Speakers

Conference Moderators

Thomas Müller is Professor at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany where he holds the Chair of Education for pedagogy at Behavioral and Emotional Disorders.  His research focuses on poverty and trust.  He concentrates on understanding disrupted childhood under the social conditions of the 21st century, teaching and education for children with behavioural and emotional disorders; habilitation treatise on concepts of trust and their significance for pedagogy at behavioural and emotional disorders

Milind Brahme is Associate Professor at Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He teaches courses on German Language and Literature, and School Education. He also translates between Marathi, Hindi, English, and German.

Suresh Babu is Associate Professor at Indian Institute of Technology Madras. His specializes on research in Indian Economic Development and Industrial Economics.

 

Conference Speakers 

Angela W Little is Professor Emerita at the Institute of Education, University of London where she held the Chair of Education and International Development between 1987 and 2010.  She was previously a Fellow of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. Throughout her career she has combined academic and professional work and has collaborated with many universities, bi-lateral and multi-national agencies and national education ministries. She is the author and/or editor of ten books, seven special issues of journals, book chapters, journal articles and reports on the themes of Multigrade Teaching, Education for All, Globalisation and Education, Assessment and Qualifications and the Political Economy of Education Reform. She has directed twelve comparative research projects in countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, supervised thirty four research students to successful completion of their doctorates and written and directed two films. She directed DFID and EU funded research on Multigrade education in a range of Asian, Latin American and European countries. Her main text on multigrade education is Education for All and Multigrade Teaching: Challenges and Opportunities, (2006), Springer.

Anjana Mangalagiri is an educationist who has worked with UNICEF for over 20 years, heading its Education programs in Bangladesh, Mozambique, China and earlier, in UNICEF’s offices of Orissa and Tamil Nadu/Kerala in India. Prior to this, she worked as an Associate Professor at the National University of Educational Planning and Administration for a decade, engaged in projects in educational policy development, training of educational planners and administrators in comparative education. Anjana has extensive experience, both at strategic levels and in the field, working closely with national and local governments, sectorally and inter-sectorally, as also with international partners in influencing policy and institutional development. She has led teams in primary education sector reform and standards development in teacher education, early childhood education, and school and learner quality and life skills education for adolescents in both formal and non-formal education, in particular for the most unreached and marginalized children.

Malathy Duraisamy is a Professor and the current head of the department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras. She specializes in research on Economics of Human Resources (Education, Health, Migration), Technical Education & Manpower, Gender Discrimination, Industrial Economics, Banking & Financial Economics.

Manjula Vithanapathirana, attached to Faculty of Education, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, is a researcher in multigrade teaching. Her PhD thesis titled ‘Improving multigrade teaching: An action research with teachers in rural Sri Lanka’ was completed at the Institute of Education, University College London. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship as the Coordinator, International Research Project “Learning and Teaching in Multigrade Settings”, popularly known as LATIMS, a collaborative project between Institute of Education, University of London, Tribhuvan University, Nepal and Faculty of Education, University of Colombo. Being experienced in multigrade teaching models of United Kingdom, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Nepal and South Africa, she completed consultancies in multigrade teacher education for Aga Khan Education Service, Pakistan and UNICEF, Eritrea. Currently, she holds the honorary position of the General President of the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS), the premier association of all disciplines of scientists in Sri Lanka.

Jürg Sonderegger is Professor at the Pädagogische Hochschule, St. Gallen, Switzerland (University of Teacher Training) where he is Director of the Didactical Centres. 

                                                                                       

Jurie Joubert is the Director of the Centre for Multi-Grade Education at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa. His areas of expertise include developing of teaching materials, reconstructive education, human rights education, multi-level classroom management and learning, especially in the context of rural education and learning and early childhood development. He is also proficient in the area of educational curriculum, drawing from his experience as a teacher at the primary and secondary school levels as well as from teaching at a teacher’s training college. He has to his name several publications in the field of curriculum and school textbooks.          He has collaborated on research projects both internationally and nationally has addressed international conferences in Germany, the Netherlands, USA, Lesotho, Scotland, England, Nigeria, Columbia and Zimbabwe. 

                         

Vimala Ramachandran is currently the Director of ERU Consultants Private Limited.   She has been working on elementary education, girls’ education and women’s empowerment. She was involved in the conceptualisation of Mahila Samakhya (Education for Women’s Equality) and served as its first National Project Director from 1988-93 in MHRD, GOI.  She established Educational Resource Unit (now known as ERU Consultants Private Limited) in 1998 as a network of researchers and practitioners working on education. From 2011 to mid-2015 she was a National Fellow and Professor of Teacher Management and Development in NUEPA. She have been engaged in research on elementary and secondary education focusing on gender and equity issues, teacher status and motivation and systemic barriers to realising the equity goals of national policies and programmes for elementary education; adult literacy and continuing education and most recently have been engaged in researching educational needs of out of school youth – especially girls.

