Announcement

 International Seminar on

Cognition and Learning: Theory and Practice 

October 5-7, 2007

In addition to undertaking a large number of innovative initiatives in elementary education, Vidya Bhawan Society has been regularly organizing workshops and seminars at the national and international level to build bridges among the academia, teacher trainers, NGOs, teachers, children and others. An International Seminar on The Construction of Knowledge was held during April 16-18, 2004; its proceedings were published in 2005 and the Hindi version in 2007 and the volume containing all the papers is in the press. In that Seminar, we tried to share the current understanding of how concepts in different domains of knowledge - e.g., language, mathematics, social sciences, space etc. - are formed and how they are mapped onto language.  An International Seminar on the Teaching of Science was held during Dec 8-10, 2005. It tried to focus on the emergence, evolution and present status of innovations in science teaching in India and abroad at the elementary levels within the context of their ideological, philosophical, sociological and psychological underpinnings.

This year we propose to hold an International Seminar on Cognition and Learning: Theory and Practice during October 5-7, 2007. We propose to make a radical departure in the structure of the seminar this time with a view to providing every participant a space to understand everything that is being said, express her ideas, ask questions and respond to different issues. We will have a total of only six major keynote papers, two on each day. Each paper will be followed by tutorials in small groups where every effort will be made to clarify the key issues raised in each keynote paper. We hope to keep the size of each group to a maximum of 10 to 12 participants. This programme will finish before lunch. In the post-lunch sessions, we have presentations from the field level experiments and experiences. In these sessions, the keynote speakers, those who will conduct the tutorials and others engaged actively in implementing educational innovations will constitute the audience and will respond to the field level issues in terms of the issues they raise in their keynote lectures. We feel this type of bridge building may prove to be more meaningful. The primary focus of the seminar will be ‘constructivism in the classroom’ keeping in view the learner, materials, teacher and assessment in view. We will request all the keynote speakers and those engaged in active experimentation to clarify what they really mean by ‘constructivism’. It is often the case that in the absence of such clarification, we end up talking at cross- purposes. We invite abstracts for the post lunch sessions. They should reach us no later than July 31, 2007.

Further Information: