An Exploratory Study of the Role of Educational Incentives in Primary Education in Gujarat

This study explores the role of incentives—monetary or non-monetary compensation offered to children so that an educational need is fulfilled or perceived cost is brought down—in attaining certain expected educational enrolment and retention outcomes. It draws on a survey conducted in six villages in Gujarat. Incentives themselves may not be that critical in improving access and retention performance; other socio-economic and school-related factors may be more significant in ensuring access and retention. However, incentives may have help in keeping the poorer performers in school.

Managerial Challenges in Addressing HIV/AIDS: Gujarat State AIDS Control Society (GSACS)

The spread of HIV/AIDS is not merely a problem of public health; it is also an economic, political, and social challenge that threatens to hinder decades of progress in different parts of Gujarat. There is an urgent need to significantly scale-up public health interventions that work to make a meaningful impact. While NGOs and community based organizations have a critical role to play in implementing these interventions amongst the various population groups, the government must shoulder the overall responsibility for planning, coordinating, mobilizing, and facilitating the various HIV/AIDS prevention, care and treatment services in the state. Generally, the departments of HIV/AIDS are dominated by doctor-managers who lack training in management. This working paper was developed with objective of enhancing the skills of the program implementers. In this paper, in first three chapters we describe the overall situation of HIV/AIDS globally and nationally. Major challenges in managing sentinel surveillance, behavior surveillance, targeted interventions and its subcomponents have been described in chapter four. Issues related to integration of HIV/AIDS activities with reproductive health has also been discussed in the chapter. In chapter five, we present a few case studies from Gujarat State AIDS Control Society. These cases focus on the managerial issues in the following areas: Project Management, Blood Bank Management, VCTC/ICTC Management, Behavioral Surveillance and MIS for Targeted Interventions. These case studies bring out the ground level realities and can help participants develop insights for better management of the HIV/AIDS programme.

Engagement Patterns of Participants in an Online Professional Development Programme: An Application of Mixture Modelling

Unhindered communication capabilities, in the form of internet, led us to believe that the difficult goal of “Education for All” is within our grasps. Recent studies have shown mixed results for learning over the internet, indicating that we are still far away from our desired goal. Online environments provide freedom to large number of learners, to learn at their own pace. Understanding the various ways in which participants engage with online content could help explain the mixed outcomes. This paper presents the results of an exploratory study on engagement patterns of 4567 elementary school teachers, in an online professional development programme. Using mixture modelling techniques, we identified five latent profiles of online engagement and seven latent classes based on off-platform activities. We present our findings followed by discussion and implications for online courses

Validating motivated strategies for learning questionnaire and invariance test across gender and caste groups in India

Non-cognitive competencies play critical role in education. Interventions targeted at these competencies require access to valid measures. Within Indian context, no such validated measure exists at present, and teachers depend on their subjective evaluation of students’ non-cognitive competencies represented via grade or comment on report card. This study examined convergent validity and measurement invariance of seven sub-scales of the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ), a widely used tool but not yet validated within Indian context. MSLQ, a measure of several non-cognitive competencies, was validated across four castes and two gender groups (N = 6423 elementary school students), the two categories highly relevant in the Indian context. For establishing convergent validity, multi-group confirmatory factor analysis was conducted where all the subfactors were allowed to correlate with each other. For measurement invariance, configural, metric, and scalar invariance were assessed by sequentially imposing more restrictive conditions. We found evidence for strong configural, metric, and scalar invariance across the gender and caste groups, and across all the seven sub-scales of MSLQ. Results also indicated good model fit for all caste and gender groups, thus establishing the convergent validity of all the sub-scales. The implications of the findings are discussed

Book review: Anne de Bruin and Simon Teasdale (Eds.), A Research Agenda for Social Entrepreneurship

Anne de Bruin and Simon Teasdale (Eds.), A Research Agenda for Social Entrepreneurship, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019, 183 pp. </jats:p

Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow

The Director, Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow is preparing to face two challenges: maintaining the educational purpose of transforming students into down-to-earth managers and lifelong champions of the institute, and attracting and retaining good faculty. The case illustrates the institutional processes that a school which is part of a chain needs to consider. The tension between autonomy and conformity, and the concept of a corporate office, which is new to educational settings, are illustrated.</jats:p