Pedagogies for developement

Child-centred education and the promise of democratic learning: Pedagogic
messages in rural Indian primary schools
Arathi Sriprakash
Centre for Educational Research, University of Western Sydney, Sydney, Australia
1. Introduction
Global and national agendas to achieve universal primary
education and improve the ‘quality’ of school provision in
developing countries have identified the need to reform classroom
pedagogy. Since the 1990s, child-centred ideas in particular have
been utilised in teacher-training programmes and school reforms
in low-income, under-resourced settings across many parts of
Africa and Asia (cf. Capper et al., 1997; Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2002;
Courtney, 2008). The widespread sponsorship of child-centred
education by governments and development agencies casts
questions over the politics of pedagogic change and the role of
pedagogy for projects of social democratisation and economic
development (cf. Tabulawa, 2003; Vavrus, 2009). This paper asks:
how far can child-centred education encourage greater freedoms
for children in specific classroom contexts?
In India, child-centred education has been positioned by
national policy discourse as a panacea to address issues of low
student retention and achievement in rural government primary
schools, serving the country’s majority poor (cf. GoI, 1992).
Estimates from 2005 suggest that up to 28 per cent of children
enrolled in primary schools in India drop-out before their fifth year
of formal schooling, and approximately 50 per cent drop-out
during the first eight years of schooling (GoI, 2006). This is despite
constitutional obligations on the state to provide free and
compulsory education for all children up to the age of fourteen
years. Pedagogic renewal in Indian government primary schools
has sought to reform dominant modes of textbook-based, rote-
oriented, authoritarian and didactic instruction with the promise
of more child-friendly, democratic learning environments.
This paper presents an analysis of child-centred teaching in a
rural primary school in the southern Indian state of Karnataka.
Classroom observations were conducted as part of a qualitative
study of Karnataka teachers’ implementation of child-centred
reforms in 16 primary schools in 2007. The study draws on Basil
Bernstein’s sociological theory of pedagogy to identify the
principles and underlying assumptions of the reforms and to
analyse how these were reinterpreted by teachers in practice.
Bernstein theorised the principles and processes of curriculum,
pedagogy and evaluation as producing a ‘message system’ in
schools through which social hierarchies and identities are
projected and institutionalised, overtly and implicitly. His theory
enables an analysis of pedagogic control in classrooms, encourag-
ing us to consider how far the democratic thrust of child-centred
ideals implies in practice greater learning freedoms for pupils. Such
an approach uncovers the social messages relayed to pupils
through pedagogic interaction. Analysing episodes fromclassroom
observations, this paper reveals the tensions experienced by one
teacher in handing over greater classroom control to pupils. It
sheds light on some of the difficulties of child-centred models to
achieve democratic learning environments and reflects on the
possibilities and conditions for pedagogic change in rural Indian
primary schools.
The paper begins by examining how Bernstein’s concepts assist
the social analysis of pedagogy and describing for readers the
International Journal of Educational Development xxx (2010) xxx–xxx
A R T I C L E I N F O
Keywords:
Pedagogy
Education reform
India
Education for all
A B S T R A C T
Global and national agendas to achieve universal primary education and improve the ‘quality’ of school
provision in developing countries have identified the need to reform classroom pedagogy. Since the
1990s, child-centred ideas in particular have been utilised in teacher-training programmes and school
reforms across many parts of Africa and Asia with the intention of creating more child-friendly,
democratic learning environments. Analysing episodes from classroom observations conducted in a
rural Indian primary school, this paper reveals the tensions experienced by one teacher in handing over
greater classroom control to pupils. It provides insight into the complex processes of pedagogic
interaction, and sheds light on some of the possibilities and conditions for achieving child-centred
pedagogic change in such development contexts.
ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
E-mail address: [email protected].
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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Educational Development
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doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.11.010
context in whichthe study took place. This is followed by a detailed
analysis of the child-centred programme under investigation to
uncover the principles and assumptions of the reformideals. I then
discuss episodes of classroom observations with insights into one
teacher’s interpretation of child-centred pedagogy. This offers a
critical perspective on the forms of control and associated
pedagogic messages relayed by such classroom interaction. The
paper concludes by reflecting on the implications of these
messages for development agendas and for the promise of
democratic education in the Indian context.
2. A social analysis of pedagogy and change
Studies of education in developing countries have tended to
focus on quantitative measures of infrastructural delivery. In the
1960s, Beeby (1966) identified requisite transitions of the
teacher and the school through four stages of development in
education. His influential model could be understood on the one
hand as encouraging an interest in the qualitative dimensions of
educational systems and their change. On the other hand, Beeby’s
model has been critiqued for assuming linear notions of
‘progress’ and western cultural norms of ‘good’ teaching in
developing country contexts (cf. Guthrie, 1980). More recent
studies of classroom reform in the global south have emphasised
contextual and contingent bases for change. For example, the
work by Johnson et al. (2000) on teacher development in South
Africa critique western models of change predicated on condi-
tions of teacher agency and professional status that are often
differently constituted in development contexts. They emphasise
understanding pedagogic change through ‘small steps’ to
recognise the ‘adjustments teachers can make within the
systems in which they find themselves, whilst not denying the
need for wider change’ (Johnson et al., 2000, p. 190). Vavrus
(2009) also highlights the need for a contextual understanding of
pedagogy in her critical analysis of teacher education in the
United Republic of Tanzania. She calls for a notion of ‘contingent
pedagogy’ in order to move beyond student-centred and teacher-
centred dualisms and recognise ‘a broader range of pedagogical
alternatives for demonstrating ‘excellent teaching’’ (Vavrus,
2009, p. 310).
In Indian schools, the contextual and contingent aspects of
schooling have only recently begun to be explored in qualitative
detail (cf. Sarangapani, 2003; Chawla-Duggan, 2007; Clarke, 2003).
