Farhat did her post graduation in Zoology from Calcutta University. Her Ph.D work was titled “Investigating students’, teachers’ and designers’ ideas about design and developing design activities for Indian middle school students” and it focused on understanding students’, teachers’ and designers’ perceptions of design and developing design based activities for Indian middle school students. Her thesis has charted a new territory by focusing on Design which is relatively ignored at the elementary and middle school levels in the Indian context. She has received the TIFR Alumni Association- B.M. Udgaonkar Award for the Best thesis of the year, 2013-2014. Farhat is currently faculty with Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru .
To know more about Farhat’s Ph.D work at HBCSE, see Research section.
Email: farhathamid[at]gmail.com
Publications
In Journals
Ara, F., Chunawala, S., & Natarajan, C. (2013). Investigating Indian elementary and middle school student’s images of designers. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 18(2), 50-65.
Ara, F., Chunawala, S., & Natarajan, C. (2011). A study investigating Indian middle school students ideas of design and designers. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 16(3), 62-73.
Ara, F., Natarajan, C., & Chunawala, S. (2009). A study exploring the strategies utilised by Indian middle-school students in identifying unfamiliar artefacts. Design and Technology Education: An International Journal, 14(3), 47-57.
In Conference Proceedings
Ara, F., Natarajan, C., & Chunawala, S. (2011). Students as users and designers: Product evaluation and redesign by Indian middle school students. In S. Chunawala & M. Kharatmal (Eds.), Proceedings of epiSTEME 4 – International Conference to Review Research on Science, Technology and Mathematics Education (pp. 95-100). India: Macmillan.
Ara, F., Natarajan, C., & Chunawala, S. (2010). Naïve designers: A study describing Indian middle school students’ creative design solutions to a real world problem. International Conference on ”Designing for children’- with focus on ‘play’ and ‘learn’, Industrial Design Centre, IIT, Mumbai, February 2-6, 2010.
Ara, F., Chunawala, S. & Natarajan, C. (2009). Moving from analysing to designing artefacts: studying middle school students’ ideas about design and designers. In K.Subramaniam and A. Mazumdar (Eds.), Proceedings epiSTEME-3: An International Conference to Review Research in Science, Technology and Mathematics Education (pp. 94-100). Mumbai: Macmillan Publishers India Ltd.
Ara, F., Khunyakari, R., & Natarajan, C. (2007). A study of middle school students’ depictions of routes based on verbal description and cues. In C. Natarajan and B. Choski (Eds.), Proceedings of epiSTEME2: International conference to review research on Science, Technology and Mathematics Education (pp. 141-145). India: Macmillan Publishers India Ltd.
Ph.D Thesis
Ara, F. (2013). Investigating students’, teachers’ and designers’ ideas about design and developing design activities for Indian middle school students (Doctoral Thesis). Mumbai: HBCSE, TIFR Deemed University.