Anita Kaul has had a long career working in the government, mostly in the social sectors. In education, she was closely involved with the Total Literacy Campaigns at the National level in the late 1980s/early 1990s to show how women can be empowered at individual and collective levels as a result of their participation in literacy programmes. She also worked in the DPEP programme, during which period Rishi Valley’s School-in-a-Box approach was adapted to the government system through the Nali Kali programme. She has been associated with the drafting of the National Curriculum Framework, 2005 by the NCERT. In her tenure at the Ministry of Human Resource Development,  the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 was passed, and the Constitution (86^th Amendment) Act, 2002 making free and compulsory education a fundamental right enforced. Anita Kaul retired from Government as Secretary, Department of Justice, Government of India. She is currently working as Director in the Council for Social Development in New Delhi.

Nirupam Bajpai is a Senior Development Advisor and Director, South Asia Program at the Center for Sustainable Development, Earth Institute,Columbia University in New York. He is also a Member of the Scientific Committee of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and the UN Millennium Project on the Millennium Development Goals. He has also served as the founding director of the Columbia Global Centers South Asia. On a request from the Government of Gujarat, between 2003-05, Bajpai led teams of scientists from Columbia University to conduct research and advise the government on a variety of issues relating to the sustainable development of the State. Additionally, on a request from the Planning Commission of India, Bajpai led teams of social scientists to undertake policy-oriented research for the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh on "Scaling up Services in Rural India".

Haresh Chaudhari has worked with government organizations (GCERT-Gujarat Council of Educational Research and Training, and Gujarat Council of Elementary Education- State Project Office-SSA) and with UNICEF. This has enabled him to develop firsthand experience of strategizing pedagogical interventions, formulating of plans of actions, setting up monitoring systems, capacity building of project staff and other stakeholders, coordination with government as well as teachers’ organization and NGO programme implementers, guiding CSR partners, material development and documentation etc. He is based at GCERT as Curriculum Coordinator with an additional charge of Convener – Quality Enhancement Cell, SSA-Gujarat. He is involved in the process of developing the curriculum, syllabus, textbooks and workbooks of standard 1 to 8 as well as the development of curriculum for Diploma in Elementary Education and Bachelor of Education. He is one of the state core group members for ABL planning and implementation in the state of Gujarat.

Y A Padmanabha Rao is the founding Director of Rishi Valley Institute for Educational Resources (RIVER), Krishnamurti Foundation India, and has pioneered the RIVER Multi-Grade Multi-Level (MGML) methodology. To date, around 250,000 schools are using this model in 13 different languages.  Over 180,000 teachers have been trained to use this methodology and 10.5 million children have benefited directly from RIVER programs. Mr Rao is a fellow of Ashoka International and the Khemka Foundation, and was the co-winner of the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year award for India at the India Economic Summit 2009. Mr. Rao has been on several evaluation missions sponsored by UNICEF, European Union and Government of India and is a member of bodies such as The Teacher Education, National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), Fulbright Exchange program, Global Social Benefit Institute (GSBI -- Santa Clara University), Mathematics Association of India. Mr Rao has 28 years of experience at RIVER, Rishi Valley.

A. Rama Rao is responsible, together with her husband, for the implementation of the Rishi Valley Institute for Educational Resources (RIVER) Multi-Grade Multi-Level (MGML) methodology in different parts of India. She has conceptualized, designed and coordinated the development of many learning packages for primary schools including “School in a Box”, Panchatantra Craft package and MGMLTrainer Resource Pack. She pioneered the ideas of “Metric Mela” – a maths community festival, “Mothers stories” – adapting and using rural women oral traditions as reading programs for first generation learners and “Miniature shadow Puppetry” – adapting the traditional puppetry as visual learning aids. She has directed designers' workshops for almost 15 state level resource groups in developing locally contextualised MGML teaching learning packages. A. Rama Rao is a fellow of Ashoka International and the Khemka Foundation, and was the co-winner of the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur of the Year award for India at the India Economic Summit 2009.

Ulrike Lichtinger is Professor at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where she is a board member of the Regensburg University Centre for Teacher Training, head of the Office for Practical Training in Teacher Education, and faculty member at the Department of Education. Her main interests are in flexible learning for Multi Grade Multi Level classrooms and school development. Her recent studies have focused on learning with ladders of learning as well as relationship and the moment of encounter in classroom situations.

