30 Years at IIMA

After spending more than 30 years at the Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation (RJMCEI), Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Vijaya Sherry Chand retired on May 31, 2023. Prior to joining the Institute in January 1993, he worked for eleven years in social development, planning and implementing a variety of developmental programs (non-formal education, agro-processing, animal husbandry, rural housing, forestry cooperatives, community health and legal rights of marginalized communities) for socio-economically marginalized dalit and tribal communities in India. His academic work at the RJMCEI was centred on teacher-driven workplace innovation, the consequences of innovative work performance of teachers for learning climate and children’s motivation, and using teacher innovations for online professional development of teachers in the public system. The base for this work was provided by a project titled ‘Educational Innovations Bank’: Decentralized Professional Development and Quality Enhancement in Public Schooling (closed in March 2023) that developed a clearing house (‘EI Bank’) for the “innovations that improve” of teachers working in government elementary schools. The question the project asked was, “How do some teachers achieve their educational goals in spite of facing the same constraints as thousands of other teachers?” The EI Bank was used to develop a teacher innovation-based online professional development program (science, math, language and social studies, and school governance) for teachers and principals in the public system. The three-decade long experience with teacher innovations is described in a book published in October 2022. (Chand, V.S., Kuril, S. & Deshmukh, K. (2022). Teacher Development in India: Building on Grassroots Innovations and Technology. London, New York & New Delhi: Routledge.)

Research Projects & Publications 

Note: Only the key projects are listed below.

Educational Innovations Bank

This project aimed at leveraging teacher-generated innovations to promote a decentralized and peer-driven approach to teacher development that can complement top-down reform. The ‘Educational Innovations Bank’ (EI Bank) so created was a clearing house for innovations of government school teachers who have achieved their educational goals in spite of facing the same constraints that thousands of others face.  The EI Bank was supported by the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai (2005-07); the Hewlett-Packard Sustainability and Social Innovation Award (2013) has made the scaling up of the work and its conversion into a web-based resource possible.  

Experimental Design and Development of Online Professional Development Platform

The objective of this project was to develop a cost-effective platform for online in-service professional development of teachers that used a curriculum based on cases of teacher-driven innovations. Two pilots for about 2000 government school principals on governance were conducted during January to October 2017, and then a program for 19000 teachers of science and math in Gujarat conducted from May to December 2018. The program was further expanded to 140,000 teachers of grade 1-8. It also incorporated the development of capabilities with the state system for designing and implementing online professional development. The program was completed in January 2020.

Leveraging technology for teacher innovation-based professional development

The aim of this project was to develop a network mechanism to disseminate problem-solving innovations and promote discussion on particular innovations. A mobile phone-based discussion forum received a link to one of the innovations in the EI Bank every 10 days, and the best responses were fed back to the forum. About 10,000 teachers were members of this forum. A similar activity was carried out through about 90 WhatsApp groups. The work was extended to studying self-initiated teacher development groups that used Facebook, websites or WhatsApp as communication tools.

Building a culture of innovation in the public system: Educational Innovation Fairs

This project aimed at examining the effectiveness of “Educational Innovation Fairs” as a tool for developing a culture of innovation in the District Institutes of Education and Training in Gujarat. IIMA was directly involved in the first two “Educational Innovation Fairs” of 2016 and 2017. In each district, about 40 teachers, whose work had been validated, displayed their innovations for two days. The stalls were visited by one teacher from each school in the district. The visitors ranked the innovations. The top three innovative teachers from each district were then invited to a state fair. A study of the program found that more than half of the visitors had adopted or adapted at least one idea from the fairs. The government has been conducting these fairs annually after 2017.

Contextualizing ICT in the classroom: Gyan Kunj

Gyan Kunj is a digital classroom initiative of the Government of Gujarat launched in September 2017. This study was an assessment of its progress during its first year. Based on the findings, some changes to the way in which technology is integrated were adopted.

Does Project Implementation Training Affect Decisional Style of School Management Committee Members

This project was focused on improving governance in school management committees. In contrast to the official training programs which focused on communication of roles and responsibilities of the members, the project implemented a project-based training module that offered the participating members a chance to engage in actual decision-making. The decisional styles of the 603 SMC members from 100 villages who participated were tracked over a nine-month period. The results were positive and recommendations for school governance were made.

Scholars for Change: Online Internship Opportunity for Students

This project, initiated in 2014, demonstrated the feasibility of an online internship program. It argued that providing higher education students a learning-by-doing opportunity in the form of a challenge related to social development can meet the desire of students to engage in reflective learning and address some key concerns related to school development, such as the digital divide in government schools.  The internship saw the participation of more than 800 students who produced about 4500 videos, many with teaching manuals, to supplement Science and Math teaching in Classes 6 to 8 and language in Classes 1 to 5, and about 2500 projects in Science and Math for Classes 6 to 8. Packages prepared from this content were distributed for offline use.

