Practice (http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spirals5.shtml).
-
Objectives:
-
Learners create a systems map rooted in both traditional ecological knowledge and science of the practice they are interested in exploring.
-
Learners should be encouraged to reflect on what and how they know about their topic by demonstrating that there are multiple perspectives to understanding sustainability, including both traditional ecological knowledge and science.
-
Learners should discuss and define the SPIRALS core concepts ‘system’ and ‘science’.
-
Spiral 6: Exploring the Sustainability of Our Practice (http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spirals6.shtml).
-
Objectives:
-
Learners set goals for exploring the sustainability of their practice and establish plans for gathering the necessary information to complete their project.
-
Learners identify the tools and resources necessary and available to investigate their chosen practice.
-
Spiral 7: Understanding What We Found (http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spirals7.shtml).
-
Objectives:
-
Learners organise what they have found about their sustainable practice into categories.
-
Learners use what they have learned to begin to form a story or stories about their practice to better understand and share the who, what, where, when, how, and why of their sustainable project.
-
Spiral 8: Creating Our Stories (http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spirals8.shtml).
-
Objectives:
-
Learners choose a format for their final project presentations. These presentations tell the story about their sustainable practice.
-
The story should reflect:
-
Their understanding of sustainability
-
What they have learned about their sustainable practice
-
-
Spiral 9: Sharing Our Presentations (http://www.spirals.unh.edu/spirals9.shtml).
-
Objectives:
-
Learners prepare to present their findings to a specific audience (school principal, school board, local conservation commission, etc.).
-
The group brainstorm the people and places that might benefit from or enjoy hearing the story of their findings that they composed in Spiral 8.
-
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Honwad, S. et al. (2019). Connecting Formal Science Classroom Learning to Community, Culture and Context in India. In: Koul, R., Verma, G., Nargund-Joshi, V. (eds) Science Education in India. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9593-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9593-2_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-13-9592-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-13-9593-2
eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)