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Calhoun Student Becomes Published Scholar, Shedding Light on How Pandemic Impacted Education in India


During the Covid-19 pandemic, the shift to remote learning was challenging for students worldwide. Calhoun student Nishant V. ‘25 wanted to shed light on the experiences of students beyond the US, deciding to explore how the pandemic impacted education in India. His research, focusing on the challenges faced by teachers and students in India, was recently published in Tropics of Meta under the title "Setbacks to School Education in India During Covid-19: A Perspective from the Field."

Nishant’s research study began after his ninth-grade year and continued for two years. He spent summers traveling to India to conduct the research firsthand. Nishant interviewed 40 students and 20 teachers in a city and small town in South India, looking at how the pandemic’s impact varied in different school settings, from private schools to public ones, at various degrees of funding. 

Nishant

Nishant’s research became the focus of his Junior Workshop project at Calhoun, where he worked closely with his teachers to refine the data and write an academic paper analyzing his findings. Though Nishant knew early on that he wanted to turn his research into a paper, the process of bringing his idea to life taught him a great deal about the complexities of the research process. "I had an initial conclusion, but as I was thinking about it, I realized that all of the data didn’t fit into that conclusion, so I had to rework it to see what actually encompassed what the data represented,” Nishant shares. 

Nishant’s conversations with his Junior Workshop advisor also inspired him to take the project in a new direction—a lecture he presented to the Upper School in the theater. "When my advisor asked me what I wanted to get out of this project, I said I wanted to educate people who didn’t know about contexts other than their own during Covid,” Nishant explains. "I wasn’t expecting to do a lecture, but it went really well, and I learned from that experience."

Nishant gives lecture to Upper School classmates

 

Collaborating with Calhoun faculty and using the Junior Workshop experience to execute his vision taught Nishant another key lesson: "Writing a paper and bringing new knowledge into the world is not just an individual process, it’s a collective process,” says Nishant. “There are always many people around you aiding you and helping you sharpen your argument and thesis."

The project not only deepened Nishant’s understanding of the subject, but cemented his future ambitions. Looking ahead, he plans to continue pursuing research and hopes to become a research professor in history and sociology. 

"Writing a paper and bringing new knowledge into the world is not just an individual process, it’s a collective process.” Nishant V. ‘25

You can read Nishant’s paper, "Setbacks to School Education in India During Covid-19: A Perspective from the Field," here.


 

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