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MAKING CONNECTIONS:
EXPLORING STUDENT AGENCY IN A SCIENCE CLASSROOM IN INDIA

By

Ajay Shanna

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Teacher Education

2006

ABSTRACT

MAKING CONNECTIONS:
EXPLORING STUDENT AGENCY IN A SCIENCE CLASSROOM IN INDIA

By

Ajay Sharma

India has been a free country for more than half a century now. In this time, the state has
succeeded to a large extent in providing universal access to at least elementary education
to all the citizens. However, the quality of education provided in state-run schools
remains far removed from the ideals endorsed in policy documents. The vast majority of
Indian poor, especially in rural areas, depend upon state-run schools for access to
education. However, the low quality of education provided in these schools militates

against their hopes and efforts for a securing a better future through education.

Undergirded by concerns over the raw deal students of government run schools get in
rural India, this study is an ethnographic exploration of science learning in a rural middle
school classroom in India. The study was conducted in the government middle school at
the village Rajkheda, in the Hoshangabad district of the state of Madhya Pradesh, India.
The study focused on the nature and scope of student participation in a middle school
science classroom of rural school in India. Taking a socio-cultural perspective, it
explored student participation in science classroom as engagement in a socioculturally
mediated dialogue with the natural and the social world. Thus, two parallel yet
intersecting themes run through the narrative this study presents. On one hand, it focuses
on students’ efforts to both learn and survive science as taught in that school. While on
the other, it details the nature of their engagement with and knowledge of their immediate

material world.

Ajay Sharma
The study shows that through active engagement with their local material and social
world, students of the 8th grade had acquired an extensive, useful and situated funds of
experiential knowledge that enabled them to enact their agency in the material world
around them. This knowledge revealed itself differently in different contexts. Their
knowledge representations about school science and the material world were situated
improvised responses to ongoing dialogues that enabled them to survive, negotiate and
maneuver their way through their immediate social world. Inside the science classroom,
students negotiated their roles as students in a varied, improvised, and contingent manner.
Further, whenever the constraints and affordances of the local situation and the resources
at their disposal made it feasible, students exercised their social agency to selectively
appropriate school science discourse for their own out-of-school purposes. The science
teacher did much to encourage this contingent and situated emergence of students’ social
agency. However, the extant teacher professional and school science discourses allowed
him to achieve only limited success in making science more meaningful and relevant to

the students.

The study reveals that though much has been accomplished to provide universal access to
elementary education in India, the science instruction still persists along traditional lines.
Thus, the state is still far from providing access to the type of science education it
advocates in its national policy documents. The study urges the state to fulfill its
constitutional obligations by providing a science education that enables students to not
only students to build a better future for themselves, but also work for peaceful and
progressive social change. The study recommends informed bricolage as a goal for

teacher education and professional development.

Copyright by
AJAY SHARMA

2006

To Venu and Dhruv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have a long list of people to thank for helping, cajoling, guiding, and inspiring all along
the tortuous path that a doctoral student has to tread in order to reach the stage in
dissertation writing where all that is left is to write this section. Without the support of

this big group of people, this study would not have been possible.

On top of my list is the wonderful bunch of bright, vivacious students that comprised the
8th grade class in the year 2004 — 2005, in the Rani Pipariya Government Middle School.
These students welcomed me into their lives and cheerfully tolerated my daily intrusion
into their social worlds. Among them, I must specifically mention Rajesh, Naati Bhaiya,
Aman and Saroj for giving me so much of their time at home and school, opening up
their innermost ideas, thoughts, desires, hopes and fears, and for being my guides

throughout the fieldwork.

I seriously wonder if this study would have been possible had Mr. Pradeep Kumar Rai
not welcomed me into his science classroom. Mr. Rai was one of the most inspiring and
loving teachers I have ever come across as a researcher or student — a fact attested by the
deep affection the students had for him. I thank him and will always owe a big debt of
gratitude to him. Thanks are also due to Mr. S. C. Meher, the headmaster of the middle
school for welcoming me into the school, and accepting me as one of their own. The
teachers of the Rani Pipariya Government Middle School are truly a great bunch, and
thus acknowledgements are also due to Mr. Ravindra Shrivastav and Mr. Umesh
Shrivastav for their constant support during the fieldwork and for permitting me to

observe their classrooms. I also cannot forget the excellent hospitality showered on me by

vi

the residents of Rani Pipariya village, district Hoshangabad, Madhya Pradesh, India - the
village that gets the pseudonym of Rajkheda in this study. Thanks are also due to the
district administration of Hoshangabad and the District Education Officer for allowing

me to study one of the their schools.

The key to successful fieldwork is the availability of a peaceful sanctuary that one can
withdraw to for reflection, rest and rejuvenation afier a hectic day of fieldwork. I cannot
thank enough my friends Gopal Rathi and Kamlesh Bhargav of the Eklavya’s Pipariya
center for providing me such a sanctuary in Pipariya. Gopal Bhai’s facilitation of my
entry into the research site was crucial. I am also grateful to him for deepening my
understanding of the political issues surrounding the never-ending struggle for peaceful
progressive social change. As always, I remain eternally indebted to my ex-colleagues
and abiding friends in Eklavya for welcoming me back into their fold as if I had never
left them. I must mention here the unfailing and unwavering support, guidance and true
Hoshangabadi hospitality given to me by Rajesh, Subbu, Rashmi, Kamal and Yemuna of
Eklavya on my return to Hoshangabad. Any mention of Hoshangabadis would be
incomplete without Susheel whose friendship and guidance has remained crucial to my
evolution as an educator and researcher. The dinners and conversations I had with him at

his house in Hoshangabad sustained me throughout my fieldwork.

I consider myself very lucky in having great mentors at the Michigan State University.
On top of the list would be my advisor and dissertation director, Andy Anderson, who
took me under his wings from day one and has most kindly remained my constant friend,
guide and philosopher till this day. Thank you, Andy, for helping me realize my dreams. I

must also thank from the bottom of my heart the other members of my most amazing

vii

dissertation committee — Lynn Fendler, Anne Dyson and Lynn Paine. Without their
unwavering support and guidance I would be still struggling with the drafting of my
dissertation proposal. Anne Dyson played a crucial role in making an ethnographer out of
me. Through her love, humor and excellent scholarship Anne showed me how to be an
excellent person and a great researcher. I remain indebted to Lynn Fendler for broadening
and deepening my understanding of philosophical issues, and for making me realize that

“everything is indeed political.”

I thank my friends who were with me in the TB 991 course, for Fall 2004 and 2005, for
being the core support group and excellent sounding board during the dissertation
proposal and data analysis stage of this dissertation. I was also lucky to have the

intellectual support of the critical studies discussion group at the College of Education.

I am blessed to have wonderful parents. Without their support and encouragement, this
study would not have been possible. I also thank my mother-on-law for coming over and
staying with us to support me during the difficult months of dissertation writing. I end my
acknowledgements by expressing my eternal love and gratitude for my wife, Venu, and
son, Dhruv for their unconditional love and support, and for happily enduring the trials
and tribulations that befalls a graduate student’s family. I dedicate this dissertation to

them.

Their remain many more friends, relatives and well wishers in both United States and
India whose help and support I happily acknowledge here. This list is too long to be
printed here. Their names and the feeling of gratitude I feel for them, though, would

remain forever etched in my memory.

viii

TABLE OF CONTENT

List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xi
List of Figures .................................................................................................................. xii
List of Pictures ................................................................................................................ xiii
Chapter 1: Introduction .................................................................................................... 1
Rationale of the Study ................................................................................................ 3
Research Questions .................................................................................................... 5
What Lies Ahead: An Overview of the Dissertation ................................................. 7
Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework .................................................................................. 10
The Sociocultural Perspective ................................................................................... 11
The Notion of Culture ............................................................................................... 12
Circulating Discourses .............................................................................................. 13
Teaching as Performance .......................................................................................... 19
Students as Learners .................................................................................................. 21
Science Learning in Schools ..................................................................................... 23
The Issue of Human Agency ..................................................................................... 24
Situating the Study in Current Research .................................................................. 26
Chapter 3: Methods ......................................................................................................... 29
Setting and Participants ............................................................................................. 30
Data Collection Procedures ....................................................................................... 35
Data Analysis Procedures .......................................................................................... 51
Chapter 4: The Study Site ................................................................................................ 55
The Status of Human Development: The National Scenario .................................... 55
The Status of Human Development: The State of Madhya Pradesh ......................... 65
The Status of Human Development: The District of Hoshangabad .......................... 69
The State Education System ...................................................................................... 71
The Village ................................................................................................................ 75
The School ................................................................................................................. 79
Teacher Professional Discourse ................................................................................ 85
School Science Discourse .......................................................................................... 91
Summing Up ............................................................................................................ 103

ix

Chapter 5: Students: Outside School ............................................................................. 105

Students’ Family Background .................................................................................. 105
Students’ Lives Outside School ............................................................................... 109
Students’ Experiences with the Material World ...................................................... 114
Understanding Students’ Representations of Scientific Knowledge ....................... 125
Students’ Views on Schooling and School Science ................................................. 131
Summing Up ............................................................................................................ 133
Chapter 6: Raghuvanshi’s Science Classroom: A Portrait of a Science Teacher as a
Bricoleur ......................................................................................................................... 135
The Teacher Script ................................................................................................... 135
Daily Routine in Raghuvanshi’s Science Period ..................................................... 138
Improvising under Constraints ................................................................................ 140
The Classroom Discourse ........................................................................................ 151
The Discursive Underlife ......................................................................................... 166
A Study in Contrast: Ritesh Shrivastav’s Classroom .............................................. 167
Summing Up ............................................................................................................ 170
Chapter 7: Students in the Science Classroom ............................................................... 173
Different Forms of Student Participation in the Classroom ..................................... 174
Students’ Response to School Science Discourse .................................................... 188
Summing Up ............................................................................................................ 197
Chapter 8: Discussion and Implications ........................................................................ 200
Enacting Agency in a Social and Material World ................................................... 200
What did Students Want? ........................................................................................ 212
Quality and Access .................................................................................................. 217
Limitations of the Study .......................................................................................... 219
Implications ............................................................................................................. 222
References ...................................................................................................................... 229

3.1

4.1

4.2

4.3

4.4

4.5

5.1

6.1

7.1

LIST OF TABLES

Conventions used in the transcripts ..................................................................... 51
India: Education status ......................................................................................... 59
Madhya Pradesh: Education status ...................................................................... 69
Basic government data on Rajkheda .................................................................... 76
Official time table for 8‘“ grade ............................................................................ 34
List of chapters in 8th grade science textbook ...................................................... 93
focus students’ background ................................................................................ 106
Electricity lessons ............................................................................................... 158
Student participation in science periods (Topic: Electricity) ............................. 175

xi

LIST OF FIGURES

2.2 A science classroom — force field analogy ........................................................... 16

2.2 Discourses — a dimensional perspective ............................................................... 18

xii

Chapter 1

Introduction

The motto of the school I studied in read: Sa vidya ya vimuktye. It is an ancient Sanskrit
aphorism that roughly translates as: the knowledge will set you free.1 This maxim has
held true for my life in many ways. For instance, the knowledge that I got in that school,
or the credentials that I got from studying in that school set me free from my social
moorings, opened the doors for me to one of the best colleges in the country, and allowed
me great many opportunities for social and economic upward mobility in a poor country
like India. But, then I was extremely lucky as I studied in an expensive private school that

offered good education.

Most Indian kids aren’t that fortunate as they lack access to the sort of education I got. In
the media, India is often portrayed as a country on the move, a country with great future.
What gets under-reported are deep socioeconomic inequities that separate urban areas
from rural, and haves from have-nots. India’s relative ranking on the United Nations
Human Development Index has remained stable at a low of 127 among 177 countries for
the last three years in a row. An ofien ignored corollary of this disturbing trend is the

poor quality of education afforded to students in poor rural schools.

Thus, in contrast to someone like me, the education these kids get rarely sets them free. If
anything, it only offers them a rudimentary support for an everlasting struggle for a life of

modest means and dignity that lies ahead of them. However, children can be diehard

 

' The term for knowledge in this saying, vidya, in general connotes knowledge or learning that one receives
in formal institutions, such as schools. A student in Sanskrit and Hindi is called vidyarthi - a derivative of
vidya, meaning the one who earns vidya (knowledge).

optimists. Still sheltered from cynicism that comes with age, they often gamely try to
make best of the deal dealt to them by their life circumstances. They also possess a
wealth of knowledge and experiences about the world that most Indian schools as a rule
fail to harness for the sake of their learning. This study narrates a story of such kids that
studied in a government run school in a village in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India.
Two parallel yet intersecting themes run weave this story. On one hand, it focuses on
students’ efforts to both learn and survive science as taught in that school. While on the
other, it details the nature of their engagement with and knowledge of their immediate
material world. These two narrative threads ofien came together and intertwined in the
science classroom. This intertwining fills the story with hope as it shows the tantalizingly
rich possibilities for meaningful learning of science that these rural kids can actualize if
given half a chance. But as it so happens in life, hope comes tinged with a sense of loss
and despair at the raw deal state sponsored education offers to such under-privileged

children in rural India.

On a personal level, this study is an attempt to re-engage with issues and the region of
India that drew me to the field of education in the first place. I had started my career as a
forester interested in development of wastelands and social forestry in rural drought
prone areas so that people living in villages of such areas have access to an control over
natural resources critical for their sustenance. However, working in villages of Saurashtra
region in India, I realized that villages in India need access to good quality education

much more than they need trees and pastures.

So I shifted to the field of education, and to the region - district of Hoshangabad, in the

central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh — that offered me an opportunity to work in an

intervention, the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program, aimed towards improvement
of science education in rural schools. The school where this study is situated was one of
the good rural schools of the region where the science teachers, with their hard work and
commitment, had largely been able to translate, the program’s guiding pedagogical
principles of learning-by-discovery, learning-through-activity and learning-from-
environment, into daily praxis. Thus, this was a school where rural kids learnt science
that was relevant and meaningful to their daily lives, and in a way that respected and
harnessed their own experiences with nature. Under the Hoshangabad Science Teaching
Program, I collaborated with two science teachers of this school in organizing
professional development workshops for science teachers, and development of science
curriculum material. Unfortunately, the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program was
shut down in 2002, and most schools of the region, especially those in the rural areas,
went back to teaching science in their schools the old traditional way: A way that
presents science as a series of canonical stories about nature; A way that denies these
poor kids an education that is meaningful and useful for their present and the coming

future.

Rationale of the Study

Undergirded by such concerns over the raw deal students of govemment-run schools
seem to get in rural India, this study is a narrative account of an ethnographic exploration
of science learning in a rural middle school classroom in India. It is also motivated by my
personal and abiding connection with science education in rural schools of the

Hoshangabad region in the central part of India. This study then is an attempt to enter and

influence the ongoing conversation in India about the quality of educational experiences

government schooling provides to kids from under-privileged and rural backgrounds.

There have been many large scale surveys and quantitative methodology based analyses
of students academic achievement outcomes in Indian schools (Reddy, 2004). These
studies have yielded important insights into the schooling of Indian kids. However, such
studies are by design incapable of carrying the voices of the kids and making them matter
in the current discourse on the quality of education they deserve. Further, studies that
gauge ‘quality’ of instruction in terms of students’ scores on high stakes tests, such as end
of the year exams, are incapable of throwing much light on the complex nature of
learning experiences that are jointly constructed by the teacher and taught throughout the
academic year (Cochran-Smith, 2003; Kennedy, 1999). These are tasks most suited for
research in the qualitative, interpretative tradition because of it ability to highlight the
meaning-perspectives of actors in particular events, such as those occurring in a science
classroom (Erickson, 1986). Through its ability to give a “rich description” of the
complex nature of teaching-learning process that occurs in schools, such research can
best convey and critique state’s efforts to translate its educational goals, as enshrined in
national policy documents and curriculum frameworks, into reality for the majority of
students in Indian schools. Such a critique is lacking in the current discourse on science
education in India. This study by providing such a critique aims to enrich the ongoing

conversations in this area.

Further, the current science education research and discourse in India, the voices of the
students themselves are at the margins, and thus rarely heard. For instance, there is little

research that speaks about the kinds of educational experiences in science that students

themselves consider meaningful and important for their lives and purposes. If school
science has to be made meaningful and relevant for students and policy statements are to
be translated into praxis, the importance of making the voices of the students heard and
matter in the ongoing conversations about education in India can scarcely be
underestimated. Ethnographic exploration of science learning, most suited for this
purpose, is however a largely uncharted research territory in the Indian context. This
study, thus, represents an attempt to (partially) fill this lacuna, and hopes to make the
familiar strange and commonplace problematic for the researchers and policy makers

alike (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995; Erickson, 1986).

Research Questions

Students, like the rest of us, through their engagement in and with the world around them,
acquire a wealth of experiences, and ways of making sense of and communicating these
experiences. Depending upon the context, their knowledge about the world may get
revealed in different ways and for different purposes. Students also have a life outside
school, and a sense of where and how school and the education it provides fits in this life.
Thus, when students enter a science classroom, along with their school bag and books,
they also bring with them their personal histories, hopes, desires, current concerns,
interests, motivation and worries, and experiences with and knowledge about the world
that exists around them. In class, they encounter a teacher with a similar yet distinct
potpourri, an agenda and practice of teaching science, and science as a school discipline
that they are expected to learn. What happens during and emerges out of this encounter,

in a science classroom in a rural school in India, lies at the heart of this study.

Thus, this study focuses on the nature and scope of student participation in a middle
school science classroom of rural school in India. Taking a socio-cultural perspective, I
explored student participation in science classroom as engagement in a socioculturally
mediated dialogue with the natural and the social world. The research questions guiding

the study were:

1) What is the nature of students’ engagement with and knowledge representations

about the material world?

Through this question, I investigated the different activities students as members of rural
communities were engaged with in their daily life outside school so as to understand the
range and nature of their experiences with the material world. Further, I chatted with
them both within and without school, visited their homes, observed them in the class,
looked at their notebooks and exam answer sheets to understand the different ways and

forms their knowledge about the material world got revealed in different contexts.
2) What is the nature of student participation in the school science discourse?

This question enabled me to focus on students actions in the classroom. I wanted to
understand what happens when students encounter school science discourse in a
classroom. To better understand students’ actions, I also investigated how the science
teacher set up and managed this encounter in his classroom. Thus through observation,
audio and video recording, I explored the different patterns of student participation in the

class as they went about learning science in science periods.

What lies ahead: An Overview of the Dissertation

As mentioned earlier, two leitrnotifs run through this study — students’ situated dialogues
with the material world, and their situated dialogues with the social world. These
recurring themes sometimes run parallel yet intertwined and mutually informing each
other throughout the chapters that lie ahead. The plan of this dissertation report is as

follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction. I start with a brief background, then lay out the rationale of the

study, and outline the research questions. The chapter ends with the plan of the report.

Chapter 2: Theoretical F ramework. I present the theoretical framework guiding the

study, and situate it in the current research.

Chapter 3: Methods. I start with the study design. That is followed by a description of the
setting and the participants. Then I present howl see my role as a researcher in this study.
Afier Situating myself in the study, I move on to a description of data collection
procedures followed during fieldwork. The chapter ends with the section on data analysis

procedures.

Chapter 4: The Stuay Site. To give the reader a sense of the place where this study was
conducted, I present the study site through multiple frames of reference. I successively
present the status of human development, with a focus on education, at the national, state
and district levels. Then I present a portrait of the village of Rajkheda where the school
where I conducted the study is located. From village, I sharpen my focus at the school

giving the readers a sense of the general daily rhythm, infrastructure, resources and

constraints of the place. This is followed by descriptions of the teacher professional and

school science discourses that influenced the teaching-learning of science in the 8th grade.

Chapter 5: Students: Outside school. This chapter focuses on students’ lives outside the
school. I describe the sort of family backgrounds most students in the 8th grade came
from. That is followed by a portrait of their everyday activities outside school. A
descriptive analysis of their experiences with the material world comes next. In the next
section, I present my analysis of their multiple representations of scientific knowledge.

The chapter ends with a description of students’ views on schooling and school science.

Chapter 6: Raghuvanshi ’s science classroom: A portrait of a science teacher as a
bricoleur. As the chapter name suggests, this chapter presents a portrait of Raghuvanshi’s
teaching of science to 8'“ graders. A start with a description of his teacher script that acts
as a template for his teaching practice and the role of students. To give the readers, a
sense of this science periods, I present the daily routine I happen to observe in science
periods. The next section describes how he worked with the existing resources and
constraints to enact his teaching script. The classroom discourse is analyzed thereafter.
Since students in his class did more than learn science, I also analyze the discursive
underlife I happen to make note of while observing the science periods. To situate
Raghuvanshi’s teaching in the extant professional discourse, I then present a portrait of

another teacher’s teaching as a study in contrast.

Chapter 7: Students in the science classroom. In this last of the ‘findings’ start with an
analysis of the different forms of students participation in the science period. That is

followed by an analysis of students’ response to school science discourse.

Chapter 8: Discussions. In this last chapter, I integrate the different themes that emerged
from the analysis of the data and discuss the findings of this study. I then discuss the
limitations of the study. In the end, I present what I think are the main implications of this

study.

Chapter 2

Theoretical Framework

A researcher’s research questions and her theoretical lenses intertwine in a mutually
constitutive relationship. The way research questions have been posed predispose them to
be illuminated by a limited range of theoretical perspectives. Similarly, our theoretical
perspective bring to the foreground only certain categories of research question as
meaningful and researchable, pushing to the background other, and perhaps equally
legitimate research questions. This study focuses on students at the margins of the Indian
society, and seeks to understand their engagement with school science discourse on one

hand, and with objects and phenomena of the material world on the other.

Erickson (1986) exhorted educational researchers to make the familiar strange,
commonplace problematic and invisible visible by paying close attention to the lives and
meanings that people living those lives make for them. With the research task that I gave
myself, a sociocultural perspective appears most suited to guide my research. It is
sufficiently powerful to unravel the complexities of events that occur in a classroom
(Ball, 2002; Hicks, 1996). Language, culture and learning are the threads with which the
fabric of events in classroom (and elsewhere) are woven. Like, Gutierrez (2000), I too
find a sociocultural perspective of learning and human development, most “useful in
making sense of the interconnectedness of language, culture, and learning.” Also, and
perhaps what is equally, if not more, important, I believe such a view on human life is
imbued with a emancipatory potential that sees “people as actively engaged with the

environment” (Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998), thereby allowing them some

10

scope for enacting their agency in changing their lives for the better. Further, as
(Gutierrez, 2000) pointed out it is a robust enough theory for helping us visualize

learning in ways that make diversity a resource rather than a problem.1

The sociocultural Perspective

As Moll (2001) quoting Engestrom pointed out, a sociocultural perspective “is not a fixed
and finished body of strictly defined statements-it is itself an internationally evolving,
multivoiced activity system." Hence, it is important to avoid the risk of essentializing this
powerful theoretical perspective by mapping out the conceptual terrain within which this
study was carried out. I start out by laying out my understanding of “cultur ” in the
socio-cultural perspective adopted for this research study. First, as mentioned above, this
perspective views “people as actively engaged with the environment” (Holland,
Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). This engagement is mediated by cultural means, i.e.
tools and signs (Vygotsky, 1980). Thus, each person is seen as possessing a cultural
‘toolkit’ of mediational means that act as a resource as well as constraint in her
engagement with the world (Wertsch, 1991). In sociocultural theory, the ‘world’
generally means the social world. In this study, I extend the gamut of ‘world’ to include
the material world of inanimate objects and non-human organisms as well. That is, the
theoretical framework of the study attributes a natural impulse to humans that propels
them to explore, understand and influence their interactions not only with other human

beings, but also with objects and material phenomena of the material world. Sociologists

 

' It is important to note here that by diversity Gutierrez didn’t imply just racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and
linguistic diversity, but also “diversity in the mediational tools, roles, and learning contexts themselves.”

11

of science have talked about how scientists’ knowledge of the material world emerges out
of a socioculturally mediated and mutually constitutive dialogic engagement with nature
(Gooding, 1990; Pickering, 1993). However, scientists are not only people who engage in
such dialogues with the material world. Like Levi-Strauss’s bricoleur (1966), all of us
attempt to explore, manipulate, understand and thus enact some level of (material, if you

will) agency over the material world.

The Notion of Culture

Now, I realize that culture is one of the most complicated terms in research with myriad
of meanings, interpretations and usages (Gallego, Cole, & Cognition, 2001). The fact that
I see human engagement with the immediate world as mediated through cultural means
implies that I attach a semiotic significance to these tools. That is, the concept of culture I
adopt in this study is, like Geertz (1973) a semiotic one. This notion of culture moves
beyond treating culture as “inherited goods” or as discreet and more or less coherent
“ways of life” to seeing culture as a “web of significance” human beings weave for
themselves in which each node and strand is imbued with symbolic meanings that are
interpersonally negotiated through linguistic discourse (Gallego, Cole, & Cognition,
2001; Geertz, 1973; Ratner, 2000; Rosaldo, 1989). That is, as Bruner (1996) so pithily
summarized, culture is all about “human transactions of all sorts, depicted in symbols."
Giving the rationale for a semiotic approach to culture, one that is most pertinent for my
research questions, Geertz (1973) explained that the “whole point is to aid us in
gaining access to the conceptual world in which our subjects live so that we can, in some

extended sense of the term, converse with them.”

12

Thus, culture is not something that is ‘out there’ to be studied directly, however, as
Gutierrez (2000) says, “we can study how people live culturally as they participate in
their daily lives.” Thus, in this constitutive approach, culture is not a transcendent notion
spanning spatial and temporal contexts, but a contingently emergent feature of situated
action in a social setting. That is, individuals do not just reproduce culture, but also
continually critique, interpret and produce and transform it as they engage in dialogic
encounters with the social and material world (Barton, Ermer, Burkett, & Osborne, 2003;
Giroux, 1997; Gjerde, 2004). What I find most promising in this standpoint, a feature
most relevant for my study that focuses on an underprivileged section of India, is that it
“forces us to confront the concept of culture as an uneven, incomplete production of
meaning and value, ofien composed of incommensurable demands and practices,
produced in the act of social survival (emphasis mine)” (Bhabha, 1994). This, I believe,
preserves hope, and as Bhabha further adds, “an aura of selfhood, a promise of pleasure”

to even the most disadvantaged people in this world.

Circulating Discourses

A semiotic perspective also allows me to take a discourse-centered approach to culture.
As Urban (1993) argues, if culture is revealed in publicly accessible signs, then actually
occurring instances of discourse(s) in an event come across as one of the important
categories of such revealing signs. Mediational (and thus cultural) means that people use
to negotiate work reveal their contingent and situated picking and unpicking of the
elements of the circulating and accessible discourses. Depending upon the extant power

relations and ideological positioning, a person has available to him a limited menu of

13

circulating discourses to author her contingent response to the world. These available
discourses, then in Bakhtinian terms, constitute an ephemeral and local space of
authoring a response to what the world directs at the person. This authorship as (Holland,
Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998) aver, “is a matter of orchestration: of arranging the
identifiable social discourses/practices that are one’s resources (which Bakhtin glossed as
"voices") in order to craft a response in a time and space defined by others' standpoints in
activity, that is, in a social field conceived as the ground of responsiveness.” These
circulating discourses actually act as both resources and constraints — constraining action

as much as enabling it.

As a web page on Foucault and discourse at
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/txt/discourshtm states, the term
discourse has become embarrassingly overloaded in human sciences. Thus, if only for the
sake of clarity and conceptual parsimony, I take help from Cherryholmes (1988) in
defining discourse broadly as “what is said and written and passes for more or less
orderly thought and exchange of ideas.” Of course, as Cherryholmes further adds,
discourses are not composed by randomly choosing words and statements; they are rule
governed and regulated as they are produced by bodies of historically situated rules that

Foucault labeled as discursive practices (p. 2).

Thus, a science classroom can be seen as a discursive site animated by several circulating
discourses that act as contingent and local resources and constraints for the teacher and
students alike for engagement in the social work of teaching and learning. (Holland,
Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998) express similar ideas, albeit in a Bhaktinian way, when

they claim that “the equation of the means of expression and social force-the notion of

14

voice-works both ways. It positions persons as it provides them with the tools to re-create
their positions. The fields of cultural production that circumscribe perspectives become in
Bakhtin's handling, spaces of authoring.” Though a myriad number of discourses can be
identified to be present as part of mediational toolkit of participants in a classroom, for
the analytic purposes of my study, I focus on a few that seem particularly relevant to
understand (scientific) literacy events in a classroom as they appear to be most important
in constituting the ‘space of authoring’ for both the teacher and the students. These are:
(a) the professional discourse that guide, constrains and enables a teacher to teach
according to the extant and socio-historically situated discursive practice of teaching; (b)
school science discourse that enters the classroom through the prescribed syllabus and
textbook, and constitutes the ontological and epistemological form and content of the
disciplinary subject of science taught to students; (c) out-o -school discourses that pertain
to daily lives of students and teachers outside the classroom and school; and (d) the
classroom discourse that (under)determine the general ebb and flow of events in a

classroom.

Thus, if I use the metaphor of interacting bodies in a force field, then a classroom can be
likened to an open system comprising two types of interacting ‘bodies’ -— the teacher and
the students - that are embedded in a force field. This force field is multidimensional with
each dimension representing a discourse present and contingently available to the
participants in the classroom. The system is open in the sense that outside discourses can
enter the classroom and influence the constitution of the force field of the system. The
interaction between the teacher and a student is partially determined in a mutually

constitutive manner by their locus in the force field as the locus determines the nature and

15

extent of discourses that work upon a body and thus, also, are available to it. Thus, their
loci positions the interacting bodies ideologically and also (under)determines the power
relations between them. However, the teacher and the students are not inert bodies totally
governed by the surrounding force field of circulating discourses. They have an internal
dynamics of their own arising from their inherent intentionality, desires and personal
histories. This internal dynamics can, in certain contingent cases, cause a shifi in the
locus of a body, thereby changing the nature of interaction between the teacher and the

taught.

Professional discourse \\

 

The teacher \
The students ‘~

I ‘\

Out-of-school /
discourse

School science discourse

 

 

 

  
 

 

 

‘
- ’
~.--..—-"'

‘

 

The Textbook ,I’

 

 

 

Out-of-school discourses “““““ ,x’

Figure 2.1: A science classroom — force field analogy

Discourses present in a classroom vary in the nature of constraints and affordances they
offer to a student or the teacher. Some discourses are easy to make ones own, and put to
creative use. Other discourses demand conformity and rigidity, and don’t submit to

appropriation that easily. As Bakhtin (1981) says,

16

The word in language is half someone else's. It becomes 'one's own' only when
the speaker populates it with his own intention, his own accent, when he
appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and expressive intention.
And not all words for just anyone submit equally easily to this appropriation,
to this seizure and transformation into private property: many words stubbomly
resist, others remain alien, sound foreign in the mouth of the one who
appropriated them and who now speaks them; they cannot be assimilated into his
context and fall out of it; it is as if they put themselves in quotation marks against
the will of the speaker” (pp. 293-294).

Highlighting this difference between different “words”, i.e., discourses, Bakhtin (1981)
wrote of discourses being internally persuasive and/or authoritative. Characterizing an

authoritative discourse, Bakhtin says,

The authoritative word demands that we acknowledge it, that we make it our own;
it binds us, quite independent of any power it might have to persuade us
internally; we encounter it with its authority already fused to it. The authoritative
word is located in a distanced zone, organically connected with a past that is felt
to be hierarchically higher. . It is a prior discourse. It is therefore not a question
of choosing it from among other possible discourses that are its equal. It is given
(it sounds) in lofty spheres, not those of familiar contact. Its language is a special
(as it were, hieratic) language. It can be profaned. It is akin to taboo, i.e., a name
that must not be taken in vain. . . ” (pp. 342-343).

In contrast, an internally persuasive discourse according to Bakhtin is a creative and
productive discourse as it, “awakens new and independent words, that it organizes masses
of our words from within, and does not remain in an isolated and static condition. the
essence of the internally persuasive word, such as that word’s semantic openness to us, its
capacity for further creative life in the context of our ideological consciousness, its
unfinishedness and the inexhaustibility of our further dialogic interaction with it. we
can take it into new contexts, attach it to new material, put it in a new situation in order to
wrest new answers from it, new insights into its meanings, and even wrest from it new
words of its own ” (pp. 345-346). Bakhtin admitted the possibility of a discourse being

both internally persuasive and authoritative. Thus, each discourse can be thought of as

17

having a locus on an authoritativeness vs. persuasiveness two-dimensional continuum

(refer Fig. 2 ).

School science discourse

Scientific discourse for scientists

Authoritativeness

Discourse on popular music

 

 

V

Intern al-pcrsuasiven css

Figure 2.2: Discourses — a dimensional perspective

As the diagram shows, in a classroom some discourses, such as school science discourse,
may have a low value of internal-persuasiveness, but a high value of authoritativeness.
While some other discourses, out-of-school discourse on popular music for instance, are
highly internally persuasive but lack authoritativeness. Scientific discourse for scientists
or for students who learn science meaningfully may be high on both authoritativeness and

persuasiveness.

As discussed above, a science teacher, depending upon the ephemeral and shifting
characteristics of a literacy event in the classroom, makes a situated contingent use of the
discourses available to construct her teaching practice. For one event, the school science
discourse may dominate her utterances, but some other event the confluence of
moderating factors may be such that out-of-school discourse may become prominent in

her interactions with the students. According to Bakhtin (1986), “Any concrete utterance

l8

is a link in the chain of speech communication of a particular sphere. Each utterance is
filled with echoes and reverberations of other utterances to which it is related by the
communality of the sphere of speech communication”. Thus, as he adds further,
“However monological the utterance may be (for example, a scientific or philosophical
treatise), (it) is filled with dialogic overtones, and they must be taken into account in
order to understand fully the style of the utterance” (p. 92). Likewise, it can be assumed
that the utterances of a teacher, or a student for that matter, even if dominated by one
discourse will almost always have traces, or “dialogic overtones” of other discourses
circulating in the immediate discursive context. Though, of course, it is possible that the
dialogic overtones may not be obvious or even observable to an observer or to another

participant in the classroom.

Teaching as Performance

The theoretical perspective of the study conceptualizes teaching practice through the
generative metaphor of “teaching as performance” (Pineau, 1994). This is done so as to
highlight the process of teaching as against its end-result. Butler (2004) giving a
performative perspective on gender called it “a kind of a doing, a practice of
improvisation within a scene of constraint. Moreover, one does not "do" one's gender
alone. One is always "doing" with or for another, even if the other is only imaginary.
What I call my "own" gender appears perhaps at times as something that I author or,
indeed, own. But the terms that make up one's own gender are, from the start, outside
oneself, beyond oneself in a sociality that has no single author.” Likewise, teaching too is

a performance enacted in front of and in relationship with others (students). It is also a

19

kind of “doing” that is part of a daily practice, but still carry a contingent admixture of
spontaneity and thinking on one’s feet — in other words “a practice of improvisation
within a scene of constraint”. Thus, a teacher is as teacher does. A practiced performance
needs a script - a sort of normative sociolinguistic pattern of interactional exchange
between the performer and the audience that can act as a common resource by all
participants to interpret the activity of others and to guide their own participation.
According to (Gutierrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995), in a classroom setting, such patterns

collectively constitute the teacher script.

With an implicit concurrence of the students, a teacher performs in the class according to
her teacher script. The teacher script, thus, shapes the ongoing dialogic events in the
classroom by (under)determining: (a) how a lesson is supposed to progress during the
class; (b) how the teacher and the students are supposed to interact and behave while
class is in progress; (c) what and whose voices are to be legitimized and included in or
de-legitimized and excluded from the classroom discourse; (d) the power and
sociocultural relationships in the official space; and (e) the construction and

legitimization of the situated identities of both the teacher and the taught.

Students also have a role and are indeed expected to participate in the teacher’s script.
For instance, the teacher-student interaction in initiation, response, and evaluation (IRE)
discourse pattern is a common feature of most teacher scripts (Burbules & Bruce, 2001;
Mehan, 1982). Of course, the control of the teacher script over the communicative events
in the classroom is never so severe and deterministic as to foreclose any contingent
improvisation by the teacher or the students. Expert teachers often deviate from the

teacher script to take advantage of the emergent and transients ‘teaching moments’, or let

20

students take the ongoing dialogue in the classroom in unscripted yet productive
directions. Students too on their own initiative can find, on opportune moments, enough
wiggle room, ambiguity, indeterminacy in the teacher script to improvise upon their

given roles in the classroom.

Further, as Lampert says, “students come into the classroom with multiple purposes:
making friends, protecting themselves, arranging dates, earning spending money, and so
on” (2001). Thus, apart from learning science, students in a classroom have several other
ongoing agendas, concerns, intentions and activities that are unrelated or only
tangentially related to the “official” business of the class, and belong to students’ out-of-
school discourses that enters the classroom along with them. These elements often get
excluded from the dialogues constructed by the teacher script in the classroom. However,
they do engender and contribute surreptitious sidebar conversations, furtive exchange of
notes, quick meaningful glances, comments sparked off by something the teacher said or
did, and umpteen other communicative exchanges that populate and sustain the discursive

underlife of the classroom (Gutierrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995).

Students as Learners

According to the sociocultural perspective of the study, learning and human development
are seen as happening in terms of their evolving participation in the sociocultural
activities of their communities (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 2003). Reflecting a
consensus view in sociocultural theory, Lave & Wenger (p. 35) say, “In our view,
learning is not merely situated in practice - as if it were some independently reifiable

process that just happened to be located somewhere; learning is an integral part of

21

generative social practice in the lived-in world. Legitimate peripheral participation is
proposed as a descriptor of engagement in social practice that entails learning as an
integral constituent. Further, learning through engagement in a social practice happens
either under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers (Vygotsky,
1980). Thus, children in all societies come to acquire a rich though locally and
socioculturally situated “funds of knowledge” about the world through engagement in
different social practices in their daily lives outside school (Moll, Amanti, Neff, &

Gonzalez, 1992).

The nature and content of this knowledge varies across different cultural communities.
Rogoff in her study of children’s lives in different cultural communities found significant
differences in the extent to which “they are allowed to participate in and observe adult
activities” (2003). Comparing children from a farming community in East Africa with
middle class American children, she reports that 4 year old children from the African
farming community, “spent 35% of their time doing chores, and 3-year-olds did chores
during 25% of their time. In contrast. middle-class US. children of the same ages
spent none to 1% of their time doing chores, though they did spend 4% to 5% of their
time accompanying others in chores (such as helping the mother peel a carrot or fold
laundry) (p. 136). Thus, as Rogoff further reports, the Aka kids of Central Africa, when
they are 7 to 12 years old, can hunt and butcher large game animals, trap porcupines and
grow food plants. In contrast, most American kids may not even know how to hold a
butcher’s knife properly and safely, though they may know a lot about manipulating

symbols and images on a computer screen or understanding a subway map.

22

Thus, students entering a classroom aren’t tabulas rasas, but possess homegrown
experiential knowledge about the world, and know effective ways of sense making and
communicating this knowledge to other members of the different communities of practice
of which they are legitimate participants. Under propitious circumstances, these valuable
mediational means get revealed in students’ dialogic engagement with the school science
discourse. As (Warren, Ballenger, Ogonowski, Rosebery, & Hudicourt-Barnes, 2001)
noted, “. . .in the science classroom children's questions and their familiar ways of
discussing them do not lack complexity, generativity, or precision; rather, they constitute
invaluable intellectual resources which can support children as they think about and learn

to explain the world around them scientifically.”

Science Learning in Schools

Traditional school science discourse recontextualizes science as it exists in scientific
research communities into a crystallized, secure, fixed body of knowledge comprising
concepts, generalizations, and procedures that children can learn, teachers can teach, and
administrators can use to govern both the teacher and the taught and themselves
(Popkewitz, 2002; Shanna & Anderson, 2003). An unfortunate consequence of this
process of recontextualization is that school science discourse often gets far removed
from the daily lives of the students, and what students learn in science classroom
contributes little in furthering their abilities to understand, influence and manipulate the

material world they live in.

23

However, there are also teachers who are confident of their content and craft knowledge,

cognizant of the generative potential of students’ own discourses and knowledge systems,
and sensitive to the learning needs of their students. Such teachers are often able to use
students’ own voices and intellectual resources to co-construct, in active partnership of
students, a rich, productive social heteroglossia and dialogic interaction of school science
discourse with students’ out-of-school discourses. Researchers have researched and
talked about this kind of meaningful learning using different metaphors. For instance,
Gutierrez et al used the construct of “third space” to denote the discursive site where
dialogic interaction of different discourses, official as well as unofficial, takes place
(1995). Dyson’s ethnographic research highlighted the importance of enacting “a
“permeable” curriculum that allows for interplay between teachers’ and children’s
language and experiences” (1993, p.1). And in a similar vein, Heath (1983) has talked
about the back-and-forth translations of knowledge between the scientific and the
community knowledge domains, that teachers as cultural brokers between communities
and classrooms can undertake in their classrooms to help students become ethnographers
(and thus learners of personally meaningful and useful knowledge) in their own

communities.

