Mumbai Campus, Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education
Ph.D. Science Education (HBCSE, TIFR)
M.Sc. Physics (Pune University)
shamin.padalkar[at]tiss[dot]ac[dot]in
shamin(dot)padalkar(at)tiss(dot)edu
After completing Ph.D. in Science Education from the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE, TIFR), Shamin Padalkar worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA during 2011-12.
She worked with an NGO 'Quality Education Support Trust' (QUEST) in 2013. She was involved in preparing online courses for teachers working in remote areas of Maharashtra in Marathi.
She also worked as a visiting faculty at the Department of Education and Extension, Savitribai Phule Pune University in 2013-14.
Shamin served as a member of science textbook writing committee of the Maharashtra State Bureau of Textbook Production and Curriculum Research (Balbharati) and as one of the authers of Certificate Programme for Teaching of Elementary School Science (CTES), a project of NCERT to prepare online courses for teachers.
She is working in the area of science education (material development and science teacher professional development). She also teaches and mentors MA and M.Phil students.
Visuospatial Thinking in Astronomy Education
- Assessing students’ astronomical knowledge (observations, textbook facts, indigenous knowledge and conceptual knowledge) in rural, tribal and urban- slum schools at the end of primary and upper primary level (Grades 4 and 7).
- Designing a pedagogy based on a sequence of concrete models, gestures & actions and diagrams to teach astronomy to highschool students and administrating pedagogy in three schools (rural, tribal and urban-slum)
- Analysing role of pedagogic gestures, students’ spontaneous gestures, pedagogic diagrams and students’ diagrams.
Representational Competence in Chemistry Education
- Exploring spontaneous strategies and errors of North American undergraduate students in diagram translation task in Organic Chemistry.
- Exploring role of concrete models as feedback in diagram translation task.
Blended Pedagogic Material
- Developing a blended module to teach astronomy to highschool students using the pedagogy mentioned above. The module includes a digital game and other digital activities. The development of the module was done using design based research.
- Studying the implementation and effectiveness of the astronomy module in seven government schools in Rajasthan. The teachers taught the module in their classrooms. I lead a team of researchers which prepared the teachers to teach the module, observed classroom, and analysed data.
Science Teacher Professional Development
- Designing blended and online course for in-service teachers.
- Facilitating online communities of practice.
Medh, P. and Padalkar, S. (2022) Teachers' beliefs and practices related to using stories as science pedagogy. Accepted for epiSTEME-9 conference, Mumbai, India, 4-8 July, 2022, pp. 291-298.
Shaikh, R., Padalkar, S., Sutar, P. and Kumar, A. (2020). Learning basic astronomy through an embodied and interactive approach. In Proceeding of K. K. Mashood, T. Sengupta, C. Ursekar, H.Raval and S. Dutta (Eds.) epiSTEME-8 conference, Mumbai, India, 5-8 January, 2020, pp. 463-474.
Shaikh, R., Chopde S. and Padalkar, S. (2018) Teaching and learning basic astronomy through a blended module. Proceedings of 8th International Annual Conference on Edu- cation and e-Learning (EeL) at Singapore, 24-25 September, 2018, 127-133.
Latha, K., Sutar, P. and Padalkar, S. (2018) Developing a blended course for in-service science teachers in India and its reception by the teachers. Proceedings of the 2018 Connected Learning Summit at MIT, Boston, USA from 1-3 August 2018, 285-292.
Chopde, S. and Padalkar, S. (2018) Astronomy education: A case for blended learning.Proceedings of epiSTEME-7 conference, Mumbai, India, 5-8 January, 2018, 116-124.
Padalkar, S. and Hegarty, M. (2014) Models as feedback: Developing representational competence in chemistry. Journal of Educational Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0037516
Padalkar, S. and Hegarty, M. (2013) Undergraduate students’ understanding about representations in chemistry. Proceedings of epiSTEME-5 conference, Mumbai, India, January 7-11, 2013, 288-294.
Padalkar, S. and Hegarty, M. (2012). Improving representational competence in chemistry with model-based feedback. Proceedings of CogSci2012: 34th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Sapporo, Japan, August 1-4, 2012, 2162-2167.
