Advocacy and Policy

Learn Today, the learning division of the India Today Group is organizing a conference on 'Textbooks and Teaching-Learning Materials for the New Millennium'.

The conference is on December 11 2008 from 9 am to 5 pm at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi.

The purpose of the conference is to consider the policy and practice which shapes the learning resources we create. It focuses on the ways in which learning resources in general and textbooks in particular, are envisioned, produced and used. Although textbooks support the maintenance of at least minimal standards and equity, they can also promote a narrow, rote-based learning culture. Yet it need hardly be said that the developments in new communication strategies - the internet, educational software, online help sites, DVDs etc - also shape the ways learning materials are used, and how we use learning material must be shaped by this.

The conference speakers constitute some of the best known and most influential names in contemporary education, including Government bodies, private foundations, leading textbook publishers and thinkers on learning practice. The spread of speakers is intended to address the issues for elite, urban private education as well as rural education.

The intention of the conference is to produce a recommendation document intervening in policy, which can be presented to government.

Attendees at the conference include members of parliament with a concern for education, government and quasi-government officials including from the Education Ministry, NCERT and NUEPA, a private sector organizations involved in education, school principals, teachers and a limited number of students.