At the fourth Annual Teachers’ Symposium held jointly by Indian School of Business and Finance (ISBF) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), at Indus Valley School, Kolkata, a panel of academicians stressed the need for an autonomous learning environment for students.
The panel, consisting of Dr James Abdey, Associate Director, International Programmes, University of London, and data science expert at LSE; Bratati Bhattacharya, CEO, Shikshayatan Foundation and Shri Shikshayatan School; Dr GL Tayal, Academic Dean, ISBF, and Amita Prasad, Director of Education, Indus Valley School, deliberated on the subject, “Creating, Curating and Calibrating Institutions of the Future.”
A total of 42 representatives of schools across the city were present. The ISBF & LSE Annual Teachers’ Symposiums 2019, a collaborative effort between the LSE and their Featured Teaching Institution (FTI), and the ISBF, New Delhi, was organised around the over-arching theme of “Empowering Post-Millenials by Future Proofing Learning and Counselling.”
Lateral thinking, focused attention
Dr Abdey stressed the significance of various knowledge structures and their effect on classroom pedagogy. Bhattacharya emphasised utilising technology for collecting, categorising, curating and calibrating, while providing sufficient liberty to promote creativity. Dr Tayal spoke on curating the local Indian schools to align them with world-class institutions, indicating the model deployed by ISBF, University of London and LSE, while Amita Prasad focussed on lateral thinking and attention towards deeper learning and problem solving to make education future-proof.
Dr Abdey said, “Higher education challenges, while not necessarily resolved overnight, can be well-worked upon if we can create an autonomous learning environment and stimulate in students the independence of thought, in both quantitative and qualitative problems.”
‘Making our students future ready’
Amita Prasad, Director of Education, Indus Valley School, said,“The time has come in education when we need to carefully examine our beliefs and practices. We need to make our students future ready for careers.”
Talking of the ISBF-LSE interface and its significance for Indian students, Dr Tayal said, “LSE, being one of the leading Social Science research institutions of the world, provides one of the most updated application based academic curricula, which benefits from LSE and its academics’ deep integration with industry. This proves a boon for Indian students, as they get access to this rigorous and application-oriented academic direction of LSE.”
The breakaway sessions saw the city teachers exchanging ideas on ‘empowering students by curating participatory teaching-learning-assessment environments’ and ‘future proofing careers in economics, management, finance and data science’.
Representatives of Adamas International School, Asian International School, Assam Valley School, Birla High School, Ashok Hall Girl’s Higher Secondary School, Loreto College, Lakshmipat Singhania, The Heritage School, Shri Shikshayatan, Mahadevi Birla High School and Techno India Group Public School were present.
Chiraag Mehta, Associate Director, ISBF, outlined ISBF’s pedagogical innovations towards fostering a spirit of enquiry among students, along the lines of the LSE motto ‘to know the causes of things.’