What We Do
TFC focuses on generating research-based solutions to provide an education that builds agency in teachers and in all, including the most disadvantaged, students in India.
Our Hypotheses
Providing high-quality, relevant, 21st C curriculum and learning resources, and creating a mechanism for support as teachers learn to access and contextualize them, and to use them in their own classrooms, will initiate a generative process of collaborative learning, intrinsic motivation, and improved practice.
Providing a 21st Century education, with inquiry-based, deeper learning methods and interactive pedagogies will build key capacities in every student and lead to increased numbers of students emerging from school as engaged citizens of a democratic world.
Our Work with Teachers
TFC focuses on NCERT Social Science curriculum so as to serve the largest group of teachers in India.
As a school subject, Social Science is uniquely suited to help both teachers and students develop a social justice lens through which to make sense of the world around them, to ask compelling questions, analyze information, and become thoughtful and engaged citizens.
In a process of active collaborative learning, TFC works with teacher educators in the system, leveraging research-based strategies to develop contextually relevant learning opportunities that can empower teachers with the knowledge, skills and learning resources they need to do their daily work, i.e. to teach such that students learn.
Our Work with Students
TFC works directly with Secondary school and entry-level undergraduate students to build core 21st Century capacities so as to equip them for their life beyond school, in college, in their careers, and in civic life. We design and execute courses to build readiness for life beyond school: for college, career and civic life. The courses focus on setting students on a path to becoming self-directed learners, using digital and media literacy as both hooks and enablers, and using social science content to promote engaged citizenship.
Research and Documentation
TFC focuses on different kinds of research including action research as well as the study of teaching practice in Social Science classrooms, and documentation, packaging, and dissemination of materials, modules and studies. We seek to document improved teacher-educator learning and practice as well as teacher learning and practice in order to inform school education policy and management. We believe that it is important to test the efficacy of new learning materials for teachers and students, and to package tested learning opportunities and learning materials for teacher educators, teachers and students so as to make them widely available.
Education Resource Collaborative
TFC also aspires to function as an Education Resource Collaborative to promote the use of rich and current curricular materials on self-development, citizenship and social justice in school and higher education institutions in India.
Recognizing that reconceptualizing educational outcomes for students from diverse contexts and different life-stages and developing need-based curriculum for these contexts must be a collaborative effort of many partners, The Ferdinand Centre prioritizes the development of institutional partnerships to think and work together in a consortium on a sustained basis, to develop and trial courses and programs at different levels. And recognizing that for sustainability, change must take place at a systemic level, and that the educators who teach in school systems are the best interpreters of their own context, the Centre simultaneously seeks partnership with institutions responsible for the development of educators, such as universities, SCERTs and DIETs, to ensure that they are key players in designing the curriculum they will transact.