Arun Naik is a Professor at the School of Education, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru.

Arun has over 20 years of experience of working with the public education system. With a postgraduate degree in Mathematics and Education, his areas of expertise are curriculum policy formulation, teacher education programmes, textbook development, design and delivery of large-scale teacher development initiatives, educational research, and advising governments on implementation of large-scale education programmes.

He began his career as a teacher educator at New Horizon College of Education, teaching courses on foundations of education, guidance and counselling, and math education. Arun then joined ​‘The Teacher Foundation’, where he led content development and capacity-building programmes for teachers, head teachers, and block education officers in Karnataka, successfully reaching over 3,000 government primary school teachers across select districts.

In his subsequent role at the School of Continuing Education at the University, Arun spent over a decade leading professional development programmes in education, working extensively with various aspects of school education across states. He lead the design and delivery of short-term capacity development programmes for SCERT faculty, DIET principals & faculty, District Education Officers, and Master Resource Persons from States like Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Sikkim, Mizoram, Meghalaya, and more.

Arun has collaborated with SCERTs of States, including Sikkim, Mizoram, and Punjab on curriculum and textbook development. Notably, he is part of the TWAU textbook development team at NCERT, contributing to the development of high-quality educational materials. Arun has also advised States on the implementation of various educational initiatives, such as the large-scale teacher language capacity enhancement programme ​‘ELEC’ in Telangana and Leadership development programmes in Tamil Nadu. Additionally, he assisted SCERTs in developing state-level plans for educational research, further solidifying his expertise in shaping education policies and practices.