Showing papers in "Contemporary Education Dialogue in 2023"
TL;DR: The authors explored reorientations to technology for online remote instruction from the perspective of educators delivering instruction with the educational non-profit organization Teach for India (TFI) in Pune, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.
Abstract: In March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close, students from marginalised communities across the world were disproportionately impacted in terms of educational access, opportunities and outcomes. This article explores reorientations to technology for online remote instruction from the perspective of educators delivering instruction with the educational non-profit organisation Teach for India (TFI) in Pune, a city in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. From qualitative ethnographic interviews with TFI fellows and programme managers to online classroom observations from April 2020 until October 2021, this article illustrates successes and challenges in online instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, which facilitated both teaching innovations and made apparent cleavages in access to education among marginalised students and their families. Ultimately, TFI’s short-term fellowship model provided novice instructors with a unique window of opportunity during the COVID-19 pandemic to integrate technology into pedagogy in novel ways.
TL;DR: In this article , a teacher education reform approach adopted in India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is discussed, where the policy recommendations in the context and challenges of TE in India and makes sense of the NEP's vision for the domain.
Abstract: This article engages with the teacher education (TE) reform approach adopted in India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. It locates the policy recommendations in the context and challenges of TE in India and makes sense of the NEP’s vision for the domain. It examines the knowledge traditions and global education policy (GEP) discourses that underlie the proposed reforms, and the translation of the core reform ideas in the national regulatory framework for implementation. The first part of the findings identifies the knowledge traditions and influences of GEP inherent in the policy and argues that NEP’s reform approach is an assemblage of fundamentally inconsistent discourses. The second part examines the regulatory norms and standards of the NEP-recommended TE programme to understand what makes it distinct as compared to similar ongoing programmes. Based on the analysis, the article argues that the proposed new programme is a tweaked version of India’s conventional TE approaches.
TL;DR: This article explored why Delpit's arguments hold such deep currencies in the world we inhabit, contextualizing it within her work contexts. And explored their significance and applications within the diverse contexts in which we work in India, to revisit, rethink and reimagine critical, decolonial and transformative pedagogies for India's fractured, post-colonial, caste-centred, often patriarchal, culturally, religiously and linguistically diverse but often hegemonic landscapes.
Abstract: Language and literacy education has long been a site of contestation. Lisa Delpit, an African–American language and literacy educator, shook this contested site in the 1980s and 1990s through her ground-breaking book Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflicts in the Classroom, by centring the voices, discontentment and hopes of African–American communities that were emerging from their everyday lived experiences in classrooms saturated by cultures of power and norms of the privileged. In this essay, I explore why her arguments hold such deep currencies in the world we inhabit, contextualising it within her work contexts. Further on, I explore their significance and applications within the diverse contexts in which we work in India, to revisit, rethink and reimagine critical, decolonial and transformative pedagogies for India’s fractured, post-colonial, caste-centred, often patriarchal, culturally, religiously and linguistically diverse but often hegemonic landscapes.
TL;DR: In this paper , a comparative analysis of textbooks revealed weak links between visuals and other scaffolding tools such as activities and end-chapter exercises, and found that visualisation in textbooks were inadequate, inappropriate and often potential sources of confusion.
Abstract: Learning about components and processes of complex biological systems is challenging and requires abstraction through mediational tools such as text, visuals, models and visualisation experiences. The ‘systems concepts’ necessitate building coherent relations and anticipating consequences, requiring greater mediational support. This article reports findings from two components of a study. The first component involved a comparative analysis of textbooks and revealed weak links between visuals and other scaffolding tools such as activities and end-chapter exercises. Visuals in textbooks were found to be inadequate, inappropriate and often potential sources of confusion. The second component of the study involved drawing-based task that elicited learner struggles in internalising ideas about the human digestive system. The study calls for a refined understanding and use of mediational tools towards bridging the gaps between conceptual models and learners’ mental models. The study opens avenues for further inquiry that could support learning biology.
TL;DR: In this article , the authors show that the practice of ability grouping has a psychological and social impact on students and teachers, and that teachers selectively cover less curriculum to help the students attain a minimum grade for promotion to the next class.
Abstract: teachers selectively cover less curriculum. This is to help the students attain a minimum grade for promotion to the next class. Her research further shows that the practice of ability grouping has a psychological and social impact on students and teachers.
TL;DR: The canvas of science education needs to be viewed in its totality to prevent the confounding of some basic issues and to enable us to evaluate the fads and fashions in educational practice as discussed by the authors .
