A Study on Awareness towards Indian Knowledge System among Secondary School Students

This study explores the level of awareness and understanding of the Indian Knowledge System (IKS) among secondary school students in Gandhinagar district of Gujarat.Indian Knowledge system deals with the systematic representation of the myriad repository of knowledge developed in the Indian subcontinent which includes domains such as Yoga and Ayurvedic Knowledge, Indian Philosophy, mathematics, history, astronomy and environmental practices to name a few.Understanding its massive importance, the ministry of education, in the recent past has focused on the integration of different aspects of Indian knowledge system in the school curriculum.The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 as well as the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) 2023 has advocated for the inclusion of Indian knowledge system and provide a detail blueprint of its inclusion in school education.In the light of these developments, the researchers through this study, intends to investigate the extent to which the students are engaging with the content related to IKS.The study adopts a quantitative research design with the sample consisted of 100 students from both urban (n=48) and rural (n=52) backgrounds.The researchers administered a structured and validated questionnaire to assess the level of awareness among the secondary students across the five domains of IKS.Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics, Shapiro-Wilk tests for normality, and independent samples t-tests to compare mean awareness scores based on gender and locality.The findings revealed no statistically significant difference in IKS awareness between urban and rural students (t(98) = 0.313, p = 0.755, d = -0.06),nor between male and female students (t(98) = 0.0861, p = 0.932, d = 0.01), which indicates a uniform level of awareness across demographics.Despite this homogeneity, the overall moderate awareness scores indicate the necessity for efficient curriculum integration and pedagogical approaches to improve students' understanding of IKS.The study concludes that while students exhibit some familiarity with IKS, formal education must play a stronger role in deepening engagement with India's cultural and intellectual heritage through targeted interventions.