For example, Sarangapani’s (2003) ethnography of learning in a
northern Indian village revealed hierarchic and multi-dimensional
teacher–pupil authority relationships that were influenced by
cultural and community specificities. Her study showed that
interventions seeking more democratic classroom interaction
needed to recognise the social base of school relationships.
Clarke’s (2003) research of student-centred reforms in Karnataka
showed how new forms of instruction were interpreted through
teachers’ cultural constructs of teaching and learning. The detailed
insights offered by such work have begun to flesh out long standing
debates about how best to conceptualise and achieve educational
change in developing country contexts.
There remains a clear need to further develop in-depth research
into the complexities of pedagogic practice in low-income, under-
resourced contexts (cf. Barrett, 2007; Alexander, 2008). This paper
draws on Basil Bernstein’s perspectives to offer detailed insights
into classroom interaction and the social implications of such
processes in the Indian context. It contributes to the field of
research mentioned above by building a contextual reading of
pedagogy, and recognising ‘contingent’ forms of pedagogic change
in the analysis. Bernstein’s analytic tools have been highly useful in
this regard, enabling a close study of how and where pedagogic
change can occur.
Bernstein was arguably one of the few educational theorists
who examined both the underlying rules and the social signifi-
cance of the pedagogic relay of knowledge. His theories on the
sociology of pedagogy have been widely used for research on
western liberal education systems (cf. Sadovnik, 1995; Morais
et al., 2001; Muller et al., 2004; Moore et al., 2006; Arnot & Reay,
2007). Though his work from 1970 to 2000 was based on an
analysis of social class inequalities in the British education system,
his development of an abstract language of description for
pedagogy carries the potential to be applied across different
national and social contexts. Researchers have recently begun to
draw on Bernstein’s theory of pedagogy to analyse educational
processes in development settings (cf. Hoadley, 2008; Nyambe and
Wilmot, 2008; Barrett, 2007). In these studies, Bernstein’s theories
have been used to frame critical investigations of the principles
that govern pedagogic relations. For example, Barrett (2007) drew
judiciously on Bernstein in her study of classroom practice in
Tanzanian primary schools to move away from a simplistic child-
centred/teacher-centred typography, citing the depth of Bern-
stein’s description and analysis of pedagogy as useful tools.
Indeed, Bernstein offered a far-reaching language to describe
and analyse different pedagogic models and their organising rules.
The dominant rote-based, teacher-centred, textbook and exami-
nation cultures of schooling found in India (cf. Alexander, 2001;
Kumar, 2005) bear some similarity to what Bernstein referred to as
a ‘performance’ orientation to pedagogy. Of course there are
varying modes within a ‘performance’ model, however, at the
centre of this model are tighter relations of pedagogic input and
outputs. For example, a performance model of pedagogic practice
can feature: strong boundaries regarding time, space, and
discourse in the classroom; an evaluation orientation that focuses
on absences (of content, skill, etc.); explicit forms of control; the
pedagogic text as the student’s (graded) performance; a lowdegree
of learner control with respect to regulation of the curriculum and
transmission; and a relatively low cost of transmission in terms of
physical resources, teacher training, and thus less restrictions on
teacher supply. Such performance modes give rise to ‘visible’
principles of instruction, whereby ‘the hierarchical relations
between teacher and pupils, the rules of organisation (sequence
and pace), and the criteria are explicit and so known to the pupils.’
(Bernstein, 2000, p. 109).
In different ways, child-centred models move fromsuch visible,
performance pedagogies to be oriented towards what Bernstein
called ‘competence’ pedagogy. Such models might emphasise the
competence that learners possess such that evaluative criteria
focus on presences rather than absences. Here, the individual
differences between learners replace an explicit stratification.
Learners might have considerable control over the use of time,
space and resources in the classroom, which positions themas self-
regulating, and constructs the teacher as a facilitator. Pedagogic
resources are less likely to be pre-packaged (for instance,
textbooks) as the degree of teacher autonomy over the interaction
is expanded.
Bernstein’s two pedagogic models draw on a theory of
educational codes using the concepts of ‘classification’ and
‘framing’ of knowledge. Both classification and framing can be
defined along a continuum of strong to weak. The term
‘classification’ is used to denote the strength of boundaries
between categories, in order to identify the power that provides
the degree of insulation in this space. For example, a competence
model might have a weak classification of knowledge selection if it
attempts to use an integrated syllabus where boundaries between
subject areas are not always distinct. ‘Framing’ in Bernstein’s work
referred to the degree of control within a pedagogic relation. He
outlined, ‘where the framing is strong, the transmitter has explicit
control over selection, sequencing, pacing [of knowledge], criteria
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Please cite this article in press as: Sriprakash, A., Child-centred education and the promise of democratic learning: Pedagogic messages
in rural Indian primary schools. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.11.010
[of evaluation], and the social base [which makes this transmission
possible]’ (Bernstein, 2000, p. 13).
As Bernstein (2000, p. 12) summarised, ‘framing is about who
controls what’ in the relay of knowledge. The concept thus helps us
identify the hierarchic relations and social order of a pedagogic
interaction (for example, the expectations of conduct, character,
manner), representing what can be understood as a ‘moral’ or
‘regulative’ discourse. It also enables us to identify the nature of
control over ‘instructional’ discourses; in other words, those
aspects of pedagogy which refer to the selection, sequencing,
pacing and the criteria of knowledge. Child-centred education
broadly employs a weaker framing of these discourses. Here, the
child is given greater apparent control over their interactions and
their learning. Competence models of pedagogy tend to be
concerned with ‘facilitation’ over ‘visible’ modes of teacher
‘instruction’. This can give rise to an ‘invisible’ (or, weakly framed)
pedagogy whereby the child is seen as the author of the pedagogic
practice, and even the authority of the interaction. Bernstein
conceptualised the instructional discourse as embedded into a
regulative discourse, asking us to consider the rules by which this
occurs:
We shall define pedagogic discourse as the rule which embeds a
discourse of competence (skills of various kinds) into a
discourse of social order in such a way that the latter always
dominates the former. We shall call the discourse transmitting
specialised competences and their relation to each other
instructional discourse and the discourse creating specialized
order, relation, and identity, regulative discourse (Bernstein,
1990, p. 183).