The Issue of Human Agency
As elucidated earlier, the theoretical framework of the study takes a discourse-centered
approach to culture and social practices. A discursive standpoint is often seen as denying
possibilities of enactment of human agency as all human thought and action are assumed

to be determined by discourses (Ahearn, 2001; Cherryholmes, 1988; Erickson, 2004).

24

That is, an individual human subject is believed to be totally “uttered” by the circulating
discourses (Erickson, 2004). However, as both Erickson and Cherryholmes and some
other social scientists, such as Bleiker (2003), have pointed out such a view of the
influence of discourses over human life is overdetennined and overly deterministic.
Cherryholmes (1988) argues that discursive practices are not always as highly integrated
or tightly coupled as those studied by Foucault, such as human medicine and law. As
Cherryholmes explains, “when discursive practices and speech communities bump into
each other, as it were, meanings and rules for proceeding must be negotiated and
established. Third, anonymous, historical rules governing discourses can be
challenged by those not fully socialized to them. Fourth, different background

institutions will not police anomalous utterances with equal vigor” (pp. 88-89).

Foucault (1988) had once remarked, “I believe in the freedom of people. To the same
situation, people react in very different ways”. Thus, according to the theoretical
perspective of the study, discourses underdetennine human behavior, and social action
epitomizes contingent improvisation within a discursive context of constraint. Contingent
discursive fissures, cracks and wiggle rooms do transiently appear in everyday social
practices that allow people to be contingently creative in their selective picking and
unpicking of elements of circulating discourses, and thus, in their dialogic engagement
with the world. Butler (2004) perhaps speaks for all of us when she affirms that “the “I”
that I am finds itself at once constituted by norms and dependent on them but also
endeavors to live in ways that maintain a critical and transformative relation to them” (p.

3).

25

Thus, like culture, human agency too can be seen as a contingently emergent feature of
situated local action. An individual does not have agency, but rather under opportune
circumstances, she enacts or exercises agency. Taking a Bakhtinian perspective, the
theoretical framework visualizes human agency in terms of a socioculturally mediated
and contingently creative dialogue with the world - an engagement that not only shapes
the counters and direction of the dialogue, but also influences its outcome. Agency in
human actions isn’t always discernable to an observer. Further, as Holland et al (1998)
quoting Indsen claim, “People do not act only as agents. They also have the capacity to
act as 'instruments' of other agents, and to be 'patients,’ to be the recipients of the acts of

others” (p. 42).

Situating the Study in Current Research

Studies of students’ experiences with schooling in India using qualitative and interpretive
methodologies have a fairly recent history. There are only a handful of ethnographies,
such as Sarangpani’s (2003) study of constructions of school knowledge in an Indian
village, and Sahni’s (1994) sociocultural analysis of literacy in a rural classroom in India,
that have attempted to chart this research territory. Ethnographic explorations of science
learning in Indian schools have, to the best of my knowledge, not been yet taken. Thus,
this study represents an attempt to (partially) fill this lacuna in our understanding of

science learning in Indian schools.

Such explorations of students’ educational experiences in school settings have been,
however, a well traversed territory for educational researchers in America over the past

thirty years, and “research has spoken increasingly to the complexity of life that goes on

26

in classrooms” (Ball, 2002). The students that are the focus of this study are on the
margins of Indian mainstream. Similar research has been done in other geographical
locations, and using ethnographic methodologies researchers have persuasively shown
that students who get traditionally marginalized by school science discourse nevertheless
possess valuable funds of knowledge about the world (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez,
1992). Further, meaningful science learning experiences get created in science
classrooms when teachers not only recognize this rich resource, but also know how to
harness it. Here, mention may be made of Barton (1998) who has done extensive research
on students who are at the margins of the society using a critical and feminist
ethnographic perspectives. She has shown how the culture of power in science education
marginalizes students who lack the requisite cultural capital (Barton & Yang, 2000), even
though they may inhabit social and cultural spaces that are rich in learning potential and
provide them resilience and sustenance (Barton, Ermer, Burkett, & Osborne, 2003). Her
work has shown what it may mean to create an inclusive science education for such

students (Barton, 1998).

Similarly, Warren and her colleagues have, through their excellent ethnographic case
studies of Haitian American and Latino students, have documented the everyday sense
making practices of students from non-mainstream backgrounds, and shown their power
and usefulness as intellectual resources in science learning (Warren, Rosebery, & Conant,
1994). Moje and her colleagues (Moje et al., 2004; Moje, Collazo, Carrillo, & Marx,
2001) have used a postcolonial notion of third spaces to explore the contingent and
productive spaces that get created in science classrooms when school science discourse

dialogizes with students out-of-school discourses.

27

Cognate branches of educational research have had an equally, if not longer histories of
qualitative and interpretative explorations of educational experiences in school of
students from non-mainstream backgrounds. For instance, important signposts of this
kind of research in literacy education are ethnographies of communication by Heath
(1983) and Dyson (1997; 2003). Heath showed how black community’s “ways with
words” culturally differed from those of white community and the school resulting in a
tilted playing field in favor of kids from white community. Dyson, on the other hand, has
shown how popular culture, to which students from minority backgrounds have easy
access, can and need to be harnessed to provide rich literacy learning experiences at

school.

A perspective on educational experiences of students from non-mainstream backgrounds
in a science classroom, from a different context, such as India, can then add fresh insights
hitherto unavailable, and thus contribute to a richer, more nuanced understanding of
science learning in school settings. Laying out the research agenda for the 21St century,
(Ball, 2002) proposed, “ethnographic and discourse studies of local uses of oral and
written language, that introduces improved instruction congruent with students' local
ways of using language, and development of research-based approaches to preparing
teachers for diversity” (pp. 97-98). In a larger perspective, then, this study can be seen as

following such a research agenda.

28

Chapter 3
Methods

This study is an attempt at immersion in Indian science students’ worlds in order to
understand their actions, words and meanings both within and without school. Thus, two
parallel, although intersecting, research themes run through this study. On one hand, this
study explores students’ engagements with other participants in a science classroom. On
another, it tries to understand the nature of their engagement with their immediate
material world. The engagement in both contexts is seen as dialogic — you say something
to the world and the world responds back to you, and vice versa. Or you do something to
the world, and the world does something back to you, and vice versa. That is, dialogues
can be verbal (through discourse) as well as non-verbal (through action) (Gee & Green,

1998).

Thus, the study of dialogues in different contexts is at the heart of the study. These
dialogues occur in sociocultural contexts with the help of and constrained by circulating
discourses. The study attempts to understand these dialogues from an emic perspective.
That is, through this study I wanted to understand what the students themselves
considered as meaningful and important as they entered in dialogic engagements with the
science teacher, their peers, other adults, and with the material world. Research methods
need to emerge out of the researcher’s questions and theoretical lenses. In light of my
research questions and theoretical perspectives as mentioned above and discussed at
length in the previous chapters, an ethnographic study design seemed most appropriate.

And since the research focus is on dialogues, this study is designed as an ethnography of

29

communication. By making this choice, I am essentially following a fairly established
research tradition, initiated by Hymes (1964), that uses ethnography of communication as
a framework for conducting and analyzing research of classroom discourse (Gee &

Green, 1998; Roberta, Rampton, Leung, & Harris, 2002).

In the sections that follow, I describe the different methodological components of the

study.

Setting and Participants

Selecting the smdvsitgz

Before coming to United States for my doctoral studies, I used to work with government
schools in the Narmada valley region of the state of Madhya Pradesh in India. My work
involved developing science curriculum material for schools of that area, organizing and
conducting professional development workshops with middle school science teachers of
this region. My six-year long association with the education system of this region has
played a crucial role in shaping my perspectives on Indian education, but also has left an
abiding interest in educational issues of this region. Till 2002, this region was home to an
major educational reform initiative that was much lauded by educators for its progressive
attributes and potential to make a major improvement in science teaching in schools all
over India (Kumar, 2005; Mukherjee, Sadgopal, Shrivastava, & Varma, 1999; Rampal,
2002) . Under this intervention, known as the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program
(HSTP), science teachers taught a learning-by-discovery, learning-through-activity and
learning-from-environment based science curriculum at the middle school level. Under

bureaucratic pressure and political opposition, this program running in the Hoshangabad

30

district of this region since 1972, was shut down in 2002 ("Education: Dead hand of
obscurantism", 2002; Sadgopal, 2002). The traditional state-mandated science curriculum
running in the rest of the state was then adopted for schools of this region. Owing to my
association with this region and belief in the reform potential of this intervention, I was
extremely disappointed on learning about its demise, and often wondered about the kind

of science teaching that was now going in the schools of this region.

Thus, when looking for a place to study how students respond to a traditional school
science discourse, this region was a natural choice for me to situate my study in. The
majority of the students in India, and most of the poor kids, study in government run
schools in India. As 72% of the Indian population still lives in villages, such a school is
more often than not a rural government school. Though the evidence is limited, these
schools are, by and large, reported to offer an inferior quality of education to their
students as compared to private schools that are patronized by relatively better-off
families (Aggarwal, 2002). Wanting to highlight the iniquitous nature of access to quality
education in India, I wanted to base my study in a rural government school. So I
contacted my ex-colleagues still working in that region to suggest a school to study. They
suggested several schools of which government middle school in village Rajkheda was
one. After visiting these schools, I chose Rajkheda school as my study site. The main
reasons behind this choice were: (a) the teacher was known to me and was widely
respected for his dedication to his job. During the heydays of HSTP, he was a lead
teacher who helped other science teachers teach science according to the program’s
pedagogical principles of learning-by-discovery, learning-through-activity and learning-

from-environment. Thus, I could be reasonably certain of accessing sufficient data of

31

interesting science teaching; (b) The classroom environment was free and relaxed with
much participation of the students — something that I didn’t see happening in other
schools suggested to me. Thus, there were greater chances of my recording interesting
data in such a setting than in one where fear of the teacher and lack of encouragement to
student initiative make students withdraw into their own shells; (c) Finally, the school
was located in a village that was close to a town from where I could commute daily.
Thus, it not only fitted with my desire to base the study in a village government school,

but also was pragmatically convenient.

The study site:

Chapter 4 describes the study site in detail. Here, for readers’ benefit and for sake of
completeness, I give a brief synopsis of the study site. The study is situated in a village
called Rajkheda, wherein I focus on students in a grade 8 science classroom of the
government (public) school in the village. This village is in Narmada valley region of the
state of Madhya Pradesh, India. Rajkheda is a medium sized (by Indian standards) village
of 270 families, and is on the main road linking two towns, Hoshangabad and Pachmadhi,
of the district of Hoshangabad. It is a relatively poor village, with 125 families (44.4%)
officially classified as below poverty line. The main occupation of the residents of the
village is agriculture, and one can see agricultural fields in all directions from the village.
The government middle school is the only middle school for Rajkheda and seven other
neighboring villages in that region. There is no high school in Rajkheda and students
graduating from the middle school have to attend high schools in neighboring towns in

order to continue their formal education.

32

The science teacher of the 8th grade class, Mr. Vineet Raghuvanshi, is a middle-class
married Hindu male, and students too come from Hindu, non-tribal rural backgrounds.
Agriculture is the main occupation in Rajkheda. Thus, students hail from mostly poor
farming, trading or artisan families from the local as well as 7 neighboring villages. The
8th grade class had 49 students on roll of which only 11 were female. Many students were
first generation learners of their families, and thus a beacon of hope for their illiterate
parents. Students sat in rows on mats in the classroom according to their roll numbers.
However, all the girls sat in a row on one side of the classroom. Sometimes, some

students did change their places, and teachers didn’t object to that much.

Like most other government run schools in Madhya Pradesh, this school too is quite
impoverished in terms of material and educational resources. It is a co-educational
school, with rather small of student population of only 193 students. The middle school
had a total of 4 teachers including the Headmaster who also taught classes along with
performing his assigned administrative role as the head of the school. The school has no
support staff, and teachers, ofien with the help of students, perform all the ancillary
chores and administrative duties. The entire building has 9 rooms, of which 6 are used as
classrooms for grades 1 to 8. Thus, teachers frequently complained to me about the
shortage of classrooms. On many days I could see at least one class being held outdoors.
The classrooms are typically crowded. The grade 8 classroom had 47 students sitting
elbows to elbows in a small 12 x 18 ft. room. The only furniture a classroom has is a
table and a chair for the teacher. 80 the students sit cross-legged on mats, on the floor.
The classrooms have few teaching aids and for many students textbooks are the only

books that they ever get to read.

33

In the winter months, the school starts at 11 AM with a combined morning assembly of
elementary and middle class students in an open space within the school boundary, in
which students sing a common prayer, and general announcements are made by the
teachers. Afler the morning assembly is over, students clean their own classrooms and
bring in the furniture for the teacher fi'om the staff room. Thereafter instruction starts in
30 minutes subject-specific periods. There is a lunch break at 1:00 PM of 30 minutes, and
the school gets over at 4 PM with another common assembly in which students sing the

national anthem before finally heading home.

The school follows state-mandated science curriculum that focused on equipping
students’ with scientific knowledge in the form of facts, definitions and principles. This
scientific knowledge is transmitted through a state-mandated science textbook for each
(middle school) grade. The curriculum and the textbook make little attempt to make
science relevant to the lives of the students, and rarely harness students own experiences
with nature for science teaching. Besides, there is no element of inquiry or even
discovery in the science curriculum. The few hands-on activities given in the textbook are
to be done basically to illustrate the scientific concepts discussed in the main body of the
various chapters comprising the textbook. Further, the textbook is written in an arid,
artificial, highly complex linguistic scientific genre that is difficult for students to
understand. Student learning is assessed through quarterly surnmative exams that tests

students’ abilities to memorize and reproduce official school scientific knowledge.

Researcher role:
I am an Indian citizen who has experienced schooling in India both as a science student

and science educator. Further, as mentioned earlier, I was also familiar with the research

34

site and some of its participants by virtue of having worked with science teachers of
schools in that area as a science educator and curriculum developer. The teacher was
known to me as I had worked with him as a science educator for a number of years. This
positioned me somewhat as an ex-insider to the research setting who by virtue of
experiences as a doctoral student in an American university had also developed

perspectives and acquired descriptive labels that marked me as distinctly an outsider.

It is a typical postcolonial situation marked with considerable cultural and ideational
hybridity, hyphenated identities, fuzzy borders and continual border crossings. The
resulting ambivalence in my positionality as a researcher did color my perspectives, and
influenced the collection and analysis of data. It also endowed my research work with
numerous tensions, contradictions and power imbalances. For instance, since I had
worked with the science teacher for a number of years in areas of teacher professional
and curriculum development, there was a lingering tendency, in the initial phase, with
both of us to re-establish that working partnership that we shared earlier. This, in a way
conflicted with the intimate yet distanced position that I desired to have in his class as a
researcher. For these types of situations, like Luttrell (Luttrell, 2000), the best I hoped to
do was to identify these so-called crises of representation in ethnography field notes

rather than try to eliminate them.

Data Collection Procedures

The fieldwork for the study was done during the months of December, 2004 to March,
2005. After spending about a fortnight in selecting the study site and reacquainting

myself with the region, I shifted to a town close to Rajkheda, and began visiting the

35

school and the village almost on a daily basis. The main components of the fieldwork

were as follows:

Negotiating entLv into tl£s_it_e:

Owing to my past history of work with teachers in that region, and of association with
Eklvya, the organization that ran the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program (HSTP) in
the middle schools, including the one in Rajkheda, negotiating entry into the site wasn’t
that easy. After I decided that Rajkheda middle school would be the most appropriate
study site for this study, I met Raghuvanshi, the science teacher, in Eklavya’s office, to
request if I could observe his science class. I explained the purpose of my research and
then with some measure of trepidation, made the request. To my utmost relief and
pleasure, he agreed. However, he said that I shouldn’t tell other teachers in the school that
I was interested in his class alone. Raghuvanshi suggested that I should observe their
classes as well so that they don’t feel discriminated against. He also told me that the
headmaster of the school, Mr. Mahto, may not be very enthusiastic about my studying his
science class, as there was some undercurrents of tension between them owing to their
affiliations in different teacher unions. Besides, according to Raghuvanshi, Mr. Mahto
had never been supportive of Eklavya’s work, though he never protested against HSTP
while it ran in his school. Thus, Raghuvanshi advised me that while in school I should
pay enough attention to him and do nothing to offend him - advice I conscientiously
followed throughout the period of the study.

Next day, accompanied by an ex-colleague of mine, I went to Rajkheda middle school to
request permission from Mr. Mahto to do research in his school and to meet and explain

the purpose and nature of my research to all the middle school teachers. Afier listening to

36

my brief presentation about my research, Mr. Mahto asked a couple of questions, such as
why I wasn’t studying other schools too. However, he finally gave me the permission.
But, after I had spent some days in the school, one day he hinted that it would be good if I
got the permission of the District Education Officer too, for basing my study in a school
under his jurisdiction. I had hoped that I wouldn’t have to do this as on reaching
Hoshangabad, I had been told by my friends in Hoshangabad that since the closure of
HSTP in 2002, the local education bureaucracy had become suspicious of Eklavya, and
maintained a safe distance with their personnel and activities. Thus, I wondered if my
association with Eklavya would make getting such permission from the District
Education Officer a difficult or even a lengthy process. To obviate the possibility of
denial of permission, I approached an officer, the local District Magistrate, who was
higher in rank to the District Education Officer, and was known to have a favorable
opinion of Eklavya’s work. After getting a recommendation from him, I finally
approached the District Education Officer. Since I had the backing of his superior, the
District Education Officer didn’t refuse the permission, but I did have to make several
visits to his office to get it. However, once I had a written permission from him, doing

fieldwork in Rajkheda middle school was not a problem anymore.

The students welcomed my presence in the school and classroom from day one. As they
told me nobody had ever come to study their school, so liked the fact that someone from
America had come all the way down to Rajkheda middle school to do a study. According
to Bogdan and Biklin, “During the first few days of participant observation, the
researcher often remains somewhat detached, waiting to be looked over and, hopefully,

accepted” (Bogdan & Biklin, 1998). However, my experience was totally different. I was

37

a center for curiosity and attraction for many a days in the beginning. Everyday as soon
as I entered the school on my bike, students would gather around, closely observing
everything I did, and asking all sorts of questions, such as where I did get this old bike
from, how does it feel to wear a helmet, where I lived, what would I be doing in the
school today, would I be coming to their classroom, would I be interested in seeing their

village, and so on.

Inside the classroom, the students were hardly used to a presence of an outsider in the
class, especially one who was observing them, taking copious notes while they spoke in
the class, and audio and video recorded the class proceedings. For the first month or so,
they would try to peep into my field notes and would ask me several questions about
what I was jotting down. Sometimes, they would even request me to show them my field
notes, and would try to read them. Finding them incomprehensible, they wondered if I

would be able to understand them later on too.

My audio recorder was a big distraction for students in the initial phase, and remained so
at least for some students right till the end of the fieldwork. I used to place the audio
recorder on the floor in the Center of the classroom. But in the initial phase of the
fieldwork, they would try to shift it around, sometimes closer to where they sat and
sometimes away from them. They were fascinated by how it worked. So for a long time,
they would try to speak something, such as a cricket commentary or a song, to it to get it
recorded. Later, as soon as the period ended and teacher left, they would request that I
play it back so that they could hear their recorded voices. It thrilled them no end to hear
their own voices. They talked about it with their parents too, so when I visited their

homes, ofien times they and their parents would request that I play that day’s classroom

38

recording to them. Hearing classroom proceedings at a different location than the
classroom used to be a huge source of amusement for parents and kids alike. Some
parents also requested me to record their songs, and thus the audio recorder became the
cause for a couple of hastily arranged and impromptu, but delightful nevertheless, music
sessions. Thus, the audio recorder acted as quite an icebreaker in at least a couple of

homes.

In the initial phase of the fieldwork, I generally let students play around with the recorder
as long as they didn’t stop the recording. As a result, afier some days it lost its curiosity

value for most kids, and thus wasn’t paid much attention to.

The video camera too was a huge source of curiosity and distraction for all students at
least for first the two weeks. The first time, I took out the video camera from the bag and
placed it on a tripod in a comer of the classroom, many a classrooms got disrupted for a
while as the news got around that there was something to see in the 8th grade classroom.
Soon I found myself and the video camera surrounded by lots of children from other
classrooms even though Raghuvanshi had begun taking his science period. However, 8th
graders were very protective of me and the equipment and did their best to keep students
of other grades at a safe distance from the equipment. After a fortnight or so, the students
of the 8th grade did get used to being videotaped, and after from making occasional

requests to see some of the recorded proceedings, didn’t bother much about the camera.

Finding a good place for me to sit and observe the classroom events proved trickier
though. The classroom was too small for 49 students and one teacher. Students sat
huddled together on the floor. I wanted to sit among the students so as to better observe

their actions and participation in the class discussions. The students, however, didn’t like

39

my sitting on the floor with them. I was an adult, a guest from America, and was as much
respected as the teachers. I was addressed as ‘sir’, just like the other teachers. No adult,
unless he was a local poor laborer or a farmer, sat on the floor in the school. So it went
against their sense of propriety to let me sit on the floor amongst them. Raghuvanshi or
other teachers didn’t have any problems about where I sat. They did ask in the beginning
if I wanted to sit on a chair. But when I explained my reasons for sitting among the
students, they understood and let me sit wherever I wished. The students though kept on
insisting for many days that I should sit on a chair just like their teachers. For many days
in the beginning, without my asking they would bring a chair for me to sit on from the
staffroom at the beginning of the day. However, I persisted on sitting with them. Afier a
few days they relented too, and would space for me and offer their mats for me to sit on.
Though there were many a sniggers among the boys and a feeling of discomfort among
the girls, if I chose to sit with the girls. After about a month, I decided to heed their
earlier advice, and started sitting on a chair kept in a corner as being a stocky person, I
occupied too much space if I sat with them thereby making them more cramped than they

already were.

It also took a while to position myself appropriately in the social space of the classroom
in terms of relationships with other participants. I wished to position myself more as an
interested and involved observer than as a full participant in the discourse community of
the classroom. Commenting upon the participant/observer continuum, Bogdan and Biklin
(1998), have opined that “Exactly what and how much participation varies during the
course of a study”. My experience in the field was quite similar. I intended to position

myself more as a researcher, and not as an ex-colleague or a potential help to either

40

teachers or students. I had hoped that by “being regularly present, unobtrusively, quiet,
and too ‘busy’ to help children with their work, but never too busy to smile, acknowledge
their presence, and say ‘hi’ (Dyson, 1997)” , I would be able to occupy a low key position
inside the classroom and the school. Further, according to (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw,
1995), “in most social settings writing down what is taking place as it occurs is a strange,
marginalizing activity, marking the writer as an observer rather than as a full, ordinary
participant” (p. 37). Thus, I had planned on being too busy with writing and observing to
participate in the study site. However, this wasn’t always possible. While a teacher was
around, I was generally able to be a busy observer. However, in the absence of a teacher
in the classroom, and this used to happen often, students wanted me to become their
teacher. If I was hanging outside the classroom, and some classroom didn’t have a
teacher, the students from that classroom would come and implore to teach them
something, anything, or just talk to them. In the initial phase, I found it extremely
difficult to say no to them, and often ended up teaching them something they were having
trouble with. Mostly, it was math or English. However, I didn’t wish to get too involved
in the setting as a participant, and thus, as time passed I became more determined to deny
their request. Though if a student approached me individually with a specific request,
again mostly it was math or English related, I tried to help. Thus, my positioning on the
observer/participant continuum shifted strategically and contingently throughout the
fieldwork. Though, following Emerson et al’s advice, even when I more of a participant
in an event, I tried to “assume the mind-set of an observer, a mind-set in which one
constantly steps outside of scenes and events to assess their "write-able" qualities. (p.

37),” an effort in which I wasn’t always successful.

41

Initial observation phfig:

Emerson et al(1995, p. 26) advise ethnographers to take note of their “initial” impressions
when they first enter their study site. According to him, these initial impressions include
“those things available to the senses-the tastes, smells, and sounds of the physical
environment, the look and feel of the locale and the people in it details about the
physical setting, including size, space, noise, colors, equipment, and movement, or about
people in the setting, such as number, gender, race, appearance, dress, movement,
comportment, and feeling tone” (p. 26). For about a week, I didn’t take my recording
equipment with me to the school, and didn’t write down notes while in the school. I just
wanted to have a sense of the place at first. Paying heed to Emerson’s advice I tried to
diligently record my initial impressions lest I should stop noticing many striking things

about the site once they became commonplace over time.

Thus, in the initial phase I focused on collecting information and recording my

impressions about things, such as:

(a) General design, layout of the school, overall features of the school building, and

general transect and mapping of the village;

(b) First impressions and basic information about the school, such as student
population, number of classes, number of teachers, general background of the
teachers (gender, education, numbers of years in service, whether regular
appointee or temporary, caste, etc.), impressions about the school in the
community, existence of competing private schools in the neighborhood, what

sorts of clothes students and staff wear, administrative details (such as who is the

42

head master, for how long, his relationship with the staff, etc.), general academic

performance of the school, non-academic duties of the teaching staff, and so on;

(0) Features of the local community: size, demographic and occupational features,

relationship with the school, etc.

((1) Basic information about the 8"I grade, such as number of students, gender, caste,
class, religion and occupation wise break-up of the class, names of the students,

seating patterns, how crowded is the class, decorations adoring the walls, etc.

(e) Occasions for communication (talk, print) between the teacher and the taught and
among the students in a regular school/class day. Following Dyson’s advice I
tried to note, “how the class day is orchestrated, including the sorts of speech and
literacy events or occasions that occur and their components” (2004, p. 4). The
components include participants, purpose, setting (time/place), mode of

communication, mood, message, and generally how interaction occurs.
(f) Student groupings — student initiated or teacher structured — in the class.

(g) Teaching and learning: grossly characterization of the classroom environment,
how teachers organize the class and their teaching practices, teacher’s way of
managing and disciplining the class, , teacher-student relationship, students
considered popular by the class, ‘star’ and problem students, general rhythm of
the class proceedings, curriculum material used by the teacher, teaching aids and

other resources available to the class and the nature of their use.

(h) Classroom and school events that appear key or significant to me in some respect.

43

Selection of focus students:

For a finer grained and extended understanding of students’ actions both within and
without the classroom, I selected three boys and two girls as my focus students. Though,
as I explain towards the end of the section, one girl opted out in the later part of the
fieldwork. I see these focus students as representative of my ‘case’ — the 8th grade science
class, my selection was purposive and not random or scientific (in the positivistic sense,
that is). This is because I wanted these students to be the best possible “guides into and
through the social complexities of their classroom lives” (Dyson, 1997). That is, I wanted
focal students to not only provide me access to the lives of the students in the 8th grade
classroom, but also act as reference points for the events significant to my study (both
within and without the classroom). Now, according to Agar as quoted by Dyson (1997, p.
22), inarticulate people with poor recall and reclusive disposition do not make good
informants. Further, gaining access to the whole class was important for my study to
capture the entire ‘case’. Kids have their own peer networks. Thus, if one is friendly with
a key member in a peer network, through him one can have an easier access to the lives

of many other children.

Thus, it seems important to choose as focal students who are: articulate, willing to talk
with me, insightful about the events in the class and beyond, popular with the class, i.e.
interact with other students widely, at ease with me following them around and asking all
sorts of question, and willing to invite me to their homes. Given the hierarchical nature of
Indian society where age is respected and elders feel relatively free to pass judgments on
those junior to them in age and/or status, it is quite likely for a child to feel threatened

and insecure in the company of a curious adult outsider like me. I was worried that if this

happened with my focal students, the quality of my data would become extremely sparse
and unreliable. Thus, I very much wanted my focal students to be confident kids with

whom it is possible to have a friendly relationship.

Of course, there are some drawbacks, to have such a bunch of articulate, confident,
friendly and popular kids as focal students. For instance, I ran the risk of not being able to
hear the ‘voices’ of quiet reclusive kids who feel maladjusted in the classroom, alienated
from science learning, or feel silenced or oppressed by the extant caste, class or any other
criterion based power relations. But since the data collection period was relatively short
(about 4 months), and it wasn’t feasible to go back to the study site after the data
collection period (as I had to head back to United States), I wasn’t sure if I would be able
to gain the confidence of shy withdrawn students sufficiently early in the data collection
period so as to have access to some good quality data. Thus, after considering the
different pros and cons of purposive “sampling”, I decided to go ahead with it
aforementioned pragmatic grounds, and chose five articulate, confident, vivacious,

friendly and popular kids as my focal students. These were:

Sarla: She was the eldest daughter of very poor and illiterate parents. She lived in a one-
room house with her parents and six siblings. Her parents didn’t have any agricultural
land. Thus they rented land for farming and also worked as agricultural laborers in farms
of other people. She herself worked on agricultural farms whenever she could to support
her family. She belonged to a low (katia) caste. Bright, vivacious and confident, Sarla
was quick to speak her mind. However, extremely weak in math, she struggled with her

studies. Because of poverty, Sarla didn’t plan on continue schooling after 8th grade.

45

Raj: He was a cousin of Sarla, and lived in the same mohalla (neighborhood) as her. He
too came from a very poor landless family, and lived with his parents and a younger
brother in a small one-room house with mud floor and walls. Like Sarla, he too was a
first generation learner in his family, and like her worked on farms besides continuing his
education. During summer vacations he went to work in a brick kiln. Despite being very
poor, he went for extra tuitions, and hoped to pass this year after failing for one year. He

wanted to continue his education beyond 8th grade.

Narendra: One of the star students, Narendra was one of the most vocal students in the
class. He lived in a neighboring village. His parents were illiterate. However, they owned
some land and cattle. Narendra lived with his extended family in a bigger house. He
belonged to an upper (purabia) caste. Though he helped his parents in their family farm,

Narendra didn’t have to work for money. He too planned to continue studying.

Amaresh: Another good student, Amaresh didn’t participate much in class discussions.
But I found him easy to talk to both in school and at home. He lived with his two siblings
and father in a rented two-room portion that was part of one of the biggest houses in
Rajkheda. Narendra’s family had shifted to this village some years back from Sagar (a
town in Madhya Pradesh). Narendra’s father belonged to an upper (soni) caste and a
family of jewelers. However, Narendra’s father for some reason had left his family’s
traditional occupation, and now worked as a guard in a weighing station close by. His
elder brother had left school after grade 9, and now worked as an apprentice in a grocery

store in the neighboring town. Amaresh did not work for money.

Amita: She was the sister of Narendra, and a diligent student. As their mother had expired

some years back, Amita was the prime caregiver of the family, besides being a full time

46

student of 8th grade. Because of household work, she had to miss school or come late
some times. I chose her as a focus student as I thought Amaresh and she would make a
good contrast. Initially she seemed receptive to the idea of being a focus student, but later
on began avoiding talking to me. One day after some days of insistent persuasion from
my side, she finally told me that she didn’t wish to talk to me. And I lost a very

promising focus student.

D_ata collection phase:

After about a week of visiting the school daily, I started collecting data as a participant
observer in the 8th grade science classroom of the school that was taught by Raghuvanshi.
For each middle school grade, the school held one science period of 45 minutes duration
(officially speaking) every day. Barring few exceptions, I observed and both audio and
video recorded this science period for the 8th grade daily. For most of the days, I also sat
and took notes in classrooms of other teachers for this grade. Though my theoretical
lenses did influence what I treated as salient and significant, I attempted to record all the
events and practices where students could be identifiably seen in a dialogic engagement

with others and the material objects.

Categories of data collected:

I interacted with participants in different places and contexts. Each encounter was
recorded either in scratch notes or remembered as head notes. The main data categories

were I

1. Ethnographic field notes: These were composed out of my scratch, head notes, audio

and video recordings resulting from (a) participant observation of 8th grade classroom, (b)

47

visits to students’ homes and interactions with their parents and other adults, and (c)

casual conversations I had with the participants inside and out of the 8th grade classroom.

2. Interviews: I did loosely structured interviews with 18 students of the 8th grade as
well as all the 4 middle school teachers. I audio recorded all the interviews. Initially I
wanted to interview only focus students. But I found that students liked the idea of being
interviewed, and thus many more students wanted to me to interview them. I am inclined
to think that this was perhaps because for the first time some adult was asking them about
their opinions, views and experiences in a nonjudgmental situation. So I happily
interviewed any 8th grade student who expressed his desire. Predictably more boys than
girls volunteered to talk to me. Sometimes I had to interview more than one students at a
time, as some students insisted on bringing their friends along. I didn’t have any
questionnaire with me for interviews with either students or teachers. Just some talking

points. So, with students I first tried to know:

a. their personal background and the kind of life they led at home: their daily
routine, family, occupation of parents, the household chores they do and other

responsibilities they take up at home, their future plans, etc.

b. their views on schooling: how they valued education, what they liked about
their school, what they didn’t like about it, ideas about ideal teaching, how
Raghuvanshi taught science, what they felt about asking content related
questions in classroom, use of study guides to pass exams, usefulness of
learning science at school, chapters in their science textbooks that they liked
and the ones they didn’t like, how was science different from other subjects,

BIC.

48

c. things they knew about and could do in connection with agriculture, taking

care of cattle, cooking, human diseases, working with electricity and electrical

appliances; from whom and how they learned what they knew and could do.

d. new things they learned about different science topics in their science periods

that they didn’t know about earlier.

e. anything else they wanted to tell me.

It often happened that I was not able to cover all the talking points with some students as

I would let them go as soon as I felt that they were losing interest and attention. With

focus students, however, I sat more than once to cover all the talking points.

With teachers, I mainly wanted to explore their ideas about teaching, students and

parents. Thus, my main talking points were:

a.

b.

their personal and professional background.

their characterization of students in terms of their motivation to learn and

understanding of content.
their expectations from students.
the preparation they do before teaching a lesson.

their conception of an ideal teacher, how close they find themselves to this

ideal.
positive and negative factors that influence their teaching.

value parents and students give to education.

49

I probed Raghuvanshi much more extensively than other teachers, and tried to know his
opinions on things I noticed in his classroom, such as why so few students did
homework, why don’t many students ask questions in his periods, where he thought
students were in their understanding of the topic he was then teaching, how he felt about

his science content and pedagogical understanding, etc.

3. Student artifacts: science notebooks and examination answer copies of focus students.
4. Other artifacts: science textbooks, administrative and policy manual for the teachers.
5. Photographs of the village and school.

Transcribing speech data:

The analysis of classroom discourse needed use of speech data along with ethnographic
field notes. Now speech data can be transcribed in varied more or less detailed ways
depending upon the nature of the arguments one is hoping to make on their basis. On the
issue of the level of detail one must present in the transcribed data, I find ourselves
agreeing with Gee when he says, “The validity of an analysis is not a matter of how
detailed one’s transcript is. It is a matter of how the transcript works together with the
other elements of the analysis to create a “trustworthy” analysis” (1999, pp. 88 — 89). I
found an abridged version of conventions (Ref. Table 1) used by Dyson (1997) in her
study of elementary children’s social and textual lives, for transcribing classroom talk as

appropriate for my analytic purposes.

50

Table 3.1: Conventions used in the presentation of transcripts

 

 

 

 

(abc) Parentheses enclosing text contain notes, usually
about contextual and nonverbal information.
() Empty parentheses indicate unintelligible words or
phrases.
_a_b_c An underlined word indicates a stressed word.
ABC A capitalized word or phrase indicates increased
volume

 

Ellipsis points indicate omitted data.

 

Conventional punctuation marks Indicate end of sentences or utterances.

 

-- Dashes interrupted sequences

 

 

 

 

ngaeriods indicate a hearablgause.

 

Data Analysis Procedures

Unit of analysis:

The unit of analysis for this study emerges from the confluence of research questions,
theoretical framework and research design of the study. As mentioned at the beginning of
this chapter, this study is basically an ethnography of communication which attempts to
explore and understand participants’ dialogic engagement with the social and material
world in different discursive contexts. The theoretical lenses of the study view this
engagement as strategic and improvised social action accomplished in real time with the
help of whatever circulating discourses the person had access to and could make use at

that moment in space and time, and influenced by her intentionality, desires and personal

51

history. If these discourses enable social action, they also constrain and influence it. In
other words, a participant’s action is assumed to be occasioned not by pervading, ever
present and ever active causal relations, but by the transient, contingent coming together
of multiple factors at the moment an action takes place.

Thus, the nature of research questions and the theoretical framework goads me to get past
the temptation of invoking universals, historical constants and structural assumptions for
understanding participants actions and practices, and look at the dialogic or
communicative event itself as the basic unit of analysis. A research approach akin to
“eventalization” that Foucault attempted in his efforts to understand discursive practices
(Foucault, 1988). Hymes too recommended a communicative event as the basic unit of
analysis for ethnographies of communication as it enabled a researcher to unravel and
understand the “patterning of communicative behavior” in a speech community, a
sociocultural group that in the theoretical framework of this study, would be more
appropriately recognized as a discourse community (Saville-Troike, 1989).

Following Saville-Troike (1989, p. 27), I define a single event “by a unified set of
components throughout, beginning with the same general purpose of communication, the
same general topic, and involving the same participants, generally using the same
language variety, maintaining the same tone or key and the same rules for interaction, in
the same setting.” Further, defining the boundaries of a communicative event Saville-
Troike says, “An event terminates whenever there is a change in the major participants,
their role-relationships, or the focus of attention. If there is no change in major
participants and setting, the boundary between events is often marked by a period of

silence and perhaps change of body position” (p. 27). In keeping with the focus on

52

dialogues in the study, and to highlight the dialogic nature of participants actions, I label

these events as dialogic events.

In accordance with the aforementioned definition of an event, I analyzed each dialogic
event in terms of in terms of:

1. participants;

2. setting of action (time and space);

3. scene (as defined culturally by the participants);

4. purpose of action;

5. Nature of action (form, content, addressivity, etc.)

6. sociocultural means (tools, discourses) used;

7. consequences of action.

Now, I understand that different researchers have demarcated the boundary of an event
differently. For instance, Mehan (1982), in her seminal paper, The structure of classroom
events, takes a communicative event to be a larger unit than Saville-Troike (1989) does.
For her, a science period would be a communicative event, whereas Saville-Troike would
label it as a communicative situation. I have chosen to go for Saville-Troike’s
conceptualization as, I think, it better suits my rhetorical and analytical purposes.
Besides, as Gee & Green (1998) say, the size of the unit does not matter, but is more
important is to understand what the participants are doing together, i.e. to analyze “the
choices of words and actions that members of a group use to engage with each other

within and across time, actions, and activity” (pp. 126-127).

53

Analysis of data:

Classroom data for each class period were first broken up into different dialogic events.

Thereafier, each interactional episode was analyzed at two levels:
(a) socio-linguistic level: where I looked at how students responded to the official
agenda, the teacher’s implementation of the official agenda and his response to
students’ actions; and
(b) science content or discursive level: where I focused on the nature of students’
utterances in terms of the knowledge and discourses students used by them, science
topic, the exigencies that led to their utterances and the effect their actions had on the

classroom discourse.

The subsequent steps in analysis based on included writing analytic memos, identification
of themes, focused coding, and writing integrative memos (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw,
1995). Finally, following Emerson et al’s and Foley's (2002) advice, rather than
presenting a tightly organized analytical argument in a “scientific ethnographic realist
narrative style”, the results of the study have been written as an analytically thematized
narrative tale in a “more reflexive realist narrative style”. A tale that not only provides a
“thick description” of participants experiences and interpretations, but also weaves in
theoretical insights in a dialogic engagement of theory with data. Thus, this paper
presents a multivocal ethnography that is resonant with dialogic overtones of both

participants’ voices and my theoretical commitments.

54

Chapter 4
The Study Site

To someone who hasn’t been to India and hasn’t directly or vicariously experienced the
life of a student or a teacher in an Indian school, interpreting the results of this study
without the benefit of a framing context can be a difficult and even misleading task. This
chapter, thus, aims to create multiple frames of reference that will help the reader to
situate and interpret the lives and actions of the participants in ways relevant to the
research agenda of the study. I start with a perspective on the status of human
development, especially education, at the national level and take the reader to
successively smaller scales of state, district, village, the school, and finally the 8‘” grade
science classroom. To help the reader interpret the events I observed in the 8th grade
science classroom, I also describe the main elements of two discourses that appeared to
matter the most in influencing the actions of teachers and students - the teacher

professional discourse and the school science discourse.

