MODULAR  TRAINING AND MICRO TEACHING: DEVELOPING SKILLS AND PRACTICE

The Centre is committed to integrating a strong skill building component into the teaching practices and pedagogy of the MA programme in Gender, Culture and Development Studies. These skills include those required in the academia and expanding sector of development and culture- in fact the Centre sees this initiative as one of building dialogue across the different government, NGO, industry and social movement organizations that are ‘doing gender’ in different ways. Towards this end, the Centre floats thematic courses every semester which seek to integrate training in academic skills with training required for working in different specialised sectors in the field of development and media.

Training in academic skills of reading, writing and presentation is conducted through micro teaching, mentorship programmes and writing courses. The faculty members at the Centre are assigned students who they meet one-to one for developing skills ranging from building a bibliography, working out annotated bibliographies, making critical notes, reading and reviewing and writing and presenting an essay. The Writing Course is built around a specific theme and introduces students to skills of exploring a new field, diverse resources, delineating specific areas of interest and articulating this interest in the form of a proposal.

The second significant component of skill development is designed through a series of ‘Modular Training Workshops’ by practitioners and professionals in the field. These workshops have grown from the Centre’s sustained dialogue with more than 40 organizations in the development, media and CSR sectors. The on-going dialogue seeks to understand the gaps between university education and the requirements of the field and to evolve ways of meaningful partnerships between the centre and various organizations and professionals. The modular workshops are an integral part of the course work and the objectives of the workshops are as follows:

• Draw out maps of development of specific sectors

• Outline processes and work involved in the sector and skill sets required for the same

• Introduce students through exercises to issues, practices and dilemmas that are encountered in practice in different sectors

• Allow students and ‘potential employers’ to interact in a non-recruiting scenario.

The modular workshops become a site on which the students in dialogue with practitioners think through and explore ways in which their post-graduate interdisciplinary training in Gender, Culture and Development Studies can contribute to their future career prospects most directly through the block placement initiative. For the Centre, the modular workshops are an important platform to learn about the new developments in the ‘field’ and develop sustained dialogues through collaborative research and training. The workshops open with daylong sessions with experts like Ramesh Awasthi, Manisha Gupte, Vijay Wavare and Milind Bokil introducing students to the historical emergence of the voluntary and NGO sector in India. This is combined with sessions by Kiran Moghe on tracing the development of mass movements in India.

Modular workshops are planned across four semesters to cover sectors of health, sexuality and media, livelihoods, child rights and education, dalit rights, disaster management and communication and documentation. Within the health sector, there have been trainings on public health in India by ICCHN, on health equity and issues of gender within health by SATHI. In the field of sexualities, there have been trainings on major issues within the field by Sangama, Bangalore, debates within Sex Work/Prostitution by SANGRAM, Sangli and on Masculinities by Samyak, Pune. The students have also completed the 4 Day Chakrabhed Training organized by MASUM on the theme of working with domestic violence. Within the media sector, through modular workshops have included training on issues of gender in cybercultures by Nishant Shah of Centre for Internet and Society (Bangalore) on Critical Media Literacy by Bishakha Dutta of Point of View (Mumbai) and Madhusree Datta of Majlis (Mumbai). The students also went through training sessions on basic social work skills of case work, group work, community organization and documentation by Vijay Wavare and Vandana Apte. In the coming semesters, modular workshops include among others those on themes of Livelihoods- Gender and Water concerns by SOPPECOM (Pune), Gender issues in Livelihoods- issues of urban reforms, EGS by Prayas (Pune) and Food Security and Livelihood Concerns by Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (Mumbai). Trainings on Dalit and Tribal Rights by Navsarjan (Gujarat), AIDMAM (New Delhi), NACDOR (New Delhi) ,VAK (Mumbai) and Insight (Delhi) are an important component of the Centre’s focus on issues of caste and gender. The upcoming semesters will also include trainings on Documentation and Communication by Aalochana and Stree-Samya; on Advocacy by NCAS and Action Aid as also on Child Rights and Education by CRY, Nirantar. The list of sectors and trainers continue to grow as the Centre seeks to dialogue with new partners in the field.


BRIDGE COURSE

The Bridge Course runs as a co-curricular course in every semester and has been conceptualised as distinct from ‘English Language Courses’ and ‘Remedial English Programmes’. At the centre of this course is an effort to wedge open the inequalities that are articulated through the ‘language question’ in higher education. The course addresses both the immediate and urgent needs of students and the long term goal of transforming the very processes involved in learning and teaching.

The University of Pune attracts equal number of students from the urban and rural areas and more than 50% of the students in the Social Science classrooms of the University including ours come from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Many of our students come from the drought-prone backward areas and aspire for career opportunities in teaching-research, State and Union Public Services and the development sector. However, almost all of them have Marathi as their language of instruction, reading and examination up to the graduation level. Hence developing reading, comprehension, writing and communication skills in English is an urgent need. The major theoretical debates, discussions on contemporary social issues are largely available in English. This leads to a major gap in the theoretical, analytical and writing skills of the students belonging to the above mentioned categories. Many of the students have not had access to computers and therefore do not have a hands-on experience with basics of data entry and processing and efficient use of web resources. On the other hand the English Medium student in this classroom often mistakes fluency of language with accuracy of argument and excellence. Often these students need special training in skills of reading, making notes, building arguments and most importantly in locating issues in social history and the everyday lived reality. Many of these students have very little idea of the rich debates in Marathi/Indian languages happening inside and outside the academia and rarely reflect on own location of privilege and its relation to knowledge and power. The gaps caused by disengaged scholarship and fractured understanding of the middle class English educated students of issues in Indian society is also a matter of concern in the formulation of this course as is the over dependency on web resources that leads to ‘download’ mode of learning and writing.

