Action research

Action research is either research initiated to solve an immediate problem or a reflective process of progressive problem solving led by individuals working with others in teams or as part of a "community of practice" to improve the way they address issues and solve problems. There are two types of action research: participatory action research and practical action research. Denscombe (2010, p. 6) writes that an action research strategy's purpose is to solve a particular problem and to produce guidelines for best practice.

Action research involves actively participating in a change situation, often via an existing organization, whilst simultaneously conducting research. Action research can also be undertaken by larger organizations or institutions, assisted or guided by professional researchers, with the aim of improving their strategies, practices and knowledge of the environments within which they practice. As designers and stakeholders, researchers work with others to propose a new course of action to help their community improve its work practices.

Kurt Lewin, then a professor at MIT, first coined the term "action research" in 1944. In his 1946 paper "Action Research and Minority Problems" he described action research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action" that uses "a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action".

Overview[edit]

Action research is an interactive inquiry process that balances problem solving actions implemented in a collaborative context with data-driven collaborative analysis or research to understand underlying causes enabling future predictions about personal and organizational change (Reason & Bradbury, 2002)^{[citation needed]}. After six decades of action research development, many methods have evolved that adjust the balance to focus more on the actions taken or more on the research that results from the reflective understanding of the actions. This tension exists between

1. those who are more driven by the researcher's agenda and those more driven by participants;
2. those who are motivated primarily by instrumental goal attainment and those motivated primarily by the aim of personal, organizational or societal transformation; and
3. 1st-, to 2nd-, to 3rd-person research, that is, my research on my own action, aimed primarily at personal change; our research on our group (family/team), aimed primarily at improving the group; and ‘scholarly’ research aimed primarily at theoretical generalization or large scale change.^[1]

Action research challenges traditional social science by moving beyond reflective knowledge created by outside experts sampling variables, to an active moment-to-moment theorizing, data collecting and inquiry occurring in the midst of emergent structure. "Knowledge is always gained through action and for action. From this starting point, to question the validity of social knowledge is to question, not how to develop a reflective science about action, but how to develop genuinely well-informed action – how to conduct an action science" (Torbert 2002 Why educational research has been so uneducational: the case for a new model of social science based on collaborative inquiry)^{[citation needed]}. In this sense, performing action research is the same as performing an experiment, thus it is an empirical process.

Major theories[edit]

Chris Argyris' Action Science[edit]

Main article: Action Science

Chris Argyris' Action Science begins with the study of how human beings design their actions in difficult situations. Humans design their actions to achieve intended consequences and are governed by a set of environment variables. How those governing variables are treated in designing actions are the key differences between single-loop learning and double-loop learning. When actions are designed to achieve the intended consequences and to suppress conflict about the governing variables, a single-loop learning cycle usually ensues.

On the other hand, when actions are taken, not only to achieve the intended consequences, but also to openly inquire about conflict and to possibly transform the governing variables, both single-loop and double-loop learning cycles usually ensue. (Argyris applies single-loop and double-loop learning concepts not only to personal behaviors but also to organizational behaviors in his models.) This is different from experimental research in which environmental variables are controlled and researchers try to find out cause and effect in an isolated environment.

John Heron and Peter Reason's cooperative inquiry[edit]

Main article: Cooperative inquiry

Cooperative inquiry, also known as collaborative inquiry was first proposed by John Heron in 1971 and later expanded with Peter Reason and Demi Brown. The major idea of cooperative inquiry is to "research 'with' rather than 'on' people." It emphasizes that all active participants are fully involved in research decisions as co-researchers.

Cooperative inquiry creates a research cycle among four different types of knowledge: propositional knowing (as in contemporary science), practical knowing (the knowledge that comes with actually doing what you propose), experiential knowing (the feedback we get in real time about our interaction with the larger world) and presentational knowing (the artistic rehearsal process through which we craft new practices). The research process includes these four stages at each cycle with deepening experience and knowledge of the initial proposition, or of new propositions, at every cycle.

Paulo Freire's participatory action research (PAR)[edit]

Main article: Participatory action research

Participatory action research has emerged in recent years as a significant methodology for intervention, development and change within communities and groups. It is now promoted and implemented by many international development agencies and university programs, as well as countless local community organizations around the world.^{[citation needed][dubious – discuss]} PAR builds on the critical pedagogy put forward by Paulo Freire as a response to the traditional formal models of education where the “teacher” stands at the front and "imparts" information to the "students" who are passive recipients. This was further developed in "adult education" models throughout Latin America.

