Meena Kharatmal (Ph.D.)

Scientific Officer - E

Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India

meena@hbcse.tifr.res.in

Ph.D. (Science Education), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India

M.Sc. (Marine Science), University of Mumbai, Mumbai, India

B.Sc. (Zoology), University of Mumbai, Mumbai, India

Biology Education Research

I am working in undergraduate biology students' understanding of experimentation.

  • I work with college biology teachers on investigating students' understanding of experimentation, experimental design
  • I work with college biology teachers on exploring quantitative skills in biology

Science Education

I work in the following areas:

  • Developing teaching learning modules
  • Conducting science investigation based sessions for teachers, teacher educators in teacher professional development programs
  • Writing popular science articles in English, Hindi, Marathi languages

Language of Science

My interest in language of science (especially biology) drives from my PhD work.

  • I work in applying knowledge representation principles for creating knowledge networks.
  • I apply semantic analysis, systemic functional linguistics for multimodal analysis of biology texts, diagrams, and students' representations.

Awards & Scholarships

  • Sir Ratan Tata Trust, India
  • Department of Science & Technology, India
  • University of North Carolina, Wilmington, USA
  • Institute of Human and Machine Cognition, Florida, USA
  • SELF Project, European Commission, 7th Framework
  • Technische Universtitat, Dresden, Germany
  • NARST 2024, USA for ASERA 55, Auckland, New Zealand

Professional Memberships

  • NARST - National Association for Research in Science Teaching
  • ASERA - Australasian Science Education Research Association 
  • ESERA - European Science Education Research Association
  • SABER - Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research
  • RSB - Royal Society of Biology
  • SFL - Systemic Functional Linguistics
  • CMC - Concept Mapping Community

Reviewer

  • Peer-reviewing for Journals: Science Education, Research in Science Education, Frontiers in Education, Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, CourseSource, Journal of Emerging Investigators
  • Peer-reviewing for Conferences: Organized by NARST, ASERA, SABER, and the epiSTEME series

International Projects

  • Collaborative Multi-Language Project:  As native language (Marathi) collaborator on a multi-national project to creating a database on naming of picture-based dataset based on grammatical features in various languages, New York University, Abu Dhabi – 2024
  • European Commission 7th Framework: Collaborator for Science, Education and Learning in Freedom (SELF) – A multinational collaborative project for developing e-learning materials using free and open-source software– 2006-2008

National and State Level Projects

  • Teacher Professional Development: Bihar, West Bengal, Punjab, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra
  • Vigyan Pratibha: KV, JNV, AEES,
  • Ashram Shala: Tribal areas of Maharashtra

Peer-Reviewed Publications

  • Meena Kharatmal & Nagarjuna G. (2010): Introducing Rigor in Concept Maps. In M. Croitoru, S. Ferre, and D. Lukose (Eds.), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence: Vol. 6208. International Conference on Conceptual Structures 2010: From Information to Intelligence (p. 199-202). Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-14197-3_22

Conference Publications and Presentations

  • Meena Kharatmal & Arnab Bhattacharya (2024). An investigation of undergraduate and postgraduate students’ ideas of experimental design using primary scientific literature. Presentation at the ASERA55 Conference, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand, July 2024.

  • Meena Kharatmal and Arnab Bhattacharya (2023). Using Primary Scientific Literature for Comparing Difficulties in Experimentation Among Undergraduate and Postgraduate Students. In Society for the Advancement of Biology Education Research (SABER) Conference, University of Minnesota, USA, 20-24 July 2023.