How does teacher innovative behavior influence the non-cognitive competencies of children such as intrinsic goal orientation, academic self-efficacy and metacognitive learning strategies? (Vishal Gupta, Kathan Shukla & Vijaya Sherry Chand)

This study of about 6700 children sought to examine the under-studied relationships between teacher innovative behavior and the development of non-cognitive competencies of children in the public schooling system. 

PUBLICATIONS (only last five years 2018-2023, up to retirement)

• Maun, D., Chand, V.S. & Shukla, K. D. (2023). Influence of Teacher Innovative Behaviour on Students’ Academic Self-efficacy and Intrinsic Goal Orientation, Educational Psychology. DOI: 10.1080/01443410.2023.2241682. 

• Kuril, S., Maun, D. & Chand, V. S. (2023). Measuring Teacher Innovative Behavior: A validated multidimensional inventory for use with public school teachers. International Journal of Educational Management. 10.1108/IJEM-03-2022-0095.

• Chand, V.S., Kuril, S. & Deshmukh, K. (2022). Teacher Development in India: Building on Grassroots Innovations and Technology. London, New York & New Delhi: Routledge.

• Chand, V.S. (2022). Private Sector in Management Education. In N.V.Varghese and J. Panigrahi (Eds.),  India Higher Education Report 2021: Private Higher Education, (pp.82-104). London, New York: Routledge. (July 2022). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003298724

• Chand, V.S., Deshmukh, K. & Kuril, S. (2021). Reforming Public In-service Teacher Training Systems. Economic & Political Weekly 56(39), https://www.epw.in/journal/2021/39/special-articles/reforming-public-service-teacher-training-systems.html (September 2021).

• Kuril, S., Gupta, V. & Chand, V.S. (2021). Relationship between negative teacher behaviors and student engagement: Evidence from India. International Journal of Educational Research, 109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2021.101858 (August 2021).

• Chand, V.S., Kuril, S., Deshmukh, K., Avadhanam, Rukmini M. (2020). Assessing Teacher Innovations: Expert versus Peer Ratings.  International Journal of Educational Management. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM-04-2020-0185.

• Maun, D., Shukla, K.D., & Chand V.S. (2020). Validating Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire and Invariance Test across Gender and Caste Groups in India. Cogent Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2020.1853303.

• Chand, V.S., Kuril, S., & Shukla, A. (2020). Dialoguing with teacher-educators, valorising teacher innovations. London Review of Education 18(3), 451-466. 10.14324/LRE.18.3.09.

• Deshmukh K.S., Chand V.S., Shukla K.D., and Laha A.K. (2020). Exploring Associations Between Participant Online Content Engagement and Outcomes in an Online Professional Development Programme. In: Sharma S.K., Dwivedi Y.K., Metri B., Rana N.P. (eds) Re-imagining Diffusion and Adoption of Information Technology and Systems: A Continuing Conversation. TDIT 2020. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 617. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64849-7_12

• Shukla, K.D., Kuril, S., & Chand, V.S. (2020). Does Negative Teacher Behavior Influence Student Self-efficacy and Mastery Goal Orientation? Learning and Motivation.
  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lmot.2020.101653.

• Chand, V.S., Deshmukh, K., & Shukla, A. (2020). Why does Technology Integration Fail? Teacher Beliefs and Content Developer Assumptions in an Indian Initiative. Educational Technology Research and Development. 10.1007/s11423-020-09760-x.

• Deshmukh, K., Chand, V.S., Shukla, K. and Laha, A. (2020). Engagement Patterns of Participants in an Online Professional Development Programme: An Application of Mixture Modelling. Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (53rd Conference), January 2020, pp.71 - 78.  https://dx.doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2020.010.

• Chand, V. S.; Patel, Gautam; Pillai, Aadarsh; Kadri, A.M.; & Bakshi, H. (2020). Gujarat’s Public Health Response to COVID-19: Documenting the Process, March to October 2020. Ahmedabad: Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. https://covid19.iima.ac.in/GUJ_COVID_forpublication.pdf

• Chand, Vijaya Sherry, & Deshmukh, Ketan. (2019). Addressing the Undergraduate Internship Challenge in Developing Countries: A ‘Learning-by-doing’ Project-based Online Internship Model. Education + Training.  https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-12-2018-0254.

• Sarin, Ankur, & Vijaya Sherry Chand. (2019). Supporting and Sustaining State-Initiated Women’s Empowerment: Learning from a National Program in India. The Journal of International Development. DOI: 10.1002/jid.3409

• Chand, Vijaya Sherry, & Deshmukh, Ketan. (2018).  Does Implementing Problem-solving Projects Affect Decisional Style? Developing Governance Capabilities in School Management Committees. Journal of Development Effectiveness. DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2018.1551920

• Chand, Vijaya Sherry, & Kuril, Samvet. (2018). Contextualising Educational Decentralisation Policies in India. Economic & Political Weekly 53(12), 107-114.

