Page 194 - Cultural Studies of Science Education

Chapter 13
Working for Change: Reflections on the
Issue of Sustainability and Social Change

Ajay Sharma

Reading George Glasson’s paper, I was transported back to the days when I used to
work in a science education reform effort in India. This effort, known as the
Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program (HSTP), developed, sustained, and dis-
seminated an innovative inquiry-oriented, place-based framework of science teach-
ing at the middle-school level. It was a collaborative effort that brought people on
the ground – the teachers, students, and activists – on a common platform with
educators and scientists in universities and research centers – quite like the effort
so well-documented by George Glasson. And just like what George Glasson and
his intrepid colleagues have initiated in Malawi, HSTP too started small, though
in 16 schools and not one, and not recently but way back in 1972. By 2002, the
program had grown to cover about 1000 middle schools in Hoshangabad, and 14
other districts of the central state of Madhya Pradesh in India. However, as often
happens with reform efforts in education, the program was unceremoniously shut
down in 2002, and the schools that had been successfully teaching science through
an inquiry and place-based curriculum for decades quietly went back to teaching
science the traditional way. Now when I look back at this unique effort in the his-
tory of education in India, I find that HSTP was largely successful in developing an
alternative way to teach and learn science. However, even after a long run of
30 years, the program’s accomplishments in terms of its ability to sustain itself and
influence the dominant paradigm in science education were comparatively
somewhat muted.
So as I read and marveled at the fascinating account of development of an inno-
vative ecojustice sensitive curriculum in a school in Malawi amidst centuries-long
unchecked devastating exploitation and expropriation by globalization and (neo)
colonialism, I could not help but wonder about the challenges as well as the oppor-
tunities that lay ahead for George Glasson and his wonderful band of colleagues in
Malawi as they work ahead to endow some measure of sustainability and wider
significance to their effort in one school. In this response to George Glasson’

A. Sharma
University of Georgia

D.J. Tippins et al. (eds.), Cultural Studies and Environmentalism, 171
Cultural Studies of Science Education, Vol. 3, DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-3929-3_13,
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010