Orlando Fals-Borda (1925–2008), Colombian sociologist and political activist, was one of principal promoters of "participatory action research" (IAP in Spanish) in Latin America. Published "double history of the coast", book that compare the official "history" and the non official "story" of the north coast of Colombia.

William Barry's living educational theory approach to action research[edit]

Main article: Living educational theory

William Barry (Atkins and Wallace 2012), defined an approach to action research which focuses on creating ontological weight.^[2] He adapted the idea of ontological weight to action research from existential Christian philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1963). Professor Barry (Barry, 2012) was influenced by Jean McNiff's and Jack Whitehead's (2008) phraseology of living theory action research but was diametrically opposed to the validation process advocated by Whitehead which demanded video "evidence" of "energy flowing values" and Whitehead's atheistic ontological position which influenced his conception of values in action research.

Barry explained that Living educational theory (LET) "[It is] a critical and transformational approach to action research. It confronts the researcher to challenge the status quo of their educational practice and to answer the question, 'How can I improve that I'm doing?' Researchers who use this approach must be willing to recognize and assume responsibility for being a 'living contradictions' in their professional practice – thinking one way and acting in another. The mission of the LET action researcher is to overcome workplace norms and self- behavior which contradict the researcher's values and beliefs. The vision of the LET researcher is to make an original contribution to knowledge through generating an educational theory proven to improve the learning of people within a social learning space. The standard of judgment for theory validity is evidence of workplace reform, transformational growth of the researcher, and improved learning by the people researcher claimed to have influenced..." (Atkins and Wallace, p. 131).

Action research in organization development[edit]

Individual Differences

That people differ from each other is obvious. How and why they differ is less clear and is the subject of the study of Individual differences (IDs). Although to study individual differences seems to be to study variance, how are people different, it is also to study central tendency, how well can a person be described in terms of an overall within-person average. Indeed, perhaps the most important question of individual differences is whether people are more similar to themselves over time and across situations than they are to others, and whether the variation within a single person across time and situation is less than the variation between people. A related question is that of similarity, for people differ in their similarities to each other. Questions of whether particular groups (e.g., groupings by sex, culture, age, or ethnicity) are more similar within than between groups are also questions of individual differences.

Personality psychology addresses the questions of shared human nature, dimensions of individual differences and unique patterns of individuals. Research in IDs ranges from analyses of genetic codes to the study of sexual, social, ethnic, and cultural differences and includes research on cognitive abilities, interpersonal styles, and emotional reactivity. Methods range from laboratory experiments to longitudinal field studies and include data reduction techniques such as Factor Analysis and Principal Components Analysis, as well as Structural Modeling and Multi-Level Modeling procedures. Measurement issues of most importance are those of reliability and stability of Individual Differences.

Research in Individual Differences addresses three broad questions: 1) developing an adequate descriptive taxonomy of how people differ; 2) applying differences in one situation to predict differences in other situations; and 3) testing theoretical explanations of the structure and dynamics of individual differences.

Taxonomies of individual differences

Taxonomic work has focused on categorizing the infinite ways in which individuals differ in terms of a limited number of latent or unobservable constructs. This is a multi-step, cyclical process of intuition, observation, deduction, induction, and verification that has gradually converged on a consensual descriptive organization of broad classes of variables as well as on methods for analyzing them. Most of the measurement and taxonomic techniques used throughout the field have been developed in response to the demand for selection for schooling, training, and business applications.

Test Theory

Consider the case of differences in vocabulary in a particular language (e.g., English). Although it is logically possible to organize people in terms of the specific words they know in English, the more than 2^(500,000) possible response patterns that could be found by quizzing people on each of the more than 500,000 words in English introduces more complexity rather than less. Classical Test Theory (CTT) ignores individual response patterns and estimates an individual's total vocabulary size by measuring performance on small samples of words. Words are seen as random replicates of each other and thus individual differences in total vocabulary size are estimated from observed differences on these smaller samples. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (r) compares the degree of covariance between these samples with the variance within samples. As the number of words sampled increases, the correlation of the individual differences within each sample and with those in the total domain increases accordingly.

