Vijaya Sherry Chand

Vijaya Sherry Chand is Professor, Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation, IIM Ahmedabad. His research interests have centered around teacher-generated, workplace-based, educational innovations in the public system, and their use as learning objects in large-scale online professional development. This work, spread over three decades, and facilitated by the Hewlett-Packard Sustainability and Social Innovation Award he received in 2012, is described (with Samvet Kuril and Ketan Deshmukh as co-authors) in his book, Teacher Development in India: Building on Grassroots Innovations and Technology (Routledge, 2023). Much of his research highlights the role of the innovative potential that exists at the grassroots of public systems in complementing top-down reform. His other research interests include activity-based learning in early childhood education, school governance, the consequences of innovative work performance of teachers in the public system for children's non-cognitive competencies, and organizational capacity of school management committees to undertake educational reform. His teaching interests include educational innovation, leadership and management, theory and practice of education, sociology of education, and management communication. He has worked with a number of provincial and central governments in India on educator professional development and assessing educational management systems.

Prior to joining IIMA in 1993, he worked on a variety of social development projects with socio-economically marginalized communities for 11 years. He sustains this interest by learning from various Indian non-governmental initiatives. He is Vice-President of SRISTI, a non-profit dedicated to grassroots innovations. He has also worked on early and medieval Indian history and religious architecture, and is engaged in promoting organ donation.