Began my stint into the profession of my great desire “teaching” by stepping into a Primary school in my native place Kodagu (Coorg) soon after completing B.Ed. to fill the leave vacancy of a regular teacher.  Soon after completing M.Ed. Joined as Lecturer in a B.Ed. college at Bangalore and continued for an academic year. After two years, joined as TGT in Navodaya Vidyalaya in my native district on ad-hoc basis. After a gap of four years got an opportunity to be a PRT in Demonstration Multipurpose School (DMS), Myosre.  Took up research and enrolled in University of Mysore for Ph.D. and worked as a Research Associate for Indo – US cross cultural study in Mysore as that helped me to collect data for my Ph.D.  Joined as a Guest faculty in University of Mysore in the P.G. department of Education while continuing to work in the Indo-US project.  Joined to work in a Research project in All India Institute of Speech and Hearing Myosre on full time basis (Contractual) and soon was Lecturer in special education in the same institute.  Took a break from full time work and continued as Guest faculty in RIE, AIISH and University of Mysore in addition to engaging in voluntary work with NGOs supporting Education of children from disadvantages and disabilities.  Got opportunity to work with organizations on the research projects as an investigator as well as a consultant.  Joined as Assistant Professor in education in RIE Mysore (Contractual) and  continued as guest faculty till I took up the regular post of associate professor in education at RIE Bhubaneswar in February 2014.

In my journey of learning, was fortunate to have got chance to interact with students at various levels of learning, participate in conferences, seminars, workshops, training and orientation programs at Local, State, Regional, National and International levels, carry out research for Ph. D. guide students and teachers for  research, work on independent projects and provide consultancy.  Was given opportunity to address students, teachers and teacher educators as a resource person on several occasions.  All these experiences provided scope to publish research articles in National and International Journals, contribute chapters to books on invitation to National and International publications, develop courses for regular and distance education as a team member, prepare SLM, record audio lessons for distance mode learners, organize meetings / programs at State and National level.

Visited Greece (1997 &2005), Cyprus (1999), Bangkok (2013), USA (2014) and South Africa (2018) to speak on various issues concerning Education of children with disabilities and inclusive education.

Received Fulbright Fellowship 2022 under the academic and professional excellence category to work on the research project “Culturally Responsive Curriculum Model for Early Childhood Education to Enhance Literacy Readiness Skills”.  Through this project got an opportunity to be part of pre-school program in USA and to document sociocultural practices adopted in early childhood and study their influence on literacy readiness. It helped to inform literacy initiatives in local language and English, in India, indicating early childhood educational practices that are beneficial.  My partner institute for this study, the Florida Center for Reading Research (FCRR) in Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida, USA, is the leader of literacy in the United States. The research in literacy and multilingual communities by the FCRR served as a guide for this project.

 

Gowramma I P, PhD
Professor of Education
Regional Institute of Education
National Council of Educational Research and Training
(An Autonomous Organisation Under Ministry of Education, Govt. of India)
Bhubaneswar – 751 022