Estimates of ability based upon Item Response Theory (IRT) take into account parameters of the words themselves (i.e., the difficulty and discriminability of each word) and estimate a single ability parameter for each individual. Although CTT and IRT estimates are highly correlated, CTT statistics are based on decomposing the sources of variance within and between individuals while IRT statistics focus on the precision of an individual estimate without requiring differences between individuals. CTT estimates of reliability of ability measures are assessed across similar items (internal consistency), across alternate forms, and across different forms of assessment as well as over time (stability). Tests are reliable to the extent that differences within individuals are small compared to those between individuals when generalizing across items, forms, or occasions. CTT reliability thus requires between subject variability. IRT estimates, on the other hand, are concerned with the precision of measurement for a particular person in terms of a metric defined by item difficulty.

The test theory developed to account for sampling differences within domains can be generalized to account for differences between domains. Just as different samples of words will yield somewhat different estimates of vocabulary, different cognitive tasks (e.g., vocabulary and arithmetic performance) will yield different estimates of performance. Using multivariate procedures such as Principal Components Analysis or Factor Analysis, it is possible to decompose the total variation into between domain covariance, within domain covariance, and within domain variance. One of the most replicable observations in the study of individual differences is that almost all tests thought to assess cognitive ability have a general factor (g) that is shared with other tests of ability. That is, although each test has specific variance associated with content (e.g., linguistic, spatial), form of administration (e.g., auditory, visual), or operations involved (e.g., perceptual speed, memory storage, memory retrieval, abstract reasoning), there is general variance that is common to all tests of cognitive ability.

Personality and Ability

Although to some the term personality refers to all aspects of a person's individuality, typical usage divides the field into studies of ability and personality. Tests of ability are viewed as maximal performance measures. Ability is construed as the best one can do on a particular measure in a limited time (speed test) or with unlimited time (power test). Personality measures are estimates of average performance and typically include reports of preferences and estimates of what one normally does and how one perceives oneself and is perceived by others.

The same procedures used to clarify the structure of cognitive abilities have been applied to the question of identifying the domains of personality. Many of the early and current personality inventories use self-descriptive questions (e.g., do you like to go to lively parties; are you sometimes nervous) that are rationally or theoretically relevant to some domain of interest for a particular investigator. Although there is substantial consistency across inventories developed this way, some of this agreement could be due to conceptually overlapping item pools. Other researchers have advocated a lexical approach to the taxonomic problem, following the basic assumption that words in the natural language describe all important individual differences. This shifts the taxonomic question from how are individuals similar and different from each other to how are the words used to describe individuals (e.g., lively, talkative, nervous, anxious) similar and different from each other.

Dimensional analyses of tests developed based on lexical, rational, or theoretical bases suggest that a limited number (between three and seven) of higher order trait domains adequately organize the thousands of words that describe individual differences and the logically infinite way that these words can be combined into self or peer report items. The broadest domains are those of introversion-extraversion and emotional stability-neuroticism, with the domains of agreeableness, conscientiousness and intellectual openness or culture close behind. These domains can be seen as asking the questions that one wants to know about a stranger or a potential mate: are they energetic and dominant (extraverted), emotionally stable (low neurotic), trustworthy (conscientious), loveable (agreeable), and interesting (intelligent and open).

Measures of ability and personality reflect observations aggregated across time and occasion and require inferences about stable latent traits thought to account for the variety of observed behaviors. However there are other individual differences that are readily apparent to outside observers and require little or no inference about latent traits. The most obvious of such variables include sex, age, height, and weight. Differences that require some knowledge and inference are differences in ethnicity and social economic status. These obvious group differences are sometimes analyzed in terms of the more subtle measures of personality and ability or of real life outcomes (e.g, sex differences in neuroticism, mathematics ability, or income).

Predictive Validity

Individual differences are important only to the extent that they make a difference. Does knowing that people differ on a trait X help in predicting the likelihood of their doing behavior Y? For many important outcome variables the answer is a resounding yes. In their review of 85 years of selection in personnel psychology, Frank Schmidt and John Hunter (Psychological Bulletin, 1998, 124, 262-274) show how differences in cognitive ability predict differences in job performance with correlations averaging about .50 for mid complexity jobs. These correlations are moderated by job complexity and are much higher for professional-managerial positions than they are for completely unskilled jobs. In terms of applications to personnel psychology, a superior manager (one standard deviation above the mean ability for managers) produces almost 50% more than an average manager. These relationships diminish as a function of years of experience and degree of training. General mental ability (g) also has substantial predictive powers in predicting non-job related outcomes, such as likelihood of completing college, risk for divorce and even risk for criminality.

