July 21, 2021 | Report-Backs
On February 10th, 2021, a one day workshop on ‘Building STS Pedagogies in India’ was virtually hosted by Prof. Ram Ramaswamy and Dr. Naveen Thayyil of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), New Delhi. In the backdrop of a proliferation of Humanities and Social Sciences departments and courses in specialised S&T institutions such as Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) etc., the workshop sought to deliberate how scientific and technical education in India can be better integrated within the broader knowledge approaches in humanities and social sciences. Specifically, it aimed to evoke conceptual and institutional issues towards developing a cogent, transdisciplinary and broad pedagogic Science and Technology Studies (STS) program within the Humanities and Social Sciences, so as to foster a more integrated Science and Technology curricula.
Originally, the workshop was scheduled to be held in March 2020 at IIT Delhi, conceived as part of the Lecture Workshops Series of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore and co-sponsored by IIT Delhi. The organisers, Prof. Ram Ramaswamy and Dr. Naveen Thayyil, explained that in its revised and compacted format, the 2021 Workshop was titled ‘Cultivating Amateur Curiosity Across Disciplinary Boundaries: Liminality Amidst the Three Cultures’, and focussed on four papers that were developed from the cluster of panels formulated for the original workshop, which was postponed due to the pandemic. The authors and discussants were all faculty members of various institutes from India, representing the multiple sites of STS traditions and scholarship from the country.
The first session was on ‘Overcoming Institutional and Epistemic Boundaries’, comprising of papers from Dr. Madhumita Mazumdar of Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DA-IICT), Gujarat and Dr. Vasundhara Bhojvaid of Shiv Nadar University (SNU), Uttar Pradesh.
Introducing Dr. Mazumdar’s paper, ‘STS in a Tech Curriculum : The Troubled Career of Strong Integration’, Dr. Bhojvaid commended the author for her self-reflexivity in identifying the limitations of her methodological moorings as a historian and the conscious effort on her part to transcend the emphasis on macro S&T issues that pervade conventional historical inquiries. The paper also traced the genealogy of the tech-humanities curriculum at DA-IICT, highlighting how interdisciplinarity was woven into the very structuring of the institute, which avoided segregation along discipline-based departments. Dr. Bhojvaid’s paper, ‘Sociology of/as Science in the Classroom’ was introduced by Prof. V. Sanil of IIT Delhi. He underscored Dr. Bhojvaid’s rich auto-ethnographic account as well as a reflexive conceptualisation of her experiences in formulating a Sociology of Science course within a Sociology department at SNU. Through her paper she made a case for decolonising the epistemological vantage point of one’s enquiry, and to decenter the human subject in disciplinary methods and approaches – thereby transforming the science and art of pedagogy.
As the discussant to both the papers in this session, Prof. Dhruv Raina of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, recapitulated the challenges that beset the vocation of STS teaching and research in India, arising from structural impediments within university and institutional spaces and the wider social context of higher education in India. He called attention to the marginality of STS in the spectrum of interdisciplinarity, and also to the fractures and hierarchies that exist within the constellations of knowledge forms that constitute STS. To overcome the fragmented imaginaries that inform STS pedagogy presently, he urged for an appreciation of the diversity of cultural legacies that various strands of STS represent as well as sensitivity to the multiplicity of S&T traditions within which STS scholars strive to establish a pedagogic space for dialogue and instruction.
The post-lunch session was on ‘Amateur Interventionists and the (kill-) joys of Crossing Over’. During the session, the paper by Dr. Aswathy Raveendran from BITS Pilani (Hyderabad), titled ‘Teaching STS: Reflections on Humanizing Techno-scientific Cultures’ was introduced by Dr. Madhumita Mazumdar. Prof. V. Sanil’s paper titled ‘The Curious Case of an Amateur’ was introduced by Dr. Aswathy Raveendran.
Dr. Raveendran remarked that Prof. Sanil’s paper took on the pertinent question of whether STS education can go on beyond the ‘liberal’ model existing in institutes like IITs, BITS, and the experimental ‘integrationist’ model in institutes like IISc. He advocated for an ‘interventionist’ move, spearheaded by the ‘curious amateur’- a reflexive epistemic agent, who probes the very conditions of knowledge production. He cited examples of transdisciplinary projects in biological sciences and philosophy at IIT-Hyderabad, and CSLC-Karnataka, whose ontological foundations, he suggested, gave space for action techniques and ethics and hence for the ‘curious amateur’ to flourish.
In her discussion of Dr. Raveendran’s paper, Dr. Madhumita Mazumdar noted that it problematised the lack of creativity and the ‘reductionist’ approach of science education. Dr. Raveendran drew on her experience of moving from biotech research to science education research, as well as teaching STS at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad. She noted that gender and caste based discrimination along with ableism, competitiveness, and meritocracy were inherent in scientific cultures and created structural barriers for learners. She then engaged with the debate on ‘integration’ and emphasised that to go beyond doing STS in the ‘add-on’ mode, it is critical to respond to the social experiences within the classrooms, to make them more inclusive.
Discussing these papers, Prof. Prajit Basu suggested that the ‘reductionist’ ways of doing biology can be attributed to the fundamental metaphysical methodological position which brackets out the issue of ethics. Adding to Dr. Raveendran’s discussion of exclusionary scientific cultures, he said that students need to be exposed to a worldview based on the principle of common good by engaging them in debates around the socio-cultural manifestations of the technologies they create. Responding to Prof. Sanil’s ideas of an ‘interventionist’ approach to STS pedagogy in STEM institutions, he said that it was imperative to pay heed to the ethical concerns associated with the aforesaid approach.
Both sessions of the workshop entailed an engaging exchange between the authors and members of the audience regarding challenges of grappling with diverse institutional and learning cultures, the utility of interdisciplinarity and methods of putting it in practice, the possibilities of shaping pedagogic practices in accordance with various models of teaching and research as well as the changing canvas and prospects of STS in academic spaces in India.
Nishtha Bharti is a Doctoral candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) New Delhi, working at the interface of Science and Technology Studies and Political Theory. Her research interests span Public Policy, Citizenship Studies, Ethical and Regulatory aspects of Emerging Technologies, Critical Algorithm Studies and Philosophy of Technology.
Abhigya is a Doctoral candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi. Her research lies at the intersection of Science and Technology Studies, and Public Policy. Her doctoral thesis attempts to gain an understanding of the perceptions of ‘risk’ and ‘safety’ that underpin pesticide regulation policy in India, through the lens of theories of ‘risk’ and ‘uncertainty’.
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Published: 07/21/2021