Highlights of the Year 2007

This year is very special, for it marks the 60 years of CIE's existence. The year has been spent in considerable introspection, rethinking and consolidation of the Department's goals and activities with reference to its existing academic programmes and the future role that it could play in the field of Education. Pro-active steps have been taken in many directions.

Currently, we are engaged in an active process of developing an innovative B.Ed. Programme of two years duration. This programme addresses two basic concerns. Primary among these is the development of teachers who will not fit in snugly within the existing educational system in a passive and uncritical manner, but play the role of catalysts for change and institutional renewal. The other concern is to participate in and interact with the existing school system, particularly the State governed schools, to enhance the quality and nature of the 'schooling experience' which they offer to children. To facilitate this, it is envisaged that experiential learning, self-study, cooperative and social learning, reflection based on inquiry, self expression, professional communication and intense sharing among communities of peers will constitute the mainstay of the new B.Ed. programme. Our endeavour will also be to, correspondingly revitalize our Masters' and Pre-Doctoral Programmes, taking a cue from both the contemporary local and national needs and global challenges.

Our commitment to building discourse in education through workshops, seminars and conferences continues unabated. An International Conference on e-Learning in Teacher Education was organized from February 26 -28, 2007, under the joint auspices of the CIE, the Indian Association of Teacher Educators (IATE) and the Commonwealth of Learning (COL). The 40^th annual conference of the Indian Association of Teacher Educators (IATE), attracted some 250 participants. Of the 71 paper presentations, 6 were in plenary sessions and 65 in parallel sessions. The papers in plenary sessions included invited speakers from The Open University (UK), Wawasan Open University, (Malaysia), Mindset (South Africa), and Commonwealth of learning (Vancouver) aside from Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited (Pune). The Conference was unique in at least, two respects: one, it was international with viewpoints and perspectives, not only from India, but, also, from other Countries. Two, it was preceded by a pre-conference workshop attended by 37 participants from different parts of the country (there were also representatives from Brunei and Iran) learning hands-on about Wiki-educator and open content. They put together about 15 projects to work on, in teams, when they got back.

The key issues that the Conference focused on were those of 'access' and 'quality' in school education, since it is now widely accepted that the 'teacher' is the key factor determining the effective synthesis of both these, apparently, opposing concerns, The Conference brought together a cross section of professionals who shared a concern for quality and versatility in teacher education and who viewed new developments in the field of information and communication technology, particularly e-learning, as holding tremendous possibilities for equipping teacher education with the capacity to face these new challenges. It also provided an opportunity for collective reflection and sharing of experiences among teacher educators. A selection of papers presented at the conference is, now, being published.

To discuss the educational backwardness of Indian Muslims and, particularly, focus on the findings of the Sachar Committee report on the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community in India, a National Seminar entitled, 'Indian Muslims: Ground Realities and Challenges for Inclusive Education''was held in the department on March 14 and 15, 2007. Many eminent scholars, researchers and practitioners participated, exchanged views perspectives and presented academic papers. The themes and sessions focussed on how Muslims have been represented in the media, textbooks, political and cultural discourse and its impact on them and their marginalization, madarsah education, women's education, classroom experiences of alienation for the muslim child and rethinking classroom processes in this regard.

To deliberate upon issues of resistance emanating from the integration of children from the weaker sections of society in private schools in Delhi, a one day workshop was organized for teachers and students in the department. Presentations were made by eminent scholars from NUEPA, Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, with a view to build up a more sensitive perspective on the issue.

A National Seminar on Inclusion : Issues and Perspectives was organised in April 2007, to highlight the importance of Inclusive Education in the pre-service and in- service teacher education programmes. The objective was also to sensitize teachers, parents, private entrepreneurs and NGOs to the concepts, needs and operational strategies in curriculum, pedagogy and vocational training for children with special needs. Different perspectives were deliberated upon, since the speakers were drawn from varying contexts ranging from University systems to Special Institutes to actual schools practising Inclusive Education and also Private Agencies. The seminar proceedings have been consolidated in the form of a book entitled, 'Inclusion'.

In an endeavour to give impetus to research and development in the areas of elementary and secondary education, recognizing the academic stature of CIE, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India sanctioned six major research projects in 2006, with the vision that, with CIE's input, there would be considerable strengthening and revitalisation of these areas in the national arena. These projects are in active progress and would soon be coming to a meaningful conclusion. The central thrust has been on action research and field based inquiry, in order that meaningful intervention and policy impact get addressed.