The non-cognitive measures of individual differences also predict important real life criteria. Extraversion is highly correlated with total sales in dollars among salespeople. Similarly, impulsivity can be used to predict traffic violations. Conscientiousness, when added to g substantially increases the predictability of job performance. Although the size of the correlation is much lower, conscientiousness measured in adolescence predicts premature mortality over the next fifty years.

Sources of individual differences

The taxonomic and predictive studies of individual differences are descriptive organizations of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that go together and how they relate to other outcomes. But this categorization is descriptive rather than causal and is analogous to grouping rocks in terms of density and hardness rather than atomic or molecular structure. Causal theories of individual differences are being developed but are in a much earlier stage than are the descriptive taxonomies.

Descriptive taxonomies are used to organize the results of studies that examine genetic bases of individual differences. By applying structural modeling techniques to the variances and covariances associated with various family constellations it is possible to decompose phenotypic trait variance into separate sources of genetic and environmental variance. The most common family configurations that are used are comparisons of identical (monozygotic) with fraternal (dizygotic) twins. Additional designs include twins reared together or apart, and biological versus adoptive parents, children and siblings. Conclusions from behavioral genetics for most personality traits tend to be similar: Across different designs, with different samples from different countries, roughly 40-60% of the phenotypic variance seems to be under genetic control with only a very small part of the remaining environmental variance associated with shared family environmental effects. Additional results suggest that genetic sources of individual differences remain important across the lifespan. However, this should not be taken to mean that people do not change as they mature but rather that the paths one takes through life are similar to those taken by genetically similar individuals.

Genes do not code for thoughts, feelings or behavior but rather code for proteins that regulate and modulate biological systems. Although promising work has been done searching for the biological bases of individual differences it is possible to sketch out these bases only in the broadest of terms. Specific neurotransmitters and brain structures can be associated with a broad class of approach behaviors and positive affects while other neurotransmitters and structures can be associated with a similarly broad class of avoidance behaviors and negative affects. Reports relating specific alleles to specific personality traits emphasize that the broad personality traits are most likely under polygenic influence and are moderated by environmental experience.

Subtle differences in neurotransmitter availability and re-uptake vary the sensitivity of individuals to cues about their environment that predict future resource availability and external rewards and punishments. It is the way these cues are detected, atttended to, stored, and integrated with previous experiences that makes each individual unique. Current work on the bases of individual differences is concerned with understanding this delicate interplay of biological propensities with environmental opportunities and constraints as they are ultimately represented in an individual's information processing system. With time we can expect to increase our taxonomic and predictive power by using these causal bio-social theories of individual differences.

Forgetting

Forgetting is the apparent loss or modification of information already encoded and stored in an individual's long term memory. It is a spontaneous or gradual process in which old memories are unable to be recalled from memory storage. Forgetting also helps to reconcile the storage of new information with old knowledge.^[1] Problems with remembering, learning and retaining new information are a few of the most common complaints of older adults.^[2] Memory performance is usually related to the active functioning of three stages. These three stages are encoding, storage and retrieval.^[2] Many different factors influence the actual process of forgetting. An example of one of these factors could be the amount of time the new information is stored in the memory. Events involved with forgetting can happen either before or after the actual memory process. The amount of time the information is stored in the memory, depending on the minutes hours or even days, can increase or decrease depending on how well the information is encoded.^[3]Studies show that retention improves with increased rehearsal. This improvement occurs because rehearsal helps to transfer information into long term memory^[4] - practise makes perfect.

It is subject to delicately balanced optimization that ensures that relevant memories are recalled. Forgetting can be reduced by repetition and/or more elaborate cognitive processing of information. Emotional states are just one of the many factors that have been found to effect this process of forgetting.^[3] As a disorder or in more severe cases this may be described as amnesia.

Forgetting functions (amount remembered as a function of time since an event was first experienced) have been extensively analyzed. The most recent evidence suggests that a power function provides the closest mathematical fit to the forgetting function.^[5]

It is inability to encode, to store and retrieve the previously learned information from long term memory over varying periods of times.

Motivation

Motivation is a theoretical construct used to explain behavior. It represents the reasons for people's actions, desires, and needs. Motivation can also be defined as one's direction to behavior, or what causes a person to want to repeat a behavior and vice versa.^[1] A motive is what prompts the person to act in a certain way, or at least develop an inclination for specific behavior.^[2] According to Maehr and Meyer, "Motivation is a word that is part of the popular culture as few other psychological concepts are."^[3]

Types of theories and models[edit]

Motivation theories can be classified on a number of bases.

