On 2nd March 2024, the ‘A Multimodal Approach to Teacher Professional Development in Low Resource Settings’ (MATPD) project funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC) kicked off the the ‘Action Research for Transformative Teaching and Learning’ training workshop for leading teachers in schools. The event also marked the launch of the Action Research Compendium, a significant achievement under the South Asian Teacher Educators (SATE) Fellowship of the project.

The four-day workshop, a collaboration with the Ministry of Education, National Institute of Education and Tata Institute of Social Sciences in India focuses on Action Research, Mentoring, Open Educational Resources and Gender Equality and Social Inclusion. The aim is to bolster the skills and understanding of teachers in these critical areas, fostering innovative practices in their daily teaching roles.
The Action Research compendium presents a summary of Action Researchers conducted by teacher educators who took part in the SATE Fellowship. Apart from conducting an action research, over the course of the fellowship, teacher educators underwent comprehensive face-to-face training, online webinars on distance teaching and learning methodologies, mentoring, ICT, and action research.

The ceremony welcomed Deputy Minister of Education, Mr Hussain Shakir as the chief guest. In his speech, he had emphasised on the need for the findings from such initiatives to be taken to grassroot levels and to be disseminated rather than keeping the information hidden in a bookshelf.

The opening remarks were given by the project’s Principal investigator, Ms Fathimath Saeed, who is also the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Educational Studies. She had stated that at the heart of the project is ‘change’, especially the kind that reshapes the way we approach teacher professional development. She also announced the inauguration of the training workshop “ Transforming teaching and learning through Action Research aimed to develop understanding and the capacities of school leading teachers in four key areas: action research, mentoring, Open Educational Resources (OER) and Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI).

The Project’s Co-principal investigator, Dr. Ruchi Kumar from TISS also delivered her remarks regarding the project achievements. In her remarks she had stressed on the remarkable achievement of the project - launching teh AR compendium. She also acknowledged that it was the result of the diligent work of many hardworking people across the three participating countries, as well as in India.

In the closing remarks, the Rector of Villa College, Dr. Ahmed Anwar congratulated all the members of the MATPD research for the unwavering commitment and achievements. He closed his speech with John Dewey’s quote 'If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow' which were the words to perfectly capture our journey and the impact we hope to achieve together.