The status of human development: The National Scenario

It has become a cliche now to call India a land of great contrasts. But cliches do possess
the virtue of being largely uncontested. Thus, India, along with China, often comes across
in mainstream media and in speeches by politicians as a looming threat to America’s
prosperity and global dominance. It is routinely put in the front rank of high-growth

globalizing countries (Human development report, 2005). However, the suicide of more

55

than 25,000 farmers since 1997 in rural India due to indebtedness and entry of
transnational corporations in the agricultural sector, a ongoing tragedy largely under-
reported in media, tells a totally different story (Shiva, 2004, April 5). As it so happens,
the flip side to India’s emergence on the global scene remains depressingly stubborn.
Indian government admits as much when its own documents report that India’s relative
ranking on the United Nations Human Development Index has remained at a low of 127
among 177 countries for the last three years in a row, and the incidence of poverty is still
at an unacceptable high of 26% of the total population (Economic survey 2005-2006,

2006)’

Part of the reason for continuing low level of human development in India may be the
legacy of colonialism that ended in 1947 (Human development report, 2005; Reddy,
2004). In 1951, the first census done in independent India revealed a literacy rate of mere
18% (the female literacy rate was a paltry 8.86%). The gross enrollment ratio - the
proportion of children in the 6-14 years age group actually enrolled in elementary schools
— was then only 32.1. However, part of the blame also goes to the political elite that took
over power from the British in 1947. For instance, the India constitution that was adopted
in 1951 enjoined the state to provide free and compulsory education for all children till
the age of fourteen years within a period of ten years of its commencement. However, as

Govinda, (2002) says, “Afier the proclamation to establish a mass education system in

 

' It is a standard (though not the only one) practice in India to calculate poverty rate on the basis of head-
count ratio which is the ratio of people are not able to have a nationally desirable minimum level of
consumption expenditure, based on a standard balanced diet prescribed by India’s Nutrition Advisory
Committee, to the total population of the region for which poverty rate is being calculated. Only food
required for subsistence is considered to calculate a person’s consumption expenditure. Thus, a person
falling below the poverty line is basically destitute as he/she can’t even afford to have two square meals a
day.

56

the country, it took national planners around thirty years to specify distance and
population norms for opening new primary schools so that access is not denied to
children due to physical distance” (p. 11). Further, according to Govinda, till 19805,
“establishing a school meant no more than posting a teacher to work in the school.” Thus,
though the number of schools in rural areas steadily grew over the decades, the majority
of the Indian population that lives in rural areas, till 19803, either lacked access to schools
or at best managed to get a very poor quality education. For instance, according to the
1991 census the literacy rate in rural areas was mere 44.69%, and only 39.3% of girls in
the age group 6 — 10 years, were attending school in rural India, as against the all India
average of 45.4% (Census of India, 1991). Here it is pertinent to point out that in India
the school system, especially at the elementary level, is totally dominated by the
government run schools. About 85.3% of the schools in India are government run schools

(Mehta, 2005).

Thus, for several decades after India’s independence, policy makers failed to appreciate
the tremendous demand for access to education even among the poorest sections of the
Indian society. Things changed for the better with the adoption of a new National Policy
on Education (NPE) at the federal level in 1986. As NPE confessed, “... problems of
access, quality, quantity, utility and financial outlay, accumulated over the years, have
now assumed such massive proportions that they must be tackled with the utmost
urgency. Education in India stands at the crossroads today. Neither normal linear
expansion nor the existing pace and nature of improvement can meet the needs of the
situation” (National Policy on Education, 1986). Thus, stressing that “education is

essential for all” (p. 4), NPE 1986 advocated “special emphasis on the removal of

57

disparities and to equalize educational opportunity by attending to the specific needs of

those who have been denied equality so far” (p. 7).

NPE (1986) led to adoption of several state sponsored programs and initiatives that were
aimed to improve access to and quality of education for the people of India. The
important examples are: the current ongoing campaign for Universalization of
Elementary Education (UEE), the District Primary Education Program (DPEP), Mahila
Samakhya project, the Total Literacy Campaign, the Lok Jumbish and Shiksha Karmi
projects in Rajasthan, the Bihar Education Project, and the Uttar Pradesh Basic Education
project (Roy & Khan, 2003). As a result of these efforts, India’s literacy rate rose from
52.2% in 1991 to 65.38% in 2001 — the highest increase in any one decade. In rural areas,
the rate of grth of literacy rate, over the corresponding period, was as much as 14.75%
(as compared to the 7.2% increase in urban areas). As a result, the rural literacy rate rose
from 44.69%. in 1991 to 59.4% in 2001 (Census of India, 1991; , Economic survey 2001-
2002, 2002). Thus, big strides have been made in increasing access to education for
Indian masses in the last 15 years. India today has the second largest education system in
the world. Aggarwal, (2002) giving an account of Indian education system’s gargantuan
size reports, “It consists of nearly 610 thousand primary and 185 thousand upper primary
schools, about a quarter million non-formal education centers, about 1.87 million teachers
and 110 million students study in primary classes in the recognized schools (1997-98).
The number of students in primary classes in India is larger than the total population of
the neighboring Bangladesh” (p. 1). According to the 7'h All India Educational Survey

conducted in the year 1998-1999, about 87% of rural habitations had access to a primary

58

school within a distance of 1 kilometer - an increase of 21% since 1993 when 6‘h All

India Educational Survey was conducted. An impressive achievement, no doubt.

Table 4.1: India: Education status

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No. Indirect indicators of ‘quality’ of education Measure

1 Dropout rate (1998-99) for girls at primary (grade I — V) stage 41%

2 Dropout rate (1998-99) for boys at primary (grade I — V) stage 38.6%

3 Dropout rate (1998-99) for girls at middle (grade I —- VIII) stage 60.1%

4 Dropout rate (1998-99) for boys at middle (grade I - VIII) stage 54.4%

5 Pupil-teacher ratio in rural primary government schools (2004) 44

6 Percentage of rural primary schools having an electrical 11.5%
connection (2004)

7 Percentage of graduate (all category and regular) teachers in 25
primary schools (2004)

8 Average number of teachers in government schools (2004) 3.43

9 Percentage of schools receiving TLM (teaching-learning material) 52%
grant in 2003

10 Average number of classrooms in rural elementary schools 2.5

 

 

 

Source for l, 2, 3, & 4: 7th All India School Education Survey, 1999
Source for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10: Mehta, 2005

But what about the quality of education offered in Indian schools? Gauging quality of

education offered in schools has been a difficult challenge for educational researchers in

India. Little reliable data is available about students’ achievement of cognitive and non-

cognitive competencies (Aggarwal, 2002; Govinda, 2002). However, on the basis a few

school-based indicators alone, such as drop-out rates, it can be easily inferred that the

quality of education offered in Indian schools is decidedly not something to be optimistic

about (refer table 4.1).

59

 

In terms of pedagogy and curriculum material that get used in Indian schools, especially
those that are run by government, a few important conclusions can be drawn on the basis
of available research. Since, the focus of this study is science education, I’ll illustrate my
arguments with examples from science education wherever possible. The National Policy
on Education (1986) argued for strengthening science education “so as to develop in the
child well defined abilities and values such as the spirit of inquiry, creativity, objectivity,
the courage to question, and an aesthetic sensibility”, and to “enable the learner to acquire
problem solving and decision making skills and to discover the relationship of science

with health, agriculture, industry and other aspects of daily life” (p. 7).

In the last 15 years, through several initiatives that were mentioned earlier, government
has tried to improved the quality of science education by revising textbooks, involving
teachers in the process of revision of textbooks, and offering professional development
workshops to serving teachers (Dinkar & Smith, 2002; Rarnpal, 2002). Speaking of
government’s attempts to measure the success of these efforts, Aggarwal says, “While
indicators to measure the access, retention and internal efficiency of the educational
system in terms of participation rate, accessibility, repetition rates, promotion rates,
dropout rates and input-output ratio have been developed, but little information is
available about the learners’ achievement of cognitive and non-cognitive competencies”
(2002). Since 2005, however, the central government has started publishing a report card
on elementary education for each state, and a similar report card is also available for most
districts with data from the last three years (District elementary education report card,
2005; Mehta, 2005). However, reflecting the priority of the state, the performance

indicators are all infrastructure related. The indicators that can speak, even if very

60

inadequately, about the quality of instruction in classrooms are the pass percentages,
percentage of students scoring more than 60% in annual exams of students at terminal
stages of primary (grade 5) and middle school (grade 8), retention rates, net enrollment
ratios, etc. Further, given the large inter-state and intra-state variations in school facilities,
quality of teachers and learning outcomes, any judgment on government efforts to

improve quality of education on their basis would face serious validity concerns.

But some things we do know that speak to the challenges government faces in their
efforts in this direction. First, the sociocultural context in which schools, especially those
in rural areas, function is such that teachers command a great degree of authority from
and power over their students (Kumar, 2005; Sarangpani, 2003). According to
Sarangpani, this authority of the authority almost gets naturalized as a taken-for-granted
feature, and is used to not only maintain behavioral control and discipline among
students, but also tends to position teachers as knowers and regulators of knowledge
construction, and students as passive obedient recipients of state sponsored knowledge.
In such an episteme, education reform efforts have to struggle very hard to give
sustenance to desirable student attributes as recommended by the NPE (1986), such as
“spirit of inquiry, creativity, objectivity, the courage to question, and an aesthetic
sensibility”.

Second, though efforts to revise textbooks and curriculum were made, often under the
impetus of foreign agencies funding reform initiatives, not much effort was directed at
deliberations on the curriculum (Dinkar & Smith, 2002). As Dinkar and Smith observed
in curriculum and textbook revision workshops, much of the effort was geared at

“identifying current difficulties faced by children and teachers” in transecting the extant

61

curriculum, and removing them. Thus, the pedagogical, epistemological and ontological

foundations of the existing curricula were by and large left unchallenged.

Third, in order to make education accessible to all sections of the society, the teacher
workforce was increased by recruiting less qualified teachers. This has adversely
impacted not only the status of teachers, but also the quality of instruction offered to

students (Dinkar & Smith, 2002; Kumar, 2005).

Fourth, government bureaucracy maintained a firm control over the curriculum and
textbook revision efforts that got eventually mainstreamed. The space for grassroots
based organizations and groups to develop alternative and more progressive models of
education remained limited (Rampal, 2002). Alternative attempts at intervention in state
schools that showed much promise in making a marked qualitative improvement in
teaching of science in schools, such as the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program
coordinated by Eklavya, were marginalized during this period. Thus the state failed to
mainstream their desirable pedagogical and curricular principles (Kumar, 2005; Rampal,

2002)

Fifth, in absence of adequate and commensurate professional development opportunities
for teachers so that they could successfully implement progressive pedagogical principles
of child-centered and joyful learning, all the fine sounding policy prescriptions remained

mere slogans for the teachers (Dinkar & Smith, 2002; Kumar, 2005).

As a result, the science teaching has remained textbook centered (Kumar, 1988). It is
pertinent to point here that these textbooks are prescribed by the state, and a science
teacher has “no freedom to choose what to teach. She must complete the prescribed

syllabus with the help of the prescribed textbook Resources other than the textbook

62

are not available in the majority of schools, and where they are available they are seldom
used. Fear of damage to such resources (e.g., play or science equipment) and the poor
chances of repair or replacement discourages the teacher from using them” (Kumar,
1988). In a critique of science textbooks prescribed in government run schools, Koul
(1997) pointed out that these science textbooks present, “science in its product form,
which is a science that gives prime emphasis to its established concepts, laws, and
theories. Both the concept development and questioning manifest this decontextualized
form. Very few activities ask students to generate and test knowledge by applying it to
new contextual situations”. Rampal (2002)makes a similar critique when she alleges that
in the curriculum reform efforts initiated by the state, “issues of 'relevance and life
orientation' nave not really been addressed. Recognition of local and indigenous
knowledge systems, with emphasis on learning in a contextual manner, through the work
of most people, engaged in agriculture or artisanal trades, has still not been accepted as a

legitimate focus of the curriculum” (p. 166).

We can say that government efforts to improve the quality of science instruction have
been successful in terms of better infrastructure and access to formal instruction for most
kids. Textbooks and curricula also now have more inputs from the teachers. But as this
study shows, the practice of teaching and learning of science in schools still continues
along traditional lines. Thus, much remains to be done by the state before it can claim to
provide access to the type of science education advocated in national policy documents.
One indirect indication of the failure in this direction comes from the reasons children
quote for never attending or dropping out of schools (National Family Health Survey - 2,

1999). According to this nationwide survey, after cost considerations, “not interested in

63

studies” comes as the most important reason for choosing to stay away or opting out of
school system, for both boys and girls. To me, these kids’ lack of interest in studies
comes across more as a failure of school system to offer an education personally

meaningful and relevant to the students, than as a reflection of their competencies.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that there seems to be a general agreement among
educational researchers that in an effort to universalize elementary education for all,
quality concerns have been given short shrifi by the Indian state, and an overwhelming
majority of Indian children, especially those from weaker underprivileged sections of
Indian society can at best hope to receive a very inferior quality of education through
formal education system (Aggarwal, 2002; Dinkar & Smith, 2002; Kumar, 2005;
Rarnachandran, 2004, July 24; Rampal, April, 2004; Rao, 2000, November 25; Roy &
Khan, 2003). It goes to the credit of the current government of India that it has confessed
failure on this front. The latest Economic survey, put out by the government of India
admits that “It is however important now to shift emphasis and focus attention on the
quality of outcome of the various social sector programmes (sic) rather than their quantity
or coverage. For example, the quality of education being imparted at the elementary
level, rather than just access or only enrolment of children in school, needs to be
emphasized (sic) through appropriate modifications in the guidelines and their
implementation. While universal coverage has been achieved in terms of opening of
health centres in most states, the quality of public healthcare services both in the rural and

urban areas need urgent improvement” (p. 21).

64

The Status of Human Development: The State of Madhya Pradesh

Now before I present a portrait of the study site, a brief description of the state of Madhya
Pradesh and the district Hoshangabad where this the village Rajkheda is located would be
in order. In keeping with the theme of this study, I focus on the status of education of this
region. Madhya Pradesh when translated into English literally means central province.
The name is befitting as it is located right in the geographic center of India. Till 2000 it
was the biggest state of India. On November 1, 2000, it lost that status when its southern
region of Chattisgarh was lopped off to make a separate Chattisgarh state. Madhya
Pradesh is a Hindi speaking state with rich history and abundant natural resources. It also
holds the distinction of being home to about 40% of India’s tribal population. Agriculture
is the mainstay of the regional economy with about 80% residents depending upon it for
their livelihood. Hoshangabad district is in the Narmada valley region of the state.
Because of the Narmada river that flows along the northern boundary of this district, this

district is blessed with sufficient water resources to make it agriculturally prosperous.

Till the early nineties, Madhya Pradesh lagged behind the national average on most
human resource development indicators. It was one of the four big bimaru (sick) states
that pulled down the human resource development index for the whole nation by several
notches.2 For instance, in 1991, its literacy rate was a paltry 44%, as compared with the
national average of 52.2%. The literacy rate among women was only 30%, as against the
national figure of 39.2%. Other educational indicators weren’t encouraging either. Only
42.8% (6th All India School Education Survey, 1993) of the habitations had access to a

school within a distance of 1 kilometer, and the net enrollment ratio, in the age group 6 —

 

2 The other three bimaru states are Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar.

65

11 years, was just 47.4% (Census of India, 1991)3 . One major reason behind these low
figures was that “the norms for opening a school in a village with population between
250 and 300 ignored the scattered and inaccessible habitation pattern of the state, where
people live dispersed in small household communities, one to four kilometres (sic) away
from the main village. These areas are generally inhabited by socio-economically
deprived communities resulting in their needs getting submerged within standardised
(sic) norms and strategies. Planning was centralised (sic) and so failed to reach out to

the needs of the people” (The Madhya Pradesh Human development Report, 2002).

Taking cognizance of the severity of the problem, the state government of Madhya
Pradesh launched several schemes to achieve universalization of education, the most
famous being the Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) that was launched in 1997. This is
a demand-based scheme according to which any community without a schooling facility
within a distance of 1 kilometer and having at least 40 children (25 in case of tribal
community) can demand from the state a schooling facility, and the state government
upon receiving such a request has to provide a school to that community within 90 days.
The teacher is chosen by the community, and the community also provides space and
some supplemental resources. Whereas the state’s role is to train the teacher, provide
teaching-learning material, academic supervision, seed money for infrastructure, and

salary to the teacher (The Madhya Pradesh Human development Report, 2002).

As a result of EGS and other government schemes, the state was able to provide access to

schooling to all communities by the year 2002 (The Madhya Pradesh Human

 

3 Net enrollment ratio is the number of students enrolled in a level of education who belong in the relevant
age group, as a percentage of the population in that age group. Thus, a ratio of 47.4% implies that only that
percent of the kids in that age group were enrolled (and presumably) attending school.

66

development Report, 2002). Other education indicators have also shown a dramatic
improvement since early 19908. For instance, the state has almost managed to bridge the
gap between its literacy rate (64.1%) and the national average (65.4%) - representing a
decadal growth of about 18.3% (Census of India, 2001). The spread of literacy in rural
areas has been more impressive as the most of the government schemes were targeted at
rural habitations. The literacy rate for women in rural areas increased from 19.2% (the
national average 30.6%) in 1991 to 42.96% (the national average being 46.7%) in 2001
(The Madhya Pradesh Human development Report, 2002). Similarly, the net enrollment
ratio at primary level, i.e. in the age group 6 — 11 years, is now at 89.73% (Mehta, 2005).
This indicates a significant improvement over last 15 years. However, access to education
does not immediately imply access to good quality education. Besides there are some
other important indicators that show that though a lot has been achieved in recent years,

the status of education in the state is still far from satisfactory.

For instance, the net enrollment ratio for middle school age group drops to mere 46.13%,
i.e. about 54% of children population in the age group 11 — 14 years that should be
enrolled in and attending middle school, are out of school(Mehta, 2005). That is an
unacceptably high number. Similarly, the dropout rate at primary level is a high 21.4%
("Sarva Sikhsa Abhiyan Madhya Pradesh: Education Profile", 2004). ("Sarva Sikhsa
Abhiyan Madhya Pradesh: Education Profile", 2004). In terms of academic achievement,
we have examinations results as one major data source. According to this data, 64.71% of
girl students managed to pass the 8th grade annual examination. However, the percentage
of girls passing with more than 60% marks was only 21.12% percent (Mehta, 2005). The

boys were a little worse off than girls in this regard. The poor academic performance of

67

students needs to be seen in context extant learning conditions at school that are by no
means conducive to high learning achievements. For instance, the student classroom ratio
for middle schools is a high 60 (in fact, in the previous year, it was a shade better at 56),
though the teacher-student ratio of 28 was far better 28 than the all schools average of 32
(Mehta, 2005). Also, according to Mehta, only about 7% of the teachers in middle
schools had received any in-service training during the previous year, while 55% of the
para-teachers didn’t have any professional preparation prior to teaching. It is noteworthy
to mention here that for some years now, the state government has stopped hiring regular
teachers. The ensuing vacancies are being filled by para-teachers that are recruited by
local bodies, like local village or the district council. These para-teachers are paid much
less for the same amount of work as done by regular teachers who were appointed by the
state government, and also do not have the security of tenure. Currently about one-third
of the teachers in middle school belong to this category (Mehta, 2005). The government
justifies staffing the schools with para-teachers on grounds of economic efficiency, and
urgent need for universalization of elementary education (The Madhya Pradesh Human

development Report, 2002).

68

Table 4.2: Madhya Pradesh: Education status

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No. Selected education indicators Measure

1. Literacy rate (2001) 64.1%

2. Rural literacy rate for women (2001) 42.96%

3. Net enrollment ratio at primary school level (2005) 89.73%

4. Drop-out rate at the primary level (2005) 21 .4%

5. Net enrollment ratio at middle school level (2005) 46.13%

6. Percentage of girl students passing 8th grade examination (2005) 64.71%

7. Percentage of girl students passing 8th grade examination with 21.12%
more than 60% marks (2005)

8. Student-classroom ratio (2005) 60

9. Teacher-student ratio (2005) 28

10. Percentage of teachers in middle schools who had received any 7%
in-service training during the previous year (2005)

11. Percentage of para-teachers in middle schools without 55%
professional training (2005)

12. Para-teachers as a percentage of total teacher population in 33%

 

middle schools (2005)

 

 

Hoshangabad district lies on the northern end of the Satpura plateau, and right in the
center of Narmada valley. The Narmada River flows along its northern border. In 2001, it
had a population of about 1.1 million, which isn’t terribly huge by Indian standards. As
with rest of the country, the majority of its population, about 61%, lives in villages (The
Madhya Pradesh Human development Report, 2002). Thanks to adequate sources of
irrigation, net irrigated area comprises 78% of its net sown area. ("Hoshangabad - At a
glance"). The national average in this regard is 40% (Agriculture research data back,

2004). Further, according to the state human development report, this district ranks 14til

The status of human development: The District of Hoshangabad

69

 

(out of 48) in the state in terms of human resources development. However, in terms of

the gender related development index, its ranking is much worse at 29 (out of 48).

As in other districts of the state (and perhaps the whole country), the state dominates the
local education system. For instance, 81% of the schools in the district are government
schools which thus account for 75.4% of the total enrolled students from grades 1 to 12.4
("District elementary education report card: 2004-05", 2005). In terms of education, the
district elementary education report card for the year 2004-05 puts the overall literacy
rate at 70% and female literacy at 57.6% (as against the corresponding state averages of
63.7% and 50.3%). By the year 2000, all habitations had at least a primary school within
a distance of 1 kilometer, thereby enabling the state to declare the gross access ratio for
elementary level in this district to be 100% (The Madhya Pradesh Human development
Report, 2002). However, in keeping with the trends in rest of the district, the net
enrollment ratios for elementary and middle school level were 87.4% and 51%
respectively for the academic year 2004-05 ("District elementary education report card:
2004-05", 2005). Thus, by the end of middle school, roughly half of the kids in the age
group 11 — 14 years were out of the school system. Other indicators too indicate that
despite considerable progress considerable distance needs to be covered before the state
can be credited with satisfactorily discharging its obligation to provide access to quality
and free education for all. For instance, according to the district elementary education
report, as many as 25.9% students at the middle school level were enrolled in a middle
school without a building. Pass percentage at 8th grade annual examination for girls was

57.58%, and only 22.71% percent girls were able to get more than 60% marks in these

 

4 Primary schools in M.P. start from grade 1.

70

examinations. Finally, in keeping with the state average, the para teachers comprised
about 32% of the total teacher population at the middle school level ("District elementary
education report card: 2004-05", 2005). Thus, we see that in overall terms, Hoshangabad

is a bit above average in terms of education as compared with other districts of the state.

The State Education System

As mentioned above, the government totally dominates the state education system.
However, it allows privately managed schools, and even supports eligible schools with
government aid. The 73'd/74th amendments of the Indian constitution heralded an era of
democratic decentralization in the state. The local level democratic institutions, like the
village and district councils, were revitalized with the infusion of new powers and
responsibilities in 1994 (The Madhya Pradesh Human development Report, 2002). In the
education sector, these bodies were given the responsibility of (a) managing and running
schools opened under the Education Guarantee Scheme, (b) construction, repair and
expansion of school buildings, (c) provision of equipment, ((1) recruitment of para-
teachers, (e) implementation of various education incentive schemes. Further, village
level village education committees (VECs) have been created in villages with powers to
supervise local schools. To assist VEC, local municipal body, such as gram sabha and
village council (panchayat), and the school, creation of parent-teacher- associations
(PTA) has been mandated in each village to “supervise and review all development,
academic, administrative and financial activities of the school” (The Madhya Pradesh
Human development Report, 2002). The teachers, as a result, are now pretty accountable

to the VEC and PTA for their performance. The state on the other hand, has redefined its

71

role in schools to (a) providing grant-in-aid to private schools, (b) monitoring and
improving quality in teaching and teacher training, (c) arranging facilities for physical
education and sports, (d) prescribe syllabi for schools, (e) printing and distribution of

textbooks, (f) and conducting exams for the students.

Thus, the state has to a substantial extent ceded its traditional power to supervise the day-
to-day functioning of the school (which in any case, it could never do in the past) to the
local institutions, it has chosen to keep to itself control over the curriculum, teacher
professional development and ‘teaching-learning material’ to be used in the school.
Admittedly, there is far greater district level decentralization and involvement of the
teachers in in-service professional development and preparation of ‘teaching-learning
material’ now than was the case about 15 years back (Dinkar & Smith, 2002; , The
Madhya Pradesh Human development Report, 2002). However, the local community is
still out of the picture as far as curricular matters are concerned. Curriculum can be
thought as consisting of content, pedagogy, learning outcomes and assessment strategies.
Till date the local community has no de jure role to play in influencing any of these
curricular elements. Though it has become customary now to take inputs from teachers in
formulation of curriculum and writing of textbooks, the final shape and form of these
teaching resources are still decided centrally in the state capital by the education

bureaucracy and a panel of curriculum experts (Dinkar & Smith, 2002).

Thus, for each school discipline, the teacher in a government school is given a syllabus
that also doubles as a pacing guide. Basically, the syllabus comprises different chapters
of the state prescribed textbook that the teacher is required to teach from. To provide

supplementary teaching-learning material in addition to the textbook, the state provides

72

for the establishment of a school-based library, and multimedia material equipped
computer centers at the local jan Shiksha Kendras (people education centers). However,
the final assessment of student learning outcomes is done through a high-stake
examination at the end of the academic year that is strictly based on the prescribed
textbook. As assessment usually drives instruction, the use of supplementary material
becomes rather incidental to classroom instruction, as I discovered during my fieldwork.

The private schools, though, have much greater freedom in choice of curricular material.

The teacher in a government can decide the nature of the annual summative assessment in
all years except the terminal ones for each state of schooling. That is, the formulation of
exam papers and the evaluation of student responses is done externally (of the school)
according to government prescribed procedures at the end of grades 5, 8, 10 and 12. The
annual examination is high-stakes in the sense that failure to pass the exam can lead to
retention of the student in the current grade. The government schools though follow a

general no-retention policy till the grade 5.

When I talk about government schools here, I refer only to schools run by the Madhya
Pradesh government. The central government also runs schools in the state. But these
schools follow their own curricula, textbooks, teacher recruitment and professional
development programs that are different from the state government’s. In addition, there
also are private schools that are affiliated to national education boards, such as Central
Board of Secondary Education or The Council for the Indian School Certificate
Examinations. However, the schools following other curricula and affiliated to education
boards other than of the state are in minority. Besides, such schools are by and large

urban schools. In rural schools, state mandated curricula is the norm.

73

However, this wasn’t the case always. The state for a long time enjoyed the distinction of
being a breeding ground of many promising alternative educational interventions, the
most famous of them being the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program (HSTP, for
short). As I mentioned in the beginning, till 2001, HSTP was in effect in all the
government middle schools and government aided private schools of the districts of
Hoshangabad and Harda, and in 13 other school clusters in as many districts of the state.
Thus, it covered more than 100,000 students and 2,500 science teachers in about 1000
schools. As mentioned earlier, the program was based on the core pedagogical principles
of learning-by-discovery, learning-through-activity and learning-from-environment. This
intervention was comprehensive and multifaceted in the sense that it comprised
implementation of not only a different science curriculum and pedagogy in schools, but
also followed a different paradigm in assessment system, teacher professional
development strategies, and bureaucratic structures. It was a collaborative effort by
academicians and scientists in several leading universities and science research institutes
of the country who were supported in field by Eklavya, a non-government organization
with focus on field-based educational innovations. This intervention was guided and
sustained by the hope that if it can be shown that science can be taught according to the
aforementioned progressive pedagogical principles in even poor, under-equipped,
government run mainstream schools, then the state will step up and mainstream the

innovations for the entire education system of the state.

It goes to the credit of the state government that it did adopt some elements of HSTP for
implementation for the whole state. However, this mainstreaming was done very

selectively, and in a piecemeal manner that diluted the pedagogical principles of the

74

program to a great extent. But, what was worse was that the state barricaded the space for
innovation for non-government agencies by withdrawing HSTP and its sister programs
from the government schools in 2002. In districts Hoshangabad and Harda HSTP was
operational since 1978. 24 years ought to be a sufficient time for an intervention to make
some place in the teacher’s professional discourse, and in public memory. However, to
my surprise, when I visited the schools in the district after the program had been shut for
just two and a half years, the program had already become part of a distant fading past
that showed up in the conversations of teachers and other people only very infrequently.
Besides, not many people seemed to miss it. It was almost as if the program never really

existed on the ground.

Thus, in 2004, I found the education system in the state in a sort of transition. Long
existing alternative interventions in the system had been closed. Many new initiatives had
been undertaken, and changes made to the existing structures in the last decade. Some
were planned or had been launched only recently. However, there are many things about
the system that had been left unruffled too. My fieldwork was, thus, situated in this

interesting mish-mash of change amidst continuity.

The Village

Rajkheda is a medium size village located on the road connecting Hoshangabad town
with Pachmari, the beautiful hill resort of Madhya Pradesh (refer table 4.3). When I did
my fieldwork, this road was being built anew, and thus people were in general hopeful
about traveling to neighboring towns with greater convenience and economy of time in

near future. The village had one unpaved main street running through it. The government

75

middle and primary school were located on one campus, quite near the entrance of the
village and next to this street. By the time I finished my fieldwork, this main street had
been converted into a proper road. As I learned this had less to do with the initiative of
the villagers, and more with the fact that the village street was to be temporarily used as a
diversion while the section of the Hoshangabad - Pachmari road near the village was

being repaired.

Table 4.3: Basic government data on Rajkheda

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Population 1299

Total number of families 270

Families certified as below the poverty line 125 (46.2%)

Total area 444.291 Hectares

Total cultivable land 394.96 Hectares

Total irrigated land 337 Hectares (85.3%)

Main castes Kachi, Katia, chamar, Raghuvanshi,
Purabia, adivasi and Brahmin

 

The fact that 46.2% families (1997-98 figures) were below the official poverty line
indicates that Rajkheda wasn’t exactly a prosperous village. However, other villages in
Hoshangabad aren’t doing very well either as the incidence of rural poverty for the entire
district is a high 52.8% (1993-94 figures) (The Madhya Pradesh Human development
Report, 2002). To put this figures in a bigger context, it may be mentioned here that
according to national sample survey (N SS) data for the year 1999-2000, the national
average of poverty for rural areas is 26.8%, and the corresponding figure for the state of

Madhya Pradesh is 37.2% (Deaton & Dreze, 2002).

The prime occupation in Rajkheda was agriculture. The main crops grown were wheat,
lentils and soybean. Besides being a village with large number of families belonging to

katia and kachi castes, who prefer to grow fresh vegetables, this was a major agriculture

76

 

produce of the village as well. If we divide the total cultivable area in the village by the
total number of families, then the average cultivable land owned by a family in this
village comes to a paltry 1.46 Hectares. Of course, during my fieldwork I came to know
many families that didn’t own any land at all; most such families worked as agriculture
labor on other farmers’ lands. Landless farmers are common in this region. For instance,
for the entire district, the agricultural laborers comprised 45.3% of the total number of
rural workers, whereas cultivators tilling their own land were just 36.6% of the total (The
Madhya Pradesh Human development Report, 2002). Thus, this figure may not be a good
measure of central tendency for landholding per household, but it does give us a rough

ballpark figure and an idea of the extent of deprivation in the village.

However, there were certainly some signs of development in the village. Many of the side
alleys were paved. The village had electricity, even though it came only intermittently.
There was a large overhead water tank right at the entrance of the village that was
recently constructed to provide drinking water to the village. However, the water supply
network hadn’t been laid yet, so the villagers still fetched water from wells and hand
prunps. Some people had motorbikes, and I once even espied a car parked within the
boundary walls of the biggest house in the village. Under the Indian Tobacco
Corporation’s e-chaupal initiative, one family even had a computer and access to
internet. This computer was used to track the bulk prices of agricultural produce on a
daily basis. However, as Raj, a student of 8th grade, told me, the family having the
computer was an upper caste wealthy and politically powerful family. Thus, as he told

me, the lower caste poorer farmers, like his, didn’t have access to this useful information.

77

Though there were a number of brick houses in the village belonging to generally better
off families, some of the poorer families I visited lived in small hutrnents made of mud
walls and floors, and clearly lacking any toilet facilities. There was a degree of
segregation along caste lines in the village, as I found that all the lower caste katia
families lived in a separate katia mohalla (neighborhood) at the back of the village,
whereas most upper caste families had their houses along or near the main street, and
right at the beginning of the village. This isn’t an unusual thing to occur in Indian
villages. Most other villages I have visited in India had this sort of caste-based

segregation.

The village had only one little utilities store that also acted as a hangout for adolescents
and youth of the village. It was one little shack built of corrugated metal sheets. When I
did my fieldwork, cricket matches between India and Pakistan were being played. The
owner of the shop used to play the live cricket commentary on his radio. Thus, often there
were a small group of people standing in front listening to the commentary and
discussing the game. The village also had a public distribution store run by government
that supplied essential daily use items, such as kerosene oil and sugar, at reduced rates to
the denizens of the village. Just next to the store was a small building, basically a couple
of small rooms, that housed the village secretariat office. On walls of the office, were
listed the names of the current office holders and village level government workers and
the dates and times at which they are supposed to be available at the office. Also on the
walls was a citizen’s charter, and a list detailing some basic infOrmation of all the village

level welfare programs.

78

The School

Rajkheda had only one school building that housed both the government primary and
middle schools. The school had a pretty good reputation for studies. As a result, as
Dinesh Mathur, the middle school teacher who taught English to eighth graders, once told
me that there wasn’t a single private school in and around the village. The school was
located on the main street, right where the village began. The school premises were
bounded by a boundary wall, and had a single entrance through a small gate at the fiont.
The main entrance of the school led to a small open ground on two sides of which were
the rooms comprising the school building. The eastern side of the school boundary was
incomplete resulting in a big opening. This side opening was in fact as much used to
enter or exit the school premises by everyone, including teachers, students and visitors, as
the main entrance at the front. The school building was built in stages with little regard
for maintaining the architectural continuity over time. Thus, each segment looked
different from the rest in layout, design and also the quality of construction (depending
upon the amount of funds available for the purpose. Besides, the state department of
school education, local village council also gave funds for construction of rooms. The 8’”
grade classroom, for instance, was built with the help of funds from the village council.
Raghuvanshi, the teacher who taught science to the eighth graders told me that when this
room was built, the wood used in making the two doors was of very inferior quality. So
the doors broke down pretty early. Only their metal frames remained. So now there were
no doors, and teachers taught 8th grade students in an ‘open classroom’. The room had a

single window that too also always remained open because of lack of any window doors.

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And since the doors and window were always open, there was always a general and

generous exchange of classroom noise between different classrooms.

During the time I did my fieldwork, one of the classrooms was being repaired, and
another one was in the danger of collapsing any time so wasn’t used at all. As a result,
there was a shortage of classrooms in the school, and on many days, especially when the
weather permitted, one or more classes had their instruction out in the open. As most
classrooms didn’t have electricity and couldn’t be shut close either because of lack of
doors or because doing so would make them very dark places, during winters there were
days when they became too cold for students to sit in. Besides, I found that most students
never wore enough warm clothes to keep themselves warm. Thus, on particularly cold
and overcast days, the students would often request their teachers to hold the class out in

the sun where they could be warm and more comfortable.

When I started my fieldwork I was a little surprised to find that both primary and middle
schools didn’t have a separate room for their headmasters. The headmasters used the staff
room as their office space, just like other teachers. The staff room was also used to store
desks and chairs for teachers to use in classrooms that didn’t have any doors. Every
morning, it was students’ chore to take a desk and chair fiom the staff room to such
classrooms for teachers to use. The students would also bring them back to the staff room
at the end of the school everyday. The school didn’t have any separate room for the
school library. One day while chatting with 8th grade students, I asked them if they got
any books other than textbooks to read. The students told me that there was indeed a
library in the school that was run by Raghuvanshi. During lunch break, the kids could

borrow books to read. However, they couldn’t check out the books for taking home. As

80

there was no teacher in the classroom then, and the students were on their own, I asked
them why didn’t they get a teacher to lend them some book right then. I was told that it
was only because of Raghuvanshi’s initiative that this library was functioning, other
teachers were not interested in running it. So I found that on some days, Raghuvanshi
would lay out a thin mattress (durri) on the floor of the verandah in front of the staff
room during lunch break. Seeing him doing that students would gather around. Then
Raghuvanshi would keep a pile of books on the mattress for them to choose and read
during the break. From the excitement among the students and the eagerness with which

they picked the books, it was evident that students looked forward to such occasions.

Under the state government’s Headstart initiative, the school had also got 3 computers
that were to be used to provide students a “computer enabled education to help the
teachers reinforce textual materials and encourage children through interactive learning

. and develop computer literacy along with it” (The Madhya Pradesh Human
development Report, 2002). The computers were used only rarely, and that too more as
monitors for showing government provided educational software. The school was
required to provide their best and safest room for housing these computers. As a result,
the best room in the school was barely used, further contributing to shortage of

classrooms in the school.

The classrooms themselves were barely furnished. That is, apart from a chair and desk for
the teacher that, in 8th grade at least, was brought daily from the staffroom by the students
and taken back there at the end of the day, there used to be no other piece of furniture in
the classroom. The students sat on long narrow mats that too were brought from the

staffroom at the beginning of the day by the students. There weren’t enough mats for all

81

the students, so some students brought their own small rugs made from sackcloth from
home. During my fieldwork I witnessed many a struggle among the students for them.
For instance, one day Raghuvanshi angrily berated 8th graders on receiving a complaint
from kids in the primary school that being bigger and stronger they had forcibly taken
mats from their classrooms. Raghuvanshi made the senior students return all the mats
they had so taken away. As the mats for the 8th grade class too had been taken away by
students from some other grade, most 8th graders had to sit on the bare floor for that
whole day. Dusters and chalks used to be another bone of contention between students of
different grades. The walls of the classroom were bare with no posters or portraits for
students’ edification and inspiration. The classrooms didn’t have any teaching aids either.
If Raghuvanshi wanted students to do or see some experiment, he would bring the kit
material from the store room and take it away at the end of the class. Often he would also
use his personal items or request students to get them from their homes as the school was

seriously under-equipped in this regard too.

The daily routine of the school occurred, with some variations, something as follows.
Officially, the school was to start with morning assembly of all the students (primary as
well as middle) in the common ground in front of the classrooms at 10:30 AM, and the
classes were to start with the first period at 11:00. However, during my entire period of
fieldwork, I never once saw the morning assembly or the first period starting at their
stipulated times. Though the students started milling around in the ground from about
10:30, the assembly usually started at 11:00, and even later if either the headmaster of the
middle school or Raghuvanshi were late. For instance on March 14, Raghuvanshi came to

the school very late because of a family engagement. The headmaster, Mr. Mahto, wasn’t

82

in the school too. For a long time after the bell for assembly was rung, no teacher tried to
impose any order to hullabaloo of the students collected in the school grounds. It seemed
as if the teachers present at the scene were waiting for Mahto or Raghuvanshi to turn up
and start the proceedings. Finally, around 11:20, Dinesh issued instructions to the
students to start their prayers — the most important part of the morning assembly. On most
days, students would trickle into their classrooms well after the morning assembly and
well into the first period. I noticed that they were rarely admonished or punished for

being late.

The official timetable for the middle school organized a day’s instruction time in 7
periods with two small breaks of 10 minutes and one big lunch break from 2:10 to 2:40
(refer table 4.4). Each period was to be of 45 minutes duration, except for the last one.
The last period was kept for sports and was of 40 minutes duration. However, the
teaching rarely followed this schedule. First, the time length of a subject period varied
from 20 minutes to more than 1 hour, depending on the time the teacher was willing to
spend on that subject that day. The teachers had pretty good understanding among
themselves. So if a teacher had to go an errand, official or otherwise, he would finish his
period early and leave or even not take it at all. The other teachers then used the extra
time to teach their own subjects. Students were totally out of the picture in such changes.
So, it didn’t really matter if students started losing their concentration in a subject period
after a while, if the teacher had decided to teach a long period that day, he would do so.
As a result, even the time for lunch break used to keep shifting almost everyday. The
official time table was so set that each subject had one period everyday. However, owing

to the tradition among teachers of doing all non-teaching official work only during school

83

time, very frequently students in each grade had a period of time during the day when
they would be in class waiting for a period to begin and no teacher would turn up to teach
them. Sometimes such unsupervised time extended over an hour. Students during this
time busied themselves with either their books, casual conversation, and some even
slinked out of the school premises to chew tobacco or have a quick smoke on the sly.
During these times, if I happen to be outside a classroom and looked available, students
from a classroom would approach and implore me to come to their classroom and take a

‘class’. Often times it was difficult to deny their request.