• Natural vs. Rational based on whether the underlying theory of human Cognition is based on natural forces (drives, needs, desires) or some kind of rationality (instrumentality, meaningfulness, self-identity).
• Content vs. Process based on whether the focus is on the content ("what") motivates vs process ("how") motivation takes place.

Psychological theories and models[edit]

Motivation can be conceived of as a cycle in which thoughts influence behaviors, behaviors drive performance, performance affects thoughts, and the cycle begins again. Each stage of the cycle is composed of many dimensions including attitudes, beliefs, intentions, effort, and withdrawal which can all affect the motivation that an individual experiences.

Rational motivations[edit]

The idea that human beings are rational and human behavior is guided by reason is an old one. However, recent research (on Satisficing for example) has significantly undermined the idea of homo economicus or of perfect rationality in favour of a more bounded rationality. The field of behavioural economics is particularly concerned with the limits of rationality in economic agents.^[4]

Incentive theories: intrinsic and extrinsic motivation[edit]

Motivation can be divided into two different theories known as Intrinsic (internal) motivation and Extrinsic (external) motivation.

Intrinsic motivation[edit]

Intrinsic motivation has been studied since the early 1970s. Intrinsic motivation is the self-desire to seek out new things and new challenges, to analyze one's capacity, to observe and to gain knowledge.^[5] It is driven by an interest or enjoyment in the task itself, and exists within the individual rather than relying on external pressures or a desire for reward. The phenomenon of intrinsic motivation was first acknowledged within experimental studies of animal behavior. In these studies, it was evident that the organisms would engage in playful and curiosity driven behaviors in the absence of reward. Intrinsic motivation is a natural motivational tendency and is a critical element in cognitive, social, and physical development.^[6] Students who are intrinsically motivated are more likely to engage in the task willingly as well as work to improve their skills, which will increase their capabilities.^[7] Students are likely to be intrinsically motivated if they:

• attribute their educational results to factors under their own control, also known as autonomy or locus of control
• believe they have the skills to be effective agents in reaching their desired goals, also known as self-efficacy beliefs
• are interested in mastering a topic, not just in achieving good grades

An example of intrinsic motivation is when an employee becomes an IT professional because he or she wants to learn about how computer users interact with computer networks. The employee has the intrinsic motivation to gain more knowledge^[8]

Traditionally, researchers thought of motivations to use computer systems to be primarily driven by extrinsic purposes; however, many modern systems have their use driven primarily by intrinsic motivations.^[9] Examples of such systems used primarily to fulfil users’ intrinsic motivations, include on-line gaming, virtual worlds, online shopping, learning/education, online dating, digital music repositories, social networking, online pornography, gamified systems, and general gamification. Even traditional management information systems (e.g., ERP, CRM) are being ‘gamified’ such that both extrinsic and intrinsic motivations must increasingly be considered.

Advantages: Intrinsic motivation can be long-lasting and self-sustaining. Efforts to build this kind of motivation are also typically efforts at promoting student learning. Such efforts often focus on the subject rather than rewards or punishments.

Disadvantages: Efforts at fostering intrinsic motivation can be slow to affect behavior and can require special and lengthy preparation. Students are individuals, so a variety of approaches may be needed to motivate different students. It is often helpful to know what interests one’s students in order to connect these interests with the subject matter. This requires getting to know one’s students. Also, it helps if the instructor is interested in the subject.^[10]

Extrinsic motivation[edit]

Extrinsic motivation refers to the performance of an activity in order to attain a desired outcome and it is the opposite of intrinsic motivation.^[5] Extrinsic motivation comes from influences outside of the individual. In extrinsic motivation, the harder question to answer is where do people get the motivation to carry out and continue to push with persistence. Usually extrinsic motivation is used to attain outcomes that a person wouldn't get from intrinsic motivation.^[11] Common extrinsic motivations are rewards (for example money or grades) for showing the desired behavior, and the threat of punishment following misbehavior. Competition is an extrinsic motivator because it encourages the performer to win and to beat others, not simply to enjoy the intrinsic rewards of the activity. A cheering crowd and the desire to win a trophy are also extrinsic incentives.^[12]