The Department was visited by representatives of International Institutions of Education from China, New Zealand and the United Sates of America, with a view to engender meaningful collaboration between the University of Delhi and their respective Universities through research, cultural exchange programmes and faculty and student exchange programmes. They also delivered lectures to the faculty, B.Ed., M.Ed. and Pre-Doctoral Students.

Under the UK - India Education and Research Initiative (UKIERI), the Department has taken up a 4-5 year project in the area of in-service teacher education, in collaboration with the Open University (OU) in the UK. As part of this project, the Department proposes to develop an outreach programme for ongoing professional development of practising educators in schools, through a multi-mode approach. This would also help to. form a network of a collegial community of professionals comprising teachers, school administrators, school system managers and teacher educators. This community would be in a position to reconceptualize school quality through collective reflection and sharing. The Department Team is presently working on the selection of schools for introducing a mentorship scheme; the OU team would be visiting the Department in February for a baseline study of schools and for holding a Mentor Trainer Training programme.

The Resource Centre for Elementary Education has been very active. As part of its activities, a dialogic process between higher education and elementary education was initiated. Further, school teachers were provided a platform to undertake research, giving authenticity and legitimate space to their voices and experiences. In the realm of curriculum enrichment, academic support was provided to SCERT, Delhi, for curriculum renewal of the two year D.Ed. programme. Public lectures and panel discussions were some of the other activities organized under the auspices of this centre.

It is indeed heartening that the Computer Centre in our Department has initiated a process of On-line learning for students of Computer Education. A multi-media resource support is also available in other subject areas such as Biology, Business Studies, Civics, Economics, Physics and Mathematics. It is hoped that students will utilize this service optimally in the future. A digital film database has been developed by the students to record their co-curricular activities. The Braille Library, within the Computer Centre, now has 50 titles, all of which have been the culmination of students' efforts. An attempt is also being made to reach out to visually challenged students, in mainstream schools, by providing study material in Braille.

In our continued commitment to the field of Special Education, a B.Ed. Special Education Programme, which prepares teachers for the Education of Mentally Challenged students was started in July this year, for which the Lady Irwin College has collaborated with and obtained affiliation with our Department. Many other institutions are also in the process of seeking affiliation with us for B.Ed. courses in Special Education.

The CIE Library is known to be one of the best libraries of Education in the country. It has a treasure of old books and documents on the one hand and the latest publications, on the other. There has been a concerted effort over the year to equip the library with many new titles in Education and subscribe to more journals. 607 books were added to the already rich collection and 30 periodicals are being subscribed to. The library functions from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on working days and from 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays to facilitate full-time and part-time students. From this year, the membership has been computerized. Further, computerisation of the Library Catalogue has been initiated and approximately 20,000 books have been catalogued so far. A special section, on the first floor, has been created for research scholars to engage in serious reading and reflection. One is proud to say that the library attracts not only our own scholars and students of Ph.D., M.Phil., M.Ed., B.Ed. and B.EI.Ed., but scholars from several organizations and institutions from outside the University, as well.

CIE faculty continue to play important roles in the University Administration, Government Organisations, and in the larger Professional Community. There were several significant publications and presentations by the faculty in the past year. We have been organizing talks and workshops in which professionals and practitioners from various parts of the country have participated. Dr. Manju Aggarwal, Dr. Neera Narang, Dr. Pankaj Arora and Dr. Vandana Saxena were promoted to the Reader Cadre. Ms. Sushmita Lakhiyani and Dr. Preety Tripathi were promoted to the Cadre of Senior Lecturer. Mr. Sandeep Kumar joined the department as a Lecturer. We congratulate them.

At CIE we have an active 'Placement Cell' to facilitate the recruitment process for our students. We are pleased to mention that many educational institutions have been approaching us personally and on-line for national and international level placements. We have been arranging in-campus interviews as desired by potential employers and have also created a curriculum vitae database of prospective candidates studying in our institution.

Efforts are being made to enrich the South Asian Documentation-cum-Resource Centre for academic exchange between the South Asian countries which had been initiated by the Department in 2004. This Centre is situated in the CIE Library and is in the process of making available material, reports, status documents and academic research, related to the South Asian countries, for all those who are interested in this pursuit. There is a plan to initiate meaningful research projects and introduce academic courses to build up discourse in this area.

In keeping with the 'fitness mantra' of contemporary times, CIE has operationalized a fitness centre with the latest equipment. This will not only help to promote health and well being consciousness but also give a thrust to the practicum of Health and Physical Education. In addition, sports activities have been revived and now very visibly constitute an important core of our institutional life. A full time faculty member has been engaged to make this possible.