  • Meena Kharatmal & Nagarjuna G. (2013): Representing Change Using Concept Maps. In G. Nagarjuna et.al. (Eds.) Proceedings of epiSTEME 5 -- International Conference to Review Research on Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, p. 124-131. India: Cinnamonteal
  • Nagarjuna G. & Meena Kharatmal (2011): A Proposal for Developing a Primer for Constructing and Analyzing Conceptual Structures. In S. Andrews et al. (Eds.), Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence: Vol 6828. Conceptual Structures - Learning Teaching and Assessment. In International Conference on Conceptual Structures: Conceptual Structures for Discovering Knowledge (p. 402-405). Berlin, Germany: Springer-Verlag. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-22688-5_36
  • Nagarjuna G., Meena Kharatmal (2010): Building Dependency Network for Teaching-Learning of Conceptual Structures,  In Polovina, Simon; Andrews, Simon; Hill, Richard; Scharfe, Henrik; Øhrstrøm, Peter (Eds.)  Proceedings of the First Conceptual Structures – Learning, Teaching and Assessment Workshop (CS-LTA) at the 18th International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS 2010), Published by MIMOS BERHAD » Technology Thrust Areas » Knowledge Technology (ISBN: 978-983-41371-5-1), Kuching, Malaysia.
  • Meena Kharatmal (2006): Concept map on cell structure and function. At IHMC Public Cmaps Meena (India) Cell Structure and Function Cell Structure and Function. http://skat.ihmc.us/servlet/SBReadResourceServlet?rid=1139090479160_113084903_8482&partName=htmltext

Popular Science Articles

Proceedings, Reports

  

International Visits on Deputation: 

  • University of North Carolina at Wilmington, USA

  • Institute of Human and Machine Cognition, Florida, USA

  • Costa Rica

  • Sofia, Bulgaria

  • Barcelona, Spain

  • Malaysia
  • Germany
  • Estonia, Sweden, Finland
  • New Zealand

  

International Conferences: 

  • ASERA55 2024 -- Massey University, Auckland, USA
  • SABER 2023 (online) -- University of Minnesota, USA
  • epiSTEME --9, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, India, January 2022
  • epiSTEME --8, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, India, January 2020
  • epiSTEME --7, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, India, January 2018
  • AABE -- Asian Association of Biology Education, Goa, India, September 2016
  • 7th International Conference on Concept Mapping, Estonia, Sweden, Finland, September 2016
  • epiSTEME --6, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, India, January 2015
  • Second International Conference on Education in Chemistry, Mumbai, India, December 2014
  • Summer School on Methodology of Task Design -- How to Construct Exercises for Learning, Technische University, Dresden, Germany, 2014
  • epiSTEME --5, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, India, 2013
  • 20th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, Mumbai, India, 2013
  • Workshop on Modeling States, Events, Processes and Scenarios, ICCS 2013, Mumbai, India, 2013
  • International Policy Dialogue Forum on Teacher Challenges for Education For All, New Delhi, India, May 29-30, 2012
  • epiSTEME -- 4, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, India, 2011
  • First International Conference on Education in Chemistry, India, 2010
  • 18th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, 2010 Malaysia
  • First International Workshop on Conceptual Structures -- Learning, Teaching and Assessment, ICCS 2010, Malyasia
  • epiSTEME --3, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, India, 2009
  • Free Knowledge in Free Technology, Spain, 2008
  • Science, Education and Learning in Freedom, India, 2008
  • epiSTEME -- 2, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, India, 2007
  • Second International Conference in Concept Mapping, Costa Rica, 2006
  • epiSTEME -- 1, Goa, India, International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education, India, 2004
  • International Workshop on History and Philosophy of Science: Its Implications for Science Education, India, 1999
  • Indian Science Congress, Chennai, Jan 1998
  • Indian Science Congress, Hyderabad, Jan 1997
  • Orientation Course on History of Science in Science Education, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, Oct 1998
  • Orientation Course in Biology Education, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, Dec 1996

        

      National Conferences: 

      • epiSTEME

      • Peoples Education Congress, Mumbai, 2010

      • National Conference in Open Source Software, Mumbai, 2009

      • Science Education in India, Mumbai, 2008

      • Recent Advances in Information Technology, Kalpakkam, 2005

      • History of Science in Education, Mumbai, 1998

      • Orientation Course on Biology Education, Mumbai, 1996

       

       Past Projects

      COVID Gyan Resource Generation

      In the outbreak of COVID-19, TIFR has launched COVID Gyan, a pan-institutional website of collection of resources in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

      Generating content and resource related to COVID-19:

       

      STEMGAMES Content and Resource Generation

      Developing content and resources on STEMGAMES related to CUBE, COVID-19, biology education, etc.

