Showing papers in "Contemporary Education Dialogue in 2003"

The Notion of Quality in DPEP Pedagogical Interventions

Abstract: The District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) has worked in 18 states in India with the agenda to enhance the quality of classroom interaction and the teaching-learning materials used. This paper examines how ‘quality’ is understood within DPEP, and the educational principles that guide DPEP efforts and training methods, based on reports of training workshops, examining textbooks and materials and first-hand field experience. A proposal is made for an alternative way of looking at ‘quality’ and efforts to realise it.

English Education and Indian Childhood during the Raj, 1850–1947

Abstract: Between 1850 and 1947 British colonial power and its related institutions reshaped the indigenous childhood of English educated Indians in ways that continue to be of significance today. Despite va...

Prejudice and Pride: School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan:

Abstract: P rejudice and Pride has appeared at a critical juncture in the history of education in this country. We are in the midst of a controversy over school textbooks — a controversy created by the National Council for Education R e s e a r c h a n d T r a i n i n g ' s (NCERT) decision to replace the existing textbooks with a set of new ones. While the ostensible reason for this is touted to be 'modernising the curriculum', it is obvious t ha t the new textbooks are being introduced to legitimise a certain ideology. The matter has been debated upon extensively and presently the focus is on the new textbooks in social studies, history, political science and sociology, which have just appeared in the market. Their poor quality and the distortions they contain have evoked sharp reactions from schoolteachers, parents, historians and others from diverse walks of life. Prejudice and Pride analyses and compares the earlier history textbooks produced by the NCERT and several state t e x t b o o k b u r e a u s , w i t h textbooks from Pakistan. Some of these books have since been replaced but several are still in use. Krishna Kumar's critique of t h e s e books and h is o b s e r v a t i o n s a b o u t t h e presentation of history to schoolchildren could have generated a fruitful discussion and debate between educationists and historians. But this has not h a p p e n e d s ince the NCERT's moves have shifted the parameters of the discussion on to a political and ideological terrain.

Understanding Educational Innovation in India: The Case of Eklavya Interviews with Staff and Teachers:

Abstract: I n the middle of 2002, the country's longest-running schoollevel educational innovation, the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (HSTP), was abruptly terminated by the Madhya Pradesh government. From its initial base of 16 schools in 1972, HSTP had expanded to cover 1,000 schools and over 2,000 teachers in 15 districts of the state. It served not only as a catalystfor Eklavya s other curricular initiatives in middle-school social science (the Social Science Teaching Programme ISSTP)) and primary education (Prathmik Shiksha Karyakram, Prashika), but was also instrumental in sparking off several innovative efforts in various other states. The unanimous opinion of scientists and science educators is that HSTP embodied all that good science teaching should entail, namely, an enquiry-based discovery approach in which children conduct experiments and arrive at their own hypotheses, which they then further verify. The government's unilateral decision resulted in the simultaneous closure ofSSTP as well. This programme has been lauded as a landmark effort to make social studies more interesting through its focus on causality rather than facts, as well as for its sensitivity in making abstract concepts intelligible by linking them to the child's local realities. Prashika developed an integrated curriculum with an emphasis on critical thinking, problem solving and creativity, and was one of the first programmes to be invited by the state government to contribute to its curricular reform efforts in 1995. However after just one phase the reform effort, the government opted for uniformity in its curricula and, in 2002, closed down Prashika as well as its own trial programme.

‘Right to Education’: Opportunities and Challenges1

Abstract: The paper critically reviews the rise and use of the ‘rights-based approach’ in ensuring entitlements of citizens vis-a-vis education, both internationally and in the context of the recently passed 93rd ammendment to the Indian Constitution which has given citizens the fundamental right to education. Reflecting on, policy shifts in Indian education such as decentralisation, and the characteristic of education itself as a ‘social’ and ‘political’ good, questions are raised about the prospects of a ‘rights-based approach’ in education.

Classics with Commentary

Abstract: I n this inaugural issue we carry excerpts from one of John Dewey's seminal works, Experience and Education, in the hope that it will initiate a dialogue among academics and practitioners of school education. Dewey wrote Experience and Education in the early 1930s as a response to the problems he perceived in the aims and methods of the 'traditional education' of the time as well as the practice of progressive schooling that had emerged as a critique of these methods. The progressive school movement, which was initiated around the 1920s, questioned fundamental tenets of the dominant or traditional education regarding how children learn, the nature of pedagogy and the teacher-child relationship. However, Dewey was concerned that the daily practices of progressive educators were in actual effect distorting the basic principles that formed the basis of a 'new' education. He felt that in their eagerness to move away from the regimentation and authoritarian relations of traditional schools, progressive educators tended to glorify the freedom of the child over organised learning. In his writing, Dewey makes a plea to educators to look beyond dualisms (traditional versus progressive education for instance, or the child versus the curriculum) and thereby to 'call attention to the larger and deeper issue of education so. as to suggest their proper frame of reference' (1938/1948: vii).