Over the last decade Geetha has researched change at many levels and it is her hypothesis that breaking patterns of practice established over decades of mimicking western and colonial education “methods” is hard to do alone, by either hero Principals or indeed by groups of evangelical school teachers. The educational system resists change and in order for reform to have a long term impact Geetha has adopted a “memetic” view to curriculum development. What this means in lay terms is that in large part members of educational communities are either skeptical, evangelical, critical or plain mimics of change initiatives and in order to orchestrate breakthroughs and not result in breakdowns change needs three critical components- a safe closed space for practitioners to try and fail; continuous and formative support by creative and critical specialists and most importantly an overarching and unambiguous vision.
Presenting at this conference, Geetha will draw on a series of innovations she has implemented at institutions in India and draw from this a kind of pattern language – that will enable these innovations to spread across borders and across spaces.
The approach and methodology outlined in the case studies presented will be of interest to a wide range of educational practitioners ranging from technology innovators to instructional designers, theoretical scholars to everyday educators.
The integration of design thinking, sustainability and embodiment should also be of interest to practitioners who want to build pedagogies that will revive the human spirit while simultaneously create cultures of stewardship for our planet.