Padalkar, S. and Ramadas, J. (2011). Using diagrams as an effective pedagogic tool in elementary astronomy. In Chunawala, S. & Kharatmal, M. (Eds.) Proceedings of Conference epiSTEME-4, Mumbai, India, 5-9 Jan. 2011, 159-164.
Padalkar, S. and Ramadas, J. (2010). Designed and spontaneous gestures in elementary astronomy education. International Journal of Science Education. 33(12), 1703-1739. DOI:10.1080/09500693.2010.520348
Along with teaching, I started my work at TISS with the field action project ‘Connected Learning Initiative’ (CLIx: https://clix.tiss.edu/about/ ). CLIx is a technology-enabled initiative at scale for high school students. The initiative was seeded by Tata Trusts, Mumbai and is led by Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Massachusetts In- stitute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA. CLIx offers a scalable and sustain- able model of open education to meet the educational needs of students and teachers. It is geared to provide engaging, hands-on learning experiences in Mathematics, Science, and Communicative English. These resources are being offered to students of govern- ment secondary schools in the four Indian states of Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana, in their respective regional languages. As a platform for innovation in education, CLIx also supports the professional development of in-service teachers, mak- ing substantial contributions to teacher education in Indian languages.
The project received the UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the use of information and communication technologies in education in March 2017 and the OER Collaboration award for Excellence 2019, under the category resources, tools and practices by the Open Education Consortium award.
I lead the science team. We designed blended and online courses for science teachers for a Certificate program in ‘Reflective Teaching with ICT’ (RTICT). CLIx science team continue to coordinate these courses for teacher of states which enter MoU with CETE (currently Chatttisgarh) and as paid runs open for any teachers all over India.
I also lead the development of a blended module to teach astronomy to Grade 8/9 students. The ‘Basic Astronomy’ module is available as OER for online use and down- load here: https://clixoer.tiss.edu/home/e-library. We studied the implementation of this module and its effectiveness in seven government schools near Jaipur. The report for this study is available, and a paper has been published at the epiSTEME-8 conference. A journal publication is underway.
Six science modules were prepared for CLIx, out of which 5 modules were designed by the Eklavya team. The CLIx science team prepared support material for teachers to teach the module. I also oversaw the translations of modules and courses in Hindi. I vis- ited several schools in Chattisgarh, Rajasthan and Telangana and spoke to school Prin- cipals and teachers to support the rollout of all the CLIx science modules.
A noteworthy teaching experience, is a special run of blended MA program for the teacher educators from Afghanistan. These teacher educators were constantly battling against regressive forces in their society, including the Taliban. I taught a part of science education course and mentored two students in this batch. As a teacher, it was enriching to understand the struggles of children and teachers of neighbouring country. In some ways it is a completely different society, one which was under the shadow of terror of war and torn by conflicting internal forces, yet at the same time very similar to India, battling the poverty and illiteracy.
I am currently engaged in the CL4STEM project with Bhutan, Nigeria and Tanzania (funded by IDRC). It involves facilitating teacher educators to design science modules for student teachers and newly qualified teachers. The content of the modules is pitched at Grades 8 to 12. The capacity building component will be followed up by research in which efficacy and dissemination of the modules on the field in the respective countries will be studied.
I am also involved in proposal writing a longitudinal study on ‘teacher identity forma- tion’ which will take off soon.
Pedagogy of Physics for Integrated B.Ed.-M.Ed., Tata Institute of Social Sciences (2022)
Learners and Learning for MA (Education), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (2019, 2022)
Visualization and Representation for M.Phil (Education), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (2018, 2019)
Child Development, Cognition and Learning - II for MA (Elementary Education), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (2016, 2017, 2018)
Science Education for MA (Elementary Education), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (2016 & 2017)
Interactive Science Teaching for Post Graduate Certificate Course for In-service Teachers (2017 & 2018)
Nature of Science and Science Education for Post Graduate Certificate Course for In-service Teachers (2020)
Learning, Learner and Development for MA (Education), Department of Education and Extension, Savitribai Phule Pune University (2013)
Education Psychology for M.Ed., Department of Education and Extension, Savitribai Phule Pune University (2013)