Table 4.4: Official time table for 8‘“ grade

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time Slot Suly’ecflTeacher)
11:00 — 11:45 Science (Raghuvanshi)
11:45 — 12:30 Math (Mahto)

12:30 — 12:40 Break

12:40 — 1:25 English (Dinesh)

1:25 — 2:10 Social Studies (Ritesh)
2: 10 — 2:40 Lunch break

2:40 — 3:25 Sanskrit (Ritesh)

3:25 - 4:10 Hindi (Mahto)

4: 10 — 4:20 Break

4:20 - 5:00 Sports (Ritesh)

 

 

I never once saw the last sports period being taken during my entire field work. So the
school got over everyday around 4:30 after a common assembly of all the students during
which the national anthem was sung by all the students, and announcements were made
by the teachers. Predictably, the students were pretty eager about sports and regretted the

fact that the teachers didn’t organize any sports for them on a regular basis.

84

 

Teacher Professional Discourse

Amidst individual differences, I also found some common trends in the ways teachers
discharged their professional duties as teachers. These commonalities constituted the
professional discourse that influenced teacher’s participation in communicative events I
happen to observe both within and without the classroom. The most prominent element of
this discourse was, of course, the stance teachers took, and were expected to adopt by the

local education bureaucracy, towards teaching a school subject.

This aspect was best exemplified to me one day when students of 8’h grade were sitting in
their classroom waiting for a teacher to turn up. Finally a teacher, Dinesh, did enter the
classroom. However, he was also accompanied by the local Block Education Officer
(BEO) who had ostensibly come to the school for an unannounced inspection. The officer
began by asking kids the reason for poor attendance. A student stood up and told him that
some students were absent as they had gone to attend weddings. On hearing this, BEO
replied that they shouldn’t attend weddings as for each wedding they attend, their marks
in exams would reduce by 5%. Then he went on to calculate for them who many % marks
they would loose if they attend 2, 3 , 4 and 5 weddings. He enquired from the students if
they were being taught on schedule, i.e. if their course work would be completed in time
and they would had some days for revision. He also asked if the math course had been
completed. Sheela and some other kids said yes. Then he enquired if they will be able to
solve a problem if he gave it to them just then. At this, there was an awkward silence
among the students. On seeing that students weren’t willing to take up the challenge, the
BEO acted as if he had scored a point, and said that what was the use of their covering all

the course then if, they weren’t able to solve math problems. Dinesh tried to impress the

85

BEO by telling him that he taught English to 8th graders and its course had already been
completed, and they would only be doing revisions from now on till the final exams.
BEO too then started emphasizing the need for revisions to start as soon as possible. He
enquired about science subject, and was told by the students that two chapters remained
to be covered. He didn’t look very happy about that. Students, especially Sheela, tried to
stand up for Raghuvanshi and said that he taught science very well and that he even did
science experiments in the class. Dinesh added that each chapter in the science textbook
had some loiyakalap (activities) to be done in the class. BEO then enquired whether these
science experiments are asked in exams. On hearing that they weren’t, he compared the
present sciende textbooks with Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program (HSTP) books
that were used in this school till three years ago. He said that unlike HSTP science, it
wasn’t necessary to do experiments to ‘cover’ current textbooks. He emphasized again
that there was no need to do experiments in science. Instead students can just read about
the experiments from the textbooks. I too was put in bit of a tight spot as BEO then
turned around and asked for my opinion. I replied that all teachers including Raghuvanshi
worked hard with the kids. I further added that in my opinion this was a good school and
that was the reason why I was doing my study here. Interestingly, neither the BBQ nor
Dinesh asked students for their opinions, problems or their experiences at school. After
finishing his spiel, BEO left the room accompanied by Dinesh, and the students were left

alone once again to do as they pleased.

As the reader may have noticed, this incident showcases some important ways teachers
were expected to, and in fact many of them did, constitute their teaching practices. First,

the teaching was primarily geared towards, as the common usage was, ‘covering’ the

86

course, i.e. the prescribed syllabus. And to ‘cover’ the course basically meant to teach all
the chapters of the prescribed textbook, and then revise the exercise questions at the end
of each chapter before the final exams. Textbook was the only curriculum material I ever
saw being used in class by the teachers. As I present in more detail in chapter 6, except
for Raghuvanshi, all other teachers always stuck close to the text of the textbooks to teach
a topic. The knowledge presented in the textbooks was regarded as uncontestable and
final. Thus, as I present in greater detail in chapter 6, if according to the social studies
textbook the Soviet Union still existed, so it was for the teacher and that is how it was
presented to the students. Raghuvanshi did mention referring to other books sometimes
while preparing his lessons. But other teachers didn’t feel the need for supplementary

material. The students, of course, did use subject guides to prepare for the exams.

Second, the teaching was supposed to be primarily test oriented. So it did not matter if the
science textbook chapters suggested some hands on activities to be done by the students
or to be demonstrated to them. If there were no questions on these activities, then the
teacher was supposed to avoid doing them. Raghuvanshi once told me, “I do try that as
many kids as possible benefit from schooling. .. And in my efforts, the problem is in
aligning with the curriculum because if I try to implement my ideas, I am short of time,
and that then influences the implementation of the curriculum. Though I am always
aware that I should not focus as much on completing the curriculum as on teaching well.
So I “cut” topics, and go ahead. I am always leaving some topics as I proceed.”
Obviously, as we saw above, the EEO disapproved such a way of ‘covering’ the course.
Raghuvanshi’s approach was also different from other teachers as is evident from

Dinesh’s attempt to impress BEO by his adherence to this expectation. Third, in the

87

incident above, neither the BBQ nor Dinesh try to probe what the students felt about the
education they got in this school, their experiences or what they wanted their education to
be. This was fairly typical of the way teachers in the school constituted their teaching
practice. In a highly hierarchical school system like the one I saw in Rajkheda, the
agenda was more often than not decided by the person(s) senior in rank, authority or age,
and obedience and compliance by juniors was considered virtuous. Thus, students were

rather incidental to determining what and how a subject should be taught.

This power relation between the teacher and the taught was also evident in the way
communicative exchanges occurred between them. The teacher script enacted by the
teachers in the class positioned students in a passive role. The teacher spoke; the students
listened. Or the teacher-student dialogue resembled Initiation-response-evaluation (IRE)
discourse patterns. Another common form of teacher-student interaction used to be what
in India is called the “tu-padh” (you-read) method. In this the teacher asks a student to
read aloud a chapter from the textbook. While the student reads, other students listen, and
it is assumed that the chapter is being ‘covered’. For passages that are deemed difficult by
the teacher, an exegesis is presented by him.5 The room for student initiative in this sort
of teacher script was limited. Except for Raghuvanshi, the teachers made little effort to
invite, facilitate and legitimize students own voices, experiences, discourses and agenda
in co-construction of their own learning experiences in the classroom. Further, only
Raghuvanshi took spontaneous and contingent detours from this script or allowed the

students to steer the classroom dialogue in unscripted, albeit often productive, directions.

 

5 I am using the male pronoun to refer to the teacher as all the teachers in that middle school were male.

88

A teacher’s relations with the students outside the classroom were in many ways a
reflection of the way he interacted with them inside the classroom. This is best
manifested in the type of errands students were asked to do outside the classroom. There
were no custodians for the maintenance and upkeep of the school. Within the school
walls, the school community comprised just the teachers and the students. So teachers
summarily requisitioned students for any errand that needed to be done in the school. For
instance, one day as I entered the village to begin my fieldwork for the day, I found
Narendra and a couple of his 8th grade friends standing close to the school wall outside
the main gate. The morning assembly was over, but still these kids kept standing outside,
and out of the sight of their teachers inside the school wall. Puzzled, I asked them why
weren’t they entering the school even though they were late. Narendra whispered that if
they entered now they will have to pick up trash (pattal, done) from the ground. At first I
didn’t understand, but when I looked carefully at the ground inside, I found it was littered
with used paper and plastic cups and plates left over by the wedding party that had stayed
in the school premises the night before. Neither had the hosts cared to place for the guests
some garbage bins or send someone before the school opened to clean the mess, nor the
guests had given any thought of not throwing the trash all around. So Narendra and his
friends feared that they would be asked to pick up all the trash now. Luckily, as the trash
was too much and all around, the teachers didn’t ask students to clean the school ground.
Though, the students had to clean up their classrooms which had been used for lodging
purposed by the wedding party. But this the students didn’t mind as it was their daily
morning chore. On other days though Raghuvanshi or Mahto did pick up some students

before the classes began to clean the school grounds. Thus, as rest of the school stood in

89

gradewise lines and sang their daily prayers, 5 — 6 students would be busy picking up

trash from the school grounds instead.

The students did other jobs as well, such as fetching water or tea for the teacher to drink,
ringing the school bell, opening the classrooms and staffroom in the morning, fetching
stationary and books for the teacher, and repairing classrooms and boundary wall. It did
not really matter if the hapless student at that time was busy learning in the classroom, or
had to rush home after school. If a teacher needed him at that moment, he or she was
requisitioned for the purpose. Further, the students were almost always ordered and never
requested to do an errand, and never thanked or shown gratitude for their labor. The
students complied with such demands, and didn’t show much displeasure or resentment
about them. Only once, when some 8th graders were asked to stay back after the school
was over, to cut down branches from a tree, and then erect a fence to cover the open gap

in the school wall, did I overhear some words of resentment from a couple students.

The teachers of the school together formed a relatively harmonious peer group. All the
teachers I spoke to talked well of their peers and praised the help they got from them.
Speaking of help he receives from his peers, Raghuvanshi said, “If I talk about our staff
here, then I would have to say that I have received their cooperation. Nobody has ever
told me not to teach in a particular way I also receive encouragement from my other
colleagues, like, Mehto sir.... For instance, just now, without my asking, he got a box of
colored chalk for the school — something that I had been planning to buy myself for a
long time. .. So now I quite enjoy teaching geography, and making maps. I use colored
chalk for that. .. So like this I get cooperation from the staff. I get help from them too. We

help each other. Like both Dinesh and I teach class 6, so he said that I teach geography

9O

well and requested that I should teach the geography part of the social studies curriculum,
and said that he would cover the civics and history portions. So, this sort of coordination
also encourages you to teach better.” I also noticed this sort of coordination in the way
each teacher picked up the slack for another teacher, in case he wasn’t in a position to

teach his scheduled period.

There were indeed some undercurrents of tension among them. For instance,
Raghuvanshi felt that the headmaster of the school, Mr. Mahto, didn’t support him in
front of his superiors, such as the principal of the local higher secondary school who also
had some supervisory powers over the Rajkheda middle and primary schools.
Raghuvanshi was of the opinion that this was so because he and the headmaster belonged
to different teacher unions. However, I never observed such tensions coming to the

surface and making the teacher group dysfunctional.

Thus, teachers’ approach to teaching, his relation with the ‘official’ text, and with
students and with their peers, as I have discussed above, were some of the important
elements of teacher professional discourse that I happen to observe during my fieldwork.
This discourse didn’t always appear as one of the factors that influenced an event in my
data. Further, not all its elements were operative when I saw it influencing an event. Or to

be more precise, this discourse or its elements didn’t always surface in my data.

School Science Discourse

In this section, I present my analysis of the school science discourse the way it factored in

students’ and the science teacher’s actions in the events I happen to observe. As a point

91

of reference, I use the National Curriculum Framework (N CF ), 2005 — a document
prepared by the National Council for Education Research and Training (N CERT) that
lays out a recommended curriculum framework for state level curricula and textbook

making bodies.

I should mention here that education being a state subject, curricula and textbooks to be
used in government schools run by the state governments are made by state level bodies
that are answerable to the state governments. Thus, state governments are not bound to
follow the advice tendered by NCERT in designing their curricula and writing their
textbooks. However, NCERT being the apex institution in this arena, the curriculum
frameworks produced by it do frame the national discourse on curriculum, and also serve

as template or reference points for state level curricula making bodies.

For teaching of science in schools, NCF, 2005 makes following recommendations:

1. Content, process and language of science teaching must be commensurate with the
learner 's age-range and cognitive reach.

2. Science teaching should engage the learners in acquiring methods and processes that
will nurture their curiosity and creativity, particularly in relation to the environment.

3. Science teaching should be placed in the wider context of children ’s environment to
equip them with the requisite knowledge and skills to enter the world of work

4. Awareness of environmental concerns must permeate the entire school curriculum
(National Curriculum Framework 2005).

Let’s consider NCF’s first recommendation, viz. Content, process and language of
science teaching must be commensurate with the learner's age-range and cognitive reach.
The science textbook, and hence the syllabus, for 8th grade has the following chapters

(Vigyan: Kaksha 8, 2004):

92

Table 4.5: List of chapters in 8th grade science textbook

 

Chapter

 

Carbon

 

Compounds of carbon: Fuel

 

Light

 

Pressure

 

Magnetism

 

Electric current

 

Rocks, minerals and metals

 

Metals and its properties

\OOO\Ic\Ut4>WN'-‘z
O

 

Manmade objects

 

t—n
0

Microscopic living world

 

#
fl

Agriculturaljractices and implements

 

g—a
N

Useful plants and animals

 

u—c
LA)

Biological evolution

 

y—o
.3}.

Conservation of natural resources

 

—o
{It

Alternative sources of enggy

 

 

 

 

—A
0\

Structure of leaves

 

Prima facie, this list would appear comparable with the sort of science topics students of
this age group and grade would be expected to learn in most parts of the world. For
instance, all of the above topics figure in some form or the other in Michigan science
curriculum fiamework at the middle or elementary school level, except for metals that are
placed at high school level. However, the content list in itself doesn’t tell much because
the same content can be taught at different levels of complexity at different grade levels.
Also, important is the context in which school science knowledge is imbedded and the
ontological nature of the knowledge so presented by the textbook, and thus the school
science discourse. Thus, to enable a closer look, I present an analysis of content, process
of teaching and speech genre of the chapter on electric current (Vigyan: Kaksha 8, 2004).
This chapter has been chosen purposively for two reasons. First, I was able to observe the

teaching of this chapter from beginning till end. And, second, as the following findings

93

chapters show, most students had an extensive experience of working with electricity and

electrical appliances at home and workplaces.

This chapter begins with a review of the concepts of electric charge and electrostatic
attraction and repulsion between charges. These concepts were part of the 7th grade
syllabus. After that, the sequence of topics is as follows: (a) Nature and sources of
electric current: under this topic, after a very concise description of electric current in a
simple circuit, there were descriptions of different sources of current, such as Voltaic,
Daniel, and dry cells, followed by storage battery, solar cell and dynamo. (b) The next
section describes in one brief paragraph the idea that a flowing charge has energy. (c)
Electric circuit: the idea of open and closed electric circuits is discussed, and circuit
diagrams of such circuits are introduced. ((1) Suggested activity involving making a
simple bulb circuit. (e) Suggested activity that demonstrates the conductivity of current in
different types of water solutions. (f) A two-paragraph section on heating effects of
current. (g) Suggested activity to show heating effect of current. (h) A two paragraph
description of chemical effects of current. (i) Suggested activity showing chemical effect
of current flow in a copper sulfate solution. (i) A one paragraph description of magnetic
effect of current. (k) One paragraph description of alternating and direct currents along
with their graphical representation. (1) Final section on dangers of and precautions
regarding electric current. The chapter then ends with a list of important facts and
statements about electric current from the chapter, and a list of questions on the chapter

topics.

The very first thing that strikes me about this list of topics is the vastness of its coverage.

The chapter achieves the audacious feat of compressing within 7 pages, a total of 8

94

major concept areas in electricity. As a result, some complex concept areas like the nature
of and distinction between get ‘covered’ in just one short paragraph. This chapter is no
exception; the extent of coverage of conceptual areas in other chapters is equally
breathtaking. Thus, considering that there are 16 chapters in this textbook, if I add up all
the different concept areas ‘covered’ in all the 16 chapters, the textbook comes across
less as a textbook for kids, and more as a compressed science encyclopedia for kids.
Further, the reason for clubbing all these topics together in one chapter is not clear. The
only thing that connects these disparate topics together is the fact that all of them are
electricity topics — an organizing principle that befits encyclopedic compendimns more
than school textbooks. Lacking coherence, the chapter abruptly lurches from one topic to
another without any smooth and reasoned segue. Thus, for instance, after the section on
conductors and insulators, students are suddenly confronted with a section on heating
effects of current without any connecting text that would explain to the students the
rationale of this transition. Two key criticisms of science curricula in American schools
that has emerged from The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)
have been that science curricula in American schools tend to be ‘a mile wide and an inch
deep’, i.e., tend to cover too many topics, and lack an organizing principle that would
limit the number of essential topics (Schmidt, 2003). From the coverage of topics in the
electricity chapter, it is clear that this textbook suffers rather severely on both these

counts.

The extensive coverage of concept areas in a chapter, and the fact that there are 16 such
chapters in this textbook forces author(s) to attend to each topic only very superficially.

The box below presents English translation of the section on chemical effects of current:

95

 

 

Chemical Effects

We have seen before that when electric current (“vidhyut dhara”) is passed through
water, it dissociates (“vibhakt”) into its two components (“gha ”) Hydrogen and
Oxygen gas. The dissociation (“vibhakt”) of chemical compounds (“rasayanik yougik”)
by the action of electric current (“vidhyut dhara”) is called electrolysis (“vidhutya
apghatan”). The chemical compound (“rasayanic yougik”) solution that dissociates
(“apghatith”) is called an electrolyte (“vidhutya apghataya”). The two metal plates that
are immersed in the solution, through which electric current (“vidhyut dara”) flows in the
solution, are called electrodes (“vidhyutagra”).

When an electric current (“vidhyut dhara”) is passed (“pravahit”) through an electrolyte
(“vidhutya apghataya”) it dissociates (“vibhakt”) into its constituent ions (“avyavi ion”).
Positive ions (“ghanatrnak ion”) get attracted (“akarshit”) and flow (“pravahit”) towards
cathode (“rinagra”), and get deposit (“ekatrit”) there. A very easy use of chemical eflect
(rasaynik prabhav”) of electric current (“vidhyut dhara”) through which objects can be
covered with a thin layer of metal is called electroplating (“vidhyutiya lepan”). For
example, a layer of Nickel and Chromium can be put on iron so that it does not rust.
Putting a layer of gold and silver on cheap metals and expensive articles can make them
look beautifirl. To observe this let’s do an experiment. This experiment needs a carbon
rod which can be procured from a used cell or battery (Vigyan: Kaksha 8, 2004, p. 37).

(This section is then followed by a suggested activity showing electroplating of copper on
carbon rods.)

 

This section is all there is about chemical effects of electric current in the entire middle
school science curriculum. As the reader can see, the author(s) have tried to compress a
lot of scientific content in these two paragraphs thereby giving the text some very
distinctive features. First, Faced with the task of summarizing a vast body of scientific
knowledge on chemical effects of current in just two paragraphs, textbook author(s)
chose to focus only on definitions and descriptions of scientific phenomena in their
presentation. Owing to differences in discursive contexts in which science is practiced
and communicated in a scientific community vis-a-vis a science classroom, scientific
discourse, the way it is in scientific research communities, needs to be recontextualized,
for the discursive context of a science classroom. One way writers of science textbooks

tend to do this is by focusing on the conclusions of scientific studies rather than on the

96

 

details of the supporting data and arguments. They leave out the painstaking data
collection and pattern-fmding activities of scientists that led to these conclusions. As a
result, scientific knowledge gets presented as a loosely related package of facts,
definitions, and sequences of events in science textbooks. We see this happening, rather
in the extreme, in the selected text on chemical effects of electric current. For instance,
the first paragraph consists of nothing other than three definitions and one sentence

description of the electrolysis of water.

Second, the extent of nominalization of scientific terminology in the text is simply mind
blowing. Some bit of nominalization is inevitable because of recontextualization of
science from scientific research communities to a science classroom, but, certainly not to
the extent as seen in the text above. There are 13 technical terms in these two paragraphs.
Each such term compresses within itself so much of concrete referential information,
links to direct experience, observable properties, material particularities, and relations
among material objects that is largely invisible to the students. As a result, school science
discourse as constructed by this textbook in the classroom becomes so much more
abstruse, alien, far removed from the experiential base of the students, and thus far more

inaccessible for use in furthering ones agency over the material world.

Third, the text comes across as a canonical story that provides an authoritative account of
the world. As a result, the school science discourse emanating from the textbook is an

authoritative discourse that does not aim to persuade, but “demands that we acknowledge
it, that we make it our own; we encounter it with its authority already fused to it. it

demands our unconditional allegiance” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 343).

97

Fourth, this section stands on its own in the whole chapter, and in fact, the whole book.
It does not build upon the preceding section which was on heating effects of current, and
does not contribute to the following section on magnetic effects. Also, it uses scientific
phrases, for instance, positive ion, that enter the text all of a sudden, and vanish likewise
from following pages. It reminds students of electrolysis of water. But there is no
mention of this phenomenon in the preceding text of this chapter or the preceding
chapters of the book. Electrolysis of water is something that student learn about in grade
7. So without teacher’s help a student may not recall or remember where she may have
encountered this phenomenon before. Thus, this section comes across an isolated
disconnected piece of text. Unfortunately, the entire book is strung together from such

disconnected texts.

Finally, the speech genre of the text is totally alien for the students. Even for non-
technical actions, objects and processes, instead of using simple everyday words, the text

uses archaic, Sanskrit-based words, like “vidhyut dhara” (electric current), “vibhakt”
(dissociate or break), and “pravahit” (flow). Nobody uses these words in everyday
discourse, except, perhaps for humorous purposes. As Bakhtin realized such words resist
appropriation, they remain alien and if used “sound foreign in the mou ” and “put
themselves in quotation marks against the will of the speaker” (Bakhtin, 1981). Thus,
whenever the context was congenial, students avoided using the speech genre of the

science textbook for purposes of communication.

They also barely understood it. This became clear to me one day when Raghuvanshi

while ‘covering’ the topic of magnetic effects of current, asked students to read the

98

activity (kriya-kalap) that demonstrated magnetic effect of current from their textbooks.

My notes for the day recorded this event as follow:

Students started reading. Most of them were reading aloud so that created quite a
din in the classroom. After a while, Raghuvanshi asked them what they
understood after reading fiom the book. Ramesh replied that they had to connect
ends of a wire to a cell. Raghuvanshi not satisfied asked again that what was one
supposed to do in that experiment. I found that nobody volunteered to explain.
Then Raghuvanshi asked students to identify the equipment needed from the
diagram and the description of the experiment in the textbook. Some students
could identify wire and cell. He then explained what was one to do in the
experiment, and then asked if needle would move once current was flowed in the
circuit. Students again apparently had no clue as no one responded to
Raghuvanshi ’s question.

Thus, though students could read the text, they could barely comprehend it. The best they
could do was to memorize it so that they could pass the exams by regurgitating it on the
answer sheet for the examiners. And this they certainly did as their responses to questions
asked in the exams show. Based on my past experience of working with students in India,
I feel that after some years of experience with such textbooks many students simply stop

believing that the text contained in these books is actually meant to be understood.

Now, let’s come to the second recommendation by the National Curriculum Framework
(N CF) about science teaching. It recommends that “science teaching should engage the
learners in acquiring methods and processes that will nurture their curiosity and
creativity, particularly in relation to the environment.” For this happen, teacher should
not only engage students in scientific inquiry in the classroom, but also create contexts
for the students to do meta-level reflections on the knowledge constructed through
inquiry and the processes they used to do so. Also, the primary context of scientific
inquiry has to be the immediate environment of the students. However, the way the

science textbook presents science to the students, NCF’s aforementioned

99

recommendation seems difficult to realize in practice even for the most determined
teacher. First of all, the textbook is the only window to science that both the teacher and
students in the Rajkheda middle school had access. However, the textbook presented
itself both to the teacher and the taught as the repository of the final uncontested
knowledge of the material world. Because of the way this knowledge was inscribed in the
textbook, students could not directly access it with much success without the mediation
of the teacher. Thus, the textbook tended to position itself as the fountainhead of
scientific knowledge, the teacher as the interpreter and conduit of this knowledge and
students as passive receivers. Such subject positioning encourage lecture driven and IRE
based instructional practices wherein students do not learn to learn. Neither does their
sense of curiosity and wonder about the world find legitimate avenues of expression in
the classroom. Instead, what students learn is to strategically mask their curiosity, and

work the system for their survival by memorizing the science text.

Also, it seems that author(s) of the textbook either do not believe in the NCF vision of
science teaching or think that it is a far fetched dream in currently existing conditions. I
say this because the way activities are written in the chapters, they become superfluous.
In each activity description, the results of activity are already described so that even if a
student does not do an activity she can know what is supposed to happen if that activity is

done.

NCF’s third recommendation is that “science teaching should be placed in the wider
context of children’s environment to equip them with the requisite knowledge and skills
to enter the world of work.” Students of the school, as the following chapters show, were

young productive members of the local economy. Their work at home, farm and other

100

workplaces had given them rich experiential knowledge of the world - a knowledge that
let them exert considerable level of material agency over the world. They could make
mud stoves, hammer iron sickles out of hot scrap iron, draw electricity from high voltage
overhead cables for their homes and so on. However, they, like the rest of us, were also
keen to further their abilities to understand and control material objects and phenomena
for their functional purposes. Thus, they actively looked for and appropriated mediational
tools that let them further their material agency from wherever they could. A science
classroom is then a natural and obvious place to build ones mediational toolkit about the

material world.

A science classroom can indeed become such a place if the science teacher encourages
students to bring their experiences, knowledge and discourses from outside the school
into the classroom, and uses them to situate school science in the daily lives of the
students. School science discourse can be of great help in enabling the science teacher
create such learning contexts. However, the author(s) who wrote this textbook didn’t
belong to the local region, and thus were perhaps unaware of the local contexts of
students of Rajkheda. Besides, even if they were aware, it is doubtful they could create
situated and personally meaningfirl learning contexts for students of Rajkheda as this
textbooks was written for the whole state, and thus assumed a student that didn’t share
much resemblance with the type of students that the 8th grade of that school had. For
instance, as I show in the following chapters, most students knew how to construct
electric circuits using alternating current. However, the science textbook assumed that
students didn’t know much about circuits. Besides, school science discourse represented

by this textbook was an authoritative one that didn’t acknowledge students as creators of

101

their own knowledge, and co-constructors of learning experiences in the classroom. As a
result, school science discourse provided the teacher with very little opportunities to

translate NCF’s third recommendation into reality.

The textbook has two chapters, conservation of natural resources and alternate sources
of energy, that raise environmental issues of depletion, destruction and pollution of
natural resources, and energy shortage, and pose them as environmental concerns for
students. Such concerns are, however, missing from other chapters. Further, the way
environmental concerns have been raised in chapter make them remote fiom the everyday
life of the students. There is no effort to help students connect their everyday experiences
with water or electric energy shortages for example, with the larger picture. For instance,
in the chapter, conservation of natural resources, the problem of destruction of natural
resources is presented as a general problem facing the mankind with no illustration of
how this problem could be playing out in the lives of people in a certain area. As a result,
the solutions suggested are also equally general in nature, such as we all should consume
less resources. One important role science curriculum can play is to help students evolve
into active citizens that are concerned about their own environmental problems and
capable of doing something about it. However, there are no suggested projects or even
examples in these two chapters that encourage students to look at their own

environmental problems in the neighborhood and search for a collective solution.

In its fourth recommendation, NCF desires that “awareness of environmental concerns
must permeate the entire school curriculum”. As I presented above, such concerns are
extremely patchy in their appearance across the two chapters on conservation of natural

resources and alternative sources of energy, and are missing altogether from rest of the

102

chapters. As a result, these concerns do not influence the character of the science
curriculum in any major way. As a result, school science discourse doesn’t really help a

teacher much in making these issues relevant to the lives of the students.

Thus, we see that the school science discourse in the 8th grade classroom at the Rajkheda
school was geared for a kind of science teaching very different from the one
recommended by the NCF. That is, if a teacher, such as Raghuvanshi, taught in ways that
matched NCF, then it was not because of the extant school science discourse, but in spite

of it.
Summing Up

This chapter prepares the stage for the following findings chapter by creating contexts at
multiple scales within which the results of this study can be interpreted. Starting from a
national perspective, this chapter takes broad look at the state of human development,
especially the status of education, at succeeding smaller levels of state of Madhya
Pradesh, the district of Hoshangabad, and finally the village of Rajkheda in which the
study site was located. Then a perspective on the school is presented in terms of its
resources and constraints, daily routine, and the elements of teacher professional and
school science discourses that I found contingently operational in the events I happen to

observe in the 8th grade classroom.

103

104

Chapter 5
Students: Outside School

The research questions of this study are directed at understanding students’ participation
in science periods taught by Mr. Raghuvanshi. However, to have a better and more
grounded appreciation of what students did or did not do in school, it is important also to
understand their lives outside school. In this chapter, I attempt to do just that. Starting
with a portrait of their family background, I narrate their daily life activities focusing on
the depth and range of their experiences with their immediate material world. I then
describe how the knowledge students accrued from these experiences got revealed in
events occurring both within and without classroom in different ways in accord with the
contingent factors that came together momentarily to influence the event. However, some
broad trends in their knowledge representations could be discerned, and thus are
presented here. Towards the end, I present an analysis of important themes emerging out
of data that reflect students’ attitudes towards education, school science and their science

teacher.

Students’ Family Background
As mentioned in the previous chapter, about 46% (1997-98 data) of Rajkheda families
fell below official poverty line. The neighboring villages that sent students to the middle
school in Rajkheda didn’t look any different from Rajkheda, and thus can be assumed to
be having similar poverty levels. The official poverty live being pegged very low at Rs.

368 per month (about $8 per month) for rural areas (2005 figure, after adjusting for

105

inflation; source: http://www.inciaresourcecrg), it doesn’t take much affluence for rural

families in India to case out of official poverty, and still leading impoverished lives.

Considering the low level of human development indices for the region, as reported in the

previous chapter, it would be fair to say that most of the students in Raghuvanshi’s class

came

from poor to very poor families. During the course of my fieldwork I visited homes of six

students in four villages including Rajkheda, and chatted with their parents. As is obvious

from the brief profile of the parents of these students given in the accompanying table

Table 5.1: Focus students’ background

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Student Caste Family Parents
Profession Educational
Background
Raj Scheduled Landless Both parents
caste laborers Illiterate
(Katia)
Sarla Scheduled Landless Father educated
caste laborers till grade 5;
(Katia) mother illiterate
Ganesh Not known Farmer Father been to
college; mother
not known
Narendra Other Farmer Both parents
backward illiterate
caste
(GUJ'J'ar)
Mahesh Scheduled Ironsmith Both parents
caste Illiterate
(Lohar)
Amaresh Upper Night Father educated
& Amita (Soni) watchman till Grade 10;
in a mother not alive
weighing
station

 

 

 

 

 

106

5.1, they came from families

with poor socio-economic
backgrounds and low levels of
literacy. I didn’t select these
families on the basis of a
random sampling exercise.
However, considering the high
levels of poverty in the village
as mentioned above, the fact that
only 5 out of 49 students in
grade 8 were from the upper
and the

castes, average

landholding in the district in

which this village fell is mere 9.2 acres (1998-99), it can be assumed that these families

were fairly representative of the type of families students in grade 8 hailed from.1

Ritesh Shrivastav, the teacher who taught social studies to grade 8, was of the opinion
that, “Parents that are educated have a good attitude towards education. Parents who are
uneducated are more concerned about their work. They don’t pay attention to their kids
education. They think this is some “extra” thing, when they should realize that it is the
“main” thing.” However, all the parents I met, and especially the ones that were illiterate
or barely literate, were eager to get their children educated. Education offered hope for a
better tomorrow. Mahesh’s father, a poor ironsmith in the neighboring village of Ajneri,
said, “I am illiterate, and have lived my life, but Mahesh has still a life to make, and if he
becomes educated then he will be able to do many things, such as getting bank loans or
opening up a shop.” Sarla’s mother expressed her worries to me about her daughter not
passing the annual examination for grade 8. Thus, I was told that Sarla was woken up as
early as 4:00 in the morning so that she could study for her exams. And according to
Sarla’s both parents, they also had their kids study in the evenings. Most students I talked
to told me that they were woken up early by their parents in the morning so that they
could study for a while. Besides, all the parents I talked to, except for Amaresh and
Amita’s father, sent their wards to extra tuition classes in the morning just before school.
Mr. Soni, the father of Amaresh and Amita, had a monthly income of mere Rs. 1500

($32.48), and thus was perhaps too poor to afford tuition.

Like Sarla’s mother who worried if her daughter would pass grade 8, I found that even

illiterate parents had a sense of how well their students were doing at school. However

 

‘ The average size of agricultural farm in United States is 444 acres (source: United States Department of
Agriculture on web @: www. usda.gov

107

they had limited means to help their children do well at school. For instance, consider
Raj’s family. Raj lived in a one-room shack made of mud walls and thatched roof with
his parents and a younger sibling. Raj’s parents were illiterate and extremely poor.
Talking to them was a sobering experience as I realized how helpless they felt in their
pursuit to ensure education for their kids. Raj’s father confided to me that he was very
worried about Raj’s younger brother who was in 5th grade and still didn’t know how to
read and write. Being illiterate obviously they couldn’t help their son academically at
home. When I inquired if they ever went to school to enquire what sort of education their
kids were getting at school, Raj’s father bowed his head down and uttered “no” softly.
None of the parents I talked to ever went to school to talk to teachers about how well
their kids were doing. As Raghuvanshi said, “an illiterate person does not have the
courage to go to the teacher and talk to him about his kids’ education, like asking him
why are you teaching this, and why aren’t you teaching that? .. Yes, how can he say that?
He can never say that.” Being illiterate or barely literate, most parents weren’t able to

help their children academically at home either.

When Raghuvanshi and I went to Narendra’s house to meet his parents, his grandmother
who lived with the family told Raghuvanshi that since theirs was not an educated family
(N arendra’s father was an illiterate farmer), it was up to Raghuvanshi to make sure that
he did well at school. Narendra’s grandmother’s request thus in a way corroborates the
reply that Raghuvanshi gave to me when I asked him about parents’ attitudes towards
education of their kids. He said, “Parents .. I agree that they want their kids to get
educated, and .. want to send their kids to schools to get them educated. .. But after they

get educational materials for their kids, they think that now it is their kids job to study,

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and the teachers’ responsibility to teach them.” Thus, I found that most parents in general
maintained a distance from the school and the teachers they sent their children to. There
were exceptions, of course. Members of the dominant family of Patels in Rajkheda, for
instancce, thought nothing of entering the school to have a chat with a teacher. In fact,
one day I saw one person (younger brother of ex-sarpanch of the villagez) belonging to
this family entering the school premises to give a sound verbal thrashing to a kid who he
thought had a fight with his son. After scolding that hapless kid who was cowering in
fear, he angrily complained to the teachers who had gathered at the scene, and demanded
that the father of that kid be summoned right away to apologize for his son’s putative
errant behavior. The poor illiterate denizens of the village, on the other hand, kept to

themselves and came to the school only when called by the teacher.

They also refrained from making any criticism of the school or the teachers to me, and
preferred to blame their children instead for their poor academic performance. As Sarla’s
father said, “village kids do not like to study.” A sentiment shared by Mahesh’s mother
who said that her son was more in playing games with his friends than in studies. Their
circumspection in criticizing the school with me may partly have to do with my
ambiguous positioning as a researcher and as someone closer to teachers in profession,

and socio-economic standing.

Students’ Lives Outside School

In my conversations with students of the 8th grade, one of my several queries always had

to do with the life they led outside the school. As I mentioned in the chapter on methods,

 

2 Sarpanch is an elected head of the local village council - the gram panchayat.

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some students, especially girls, were not willing to talk about their life outside school
with me. However, the ones who did agree painted a rich portrait of their everyday

activities of outside school.

Through them I came to know that most kids of their age (13 — 16 years), especially those
belonging to poorer families, led a pretty busy life as productive members of the local
village economy. Before and after school, they helped their parents at home, farmland
and/or in their family profession. For instance, Raj who came from a family of landless
agriculture workers, told me that he was then helping his parents harvest sweet potatoes
from an agricultural farm they had taken on contract from the landowner.3 During
forthcoming vacations in the summer, he planned to join his uncle to work as a wage
laborer at a brick-making factory close by. He said he had been working in this factory
during summer vacations for the past five years. Likewise, Mahesh’s father was an
ironsmith who worked from his home. Mahesh told me that he helped his father, and
could make iron sickles on his own. On visit to his home, his mother confirmed that she
and her husband let Mahesh make small farm implements. Mahesh’s father also
moonlighted as agricultural labor. Following his father’s lead, Mahesh told me that in his
spare time he also worked as a hired labor on wages. When I asked him what sorts of jobs
he did, he replied, “ All types .. If somebody needs labor, I go there. If soybean is being
harvested I go there.” It seems that students hailing from comparatively better-off
families were not required to contribute as much to the family’s income or work. For
instance, when I asked Narendra if he helped the family in growing crops, he replied, “No

sir, not that much. Nothing special.” Narendra’s family owned agricultural land and lived

 

3 I got to take with me delicious baked sweet potatoes, when I went to his home to meet his parents.

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in a better looking house than his poorer peers like Raj and Sarla. However, Narendra
too, as he told me, helped in household chores, such as cutting fodder for and feeding the
cattle the family owned. Similarly, Deepak, who belonged to a relatively well-to-do
family with father having a side profession as a priest, admitted not helping his family in

cultivation of crops.

Most students I talked to also helped their family in household chores. I could also see
some gender-based division of labor, especially in case of household work. For instance,
though some boys reported that they could make food, cooking was primarily a girl’s
domain. Boys helped in taking care of cattle, filling up water to drink, and helped in
maintenance and running of agricultural and other implements and appliances. In case of
poorer families, however, the gender division was less marked as all members had to
work out of sheer economic necessity. As a result, everybody had to do at least little bit
of everything for the whole family to survive. For instance, Raj’s both parents used to be
at work when he returned from school around 4:00 PM. So, as Raj told me, he usually
cleaned the house and washed the utensils, which are traditionally women’s jobs, after
returning from school, while his both parents were away working on somebody’s fields.
On her return from work, her mother then cooked food for the family. Likewise, Sarla,
being the eldest daughter of poor landless agricultural workers, not only cooked evening
meals for the whole family, but also worked as a productive member to add to the
family’s income. While talking about the ‘weak’ condition of her family, she told me,
“Sir, in grade 8, I went to fields to do weeding and harvesting of soybean. And now after

the examinations are over, I’ll go to harvest wheat.”

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All this non-academic work was done by these kids in addition to the full time
responsibility of being students in a middle school and teenagers with active social lives.
They had to find time during the day for not only hanging out with their friends, but also
to prepare for the approaching annual examinations on which their academic future
depended. Thus, most kids I talked to mentioned getting up early in the morning, in some
cases as early as 4:00 AM, to study before the hustle-bustle of the daily routine started. It
mustn’t have been easy for them. Speaking of his difficult morning routine, Raj said,
“You see, ever since this month of January started, I have been getting up very early in
the morning, getting up at 4:00 in the morning. It was difficult for the first week. I used to
tell my mother to wake me up, but I just wasn’t able to open my eyes. But after a few
days, it was possible to wake up so early. After getting up, I go to toilet. I wash my face
and hands so that I don’t fall asleep again. And then I sit separately on a bed to study. I
study till about 6 O’clock. Then I again wash and freshen up again. Then I drink tea
around 7:00, and then head for tuition classes.” After coming back from his tuition
classes, Raj took a bath and had his early lunch and then headed for school that started at

10:30.

