An experiment for excellence

The Nexus of Good City Chapter, Bengaluru, organised an event on July 28, 2024, where four organisations doing exemplary work in various fields made presentations. Among these was Prayog.

Established as a trust in 2015 and based in Bengaluru, Karnataka, Prayoga is a unique educational research institution deeply committed to the nation-building mission, with a steadfast conviction in the transformative power of education. Prayoga is a not-for-profit research institute recognised by the DSIR, Government of India, as a Science and Industrial Research Organisation. Prayoga is qualified under CSR, FCRA, 80G, and 35 (1) (ii).

Prayoga's vision is to bring about “a transformation in society by enhancing the utility and quality of learning through research.” The rigorous pursuits in educational research aim to facilitate significant advancements in teaching and learning, cultivating an effective educational landscape. By evolving newer and innovative pedagogies, Prayoga enables students to adapt and thrive in changing societal and global scenarios. The research-based innovations developed help transform schools, empower teachers, and enable richer learning experiences for students.

Prayoga’s multidisciplinary team comprises education and scientific researchers, mathematics specialists, data science experts, and programme management professionals who collaborate to find innovative solutions to the challenges faced by the Indian education system. Prayoga has a vision of becoming a globally unique multidisciplinary education research institution.

The Prayoga approach in a nutshell

The Prayoga approach centres around utilising data from social impact programmes to inform research on developing pedagogical solutions and education policies that improve the quality of education in India. This, in turn, bolsters Prayoga’s endeavour to contribute towards policymaking and the global knowledge repository on education, resulting in a nation-building exercise.

Social impact initiatives

Kriya: Reimagining education and classrooms to make every Indian child learn science experientially

The Kriya project is an amalgamation of education research and social initiative, designed to facilitate experiential teaching-learning methods in schools. The long-term desire is to contribute to making every child in India learn science experientially, and actively reshaping science education for school students. Kriya implements end-to-end experiential learning of science for students in grades 6 to 10. This unique programme is one of the largest and most comprehensive experimental studies in teaching and learning in India.

The goals of this project are to:

Inculcate critical thinking, analytical bent of mind, curiosity, innovative ideation, and a scientific temper in students.

Promote a holistic and integrated approach to science education that moves beyond curricula and inspires youth toward exploration and innovation for national welfare and progress.

Prayoga’s education research will be valuable in informing changes in pedagogy and education policies in the future.

1. Kriya implementation at schools

Kriya aims to understand the impact of experiential learning of science on the development of competencies in school students in India. Kriya envisions transforming a school into an experiential learning centre for science, empowering teachers, and enriching student learning experiences, particularly for segments of society that lack such learning opportunities, through a multi-year partnership with schools.

The Kriya Project involves a five-year engagement with schools, where the transformation is achieved through a comprehensive set of well-planned activities. By the end of five years, the school will have acquired all the pedagogical capabilities and experience needed to offer experiential learning to all its students. The lab stations provided over the five years will allow experiential learning for every child.

Beyond this period, the school has to bear the nominal cost of replenishing consumables. If the need arises, Prayoga will attempt to extend further financial support solely for the replenishment of consumables required to continue implementing experiential learning. The project has already impacted 67 schools, covering 6,756 students.

2. Anveshana

As a DSIR-recognised science and industrial research organisation, Prayoga has state-of-the-art research facilities to conduct its domain research centred around sustainability. Prayoga nurtures researchers for the nation through the Anveshana programme, which is offered at “no cost” to schools.

Anveshana offers students an opportunity to participate in scientific research projects. In this direction, Prayoga has established the required infrastructure for students to undertake high-quality research with best-in-class equipment. Students may also have the opportunity to present or publish their work in conferences and scientific journals. High school students in grades 9 to 12 who are passionate about a career in science participate in research projects guided by senior researchers at Prayoga. Students are introduced to the process and products of scientific research.

This is an opportunity to evaluate research as a pedagogy and its impact on developing student competencies and attitudes towards science. From working within a defined syllabus to exploring beyond the curriculum, research expands the ambit of student engagement with science. Research activities build the capabilities to deal with unknown outcomes and strengthen attitudes to deal with uncertain paths in acquiring knowledge.

The impact of research in developing competencies and performance is assessed through this initiative, which will help evolve a framework to develop and nurture the next generation of researchers for the nation.

Under the guidance of experienced researchers, student researchers in the Anveshana programme are encouraged to conduct innovative scientific research under five themes:

i) Green chemistry

ii) Advanced and functional materials

iii) Earth sciences

iv) Wellness

v) Food and agriculture

Anveshana has already started making an impact. International journals, including those from Harvard University, have published some of the papers written by the students.

3. Prerana

The Indian education system is predominantly textbook-centric, teacher-led, and memory-based. The primary focus remains on imparting available information to students who passively listen and memorise content for examinations. It is necessary to move towards incorporating pedagogies where students are active learners, thereby building competencies in students.

Increasing local-level mobilisation on the variety of learning methodologies, and teaching skills available for educators that enhance teaching-learning processes, will make education more meaningful and rewarding for both instructors and students. It will also strengthen the call for policy changes to adopt better pedagogies. There is a need for schools and educators across India to become aware of active learning pedagogies that will greatly transform the learning ecosystem.

4. Industry partnership

a. Sustainability Garage—a Mercedes-Benz initiative

The joint vision of MBRDI and Prayoga is to cultivate innovative ideation among young student researchers, particularly in projects that have significant social impact and mainstream sustainability research.

b. Green innovators for tomorrow

This vision of Merck and Prayoga is a structured certification programme for chemistry and chemical engineering students, intended to equip them to become innovators in Green Chemistry. It emphasises the applicability of Green Chemistry principles in various industries and the skills needed to operate instrumentation essential for materialising innovative thinking.

5. Upcoming initiatives

Building on its successes, Prayoga now proposes to create pedagogies to meet the learning needs of students with diverse interests. The programme will build a syllabus for science and mathematics learning with sports as the context. Prayoga is also working on a Teacher Fellowship Programme to celebrate teacher innovators.

What is being attempted through Prayoga is a wonderful example of Nexus of Good. The model that has been put in place is transformational and scalable through public-private partnership.

Views expressed are personal