On 1st December 2015, Prof Krishna Kumar (Former Director, NCERT) released the book THE REFLECTIVE TEACHER: Case Studies of Action Research (By Neeraja Raghavan, Contributing Editor Vineeta Sood) published by Orient Blackswan.
The release was followed by a panel discussion of the book at India International Centre, New Delhi.
The panelists were Prof Nargis Panchapakesan (Former Dean, Department of Education, Delhi University) and Shri S Regunathan (Former Chief Secretary, Delhi Government). While Prof Krishna Kumar termed it an unusual book worthy of being translated into Hindi and other regional languages, Prof Panchapakesan noted the tremendous amount of reading done by the author in ensuring that theoretical underpinnings were carefully addressed. Shri S Regunathan spoke of several questions that this book raised in his mind about education, and observed that the book cited only a few teachers as being comfortable with the curriculum. Why, then, he asked was there a continued insistence on vast curricula? The author spoke of how the intent of the study had been beautifully captured by one of the participating teachers (with seventeen years’ experience), when she had come to the realization that doing action research was not as important as being reflective – which could happen with or without action research. Prof Krishna Kumar concurred with this, even as he acknowledged that education is a field where shifts in attitude or learning take time to manifest, and agreed with the author that it will take time to say whether or not reflective teaching has taken root in the school under study.