My First International Conference...Or How I Caught the Bug.

        The first time I got in front of an international academic audience and presented my work was at the Barcelona Conference on Education, 2023 (BCE2023). This conference organised by the International Academic Forum (IAFOR) brought together education researchers, education leaders, education practitioners and other stakeholders in a 4 day conference. My colleague, Geeta (Mary Rita) Paul and I both believed that we had, independently and collaboratively, done quite a bit of novel, effective teaching that we owed to ourselves to share with the larger community.

        The Barcelona skyline overlooking the Mediterranean sea from Park Guell

        Looking back over the many projects we had worked on, we decided to present a large, interdisciplinary project we had created and ran over 2019-2020. The project, called Silk Roots, was a great example of place-based learning and could lead to a generalised design template that other schools could follow. I submitted our abstract on 9th July 2023. Several weeks passed and we got on with the 100 things teachers have to do every day. And then, it arrived in my inbox – our acceptance into the conference. We had a presentation to make at an international conference in less than three months. 

        Over several conversations, Geeta and I decided that we would like to present in-person at the conference in Barcelona. The opportunity to learn and network, the potential for international collaboration for our school and the lure of Barcelona itself was irresistible. Presenting online was kept as a backup plan, just in case. However, the inequities of international travel were still to be navigated. Indians have to jump through hoops to obtain visas to travel to Europe, and this requires considerable time and money. Multiple travel agents told us it would be nigh-impossible to get even an appointment for a Spanish visa and have it processed within two months. However, one resourceful agent suggested obtaining a French visa which was much more likely in the time available. This added considerable expense and time to our trip but seemed to be the only way we could make this happen. We had limited support from our school which enthusiastically sanctioned time away to make the presentation but could not financially support our travel. 

   

        Suffice to say, it worked. A few days before our departure, our visas arrived. 

        September swung around and it was time to leave. My colleague and I had got precious little done making our presentation for the conference but had identified the key themes and points to discuss. Off we went to Paris!

        Paris and Madrid were a wonderful time! We immersed ourselves in art, culture and food, and had a grand holiday. Not getting a visa to Spain directly proved to be quite serendipitous and led to memorable experiences for both of us. We spent our days exploring the sights, and our nights working on our presentation. We felt fully prepared for the conference by the time we arrived at the conference in Barcelona.

Geeta and I at the Louvre, Paris

        The conference itself was a rich learning experience. We drew the short straw – presenting after lunch on the last day of in-person presentations. However, we decided to make the most of attending the numerous presentations that we could. Over a year later, I still can recall the sessions I attended on the trap of perfectionism and education system reforms in Norway. One pleasant surprise was the opportunity to chair a session on multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary education. 

        It soon came time to take the stage and present our work. The many years of collaboration and the strong rapport Geeta and I have built helped us move seamlessly between the sections we presented. Starting from giving brief context on the education system and what constitutes a meaningful Project-based learning (PBL), we dove into how we applied the principles of Design Thinking to bring together a multidisciplinary team of teachers to engage students in interdisciplinary learning. We then used the Silk Roots project and our learnings from its creation, organisation and implementation to create an operational design sequence that schools could follow to achieve similar learning outcomes.

        Presenting at BCE2023

        Our focus on teacher learning and collaboration through this work as well as the place-based pedagogy were very well received. We were thrilled and gratified to receive kudos from professors of education from places as diverse as Nigeria and Malaysia who saw the relevance of our presentation even in their own contexts. The strongest impression both Geeta and I were left with was how ahead of the curve Mallya Aditi International School and many of the teachers’ practises were – it reaffirmed just what a unique and academically vibrant space the school has been. Hearing participants from around the world, I keenly felt the dearth of Indian voices. I personally knew of so much cutting-edge practice in education that was going on that was undocumented and therefore invisible to the world. The whole process of applying to the conference and presenting in person also highlighted how privileged and lucky I was to not only have the means and support to do so but have also had the opportunities to develop the skills and the exposure to be able to do so. The logistical obstacles are numerous and teachers don’t often identify themselves as knowledge-creators and knowledge-sharers outside the classroom. 

 That was when I caught the bug. 

        I knew then that I would not be satisfied with just teaching but I wanted to create and share knowledge on the process. At that point of time, I did not know I was a year away from starting my PhD at Purdue University, but it definitely lit a spark in me. I decided that I would present my own practice as a teacher and educational leader and work to document the rich, varied and considerable pedagogical innovation that takes place on the ground while continuing to teach and serve my students and school. One year later, my determination has not wavered, but I can see my learning at Purdue honing the skills I need to accomplish this goal. 