      Teacher Education

      Developmental Projects

      Academic Programs

      Others

      • Orientation courses and workshops
      • GNU/Linux operating system

       

      School Science Research and Development

      Conducted Summer Camp Activities for Nutan Vidya Mandir Class 3 Students. The focus of the activities has been to encourage children to observe, write, draw, ask questions. The work can be read from articles in English and Marathi.

      Teacher Education 

      Currently I am working in the area of teacher education. I conduct activity based sessions related to teacher professional development on various topics. In the process, the resource material in the form of questionnaire, worksheets, handouts, etc. for TPD is being developed. I also organize TPD workshops.

      • Joint Review Mission on Teacher Education

      I was involved in the Joint Review Mission on Teacher Education for Punjab. The  main objective of the JRM is to review status of progress and to also consider issues related to programme planning, implementation,  monitoring and evaluation, with respect to each of the programmatic interventions under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme for Teacher Education, in respect of each level of institution. The visit culminated into a detailed JRM Report. More information about JRM can be viewed from its website: http://www.teindia.nic.in/jrm.aspx

       

      • Capacity Building Program of the DIET Faculty

      I have been involved in the MHRD-HBCSE project on teacher professional development in Bihar and West Bengal. As part of the project, we visited DIETs, SCERTs in-field in Bihar and West Bengal. Later, I was involved in conducting a two week intensive workshop on capacity building program for DIET faculty.  Further, as part of the project, I was involved in a follow-up in-field workshop for the DIET faculty. 

      My areas of interest at the workshops have been -- activity based science experiments, textbook analysis, NCF and teaching of science. I am involved in developing activity based science experiments, developing resources for teacher educators at elementary education level. More information about the project can be viewed from its website: http://teacher-ed.hbcse.tifr.res.in 

       

      Ph.D. Project in Science Education

      I am also a Ph.D. Student at the Centre. My research interest is broadly in the area of knowledge representation in biology education. I am using concept maps to characterize scientific knowledge, understand students' representation (understanding) of a domain, to compare novice's knowledge structure with that of an expert's knowledge structure.

      Please visit my profile as a Ph.D. Student in the area of "Refined Concept Maps in Science Education".

      I blog at Okeanos mostly on science education, concept maps, knowledge representation,  etc.

      Areas of Interest:

      Knowledge Representation; Concept Mapping

      Cognitive Studies of Science Learning

      Science Education

      Teacher Education

      Biology Education ; Language in Biology Textbook

       

      History and Philosophy of Science in Science Education

      Organization Member:

       

      • Workshop Co-chair: Second Conceptual Structures - Learning, Teaching and Assessment 2011, @ 19th ICCS 2011, University of Derby, UK
      • Organizing Committee: epiSTEME 4, HBCSE, Mumbai, India
      • Organizing Committee: International Conference on Education in Chemistry, HBCSE, Mumbai, India
      • Convenor: Exhibition on Science Education, Peoples Education Congress, HBCSE, Mumbai, India
      • Organizing Committee: Peoples Education Congress, HBCSE, Mumbai, India
      • Organizing Committee: Free Knowledge Free Technology, Barcelona, Spai
      • Organizing Committee: Science, Education and Learning in Freedom, HBCSE-TIFR, India
      • Organizing Committee: International Workshop on History and Philosophy of Science: Implications for Science Education, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, Feb 1999
      • Organizing Committee: Orientation Course on History of Science in Science Education, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, Oct 1998
      • Organizing Committee: Orientation Course on Biology Education, HBCSE, Mumbai, India, Dec 1996

      Links:

       

      Knowledge Organization in Science Education Knowledge Organization Approach for Biology Education International Visits Conferences
      Talks and Seminars Graduate Courses - credited
      		 Portal site for Science Education History of Science
      About Me My Blog - Okeanos  Gnowledge Project  SELF Project
      Contact Me My Photo Gallery  Biology Education Concept Mapping

       

      Contributors
      Meena Kharatmal