Social psychological research has indicated that extrinsic rewards can lead to overjustification and a subsequent reduction in intrinsic motivation. In one study demonstrating this effect, children who expected to be (and were) rewarded with a ribbon and a gold star for drawing pictures spent less time playing with the drawing materials in subsequent observations than children who were assigned to an unexpected reward condition.^[13] However, another study showed that third graders who were rewarded with a book showed more reading behavior in the future, implying that some rewards do not undermine intrinsic motivation.^[14] While the provision of extrinsic rewards might reduce the desirability of an activity, the use of extrinsic constraints, such as the threat of punishment, against performing an activity has actually been found to increase one's intrinsic interest in that activity. In one study, when children were given mild threats against playing with an attractive toy, it was found that the threat actually served to increase the child's interest in the toy, which was previously undesirable to the child in the absence of threat.^[15]

Memory

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Memory (disambiguation).

Overview of the forms and functions of memory in the sciences

Memory is the process in which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved. Encoding allows information from the outside world to be sensed in the form of chemical and physical stimuli. In the first stage the information must be changed so that it may be put into the encoding process. Storage is the second memory stage or process. This entails that information is maintained over short periods of time. Finally the third process is the retrieval of information that has been stored. Such information must be located and returned to the consciousness. Some retrieval attempts may be effortless due to the type of information, and other attempts to remember stored information may be more demanding for various reasons.

From an information processing perspective there are three main stages in the formation and retrieval of memory:

• Encoding or registration: receiving, processing and combining of received information
• Storage: creation of a permanent record of the encoded information in short term or long term memory
• Retrieval, recall or recollection: calling back the stored information in response to some cue for use in a process or activity

National Knowledge Commission

National Knowledge Commission, is an Indian think-tank charged with considering possible policies that might sharpen India's comparative advantage in the knowledge-intensive service sectors. It was constituted on 13 June 2005, by the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh.

In particular, the Commission was to advise the Prime Minister's Office on policy related to education, research institutes and reforms needed to make India competitive in the knowledge economy. The Commission was to recommend reform of the education sector, research labs, and intellectual property legislation; as well as consider whether the Government could itself upgrade its use of the latest techniques to make its workings more transparent. The NKC website was launched in February 2006.

Working of the National Knowledge Commission[edit]

The National Knowledge Commission (NKC) consists of the following eight members.

• Sam Pitroda, Chairman
• Dr. Ashok Sekhar Ganguly, Corporate leader
• Nandan Nilekani* (Resigned), Chairman of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)
• Dr. Deepak Nayyar, former Vice-chancellor, University of Delhi
• Dr. Jayati Ghosh, economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University
• Dr. Sujatha Ramdorai, internationally reputed algebraic number theorist and professor of mathematics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
• Dr. Padmanabhan Balaram, director of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
• Prof. Amitabh Mattoo, Former Vice Chancellor, Jammu University

The Terms of Reference of the NKC are:

• “Build excellence in the educational system to meet the knowledge challenges of the 21st century and increase India’s competitive advantage in fields of knowledge.
• Promote creation of knowledge in Science and technology laboratories.
• Improve the management of institutions engaged in Intellectual Property Rights.
• Promote knowledge applications in Agriculture and Industry.
• Promote the use of knowledge capabilities in making government an effective, transparent and accountable service provider to the citizen and promote widespread sharing of knowledge to maximize public benefit.”

The organisational structure of the NKC is flat. The Secretariat is headed by an Executive Director and consists of around 8-9 research associates. It also has four advisors who advises the commission on different issues. The Secretariat of the Commission is located in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi.

In December 2006, the Commission brought out a 'Report to the Nation 2006'. It includes the following recommendations submitted to the Prime Minister:

• Libraries
• Knowledge
• E-governance
• Translation
• Languages
• National portal of india

Many of the recommendations of the NKC are already in the implementation stage by different ministries of the Government. This includes areas such as Libraries, e-governance and translation.

Some of the major areas under work are higher education, vocational education, entrepreneurship, school education etc. The NKC consults a wide range of stake-holders and experts on each area before submitting the recommendations to the Prime Minister. Each area has a working group which is headed by a prominent person in that field. It has also created multiple articles to educate foreigners about the culture of India.^[1] The Working Group members meet several times to submit a report to the NKC. The NKC members then hold discussions on the report before submitting it to the Prime Minister. After submitting the recommendations, an extensive coordination also takes place with the Planning Commission of India and relevant ministries of the Government.

