Venkatesh, K. 2017. Negotiating the ‘Social’ in Elementary School Social Sciences. Economic and Political Weekly, LII (24): 169-172. Read full article here. Brief Overview The paper begins by raising the fundamental question of what constitutes Social Science at the school level in the specific context of division of textbooks into disciplinary areas. Debate around social…
Ravikant. (September- October, 2017) “Ek Adhyapak Shikshak ki Diary – V” (Diary of a Teacher Educator-V), “Acche Bacche kaise? –Aise” (What are good children like? – Like this.), Shiksha Vimarsh, 19(5): 41-45. Introduction The paper begins by discussing the stressors and dilemmas faced by school teachers, particularly those in the government school system, on an everyday basis. Systemic…
Manjrekar, N. (2013) Gujarat: Patriarchy Revisited – A Dress Code for Teachers. Economic and Political Weekly, 48(43). Read here Key Idea The paper addresses the phenomenon of making a dress code compulsory for teachers. This in turn points towards the authoritarian approach of bureaucracy as also towards the attempt to curtail the freedom of teachers,…
Jackson, P. (1994) Life in Classrooms. In Pollar, A. & Bourne, J. (ed.) Teaching and Learning in the Primary School. (pp. 113-118). London: Routledge. (Affiliate Link) The chapter is an extract from Jackson’s book titled Life in Classrooms. It addresses various aspects of school life. It brings to the fore that not all aspects of school life…
The title of this post is inspired. I read this chapter in a book where the author talks about mice and mould in American classrooms and the frustration that teachers experienced from having to teach in less than healthy physical conditions. Sometimes you read something that sticks with you. Mushrooms, Mice and Mould Shalaby in…
लोक शिक्षक मंच (2016) हमारे शिक्षक. नई दिल्लीः लोक शिक्षक मंच।40 पृष्ठ The booklet begins by presenting a summary of the lives and works of educationists. While some of these educationists have been recognized for their contribution, others have not got their due. Situated in pre-independence India, the educationists differ across class, caste, religious and…
The Head of the Department and I were discussing today about a specific colleague who everyone knows and has labelled to be eccentric, to put it mildly. There have been so many instances in the past year or two, that in common language, we would call her mad. The rest of us in the department…
I have reached a stage where I have started accepting the hierarchy in student-teacher relationships. I sometimes fancy myself believing that it is necessary. I went for school observations today. The basis of this entire exercise is rooted in hierarchy. I sit at the back of the class while my students teach. With the current…
One of the key things that I learnt from working on field projects early in my career is the importance of teacher communities. I realised quite early that regular training and updating of skills for teaching, organised by the government, was a far-fetched dream. Although things have since changed at school level, many have often…
It is a little weird to ask this question because we tend to take schooling, and therefore teaching, as a given. We do not sit and wonder about whether it is necessary at all. In a teacher education programme, this is even more so. Everyone in the department is a teacher- a student teacher, a…