IIMA ARCHIVES PUBLICATIONS

Not Yet 25: IIMA in Louis Kahn's Designs and Pranlal Patel's Images, (Vijaya Sherry Chand) (2023) https://archives.iima.ac.in/monograph.html 

Maritime Trade of Gujarat's Princely States: Nawanagar and Porbandar (Vijaya Sherry Chand, Abhishek Mishra and Kriti Bole) (2023) https://archives.iima.ac.in/monograph.html 

Past Research Projects

• Review of curriculum of rural higher education institutions (Gujarat) to identify the scope for incorporating concepts of sustainable development and sustainable, eco-friendly entrepreneurship into the formal curriculum.

•  Curriculum review for incorporating local women's knowledge of animal husbandry and veterinary knowledge into the Dairy Science stream of the Bachelor's program in Rural Studies in a women's college. 

• Incorporating local ecological and natural science knowledge into formal education through bio-diversity contests among primary school children: Development of methodology for externalizing ecological knowledge of children.

• Participatory Research and Gender Analysis in Natural Resource Management (as part of RJMCEI team). A number of similar projects related to biodiversity and dairying. 

• Review of the post-literacy campaign in Dumka, Bihar (as part of RJMCEI team, 1998).

• Assessment of institutional capacities for delivery of school education in some states of Eastern and Southern India. 

• Review of gender issues and alternative schools in the Shiksha Karmi Project (as part of RJMCEI team, 1998). Similar studies in a few Indian states focusing on gender disparities in enrolment and retention in school. 

• Assessment and reformulation of teacher training strategies, Gujarat and other states (1998, 2003-04), with specific focus on decentralization.

• Review of class one textbooks in Gujarat: Assessing integration of environmental science and language textbooks. Followed by a review of class three and four texts.

• Studies on drop-out, non-enrollment and primary school completion in Gujarat, including a social assessment series of six districts.

•  Educational practices of successful secondary school teachers of Gujarat.

• Institutional assessment of the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya schooling system (as part of RJMCEI team).

• Institution building in education: Case studies of institutions of higher education in Commonwealth countries.

• Kayakalp: Innovations in Higher Education. Editing a newsletter sponsored by the University Grants Commission, India, to network innovative teachers, administrators and institutions (1996-98).

• National policy framework for assessment of quality in institutions of higher education.

• Participation in various District Primary Education Programme/ Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and other primary education programme assessment/ review/ evaluation missions of the Government of India and external donor agencies, focusing usually on management structures, financial analysis and gender audit.

• Short-term curriculum (1999-2000) for social organizations on gender as ideology, gender discrimination/ awareness and the interplay of gender as ideological practice and "women's development" as concrete socio-economic practice (follow up of an earlier review of the Mahila Samakhya program of GoI).

• Management of rural residential schooling: This project, in partnership with the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, focused on strengthening the capabilities and capacities of the system to address the needs of talented rural children. The specific focus was on developing teacher capabilities and leadership within the system.

Teaching and Administration

• Teaching interests: Educational innovation, communication, research methodology, socio-cultural and socio-political contexts of business. 

• Enterprise and Innovation in Education, a postgraduate course focusing on recent changes in management of education

• Written Analysis and Communication and Managerial Communication, for the postgraduate programs at the IIMA

• Communication for Management Teachers, Socio-political Contexts of Research in Management and Education: Theory, Policy and Practice, doctoral courses

• Case Method in Management Education, a course that involves a case writing exercise and case teaching, for doctoral and faculty development programme participants

• Qualitative Research Methods in Education, a course for doctoral students.

• Other teaching interests include teacher development (school level), institution building in higher education and general professional development programs for university and departmental heads. 

Key administrative positions held include the following: Chairman's nominee to IIMA Board, Dean (Alumni & External Relations), Editor Vikalpa, and Chair of various entities like RJMCEI, Admissions, Financial Aid Committee, IIMA Archives, Faculty Development Programme, PGP-ABM, JSW School of Public Policy, Communication Advisory Committee, and the PGP-ABM and PGP Review Implementation Committees. He has also been a member of various committees including the Case Centre Executive Committee and the Computer Services Committee.

Other Interests

People's organizations and local non-governmental work which deal specifically with social development, educational access and local innovations (including the work on grassroots innovations www.sristi.org). This has often extended to participation in relief activities (natural or human disasters) and ongoing interest in non-governmental organizations. In addition, in the past, participation in various committees (educational reviews and assessments for state and central governments), Gujarat Council of Primary Education, and a few Research Advisory Councils, focused on educational management.

Other areas of work include early medieval temple architecture, including medieval water structures in Gujarat, Tamil Brahmi epigraphy in the southern parts of South India, developments in Indian protohistory and the Indus Valley civilization sites in Gujarat, early Christian sites and dualist 'heretic' movements. Also involved in support to organ donation and Guillain-Barré Syndrome/ CIDP rehabilitation.