As many of the components of the education sector remains state subjects in India, NKC representatives also visit various state governments and conduct deliberations with secretaries of education departments for reforming of the education sector at the state level.

The Commission was mandated to last till October 2008. But now, looking at the good work the Commission has done, it has been extended until March 2009.

Human Rights Education in India

Human Rights Education in India

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. So stated Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. This is what the Indians have been preaching since times immemorial as it has become the immemorial customs of our nation .Human Rights are a fundamental value. There is a long Indian tradition of standing up for the weak against abuse by the strong. Upholding human rights values in every aspect is firmly in our tradition. The ”Great Mauryan emperor Ashoka the great renounced the path of violence after the massacre in the war of Kalinga ” The ”Great Moghul,” Akbar the Great granted religious minorities legal status in his realm, One of the most influential was Mahatma Gandhi’s movement to free his native India from British rule. It is the core of our Constitution and the heart of our national interest today. But the values that we stand for – freedom, human rights, the rule of law – are all universal values. Given the choice, people all over the world want them. But it is regretting that India who was once looked up by whole world as the pioneer of these values is now groveling in lowly dust of atrocities and human rights abuse. Human rights abuse is sadly a reality in Indian society, it is not just an affront to the values of tolerance, freedom and justice that underpin our society. It is also a tragic waste of human potential.

The Need for Human rights Education

The importance of human rights education hardly requires any over emphasis. It has a crucial role in preventing human rights violations from occurring.

The United Nations proclaimed that human rights education is “training, dissemination and information efforts aimed at the building of a universal culture of human rights through imparting knowledge and skills and the moulding of attitudes”. These efforts are designed to strengthen respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, facilitate the full development of human personality, sense of dignity, promote understanding, respect, gender equality and friendship to enable all persons to participate effectively in a free society, and further activities for maintenance of peace.

Human rights education, training and public information are, therefore, necessary and essential for the promotion and achievement of stable and harmonious relations among the communities and for fostering mutual understanding, tolerance and peace. Through the learning of human rights as a way of life, fundamental change could be brought about to eradicate poverty, ignorance, prejudices, and discrimination based on sex, caste, religion, and disability and other status amongst the people.

Human rights Education in India

It may be said that in India that the content of human rights education is not different to what was taught by way of religion, be it Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity or Islam. There is lot of truth in that statement. The quintessence of human rights is also the basic essence of all religions, Love, compassion, loving kindness are the same. However, while teaching religions we confined the obligations arising from these doctrines only to their followers. Human rights could bring in a universal aspect to moral and ethical education. And we in our divided societies are in great need of this On the other hand in the context of rapid secularization we could still retain a basic common ground for respect for each other. We could still be our brothers’ keepers and withstand value systems which only promote selfish ways of life.

Indian textbooks barely mention human rights. Indirect references to human rights are included in the Directive Principles of the Constitution of India and in civics and history textbooks. Most universities in India do not offer human rights education, although some have three-month to one-year postgraduate courses on human rights. Section 12(h) of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, requires the Commission ”to spread human rights literacy among various sections of society and promote awareness .The National Human Rights Commission of India and many NGOs have launched a countrywide public information campaign for human rights. It aims to make everyone more conscious of human rights and fundamental freedoms, and better equipped to stand up for them. At the same time, the campaign spreads knowledge of the means which exist at the international and national levels to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms.

CONCLUSION

Any education to be effective needs to be contextualized too. Thus it is not enough to teach abstract principles of human rights taken from United Nations’ documents or our Constitutions. Our historical context as nation as well as local contexts need to be reflected in human rights education. The contextualizing of human rights is essential for nurturing of peace. Creative reflections on local situations from a human rights perspective would help the schools greatly, to become the societies’ most important peace makers. Some say that we Indians should have less rights than people living in Western countries. They say, the human rights concepts are Western. Only people who have all the rights could say this to people who have much less rights. We keep masses of humanity without rights and condemn the growing consciousness of rights as a Western one. This would mean that to be Indian one has to put up with one’s bondage, one must remain submissive, one must eat less and work more. Is that what our women, and our children need to believe. Is that what our workers and peasants need to believe while multinational companies with the help of our elite take away the fruit of their labours, and the fruit of our lands. The relativist theory, though couched in nationalist terms is not nationalist at all. It work for the benefit of big companies Western or otherwise.