Of course, doing all this extra work besides being a full time student wasn’t easy and
sometimes led them to miss their classes. For example, one day when I was walking back
from Sarla’s house to the school, Sarla’s younger brother, Ramji, accompanied me for
some distance. School was about to start, so I asked Ramji if he was accompanying me to
the school. He told me that he wasn’t going to the school but to the village government
public distribution supply shop to get kerosene for the house. I asked him when would he

come to the school then. He said he wouldn’t be going to the school as he had to feed the

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cattle that day. Similarly, sometimes girl students too had to stay back to take care of
household chores as I learned one day when I asked Amaresh why her sister, Amita, who
was in the same grade as him, was absent that day. He told me that she was cooking food
and had got late doing that so she couldn’t come. I then asked if their mother made her
finish cooking before she could leave for school. Amaresh replied in a subdued voice that
their mother was dead. So Amita, still in her teens, had already become a fulltime
caregiver for the family in addition to being a student of 8’” grade. Whenever I went to
Amaresh and Amita’s house to meet their father, it was always Amita who did the
welcoming chore, like offering water to drink and making tea for all, for the guest, i.e.
me. My impression that girls in Raghuvanshi’s class often had to work a lot at home got
confirmed several times during the study. For instance, once I was having an informal
conversation with Beena, Uma, Mukta and Amita. It was lunch break and we were
chitchatting about sundry things. During the conversation I remarked, “I have been
talking to both boy and girl students. It seems girls do not get time to study at home
because of all the work. And sometimes they are even not able to come to school because
of all the work at home.” All the girls wholeheartedly concurred with my remark said
almost in unison, “Yes sir! That’s true! We hardly get any time to study at home.” Of
course, like boys, girls from better off families were .. well, better off in this regard. Uma,
who hailed from a relatively prosperous and upper-caste (Brahmin) family of the village,
admitted that though she knows how to cook, she doesn’t have to as there are other
people at home to do the cooking. She further added that she cooks food only now and

then when need arises.

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Students’ Experiences with the Material World

As a result of their active engagement with paid and unpaid work at home and workplace,
most students of 8th grade had accumulated years of rich experience of either working
with many material objects and phenomena relevant to their daily lives, or had closely
observed adults working with them as legitimate peripheral participants in native
discourses surrounding them (Lave and Wenger, 1991). It is not possible for me to give a
complete and extensive account of the range and nature of students’ experiences with
Nature. However, in this section I attempt to give the reader an idea of the wealth and
diversity of their experiences through an account of the kind of things they did or were
able to do in the daily life contexts of working with plants, cattle, electricity and cooking.
This section, thus, sets the stage for talking about the nature of knowledge representations
that students produced in different contexts and how these knowledge representations
relate with the nature of experiences students had with the material world as part of their

daily lives.

As I mentioned above, almost all 8th grade boys I interacted with during my fieldwork,
either worked on or had opportunities to closely observe adults working on agricultural
farms and homestead vegetable gardens. The only exception I came across was Amaresh
whose father neither owned agricultural land nor worked on it. As mentioned earlier, he
worked as night watchman at a weighing station close by. Amaresh’s elder brother too,
after quitting school in 10‘” grade, worked as an apprentice at a grocery store in the
neighboring town of Pipariya. So, perhaps, he didn’t have as many opportunities to work
on farms as his other classmates. As reported earlier, most girls belonging to poorer

landless families also had to work on farms.

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As a result of their agricultural work, these students had rich experiences with plant life
in all their life stages. They knew how to plant agricultural crops, grow and tend them,
and harvest them when they are ripe. For instance, consider a part of conversation I had
with Narendra on agriculture:

Me: But you surely know a lot about agriculture. Right?

Narendra: Yes sir.

Me: Do you know what is done and not done to grow wheat?

Narendra: Yes sir, before sowing wheat, the entire field is irrigated. Then there is
something called “rakhad ” that is

Me: What is that?

Narendra: ‘Rakhad ’.

Me: What is this?

Narendra: It is a powder.

Me: What does it do?

Narendra: Nothing, it just has some manure and keeps the soil wet.

Me: 0k

Narendra: So that is spread throughout the field while plowing the field. Then
wheat is sowed. Along with wheat, we put a manure called DAP, and the seed is
sowed. The wheat grows up in I 5 -20 days. Then we irrigate the crop. Thereafter
we have to irrigate the crop 3 times. Then one day ‘bal ’ comes out.

Me: Your father had given water just a few days back

Narendra: Yes. Now water has been given enough times, we wouldn ’t have to give
any more water. .. We have finished with it just yesterday.

As we can see in this conversation, Narendra speaks pretty confidently about the different
things a farmer needs to do to plant a wheat crop in that region. Unlike many other
students, his knowledge, however, sprang more from close observation of adults than
from his direct participation. As he admitted when I asked how did he know so much
about agriculture, “1 often go to the field. I see and sometimes when I go at night, I
don’t come back, and spend the night there in the field. There is motor there, so I go
there sometimes .. just to keep guard.” Raj, however, worked in the fields, and thus his
experience with plants wasn’t vicarious like Narendra’s. In the conversation fragment I
produce below, he educates me about how wheat crop is harvested:

Me: How do you cut it (wheat crop)?

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Raj: For cutting, first we select an auspicious day — a Monday or a Tuesday. That
day, we just go in the evening, and just cut one fistfitl of wheat. We tie and keep it
safely. And then the next day we start cutting wheat.

Me: So do you cut by your hands?

Raj: We cut it by sickles.

Me: And I have seen some harvesters here too.

Raj: Yes, there are harvesters too. Harvesters are used because they finish up in
one day. Sickles are used because then thresher allows us to make hay for feeding
cattle.

Me: You get hay when you cut wheat with sickle or when you use a harvester?
Raj: You don ’t get hay when you use harvester.

Me: Really? Is that so?

Raj: Yes. When you use harvester everything else comes out fiom below. So you
end up getting nothing. When you cut wheat by a sickle, and then break it up in
thresher, then it throws out hay fiom one side.

Me: From thresher?

Raj: Yes, fiom thresher.

Me: Then it must be a disadvantage to use a harvester?

Raj: Yes, your losses are great with a harvester. With harvester, a lot of wheat gets
lost by spilling. You just wait and see, when harvesters are used here, you will see
that a lot of wheat is lost in the field when harvester is used. You will find lots of
kids, everybody picking those grains scattered by the harvester in the fields.

Me: Then what is the point of using a harvester? Why do people use it then?

Raj: People who have lots of land do that. Harvesting becomes manageable then.
When a lot of wheat is produced. Big people do it. That is why.

It is clear from this piece of conversation that such detailed and nuanced knowledge of
comparative advantages of using a harvester versus harvesting the standing crop through
the traditional, low technology way could come to Raj only through years of observation
as well as direct experience with harvesting of crops. Sarla too explained to me in similar
terms the different things a farmer needs to do to grow crops. When I asked her how she
came to know so much, she said, “Sir, I learnt it being observing others. By seeing how

my father does things.”

It is possible, though, that these kids were still not allowed to have experience of some
agricultural operations, especially those that were hazardous in nature. For instance,

spraying of insecticides on crops is done usually manually with the help of a spray gun

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and a canister of insecticide carried on ones back in that part of India. It is a risky
operation as there is always a danger of exposure to powerful noxious chemicals. Mahesh
told me about many different operations that he did on agricultural fields. But when I

asked if he had ever sprayed insecticides, he said, “No, I have never put pesticides.”

Besides working on farms, another important chore both boys and girls reported doing at
home was taking care of cows and/or buffaloes owned by the family. As I understood
listening to students’ descriptions of their daily routines, feeding and giving water to
them used to be primarily their responsibility. Milking them was something adults took
care of, though some kids, like Raj, knew how to do it. It seems that through years of
tending to them, students had accumulated a much experience about these domestic
marmnals. I had an inkling about the depth of their experience when I heard them talk
about the various diseases cows get afflicted with and the homegrown remedies that are
then used to cure them. For example, consider the following segment from a conversation
I once had with Raj:

Me: And you know, cows sometimes get sick

Raj: Right.

Me: So what types of diseases does it normally catch?

Raj: They catch cold .. And you know, their hooves. They also catch the disease of
hooves — “baiga ”. You have seen there hooves, right? You know their hooves
become like this (Shows me with his hands). ( )

Me: So how do you treat a cow? For instance if it catches a cold, then what do
you do?

Raj: Then it has be fed “auta

Me: you mean porridge.

Raj: No, of garlic, and it has 1 kilo of ( “khilwara ”). This big, and fiuit of

(“peda ”). That and “saunf”, “aijwayun and garlic is grounded into a paste and
dissolved in water. The cow is made to drink that. And if its stomach has bloated
then feeding her leaves of (gajra) cures it fine.

Me: And if it is sufferingfi'om loose motions, then?

Raj: Then one should make a paste of “chedchitta and feed that.

Me: What?

Raj: “Chedchitta. ”

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Me: OK .. that should be fed

Raj: Right.

Me: And if you treat a cow, and still it doesn ’t get well, then what do you do?
Raj: If it is serious, then a doctor has to be called

Thus, as we see above, Raj not only knew the symptoms of two of the most common
diseases but also had a detailed knowledge of how to prepare the homegrown medicines
to cure them. Other students too impressed with their experiences with cattle. For
instance, when I posed similar questions to Narendra, I got equally detailed responses. As
example, I present below a similar segment of a conversation with Narendra on this issue
of diseases of and cures for cows:

Me: and if your cow or buflalo falls sick do you what needs to be done?
Narendra: Yes sir, if it catches cold, then they must be made to drink mustard oil.
And if it “phoks ”, then hay and “bhant” must be fed to them.

Me: Hay and?

Narendra: “Bhant ”.

Me: When do you give that?

Narendra: There are 7 grains, right? (I nod) wheat, gram, and so on. They are all
mixed to make a mixture, and then it and hay must be fed to the cow.

Me: When should it be given? What is “phok”?

Narendra: That means that it is excreting loose shit.

Me: Oh, Ok So if a cow falls sick, you do all this. But if it is very sick then what
you do?

Narendra: if it is very sick, then we ask a knowledgeable person. And if he asks us
to put “dima then we put “dima ” to the cow.

Me: what is “dima”?

Narendra: It is a sharp thing which is heated and the cow is poked with it.

Me: How does that help?

Narendra: That gives energy to the cow, and since it gets a shock, it gets 0k

Me: Does that bleed then?

Narendra: No sir, it doesn 't bleed Only the outer skin gets burned.

Here again we see an impressive display of experiential knowledge, a native, unofficial
pathology, arising out of years of tending to sick cattle of the family. What is also
remarkable in these two pieces of data is the fact that both students also recognized the
limits of their knowledge, and knew when to ask for advice of a more knowledgeable

person, usually the local veterinarian. These experiences can potentially serve as a solid

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foundation for building rich learning experiences for students in science. However, as the
reader will see in the following chapters, this wasn’t always feasible. In the next two
chapters, I present the varied contingencies in which such rich experiences that kids had

outside school, did or didn’t get leveraged for the sake of their learning of science.

As I mentioned above, cooking was something that most girls, and some boys, had to at
home, albeit to varying degrees and sophistication. Experiences with the family hearth
were, however, not restricted to just cooking food. As I discovered one day during a visit
to Sarla’s home, having the responsibility of preparing meals for the family also included
making and maintaining earthen stoves (called “chullah” in Hindi) on which food was
cooked using fuel wood. Elder sisters in the family also made toy earthen “chullah” for
their little siblings. I often found little kids cooking pretend food with beautifully made
and decorated toy “chullahs” in evenings outside their homes. Through years of making
these stoves, these girls in 8th grade had acquired a rich experience of working with
different types of clay and an appreciation of the thermodynamics of cooking food on

such stoves using wood.

To give the reader, a flavor of the richness of their experience that they accrued while
making these stoves, I present a portion of a very interesting conversation I had with
Sapna and Sarla when I had gone to Sarla’s house to meet his parents. Sapna was Sarla’s
cousin and lived in a house right opposite Sarla’s. In between their houses was a dirt
track barely wide enough for a small bullock cart to pass through. So when I reached
Sarla’s house in the evening, I found Sapna making a “chullah” in the open courtyard in
front of her house. Seeing me, she stood up and greeted me. Curious to find out what she

was doing, I struck up a conversation with her. Sarla saw me chatting with her cousin,

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and joined us. After returning to my lodgings, I noted the relevant segment of this

conversation in my field notes as follows:

When I inquired how a “chullah” was made, Sapna said that it was girls’ job.
When I insisted on being told both Sapna and Sarla explained to me how a
chullah was made. They said that first they strain the soil to take out small
pebbles, then soak it in water, then knead it afier mixing it well in water. Then
they mixed hay in it, and again kneaded it for about 30 minutes. When I asked
why they did that. I was told that that was done so that “chullah ” didn’t break
when it dried I was told that “chullah” could be made with black as well as
yellow soil. Sapna said she was painting the new “chullah ” with red mud because
it looked good If she didn ’t paint it with red mud, it would have looked black and
not so good Red mud was brought fi'om a red mud pit close to the village. Then
with the help and support of wooden planks, the base and three sides of the
“chullah ” were made. After that it was left to dry, and its surface was
smoothened by rubbing it with pieces of earthen baked tiles that are used in
construction of roofs here. When I inquired about the height of the “chullah
Sarla said that it was usually roughly equal to about one palm and couple of
fingers length, though the height varied But she added that usually “chullah ”
weren’t taller than this. When I asked whether these “chulla ” gave too much
smoke. Sarla denied, and said that it gave smoke only when the fire was
extinguished When I asked how long does a “chullah ” last, Sarla said that one
normally “chullah ” lasts for about one year. But she made about 3 - 4 “chullahs ”
in a year. I then asked her if fire got dimmer because of deposition of ash. Sarla
replied that when that happened they would take the ash out. The “chullah ” had a
small platform with raised edges in front. Sarla told me that was for making
“baati ” and roasting sweet potatoes on hot embers. I told Sarla that I had seen
“chullahs” in which there were small thin parallel iron rods inserted a little
above base. Sarla agreed that there are “chullahs ” of this sort, and this was done
so that ash fell to the bottom and thus didn ’t cover the burning wood I asked
where she had seen these type of “chullahs ”, Sarla said that she has had them in
her own house. When I asked why they hadn ’t put iron rods in this “chullah ”
then, Sapna replied that that was because they didn ’t wish to go around asking
others for these rods.

This conversation shows the depth of Sarla and Sapna’s familiarity with the materials
used for building the earthen stoves. Through experience they had became aware of
properties of the different types of clay. They knew that locally available clay cracks up
on drying, but when mixed with hay, this property can be changed to their advantage.

They had also developed an appreciation that height of the stove matters for its proper

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working. Through apprenticeship of observation and their own experiences, these girls
had also come to know that basic design principles that were compatible with not only
local culinary practices but also the thermodynamic constraints imposed by nature.
Through these girls and other students I also came to know about the different types of
food they could or had to cook at home. Once I got to eat a delicious meal prepared by
Sarla. It seems likely to assume then that time spent in the family kitchen had given these
kids immense experience with different kinds of food materials, their physical and
chemical properties, mixing and separation of materials, effects of heat on materials, and

$0 011.

To some extent I expected students in such a rural setting to be having such rich
experiences with farming, cattle and cooking, and a situated yet functionally powerful
everyday knowledge about the material world that arose out of such experiences. What I
had not expected was to find that students in 8th grade, especially boys, also had extensive
experiential knowledge of high voltage (220 volts) AC electricity and electrical
appliances. Their knowledge couldn’t have had its source in school science as it didn’t
provide students with any opportunities to explore AC electric circuits. The source, as I
discovered, was the important role of an ability to work with household electric lines and
appliances in their daily lives. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the village had
electricity. Electric bulbs lit the homes of even the poorer denizens, TV sets and music
cassette players were not uncommon, and electricity run pumps were used to draw water
from wells for irrigation of agricultural fields. Villagers needed electricity, and it was
available, at least for a few hours everyday. However, it was also costly - for many

families, that is. Besides, electricity consumed is rather laxly monitored by state

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showing

electricity boards in India. Thus, I found that using electricity by making an illegal “direct
connection”, as villagers called it, to the nearest power cable supplying electricity to the
neighborhood was common. Actually, this is a rather widespread phenomenon in India.
Studies on India’s power sector show that, as much as 21% of the electric power
generated in India got lost during transmission and distribution of electricity (Dosaani,
2004), and as much as 37% of reported electrical consumption in the rural areas may be
contributing to this extraordinary transmission & distribution losses in India (Kannan and
Pillai, 2000). Thus, many students through apprenticeship of observation and by trying it

themselves had learned out to make such “direct connections” safely.

Their deep experiential knowledge about making such potentially dangerous high voltage
connections got revealed to me during one freewheeling discussion I once happened to
have with a bunch of students in their classroom. The fact that there was no teacher in the
class then and students were largely left to themselves, probably encouraged them to
participate more freely than usual. During this conversation I asked them if they knew
how “direct connections” are made to get electricity from electric poles. Raj said yes. I
then asked if he could draw a diagram to show me how that is done. Using a page of my
notebook and with helpfirl suggestions from other students, Raj drew a diagram in my
notebook, and explained how wires are connected to the electric lines between the poles,
where switch is placed, how “joints” are made in wires, and how one wire is connected to
the ground for “earthing” (Pic. 5.1). As he drew, he also told me in detail how a wire is
“earthed” - the pit that is dug and the chemicals (water, coal and salt) that are put into it
along with the wire attached to an iron rod. He and other students sitting there were

aware that not all electric lines carry current — two carry “phase”, but one is earth line.

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Picture 5.1: Circuit diagrams showing
“direct connection.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

in) 64 1x

 

 

Raj thought that one wire was of
“phase”, and the other didn’t carry
current. But when I asked him about
the third wire, he didn’t know for

sure, but told me that two wires

_ were of use, and the third one

wasn’t. Ganesh thought that two
carried current, and one didn’t.
Ganesh also told me how electricity
can be brought to a house through
two types of circuits one with
“earthing”, although without a
switch and one without “earthing”,
i.e. by simply connecting the two
ends of the connection to the two

phase wires. To explain his circuit,

he drew the circuit diagrams in the space below Raj’s diagram (Pic 5.1). I asked Raj if

Ganesh was right. He said yes. Ganesh also said that if connections were made to just one

line, then bulb would not light. It would light only when connections were made to

different lines. I learned from them that most houses in Rajkheda village get electricity

this way.

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Students, especially boys, were also able to do simple repairs of electrical appliances,
ofien using soldering iron to accomplish their job. Consider an excerpt from a

conversation I once had with Dheeraj, a student in R’s class:

Me: What all things can you do related to electricity? Can you connect with
the line?

Dheeraj: Yes sir.

Me: And can you repair some things?

Dheeraj: Yes sir.

Me: What all things can you repair?

Dheeraj: Sir, things like “tape ” (cassette player in local lexicon) and “torch ”
(flashlight).

Me: Really?

Dheeraj: Yes sir.

Me: so you have ever done soldering?

Dheeraj: Yes. .. If there is loose connection anywhere, I can set it right. If
some bulb holder is not working, I can repair that.

Praveen, in fact, went one step further. He reported to me, “If somebody in the village
comes, then I do “welding-shelding” and using “ranga” (solder) can “solder-volder”
things.”4 As I learned, many times their knowledge arose from having to solve a problem
in their household circuits and appliances all by themselves. As Deepak told me, “Sir, we
have a tube well, when its fuse blows up, I have to go to repair it.” Repairing a fuse in a
220 volts AC current is dangerous, but not that complicated. One just has to replace the
burnt out fuse wire with a new one. Sometimes, however, the problems were more
complex working knowledge of AC current and circuits. For instance, Deepak told me
how he once repaired a fan that was not working. I reproduce the conversation we had
below:
Deepak: No sir, what happened once was .. there was a “fault” in the wire. So, I

checked it with, what do you call it .. a (“series ”) .. it was a long wire ..
Me( Interrupting): What? What did you use to check?

 

‘ It is common usage in Hindi to add a rhyming (nonsensical) word at the end of nouns and action verbs.
Thus, welding in Praveen’s sentence was uttered as “welding-shelding” and solder as “solder-volder”.

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Deepak: Sir, don’t we call it .. a “tester”.

Me: Oh, yes, right, right.

Deepak: So I checked the wires with it .. where the “cut” in the wire was .. it was
lighting there (“liss raha tha ”), but was not lighting (“nahi liss raha tha ”) in the
other wire. Then I checked in the middle, it was not lighting up, so I replaced that
bit of wire, and it started working.

Thus, we see in this conversation, how Deepak when confronted with the problem of
a nonworking fan figured out the problem through a “tester” and solved it by
repairing the gap in the circuit. Students also got to learn about electrical circuits from
the adults in their family and village. As Raj told me, “When people in my locality
repair electricity, then I usually observe them. If somebody opens a TV, and repairs it.

Then I observe that too, and learn which wire is connected to where .. .”

Thus, as I have shown in these examples, students through active participation in
daily events and activities in the local village economy and their homes had
accumulated a rich experience of working with plants, domestic animals and
inanimate objects and phenomena. This experience yielded them a robust and
functional knowledge of the world around them. However, as I show in the following

section, the expression of this knowledge was very much context dependent.

Understanding Students’ Representations of Scientific Knowledge

During my fieldwork I was able to observe students expressing their knowledge of
the material world in many different contexts. They revealed their knowledge through
the various chores they did during the course of their daily existence as natives,
solutions they came up with to solve practical problems they encountered in their

work outside school, their participation in classroom discussions with their science

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teacher, homework done in their notebooks, answers to questions asked in the exams,
responses to questions asked by me in one-on—one interviews, and so on. In each
event of this nature, their knowledge representations depended very much on the
situated manner in which they choose the discursive resources to construct their
responses, the dialogue they were entering into or participating through their

knowledge representations, the purpose, and their audience.

For instance, consider the following page from the science notebook of Narendra, in
which he used to write his homework. On this page Narendra has answered the
following question:

Describe direct and alternating currents with the help of diagrams.

Picture 5.2: A page from Narendra’s science notebook

 

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The two graphs shown in the page above are time versus amplitude graphs for alternating
and direct current. The text of the answer translates in English as follows:
1. Answer: Direct current (“disht dhara ”): Current flows uniformly in direct

current (“disht dhara ”). And it does not give us electric shock and home
appliances do not work with direct current (“disht dhara ”).

2. Answer: Alternating current (“pratyavarti dhara ”).. Current does not flow
uniformly in alternating current (“pratyavarti dhara ”). It gives us electric shock.
All home appliances run with alternating current (“pratyavarti dhara ”).

As a speaker of Hindi would know, “disht dhara” and “pratyavarti dhara”, the terms
used by Narendra to denote the two types of current, belong to a lexicon that doesn’t
circulate outside of school science textbooks and students’ notebooks. In everyday
language people in that region refer to these currents as “AC current” and “DC
current”. Similarly, the phrase for uniformly, “ek samaan”, used by Narendra is more

commonly found in textbooks than in everyday conversations.

Another striking aspect of Narendra’s response is the implicit disavowal of out-of-
school experiential knowledge about electricity, and adherence to the school science
version of the type of current used in household circuits. As I explicate in greater
detail in the next chapter, according to the science textbook, “The current that is used
in household electrical appliances is not direct current.” Whereas, owing to shortage
or non-availability of alternating current from electricity lines, use of car and truck
DC batteries to run small electrical appliances is pretty common in the region. In fact,
recognizing the endemic power shortage problem in rural India, the Center for
development in Advanced Computing, an Indian research organization, recently
launched a poverty-a1leviation-through-computers type of project in which computers
that run on car and truck batteries are to be set in village based computer centers

(http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040 t22-5700701.htm1) . Thus, when this issue was

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discussed in the class, students were very reluctant to accept what the textbook said.
During the discussion many students, including Narendra, insisted that the TVs in
their homes ran on truck batteries (which supplies only direct current). However,
when Narendra had to answer the question given as homework by the teacher, he
chose to ignore his experiences with electricity outside the school and retold the

science textbook version, viz. “home appliances do not work with direct current.”

In the example given above, the dialogic overtones are much muted, and the response
is constructed using primarily school science discourse and school science
knowledge. Students in the school used their class notes and homework written in
notebooks to prepare for exams that tested not what students understood about the
material world, but the extent to which they were able to remember school science
knowledge given in the textbook. Thus, one can understand why Narendra chose to
ignore his out-of-school discourses and knowledge to construct the aforementioned

response.

However, as the (rhetorical) context changed, so did students’ knowledge
representations as revealed through their utterances. The reader saw one contrasting
example in the slice of conversation with students about “direct connections”, that I
presented earlier in this chapter. The discursive hybridity and the free borrowing from
different knowledge sources is conspicuously present in this rhetorically effective
response that was intended to show me how a “direct connection” is made. Students
drew on their elemental knowledge of circuits, most probably garnered from school
science, and added in their experiential knowledge arising from observation and

practice to draw for me two alternate circuit diagrams for such connections. School

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science, in India or elsewhere (such as US), generally eschews high voltage
alternating current circuits to teach about how currents flows in electric circuits. But
this conversation and the circuit diagrams they drew revealed to me that through their
experience with high voltage alternating current household circuits, the students had
indeed come to have a pretty sophisticated understanding (for their age) of current
flow in circuits. Further, the conversation revealed their awareness of many aspects of
alternating currents that school science barely, if ever, touched upon at this grade. For
instance, they were aware that alternating current have “phases”, and only two of the
power lines supplying current to a neighborhood, the ones that in their discourse on
electricity carry “phase”, carry current The textbook barely mentioned “earthing” as
a safety precaution. But, as the discussion uncovers, the students actually knew how
to “earth” a household circuit. This knowledge, of course, never got revealed neither
in their notebooks nor in their answers to questions in the examinations. Further, use
of English terms, like “earthing”, “direct connections”, “phase” and “joints”, shows
their familiarity with out-of-school discourse about electricity that circulates among
electricians and people knowledgeable about electrical appliances in rural areas. In
the next two chapters 1 show more examples which showcase how students, in a
manner befitting a bricoleur, dipped into and selectively picked from available

circulating discourses to jerry-rig responses that were sensitive to contingent

rhetorical context of the event.

Students’ knowledge representations didn’t always get revealed in dialogues with
other people. They also got revealed in their dialogue with the material world. For

instance, when I saw Sapna making “chullah” (earthen stove) from clay or when I

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observed Govind and Moti making a simple bulb circuit from a students’ bracelet, a
bulb that they had brought from home, and a battery they borrowed from me, I was
essentially seeing them engaged in an intense dialogue with the material world. The
material object they crafted represented their knowledge in a material form - a
knowledge that was intimately sensual, implicit, and in no need of conscious
articulation for its rhetorical effectiveness. One look at the “chulllah” Sapna made
was enough to convince me that she knew a lot about clay and thermodynamics of

firewood based cooking.

However, the rhetorical diversity of the knowledge representations that students
produced could not sufficiently mask some common trends that I was able to observe
nonetheless. First, their representations of the material world were far richer in
experiences than in scientifically accurate patterns and explanations of those
experiences. Second, being deeply and primarily experiential, their knowledge of the
material world was more functional in nature. It enabled them to manipulate the
material objects and phenomena for their everyday purposes, but didn’t help them
much explaining why the material world behaved the way it did. When pressed for
explanations, they often produced tautological ones. For them, if a thing behaved in a
certain manner, it was because it was its nature to do so. Thus, their knowledge of the
material resembled crafi knowledge in terms of being more implicit than explicit.
Lastly, material phenomena were largely understood in terms of sequence of
observable events. That is, their representations by and large manifested ignorance of

unobservable (to naked eye) reasons and mechanisms of material phenomena.

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Students’ Views on Schooling and School Science

I was curious to know how students in R’s class viewed schooling and school science.
Thus during interviews and informal chats with them I probed them on these matters.

An analysis of their responses revealed the following major trends:

All students professed liking their school. The main reason they gave was that in this
school, they were taught well. So, like Bhagirath, other students too would say, “sir,
‘padhai”’ (a Hindi word that in different contexts mean teaching, education, and
learning), when I asked them what did they like best about this school. As regards
their impressions about the individual teachers, it was evident that almost all of them
liked Raghuvanshi’s teaching, though they mentioned different reasons for their
liking. For instance, Deepak liked the fact that Raghuvanshi didn’t teach that much
from the book because that way he was able to understand science better. Uma, on the
other hand, mentioned that Raghivanshi never beat students for their failings and

misdemeanors. Some students also mentioned that he made science interesting and

cracked jokes in class as reasons for liking him.

Students valued education mostly for being necessary for getting jobs or setting up a
trade. As Kishen said, “By getting educated .. we can get a job, we can go anywhere,
we can go to offices ...” Like Kishen other students also mentioned that education
would help them get along in the world by enabling them to conduct financial
transactions, read written information on products and public notices, enabling them
to travel, be better farmers, etc. For these pragmatic reasons, almost all students I
talked to recognized the importance of knowing mathematics, Hindi and English.

They considered it necessary for surviving as productive adults. Students approached

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me many times with the most sincere request that I tell them some easy way to learn

English.

Though science wasn’t considered as important as mathematics, Hindi and English,
most students I talked to valued science for the knowledge about the world it
provides. When I quizzed students about what sort of things they learned from
science, most examples pertained to plants and agriculture. When I asked Yash why
he liked science, he replied, “Sir, I like science subject the most because through it
we come to know many crops, such as what are the different things about it, and what
sorts of diseases inflict them and what is their treatment.” Interestingly only a few
students mentioned electricity in this context. A couple of the students, such as
Narendra and Raj, were, however, of the opinion that though science provided
knowledge about the world, they would not be seriously disadvantaged if they didn’t
study science at all. It was also interesting to note that Mukta valued science for its

language which she found to be very different from the everyday language.

Interestingly, all except one student liked learning science. The reasons they gave
were: (a) Raghuvanshi taught well, he worked hard to make them understand science
well; (b) they did experiments; (c) it was easy; (d) they learned about agriculture, etc.;
(e) he didn’t teach from the book; (i) Raghuvanshi didn’t beat students, and students
weren’t afraid in his class; (g) and he used humor in teaching them. Kishen was the
only student, who said he didn’t like science. He said, “sir, in science .. my mind
really gets blown off .. I don’t know what happens but I just can’t put my heart into

science.” Though he also readily admitted that he liked Raghuvanshi’s teaching.

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When asked why students seldom asked questions in the science class (and of other
subjects too), the most common response was that they felt shy or were afraid of
being made fun of by their peers and/or upbraided by their teacher in case they made
a mistake. For instance, consider a segment of a conversation I once had with two
students - Rakesh and Ramesh.

Me: Tell me .. why don ’t you ask questions in a science class?

Rakesh: Just like that .. Sir, boys laugh, that’s why.

Me: Because boys would laugh?

Ramesh: They would make fun.

Rakesh: Yes, they would make fun.
M: What? .. If you can ’t understand, then they would make fun of you?
Rakesh: They laugh also when if we answer in the class.

It was also interesting to hear from as many as three students, Yash, Narendra and
Ganesh, that they did not ask questions because questions about the natural world did
not come to their minds anymore. A couple of students also felt that asking non-
course and related-with-natural-world sorts of questions may derail the official
agenda of the teacher, and classroom was not an appropriate place for asking such

questions.

Summing Up

It was my intention to challenge in this chapter the conventional wisdom, often
reflected in teachers’ and even parents’ comments, about students from rural families
and their parents not being interested in education. In this chapter, I showed how keen
the rural parents were to see their kids acquire education — a desire that was matched

by the efforts made by students to succeed at school. Besides being students of 8th

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grade, these kids were also important contributing members of the local rural
economy and their families. They were legitimate, and not always peripheral,
participants to multiple discourses that constituted rural life. And, as presented in this
chapter, this participation had yielded to them a rich wealth of experiences about
objects and phenomena about the natural world. This was an immensely powerful
resource for learning of science that, as I present in the next two chapters, got

harnessed only partially and sporadically in science periods.

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Chapter 6

Raghuvanshi’s Science Classroom: A Portrait of a Science
Teacher as a Bricoleur

Raghuvanshi was certainly not an ordinary run-of-the-mill teacher. Much of what he did
in his science class was different from what I saw happening in classes led by other
teachers. However, he was also not a heretic by any means in terms of his teaching
practice. He did by and large use the professional and school science discourses in his
teaching of science — discourses that had legitimacy in the school and approval of the
local government education bureaucracy. However, his enactment of the teacher script
carried an unmistakable stamp of his ideas, beliefs and personality, and unmistakable
evidence of contingent improvisation under constraint. In this chapter, I present an
analysis of Raghuvanshi’s teaching of science. As a study in contrast, I also present a

brief portrait of another teacher’s enactment of teacher script.

The Teacher Script

To fully appreciate Raghuvanshi’s tactical enactment of the teacher script, it is
worthwhile to first recapitulate the main elements of the teacher professional and school
discourses that were elucidated in greater detail in Chapter 4. As I showed in that chapter,
the school provided bare minimum resources to a science teacher. He had to teach
science to a class full of more than 40 students packed in a small room with the help one
book (the science textbook approved by the state textbook board), one blackboard and a

handful of chalk pieces. The science textbook represented the science curriculum. Except

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for a pacing guide that specified chapters to be covered each month and government
published textbook, teacher did not have access to any other curriculum resource to teach
the state mandated science curriculum for VIII grade. The teacher was expected to cover
the curriculum by strictly following the textbook, and ‘doing’ all the chapters. As was
shown in Chapter 4, government education officers overseeing the implementation of the
curriculum measured a teacher’s professional competence by the number of chapters he
had taught to his students. The local Block Education Officer, as I mentioned in Chapter
4, was pretty displeased by the fact that Raghuvanshi had still to ‘do’ two more chapters.
The fact that students got to learn science through experiments in his class only served to
mark Raghuvanshi down in the officer’s eyes. According to the Block Education Officer,
it wasn’t necessary to do experiments in class to cover the science textbook. As my
review of school science discourse in Chapter 4 shows, experiments were indeed
presented in the science textbook in a way as to make them totally superfluous. Passing in
exams didn’t depend a bit on whether students ever got to do cookbook type of lab
activities or lab demonstrations given in the textbook. Further, experiments were
suggested in the textbook but only as illustrations of scientific principles, facts and
theories, with their results given alongside. So a student could learn what would happen if

these activities were done, without doing them.

Further, as I present in greater detail in Chapter 4, the absence of scientific inquiry was
complemented by an emphasis on having students memorize scientific facts, definitions
and explanations in the name of science learning. Science textbook presented to the
students as sole authoritative canon presented science as turgid prose in a genre that was

barely comprehensible to the students and ofien left a native Hindi speaker like me, with

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some experience of writing in Hindi, flummoxed. The science textbook and hence the
science curriculum made little effort to connect school science with students lives and
experiences, and offered little opportunities for inclusion and legitimization of students’

voices in the classroom discourse.

According to the professional discourse of teachers that I inferred from teaching practices
of teachers, a few of teaching practices were much preferred over others. First, the
teachers often resorted to initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) teacher-student exchanges
to teach a topic. Then, I also got to see the (in)famous “you read” teaching practice, in
which a student was asked to read aloud text from the textbook, and everybody listened.
The teacher, now and then, interrupted the student reading aloud to translate in everyday
language what the text meant or to elaborate on some point presented in the chapter.
Preference was to be given to individual seatwork rather than group work. Lastly, it was
considered important to teach-to—the-test. Questions that were likely to be asked in the
final annual examination were identified, and a considerable time was spent in detailing
their answers to the students. No formative assessment was done, and the sole purpose of
summative evaluations was to grade student performance and determine students’ future,
in terms of promotion to the next grade. Summative evaluations were of the nature of
paper and pen tests largely designed to test how much and how well the student had

memorized the official scientific canon as presented in the science textbook.

Finally, both the teacher professional and school science discourses stipulated a marginal
role for students in construction of their own learning experiences. They were expected to

be subservient to the teacher, and participate in their learning largely through passive

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listening and obedience to teacher’s instructions. They were not encouraged to question,

probe and explore but rather to memorize and regurgitate official text on demand.

Daily Routine in Raghuvanshi ’s Science Period

Before I lay out in detail the different ways in which Raghuvanshi enacted his teacher
script, it would be useful to get a sense of the daily rhythm of events in his classroom that
I got to observe during the course of my presence in the school. In the paragraphs that
follow I will attempt to construct from my field notes a typical science period thought by

Raghuvanshi to 8th grade students.

Though there were small variations now and then, throughout my study period, I found
Raghuvanhi’s class having a predictable recurring pattern of events and practices. A
typical science period started with roll call of students taken by Raghuvanshi. He called
out their roll numbers, and students responded by standing up and saying “yes, sir!” in
English. It usually happened that while Raghuvanshi was taking roll call, a few students
would enter the classroom. They did that often by first asking, in English, permission to
enter. They would say, “May I come in, sir?”. Raghuvanshi would respond, “Come, in.”
But it also happened sometimes, often when he had already started teaching, that they
would just slink in and occupy their place on the mat unobtrusively. After roll call was
done, Raghuvanshi called students to show their “homework”. Only a few students
(usually not more than three) got up and show their notebooks in which they did their
homework to Raghuvanshi. While Raghuvanshi checked their homework, these students
stood there, listening to various comments Raghuvanshi made while going through their

work. During this time, the rest of the students either chatted with their friends, opened

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their books or notebooks and read them, or tried to finish their homework (sometimes by
borrowing somebody else’s notebook). After Raghuvanshi was done with this daily
routine, he made some general announcements, if there were some to be made, and then
would start his teaching for the day. Sometimes, students chose this moment to seek

clarifications on some procedural issues pertaining to the classroom or the school.

The teaching often began by his asking students, often in English, to close their books
and notebooks. If he was teaching a chapter that was to be continued from the last class,
he would start by reviewing what the class had done in the last science period. This was
generally done in the instructional sequence of initiation-response-evaluation (IRE).
Thereafter, Raghuvanshi posed a question for students to consider and respond.
Sometimes, he would do this by asking students to discuss the question amongst
themselves in small groups. He would give students about 5-10 minutes for this
discussion. Students were left free to form groups as they desired. These groups were
always monolithic in terms of gender — girls formed their own groups and boys had their

own.

After review of last lesson was done, Raghuvanshi would start teaching the topics he
intended to cover that day. He roughly followed the sequence of topics laid out in the
concerned chapter of the science textbook. However, brief detours, often at the initiative
of students, were also taken at times. Unless Raghuvanshi wanted to use the textbook
specifically for some purpose, students weren’t allowed to open their textbooks while
lesson was being conducted. Teaching usually proceeded as a concatenated series of
teacher talk and Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) exchanges that sometimes evolved

or transformed into animated whole class discussions with eager multivocal exchanges

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between the teacher and the taught. Whenever the contingent constraints and affordances
of the teaching situation made it possible, Raghuvanshi complemented his teaching
through IRE exchange and classroom discussions with hands-on activities done in the
classroom. After covering the topics that Raghuvanshi had intended for the day, he
signaled the end of science period by giving some questions to students to be done as

homework.

Improvising under Constraints
After having a sense of the daily rhythm of events & practices in Raghuvanshi’s science
period, it seems apposite to examine how Raghuvanshi worked with the existing and
contingently emergent constraints and affordances to create learning opportunities for his
students. That will set the stage for understanding the nature of classroom discourse that

Raghuvanshi helped create in his science class.

As mentioned earlier, the science textbook was the only curriculum resource available to
Raghuvanshi save for a pacing guide that laid out chapters of the textbook that were to be
taught in each month of an academic year. As indicated in the previous section,
Raghuvanshi more or less faithfully followed the sequence of content as presented in a
chapter in the science textbook to teach a particular topic. However, for most of the
topics he never referred to the textbook while teaching a topic in the class. As
Raghuvanshi told me, “My expectation is always that when I am teaching, their complete
attention should be on me. It is for this reason why I ask kids to turn over their books or
keep their pens in their bags.” Having focused the attention of the students away from

science as presented in the textbook, Raghuvanshi was left free to improvise upon and

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enact the teacher script in his own way. Thus, as I show below, he taught science topics
as he understood them taking frequent detours from the prescribed sequence or allowing

students to lead the class discussion in directions interesting to them.

For example, the textbook has only one chapter on electric current. In that chapter there is
one paragraph on two types of electric current — direct (DC) and alternating current (AC).
Content wise, it is a very densely packed paragraph that describes, with the help of two
small current vs. time graphs some theoretical differences between these two types of
current. It gives no examples of how and the usual voltages at which these currents are
used, makes no attempt to connect this content knowledge to students’ lives, and provides
no openings for students to add their own experiences with these two types of currents. In
fact, this paragraph even makes statements that contradict students’ experiences with
electricity. For instance, it states that, “The current that is used in household electrical
appliances is not direct current.” However, owing to shortage or non-availability of
alternating current from electricity lines, use of car and truck DC batteries to run small

electrical appliances is pretty common in the region.

Raghuvanshi, on the other hand, devoted one whole extended class period of 1 hour, as
against officially stipulated 45 minutes, to discuss these two types of currents and how
the differences between the two play out in the daily lives of his students. The textbook
presumes that students don’t know that there can be different types of current and
proceeds to educate the students about them. Whereas, Raghuvanshi right from the
beginning of this science period not only invited students to bring in and share their

knowledge and experiences with different types of current with the whole class, but also

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allowed them to lead the class discussions in directions more compatible to their interests.
Consider an event from this science period given below:

Raghuvanshi:: Till now, .. you have seen how many types of electric current?

