International Institute for Higher Education Research & Capacity Building

Projects

Strengths-based school leadership and management practices

External Collaboration: Monash University, Australia
Project Leads: Prof. (Dr.) Mousumi Mukherjee, Prof. (Dr.) Deepak Maun, Prof. (Dr.) Krishan Kumar Pandey

 This project in collaboration with colleagues at Monash University is seeking to understand strengths-based leadership and management practices of school leaders in the context of fast globalizing times and increasing pressure from various stakeholders of the schooling systems in India and Australia. The research outcome of this comparative study of strengths-based school leadership practices in two very different and diverse contexts will inform school leadership training in higher education in the future.

Students’ Experiences with Distance Learning under COVID-19

External Collaboration- SERU Consortium, University of California, BerkleyProject Leads: Prof. (Dr.) Mousumi Mukherjee, Prof. (Dr.) Tatiana Belousova, Prof. (Dr.) Deepak Maun

This research study aims to understand student experiences of distance learning during COVID-19 global pandemic. Data for this study is being collected from students in the form of auto-ethnographic self-reflections and an online survey tool developed by the Student Experiences in Research University (SERU) consortium at the Centre for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkley

Other Ways of Knowing and Doing: Globalizing Social Science Knowledge in Higher Education 
Oceania Comparative and International Education Society Networking Grant 2017
Project Leads: Prof. (Dr.) Mousumi Mukherjee and Ms. Nandita Koshal

This International Research Symposium aimed to share knowledge on some of the recent theoretical and methodological trends in the field of comparative and international education. Drawing on the issues raised in the recent Special Issue of the journal, Comparative Education Review “Contesting Coloniality: Rethinking Knowledge Production and Circulation in Comparative and International Education” (Takayama, Sriprakash & Connell, 2017); this international research symposium sought to provide a forum for sharing theoretical and methodological knowledge about “Other ways of Knowing and Doing” (Raina, 2016). It sought to establish an academic alliance of OCIES scholars with educators, institutional leaders, and researchers investigating educational issues incorporating local wisdom and theories within the South Asian context and other marginalized/postcolonial contexts around the world. The two-day long international research symposium with a pre-symposium journal publication workshop was organized by the ‘Centre for Comparative and Global Education’ and International Institute for Higher Education Research and Capacity Building at O.P. Jindal Global (Institution of Eminence Deemed To Be University) in collaboration with Oceania Comparative and International Education Society (OCIES), Indian Ocean Comparative Education Society (IOCES), World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) and UNESCO-Chairs in Community-based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education.

Selected papers presented at the research symposium are being compiled as the Special Issue 19 (1), 2020 of the “International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives” published by the University of Sydney Open-journal system. It is an internationally peer-reviewed flagship journal of the Oceania Comparative and International Education Society (formerly the Australia-New Zealand Comparative Education Society)

Bridging Internationalisation and Social Responsibility in Higher Education

JGU Research Project Grant ID: JGU/RGP/2018/006
Project Lead: Prof. (Dr.) Mousumi Mukherjee 

Internationalisation and social responsibility of higher education are often seen as cross-roads with each other in the existing empirical research literature on higher education. By exploring a historic connection between Tagore’s Viswa Bharati and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, this project sought to understand how Tagore and his admirers at the UIUC campus Tagore circle envisioned internationalisation and local community engagement. This project sought to explore what historic and sociological forces shaped their conceptualisation of the aims and objectives of the international university responding to the local community needs.

Publications: 

1) Mukherjee, M. (2020). Tagore’s “rooted-cosmopolitanism” and international mindedness against institutional sustainability. In Special Issue on Asian Cosmopolitanisms: Living and Learning Across Differences. Asia Pacific Journal of Education. 40 (1), 49-60.

2) Book chapter titled- “Creative Resistance”: Establishing a World-minded Indian University in colonial British India” submitted for an edited book on “Ubuntu and Comparative Education and International Education for Peace” to be published by Brill/Sense in 2020

3) Ongoing Book Project: Mukherjee, M & Bera, A. “Tagore @Illinois: Researching Global Connections in Education”

Critical Thinking and Education: Study of a Few ‘Critical Spaces’ in India

External Collaboration: Pranab Mukherjee Foundation
Project Leads: Prof. (Dr.) Deepak Maun, Prof. Anamika Srivastava and Ms. Nandita Koshal

The project builds on the premise that critical thinking is an important goal of formal education, but such thinking and its manifestations are highly context-specific. The aim is to study the notions of critical thinking that prevail among students in the universities (higher education) and alternative spaces for education (among school-aged children) within the Indian context.  The objective is to see, how do these notions manifest in the lives of the students and other adults in these spaces. The project also seeks to identify the factors that shape the prevailing notions of critical thinking within the context of the spaces being studied and why.

Comparative and Global Perspectives on International Student Experiences: The case of Tibetan Students in India

JGU Research Grant ID: JGU/RGP/2019/006
Project Lead: Prof. (Dr.) Mousumi Mukherjee

Globally, there are about 5 million students studying in higher education outside their home country. Out of these students, roughly 48,000 foreign students are studying in India. They represent less than 1 per cent of the global total. The Government of India recently launched the Study in India initiative to increase foreign student enrolment to over two lakhs by 2023. Though the logic of market-economics is being used these days in most policy discourse (including that of education), teaching and learning is integrally a social process. So, it is important to investigate the experiences of existing groups of international students in India, as the body of international students is also very diverse. However, little is also known about the experiences of these foreign students in Indian universities. By doing a case study of the experiences of the Tibetan students in India (who have been residing in India as “foreigners” in exile and studying in Indian institutions) we can get a glimpse of the experiences of the one of the most vulnerable refugee/exiled community of students in India, who are treated as international students in most college campuses. The findings from this study can help inform policies for Tibetan students in India and also further expand this study to include other groups of international students in India, informing policies for international students at large.