Anumber of educational researchers in the West have foundthe
concepts of classification and framing useful in analysing the
structure of pedagogy. In particular, the work by Morais and Neves
(2001) and their colleagues (cf. Morais et al., 2004; Neves et al.,
2004), have demonstrated the value of a detailed coding of
observational and interviewdata to identify where and howpower
and control occurs in pedagogic relay. As Arnot and Reay (2004)
noted in their study on pupil-voice in England, such detailed
analyses uncover the relative strengths and variations of educa-
tional codes, enabling researchers to address the social and
educational implications of pedagogy.
What has been less developed in the sociology of pedagogy is
how the concept of classification and framing can be used to
analyse the introduction of competence modes of pedagogy into
the performance-based systems of low-income, under-resourced
schools, such as those found in many rural Indian contexts. The
notion of embeddedness is relevant here; as we see below, the
reform investigated in this study attempted to embed certain
principles of competence pedagogy into a performance-oriented
system. In this context, Bernstein’s theory of educational codes
encourages us to examine where and how competence principles
of pedagogy are used in policy and practice. Thus, beyond an
oppositional view of competence and performance models, or
‘traditional’ and ‘child-centred’ practice, the classroom analysis in
this paper reveals the mixes and layers of pedagogy; the pedagogic
palettes and palimpsests in school worlds.
3. Child-centred reforms at Mallige Higher Primary School
The classroom observations discussed in this paper were
conducted at Mallige Higher Primary School (HPS),
1
a rural
government school with 422 students from Mallige and surround-
ing villages enrolled from standards 1–7. Students primarily came
fromagricultural and labouring backgrounds, and many had one or
both parents who had not completed primary schooling. According
to 2001 Government of India census data, Mallige village had a
literacy rate of 55 per cent, and school records from2007 indicated
that 68 per cent of students at the school came fromdisadvantaged
caste backgrounds. In terms of resources and infrastructure, the
school was typical of other rural government primary schools in
the area; Mallige HPS had permanent buildings and a field, a
kitchen for the preparation of free school lunches, basic facilities in
classrooms (for example, a blackboard, teacher’s desk and chair),
and very limited student access to books and other learning
resources. Class sizes ranged from 41 to 54 students for one
teacher. I spent a full month in Mallige HPS and focused my
observations and interviews with two teachers. In this paper I
analyse episodes of classroomobservations in Standard 2 taught by
Savitha. Savitha was an experienced teacher of 38 years of age who
had been teaching at Mallige HPS for ten years. While I focus on the
specificities of her classroom practice here, these episodes of
teaching were not unfamiliar in the other 15 schools I studied over
the course of the year.
I was interested in Savitha’s experiences and practice of a child-
centredpedagogic reformcalled Nali Kali (or, ‘Joyful Learning’ as it is
known in English) which had been introduced in Mallige HPS
through compulsory in-service teacher-training. During the late
1990s, the Nali Kali programme was implemented in some 4000
rural primary schools in Karnataka. It was a significant government
project to improve pedagogic processes in these schools as part of
the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), a major
development programme taken up by the Indian government with
sponsorship fromthe World Bank. While estimates vary, one report
suggested up to 16,330 teachers had been trained in Nali Kali during
the DPEP (GoI, 2002). At first, Nali Kali was implemented in
Standards 1–4, but in 2001 (at the end of the DPEP) it was down-
scaled to Standards 1 and 2. Government in-service training in the
pedagogy for teachers of these standards like Savitha still occurs.
Suchseparatein-service teacher trainingarguablytransmits specific
and different pedagogic knowledge, producing strong boundaries
which insulate Nali Kali teachers from non-Nali Kali teachers. The
Nali Kali pedagogybecomes bothspecialisedandnot desirablefor all,
yet is expected to be sustained within the wider performance-
oriented structures of the school and education system.
The democratic ideals of Nali Kali were made explicit in
documents associated with the reform. The Nali Kali programme
intended to reform the ‘non-participatory’, ‘teacher-centred’
instruction of the ‘traditional system’ to address low enrolment,
retention and achievement in rural government primary schools
(Kaul, 2004, p. 21). Nali Kali teacher-training sought to encourage
new ways of understanding the teacher–student relationship: ‘the
basic idea is to help the teacher understand the family and the
larger social context of their students and try not to be judgemental
and help children move from one level to another without fear of
censure, failure or fear’ (Ramachandran, 2001, p. 3). The approach
was seen to depart from the ‘passive and one-way communication
that characterises most schools’, requiring the teacher to
‘transform herself, from an authoritarian figure to a fun loving
and creative facilitator’ (Ramachandran, 2001, pp. 1–2). In the
following section, I use a Bernsteinian analysis to uncover the
principles and assumptions of Nali Kali’s proposed ‘child-centred’
model.
3.1. Nali Kali ideals
The Nali Kali pedagogy is organised around a series of exercises
and activities presented on ‘learning-cards’ for children to work on
1
Pseudonyms have been used for the school and for the names of teachers and
pupils.