Abstract: The canvas of science education needs to be viewed in its totality to prevent the confounding of some basic issues and to enable us to evaluate the fads and fashions in educational practice. Policies and processes in education are tacitly shaped by theories in the humanities and social sciences. Inadequate understanding of these theories, or the lack of attention to uncalled-for implications of their practical import, takes education in undesirable directions. To be a good science teacher has never been easy. The teacher is a master of knowledge in science. But that is not all. She is equally committed to the principles governing the practice and communication of science.
TL;DR: In this article , the authors argue that Gandhian thought can serve as a guiding principle in our struggle to stem the tsunami of language endangerment, and that diversity is not seen as a management problem but rather a necessary condition for all that is human.
Abstract: Mother-tongue education has increasingly become a keyword in formulations of development goals, especially the Sustainable Development Goals (2015). Achievement of these goals acquires a grave sense of urgency in light of the ever-increasing threat to the very fabric of our linguistic diversity. The basic premise of this article is that Gandhian thought can serve as a guiding principle in our struggle to stem the tsunami of language endangerment. Engagement with Gandhian thought enables us to critically examine the current presuppositions about development and the role of language in nation-building (especially in schools) and also inspires us to look for more sustainable alternatives. This article aims at examining the linguistic world order that Gandhi envisaged—an order where languages do not encroach upon each other. In postulating such a world order, Gandhi shows a keen awareness of the dangers that languages such as English could pose to mother tongues. Furthermore, diversity is not seen as a ‘management’ problem but rather a necessary condition for all that is human. Emphasis on ensuring that the child in school is an active producer rather than a passive consumer of knowledge, as well as envisaging the school as a resource centre for the neighbourhood ensures that the mother tongues (L-languages) and languages taught in schools (H-languages) enter into a harmonious and symmetrical pedagogical relationship rather than a relationship of violent conflict, which characterises the current linguistic world-order. The article argues that such a pedagogical relationship serves as a necessary component of any sustainable developmental paradigm.
TL;DR: In this paper , the micro-managed context of teachers' work in low-fee private schools in semi-urban Delhi is examined based on ethnographic fieldwork, and the authors argue that teachers strongly constructed their work as provisional and used silence and exit as a way to cope within the highly regulated work environments of the school.
Abstract: It is well known that teachers are central to education reforms and to providing high-quality instruction. The National Curriculum Framework 2005 identifies the need for professionally qualified teachers and the need to enhance the professional identity of schoolteachers. Low-fee private schools are often presented as a solution to the supposedly poor quality of education provided by government schools. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the micro-managed context of teachers’ work in low-fee private schools in semi-urban Delhi. It illustrates ways in which curriculum and pedagogy were used to control teachers’ work and analyses these observations in the light of New Public Management discourses. This article argues that teachers strongly constructed their work as provisional and used silence and exit as a way to cope within the highly regulated work environments of the school.
TL;DR: In this paper , the authors explored how the objective practice of ability grouping positions teachers and their pedagogical practices as intending to obtain performance measurement and found that most of the teachers' pedagogic practice take the shape of educational triage.
Abstract: This article discusses the pedagogic practice of ability grouping in government schools in Delhi. Despite practical evidence against homogenous student settings, ability grouping is implemented as a policy solution to reduce the huge variance in students’ learning levels within a classroom. Research data is drawn from interviews with 110 government schoolteachers in Delhi, where achievement data from baseline surveys conducted by the Delhi government was used to group students. Using Bourdieu’s (1998) theoretical tools, this article explores how the objective practice of ability grouping positions teachers and their pedagogical practices as intending to obtain performance measurement. Ability grouping creates an environment for teachers in which they submit to consigning students with low achievement results to low ability classrooms. Their habitus is less empowering as teachers’ ability to be teachers and in developing their own curricular content is curtailed by ability setting. The findings of this study reveal that most of the teachers’ pedagogic practice take the shape of educational triage. This had implications for enacted pedagogies and curriculum, as there is an extensive application of the exam-oriented technique of teaching, including selective and abbreviated curriculum in low-ability classrooms as teachers selectively cover less curriculum.
TL;DR: This article studied the relationship between the authorities of newly independent India and mission schools using the case of (and the perspective/sources from) the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Chotanagpur (then South Bihar, now Jharkhand).
Abstract: This article studies the relationship between the authorities of newly independent India and mission schools using the case of (and the perspective/sources from) the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Chotanagpur (then South Bihar, now Jharkhand). These relationships were marked by much tension in the late 1940s and early 1950s. An abundance of issues—for instance on finances, appointments, recognition, and management—mirror the fight over the control of the mission schools. However, these debates faded in the late 1950s, inter alia because policy-makers became aware of the benefits of mission schools, both in efficiently educating and in collectively suppressing communism.