No response for a flaw moments. Students sitting quietly (well, almost; some
whispering could still be heard).

Ramesh Singh stands up, and says: The “current” that flows in wires.

Raghuvanshi:: Yes.

Ramesh: The “current ” that flows in wires.

Raghuvanshi:: Which type of wire?

Ramesh: The “line ” wire.

Raghuvanshi:: The “line ” wire. So this is “line ” type of current. That you call ..
“bijli ” .. or “electric ” .. “line ”. This is one type of electricity. .. Is there any other
type of electricity (“bijli ”)? .. The one that is flowing in your electric poles and wires.
That is one type of electricity. It is Ramesh Singh ’s opinion that one We of electricity
is that which flows in the wires on electric poles. Is there any other type of
electricity?

N0 immediate response fiom the students.

Raghuvanshi: writes on the blackboard: (l) The one that flows in wires hanging on
electric poles.

Raj and Baghirath exchanging sidebar conversations and smiles.

As we see here, instead of proceeding to tell the students what the different types of
current are, Raghuvanshi starts by inviting students to share their knowledge of different
types of currents that they may have come across in their daily lives. Further, when
Ramesh responds to Raghuvnashi’s invitation with an answer using terms from out-of-
school discourse on electricity, like “line” and “current”, he not only accepts them but
also legitimizes their usage in classroom by re-voicing them himself for the whole class.
The student’s contribution is duly acknowledged by writing it on the blackboard. The
discussion then proceeds as follow:

Raghuvanshi: asks again: Is there any other type of electricity that you may have

seen or experienced? Or in your homes, you may have used it.

Raj exchanging sidebar conversations with Rakesh now.

No response fiom students for a while.

Raghuvanshi:: There is one in your homes, and you use it. You use it often.

Ramesh raises his hand once more.

Raghuvanshi:: One “minute ”, let the others think about it too. .. Let other answer
too. You have already given one answer.

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Ramesh pulls his hand down.

No response fiom students.

After a while, Raj raises his hand and says: Sir, may I tell you about one?
Raghuvanshi:: Yes, speak up.

Raj stands up and says: Sir, the electricity fi'om a “generator. ”
Raghuvanshi:: The electricity from “generator”.

Raj: We can run tube wells from this type.

Raghuvanshi:: 0k .. He says that there is an electricity fiom generator.
Some students speak “generator” in a low voice.

Raghuvanshi: writes “electricity from generator” on the BB.

Thus, not content with just Ramesh contributing his ideas about different types of electric
currents, Raghuvanshi asks the students again to think of types of electricity that they
may have “seen or experienced”. These repeated invitations do result in more
participation from students. In fact, when Ramesh volunteers again to share his ideas,
Raghuvanshi asks him to wait and let other students contribute too, which as we see
above, they finally did. Raj comes forward with his idea about electricity from a
“generator” as being another type of current. Raghuvanshi again deviating from an I-R-E
type of exchange, doesn’t immediately evaluate Raj’s contribution as right or wrong, and
legitimizes it by accepting it and writing it verbatim on the blackboard. The students
obviously had plenty of experiences about electricity to share, but were hesitating to do
so. But as a result of Raghuvanshi’s repeated exhortation and Ramesh and Raj’s
participation, the hesitation dissolves and many more students jump into the discussion
making it highly animated and multi-vocal, as I present below:

Bharatjee: Sir, “battery ” — the one that can run a TV.

Raghuvanshi:: Yes, the electricity fiom a “battery”.

A student: Sir, TV can be run on it.

Another student: Our TVruns on it.

Raghuvanshi:: Yes, a TV can be run on it. Now which type of battery?

A student: sir, “kisan torch

Raghuvanshi: : The truck battery.

Another student: sir, tractor.

Now more students say: “kisan torch ”.
Raghuvanshi:: Can TV run on the battery used in “kisan torch”?

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Many students: YES SIR!

Raghuvanshi:: Ok, now tell me if the electricity fiom “kisan torch” is difiizrent from
the electricity fiom a truck battery?

Most students listening to Raghuvanshi attentively now.

Some students say yes.

Narendra shouts: No, they are the same.

Ramesh Singh raises his hand, and says: Should I say something?

Raghuvanshi: : Yes.

Ramesh: They is a diflerence between them.

Raghuvanshi:: They are diflerent? Tell me more.

Ramesh: One is of 3 volts and the other is of12 volts.

Raghuvanshi:: No, the voltage can be more or less. Just like, these wires on poles ..
(some students start chatting) .. Listen to me .. Listen. .. The electricity that is flowing
in wires on poles .. There is one which is flowing in those big wires that are near the
temple there ..

Students: Yes sir.

Raghuvanshi (continuing): And there also are poles that are here. .. The ones that are
standing in your village. .. Now, the electricity is these two types of poles .. is it of
diflerent types or the same?

Some students: It is of the same type.

Raghuvanshi:: It is of the same type, right?

Students: Yes sir.

Raghuvanshi:: Similarly, electricity that flows in your “kisan torch ” and the one that

flows in your battery .. are they of the same type or dflrent?

Students: THE Y ARE THE SAME.

Raghuvanshi:: You mean this big type of battery.

Students: Yes sir.

Raghuvanshi writes on the blackboard: (2) The electricityfi'om “kisan torch” and
“battery

As we see in this lengthy event, students had a rich experience with household electricity,

and were aware that all electric currents that flows in the appliances they used weren’t the

same. In this event, we also see that after they got over their initial hesitation because of

Raghuvanshi’s encouragement, they were eager to share their experiences with the whole

class. In contradiction to the claim made in the textbook that “The current that is used in

household electrical appliances is not direct current”, students knew that batteries can be

used to run such appliances. Raghuvanshi accepted and legitimized this homegrown

knowledge. He deviates from an I-R-E interactional pattern, and encourages a much

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lengthier discussion on this topic than what the school science discourse warranted, as is
reflected in the condensed, abstruse, and remote way this topic was presented in the

science textbook.

Each chapter of the book had some exercise questions at the end. Raghuvanshi often
avoided referring to them or asked students to answer them for homework. At the end of
a science period, he gave his own questions for students to answer as homework.
Raghuvanshi rationalizing this predilection told me, “I do not give questions from the
book because I know that there are books like MBD and .. GPH, that have answers to
those questions. .. That’s why I give the questions that I have made myself. The questions
are always about things that I have taught that day — the things that I have “targeted”
today for learning by kids. My questions are always related to this fact.”I Since
Raghuvanshi ofien didn’t teach from the textbook, it is easy to understand why he chose
to have summative assessments different from those prescribed by the school science
discourse. But that does not imply that Raghuvanshi, unlike other teachers, did not
prepare his students to succeed in the annual final examinations on which their fate as
students depended. I observed a few instances when Raghuvanshi stressed that students
write answer of some “I-M-P” (short for “important”) questions because of their
likelihood of being asked in the exams. He sometimes also pointed out science content
that had greater chances of being asked in the exams. For instance, consider this event
that occurred when Raghuvanshi was teaching the chapter on rocks, ores and metals:
Raghuvanshi: In our Madhya Pradesh, iron mines are found in the Chattisgarh

area from where iron ore is extracted Now the iron are we get what is its
chemical composition? What is the name of the iron are we get?

 

' MBD and GPH referred to by Raghuvanshi here are test preparation guide books that were popular with
students.

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(N 0 response from the students)

Raghuvanshi: You read the first line look into your books.

(Students start looking into their science textbooks.

Raghuvanshi: Look into ‘Extraction of iron ore ’.

A student: Hematite.

Raghuvanshi: Yes, iron ores are number one hematite, and the other
magnetite, and the third one is iron pyrite. (writes on the BB) Remember these
names. These are also asked in exams. So the chemical formula of hematite is
Gautam: F e203.

Raghuvanshi: And of magnetite?

Students: F e 304.

Raghuvanshi: And pyrite?

Students: F eSz.

Raghuvanshi: These you will have to remember. Iron is always asked about in the
exams.

However, the textbook didn’t always remain at the periphery of classroom discourse in
Raghuvanshi’s classroom. As the event given above shows, I got to witness a few
occasions when contrary to my expectations, Raghuvanshi asked students to either refer
to some particular text in the textbook. A couple of times I even found him asking
students to read aloud some sections from the book, a teaching practice much favored by
other teachers of the school. It is difficult to see any clear pattern in when Raghuvanshi
chose to refer to the textbook and when he consigned it to the margins. For instance, one
might presume that a teacher is more likely to take a greater support from the textbook in
content areas where (s)he was not very confident of her/Iris understanding of the subject
matter. But, in Raghuvanshi such reasoning didn’t always hold. Raghuvanshi confessed
to me, “I have a good understanding of Physics and Chemistry topics, but I feel some
lack of understanding in Botany and Zoology.” However, as we see in the event given
above, Raghuvanshi chose to depend upon the textbook while teaching about ores and
metals. Likewise, while teaching electricity when Raghuvanshi came to the topic of

dynamo, he asked a student to get up and read aloud related text from the textbook for the

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benefit of the whole class. Perhaps, these deviations from expected behavior only show
that events are caused by a contingent confluence of multiple factors arising out of then
extant constraints and affordances of the teaching situation. A search for definite and

definitive causes is often as elusive as it is misleading.

However, science isn’t or rather shouldn’t be taught with the help of a textbook alone. If
the learning goals aim for student learning science with understanding and motivation,
just as in scientific communities, dialogue with peers have to go hand-in-hand with
dialogue with the material world through experiments and other activities(Anderson,
2003; Sharma & Anderson, 2003). As mentioned earlier, textbook did mention some
experiments and activities to be done by the teacher, but only as demonstrations and
applications of scientific facts and theories given in the accompanying text. Even if
students do not get to do scientific inquiry to learn science, experimental demonstrations
can do much to help students learn and maintain their interest in science. However, the
state education department didn’t really expect the teacher to demonstrate or let students
do these experiments. As Raghuvanshi told me they neither got sufficient funds to buy
equipment and supplies needed for the purpose, nor did they get the type of professional
development opportunities that would enable them to perform these experiments and
activities with students. However, Raghuvanshi was not to be deterred. Being a
resourceful person, he had managed to collect and preserve some science equipment over
the years, much of it dating from the time when the government schools of the area
followed a learning-by-doing and discovery oriented science curriculum. He used this
equipment to demonstrate or let students conduct experiments whenever the teaching

context was amenable to such improvisation.

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For instance, the chapter on electricity describes different types of battery, such as voltaic
cell, dry cell and Daniel cell. Raghuvanshi, however, went one step further, and with the
help of students made an improvised Daniel cell in classroom out of a copper vessel
(Iota) that is used in Hindu homes in religious rituals, a water purification candle, and
chemicals. He then made a simple circuit connected with the Daniel, and showed that the
cell was generating current by showing the effect of current on a magnetic needle put
close to the connecting wires of the circuit. Now, Daniel cell is a type of battery invented
by Englishman John Daniel in 1836, that for some reason is still taught in Indian schools,
even though most students never get to see them in their lives. As a science student I too
had read about Daniel cell, but had never had seen it made right before my eyes till that
day in Raghuvanshi’s class. Like me, students were also thrilled to see this simple yet
elegant demonstration. They probably had a better appreciation of a Daniel cell than I had
as a student when I just had to memorize its construction and diagrammatic

representation for passing the exams.

As I have shown, the school didn’t provide many resources to a teacher to support her/his
teaching. However, teachers in a school form a community of practice that can be a
source of much support to a teacher. Though I didn’t see teachers collaborating to co-
teach a class or helping each other with teaching ideas, I did find one instance of
Raghuvanshi seeking help of another teacher to teach a topic. One day, when I was
helping some grade 8 students with math problems in the absence of a teacher in the
classroom, Dinesh Mathur, the teacher who taught science to the 7th graders, but English
to the 8‘“ graders entered the room to announce that in place of Raghuvanshi sir, he would

be teaching the chapter on biological evolution to them as Raghuvanshi sir had asked him

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to do so. Now, as reported earlier, Raghuvanshi didn’t feel comfortable with his content
understanding in Life Sciences. Thus, as Raghuvanshi told me later, he had requested
Mathur to teach this chapter in place of him. This event indicates that Raghuvanshi was
willing to move himself out of the teacher role temporarily if that made better science
learning among students possible. I found that Raghuvanshi and Mathur collaborated in
this manner in other grades too. It is possible that other teachers in the school too helped
each other out by agreeing to chip in with their help in academic areas of their expertise
for their peers. Certainly, all the middle school teachers I talked about the cohesiveness of
the small community of practice they had in school, and appreciated the help they got
from their peers. Such peer collaboration does not find mention in ‘The Charter of
Education’ (Siksha ka charter, 2003) - the only official policy document the teachers of
the school had. The professional discourse of teachers did not and could not account for
every contingency arising in the day to day work of a teacher. There existed wiggle room
where capillaries of discursive power ran dry, official voice was silent. In such in-
between spaces, local actors, like Raghuvanshi and Mathur, could author their own
improvised responses to meet the local contingencies and circumvent the factors that

otherwise would constrain their teaching practice.

Raghuvanshi was often in the habit of using simple instructions in English. Thus, for
instance, if he wanted a student to wipe clean the classroom blackboard, he would
instruct a student to “clean the blackboard” in English. Likewise, throughout the science
period, students got to hear and respond to instructions, like “show your homework”,
“take out page 47”, “close your books”, and so on. Students seeking to enter the class

would often ask permission by saying “May I come in, sir?” to which he responded by

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uttering, “come in”. When he took roll call, students responded to their roll number by
getting up and saying ‘yes sirl”. I found this insertion of English in the daily classroom
discourse pretty interesting and often wondered if Raghuvanshi’s teaching craft
knowledge had anything to do with it. My questions on this issue got answered during
one of the lengthy conversations I had with him. He told me that he recently attended a
“Sanskrit training” camp in which the “trainer” required all the attending teachers to
commmricate in Sanskrit only while they attended the camp. As Raghuvanshi said that
experience, “helped me to incorporate some things in my teaching that I had long desired,
Like, I now give many instructions in English, like I tell them to “open your book”,
“close your book”, or “take out your homework”. .. Or “clean the blackboard”. I use these
instructions, so they (students) have also started learning them.” Raghuvanshi’s desire
and insistence on inserting English in the daily classroom clearly indicates his attempts to

harness whatever extant resources to enrich his teaching practice.

Thus, as we see in this section, Raghuvanshi worked with the contingent resources and
constraints in his teaching situation to enact in his own version of the teacher script — an
enactment that was marked with contingent improvisation and was suffused with his own
intentions, personal history and positionality in local time and space. However, the
portrait of Raghuvanshi’s teaching is still incomplete as I still have to delineate the
contours of the classroom discourse Raghuvanshi sought to create in his science periods
with the help and/or hindrance of the abovementioned resources and constraints of this
teaching situation. In the sections that follow, I attempt to do just that, and then perhaps

the reader will have a fuller measure of Raghuvanshi as a bricoleur engaged in selective

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picking and unpicking of elements of the teacher professional and school science

discourses and authoring his own personal and unique performance.

The classroom discourse

Looking at the patterns of events and practices in science periods, one can piece together
major elements of the classroom discourse in science periods. Understanding these
elements sets the stage for an examination of the different ways students responded to
school science as taught by Raghuvanshi — a key focus of the next chapter.
As I mentioned above, the teaching for the day actually began only after Raghuvanshi
was done with checking the notebooks of the few students that came to him to show their
homework. In sharp contrast to the way text has been presented in the science textbook,
and the way other teachers of the school taught, Raghuvanshi invariably started his
teaching with a string of questions about the topic that were posed to the students. Often,
he asked students to get together in small groups to discuss the questions among
themselves before reporting their answers to the whole class. Thus, for instance, on
January 24, 2005, Raghuvanshi began the chapter on sources of energy by first asking
students in English to “stop writing, and close your books”, and then gave them the
following question to discuss in small groups:

“Urja sankat ko dekhte hue, aaj humne kin sroton ka upyog karna shuru kar diya

hai? Aur agle samay mein humein kin sroton ka upyog karna chahiye? ” (Keeping

in view the shortage of energy, which resources of energy have we started using
today? And which sources of energy should we use in fitture ?)

Raghuvanshi also wrote this question on the blackboard. Similarly, on March 2, 2005,
Raghuvanshi started the topic of dangers of electricity by asking students to discuss

among themselves in small groups what are the dangers of electricity, its causes and

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precautions one can take to escape these dangers. Evidently, through these questions,
following a sort of learning cycle approach, he sought to establish the main problems of

his science lesson for the students (Anderson, 2003).

As can be noticed above, I found that Raghuvanshi encouraged student-student exchange
in the classroom. For instance, Raghuvanshi also asked students to get into groups in
order to do experiments. Not always, but it seems that this happened whenever he had
sufficient kit supply to make it feasible. For instance, he had sufficient bar magnets in his
kit supply. So while teaching the chapter on magnetism, he asked students to form 4
groups, and gave one pair of bar magnets to each group for exploration of magnetic
properties of attraction and repulsion. The students were told to find out the answers of

following questions through their explorations:

 

Q. 1 Iron is when brought near North pole.

Q. 2 Iron is when brought near South pole.

Q. 3 South pole is when brought near North pole.
Q. 4 North pole is when brought near South pole.
Q. 5 North pole is when brought near North pole.
Q. 6 South pole is when brought near South pole.
Q. 7 There is between like poles.

Q8 There is between unlike poles.

Such group discussions and explorations did much to engage students in productive
content related dialogue with each other. I also found that sometimes Raghuvanshi also
encouraged student-student dialogue by echoing and throwing back a students’ comment
for consideration to the whole class. This sort of re-voicing of students by the teacher put
students’ voices in the center of an emergent heteroglossia that was mostly as productive
as it was unscripted. For instance, consider this student-teacher dialogue that occurred

when Raghuvanshi was teaching the chapter on magnets.

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Raghuvanshi: OK, you guys also have magnets of your own?? All of you have
seen magnets? You have seen the school ones that I showed you, but you also
have magnets in your homes.

Students: Yes, sir.

Raghuvanshi: What do you think they must be made of? What is it — wood, cloth,
stone, sand?

Mukta: Sand

Raghuvanshi: Sand, eh?

Ramesh: It looks like iron.

Raghuvanshi: So it is like iron? Does everyboay agree with this?

Here in this excahnge, we see Raghuvanshi re-voicing first Mukta’s and then Ramesh’s
response for the whole class to consider. Through such re-voicing Raghuvanshi often
engendered vigorous classroom discussions in which he was just one another, albeit an
important one, participant. I saw such discussions very rarely in class periods taken by

other teachers.

Sometimes, dialogue among students led to a light hearted banter that did much to
enliven events in science periods, and establish a sense of conviviality in the classroom.
Consider the event given below:

Raghuvanshi:: So if the motor is on, and if there is a drop in current, then
Raj: Sir, that thing will automatically shut the motor 019?

Raghuvanshi:: Yes, so it also stops the engine on its own. So there is a new
thing now. What would we call it? .. Auto .. Auto switch?

Raj: Yes, auto switch.

Dhanraj: Auto! .. There is an “auto ” that runs too.

Raj: Sir, please write “switch ” along with “auto ”, otherwise Dhanraj would
think that we talking of the “auto ” that runs. (Students laugh).

R (while writing on the BB): A-U-T-O S- W-I-T-C-H. ( ).

Raj: Sir, Dhanraj was talking of the auto that runs on the road

Mahesh: Sir, there is one Mahindra auto too.

Students laugh.

Raghuvanshi: : Mahindra auto .. and .. Vespa auto.

Students: Ganeshji ’s auto, automatic pump, ..

This dialogic event occurred during classroom discussion on electrical safety, in the event

of houses not having the safety of fuse wires installed in the household circuits. This

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discussion saw a strong participation by students who infected and invigorated the
discussion with their ideas and experiences of working with such circuits in their daily
lives outside school. Raj, as we see in this event, brought in the idea of using “auto-
switches” that automatically switch off circuits in the event of current fluctuations. In the
villages in this region, people prefer the shorter moniker “Auto” instead of “Auto-switch”
in their everyday discourse on electricity. However, “Auto” (short for Auto-rickshaw) is
also a name for a three-wheel scooter that is used as, taxi in cities of India. So, Dhanraj
commented on the homonymic nature of this word, prompting banter and humorous
digressions among students. I found that Raghuvanshi tolerated, and most times didn’t
even hide his enjoyment at such gentle teasing and repartee among students. In fact, once
when Raj jokingly complained that Sapna was laughing at him, Raghuvanshi replied in
good humor that Raj should let her laugh as he was making her happy by letting her
laugh at him. However, assuring Raj at the same time, he said, “You said nothing wrong.
Whatever you said was good. And if somebody felt like laughing because of what you
said, then it is all the better.” Thus, the classroom events in science periods weren’t
always dull and dreary like other class periods, continually punctuated as they were with

healthy and humorous interludes.

Though it was infrequent, Raghuvanshi wasn’t shy either of using humor as a pedagogic
tool to interest and motivate students his class. Humor often lies in transgression of
cultural and linguistic boundaries. So, when Raghuvanshi inserted out-of-school
discourses in the classroom discourses, or did something that was unexpected for a
teacher, students couldn’t help being tickled. For instance, while telling students how

they can reverse the effects of electrolysis by reversing the polarities in the experimental

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set-up, Raghuvanshi uttered the typical (Indian) magic incantation: “Jai kali culcutte wali
tera wachan no jaye khali” to dramatize the results of the experiment. As was to be
expected, students just loved it and there were smiles all around. Raghuvanshi also had a
fetching talent of using the most evocative analogies to drive home a point — a
pedagogical content knowledge that he used most effectively. Consider the event I give
below. In this event, Raghuvanshi is talking about an adaptation leaves of some water
plants have that let such plants survive in water.

Raghuvanshi: So it (the leafs surface) is smooth, green and what else does it
have on its surface .. I mean, what must be happening, why doesn ’t water stay on
its surface? .. What must be on its surface? .. (no response from students) .. that
is, it is very smooth. Thus, on it .. oily or wax like substance is there on its surface.
This wax like smooth substance does not let water .. stay on the surface of the leaf
(students chime in with Raghuvanshi). .. Why is it not letting water to stay on its
surface? .. If it stayed then what would have happened? .. (no response fiom
students) .. After all, it is submerged in water fi'om beneath, and so if it also gets
submerged from the top then what would have happened? .. (no response fiom
students) .. Then it would not have been able to give out excess water. How would
it have given out water if its upper surface had not been open to air? That ’s why,
God or the plant itself has made such an arrangement that .. it made the upper
surface smooth.

Students: Yes sir.

Raghuvanshi: That’s what it says to the water — “Don ’t sit over me. I won ’t let
you do that. As it is I am living in water day and night, and on top of that if you
climb onto my head then what will happen to me! ? ”

Students laugh.

Sheela (laughing): Yes sir.

 

The image of leaf admonishing water must have been rib-tickling one indeed for these
students. Especially, if in other classes they got nothing but dour authoritative instruction
from teachers. The transgression of boundaries by the teacher encouraged students to do
the same. As a result, I frequently got to observe events wherein students brought in their
everyday discourses in the classroom discourse. Raghuvanshi gave legitimacy to such

attempts and welcomed the ensuing hybridity.

155

His tolerant attitude towards hybridity of discourses was revealed to me one day when the
science period had just started. Raghuvanshi had checked some students’ homework, and
was to begin teaching for the day. Seeing a smile on Raghuvanshi’s lips, Rakesh asked
him why was he smiling. Raghuvanshi laughed and said that he was smiling because of
the way Dhanraj had used hybrid language (“kichdi basha ”) in his homework. R told the
class that we all use hybrid language (“kichdi basha ”), but Dhanraj had gone one step
ahead and mixed languages within a word. Raghuvanshi then gave an example of how we
all use hybrid language. He spoke a sentence in a Hindi-English hybrid: “daily use mein
hum ek mixed basha bolte hain ”, and asked students to identify English words in this
sentence. Students quickly pointed out the English words “daily” and “mixed”.
Raghuvanshi then told the class that in his homework, Dhanraj had written “Aluminum”
as L’mineum’ (letter ‘L’ followed by ‘minium’ in Hindi). Raghuvanshi wrote
“L’mineurn” on the BB to show how Dhanraj had concocted this hybrid word. Students
could easily read and understand what Raghuvanshi had written. Sheela then pointed
Raghuvanshi’s attention towards the name ‘Dhanraj’ written on one of the classroom
walls, with white chalk, mixing in a variety of ways English, Hindi as well as symbol “+”
- “+raaz”, “+raj” (‘raj’ in Hindi), and “+raj”). R seemed amused after reading them.
Surprisingly, he didn’t tell Dhanraj or any other student to wipe them off. However,
Raghuvanshi ended this brief digression by saying that such usage was good for laughs
and for fun sake, but Dhanraj should desist from using such language in exams lest he

should get zero from the examiner.

Thus, in the event mentioned above, we find Raghuvanshi endorsing hybridity while at

the same time reminding students to be mindful of the communicative context. Whenever

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the confluence of different factors contributing to an event made it possible, students,
encouraged by the openness of their teacher towards out-of-school hybrid discourses and
knowledge, suffirsed the classroom discourse with heteroglossia that was marked with
productive intertextuality and acceptance of differences in meanings and genres. This
aspect of Raghuvanshi’s science classroom is explored in greater detail in the following
chapter as it focuses on students’ actions. Here, in keeping with the focus of the chapter, I

wish to highlight Raghuvanshi’s actions that helped co-construct this heteroglossia.

First, whenever he could, Raghuvanshi tried to situate school science in the lives of his
students. More often than not that meant going beyond or around the prescribed
curriculum. But there were exceptions too — occasions when he followed the professional
discourse, and treated school science as presented in the textbook as the sole authoritative
fountainhead of knowledge in the classroom. To illustrate the contingent and shifting
nature of Raghuvanshi’s teaching practice, the way he taught the chapter on electricity is
an apposite case in point. The reader will remember from the previous section how
Raghuvanshi tried to situate the classroom discussion on alternating and direct currents
by first asking students to narrate their experiences with different types of current. That
set the stage, as we saw, for the entire discussion on this topic to stay grounded in the
daily life experiences of the kids. As a result, students’ knowledge abstracted from their
experiences with household electricity could not only be a part of the classroom
discourse, but could also gain due legitimacy — something that school science discourse
just did not provide for. For instance, if Raghuvanshi had not made effort to situate this
discussion in the lives of students, the home grown knowledge that some household

appliances can indeed, and are in fact, run on direct current would have been de-

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legitimized by the rather categorical assertion of the science textbook that “The current

that is used in household electrical appliances is not direct current.”

But, even with the chapter on electricity, Raghuvanshi did not always attempt to bring
students experiences to the foreground in classroom dialogues. I observed eight science
periods in which Raghuvanshi taught electricity. Each of these periods was focused on

Table 6.]: Electricity Lessons one topic 0f electricity (refer

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

, , _ , , , Table 6.1).
Date Marn topic Situating topic rn the
lives of the student

Feb 9 Magnetic effects of No As can be seen in the

current
Feb 10 Static electricity No . T bl 6 1
Feb 15 Sources of electricity Only while discussing accompanymg a 6 ° ’

— chemical batteries, chemical batteries _

solar cell & dynamo there were a few occasrons,
Feb 16 Conductors and Yes .

Insulators such as when Raghuvanshr
Feb 18 Heating effect of Yes

current taught solar cell and static
Feb 19 Chemical effect of No

current electricity, that he did not
March 1 Alternating and direct Yes

cum” attempt to connect the topic
March 2 Dangers from current Yes

& electrical safety with the lives of the students.

 

 

 

 

To teach electricity generation through solar cells and dynamo, Raghuvanshi deferred to
the professional and school science discourses and based his instruction solely on the
textbook. He read aloud fiom the book, translating the text in simpler everyday Hindi,
made constant references to it, and even asked a student to read aloud the text for
everybody — practices that constituted important tools of the trade for other teachers in
the school. For the topic of static electricity, he didn’t refer to the textbook at all, basing
his instruction on static repulsion and attraction experiments he did with the students.

However, in order to teach magnetic effects of electric current, he first asked students to

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read an experiment suggested in the textbook, and then demonstrated that experiment to
the whole class. Thus, we can see that though Raghuvanshi tended to situate school
science content in the lives of his students, there were occasions when he followed the
school science discourse and didn’t make effort to enrich school science with the daily

life experiences of the students.

The tactical nature of selective picking and unpicking of the circulating discourses that
we saw above correlates rather well with the nuanced and apparently contradictory nature
of Raghuvanshi’s thinking on this issue as it got revealed to me during the couple of
lengthy conversations I had with him on his ideas and practice of science teaching.
Raghuvanshi was of the firm opinion that, “. . .the things that we teach should match their
interests too. So we should know what are the interests of a student, and then we should
encourage him to learn according to his interests. And then he can learn a lot.” Further,
Raghuvanshi believed that a teacher “should have full faith in the capabilities of his
students that kids too have immense potential for lot of learning, if only we teach them
properly.” Thus, guided by confidence in the learning abilities of his students and a desire
to align his teaching with their interests, Raghuvanshi tried his best to situate school
science content in the everyday experience of his students. However, talking about his
image of an ideal teacher, he commented, “Well, it is this thing that the objectives
that are determined for us, the most important, “basic” things in our curriculum —- we
should understand that it is essential to teach them first. First, you teach them, and then
come on to other things .. Basically (word uttered in English), what is most essential
should be taught first.” Raghuvanshi never once complained about the science curriculum

or berated the content or form of the science textbooks he had to use. In fact, when I

159

asked him about the main ideas of the chapter on metals that he was then teaching,
Raghuvanshi added after talking about the main ideas that “In this book, the effort is to ..
those properties have been entered (word uttered in English) that can be done by the kids.
Activities have also been included.” Such comments and the fact that Raghuvanshi taught
topics like solar cell that were required by the precribed curriculum, but had little to do
with the daily life experiences points towards Raghuvanshi’s acceptance and conformity,

if only partial, to the professional and school science discourses.

Being a reflective practioner of his crafi, Raghuvanshi was, however, aware of agonistic
relationship between concern for students and compliance with school science discourse.
I asked him how far he thought he was from his image of an ideal teacher. Raghuvanshi
gave a little laugh on hearing the question and responded, “I think I am very, very far
from that And in my efforts, the problem is in aligning with the curriculum because if I
try to implement my ideas, I am short of time, and that then influences the
implementation of the curriculum. Though I am always aware that I should not focus as
much on completing the curriculum as on teaching well. So I cut (word uttered in
English) topics, and go ahead. I am always leaving some topics as I proceed.”

I found a similar pattern of contingently shifting confluence of competing tendencies in
dialogic exchanges between the teacher that the taught in the science period. As
mentioned in the section on daily routine in Raghuvanshi’s class, the teacher script as
enacted by Raghuvanshi positioned him at the center of the dialogic exchange with
students at the margins. Teacher talk and teacher initiated and controlled Initiation-
Response-Evaluation (IRE) exchanges was the general norm in science periods.

However, as I present in greater detail in the next chapter, this script was neither set in

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stone nor indifferent to the intentions and actions of students. The roles of the teacher and
the students in this script were contingently and continually negotiated between them.
Consider an event that occurred in a science period in which the main topic for the day
was heating effects of electricity. Before this event, Raghuvanshi had talked about
melting points of metals being high or low, and a student had mentioned fuse wire as a
substance with low melting point

Raghuvanshi: In the main switch cut-out “fuse wire ” is used Now this ‘Yitse
wire” “F USE WIRE What is this? In our houses, if there is any problem,
of the electric sort, or if something happened outside the house because of which
suddenly lots of current flows into wires, then what happens?

Mahesh: It blows then.

Raghuvanshi: Then what happens (repeating the question).

Students: Sir, it blows.

Narendra: it melts.

Mahesh: a “blast” occurs.

Raghuvanshi: When electricity is more, what happens ? The “fuse wire” melts.
Why does it melt?

Students’ response unclear.

Raghuvanshi: No, what happens then? What is it that happens there? If voltage is
high, then what does that do?

Mahesh: Sir, that “ use wire” becomes very thin.

Rakesh: (Sir, one phase goes oflf)

Raghuvanshi:: So what happens to the wire? Do they heat up? The “ use wire
Students: Yes, sir.

Raghuvanshi: So fitse wire heats up and then melts.

Here, as can be clearly seen, students are conforming to the teacher script and playing
their ascribed subordinate role in the IRE exchange. Students do not take any initiative in
terms of asking questions or offering their own and unsolicited comments. They merely
respond to Raghuvanshi’s questions and instructions. However, earlier in the same
period, the roles had got re-negotiated when Raghuvanshi was discussing with students
coils of metals or alloys of high melting point used in electric stoves and heaters.

Bharatjee then mentioned about coil being there in bulbs too. Raghuvanshi agreed and

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wanted to talk about the filament in a bulb. But suddenly Raj smiling heavily got up from

his seat, moved to the next row of students and looking out points to a halogen bulb

hanging outside the classroom said, “ sir, this one that is lighted up there also has one.”2

Raj’s initiative then triggered off the following dialogue:

Raghuvanshi: Yes, what is it called?

Narendra & Mahesh: MERCURY!

Baghirath: No sir, it is not Mercury.

Many students talking at once oflering their opinions about what it is called Of
them Sapna ’s voice is the loudest.

Sapna: Halogen!

R (speaking slowly): H—a—l—o-g-e-n.

Narendra: No sir, it is Mercury.

Raghuvanshi:: Yes, this one is Mercury. Mercury gives out a yellow colored light.
Rajesh and Meer Saheb: Sir, it is there on ‘Chaugadda’ and also in ‘Itwara
bazaar ’.3
Raghuvanshi:: No, Mercury doesn ’t give yellow light.

Mahesh: Sir, it gives blue .. or green.

Raghuvanshi:: Mercury gives a milky white light. Like the one our tube lights
give.

Students: Yes sir.

Raghuvanshi:: Yes, that is Mercury .. And the yellow color, I think, is .. yes,
Sodium lamp. It is the Sodium ones .. The ones that give yellow color. .. Sodium
lamp.

Mahesh: Sir, the ones that are in Pipariya give yellow.

Raghuvanshi:: Yes the ones that give yellow .. There are yellow .. but there are
milky ones too. The ones that are installed on Jhanda Chowk .. they give totally
milky white light.‘

Students: Yes sir.

Raghuvanshi:: They are mercury lamps. .. And the ones that are fitted on street
lampposts ..

Students: Yes sir.

Raghuvanshi:: The ones that give yellowish light are Sodium lamps.

Mahesh: Yes sir, that ’s right.

 

2 This was a halogen lamp hanging on a wire outside that had been left by hosts of the wedding party that
had stayed in the school the night before. The bulb was still lighted up as it was jury-rigged through a
‘direct’ connection from the main wire supplying electric power to the school.

3 ‘Chaugadda’ and ‘Itwara bazaar’ are two famous and busy markets in the neighboring town of Pipariya.
’ ‘Jhanda Chowk’ is the important city square of the Pipariya town.

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Thus, we find here that Raj’s initiative triggered an animated discussion in which the
teacher script was abandoned for a while, speaking roles changed and dialogue proceeded
in a rather in an unscripted manner rich with multiple voices and discourses. In
contradistinction with a typical IRE exchange, Raghuvanshi wasn’t the only initiator or
evaluator, nor students were the only ones responding to the other person’s initiative. For
a while, everyone was at the center and the periphery of the classroom discourse at the

same time — positioned equally in a dialogue among equals.

And that’s how I observed much of the dialogic exchange happening in Raghuvanshi’s
class — linked periods of authoritative teacher talk and IRE exchanges that repeatedly and
ephemerally evolved into a multivocal heteroglossia - thick with intertextuality, and
acceptance of difference. The fact that students took content-related initiative in the in
Raghuvanshi’s classroom is remarkable. First, because I saw a complete lack of initiative
in class periods of other teachers. And second, because this happened despite the
reluctance among students, as shared with me by many students, to be seen as taking

initiative in the classroom.

Now, making causal links is risky and can even be misleading. But certainly at least some
of the contributing factors for an event or a practice can be identified. The analysis of
transcripts of science periods indeed suggests some important contributory factors. First,
the way Raghuvanshi enacted his teacher script, students felt encouraged to contribute
their voices, discourses and experiential knowledge to the ongoing dialogues in science
periods. For instance, as we saw in events analyzed earlier, he often began instruction on
a topic with questions asked to the students. Students were many a times encouraged to

discuss these questions in small groups.

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Second, as I showed in the case of the chapter on electricity, Raghuvanshi more often
than not tried to situate science content in the lived experiences of his students. Third,
analysis of communicative events in science periods showed that student initiative was
more often than not acknowledged and legitimized by Raghuvanshi. Out of 39 events that
had students taking science content-related initiative in science periods, I found that
Raghuvanshi didn’t privilege only four such attempts. As we saw happening in a few
events given above, he tended to acquiesce to students’ attempts to influence and take the
content-related classroom discussions in unscripted directions. My analysis shows that as
a result, students were able to substantially influence events in science periods in about

64% of the cases where they took some initiative to do so.

Fourth, as I showed in the event where Raghuvanshi reacted to Dheeraj’s hybrid spelling
of the word ‘Aluminum’ in his homework, Raghuvanshi was comfortable with hybridity
and accepted presence of multiple discourses in classroom dialogues. He used both the
local vernacular and official Hindi as presented in the science textbook in his teaching,
mixed English phrases in his instructions and comments, and actively translated between
different discourses while teaching, especially when he borrowed text from the textbook
to make a point. For instance, while asking students to refer to the text about Alternating
and Direct currents in the textbook, Raghuvanshi mentioned, “Now you can open your
books, and .. page 38 .. “dhist dhara” and “pratyavarti dhara”. (students open their
books) .. Have you understood now? Let me tell you what it is called in English because
in the book English words are also used. “dhist dhara” is called “direct current”. D for
“direct” and C for “current”, so in short we will say “DC current”. .. (Raghuvanshi points

to the graph of AC in the book) And this is called “pratyavarti dhara”, or in English it

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would be “alternating current” (students practice speaking out this English word).
Raghuvanshi also translated students’ discourse into science discourse. For example,
consider this brief dialogue:

Lal Saheb: Sir.

R: Yes.

Lal Saheb: Should I say something?

R: Yes, speak up.

Lal Saheb (stands up): Sir, in TVand radio, there is an “elumeetur” that ’s why

they can run. The bulbs don ’t have it, so that ’s why they would not light up.

R: “Elumeetur”?

Lal Saheb: Yes sir.

R: “Eliminator”? Yes it is called “Eliminator”. “E-L-I-M-I-N-A-T-O-R”.
Some students try speaking “eliminator

In everyday discourse, the electrical appliance eliminator has got transmuted to
elumeetur. Thus, we find Raghuvanshi re-voicing this term in English and letting students
practice speaking it. Similarly, when Sapna used an everyday expression — alag-alag — to
indicate magnetic repulsion between like poles of two magnets. Raghuvanshi then re-
voiced her answer in scientific terms, by mentioning the term used by textbook —
vikarshan. In such events, I find Raghuvanshi not only allowing entry of out-of-school
discourses and knowledge sources in classroom discussions, but also dialogizing them
with school science discourse. This teaching practice comes across to me as a
contributing factor to vibrant heteroglossia that I saw contingently emerging now and
then in his classroom. I have presented some events in this chapter that showcased this
dialogizing of discourses in the events. In the next chapter, instances of this heteroglossia
are examined in further detail to show how students actions too contributed to its

contextual and ephemeral emergence (and dissolution).

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The discursive underlife

Finally, except perhaps Mathur, Raghuvanshi had a greater tolerance for an active
underlife and general lack of overt discipline in the classroom than the other two teachers
of the middle school. Many times students would walk in late and he would pay little
attention to the late coming student. Loud rhythmic chanting of multiplication tables by
children from elementary classrooms that wafied in through the open door and window
often merged with the background noise of student chatter to transform the classroom
into a vocally vibrant public space where often much seemed to happen besides the
official business of imparting and receiving education. Predictably, periods of high
activity coincided with transitions or lull in teaching in the science period, such as when
Raghuvanshi gave homework at the end of the class or transitioned from one activity to
the next. Much of the underlife comprised students having sidebar conversations, and
passing books and other stuff among themselves. But sometimes, students also tried to
communicate with students outside the classroom through the open door or window.
Raghuvanshi, however, discouraged such behavior through mild reprimands. Actually, I
never saw Raghuvanshi threatening any student with any punitive action for their actions
in the classroom. Unlike other teachers, he never beat or threatened to beat his students.
At most they received a mild verbal reprimand for their behavior unruly behavior.
Besides, his reprimands mostly were addressed to no one in particular but to the class as a
whole. Many students I talked to listed Raghuvanshi never giving corporeal punishment
to them and their consequent lack of fear in his classroom as two important reasons of
their liking science as a school subject. Thus, students were visibly more relaxed and

acted more naturally in science periods as compared to other subject periods. As Dheeraj

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said, “there is no fear of doing anything in Raghuvanshi sir’s class.” However, I also
never saw open defiance and gross indiscipline in science periods. Raghuvanshi only had
to raise his voice to put the class back on agenda and greatly reduce activity in the
discursive underlife. Perhaps, mutual respect among the teacher and the taught,
Raghuvanshi’s engaging manner of teaching, and traditional cultural norms of interaction
between a teacher and a student worked to keep students’ underlife in the classroom
within healthy limits. It seems safe to conclude though that Raghuvanshi’s lack of
emphasis on enforcing overt discipline and compliance among students and the resulting
construction of a relaxed and convivial classroom learning environment may have
spurred many a student to add their often hesitant voices to the ongoing dialogues in

science periods.