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Please cite this article in press as: Sriprakash, A., Child-centred education and the promise of democratic learning: Pedagogic messages
in rural Indian primary schools. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.11.010
in small groups. Learning-cards were originally hand-made by
each individual teacher in the early years of the Nali Kali reform,
but they are nowproduced and supplied by the state in the place of
textbooks. The content and sequence of the learning-cards is based
on the standardised national syllabus for the subjects Mathemat-
ics, Kannada (language) and EVS (environmental studies). The
rules governing the sequencing of knowledge are explicit and
tightly framed—for example, through learning-card exercises
students are expected to recognise and write the numbers 1–5
before the numbers 6–9. The step-wise progression of the pre-
sequenced cards is based on ‘an understanding that there is a
certain cognitive sequence to learning’ (Kaul, 2004, p. 4).
Therefore, students are not necessarily given greater control
over the selection and sequence of knowledge. However, the
pedagogic model intended for students to progress through the
sequence of learning-cards at their ‘own pace’, such that there
would be ‘no pressure on the child to rote-learn huge portions’
(Kaul, 2004, p. 21). The learning-cards for each subject are to be
displayed on the classroom wall in sequence, in order for children
to access them independently. A weaker framing on the pace of
knowledge acquisition was thus suggested by the reform;
apparent control was given to students through opening out
spaces for more individualised modes of learning. Indeed, Nali Kali
teaching was constructed as the ‘facilitation’ of students’ learning,
with their readiness to learn underscored. However, teachers are
also expected to teach according to a state-set syllabus guide with
‘portions’ (syllabus content) that should be completed for each
month. This in effect pulls back to a stronger, state-directed control
over the pace of knowledge acquisition, demonstrating how the
child-centred model has been embedded into a performance-
oriented system.
Documentation from the Nali Kali reform highlights ideals of a
‘democratic’ and ‘participatory’ classroom. The child is constructed
as an individual, where difference is valued over explicit age,
achievement, or social stratification. The order of the classroom
environment seemed to be held together by a regulative discourse
concerning an ‘attractive’, ‘friendly’, ‘joyful’, and ‘active’ school,
which depends highly on the communicative skills of the teacher,
and their disposition to be personable (‘friendly’) towards their
students. Group-work on learning-cards was to create ‘an
atmosphere in the classroom that is informal, non-hierarchical
and friendly’ (Kaul, 2004, p. 21). Such ideals in some ways reflect
what Bernstein called an ‘invisible’ pedagogy, in which the
boundaries and control of social relationships and learning are
made implicit. Teachers are expected to have an open and equal
relation with children; to sit with themduring learning activities in
open participation. Whole-class games, craft, song, and dance are
recommended, and the classroom is expected to be lively and
colourful. The framing over teacher–student interaction is
weakened by the Nali Kali model as children are to ask questions
and seek help. Teachers are to pay attention to students’ affective
needs, as ‘the most precious part of Nali Kali is that the system is
designed to develop self-confidence, self-esteem and a sense of
security in the child’ (Kaul, 2004, p. 21).
The principles that govern the ‘ideal’ form of the Nali Kali
pedagogy discussed above are summarised in Table 1. The relative
strengths of the classification and framing of knowledge transmis-
sion used by the pedagogy are identified in the table. This is
represented by C+ for strong classification, and CÀ for weak
classification, and F+ for strong framing and FÀ for weak framing.
Identifying the pedagogic principles in this way helps us to see in
what aspects the Nali Kali pedagogic reform moves towards a
competence model, which is discussed below.
From this summary we can see that the weakening of the Nali
Kali pedagogic code was to mainly occur in terms of teacher–pupil
relations. The range of options available to students in terms of the
use of space and interactions with teachers was to be expanded.
This has been identified by a weaker framing (FÀ) over these
aspects. In this sense, the greatest change sought by the pedagogy
in its organising structure was related to the regulation of
classroom relationships. The social order of classroom interaction
was to be changed, but was this able to occur with tight controls
over the instructional codes being maintained?
The analysis shows how the classification and framing of the
instructional aspects of the pedagogy remained strong. There was
some attempt to loosen the control over the pacing of knowledge
within classroom interaction, but the monthly syllabus schedule
maintained strong framing rules over this pacing. In particular, the
classification principles of the selection of knowledge were seen to
be strong in the Nali Kali model. Thus, it was only in certain features
Table 1
Summary of Nali Kali pedagogic principles.
Nali Kali (ideal type post 2001, Standards 1 and 2)
Selection of knowledge Standardised syllabus for three subjects mathematics, Kannada (language), and EVS (environmental studies). C+
Knowledge selected for students on standardised learning-cards. F+
No formal hierarchy between subjects, equally timetabled, in separate slots. Exclusive of family/community knowledge. C+
Sequencing of knowledge Linear, fixed, sequence of knowledge through learning-cards, organised by grade and subject. C+
Progression through sequenced levels determined by teacher assessment criteria, and state guidelines of
monthly syllabus ‘potions’ to be covered.
F+
Activities within a sequenced level on learning-cards chosen according teacher assessment of appropriateness. F+
Pacing of knowledge Pace of knowledge determined by monthly ‘portion’ guide to syllabus. But students also said to work at ‘own pace’. F+/FÀ
Pace of content development controlled by teacher based on observed continuous assessment of students. F+
Evaluation criteria
and processes
Evaluation criteria are explicit through the progress chart, which is grade specific, and standardised through
all schools. Criteria is based on achievement of standardised syllabus components. No homework is officially set.
C+
Evaluation of students is continuous, non-formal assessment conducted by the teacher, through observations and activities. F+
Student groups are made based on level of syllabus acquisition, not age or grade, determined by teacher’s assessment
criteria, but student groups do not have to remain fixed.
F+
Students’ progress through the syllabus is marked on the progress chart displayed on the classroom wall. Children
are able to track their own progress.
C+
Space/resources/
interaction
Classroom space is used diversely. Students work in groups and in whole-class organisation. This is determined by the
teacher but there are weaker controls on student movement.
F+/FÀ
Students access resources when relevant to learning tasks. Local/low-cost material teaching aids. FÀ
Teacher sits with children in small groups to help them with their work. In groups children also provide peer-support.
