Email : jr at tifrh dot res dot in
Phone : +91 44 4743 9108
Visuospatial reasoning
(till 2013)
Science learning in the early years is experiential in nature. The role of school is to create a bridge between informal experiences and formal expression. Field experiences and experimentation, which are integral to the process of science, are mediated through the human sensory and perceptual systems. Research on visuospatial reasoning draws on the perspective of ’embodied cognition’ which links perception and action on the one hand, with abstraction and imagination on the other. Diagrams and gestures are examples of ‘epistemic actions’ that connect a lab or field situation with the concepts and models of science.
Curiosity and questioning
Research in science education is closely linked with aspects of development and outreach. Sawaliram 2.0, in collaboration with Eklavya of Madhya Pradesh, aims to build an open access multilingual repository and an open source web platform to document and analyse questions asked by children from around the country. The web platform may be accessed at sawaliram.org. The open source code repository for the project is at github.com/sawaliram/sawaliram. Complementing this global perspective on curiosity, in 2017-20 a local effort in neighbouring Telangana government schools investigated the process of curiosity and questioning in children through classroom interventions and inquiry projects using foldscopes.