A Stuay in Contrast: Ritesh Shrivastav ’s Classroom

The nature of Raghuvanshi’s enactment of his teacher script can be better appreciated in
light of how other teachers in the same school taught. Thus, in this section, I present a
brief portrait of Ritesh Shrivastav’s classroom. Ritesh Shrivastav taught social studies to
the 8th grade. He had a good opinion of himself as a teacher as he unabashedly admitted
to me that he felt he was close to the image of an ideal teacher he had in his mind. He
added though as an afterthought that he did still keep trying to come closer to that ideal.
He wasn’t very articulate about describing his image of an ideal teacher, but did say that,

“well, the ideals are just that one must do ones duty whatever it is. .. Also, all topics

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should be taught in as much “detail” as possible. Then it is “clear” to the kids. .. So, kids

should be taught in as much “detail” as possible.”

A tall imposing man that he was, Ritesh Shrivastav maintained a stern visage in the class.
In response to my question about his expectations about how students should behave in
his class, Shrivastav told me that “students should take interest in whatever subject is
being taught to them. .. They should have an inclination towards the subjects.” Taking
interest in studies probably meant being a good listener as that was pretty much of what
students were allowed to do in class. Any sidebar conversation among students was
strongly admonished. Students told me there was a general fear of him as he had the
reputation of beating students for their misdemeanors and infractions. Thus, I found that
while Shrivastav taught, students in his class kept silent - their heads down and trying or

pretending to read the textbook.

As for the teaching practices he favored, three clearly stood out during my study period.
First, teaching a chapter meant asking a student, mostly it was Amaresh who was picked
out, to read aloud the chapter from the beginning for the whole class. So while Amaresh
read aloud the chapter, rest of the class listened. Though, of course, I could see them
looking sideways now and then and exchanging glances with their friends. When I asked
him what kind of preparation he did before teaching a chapter, Shrivastav replied, “I need
to prepare. .. I have to look at the chapter and see which terms will be difficult for
students so that I can get them to write their meanings. .. So I have to look it up a bit.”
Besides, identifying difficult terms he felt he didn’t need to do any other preparation now
as he has been teaching this subject for the last six or seven years. In keeping with how

he prepared for his teaching, Shrivastav’s academic input in the class didn’t go far

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beyond translation of academic official Hindi terminology into simpler everyday
language. And thus, Shrivastav would interrupt the student reading aloud the text
frequently to either explain the meaning of some term he thought was difficult for the
students or to re-voice a passage or a couple of sentences in the text in a slightly simpler
but similar language for the benefit of students. He particularly emphasized the content
he thought was important for students from the point of view of examinations marking
such content as “I.M.P” (short for “important”). The contrast with Raghuvanshi’s class is
striking as never even once during my entire study period did I witness students asking a
content related question or making a content related comment in class. If students had

any questions, they were almost always of procedural nature.

Second, unlike Raghuvanshi, Shrivastav followed the school textbook strictly to cover
the social studies curriculum. Never once did I see him abandoning it even momentarily
or improvising upon it. The textbook represented the final authoritative word, even if it
was outdated and incorrect. For instance, the book had a chapter on India’s foreign
policy. This chapter, long afier the demise of Soviet Union in 1991, still stubbornly
mentioned it as existing. And that’s how it was taught to the students — still existing and
as one of the two super powers in the world. Further, the chapter also talked of India as
one of the leaders of the Non-Alignment Movement and as following Panchsheel
(meaning five moral principles in Sanskrit) principles of co-existence among nations (of
19508) as a component of their foreign policy. There was no'mention of India’s foreign
policy in a uni-polar post 9-11 and increasingly ‘flat’ world. Evidently this chapter had
been written many, many years back and hadn’t been revised since. But, Shrivastav

didn’t deviate a bit from the text and endorsed every word of it for the students.

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Third, after a chapter or a portion of it had been read by one and listened to by all,
Shrivastav dictated answers to exercise questions that were at the end of each chapter. A
couple of times he started with questions first, and then came to the reading of the
textbook. Questions, he thought, were important from the point of view of exams, were
declared as “IMP”. So while he dictated, all the students, sitting cross-legged on the floor
and their shoulders hunched over the notebooks in their laps, hastily scribbled down what

the teacher said.

Thus, I found an enactment of teacher script in Shrivastav’s class that was in sharp
contradistinction with Raghuvanshi’s. While Raghuvanshi enabled students, albeit in a
contingent and context dependent manner, to play an important role in the co-
construction of their learning experiences, Shrivastav denied them any meaningful role.
While Raghuvanshi worked to create conditions for contingent enactment of student
agency, Shrivastav’s teaching didn’t allow such conditions to congeal, even if transiently.
Other two teachers, headmaster Mahto and English teacher Mathur, enacted the teacher
script differently from Shrivastav and in their own way. But none of them did as much
selective and contingent picking and unpicking of circulating discourses and
improvisation in their enactment of the teacher script as much as Raghuvanshi. And
lastly, but most importantly, none of them made learning as much personally meaningful

to a student, as Raghuvanshi did.

Summing Up

It would be naive to think of Raghuvanshi as a mythical hero who having little weakness

of his own was able to surmount daunting odds to teach science in ways that educators

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and policy makers advocate. His teaching practice had several shortcomings of which he
too was aware. Also, as the analysis in this chapter reveals, many times he chose to teach
in pretty traditional, non-student friendly ways. However, what was certainly remarkable
about his teaching was the way he was able to contingently circumvent his own
limitations and negotiate the existing constraints and affordances to create apposite
conditions for learning of science in ways that were personally meaningful and relevant
to this students. As a skilled bricoleur, he seized contingently emerging opportunities to
exercise of his own agency as a teacher. This ephemeral and situated emergence of
teacher agency enabled him to contingently and selectively pick, adapt and improvise on
circulating discourses of his profession and school science to craft a teaching script that
offered many opportunities for students to learn science in ways that went beyond the

limitations of the extant school science and professional discourses.

This agency manifested itself in many different ways and contexts. For instance, as we
saw in this chapter, he followed the curriculum, yet found opportunities to deviate from it
or improvise upon it to make school science more relevant to students’ daily lives.
Whenever it was feasible, he scrounged around for kit material to do fascinating science
experiments with students even though the extant professional discourse didn’t encourage
this practice. Thus, through a tactical re-use of the prescribed curriculum he was able to
help engender contingent opportunities for himself and his students that enabled both the
teacher and the taught to move beyond its limits and make school science more relevant

and meaningful to their lives.

Likewise, though I-R-E type of interactional exchanges dominated in science periods,

there were also many occasions when by a contingent enactment of his teacher agency,

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he was able to open up ephemeral spaces where students’ agency could be exercised. He
helped actualize, although in an contingent and thus inconsistent manner, conditions that
made it possible for students to take initiative, change the nature and form of classroom
dialogues, and animate the classroom discourse with their voices, out-of-school

discourses and knowledge systems.

Thus, Raghuvanshi’s enactment of the teacher script stamped with his own personality,
history, ideas and beliefs showed unmistakable evidence of situated improvisations and
enactment of teacher agency for sake of better science learning. This enactment of
teacher agency was very much depended on the transient confluence of different factors
defining that moment in space and time. As a result, it got revealed to me only
inconsistently and under opportune circumstances. In contradistinction, Ritesh
Shrivastav, who taught social studies to the same class, enacted the teacher script in ways
that were relatively more consistent in adherence to the extant circulating discourses of
the profession and the school subject and lack of contingent improvisation upon them.
Unfortunately this also translated as consistent denial of possibilities of greater

participation of students in co-construction of their learning experiences.

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Chapter 7

Students in the Science Classroom

All the students I spoke to liked Raghuvanshi and the way he taught science. However,
their participation in the classroom discourse varied considerably within and across
subject topics. As mentioned in the methods chapter, to evaluate how students
participated in the classroom discourse and responded to school science, I took an
dialogic event in Raghuvanshi’s science class as the basic unit of analysis, and analyzed a
total of 469 episodes that occurred in 11 class periods of Raghuvanshi’s teaching science.
An interactional episode is one where participants can be identifiably seen as engaged in
a dialogic and socioculturally mediated action in a social context such as a science period
taught by Raghuvanshi. A class period consists of a sequence of connected dialogic
events wherein each event is demarcated from the preceding and succeeding ones in
terms of participants, setting, topic, and nature of action (form, content, addressivity,

etc.).

I was interested in understanding not only how students participated in the classroom
discourse and responded to the teacher script in the science classroom, but also how
students’ agency gets enacted in the way they responded to the school science they
encountered in Raghuvanshi’s classroom. Thus, each interactional episode was analyzed
at two levels:

1. socio-linguistic level: where I looked at how students responded to teacher’s

enactment of his teacher script, and his response to students’ actions; and

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2. science content or discursive level: where I focused on the nature of students’
utterances in terms of the knowledge and discourses students used by them, science
topic, the exigencies that led to their utterances and the effect their actions had on the

classroom discourse.

In this chapter, I present the main results of this analysis. The attempt is to showcase
interesting patterns that the analysis revealed at both levels — patterns that help us
understand the nuanced, contingent and improvised ways in which students with all their
knowledge and experience of and interests in the material world respond to teacher script

and school science discourse in Raghuvanshi’s classroom.

Different Forms of Student Participation in the Classroom

As discussed in the previous chapter, Raghuvanshi’s class had a predictable familiar daily
rhythm to it. Almost every day, the science class started with roll call of students. First,
homework of students who volunteered to show was checked while rest of the class
waited. The teaching began shortly thereafter and almost always ended with the giving of
homework to students. In the previous chapter I also showed how remarkably relaxed the
learning environment in Raghuvanshi’s class was, especially if we compare it with that of
other subjects. Students not only felt more fi'eer to participate in classroom discussions,
but also in the discursive underlife. Raghuvanshi didn’t spend much time in managing the
students overtly. He tolerated students’ sidebar conversations as long as they didn’t
threaten to overwhelm events related to classroom discourse. Further, Raghuvanshi
actively encouraged students’ participation in the classroom. However, as this section

will show, despite all the encouragement by the teacher, students responded to the

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Table 7 . 1: Student participation in science periods (Topic: Electricity)

 

l Category of Events

Frequency

 

i . . . .
; Events With students-1n-actron(taklng
' initiative)

54 (25 events with content-related initiatives
(9% of total no. of total number of events)

 

Events with students responding to
teacher instructions and questions and
conforming to the teacher script

165 (90 events where students responses
include their out-o -school discourses and
knowledge (32% of total no. of events))

 

Events with students taking initiative 14
to inject a non-content related element
in the classroom discourse
Events with students taking initiative 38
in the discursive underlife

 

 

Events with students responding to 7
teacher instructions and questions

- with a non-content related response
iEpisodes with Teacher-in-action on 3
non-science related issues

 

 

 

281 (in about 41 % episodes, students either
took content related initiatives or responded

l with their out-of-school discourses and
I knowledge)

‘l Total Episodes examined

 

 

 

classroom discourse contingently, calibrating their responses in accordance with the
constraints and affordances of the social situation of the moment. The major categories
of their response as thrown up by the socio-linguistic discourse analysis of the

interactional episodes are as follows:

(A) Following the teacher script: For much of the class time (61% of the 469 episodes
studied), I found that students sat in the class rather passively either listening to
Raghuvanshi or participating in the IRE (initiation-response-evaluation) exchanges or
classroom activities as instructed by him. Except through compliance, there was little

evidence of student initiative to influence events pertaining to teaching-learning of

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science. As a result, teacher-student dialogue unfolded more or less according to the
teacher script. Students in these dialogic events opted to conform to the teacher script by:
(a) using or adding their out-of-school discourses and experiences in their responses to
teacher’s instructions or questions; (b) using or repeating statements from school science;
(c) responding to teacher’s procedural or instructional routines; or by ((1) just silently

listening to what the teacher had to say.

For instance, one day Raghuvanshi was teaching chemical properties of metals. After
reviewing with the students the chemical properties of metals that were covered the day
before, Raghuvanshi came to the topic of the influence of acids on metals and nonmetals,
and initiated the following IRE sequence with students:

Raghuvanshi writes “The influence of acids on metals and nonmetals ” on the BB,
and then turns around to ask: Do you know what is an acid (“amla ”)?

There was no immediate response from the students.

Raghuvanshi sits down on the chair, and asks again: Acid (“amla ”).. what is it? ..
Keep the pen down, keep it down. . Do you know anything about acids? .. Eh? ..
“Amla ” means?

Dheeraj: “Acid

Raghuvanshi: Acid That’s the English name. Do you know its any other

properties?

No response fiom the students.

Raghuvanshi: “amla” means “acid”. “Amla” means .. there is a trade name —
“tezaab ”.

Yash: Yes sir, “tezaab ”.

Raghuvanshi: Trade name .. ?

Students: “Tezaab ”!

Here as we see, it is the teacher who asks the question the question that kicks off the
teacher-student dialogue. This question, “Do you know what is an acid? ” first finds no
response from the students. But after being asked again in a different way, a student,
Dheeraj, attempts a response. He answers Raghuvanshi’s question, “Amla means?” by

giving its equivalent word in English. This response, interesting in its own way as it

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provides a glimpse of students’ out-of-school discourse on chemicals, is then evaluated
by the teacher, and used as a base for furthering the IRE mode of exchange by asking
further questions on the issue-at-hand. This episode also shows a rhetorical practice
usually linked with IRE exchanges, and indulged in quite regularly by Raghuvanshi. This
was to ask rhetorical questions to make sure that all the students were on the same page.
In this episode, after telling the students that “tezaab” is a trade name of “arnla (acid),
Raghuvanshi asks again, “Trade name ? ” to which students promptly answered by
repeating in unison, “Tezaab! In episodes where students followed the teacher script,

such IRE exchanges dominated much of the teacher-student talk in the classroom.

While students in such events conformed to the teacher script, their participation shows
how extensively they made use of their out-of-school discourse and experiences with
material world in structuring and giving substance to their responses, whenever the topic
resonated with their daily life experiences. An episode that occurred one day when the
class was engaged in learning about the heating and chemical effects of electricity
manifests this recurrent theme in students’ participation in the classroom discourse quite
effectively. This episode centers on the question (posed by Raghuvanshi) of why does the

fuse wire melt so easily when the other wires in a household electric circuit do not.

Raghuvanshi: So why does it melt? Why don’t other wires in our houses also
melt?

Mahesh: Sir, it is because “current ’s ” influence is first felt by it.
Raghuvanshi: So is that why the wire melts?

Mahesh: Yes sir, it is kept there right in the beginning.

Raghuvanshi: How is it in the beginning? There is a wire fiom the “pole ” to
the house too!

Mahesh: Sir, but that wire is thick

Raghuvanshi: It has nothing to do with wires being thick or thin Think again.
Why does the fuse wire melt? And right next to it there are other wires (which
don’t melt).

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Mahesh: Sir, “line ” (electricity connection) to the house starts right fi-om
there.

Raj: sir, a “fault” occurs.

Raghuvanshi: There is indeed a “fault ” because of which something happens.
What happens to the wire?

Mahesh: (Small explosions occur on electricity poles. Why does that happen?)
Raghuvanshi: Why does it melt?

A Student: what?

Raghuvanshi: This solder (“raanga ”). I told you just now. Why does it melt?
(pointing to solder wire in his hand)

Narendra (and a couple of other students): Because if its “galnank”(melting
point).

Raghuvanshi: Yes, its “galnank”(meltingpoint)is ?

Students: Low.

Raghuvanshi: So wouldn’t something similar be happening in the fiise wire?
Students: yes, sir.

Raghuvanshi: It ’s melting point too is

Students: Low.

Raghuvanshi: That is, because of electricity, because of high voltage, because
of this problem, heat is produced there. That is why when you take out the cut-
out

Students: yes, sir.

Raghuvanshi (continuing): So have you ever touched the plates of the “cut-
out”? How is it?

Students: Hot.

Hemraj: “taanti ” (warm or hot in local vernacular).

Raghuvanshi: It is “taanti ”, that is, it is hot. This is our Bundelkhandi
language. Right?

(Students and R smile and laugh.)

Raghuvanshi: So it becomes taanti because of high voltage or because of
some problem with our electrical appliances. If there is some problem in our
radio, TV, or something, or if two wires touch each other, then what happens
in a flash? Fuse wire

Students: Blows off

Raghuvanshi: It blows ofif And the electricity ?

Some Students: “fault”. “Fault” occurs.

Raghuvanshi: The electricity switches 0:2?

Dheeraj: Sir, the wire gets burned

As we see in this event, students infected the classroom discourse with their voices that
borrow liberally from their out-of-school ways of talking about electricity and
experiences with household electric circuits. Mahesh had abstracted from his experiences

with household electricity an explanation of why fuse wire melts first and not other wires

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in the circuit. Consequently in the beginning of the episode, we find him engaged in an
insistent effort to gain legitimacy for his ideas about the melting of electric fuse wire.
Soon other students, Raj, Narendra and Hemraj also, pitch in with their ideas and
experiences with electricity. Thus, we get to hear from Raj that fuse wire melts when a
“fault” occurs in the circuit, and from Hemraj that plates of the cut-out (the electric fuse)
feel “taanti” (meaning hot in local Bundelkandi dialect) to touch. Now “fault” is an
English word, but it is also part of the everyday discourse on electricity in the region.
Similarly, “taanti” is a word that belongs to the local Bundelkandi dialect. Both, of these
terms were certainly not part of textbook Hindi - the genre in which the school science
textbook was written. Students working in real-tirne to fashion a response to the teacher’s
instructions or questions also made use of school science whenever they could or
whenever their out-of-school resources didn’t suffice. For instance, in this episode, when
Raghuvanshi asked the class, “Why does it melt? (pointing to solder wire in his hand), the
students used a school science term, “galan ” (melting point in textbook Hindi) to
answer the question. “Galnank”, both as a term and as a concept, are not part of the

everyday discourse on metals in the region.

Thus, I found that students used their out-of-school discourses and knowledge to
construct their responses in about 44% of the episodes where they chose to follow the
teacher script without taking any initiative on their own. However, as we saw in the
episode above, they also used school science to construct their responses. Let me give
another example of this sort. This episode occurred in a science period where the main
topic was generation of electricity through different means, such as solar cell, different

types of chemical cells, and dynamo. Raghuvanshi’s main focus in the classroom

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discussions that happened during this period was having students realize that in each of
the electricity generating devices some form of energy was converted into electrical

energy.

Raghuvanshi: Here we have the solar “cell ”. What happens in the solar

“cell "? In the solar “cell which energy got converted? ..Light .. Does light
have energy too or not?

Students: yes sir.

Raghuvanshi: So in a solar “cel light energy gets converted into electrical
energy. Now write this completely. (speaking slowly so that students can copy)
In a solar “cell ”, light energy gets converted into electrical energy. (R also
writes sentence on the BB). .. OK? But in these three batteries, do they have
light energy?

Students: No sir.

Students facing the teacher and most of them paying attention to him.
Raghuvanshi: Light has no role here. In them, it is the chemical energy that
gets converted .. What is it getting converted into?

Students: electricity. (Raghuvanshi repeats with them).

Raghuvanshi: And in this .. the dynamo?

Dheeraj: Magnet ..

Raghuvanshi: What energy is this?

Dheeraj (in a low voice; covers his mouth with his hand while speaking):
Magnetic energy.

In sharp contrast to the episode that I discussed earlier where students made good use of
their out-of-school experiences and discourses to influence the ongoing dialogue between
the teacher and the taught, in this episode we find students’ role reduced to re-telling of
tiny bits of school science. Evidently, the topic of energy conversion in solar cells and
chemical batteries spoke little to their everyday concerns, experiences and ways of
talking about the material world. The only discursive resource they could borrow from
was school science. This is a recurrent theme that emerges from the content analysis of
student participation in the classroom discourse. That is, whenever the science topic
veered away from the lived experiences and everyday discourses of the students, they

were deprived of important mediational means to participate in and make sense of school

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science discourse. In such situations, school science was the only resource they could rely
upon to navigate events in science periods. In this event, we see that students responses
are short, even monosyllabic. In many other events of this nature, students just sat

passively listening to their teacher.

However, as I present below, conformity wasn’t the only way students related to the
teacher script in Raghuvanshi’s science classroom. Admittedly, following the teacher’s
lead and participating in IRE exchanges was what I found them doing in majority (about
61%) of the episodes I analyzed. But whenever the constraints and affordances of the
local situation and the resources at their disposal made it feasible, they did the local work

of participating in classroom activities a bit differently.

(B) Taking initiative: One day when I asked Lal Saheb why he didn’t ask many questions
in the science class, he responded, “Just like that .. Sir, boys laugh, that ’s why.” As I
discussed in the previous chapter, several other students too confessed to me about being
afraid, or feeling awkward and shy about asking questions in Raghuvanshi’s class.
However, during the time I was with them, I got to see many events when, overcoming
their fears and misapprehensions, students took initiative in class by asking unsolicited
questions or making comments that influenced the ongoing dialogue and often took it
into contingent and unscripted directions. Of the total 469 episodes analyzed, in about
17% of them clear evidence of such student action was found. Raising unsolicited science
content questions directly or indirectly related to the topic being discussed, adding ones
unsolicited comments, views and knowledge to the whole class discussion, taking action
or voicing their comments, concerns clarifications on class procedural matters, seeking

clarifications on the teacher’s or somebody else’s comments, and other unsolicited

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actions by students that perceptibly aimed at influencing the course and outcome of the
student-teacher dialogue in science periods were considered as evidence of student

initiative in the analysis of classroom data.

In the following episode, we see students taking initiative to influence the classroom
discourse by countering not just their peers but also the teacher with their own
understanding of the issue. In the first half of the class period during which this episode
occurred, Raghuvanshi wrapped up discussions on a chapter on different sources of
energy. The last few science periods had been devoted to this chapter. Student
participation in the science period had been mostly passive on these days. Raghuvanshi,
sensing students boredom remarked afier finishing discussions on this chapter, “We have
been doing energy, energy, energy for long. Now let’s talk about leaves — something
different.” Students agreeing with Raghuvanshi responded, “Yes, sir, this energy,
energy, energy had gone on for too long. We had got bored of it.” Raghuvanshi
attempting to segue from energy to plants retorted that it was because of energy that they
were alive, and initiated a lengthy but lively dialogue on what makes something living.
Excerpts from this dialogue are given below:

Raghuvanshi: Now I ask you a question.

Students (Naati and a few others): Yes, sir, ask

Raghuvanshi: Those things that have energy are called “sajeev ” (living things).

Narendra: Sir, wood has energy

Raghuvanshi: One minute please. First listen to the question completely, and then

answer it.

Raghuvanshi: Living things which are they? You have heard this word

“sajeev ” for a long time. You have known it for long. It is familiar to you. What

all things are “sajeev”?
Dheeraj: Sir, tree and coal.

Raghuvanshi: Just now Dheeraj told us that tree and coal are living things.

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Sapna: Sir, coal is not a living thing.

Raghuvanshi: Why?

Sapna: Sir, it doesn’t have any life in it.

Narendra (challenging other students): But afier all it is made from living things.
Amaresh in a low voice: But it doesn ’t grow.

Raghuvanshi micking up Narendra ’s utterance): See, he is saying that it is made
from living things.

Sapna: Yes, that ’s true.

Raghuvanshi: So?

Sapnafells silent.

Raghuvanshi: Coal is made from trees. And plant is living thing. And then wood?
It is from the tree. You burn it in your homes, you cut it and bring it to your house
for burning. Then is wood a living thing?

Narendra and others: It is not, sir.

Raghuvanshi: Why? After all wood is made from tree which is alive.

Narendra and others: Yes, it is made from tree but

Amaresh: It doesn ’t grow.

Raghuvanshi: Listen to him what he is saying. Why is wood not a living thing?
Amaresh: It is not, because it doesn ’t grow and it doesn ’t procreate.
Raghuvanshi (to all): Did you listen what he said? Wood does not

Students: Yes sir! Wood does not grow and procreate.

Raghuvanshi: Then do you agree with this statement that wood is a living thing?
Was he correct or not? (referring to the Dheeraj).

Students: No Q. He was wrong.

As we see in this episode, Raghuvanshi attempting to segue from the topic of energy to
plants makes a connection between living things and energy. Narendra sensing the fallacy
of this connection, unsuccessfully tried to counter Raghuvanshi’s assertion by saying that
“wood has energy ...”. Later, when Raghuvanshi revoices Dheeraj’s incorrect statement
about coal being a living thing, it sparks an animated and unscripted exchange of ideas
and opinions among students. Sapna took the initiative and counters Dheeraj ’s assertion
on tautological grounds that it does not have life in it. Sapna’s comment sparks a lively
exchange among students in which Narendra playing Devil’s advocate counters Sapna’s
argument by stating that coal is made from living thing. It was an erroneous counter
argument, but effective enough to not invite a suitable rebuttal from fellow students.

However, Amaresh did counter Narendra on other grounds by observing, “But it does not

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grow. ” Uttered in low voice, Amaresh’s utterance is not picked up and legitimized at first
by the teacher. Perhaps, it was not meant to be recognized according to the teacher script.
I saw several instances when students responded to the dominant narrative in the
classroom discourse sotto voce so that only their fiiends sitting close by could hear and
recognize their independent (and often in the minority) take on the issue at hand. Later,
Narendra offers his counterargument again, this time in a louder voice, and Raghuvanshi

recognizes and allows it to influence the ongoing dialogue.

Thus, we find several things happening in this event. There is clear evidence of student
initiative to counter questionable assertions made in the classroom discourse, even if they
are from the teacher. This initiative takes the ensuing dialogue in unscripted directions so
as to address students’ ideas and concerns. However, we also see that student initiative is
not always successful in gaining access to the floor and influencing the course and
outcome of the dialogue. The teacher acting as a gatekeeper, enacts his own agency in
giving or denying legitimacy to students’ utterances. Finally, as Amaresh shows through
his participation in this dialogue, students calibrated the addressivity of their utterances in

a nuanced and measured way to choose their audience.

However, as can be expected student initiative wasn’t only or always directed at the
school science topic being discussed in the classroom. Through their action students also
voiced their intentions on procedural matters, and sought clarifications on procedural
matters or on somebody else’s comments or actions. In fact, I found that only in about
48% of the episodes that had students taking initiative, was student action aimed at the

science topic being discussed in the classroom. As I discuss shortly in the pages ahead,

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these few episodes gave me a crucial window into the ways in which students were

making sense of and appropriating school science discourse.

(C) Students in action in the discursive underlife of the classroom: As I presented in the
previous chapter, Raghuvanshi’s science periods were in general noisier than those of
other teachers. Of course, there were time spans too, in most science periods I observed,
when I found most students paying attention or participating in the activities pertaining to
the classroom discourse. But still, compared to other periods, underlife in Raghuvanshi’s
classroom was often rife with surreptitious and not so surreptitious sidebar conversations,
nudges, smiles, and other sundry exchanges among students. Unfortunately, as the
classroom was small and fully occupied with more than 40 students on most days, I
didn’t have the liberty of changing my location in the classroom while the class was in
progress. This limitation coupled with inability to attend to and commit to memory or
scratch notes all that was transpiring in the classroom, and poor audio recording of the
classroom meant that often I was not privy to many of these student initiated exchanges
in the underlife of Raghuvanshi’s classroom. But I tried to record as many as I could, and
of the total of 469 science classroom I analyzed, I find that in about 14% of these
episodes, the main activity is happening in underlife, in the form of student initiated and
sustained exchanges. These dialogues predictably tended to spike when there was some
sort of transition in the period, a temporary lull in active teaching by Raghuvanshi or
when the main activity for students in the teacher script mainly comprised copying from

the blackboard or taking notes or homework questions from Raghuvanshi.

Most of the times these exchanges were in the form of sidebar conversations both on and

off science topic-at-hand in the science period. However, I also witnessed occasions

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when students indulged in other forms of exchanges, such as talking to somebody from
outside the class without teacher’s explicit permission, throwing things, such as leaves, at
each other, and taking initiative to help a visitor to the classroom without or without
explicit Teacher’s permission. Sometimes teacher’s actions too led to student action in
the underlife. For instance, a content-related comment by Raghuvanshi would generate a
student-to-student exchange in the underlife of the classroom. This either didn’t happen
often, or I missed recording it many times. Thus, I could find only 15 episodes (out of a

total of 469 examined) of this nature.

Raghuvanshi often ignored student action in the underlife, and asked students to cease
them only when they threatened to disrupt the enactment of the teacher script. For
instance, once Raghuvanshi espied Raj trying to communicate with some student from
another grade standing outside next to the window. Interrupting his teaching, he said,
“Hey, no talking! What’s the matter?” That was enough for the student standing outside

to scamper away, and Raj to get back to paying attention to the teacher.

(D) Students injecting humor in the classroom discourse: Students didn’t always respond
to Raghuvanshi’s instructions and questions with an anticipated action according to the
teacher script. Though I found this happening in only about 4% of the episodes examined,
students some times taking advantage of the contingent ambiguities inherent in social
talk, tried to inject an unanticipated and unscripted element, ofien humor, in the
classroom discourse. For instance, one day when a religious sermon by a popular Hindu
religious preacher was to be given in the neighboring town, Raj made a mock request to

the teacher to be allowed to leave school so as to attend the sermon. Raghuvanshi giving

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limited legitimacy to the request smiled and replied that that there was no need to go to

Asararnji Bapu as he also will be giving them sermons in the class today.

Another episode of this nature occurred one day when the class was discussing
conductors and insulators of electricity. The student-teacher dialogue happened as
follows:

Dheeraj (smiling): Sir, Does current flows through humans or not?

Raghuvanshi: Well, let ’s find out if electricity flows through human beings or not.
Now, in paper?

Raghuvanshi: Yeah, that’s what I wanted to know if electricity would flow
through Peetum Chand Will it flow through Lalji? Will it flow through Khemraj
or not?

Yash (laughing): Yes, through Khemraj it will definitely flow.

Sarla (in aloud voice against lot of student chatter) : Yes sir, whether it flows
through our arms, let ’s find this out.

Here we see how Dheeraj and Yash manage to introduce humor in the
classroom by asking questions and making comments about the conductivity of human
body and by extension of a classmate of theirs.

Lastly, it also happened, albeit rarely, that the teacher led students into a discussion on

some issue that had little to with the teaching-learning of science.

Thus, I observed different forms of student participation in Raghuvanshi’s classroom
manifesting students’ ability and willingness to initiate action as well as to conform to the
teacher script. Students gave a situated, contingent and improvised, and thus varied and
tactical response to the teacher script. Their response was actively predicated upon the
locally extant contingencies, constraints and affordances of the social context and

mediational means available to accomplish the work of social talk in a science classroom.

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However, a socio-linguistic discourse analysis of the teacher-student dialogue isn’t
adequate on its own to help us understand how students, with all their out-of-school
knowledge of discourses about the things and phenomena in the material world,
responded to school science. For that, one will also have look at the social work being
accomplished in the classroom from a science-content perspective. And this is what the

next section in this chapter aims to do.

Students ’ Response to School Science discourse

From reading field notes of Raghuvanshi’s classroom, it was clear to me that the nature
of student response to school science very much depended upon the science topic being
discussed in the classroom. Thus, desiring to get a glimpse of what are the sort of science
topics interest these students or are amenable for student initiative, I content-analyzed all
the episodes that showed student initiative as well as those where students chose to

conform to the teacher script in terms of science topic.

If we restrict ourselves to only those episodes during which the main topic being
discussed had to do something with electricity, then content-analysis reveals that students
took initiative when the main science topic for consideration in the class revolved around
issues of electrical safety, conductivity of electricity through different materials, working
of an electrical circuit, and electrical lamps. These are all those topics that students,
especially boys, had to grapple with in their daily lives as young working adults in
farming families. In contrast, I didn’t find students taking initiatives in electricity topics
like electroplating (chemical effects of current), different kinds of batteries, solar cell,

dynamo and electrical charge. In Chapter 5, I dwelt on the nature of experiences with and

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knowledge of electricity that the students of Raghuvanshi’s class had as a result of being
young productive members of a rural and agriculture based society. If we recall the
findings from the chapter, it becomes evident that the electricity topics in which students
showed initiative, were actually the ones that resonated well with their out-of-school
experiences with electricity. On the other hand, electricity topics that showed little
student initiative, such as electroplating and solar cell, didn’t connect that well with their

life outside school.

I found a similar pattern in other school science topics, such as plants, chemical
properties of metals and energy generation. For instance, even in plants, something that is
closely connected with their everyday existence as farmers, students take initiative mostly
in discussions that they could relate to, such as different types of leaves and plants found
in the area. But, when Raghuvanshi discussed how leaves of aquatic plants adapt
themselves to their aquatic habitat, students showed little science content related
initiative, and played their part in Raghuvanshi’s teacher script. Likewise, students didn’t
take any initiative when the topic was chemical properties of metals - something they

couldn’t readily relate to.

Obviously, students’ engagement with school science didn’t just vary in terms of the
science topic, but also, and equally importantly, in terms of exigencies that led to it and
the intended purpose of their engagement. In this regard, it seemed important for me to
understand what the students were trying to accomplish in events where they take
unscripted, unsolicited science content related actions in the classroom discourse. Thus, I

analyzed the content-related episodes where students took action in terms of exigencies

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that led to that action and its intended purpose. Three clear trends emerged from this

analytic exercise.

(A) Making connections:

First, students were seen to take content-related initiative, in terms of asking question or
making a comment, when the topic was directly connected with their lives. For instance,
consider the episode given below. This episode occurred when the class was discussing
the different ways household or agricultural electrical connections can be made safe if the
electricity is being drawn from the main line through a “direct connection” (as the
students mentioned during this class), without using fuse wire in between as a safety

precaution.

Narendra: Sir, we can also connect an “MCB

Raghuvanshi: There is a fitse wire in the “cut-out

Students: Yes sir.

Raghuvanshi: What?

Students: An “MCB ”.

Raghuvanshi: M-C-B. It is a new thing that has come recently that is used in
place of cut-out or fiise wire. It is called ..

Students: M-C-B.

Raghuvanshi: What does it do?

Yashwant: Sir, if there is too much “current”, then it “trips ”.

Raghuvanshi: Yes, it “trips ”. That is, it stops the “current ” on its own.
Yashwant: And, sir, if someone gets a shock then also it “trips ”.
Raghuvanshi: Are you all listening?

Bhola: Yes sir.

Raj: Sir, another new thing has come. .. “Auto ”.

Roop Singh: Oh that! That has been long in use.

Raghuvanshi: “A uto "?

Jagdish: ( )

Raghuvanshi: One minute! Let him speak Go on.

Raj: Sir, it is used in “tube-wells It is used in “starter ” that is used to start
tube-wells. If “light” comes, it allows tube-well to start automatically, so that
we don’t have to go near the “starter ”. But if “light ” is low, it wouldn’t start.
( )

Raghuvanshi: So if there is enough “light”, it would start on its own. And if it
is low then

Students (and Raghuvanshi): it would shut-ofi."

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Raghuvanshi: So if the motor is on, and if there is a drop in “current then

Raj: Sir, that thing will automatically shut the “motor ” ofif

Raghuvanshi: Yes, so it also stops the “engine ” on its own. So there is a

new thing now. What would we call it? .. “A uto ” .. “A uto switch”?

Raj: Yes, “auto switch.
Most of the boys in the class worked on farms (their family’s or as hired labor)
where they either operated tube-wells or water-pumps to draw water for irrigation
purposes or observed adults doing so. Further, as I found out during my study,
drawing electricity illegally from the main line by making a “direct connection” to
it was a common practice, especially among poor farmers, in the villages of the
region. Since such connections were made without seeking approval of the local
electricity board, the farmers escaped paying the electricity bills, and got this
precious resource totally gratis. However, getting a “direct connection” also carried
a serious danger of electrocution through unsafe connections. Thus, farmers of the
rural community of the region had learnt different ways of making such connections
safe. Young men of Raghuvanshi’s class, being legitimate, and many a times more
than peripheral participants to this practice, had acquired much working knowledge
about how to make such connections safer. As the topic was intimately connected
with their lives as productive adults outside school, in this episode, we find them

shedding their inhibitions about taking initiative, and influencing the course and

outcome of the ensuing dialogue in a major way.

It is interesting to see how, in this episode, their knowledge of electrical safety and
the discourse that accompanies it spills over into classroom dialogues. The science
textbook assumed very limited understanding of electrical circuits and safety among

its intended audience. In the previous grades, students had only been taught about

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electrical charge. In the current grade too, there was only one small chapter on
electricity that tried to cover too many topics. As a result, the chapter had only one
small paragraph on simple electrical circuit, and one small section comprising three
paragraphs on dangers of electric current in which the use of fuse wire for ensuring
electrical safety was mentioned in a couple of lines. Working with electricity being
a big part of their lives outside school, the students, especially boys, evidently knew
much more about this topic. And seeing the connection with their daily lives, they
were much eager to enrich the school science discourse with their out-of—school

discursive resources.

Thus, we find Narendra and Raj taking initiative to inform Raghuvanshi and other
students about advanced electrical switches — “MCB” (multiple circuit breaker) and
“auto switch”. From the class proceeding of that day, it is clear that Raghuvanshi
wasn’t planning to talk about these kinds of electrical equipment. He only talked
about fuse wires for electrical safety. It was students who by taking initiative to
about MCB and “auto-switch influenced the ongoing dialogue to proceed in a
direction closer to their lives and interests. Evidently it wasn’t just these two
students who knew about these appliances. It appears to be common knowledge
because when Raghuvanshi asked Narendra to repeat the name of the equipment he
had mentioned, many students spoke at the same time to repeat the name of the
equipment. Similarly, when Raj informed the class about “auto-switch” and claimed
that it was a new thing. Ramesh countered it by asserting, “That has been long in
use.” The students also explained how these safety features worked heavily

borrowing English scientific terminology, like current, tripping of electrical circuits,

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light, starter, auto-switch and MCB. As the reader may have inferred from the
passage, “light” was used as another word for electric current. It is a common usage
in India probably owing its origin to the fact that in an electric power deficient
country like India, in homes electricity is used more for lighting a bulb than for any
other purpose. Students’ explanations also show how well the students had
understood how these advanced electrical devises worked. As we will see, this
robust working knowledge of electricity manifested itself frequently in students’
utterances in the classroom discourse whenever the electricity topic was connected
to their lives outside school. As we saw in this event, whenever student initiative
seemed relevant to the topic, Raghuvanshi legitirnated entry of student utterances
into the classroom discourse, and allowed students to shape the ongoing discussion

in a meaningful and substantial manner.

(B) Ironing out contradictions:

Secondly, analysis shows that students also took initiative when school science
appeared to contradict or say something different about the material world from
what students had learned from their outside school experiences and immersion in
other discourses. The following episode occurred during a science period where the
main topic was the two types of electric current — alternating (AC) and direct (DC).
Prior to this episode, Raghuvanshi had discussed with the class how two types of
electricity were used in their houses and how appliances that run one type of
electricity do not run on the other. The class had also discussed the use of
“eliminators” to convert AC to DC, and how magnitude of current in one remains

constant while in the other undergoes repeated cyclical changes.

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=: "ifits “Mlfiela. u

Narendra: Sir, we get a shockfi'om the current on poles, and don ’t get shock
fi'om the battery current.

Raghuvanshi: So don’t you get a shock form the current fiom a battery?
Students: NO SIR.

Narendra: that is just 12 volts.

Raghuvanshi: You don ’t get the shock because it is just 12 volts. If it becomes
60 or I 00 volts, then with it too you will feel a shock

Students: yes sir.

Raghuvanshi (continuing): .. because the electricity from poles is 220 volts.
Narendra: sir, why then we don’t get a shock when we touch the wires afier it
passes the “eliminator”?

Raghuvanshi: Eh?