Children can ask for help at all times.
FÀ
Students ask questions, seek clarification, in open communication with teacher. FÀ
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Please cite this article in press as: Sriprakash, A., Child-centred education and the promise of democratic learning: Pedagogic messages
in rural Indian primary schools. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.11.010
that the ideals of the pedagogy pulled towards a competence
model of weaker classification and framing of knowledge relay. We
have seen here how the child-centred approach of this particular
model was governed by mixed strengths of codes, and strong
controls over many aspects of the pedagogy remained even within
its official structure.
4. The framing of pedagogic practice
How are we to understand the expected changes to teacher–
pupil relationships and the social order of the classroom in school
contexts? An in-depth analysis of teachers’ perspectives of their
students revealed strong deficit assumptions about their learners
(cf. Sriprakash, 2009). The rural child was often constructed as
‘uneducated’ and uncivilised, exposing the deeply stratified social
order regulating the Karnataka school communities in which the
study took place. Acritique of the child-centred project has been its
failure to confront social boundaries and hierarchies (cf. Sharp &
Green, 1975, p. 226). The task for teachers like Savitha in Mallige
HPS was always going to be a challenge, not least because of the
dominant performance-oriented culture that persisted in the
school and wider education system.I turn now to examine more
closely the principles underlying the transmission of knowledge in
Savitha’s practice of the Nali Kali pedagogy. She was expected to
implement this pedagogy in her second standard class in which 42
children were enrolled. By focusing on the nature of pedagogic
control in Savitha’s classroom, the analysis works towards
uncovering the social messages relayed to students through her
pedagogic practice. I examine episodes reconstructed from my
fieldnotes of a Kannada lesson conducted on 2 August 2007.
It is 10:25 am, as part of the morning ritual the children have been singing
songs and rhymes, standing in their groups making actions to the words and
giggling along. There are 33 children present today. Savitha sits at her desk
with her ‘teacher book’ (syllabus portion guide), looking through the pages.
She puts the book down, and remaining seated says: ‘Okay, stop . . .. sit
down.’ The children sit in their groups on the floor, facing towards Savitha.
She does not need to wait long before there is quiet, and begins the
following:
Savitha: have you all seen bees? Bees?
Students: (in unison) yes!
Savitha: how are they? (pause) Do they bite? (expression of fear)
Students: (in unison) yes!
Savitha: what do they do? Where do they live? (pause)
Have you seen a bee’s nest?
Students: (in unison, but with some shuffling around) yes!
We see above how Savitha attempted to relate the topic of the
lesson to children’s experience. The series of question–answers
conducted with the whole-class did not allow for individual
responses. The children answered collectively. The framing of the
interaction was strong; Savitha determined the sequence and
pacing of questions (including the transition to this ‘lesson’). She
also led into the ‘correct’ response through the use of expression.
Her tone was engaging and the children seemed to be enjoying the
performance. We see this further as the lesson continues:
Savitha gets up from her desk and goes to the blackboard. She draws a
picture of a bee’s nest in a tree. Standing at the board, Savitha continues
to ask,
Savitha: What will they do if you touch the nest? (points to the picture on
the board with her stick, eyes widening to indicate fear). They will
sting. What will they do? They will –
Students: (in unison) Sting!
Savitha: Where do we get honey?
Students: (in unison) Bees!
Savitha: Where do we get honey?
Students: BEES! (students answer in unison loudly. Some quiet laughter)
Savitha: Yes, from bees. Good. What work do bees do?
Students: (students remain silent)
Savitha: They go to flowers and get pollen and then make honey.
Savitha’s words and actions were lively and expressive as she
continuedto pose questions tothe class. We cansee howthe closed-
type questions required students to produce single-wordresponses,
with answers often given in the question itself. When Savitha asked
the open-ended question ‘what work do bees do?’, the children did
not respond. Rather than prompting further, asking follow-up
questions, or working through possibilities from their own
knowledge-base, she provided the answer quickly for them. In this
sense, school knowledge was both strongly framed and with strong
classification (of a ‘correct’ answer’). Savitha continued to relate the
topic to students’ experience, as the lesson went on:
Savitha draws a honeycomb shape on the board as the children look on.
She then asks
Savitha: have you seen this?
Students: (some students remain silent, but a majority seem to answer,
with less surety) Yes.
Savitha: Have you eaten honey?
Students: Yes! (students answer in unison with more enthusiasm)
At this point Ravi, who is the class leader says eagerly:
Ravi: I have eaten honey!
Savitha: (speaking to the whole class) Good. How did you eat honey?
Like this? (she enacts eating honey, with pleasure on her face,
moving her fingers showing the sticky consistency)
Most of the children follow her action, giggling. At this point she says:
Savitha: Okay, we shall write.
We see in the above episode howRavi, the class leader, was able
to share his individual response, ‘I have eatenhoney!’ However, the
rhythm of the question–answer interaction was maintained by
Savitha who moved on to the next question directed to the whole-
class. Again, an open-ended question ‘how do you eat honey?’ was
provided with a response for students to repeat, this time in mime.
The control of the sequence and pace of the lesson was determined
by the teacher. She announced the next part of the lesson, ‘okay, we
shall write’, which is described below.
Savitha takes a Nali Kali book from her desk to refer to as she writes three
sentences on the board, one under the other. As she writes each word, she reads
it out aloud, and the students, in loose unison, repeat the words.
The sentences, written in Kannada, are loosely translated as:
Bees get pollen from flowers.
With this they go to make honey.
Daily, we should eat honey happily.
Savitha: Okay. Do something. Can you all read this?
Students:(in unison) yes.
Savitha: Okay
Savitha thenstands by the board andreads each sentence word by word, pointing
with her stick as she goes along. The children repeat each word as she says it.
After the sentences have be repeated, Savitha asks:
Savitha: who eats honey at home?
