Our newspapers recently reported the inauguration of ‘Orientation Programme on Innovations and Start-ups’ for Science teachers of South Goa teaching from class 6-10 by Dr. Jose Manuel Noronha. This senior educationist and technocrat reportedly spoke about ‘encouraging and motivating the children at schools when they come with any question or difficulty so that innovation takes birth’. The objective of the orientation programme was to train and guide teachers on innovation and creativity. Incidentally Dr. Noronha chairs the Goa State Innovation Council (GSIC) empowered to drive the innovation agenda and foster innovation culture to prepare the innovation roadmap in Goa.
The above remarks remind me of an interesting publication called the ‘KellogInsight’ by Northwestern Kellogs Institute of Management, Bianchi and Giorcelli in July 2017. The authors substantiate that formal education in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math (STEM) has not necessarily been successful in catalysing innovations. By tracking a large number of students who studied STEM subjects, they found that they actually patented much less after pursuing university-level education than they had done before. The underlying construct being that specialisation fails to nurture creativity and innovation quotient among pupils. This underlines the importance of building innovation culture in schools itself, as the speaker rightly noted.
The academia ‘oriented’ in the above program was reminded that creativity should not be aborted at every turn. It may be of interest for all of us in academia to follow Harvard University Professor and author of ‘The Global Achievement Gap’ Dr. Tony Wagner on how these abortions happen. The author believes that the over-focus on individual achievement, emphasis on specialisation, fearing failures, passive learning and lack of intrinsic incentives stunt culture of innovation in education. As a solution, the renowned proponent of policy for fostering innovation in schools and the former minister of school education of Singapore Ng Chee Meng proposed 3I’s formula for nurturing innovation as Imagination, Inquisitiveness and Interconnections.
The practical approach based on the above theorists’ demands pupil should be encouraged to question everything around them. The challenge for a teacher is to link things they teach to real-life events and demonstrate its practical application. It falls on our education system to nurture their ability to question and to innovate. Our current education system fails to provide both.
Indian education system is more marks-oriented, teacher-centric and based on rote learning. New methods of instruction like the flipped learning, Outcome Based Education (OBE), and learner-centric approach are yet to make a formal entry into the system. Quality is yet to become a pertinent factor for seeking admissions. It’s high time schools in India do away with formal stereotype examinations, race for marks and quests for merit-lists through quantitative assessments of memorization tests. Innovation quotient could develop only if teachers aim at creating learning abilities in students rather than syllabus completion.
Qualitative assessments must evaluate the level of curiosity addressed, most productive and practical use of things pupil learns and creative aspects in the work assigned to them. Assessments modes could be based on issues that foster imagination, give them space to explore, and do things differently. Assessments rather than expecting ‘right answers’ must encourage in getting them to come up with ‘good questions’.
Designate a space, colour it up, put up a 3D printer, some gadgets, a computer system and inaugurate it as a ‘technology hub / thinking centre/ tinkering lab’, is the new fad in schools today. The only creativity is seen in naming them!
School managements must understand that innovation need not be through technology alone, it could also be in cleaning or cooking. Creativity is not just in coming up with a good design or an interesting tech startup it is also in arranging a bouquet or laying the buffet. How many schools encourage innovation relating to real life? How many schools realise that their onus is to expose pupils to a variety of learning opportunities by letting them choose their subjects of interest? How many rather than compulsorily teaching Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics lay compulsion on developing of skills and craftsmanship by internships?
The National Innovation Council under the leadership of Sam Pitroda in the yesteryears reported some primary strategies for developing innovation culture in the education system. The GSIC could try some of them on pilot basis in Goa. Foremost could be creation of a scholarship scheme analogous to the Talent /Olympiad tests. Fund starting a degree program in Innovation, create a cluster innovation-lead schools in each taluka, fellowships to teachers to document the indigenous innovations, and by providing seed grants to test and commercialise final year projects of graduating science and engineering students.
Fortunately for Goa Dr. Noronha through the GSIC he heads has well started to walk the talk. One may like to see the GSIC website to find well displayed initiatives, resources, along with minutes of all the six meetings it held so far. The creation of a Virtual Innovation Register provides a coordinate to register their ideas and source needed support. These efforts befit results.