The Bridge course was started therefore with the following objectives:

• To improve the linguistic skill of English language by teaching basic grammar and phonetics by using readings from the classroom as ‘texts’ for reading and comprehension skills.

• To enhance analytical skills through learning skills of discussion and presentations.

• To develop skills of argumentation and presentation of subject matter.

• To develop basic skills of data entry, use of web resources and processing through social science packages.

• To develop Social Science and Humanities Vocabulary in Marathi/Indian Languages.

• To ‘reflect’ on social location and processes of knowledge.

• To recognize that diverse groups work more efficiently and creatively and transform knowledges.

The Bridge course has been designed around the following five modules:

• Oral, Written, Aural and Visual Comprehension in English

• Basic Comprehension of English Grammar

• Instructional Sessions to navigate real and virtual spaces in English

• Individual and group exercises to develop skills of critical note-taking, reviewing and presentation of subject matter

• Foster respect for diversities through understanding inequalities and creating equal opportunities

The Bridge Course involves at least twice a week classes plus contact hours with the faculty for addressing individual queries and issues. The contact hours work like tutorial sessions. The department is committed to this project and in keeping with the stated aims of the Bridge Course we have also begun writing and publishing teaching-learning manuals for each semester to suit the needs of the course.

BLOCK PLACEMENTS AND INTERNSHIP PROGRAMME

The Masters and Diploma programmes in Gender, Culture and Development Studies are framed within the context of changing social composition of our classroom and the opening up of disciplinary boundaries. The programmes seek to address some of the challenges facing contemporary higher education, more specifically the questions raised about the relevance and ‘employability’ of postgraduates in social sciences and humanities. There has been in recent times, considerable debate on increasing number of unemployed/underemployed postgraduates in Social Sciences and Humanities and research programmes for many are no longer a choice but a way to escape unemployment. Goals of higher education have often come to be posed as either training for labour market or shaping of sensibilities. The programmes at the Women’s Studies Centre seek to move out of this posed binary and are committed to curricula and pedagogies that integrate critical knowledge with skill development for ‘employability’.

The Block Placement and Internship programme which introduces students to the critical areas of practice in the fields of development and culture is an effort to make higher education more adaptive and imaginative and has evolved through seminars, meetings and focused dialogue with the State, Corporate and Non-Governmental Sector to explore mutually beneficial partnerships . The Centre believes that the best of talent from diverse social groups needs to be brought into Social Sciences and Humanities and this is possible only if sustainable partnerships can be built with Development, corporate and media houses. With this in view, the Centre through its project on ‘Reimagining Higher Education: Issues of Employability and Partnership’ has been in dialogue with over 40 organizations in India across the following sectors: Documentation for Change, Alternate Media, Youth, Health, Education, Human Rights and Law, Sexuality and Sex Work, Livelihoods, Publishing/Translation, Microfinance, Dalit rights and relatively newer fields that include disaster management, CSR and Innovation.

The Block Placement Programme is closely linked to intensive semester long training programmes that are integrated in the curriculum through specially designed theme/sector based modular workshops. These modular workshops constitute an important part of the skill development and practice component of the programme and are conducted by renowned practitioners in the above-mentioned sectors. The centre is being assisted in the process of conceptualizing and concretizing the block placement programme by an expert Vijay Wavare who has rich experience of working in the development and CSR sectors and is a trained social worker.

The idea of the block placement programme is to place students for a period of one month with various organizations working in diverse fields, with a view of matching the requirements of the organizations and the interests of the students. The block placement is located in the summer vacations between the first and second year of the MA programme. The block placement seeks to break away from regular models that envisage ‘the field’ as separate from the classroom and as an exposure to the ‘real world’. Rather the bridge course, modular workshops and block placement components are integrated as a part of reflexive learning – of seeing the ‘field’ in the classroom and experiencing the ‘classroom’ in the field. In this process, doing block placement becomes a way of knowing not just about the concerned sector but also about one’s own strengths and limitations. It is envisaged in terms of giving students a space to practice the skills that they possess, identify gaps in skills and work on these during the semester. Students also undergo special training and one-to-one guidance sessions before being placed for blocks and after completing block placement assignments. The block placement is followed by a 2-3 month long internship at the end of their second year of MA. The block placement-internship programme is a step towards building a Placement Cell in the near future.

The first batch of the MA students did their block placements with Action-Aid India, MASUM, Pune; Samyak, Pune; SWACH, Pune; Navsarjan, Ahmedabad; SOPPECOM, Pune; Sangama, Bangalore; Aalochana, Pune; SATHI, Pune; Manuski, Pune among other organizations working with issues as diverse as livelihoods, sexualities, health, masculinities and dalit rights . At the organizations, students have been involved in preparing bibliographies, field based research, documentation, designing and implementing sessions with specific groups, web campaigning apart from participation in the on-going activities of the organizations.

Apart from this, organizations like Drishti Media Collective, Ahmedabad; Centre for Social Justice, Ahmedabad; Olakh, Baroda; ANANDI, Gujarat; Jagori and Jagori Rural, New Delhi and Himachal Pradesh; Saheli, New Delhi; AIDMAM, New Delhi have agreed to be partners in the Internships Programme in the coming years.