Students:(some students begin to say ‘me’, then 11 students put their hands up.)
Savitha: Good. Okay, now read. Ravi!
Ravi, from the ‘brilliant’ group stands and reads the first sentence, and the class
repeats in unison. Savitha says ‘next!’ to indicate for another student in the
‘brilliant’ group to read the next sentence, with students repeating in unison.
Eyes are often not on the words, some students’ backs are facing the chalkboard.
This continues as the children take turns in reading a sentence each. Savitha sits
at the side, correcting pronunciation. One girl, Sindhu, pauses. She looks to Ravi
who tells her the pronunciation.
After about 12 students have read, Savitha then moves over to the ‘dull’ group
seated at the front of the room. While the other children are directed by Ravi in
reading the sentences, Savitha gives two letters for the ‘dull’ group to practice
writing on their slates. She watches themas they practice writing and saying the
letters repeatedly. They show her their slates, and she corrects them. One boy,
Manju, is not able to form the letters neatly, to Savitha’s frustration. She shows
himagain with little patience, ‘no! like this!’ Holding the chalk-piece tentatively
he slowly starts writing again. His face shows fear. Savitha grabs her stick from
her desk and returns to him. His unsatisfactory handwriting leads to repeated
strikes across his fingers. Manju doesn’t cry, though his face is full of fear.
This segment of the Kannada lesson described a commonly
observed approach to teaching ‘reading’ in Savitha’s classroom. The
use of repetition, and reading in unison were common strategies.
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Savitha would first model the sentences, then she would choose
Ravi, the class leader who she identified as ‘brilliant’ student, to
take over. Most students would get the opportunity to read a
sentence, but not all would be given individual attention by the
teacher. Children’s repetition in unison was often without their
eyes on the letters; the outcome of this teaching strategy was
arguably oriented towards verbal mimicking more than reading.
We can also reflect on what lessons may have been learnt so far
in these episodes of teaching. Children may have become aware
that honey is made by bees, from flowers. A specific lesson
objective was for children to read the three sentences. Beyond the
specific knowledge content and skills that were intended to be
transmitted through this interaction, certain messages would have
also been relayed to students. For example, through the order of
participation by achievement-groups, children would learn that
they have been differentiated by academic achievement criteria.
The ‘dull’ child in particular would learn they have little agency in
the pedagogic interaction, and students would understand that
failure has penalties, often of a physical nature. In terms of Ravi’s
leadership in the class, students might also become aware that
learner differentiation can be based on social criteria. Savitha
described his ‘brilliance’ to me as owing in part to the ‘interest’ his
parents demonstrated in his education.
During this lesson, the Nali Kali learning-cards, which contained
various ‘activities’ for students to complete, remain unused on the
wall. These cards were designed to assist teachers to organise
differentiated teaching; students were to work at their ‘own pace’
through the content of the cards. However, on the rare occasions
learning-cards were used in Savitha’s class, they functioned as a
teachers’ resource for whole-class instruction. Children in Stan-
dard 2 did not have open access to the cards, such that their teacher
maintained the control over the selection, pacing, and sequence of
syllabus knowledge transmission. Savitha explained why she
didn’t use the Nali Kali learning-cards in the way they had been
intended by the reform:
Infirst standard they didnot learn anything.
2
So I amdoing it like
this, that’s all. Otherwise, I would have done the groups, first
group, secondgroups, likethis. . . I wouldmakethemsit andteach
them. . . each group would be given a different card. I would give
the card based on the child’s ability. But nowI can’t give like that
because it will be difficult for me, and I can’t give the first
standard cards. So what I will do is, I will teach themall together.
Although the Nali Kali cards were not used, Savitha did often
attempt to provide differentiated tasks according to students’
achievement level. As she has done in the lesson described above,
she often set a task for the majority of the class then identified
different work for the ‘dull’ group of about 6 students. However, as
the episode above described, the dominant strategy for teaching
continued to involve repetition and drilling. The learner was to
assimilate knowledge, not construct it, despite the promotion of
‘activities’ by the Nali Kali model. Savitha was rarely observed to
use activity-based strategies in her class practice.
3
She seemed to
understand TLMs [teaching-learning materials] and ‘activities’ as
relevant for teaching ‘dull’ students, rather than appropriate for all
children. She described that TLMs should be used ‘to make it easy
for children to learn.’:
Nowall children are not the same. . . their intelligence levels are
not the same. Some will be dull, some will be fast. . . for some, if
we tell orally, they will answer. If we ask questions orally, they
will answer. But some children, if we ask them, they won’t
answer. So we have to teach using all these TLMs. [. . .] Based on
the child’s level of learning, we should teach. So if we use these
types of TLMs it will be very effective for children’s minds.
In this quote, we see how a strongly framed pedagogy based on
intelligence differentiation of students was used with child-
centred ideas about the individuality of the child and their learning
needs. The ‘needs’ of the child appeared here to refer to cognitive
values, and not their personal needs or interests. Yet, the dominant
approach to transmitting school knowledge was repetition and
closed-questions. Different learning styles or children’s own
knowledge were not explicitly acknowledged or deemed relevant
in Savitha’s pedagogic practice. For example, as the episode above
described, Manju was a ‘slow’ learner who was expected to
repetitively repeat a task until it remains with him. The pedagogic
interaction in this case remained strongly framed and uniform,
despite Savitha’s interpretation of a child-centred discourse that
validated the individual child and their differences; ‘all children
are not the same’. Such individual attention would be a challenge
to achieve in a large class of 42 students. In this case, the child-
centred discourse may reinforce a hierarchy of differentiated
learners rather than challenging it. Such a hierarchy creates
exclusion on grounds of individualised failure that could legitimise
the pulling back towards strongly framed forms of instruction.
