Contemporary Education Dialogue

Science education is an interdisciplinary field of enquiry with conceptual frameworks drawing from the foundational disciplines of education, besides the multiple sub-disciplines of science. An interdisciplinary understanding has been critical to postgraduate courses in science education. However, students continue to have a conventional understanding of the nature and practices of science, based on predominant experiences at school and undergraduate education. This article analyses two assignments which draw upon philosophical and sociological perspectives in science. It discusses the development of hybrid spaces for students in understanding and navigating the disciplines and their interests. Conceptual and rhetorical elements, particularly emphasising students’ extension of inferences and projection of personae, are illustrated as elements of the forward and backward search strategies. Such assignments are essential to develop a richer understanding of the nature of science and its complex interpretation compared to typical deifications in textbooks and pedagogic approaches. They also support students with diverse interests and backgrounds to navigate different disciplines and unique interests through the development of ‘hybrid spaces’. Such spaces, at the boundaries of disciplines, writing conventions and students’ interests develop and reshape conventional understanding.

In South Asian societies, nationalist projects have often relied on cultural symbols drawn from varied native traditions for their legitimacy claims. In a multi-ethnic society like India, with a multitude of narratives about collective pasts, it becomes difficult for such projects to achieve a multi-symbol congruence that is deemed necessary. The schools are key sites where such complex interplay of the production of locality (region) and national identity can be examined. Schools located in the state of Assam afford a vantage point to examine the vexed relation between the national and the regional imaginaries. The article draws on materials collected from a school affiliated to the Vidya Bharati Trust located in Assam. The Trust and the schools run by it have been extensively examined for their focus on promoting a certain ideology of nationalism which is based on the cultural supremacy of Hindu symbols. However, the branches of such schools in Assam carry a distinct regional character in their endorsement of regional icons and of Assamese language. This article examines the dynamics of nation, religion and region within educational spaces in the deployment of visual images and in the curricular materials used in a school named after Sankardeva.