Swatantra Talim Foundation

The Preamble of Indian Constitution mentioned, 'It is to secure all its citizens the liberty of thought and expression, equality of opportunity'. When we started working in the villages and public schools of Uttar Pradesh, we saw gaps in terms of quality of education and levels of opportunity to different socio-economic groups. 

Therefore, our vision is one day all citizens have access to quality education and equal opportunities to take decisions to pursue a career of their choice. In doing so, our mission is to nurture socio-scientific temper of most socially-culturally-economically marginalised children through a play-based making-centered pedagogy.

Indian education is becoming extremely rote over the years with focus on academic outcomes in terms of marks and grades with very little focus on thinking, cognition, application, observation, perseverance, etc. The focus has shifted from understanding concepts to cracking the pattern of examinations. If we see the approach in higher education or going through the entrance examinations for higher education, such skills are very much required in terms of thinking and application.

Sometimes, such application based educational things are available for economically privileged children but is non-existent for children coming from socially, culturally and economically deprived sections. What is the way out for such children to compete and move forward in life?

Our objective is to develop studio thinking habits of children through a puppetry linked making-centred program integrating the elements of play and stories. Through this program, the students not only become more engaged, they will develop the resilience and agility in mind to solve complex problems, innovate from contextual material, be better thinkers and makers and not mere replicators. 

It is an effort to reduce the gap between different groups of our children through education.

Rahul has been playing a key role in strategy and implementation processes, monitoring and evaluation parameters, budgetory, internal and external compliances. He has been playing a mixed role of an academician as well as an administrator.

Rahul’s keen interest is in setting up maker-spaces and design thinking interventions in rural and urban contexts. He has been working in the field of contextual and cultural maker spaces in rural context for the last 5 years. He has also been devising impact parameters with respect of the work in government schools.

The team lead and other team members are fairly experienced to handle such work as they are focused to implement this in the organisation now and also they possess the in-depth ground understanding of conceptualisation and implementation of the program.

The team lead and other team members will take out to create parameters as they will delegate some of the work to other team members, there are certain things that are getting uploaded etc which will give time for this team to take out time and act.

Also, the team is really motivated to get this done in this year as it will give the program a very strong edge over other programs.

Khoj Yaan is about purposeful play. When a child is playing purposefully lot of ideas emerge, which are quite natural.

The problem is in current education system which is restricting children to foundational literacy and numeracy, i.e to read, write, add, subtract, multiply and divide. 

Secondly, there is problem in school assessments which are not making students ready for competitive examinations after school education which demands application of concepts, thinking, problem solving and such other things.

Thirdly, the imagination of policy makers seemed to be very constrained and narrow with children being made just as puppets who could be moved by any other person without the mind and application of their own. The entire curriculum is devoid of demand of critical thinking and questioning.

Khoj Yaan is about purposeful play. When a child is playing purposefully with different tactile materials, lot of ideas generally emerge, which are quite natural. Play builds imagination, curiosity, collaboration, observation and much beyond. In the truest sense, a child is most active while she or he is at play. 

In this program, play is happening through puppetry, stories, making & tinkering. It is an opportunity for children to express their inner emotions while gaining an understanding of others as they act out various scenarios in a safe, playful environment. It also provides scope for children to explore, question and experiment which are the triggers for our five senses — sight, hear, smell, taste and touch building curiosity and inquisitiveness.

The program started as a pilot in 2018 with five government schools in Sarojini Nagar Block of Lucknow district in Uttar Pradesh to nurture the innate qualities within a child beyond the foundational literacy and numeracy elements in a school. 

The program starts with a puppet show for children and thereafter it builds through puppetry-linked appropriate toys, puzzles, games and making & tinkering activities for the children. In the program, the puppet show helps children to explore and imagine a new world thinking about certain questions which are generally posed during the program, the toys puzzles and games element helps to question through strategies, logical and mathematical thinking and making and tinkering enables children to experiment. In the making and tinkering, the idea is not to represent what is out there, but to imagine what is not and to bring into existence what is imagined. It is also to try something when you don’t quite know how to do, guided by whim, imagination, and curiosity.    

This program is an attempt to go a little deeper into the various elements of explore, question and experiment through stories, play and making & tinkering connecting it to curiosity and wonderment.

I think we have used Formative research and Foundational research. The Foundational reserach has helped to create a cutting-edge content and curriculum for the Khoj Yaan Program.

The Formative research has been used in user-interviews etc in which we have got a sense that this program has been moving in the right direction.

The research has provided us positive results with an impetus to move forward. The user-interviews have given that there is positive impact in the students thinking and approach.

The timing of this evidence based of Khoj Yaan is extremely important in many ways:

1. To prove to the government that such a program has been really useful and productive and it also supports and complements the bare minimum that govt is running

2. To prove to the funders that the money they are investing in this program is giving the right return and is not wasted.

3. To give motivation and direction to the team that the work they are doing is going in the right direction.

1. How to measure the impacts

2. What will be the basis of such parameters

3. This parameters should assist children's learning and not in any way is demotivating

We need a framework and data capturing elements for capturing these evidences in a logical manner with data so that it can be proved to the internal and external agencies.

We will be training the team members about these evidences and then would be taking this to govt schools for capturing the same.

Short-term

1. Creation of framework and evidences

Long-term

1. Everything synced up