Dr. Anveshna Srivastava is a Visiting Professor in the department of Cognitive Sciences at IIT Kanpur.
Dr. Anveshna Srivastava was raised in Ballia, a small town that marks the easternmost border of Uttar Pradesh with Bihar. The land of Shaheed Mangal Pandey, Ballia is the cradle of India’s first uprising against the Britishers, which made it earn the title of ‘Baagi’ (a rebel). Dr. Anveshna is a proud daughter of ‘Baagi’ Ballia and carries the ‘baagi’ germ within her to fight off inequalities in education.
A daughter of a teacher and a lawyer, Dr. Anveshna had a simple middle-class upbringing. Her academic journey began at the only English medium school in the town, Holy Cross, in the late 1980s. While growing up, she was deeply inspired by her mother, Late Neeru Krishna Srivastava, who taught History & Civics in the same school. Her mother’s honesty, integrity, and empathy shaped her understanding of worldly interactions and the role of humans in society. In one incident, when the mother-daughter duo were discussing the sources of human pain and agony, the mother advocated that books were human’s best friend and one may find solace in them when things were not going right. This was the moment of deep revelation for 11-year-old Anveshna and laid the foundation for her love and respect for learning.
With reverence for knowledge and curiosity to learn new concepts, Anveshna started to observe the underlying connections across different subjects. Despite limited finances, her parents did all to make sure she had the required resources. However, she was soon exposed to the deep patriarchal mindset of our society and was quick to realize that the field was uneven for women. For instance, even within her extended family, her brown skin was a matter of deep concern. Concerned relatives offered unsolicited suggestions which ranged from the natural haldi-besan (turmeric-chickpea flour) scrub to the chemically laden and outrightly stupid ‘Fair & Lovely’ cream. However, the ‘books are best friends’ mantra helped her through several such negative and judgmental situations. Soon after, she found herself pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Botany (Honours) from Miranda House at Delhi University. The journey from Ballia to Delhi was much more than just a 1000 km path. It was a journey of thoughts and aspirations! And it had its share of troubles, hard work, and of course, learning.
Her daily 3 hours of travel from her uncle’s home to college & back involved changing multiple buses, and the commute was nothing short of traumatic. There was no guarantee that one would not be touched inappropriately. One could just never afford to be in a ‘non-alert’ mode. This was the time when the first Delhi Metro was launched from Kashmere Gate to Vishwavidyalaya. By her final year, she used to travel carrying her dissection needles in hand, just in case! This level of safety for the women in the heart of our capital city was disturbing for her.
She then pursued her Master's degree in Biochemistry from Dehradun and Ph.D. in Science Education from Mumbai. As a young researcher, her ideas were deeply influenced by Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj and Nai Taleem. She realized that the education system was stubbornly insular to the idea of ‘learning’. It was too focused on learning ‘outcomes’, rather than on the ‘processes’. For Anveshna, the mushrooming of coaching classes for competitive exams all over the country at the expense of learning in the schools was a testament to society’s obsession with outcomes, where education was nothing more than a form of lucrative business or a gateway to economic security. She wanted to separate education from learning. Her work started during her PhD at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, where she started designing low-cost, pedagogical tools to assist the learning ‘processes’ of students, focusing on STEM concepts. These tools included designing a simple gesture to help students understand the structure of the DNA molecule, the pedagogical method of 3-D ‘model-dissection’ to help teachers save time while getting the benefits of engaging with a physical model, the method of concept-mapping analysis for identifying the learning stages of learners, etc.
During her postdoctoral jobs at IIT Kanpur & IIT Bombay, she focused on students’ thinking and reasoning processes. This stemmed from her ideological stance that it was important to target learners’ ability to think and reason, rather than help them perform better on some measure of learning outcome. Changing mindset and temperament is far more difficult to achieve than scoring good marks. Hence, her work focused on ‘counterfactual reasoning’, ‘critical thinking’, etc. to help learners develop scientific temperament. At IIT Bombay, she studied cutting-edge technological interfaces to assess their efficacy in learning processes. For instance, in a recent work, she studied an Augmented Reality tool to understand its impact on learners’ spatial ability, a cognitive ability known to have a positive impact on achievement in STEM fields.
Her relentless efforts in making scientific concepts fun and easy to learn is based on her strong interdisciplinary leanings where she thinks that it is time we liberate our kids from the shackles of boundaries between different subjects and let them enjoy learning by organically linking different concepts. Working in this direction, she has published ‘Letters in Action’, a basic English alphabet book for pre-primary kids to make them learn concepts by linking the functional relationships between different objects of the world. She is currently working on the Hindi counterpart of this book, called ‘Aksharon ki Udaan’.
She has recently joined as a Visiting Faculty in the Department of Cognitive Science at IIT Kanpur. In line with her commitment to influencing thinking and reasoning abilities, she is now working on developing computational thinking in middle school students. She is experimenting with innovative methods so that they can be used even in resource-strapped conditions, where access to computers and the internet is still a distant dream.
Dr. Anveshna's commitment extends beyond the classroom and lab. At IIT Kanpur, she spearheads a social initiative aimed at equipping children from low socioeconomic backgrounds with basic educational opportunities. She conducts weekly classes for these children with the help of a couple of committed volunteers. This program identifies motivated children and makes them appear for the entrance exam of IITK’s ‘Opportunity School’. On clearing the entrance on their merit, these children are funded by the program to commence their schooling. In the past one and a half years, three children have been brought to mainstream education via this program and Dr. Anveshna gives credit to the children for believing in their abilities to alter the trajectory of their lives. She says that she cannot help anyone if they are not ready to help themselves.
Dr. Anveshna's story is a powerful testament to the resilience and determination required to challenge and change the status quo. Her journey embodies the profound impact education and perseverance can have on the world. As she continues to break barriers and forge paths for future generations, Dr. Anveshna remains a pivotal figure in the landscape of educational reform and an inspiring role model for women everywhere.
She shares an anecdote about when she was returning from TIFR’s campus in Colaba, Mumbai after watching a play at 1 am to HBCSE in Mankhurd, Mumbai. She was traveling in the Mumbai local train and had been thinking about the play. The cool breeze was exhilarating and after she reached her place, it struck her that in that hour-long journey, she was alone in the train, and not once did it cross her mind that it could be unsafe. It brought a smile to her face! She quips- “the difference between the ‘dissection-needle’ commute and the ‘needle-free’/’non-alert mode’ commute is one of a mindset of the society, one that enables terror and the other that lets you be. It requires a hell lot of effort to change that. I am doing my job and I need more help.”
This blog seeks not just to tell her story but to motivate others to believe that no barrier is too large to overcome—and that the pursuit of education and equality is a noble, impactful journey.