Training of Trainers in Jaffna towards inculcating research in school

More than 120 school staffs from different schools in the Northern Province participated in the two dayworkshop organised by the Engineering, Architecture and Surveying Section of the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS) to improve and promote research initiatives amongst school teachers. It was yet another effort to strengthen the actions taken by the collaborative efforts of the two Ministries, Ministry of Science, Technology and Research (MoSTR) together with the Ministry of Education( MoE) in order to improve Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education starting with a class of school teachers. Since the interest for STEM subjects is declining in school level, Hon. Minister, Mr. Susil Premajayantha, Minister of Science, Technology and Research, engaged scientists to cultivate innovative thinking, curiosity and creativity among school kids through research. Mr. P. M. Dharmathilake, Director (Research Development), MoSTR, Mr. M.P. Vipulasena, Science Director and Mr. Vipula Kulathunge, Deputy Director, Science Education of the MoE collaborate for the success of the program.With the request of Mr. K. A. Shivanarulrajah, Science Coordinator, Northern Province, close to 60 STEM teachers were at the 2 day workshop. The workshop were opened for discussions in numerous diverse subject areas ranging from importance of observation in research, ecology, basic chemistry and material sciences, botany, and up to basic statisticaltools for basic research and ended on a note on how to produce a winning research proposal.

The distinguished speakers were from different universities all over the country with various specialties. Dr. N. Karthykeyan, the Open University of Sri Lanka and Dr. S. Prabagar, Industrial Technology Institute were the key personals to deliver English based discussions to Tamil teachers while they served as resource persons to introduce research topics on Physics and Biology. Many academics from the University of Jaffna taught the audience of teachers how simple problems can be used to conduct a quality research which will lead to improve innovative thinking and curiosity of stu- dents. The workshopfurther trained the school teachers on writing a winning proposal at a basic level and research methodologies to start from; so as to bring these training onto their own classrooms. It is an initiative sought to remind the teachers to bring back the 21st Century Learning goalsamong students at a young age rather than having to teach the know-how of individual sciences. It provided an excellent platform for teachers for direct support from experts in varied fields and built on a firm network for consistent encouragement and support all along their research initiative. Prof. T. Mikunthan, Prof. S. Kuganathan, Ms. S. Sriskandarajah, Ms. S. Srivarathan, Mr. M. Vignarajah conducted interactive sessions in various disciplines while Dr. Meththika Vithanage, Dr. Janitha Walpita, Dr. Nadeesh Adassoriya and Ms. Gihani Ranasinghe from University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Dr. Bandunee C. L. Athapattu, Mr. C. P. S. Pathirana, the Open University of Sri Lanka served as the panel of coaches. In addition to the workshop session, the teachers were made to draft a plausible research proposal at the end of the workshop where they got individual support from the various resource persons.

So far, 03 provinces are covered to meet the target of 09 workshops in the 09 provinces; it is a journey yet to meet the target with strong resource persons on the highway for reminding the teachers time and again to instill curiosity, innovative thinking and many more amongst the youngest that used to be a norm back in the day. The series of workshops in this manner are organized by Dr. Meththika Vithanage, President ( USJP) and Dr. Bandunee Athapattu (OUSL) as the members of the Section C of SLAAS.