Ralf Girg is Professor at the University of Regensburg, Germany, where he is the Academic Director at the Chair of Education working in teacher education. His philosophical and research interests focus on integral education and integral schools in global contexts. He initiated Team Research Integral and cooperates in several international collaborations working with the MGML-Methodology.

Pooja Kulkarni is the current Tamil Nadu State Project Head of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan. Since 2003, she has extensive experience working across districts in Tamil Nadu on District Administration, Rural Development, Health, and Industries. She has been headingthe SSA program  as the project director in Tamil Nadu beginning 2013.

Begur Ramachandra Rao is currently a senior educational specialist at UNICEF India and has vast experience in designing and demonstrating effective educational programmes especially in the areas of curriculum, pedagogy and, teacher education. He works with the national and state governments and the civil society partners for the implementation of several educational programmes in the country. He has also designed and developed several teacher training strategies based on emotional intelligence, humanistic education and various context specific models for the enhancement of learning and learning outcomes for children. He had served as a faculty at the Centre of Advanced Study in Education at the M.S. University of Baroda prior to joining UNICEF.

Vishnuteerth Agnihotri has had a diverse professional career in the fields of educational assessment, development of e-learning solutions, leadership training, consulting, business development, project management, and performance improvement. He is currently Senior Educational Advisor to Educational Initiatives (EI), a leading player in the field of educational assessments and e-learning. During his tenure at EI, he has headed the development of diagnostic assessments, an adaptive computer-based learning system and the Large Scale Assessments team that conducts large scale assessment-based research studies in both government and private schools. A graduate of IIT Madras, prior to EI, Vishnu was a Senior Program Manager with i2 Technologies (now JDA), a leading global provider of software solutions. He has worked on several projects in India, and around the world- including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, the US and China.

Richard Rowe is Chair and CEO of the Open Learning Exchange. Founded in 2007 as a Social Benefit Organization (501c3), OLE is committed to achieving quality universal basic education in the economically less-developed parts of the world. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in clinical psychology in 1963.  In the early 1960's, he lived in Nigeria for three years as Director of the Test Development and Research Office of the West African Examinations Council, providing the elementary and secondary educational tests for the five English-speaking West African countries. Subsequently he served as Associate Dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Education, and chair of the Center for Studies in Education and Development.  He was President of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation before founding OLE. Richard Rowe has conducted research concerning methods for assessing social interventions in the developing world and has long been an advocate for early childhood education.  He has served as Chair of the Statewide Advisory Committee of the Massachusetts Office for Children, as a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education where he served both as Chair of the Selection committee for the Commissioner of Education and of the Education Reform Review Committee.   He has served on several other boards including the MIT Press Management Board, the Board of Advisors of the School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and as Chair of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education.

Sandeep  Menon is a Social Entrepreneur, the co-founder and CEO of TIDE Learning Systems Pvt. Lts. He is engaged in creating EdTech solutions; using technology in education for empowering teachers and engaging rural and underprivileged students globally.  He has been an entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience managing wide-ranging manufacturing capabilities with a turnover of INR 150 million and over 200 employees. His assets include is vast experience in start-up projects, project planning and execution, strategic planning, operations, people management and exposed to government and statutory obligations.  Sandeep is an alumnus of Rishi Valley School.

Shashi Nair is Professor at Azim Premji University. He holds a B. Tech (Civil) from IIT Madras, and an MBA (Operations Research) from IIM Bangalore. He has over 36 years of experience covering areas such as design, research and development, product development, operations audit of organizations, instructional design, people development, organizational development and developing partner networks. He has worked in Azim Premji Foundation since 2006. Shashi has played the roles of Consultant, Policy Planning Unit, Office of the Commissioner for Public Instruction, Department of Education, Karnataka, and Head, Education Leadership and Management, Azim Premji Foundation. His projects involve the creation and implemention of programmes and strategies for the large scale development of leadership and management capabilities of education functionaries in Karnataka school education system and systemic capacity development of the district elementary education system in Mandya, Karnataka.

Ruchi Ghose holds an M.A. in Economics from Calcutta University and an M.B.A. from UCLA. After a 14 year stint in marketing and advertising she moved to the education sector to become a school teacher at the Primary level with Shree Ram School Aravalli in Gurgaon in 2001. From being a teacher she moved to being a teacher educator in 2004 with the Teacher Foundation in Bangalore, after which she joined Azim Premji Foundation. She is currently part of the team that set up and continues to support the six demonstration schools of the Foundation. In particular, she is responsible for capacity building of the Azim Premji School Principals. During her tenure at the Foundation, she has also worked in a variety of areas including Education Leadership and Management and developing content for and facilitating workshops for senior functionaries.