The level of teacher input (control) in the lesson described
above has been high so far. However, at 10:50 am, just 25 min after
the ‘bee’ topic was introduced and the reading task was set, Savitha
left the classroomto sit outside on the verandah. Consider howthe
Kannada lesson continued until lunchtime:
Savitha sits with Sujatha, the Standard 1 teacher from next door out on the
verandah. They are putting together the year planner chart for the school,
to be displayed in the headteacher’s office. The children continue inside,
reading the sentences on bees in turn, with the rest of the class repeating in
unison. Ravi directs which student takes the next turn. The ‘dull’ group
continue tracing over their letters on their slates. The two teachers sit
outside, near the open doorway, and manage the classroom noise by
periodically saying loudly ‘hey! Don’t make noise!’
At 11:25 am Savitha, still sitting outside on the porch says, ‘okay, write
the sentences’. The students go to the small chalkboards that line the
walls of the classroom and begin to copy the sentences repeatedly,
reading to themselves quietly as they write. Savitha remains outside.
This goes on for over an hour while the two teachers chat and draw up
the planning chart.
Some children come out to signal to Savitha they need to go to the toilet.
She tells them to all go. The class file out for their recess break, and are
back in the room 5 min later. They are at their chalkboards writing,
but their concentration seems to be waning as a few begin to chat.
At 12:40 pm, Savitha says loudly from her seated position: ‘Hey! Why all
the noise?! Before lunch, each of you read the numbers. Ravi! You do it’.
The ‘bee’ lesson finishes abruptly, and Ravi resumes the morning ritual
instructing the reading and repetition in unison of the 1–100 number-chart
that hangs on the wall. This goes on for about 10 min until lunch is ready.
Savitha and Sujatha return to their classrooms and tell the children to go
for lunch. There is a clamour as children get their bags, plates, and water
bottles to go outside for the break.
This episode describes how students were left to work on the
set task without direct teacher interaction for over 90 min. During
most of this time they were repetitively writing the three
sentences about bees (or repetitively writing two letters in the
case of the ‘dull’ group). Most students were observed during this
time to maintain concentration on the task, filling their chalk-
boards with the letters. Repetitive writing was a common feature
of Savitha’s Kannada lessons; it was understood as enabling
students to practice and consolidate their writing skill, and was
seen as the terminal objective of the lesson.
Learning as ‘copy-writing’ output might suggest a performance-
oriented pedagogy, but we might also understand this teaching
2
Savitha frequently reminded me during my time in her class how a teacher
shortage in the previous year meant that her students did not have a regular teacher
for much of the time. Hence, she felt they ‘did not learn anything’.
3
During the four weeks spent in her classroom, I observed the use of stones (for a
counting activity) and flash-cards (to teach addition) on two occasions.
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in rural Indian primary schools. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.11.010
mode as one part of Savitha’s reinterpreted child-centred practice.
A certain sequence can be identified in the Kannada lesson
described above, beginning with morning rituals (songs), ques-
tion–answer interaction about bees, repetitive reading of given
sentences, and culminating in practice writing for a significant
period of time. Savitha’s comment belowreveals howthe output of
her lessons (in this case, writing practice) was arrived at through a
sequence that was required given her children’s affective needs
and the assumed lack of ‘care’ in their home-backgrounds.
If we go directly to teaching, we won’t be able to focus the
children’s minds. First, we should attract our children towards
us and then if we do the lesson, it may be effective to children.
Keeping this in mind, they have told us to teach songs to
children or tell stories. (. . .) So then the childrenwill be happy. . .
make them get attracted towards us, then we can move on to
the lesson. Since at home they don’t take much care of these
children, we can’t tell them straight away ‘read this, or learn
this’. If we do like this, it will have an effect on them. That is a
problem. So, we have to make those children’s minds clear, and
then we should attract them to us, and then we should go to the
lesson. And if I teach children without telling the concept to
them, and if I tell them to write, then how will they write? Isn’t
it? First I have teach the concept, then only I can make them
practice. We can’t go directly. . .
We see here some echo of a child-centred discourse which took
into account children’s affective needs, but which ultimately
privileged the type of output (repetitive writing) associated with
performance-oriented pedagogies. When the affective needs of
children were considered, they were understood through dis-
courses of children’s ‘neglected’ or ‘uneducated’ home-back-
grounds (cf. Sriprakash, 2009). Savitha expressed this by
suggesting a lack of parental ‘care’ for her students. With respect
to such assumed deficits of rural learners, the weakened framing
over teacher–child interaction appears to have been understood to
some degree as a compensatory discourse.
However, what are the implications of Savitha’s lengthy
absence from the classroom? When she was outside the room,
she was unable to provide feedback or support to the students as
they went on with the writing task. In one sense, we can see this as
a weakened framing (control) over the pedagogic interaction.
However, from her position outside, she was still able to manage
children’s behaviour and set new tasks through Ravi, the class
leader. On the one hand, the Nali Kali encouragement of student
grouping and group-work could be seen to enable greater peer
interaction.
4
On the other hand, it could also legitimise teachers’
non-involvement in lessons.
The last episode of the Kannada lesson described above might
have an appearance of a weaker framing, as students were able to
work independently on their task. However, the task itself (the
reproduction of pre-given sentences) was strongly framed by fixed
outcomes. The rules and expectations of students to complete the
task were clear. In these ways, control over students was
maintained despite Savitha’s absence from the classroom. She
explained the legitimacy of her absence:
It is not necessary that we should always supervise . . . most of
the children have got their own responsibility. We will tell
them, and they will follow it. They will obey it. . .
With such lengthy teacher absences, the ideals of a highly
interactive Nali Kali pedagogy are likely to be compromised. To a
point, the notions of children’s independence and responsibility
were used to justify non-active teaching or even absence, despite
the high demands made by the child-centred pedagogy of teachers.