 Jayanth N., & Paul M. (2023) Silk Roots – A Design Template for Interdisciplinary Learning Projects ISSN: 2435-9467 – The Barcelona Conference on Education 2023: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 909-919) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2435-9467.2023.72

AI in P-12 Education - A reflection

 No discussion on education these days is complete without a reference to AI. Some venerate it, some demonise it, but we just can't seem to stop talking about it. World over individuals, institutions and companies make grandiose claims that AI has either consigned formal education to ignominy or saved it from obsolescence. While neither of these might be true in their entirety, it is true that AI has affected the educational landscape; it is the newest tool on the bench and like any tool, can either help or harm depending on how it is used or abused. Thankfully, conversations around AI are happening at all levels starting from teachers on the ground to national policy and this will help guide the use and put much-needed guardrails to help curb the abuse. 

As a teacher, I would consider myself an early adopter of technological innovation in teaching. I began exploring how to use AI to make my job more efficient and as Head of Department, helped pioneer department policy on how my teachers could leverage AI like ChatGPT (which so many of our students blindly used already) to foster better teaching and learning of critical thinking skills. I was therefore very excited to get an opportunity to attend the Purdue AI in P-12 Education Conference organised on 11 November, 2024. There is considerable research happening in Purdue itself on AI and how it interfaces with education, so I was sure this would be an illuminating and productive conference for me even if my main research interests don't have much to do with AI.

I chose to attend sessions that spanned the full range of themes - AI tools, AI education research, AI curriculum applications and AI ethics and policy - to get a broad overview of the issues. The keynote by Dr. Stephen J Aguilar, a philosopher by training, set the tone with having us consider the potential and also the limitations of AI. Jenna Lane ran a session on using AI to teach 21st century skills like critical thinking corroborated and validated the policy and outlines for use that I had setup at Mallya Aditi International School in 2022. The session on using AI to create personalised learning programs for gifted students did not quite hit the mark for me, with too little focus on the actual AI use and more about the summer program. Presentations by a series of doctoral student presenting diverse research showed the great quality of work being done by researchers at Purdue and similar universities. These consisted of rural teacher PD in AI tools, a systematic review of literature on AI in educational leadership and policy and a study of teachers' perspective on AI integration on education in South Korea. 

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The session I think I most enjoyed was on AI ethics and policy by Wesley Skym, a theatre and communication educator and a doctoral student in educational administration and leadership at UIUC. His session titled, "AI and HI-FIVES" looked at applying an established framework - HI-FIVES - to evaluate the need for the inclusion of any teaching tool into pedagogic practice. 

Wesley took us through a brief history of educational interventions from the past few decades - distance learning, flipped classrooms, asynchronous/synchronous classes, game based learning, Virtual reality and finally AI - discussing the benefits and concerns of each that have been documented in the literature. The large number of common benefits and concerns across all these tools was thought-provoking, but not entirely unsurprising. This led to an elaborate discussion of the HI-FIVES model that was constructed with inputs from both learning theories and computer-mediated communication theories. HI-FIVES essentially is a rubric to check any tool against to evaluate its merit for inclusion in a classroom. It stands for:

H - Hyperpersonal

I- Interactive

F- Foundation

I-Immediacy

V-Versatility

E-Empowerment

S-Support.

Wesley took the session attendees through each of these criteria and how we can understand and apply it. For example, when questioning if the tools is interactive, we see if it supplements and not fully replaces current practices and creates an engaging experience for teachers and students. This deep dive into each of the different criteria was insightful and helped me consider how I'd apply this to different AI tools I've encountered before. In the last few minutes, Wesley did a rough evaluation of Gimkit, a tool he uses abundantly in his classes, using the HI-FIVES framework and justified its use in his lessons. While I'm sure there may be concerns about how one could objectively measure the different metric required for HI-FIVES and how feasible it is to do perform this evaluation rigorously for every tool that may be considered for deployment in a classroom, it was eye-opening to see an established framework for this purpose. I also liked that it drew from diverse theoretical frameworks thereby creating a more robust synthesis.

One of the things I've come to enjoy in my first semester at Purdue is the breadth and variety of learning opportunities available here. This conference, my first in the US but far from the last, was just one more opportunity to broaden my mind's horizons in a long list I've enjoyed within just 3 months here. The diversity of perspectives, the quality and rigour of the content and the passion of the presenters and learners reminds me why I chose to come here and makes me thrilled to be a part of such a vibrant academic ecosystem!