my presentation at the annual research meet

as part of annual research meet in HBCSE, I presented the current work of my ph.d.  It was mainly focussing on “to determine a fixed set of relation names to represent secondary school level cell biology”. The abstract can be read from here.  there were useful inputs and comments on the work.

the presentation depicted the number of concepts at 8,9,11 standards and the number of relation names required to link these concepts.

concept mapping – article in indian journal

I have been always thinking to publish our research work for an Indian audience. Atleast in India, the community of educationists, teachers, etc., get to know what we are working on. With this objective, I had
submitted some preliminary findings of my Ph.D. work to an Indian Journal. The following research paper has been published in the Indian Educational Review (a journal published by NCERT).

Kharatmal M. (2009): Concept Mapping for Eliciting Students’ Understanding of Science. Indian Educational
Review. 45(2), pp.31-43.

The article is on display in our library. I have also uploaded the article which can be downloaded from the publications page of my blog

vishwakosh – vai

I happen to visit the vishwakosh (encyclopedia) office in vai on 7th nov. I was really glad to interact with the people and look at the interesting and resourceful library of classic collection and encyclopedia. It is worth visiting the library. Prof. H.C.Pradhan was discussing with Mr. Chaunde related to the biology encyclopedia.  Since i had some curiousity about it which i have also mentioned in my earlier post related to change in biological terms, I participated in their discusison. Chaunde was showing how they are managing the entries, the usage of sorting cards. The information on the sorting cards display the name of the term and also a related entry with see also. In this way, they are now trying to embedd the terms which are introduced in the textbooks. It seems that the vishwakosh project began about five years ago, the list of entries was decided but the textbook committee have overlooked this project and hence there has been discrepancies in the names of the terms. But even this problem is being handled by the vishwakosh. They are really meticulously taking care of such issues.

Over a cup of coffee, Chaunde shared his experiences about peoples responses to their work. Overall, I was satisfied with this meet, cos my quest of finding the rationale behind the change in the terms was a bit resolved.

change in the names of scientific terms in marathi textbooks

Today, discussion over lunch made me curious to find out who decides the changes in the scientific terms that are used in the textbook.

We were discussing about the Marathi Vishwakosh Project that HBCSE is involved in. In the early years of HBCSE, V G Kulkarni (Founder Director, HBCSE)  instigated the project on language in science. Since then, there are a few members who are working in this area.

Deshmukh explained the volumes of work that the project is coming up with. It has been decided to bring a separate volume for biology subject and produce it in three parts. Related to the scientific terminology, he mentioned that a few scientific terminology in marathi textbook has been changed and hence the members have to pay heed to the latest usage of the term. He gave two instances of such change: the marathi term for auricle has been changed from karnika to alind; for ventricle it has been changed from javanika to nilay;  the other instance of marathi term for skull has been changed from kavati to karkara. I was anxious to know why the name of the terms got changed, who decides that such change is required in textbook, what is the rationale behind it. May be the textbook bureau decides about these changes. Jayashree too agreed, and she added that it could be that they want to give a more specific word for a very specialized part.

But i am not yet convinced. Can a name of a scientific term change over a period of time. Well of course, if the meaning that is implied to it changes. But in this case, atleast the meanings of auricle, ventricle, skull  are not yet changed, and their english names of terms are still the same. So what makes the marathi language textbook bureau to change it. Then we thought we should check the bodies/organizations who possibly could be involved in this work. We all headed to the library, and referred a few books related to Vishwakosh, Paribhasha Granth, etc. We could find atleast two bodies who have been involved in this work since the 1970s: Bhasha Sanchalanalay (Directorate of Language); and Maharashtra Rajya Sahitya-Sanskriti Mandal (Maharashtra State Board of Literature and Culture). Perhaps one can write/meet these people and find out more.

As i am also interested in the language of science, all this discussion has made me more curious, and i am into finding out as to who decides the changes in the scientific terms and what is the rationale behind it.