We have seen through these slices of pedagogic practice how
forms of control in classroom interaction appeared to have been
mediated by Savitha. Certain child-centred principles were
observed to be at play. For example, the attempts to relate the
bee lesson to students’ worlds, and the appeal to children’s
affective needs through ‘joyful’ rhymes and songs. However, the
extent to which these principles of weaker framing were seen as
relevant to the acquisition of syllabus knowledge was ambivalent.
Valued learning remained the written output of given sentences.
This was perhaps not arrived at in the ‘direct’ way of a traditional
pedagogy, but through a reinterpreted child-centred practice. With
terminal objectives for the lesson (by the tightly framed syllabus
structure which governed lesson outputs), there was a pulling back
towards performance discourses and practices. We sawthis in how
the differentiation of students was interpreted through an ability
discourse, the appeal of ‘joyful’ child-centredness was understood
as a compensatory discourse, and the non-involvement of the
teacher was legitimised by the supposed independence and
responsibility of students.
The following section draws together these findings to reflect
on the pedagogic (and ultimately social) messages students might
learn from such forms of classroom interaction in Mallige HPS.
5. Pedagogic messages and implications for development
agendas
The classroom observations discussed above have revealed
some of the tensions regarding how ‘learning’ was to be
understood in the Mallige HPS context. We have seen how the
Nali Kali pedagogy provided a place for laughter, happiness, and in
some cases individual expression in the classroom. However, such
modes of pedagogic interaction were not always related to
processes of learning. Learning was largely understood as
knowledge assimilation (the acquisition of the syllabus) rather
than knowledge construction. While attention to the affective
needs of children was encouraged by the Nali Kali pedagogy, this
did not necessarily imply greater student consultation or expres-
sion that would contribute to the acquisition of knowledge. The
strong classification of the syllabus, as a significant aspect of the
performance-based system which remained in place, did not
support a more democratic approach to knowledge acquisition.
With ‘real’ learning not seen to take place through the ‘joyful’
aspects of the pedagogy (the affective discourse), a strong message
was relayed about the ultimate value of written output in schools.
Letter-formation through copy-writing tasks remained the pur-
pose of the pedagogic interaction, regardless of whether a weaker
framing over that interaction was attempted.
The privileging of this kind of written output was entwined
with the strong ability discourse that was maintained in the school.
The observational data suggests students were differentiated by
narrow criteria of evaluation based largely on their pace or
‘brilliance’ of their written output. Through such boundaries,
students learn they are not equal. Within the classroom,
performance stratification is explicit and little agency appeared
to be held by the ‘dull’ child in a strongly framed pedagogic
interaction. More broadly, school rituals relating to discipline and
moral behaviour relayed a stratified social order that competed
somewhat with the democratic ideals of the child-centred
pedagogy expected in Standards 1 and 2. Therefore, the pedagogic
messages relayed to children often sustained tight controls and
stratification (particularly relating to performance output), reflect-
4
During my study of Savitha’s teaching, I did not observe the organisation of
group-work that involved dialogic or collaborative interaction between children
with explicit relation to the set learning task. This is not to say that students did not
interact in their groups; often I noticed children comparing each other’s work,
checking their answers, or chatting quietly during their set tasks.
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in rural Indian primary schools. Int. J. Educ. Dev. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.11.010
ing the hierarchical order within the classroom. Socially deficit
constructions of students and their families (as uneducated,
uncivilised) at times legitimised these strong pedagogic controls; a
revealing example of the social messages underlying the principles
of knowledge transmission.
The question remains as to whether national and global
development goals of providing ‘quality’ education for all can be
achieved through such implementation of child-centred pedagogic
reforms. Bernstein (2000) suggested that a competence model of
pedagogy (like Nali Kali) has an elaborate theoretical base, and its
effectiveness is largely dependant upon enabling and supporting
the teacher to construct meaning from this in her classroom. Such
pedagogy has a number of costs in terms of time and resources
which are often charged to the teacher and hidden or rarely
officially recognised, but are crucial to the pedagogy to be able to
sustain itself in its own terms. For example, child-centred
pedagogies can require a high level of individual commitment
and time fromteachers to construct pedagogic resources, establish
classroom relations and develop evaluative profiles for each pupil.
They often expect teachers to socialise parents into the practice
and establish student feedback processes. In the Mallige context,
these commitment and time costs were not always supported by
teaching contexts (e.g. large class sizes) and institutional systems
which were found to privilege the delivery of performance
pedagogic models. The assumptions of teacher commitment were
further undermined by school and bureaucratic cultures in which
frequent teacher absences from the classroom took place. Similar
tensions between competence pedagogic ideals and the conditions
and cultures of schooling have been reported in research beyond
the Indian context (cf. Vavrus, 2009; Barrett, 2007; Johnson et al.,
2000).
Development agendas continue to draw on the promise of
child-centred education with child-friendly, democratic language
to reformschool processes in the name of ‘quality’ educationfor all.
However, this paper has shown how child-centred models do not
always seek to hand-over greater control to children in the
instructional aspects of pedagogy, despite reform language which
suggests otherwise. The processes of the teacher’s interpretation
and practice of such a pedagogic model can reinforce social
messages of control and hierarchy relayed to children, particularly
as teachers grapple with the tensions involved in weakening the
framing of pedagogic interaction. This suggests the relationship
between child-centred education, democratisation, and ‘quality’
improvement in education is not unequivocal and would benefit
from further inspection. Indeed, this paper has begun to show that
the utilisation of child-centred pedagogic models in the Indian
context requires specific engagement with the material conditions
and institutional systems of Indian rural education, but also
importantly with the regulative hierarchical discourses that
reproduce social inequality. The discussions go some way in
developing an understanding of the teacher’s central role in
implementing classroom reforms, exposing the challenge ahead
for achieving a democratic and socially just education.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Madeleine Arnot for her guidance
with this project and the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust for
funding assistance.
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