Narendra repeats the question.

Raghuvanshi: in the “Eliminator”?

Students: yes sir.

Raghuvanshi: “Eliminator” means that it reduces the current. .. It makes 220
volt current into a 12 or 6 volt current. It changes the current, it makes it DC
.. and reduces it too. It does two things. It makes a “cell ” like current.

Though Raghuvanshi had covered major differences between AC and DC, he had
neglected to address one important difference between AC and DC that students saw in
their daily lives. And that is, AC gives electrical shock, but DC seemingly doesn’t. It is
easy to see how someone may develop this na'r've conception since only low voltage DC
is used in household circuits whereas only high (comparatively) high voltage AC is used
in homes. In this episode, Narendra took initiative to help Raghuvanshi address this na'r've
conception, and also supplied his own (correct) interpretation that battery current didn’t
give shock as it was “just 12 volts.” Now, while talking about invertors, Raghuvanshi had
not mentioned that eliminators, apart from converting AC to DC, also reduced the voltage
of the current. By skipping this crucial bit of information, Raghuvanshi had unwittingly
created an apparent contradiction about AC and DC, and their capacity to inflict electrical
shock on pe0ple. That is, if eliminators only converted AC to DC, and the possibility of
electrical shock was dependent upon the voltage of the crurent, then the DC current

coming out of an eliminator should have the same voltage as AC and thus, the same

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capacity to inflict electrical shock to people touching naked wire inadvertently. But that
as at least Narendra had realized doesn’t happen. Hence the contradiction. Narendra
brought up this contradiction for resolution by asking Raghuvanshi, “sir, why then we
don’t get a shock when we touch the wires after it passes the “eliminator?” As we see in
this episode, Raghuvanshi resolved the contradiction by mentioning the fact that

eliminator also reduced the voltage of the current.

(C) Making science relevant:

Finally, the analysis shows that on occasions when the main topic was close to students’
lives, but the way it was being approached in the class reduced its relevance for the
students, students responded by taking initiative to influence the ongoing dialogue in the
classroom so as to make it germane to their out-of-school experiences or life situations.

As an illustration, consider the episode given below:

Raghuvanshi: So is there anything we can do to avoid this danger? If there is
too much current, then wires in our homes get hot .. There was no fault. But
because of too much current what happens is that ..

A student: A “fault ” occurs.

Raghuvanshi: N0, the wire melts. Right?

Students: Yes sir.

Raghuvanshi: So what can we do to avoid this danger? If there is too much
current .. it happens sometimes.

Bhola: “F use wire sir. Of low melting point.

Raghuvanshi: Yes, we should use a fuse wire of low melting point. So tell me,
is he correct in saying this?

Narendra: Yes, sir.

Raghuvanshi: Can we use any “fuse wire and fi'om anywhere?

Students: NO SIR

Raghuvanshi: So, of what type?

Students: Of low melting point.

Raghuvanshi: Of low melting point, and of precisely the gauge that is needed
there.

Students: Yes sir.

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Narendra: Sir, what if someone has a “direct connection”?
Raghuvanshi: Even if there is a direct connection, then also you can think of

some solution. That is, if you connect wires directly, what precautions need to
be taken?

Raghuvanshi: Come on tell us what needs to be done to avoid this danger if
wires are connected directly?

A student: Sir, we should connect a “grip ” to the wire.

Raghuvanshi: I’L’bfl should be connected?

Students: GRIP!

Raghuvanshi: Grip, or what you also call the “cut-out”. Or “main switch

In this episode, we find Raghuvanshi leading a discussion on how fuse wires keep homes
safe from electrical fires, “faults” and other dangers. Fuse-wire-based protection is
usually installed by the local electricity board while installing a legal electrical
connection in a house or a farm. However, since many homes in the villages of this
region get their electrical connection illegally directly from the electric poles, fuse wires
weren’t a very relevant form of protection for the people in the surrounding villages.
Though, since using an illegal “direct connection” was fraught with risk of electrocution,
the issue of electricity safety was an important issue in the lives of the people. Finding
that the discussion was proceeding in a direction not very relevant to the lives of the
students, Narendra took corrective action by asking Raghuvanshi, “Sir, what if someone
has a direct connection?” Everyone in the class, including Raghuvanshi, apparently knew
what this phrase in English meant. There were no explanations sought or given on what
Narendra meant by “direct connection” and why he asked this question. Raghuvanshi
perhaps sensing the importance of this question for the lives of the students, and also
recognizing that students may have lots to say on this issue, re-voiced the question back
to the students. Narendra’s action once legitimized by Raghuvanshi, was immediately

taken up by other students. Thereafter, the ongoing dialogue charted an unscripted

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direction guided by contributions from the students. In this way, Narendra’s action
succeeded in rooting a school science topic to the lived experiences of the students and

their families.

Summing Up

Thus, an analysis of student participation in Raghuvanshi’s science classroom both at
socio-linguistic and science discourse level reveals interesting and meaningful pointers to
students’ response to schooling as well as school science discourse in the VIII class of the
Rani Pipariya Government Middle School. A sociolinguistic analysis of classroom
discourse showed how students accomplished the social work of participating in activities
of the science classroom, in a varied, improvised, contingently situated and tactical
manner. Though for much of the class time, students sat either passively listening to the
teacher and conformed to the teacher script, there were occasions when they took
initiative and tried to lead the classroom dialogue in unscripted directions. Sometimes
they succeeded in doing so, and sometimes they didn’t depending upon the response of
the teacher to their initiatives. The analysis also shows that students didn’t always restrict
their initiatives in classroom discourse to purposes of learning science. Whenever, an
appropriate situation presented itself, they also tried to infect the classroom discourse
with unscripted utterances that often had humorous overtones. Further, Raghuvanshi’s
classroom was often rich in discursive underlife. It was tolerated by him as long as it

didn’t threaten to derail the ongoing science related activities in the classroom.

The varied, situated and tactical manner in which student performed their social roles as

students in the classroom bespoke of their contingent enactment of their social agency in

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the science classroom. The theoretical perspective of the study posits agency in terms of a
socioculturally mediated and contingently creative dialogue with the world — an
engagement that not only shapes the counters and direction of the dialogue, but also
influences its outcome. To an observer, this agency is identifiable in the contingently
create aspect of the dialogue, i.e. by the tactical improvisations that participants do in
selective picking and unpicking from available circulating discourses to construct their
dialogic responses. If the students in Raghuvanshi’s classroom had participated in the
classroom discourse in a consistently uniform manner, such as by always conforming to
the teacher script, their enactment of social agency would not have been observable to
me. However, as the analysis in this chapter reveals, students’ participation in the
classroom discourse was marked by contingent variation and improvisation — a feature of
their enactment of their roles as science students that allowed me to observe their social
agency. It is also interesting to note that the social agency of students in Raghuvanshi’s
classroom got expressed in ways far more complex and nuanced than simple opposition

and rebellion.

Finally, a science discourse analysis of the class talk reveals how students, as active and
knowledgeable agents in the material world, responded to school science discourse. I
found that the three main exigencies that gave rise to student action were connectedness
of the topic to the lives of the student, need to reconcile their out-of-school discourses
and knowledge with school science discourse and desire to influence school science
discourse so as to make it relevant to their out-of-school experiences or life situations. In
addition, the analysis also showed student action in the classroom discourse resulting

from (a) a desire to correct perceived errors in comments made by the teacher or the

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students, (b) humor or the possibility of it, and (c) a desire to share ones experiences to
the ongoing learning process. Interestingly, none of the student actions seem to be driven
by pure curiosity about the material world. There was little sense of wonder in the
questions students asked. As we saw in chapter 5, this lack of expression of scientific
inquisitiveness by students correlates rather well with statements by students to the effect
that questions about the world do not arise in their mind now, their valuing education

largely for functional purposes, and their general fear of asking questions in the class.

Thus, the analysis shows that students, acting as bricoleurs, tried to selectively
appropriate school science discourse for their own out-of-school purposes, through their
initiatives in science periods. These initiative led to dialogical engagements that shaped
the way events unfolded, and often determined their outcomes. In these situated actions
aimed at selective appropriation of school science discourse, we can again see a
contingent enactment of social agency by students — an agency that sought to extend

students’ material agency over the material world.

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Chapter 8
Discussion and Implications

In this concluding chapter, I bring together and discuss the main themes coursing through
this study so as to bring into focus the phenomenon, viz. science learning, that the case
analyzed in this study represents. A corollary of Gddel’s Incompleteness theorem is that
all logical systems, irrespective of their complexity, are intrinsically incomplete. That is,
they contain true propositions that cannot be proven from its own defining set of rules.
For qualitative interpretive research, I find Gddel’s theorem pointing to the inevitable
limitations that accompany attempts to “reveal the multiple truths apparent in others'
lives” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995, p. 3) through such research. Thus, in this chapter I
also discuss what I perceived as the main limitations of this study. Finally, I delineate
some implications that this research has for the ways science education in particular and

education in general is imparted in schools in India and beyond.

Enacting Agency in a Social and Material world

In this study, human agency comes across as a contingently emergent feature of situated
local action. The students or Raghuvanshi did not have agency, but rather under
opportune circumstances, they enacted or exercised agency through socioculturally
mediated and contingently creative dialogue with the world — an engagement that not

only shapes the counters and direction of the dialogue, but also influences its outcome.

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(A) Enacting material agency:

The sociocultural perspective views “people as actively engaged with the environment”
(Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). As the study shows, the students of the 8th
grade led a busy demanding life. Apart from being students of the local middle school,
they also were productive members of the local economy, and thus fully engaged in their
local social and material worlds. Rogoff (2003, p. 133) in her study of children’s lives in
different cultural communities found significant differences in the extent to which “they
are allowed to participate in and observe adult activities”. Comparing children from a
farming community in East Africa with middle class American children, she reports that
four year-old children from the African farming community, “spent 35% of their time
doing chores, and 3-year-olds did chores during 25% of their time. In contrast.
middle-class US. children of the same ages spent none to 1% of their time doing chores,
though they did spend 4% to 5% of their time accompanying others in chores (such as
helping the mother peel a carrot or fold laundry). (p. 136). The children in the study site,
like kids of the aforementioned African community, worked alongside their parents and
other adults. Thus, they worked on farms, tended cattle, operated and helped repair
agricultural and household electrical appliances, and cooked food for the family. And as
they worked, they also learned about the material world, through direct experience and
through apprenticeship and observation from their parents, other adults in the community

and their more knowledgeable peers.

As a result of their paid and unpaid work at home and workplace, these students had
accumulated years of rich experience of either working with many material objects and

phenomena relevant to their daily lives. In the time I spent at the study site, It was not

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possible for me to have a complete and extensive access to the entire range and nature of
their experiences with the material world. But, the data I could gather speak eloquently
about the wealth and diversity of their experiences they had garnered in everyday

contexts of working with plants, cattle, electricity and cooking.

For instance, as a result of their agricultural work, the students in Raghuvanshi’s class
had rich experiences with plant life in all their life stages. They knew how to plant
agricultural crops, grow and tend them, and harvest them when they are ripe. Their
conversations revealed an impressive display of experiential knowledge, a native,
unofficial pathology, arising out of years of tending to sick cattle of the family. By years
of experience in making chullah (earthen stoves), the girls had acquired a rich experience
of working with different types of clay and an appreciation of the thermodynamics of

cooking food on such woodstoves.

To some extent it is to be expected that students in such a rural setting would have rich
experiences with farming, cattle and cooking. What I had not expected was to find that
students in 8th grade, especially boys, also had extensive experiential knowledge of high
voltage (220 volts) AC electricity and electrical appliances. Their knowledge couldn’t
have had its source in school science as it didn’t provide students with any opportunities
to explore AC electric circuits. As I discovered during the fieldwork, the source was the
important role an ability to work with household electric lines and appliances played in

their daily lives.

In all cultures, kids learn and develop through their evolving participation in activities

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and discourses of their communities.1 As Lave & Wenger (p. 35) say, “In our view,
learning is not merely situated in practice - as if it were some independently reifiable
process that just happened to be located somewhere; learning is an integral part of
generative social practice in the lived-in world. Legitimate peripheral participation is
proposed as a descriptor of engagement in social practice that entails learning as an
integral constituent.” Because of the situated nature of many of these activities and
discourse, the sort of experiences with the social and material world that kids have differ
across communities. Thus, for instance, in an American town, a middle school kid may
know how to download driving directions from the internet for the family trip, or how to
order food through phone. The Aka kids of Central Africa, on the other hand, when they
are 7 to 12 years old, can hunt and butcher large game animals, trap porcupines and grow
food plants (p. 136). And as we saw in this study, there was no game around for kids in
Raj kheda, but certainly they had learned the equally dangerous and important task of
rigging a direct electrical connection for their homes and farms from the main line

supplying electricity to the whole village.

These experiences of working with objects and phenomena in the material world had
yielded them a robust and functional knowledge of the world around them. During my
fieldwork I was able to observe students expressing this knowledge in many different
contexts. It was revealed in the various chores they did during the course of their daily
existence as natives, solutions they came up with ways to solve practical problems they
encountered in their work outside school, their participation in classroom discussions

with their science teacher, homework done in their notebooks, answers to questions asked

 

' For kids in developed nations with 25/‘7 multimedia connectivity, there is much larger interpenetration of
local and global communities. But for kids in Rajkeda and neighboring villages this interpenetration was
still small in significance, and community more often than not was rooted in their local village.

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in the exams, responses to questions asked by me in one-on-one interviews, and so on. In
each event of this nature, their knowledge representations depended very much on the
situated manner in which they chose the discursive resources to construct their responses,
the dialogue they were entering into or participating through their knowledge
representations, the purpose, and their audience. As the (rhetorical) context changed, so
did students’ knowledge representations as revealed through their utterances. Though in a
different context of children learning to write in an American urban school, Dyson (1993)
expressed similar ideas when she said that “writing, like all language use, is always a
situated response, an addressing of another in a particular time and place, a motivated
making of words for some end.” As Dyson found with kids learning to write, for students
in Raghuvanshi’s class too their situated expressions of knowledge of the material world
were their mediators of social action. Through on-the-moment, selective picking and
unpicking from circulating discourses accessible to them, the students authored
improvised responses that them to survive, negotiate and maneuver their way through
their social world(s). As Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain (1998) also aver, this
authorship “is a matter of orchestration: of arranging the identifiable social
discourses/practices that are one's resources (which Bakhtin glossed as "voices") in order
to crafi a response in a time and space defined by others' standpoints in activity, that is, in

a social field conceived as the ground of responsiveness” (p. 272).

However, the rhetorical diversity of knowledge representations that students produced
could not sufficiently mask some common trends that I was able to observe
nonetheless. First, their representations of the material world were far richer in

experiences than in scientifically accurate patterns and explanations of those

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experiences. Second, their knowledge of the material world was more functional in
nature. It enabled them to manipulate the material objects and phenomena for their
everyday purposes, but didn’t help them much explaining why the material world
behaved the way it did. When pressed for explanations, they often produced
tautological ones. For them, if a thing behaved in a certain manner, it was because it
was its nature to do so. Thus, their knowledge of the material resembled craft
knowledge in terms of being more implicit than explicit. Lastly, material phenomena
were largely understood in terms of sequence of observable events. That is, their
representations by and large manifested ignorance of unobservable (to naked eye)
reasons and mechanisms of material phenomena. In a way, these results point to
commonality in students’ modes of reasoning across different cultures. A study done
in Michigan, US, on students’ explanations on natural phenomena and processes
related to carbon cycle revealed similar trends in students’ explanations (Hawkins,
Sharma, Cho, Jin, & Anderson, 2006). Similarly, Enfield (2005) found greater
predilection among second and third graders for doing projects rather than developing

accounts.

Egan, (1997) outlined five ways of thinking that, in his opinion, governs an
individual’s intellectual development.‘ In order of their development, these are:
somatic understanding, mythic understanding, romantic understanding, philosophic
understanding and ironic understanding. While reasoning about the material world,
students in my study seemed to reflect elements of mythic understanding, in terms of

their reasoning being largely narrative-based and largely orally communicated, and of

 

2 According to Egan these five forms of thought are reflected in intellectual development across history too.

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romantic understanding, in terms of it being personal, affective, and containing a mix
of both mythic and rational thinking. Bruner (1986) also found similar dependence
upon a narrative approach to sense making in people’s thinking. Since students’
knowledge representations tended to be more action-oriented, contextual, personal,
and tacit, I find interesting parallels between their knowledge representations and

teacher’s practical knowledge as described by Driel, Beijaard, & Verloop (2001).

Thus, I found that students, on account of their busy productive lives outside school,
had learned to engage in socioculturally mediated and contingently creative dialogues
with the material world. They could construct and manipulate objects, material
phenomena, processes and non-human life to their locally situated purposes, and
could improvise solutions to challenges posed by local material constraints. In this
two-way communication, what they learned from the material world’s responses to
their actions contributed to their context-bound knowledge about it. This dynamic

engagement bespoke of their contingent and situated enactment of material agency.

Harper (1987) did a part ethnographic and part biographic study of an untrained yet
expert motor mechanic, Willie, in rural upstate New York. The study showed how
Willie through long years of working with, in a sort of dialogue as Harper describes
it, automobile parts, tools and materials evolved into a jack-of-all-trades, a Levi-
Strauss's bricoleur, with a very robust, extensive and proven knowledge of the
material world. Willie’s knowledge was deeply experiential and replete with useful
patterns about how the material world behaved. However, it was also limited in the
sense of not being enriched by the powerful explanations that scientific theories

provide for our experiences and the patterns we observe in them. Raghuvanshi’s

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students through their own experiences with the material world in their daily lives,
had also borrowed, adapted and developed a similar working knowledge. This
knowledge, as the study shows, was rich in experience and useful on account of the
patterns that students had come to understand about the behavior of electric current
and appliances. However, deprived of the explanatory power of scientific models and
theories, it was also limited in crucial ways. For instance, the students had a sense of

how current flows, but didn’t understand what it was and why it flows.

(B) Enacting social agency in science classroom:

Thus, 8th grade students stepped into Raghuvanshi’s science class with extensive,
useful and situated funds of knowledge about the material world (Moll, Amanti, Neff,
& Gonzalez, 1992). There, in order to survive and successfully negotiate their roles,
students had to accomplish the social work of engagement in activities of the science
classroom. This was an engagement that was mediated by sociocultural mediational
tools, such as circulating discourses, in the social setting of a classroom community.
The study shows that they performed this role in a varied, improvised, contingently
situated and tactical manner.

For much of the class time, students sat either passively listening to the teacher or
conforming to the teacher script. Whenever the topic resonated with their daily life
experiences, students made extensive use of their out-of-school discourses and
experiences with material world in structuring and giving substance to their
responses. Students also depended heavily on their out-of-school discourse in taking
initiative in the classroom. In a study on use of students’ everyday experiences in an

American urban elementary science classroom, Upadhyay (2006), came to a similar

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conclusion, viz. students bring their different funds of knowledge accumulated
through their everyday experiences into the classroom, and much meaningful science
learning resulted when the teacher integrates students’ experiences in her teaching of
science topics. Likewise, a study done by Smardon (2004) showed that students
sometimes used “the code of the street” to enhance their learning achievements in a
science class. These researchers are in good company as some other researchers have
also noted the learning potential of such crossing of boundaries and interactions of
different discourses in a common space (Gutierrez, Rymes, & Larson, 1995; Heath,
1983; Varelas, Becker, Luster, & Wenzel, 2002; Warren, Ballenger, Ogonowski,
Rosebery, & Hudicourt-Barnes, 2001). In language learning, Dyson’s work (1996,
1997, 2003) has consistently shown the immense learning potential of permeable
curricula that invite students’ everyday discourses into the classroom.

But when the science topic veered away from their lived experiences and everyday
discourses, the students were deprived of important mediational means to participate
in the classroom discourse. In such events, school science discourse was the only
circulating discourse they could access to navigate their role as students. However,
for students, school science discourse wasn’t a discourse that could be easily made
ones own, and put to creative use. Speaking of the challenge of appropriating such
discourses, Bakhtin (1981) says, “The word in language is half someone else's. It
becomes 'one's own' only when the speaker populates it with his own intention, his
own accent, when he appropriates the word, adapting it to his own semantic and
expressive intention. And not all words for just anyone submit equally easily to

this appropriation, to this seizure and transformation into private property: many

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words stubbornly resist, others remain alien, sound foreign in the mouth of the one
who appropriated them and who now speaks them; they cannot be assimilated into his
context and fall out of it; it is as if they put themselves in quotation marks against the
will of the speaker.” With only limited access to school science discourse and their
out-of-school discourses not proving handy, students had narrower spaces of
authoring their responses on science topics not closely connected with their lives
(Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998). Thus, they stuck to the safer strategy of
conformity and re-telling of the canonical text, and responding with short, even
monosyllabic, responses.
Whenever the constraints and affordances of the local situation and the resources at
their disposal made it feasible, they did the local work of participating in classroom
activities a bit differently. For instance, I observed several events when leaving aside
their circumspection, they took initiative to set off new classroom dialogues, or
worked to substantially influence their direction and end result. Sometimes they
succeeded in doing so, and sometimes they didn’t depending upon the response of the
teacher to their initiatives. The analysis showed that students didn’t always restrict
their initiatives in classroom discourse to purposes of learning science. When, an
appropriate situation presented itself, they also tried to infect the classroom discourse
with unscripted utterances that often had humorous overtones. Further, there were
also, relatively speaking, more opportunities to take initiative in the discursive
underlife in Raghuvanshi’s classroom. This underlife was tolerated by Raghuvanshi
as long as it didn’t threaten to derail the ongoing science related activities in the

classroom.

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The students were aware that school science could provide them with knowledge that
was relevant and useful for their social and material lives outside school. The rich
hybridity of their discourse on science topics connected with their lives, such as
electricity, indicates that as bricoleurs, they were eagerly looking to beg, borrow and
adapt mediational tools from wherever they could find them - tools that would extend
their agency over the material world. Raghuvanshi’s science classroom was one such
place. And, as this study shows, students, acting as bricoleurs, tried to selectively
appropriate school science discourse for their own out-of-school purposes, through
their initiatives in science periods. Whenever, they could, they used school science
discourse to make sense of their daily life experiences with the material world, took
initiative to reconcile their out-of-school discourses and knowledge with school
science, and tried to influence classroom dialogues so as to make them relevant to
their out-of-school experiences or life situations. These were dialogical engagements
that shaped the way events unfolded, and often determined their outcomes. In these
situated actions aimed at selective appropriation of school science discourse, we can
see a contingent enactment of social agency by students — an agency that sought to

extend students’ material agency over the material world.

Ever since Willis (1977) seminal work in ethnography that showed how working class

‘lads’ in England resisted and rebelled against the perceived agenda of schooling, there

has been a slew of studies purporting to show student or teacher agency largely as

resistance and rebellion (Barton, Ermer, Burkett, & Osborne, 2003; Carlone, 2003; Foley,

1991; Gilbert & Yerrick, 2001; Seiler, 2002; Seiler, Tobin, & Sokolic, 2001; Taylor,

2003; Zembylas, 2003). However, like (Niesz, 2003) study, my research with Rajkheda

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middle school kids also shows that students’ responses to school-bound authoritative
discourses, such as school science discourse, are far more complex and nuanced than
simple opposition and rebellion. Depending upon the contingencies of the moment,
students conformed to the teacher script, sat passively listening to the teacher, took
initiative to influence the direction and outcome of ongoing classroom discussion, or
indulged in surreptitious conversation with their neighbor. Negotiating a science period
was social work, and as (Erickson, 2004) says, “the concrete work of
uttering/muttering/listening - the practice of social action in oral discourse - is a matter of
the use of locally oriented tactics. Talk in interaction may or may not constitute
transformative social action but it is always tactical, local social action. Sometimes such
action involves small-scale innovation that is no less novel for its being subtle and
situated, written upon transcripts that usually remain hidden from panoptical view” (p.
174). This study thus supports Ahearn's (2001) contention that that not only is pure
resistance an abstraction as human motivations are always complex and contradictory,
but also human responses to hegemony are far more improvised and creative than simple

resistance (Holland, Lachiotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998; Levinson & Holland, 1996).

The science teacher did much to encourage this contingent and situated emergence of
students’ social agency. By tactically and contingently selecting and unselecting elements
from professional, school science and out-of-school discourses, and improvising upon
them, Raghuvanshi was able to open up ephemeral spaces where students’ agency could
be exercised. This was accomplished by a tactical re-use of the prescribed curriculum
such that even though he followed the officially mandated science textbook, there were

occasions when his improvisations enabled him to move beyond its limits so as to make

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school science relevant to students’ lives. Concurrently, he also helped actualize
conditions that made it possible for students to take initiative and change the nature and
form of classroom dialogues. His teaching practices helped students to animate the
classroom discourse with their voices, out-of-school discourses and knowledge systems.
However, there were also occasions when he followed the professional discourse, and
treated school science as presented in the textbook as the sole authoritative fountainhead
of knowledge in the classroom. This tactical nature of selective picking and unpicking of
the circulating discourses correlated well with the nuanced and apparently contradictory
nature of Raghuvanshi’s thoughts about following school science and professional
discourses and addressing students’ interests at the same time. In contrast, other teachers
depended rather heavily and consistently on professional and school subject discourses,
and thus, enacted their teacher scripts in ways that persistently denied possibilities of

greater participation to students in co-construction of their learning experiences.

What did Students Want?

In abstract conversations among policy makers and educators on the nature of schooling
the state must provide to its future citizens, it is easy for the voices of these future citizens
themselves to go unheard. However, if education is to truly serve the interests of students
in govemment-run schools throughout the country, we must pay heed to what the
students and their parents have to say about the kind of education that would best serve
their interests. Also, it is only by looking at students’ life situations and their motivations
regarding education that we can have a better understanding of the different ways they

participated in classroom discourse in Raghuvanshi’s science periods.

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Most kids attending 8'“ grade in Rajkheda middle school came from very poor families,
many with illiterate parents. Contrary to perceptions of some teachers, all the parents I
interacted with were eager to get their children educated as education offered hope for a
better tomorrow. They tried their best to help their kids succeed at school. They sent them
for expensive extra tuition classes despite their extreme poverty. However, their poor
educational backgrounds and generally lower social status limited their efforts to their
homes. Like working class parents in Lareau's (1989) study on social class and parental
intervention in elementary education, the poor farmers of Rajkheda and neighboring
villages hesitated to enter the school premises to do something to qualitatively improve
their children’s educational experiences at school. They further resembled working class
parents in Lareau’s study in maintaining that it was primarily the teacher’s responsibility

to ensure that their children get good education at school.

The students too by and large wanted to succeed at school and wanted to get educated.
Almost all professed liking their school, and thought that they got good education there.
They valued education mostly for being necessary for getting jobs or setting up a trade.
They also thought that education would help them get along in the world by enabling
them to conduct financial transactions, read written information on products and public
notices, enabling them to travel, be better farmers, etc. There might also be cultural
reasons, such as desire to be perceived as “educated”, that made them value education,
but such rationalization on the part of students or even their parents didn’t come out
strongly in my study. However, in a ethnographic study of lower caste Dalit (formerly
un-touchables) and Muslim young men in North India, researchers did find participants

valuing education as a cultural distinction, as something that would help them getting

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perceived as moral, civilized, and developed “educated” people (Jeffrey, Jeffery, &

Jeffery, 2004).

Though science wasn’t considered as important as mathematics, Hindi and English,
students valued science for the functional knowledge it provided them about the world,
such as pertaining to plants and agriculture. Interestingly only a few students mentioned
electricity in this context. Indicating limited value of school science for their everyday
purposes, some students were of the opinion that though science provided knowledge
about the world, they would not be seriously disadvantaged if they didn’t study science at
all. However, almost all students liked learning science at school. The reasons they
reported had largely to with the way Raghuvanshi taught the subject. These results
correlate with that of a comparative study on children’s attitudes on interest and
enjoyment in science in Northern Ireland and Oman which found that in both cultures an
activity-based science aroused greater positive attitudes towards science in students
(Murphya, Ambusaidi, & Beggs, 2006). The same study also reported that as school
science became less activity oriented in higher grades, students’ interest and enjoyment in
science declined in both cultures. Thus, it would be safe to conclude that as students
explained, Raghuvanshi’s teaching practices had much to do with students’ general liking

of school science.

The study then shows that students came to the school and attended Raghuvanshi’s
science class eagerly wanting to succeed not only in the scholastic sense of passing the
exams, but also in terms of finding and adapting useful mediational tools that would help

them make sense of their everyday experiences and extend their chances and scope of

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exercising agency over the material world. However, students efforts in this direction

were continually frustrated and remained limited in extent and scope.

Presenting Levi Strauss’s portrayal of a bricoleur, Harper (1997) states that, “he "speaks"
not only with things. . . but through the medium of things” (p. 21). Likewise, equipped
with rich experience with the material world, students’ in Raghuvanshi’s classroom were
ready to have a dialogic engagement with school science with voices that best spoke with
real electrical circuits and appliances and through the medium of these “things”.
However, the stilted, alienated and alienating school science curriculum mandated by the
state encouraged an authoritative school science discourse in the classroom that
demanded students unconditional allegiance (Bakhtin, 1981); and could only speak in a
voice little understood by the students, and largely irrelevant to their contexts and
purposes. Raghuvanshi tried his best to overcome these limitations of the prescribed
science curriculum by not strictly following the science curriculum. He also encouraged
students to dialogically engage the school science discourse with their funds of
knowledge, and tried to harness the “the potentially profound continuities between
everyday and scientific ways of knowing and talking” to make school science
meaningful, accessible and relevant for his students (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez,
1992; Warren, Ballenger, Ogonowski, Rosebery, & Hudicourt-Barnes, 2001).
Unfortunately, he could only achieve limited success in this endeavor as he couldn’t
completely abandon the prescribed science curriculum and textbook and lacked adequate
resources and professional support to teach science in ways that would have made it more
meaningful and relevant for the students. If a dedicated, committed teacher like

Raghuvanshi could translate at best only a partial version of the kind of science education

215

the national policy documents advocate, it becomes important for the policy makers to
create enabling conditions in schools that will help students learn science in a much more

meaningful and connected way.

Thus, as some students had reported, school science proved to be of limited use for the
students attending the Rajkheda middle school. And by being so, it and the school failed
the students in a large measure. Admittedly, as Honig, Kahne, & McLaughlin (2001)
argue “many of the factors that shape students’ opportunities to learn and teachers'
opportunities to teach are beyond the purview of schools.” But still there was much that
the school and the makers of school science curricula and textbooks could have done to
make science education work for the kids attending the school at Rajkheda. For instance,
students came to the school with a robust, extensive and proven knowledge of the
material world that was deeply experiential and replete with useful patterns about how
the material world behaved. However, it was also limited in the sense of not being
enriched by the powerful explanations that scientific theories provide for our experiences
and the patterns we observe in them. The school could have been a natural site for them
to be exposed of these scientific theories, and also to see how their experiential
knowledge connects with these theories. Had the school and school science been able to
accomplish this feat, the students’ engagement with the material world and the scientific
knowledge would not only have been more useful to them for their everyday functional
purposes, but it also would have closely resembled the way scientists do science
(Anderson, 2003; Shanna & Anderson, 2003). Unfortunately, the teacher professional

discourse, science curricula and the textbooks made the odds of this happening in a

216

school like Rajkheda very slim. If some meaningful science learning happened, it was

largely because of Raghuvanshi’s untiring efforts.

Researchers have argued that by being culturally situated, scientific knowledge, like all
other bodies of knowledge, reflects the existing gender and racial ideologies of science
that seek to deny certain groups, such as women and minority students, from equal access
to this body of knowledge (Barton & Yang, 2000; Brickhouse, 2001; Brickhouse,
Lowery, & Schultz, 2000). Extending such claims, this study presents the case for
scientific knowledge, at least as presented in school science textbooks that are used in
government run schools in India, to reflect the class and location (rural versus urban)
based differences embedded in Indian society as well. By presenting scientific knowledge
as a body of canonical text comprising facts, definitions and narratives about the world,
science curricula and textbooks remove at one stroke all the comparative advantages rural

kids might have over urban students in terms of experiences with the material world.

Quality and Access

Ever since the adoption of the National Policy on Education (NPE) in 1986, the
governments at the state and central level have made sustained efforts to improve both
access to education as well as quality of education offered to the masses. The state
apparatus has indeed made substantial progress in making elementary education
accessible to all. For instance, the region where this study was done, has had universal
access to elementary education since 2002. However, access to education alone may not

mean much if the quality of education provided in schools remains low.

217

It is not easy, however, to gauge government’s efforts to increase quality of education on
the basis of studies done so far owing to absence of reliable data, and focus on measuring
‘quality’ in terms of students’ scores on high stakes tests, and infrastructure-related
indicators of ‘quality’ in government collected data. An argument can be made that there
has been some improvement in the quality of instruction because of government’s efforts
as infrastructure and access to formal instruction for most kids has certainly improved
over the years. Further, the textbooks and curricula also now have more inputs from the
teachers. However, as this study shows, the practice of teaching and learning of science
in schools still continues along traditional lines, and much remains to be done by the state
before it can legitimately claim to provide access to the type of science education it
advocates in its national policy documents. This assessment concurs with a persistent
level of concern among a large number of educators and researchers in India about the
quality of instruction, in science as well as other subjects, accessible to an overwhelming
majority of Indian children, especially those from weaker underprivileged sections of
Indian society. The current Indian parliament is considering a bill to amend India’s
constitution so as to make right to education a fundamental right of every child in India.
Such an amendment is indeed long overdue. However, unless education offered in
schools becomes meaningful and relevant for the students, access to schooling alone may
not accomplish much in making students studying in government schools like Rajkheda
middle school, happy, productive and successful adults in the fast evolving

socioeconomic conditions of India.

218

Limitations of the Study

This study was an attempt at immersion in students’ worlds in order to understand how
they experienced and perceived the events occurring in their lives (Emerson, Fretz, &
Shaw, 1995). Such an attempt is necessarily ambitious as it seeks to capture and inscribe
fast-moving events in an hectic, complex social world of which the researcher because of
her outsider’s status has only limited understanding. As such ambitions are difficult to
realize in practice, this study is defined as much by its limitations as by its success in

offering the reader a nanativized glimpse into the lives of students in Rajkheda.

A prominent limitation that restricts the scope of this study was poor access to lives and
thoughts of girl students in Raghuvanshi’s class. I had hoped to better study how science
instruction gets gendered in a school like Rajkheda. However, the girl students in 8'“
grade were now of an age when social norms, especially in rural areas of that region,
encourage girls to become wary of contact with outsiders like me. Though there were a
few girls that overcame these restraints and offered me as much access to their
experiences and lives as the boys, most girls were shy and restrictive in talking with me.
In fact, I lost one of my focus students as after a few weeks into the fieldwork she began
avoiding talking with me. She was a shy girl — a student of 8‘“ grade along with her
brother. Her brother was one of the focus students too. I thought comparing the two
siblings would allow me to better understand how gender factors into a student’s
approach to school science and work outside school. Initially it appeared that with time, I
would be able to gain her confidence. But apparently that never could happen, and I lost a

great opportunity.

219

I was in the field continuously for only about 4 months. In retrospect, I think that
collecting data in one time slot constrained the depth and quality of data I could access.
First, I didn’t have much time for making a space for myself in the field, and gaining trust
and confidence of the participants before beginning data collection. Second, while in
field, I was under tremendous pressure to collect as much data as was feasible. As much
of the time went in data collection, I got few opportunities to step aside and pause for a
while to reflect at the data, mull over the emerging themes, and do necessary along-the-
way course corrections in data collection. Also, once the data collection phase was over, I
had to work with what I had because after leaving the site, I could never visit it again for
re-checking any facts, finding missing links, or sharing and getting feedback on emerging

themes with the participants.

This study is an effort to represent the voices of the underprivileged students and their
parents in a village in India. Through this study I wish to speak for them as their voice
goes largely unheard in the current discourse on education in India. However, as (Spivak,
1988) reminded intellectuals engaged in such efforts, I run the risk of doing “epistemic
violence” to the participants of this study by re-voicing their desires, actions, and
meanings through this study. This is so because, as Spivak cautioned, by speaking for
them I may be re-inscribing their subordinate position in the society, and furthering their
dependence on someone else, an outsider, and a member of a social class that has

traditionally oppressed them to speak for them.

Further, as Emerson et a1 (1995, p. 108) said, “Members' meanings are not pristine
objects that are simply "discovered." Rather, these meanings are interpretive

constructions assembled and conveyed by the ethnographer.” Thus, voices of the

220

participants present in this study are more than in situ utterances. They have been
interpreted, assembled and conveyed by me, and thus contain more than a trace of my
own etic meanings, beliefs and agenda. This was necessary to weave a coherent cogent
narrative out of a large knotted bunch of disparate little data fragments. As Erickson
(2004, p. 196) noted, doing such a study is essentially a “critically realist inferential
enterprise.” However, any such enterprise is also fraught with the risk that at times the
dialogic overtones in the narration may become so loud that the reader may not be able to
clearly hear participants’ voices. Further, as data collection was perforce influenced, if
not guided, by my theoretical lenses and political convictions, it is possible that I may
have overlooked or ignored data that on hindsight may come across as salient and

insightful.

Lastly, in this study I have presented a detailed ‘case’ of a middle school science
classroom, and through that case I have made generalizations about the ‘phenomenon’ of
science learning. In making this transition, I have depended upon naturalistic
generalization, that is, on the belief that “if a study gives readers a sense of "being there,"
of having a vicarious experience in the studied site, then readers may generalize from that
experience in private, personal ways, modifying, extending, or adding to their generalized
understandings of how the world works” (Dyson & Genishi, 2005). However, any such
attempt also involves the risk of essentializing the lives and identities of the participants,

and leading readers to make logocentric assumptions about the case.

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Implications

Being a qualitative, interpretative account of a case that unfolded in a unique way and is
now fixed in time and space, the findings of this study, as Dyson and Genishi (2005)
opine, may not be replicable per se. However, as they further argue, it can still be read as
a concrete instantiation of a more general phenomenon, viz. how science is learned in
school settings in India and also in most other countries. Thus, the findings of this study

have implications for the way science is and ought to be taught in schools.

As the study shows, kids are naturally desirous of making sense of, interacting with and
manipulating their material world. Acting as bricoleurs, they try to adopt and adapt
whatever mediational tools available to them for this purpose. Tinkering with the material
world, they accumulate a robust body of useful experiential knowledge and ways to make
sense of and talk about it. In India, this is likely to me truer of children living in rural
areas as besides being students they are also expected to contribute at work in agricultural
farms, with cattle, and at home cooking food and doing other household chores. All these
out-of-school tasks involve intense and intimate engagement with the material world,
albeit always in a social setting. The knowledge that kids gather in non-school settings
enables them to accomplish their traditional roles. But because it arises from and is tied
down to particular situated experiences and lacks rigor, cogency, and explanatory power
of scientifically valid theories and models about the world, their experiential out-of-
school knowledge is not of much use in helping them extend and transcend the roles that
society has bequeathed to them. Through apprenticeship with a farmer, a rural kid can
learn to be farmer - just another farmer, but not a better farmer or something other than a

farmer.

222

For that, an argument can be made that society has provided schools. Of course, many
researchers, such as Barton & Yang (2000), Bourdieu (1986), Bowles & Gintes, (1976),
Gilbert & Yerrick (2001), Giroux (1997), and Seiler (2002), have shown how effectively
schools function to reproduce existing socio-economic inequities and thwart attempts for
upward social mobility through education by the underprivileged sections of the society.
In the Indian context too, an argument can be made that existing poor condition of
schools helps economic and political elite maintain their disproportionate power and
control over economic, political and social institutions and natural resources (Madan,
2003, May 31). That may explain the lack of serious commitment towards schooling for

the poor that Indian elite has shown so far.

I agree that it is important to highlight the reproductive aspects of schooling, as has been
done so well by the researchers I mentioned above and many others. However, excessive,
and one-sided focus on the negative aspects of schooling can be counterproductive as
well by obscuring the virtues of schooling and extinguishing hopes for peaceful
progressive social change. After all, as Anyon (1981) argued, schooling for all sections of
society, has not just reproductive but transformative aspects as well. It then becomes the
responsibility of the educators and progressives among other stake holders to work
towards increasing the transformative aspects of schooling, and whittling down its
reproductive aspects. Unwilling to abandon hope, I continue to believe that schools can
indeed be places where through apprenticeship of a cognitive sort, kids learn to make
connections between with their experiential knowledge and the accumulated knowledge
and wisdom of science. Schools can also be natural sites for helping students transition

from being just bricoleurs to informed bricoleurs who are capable of extending the range,

223

reach and extent of sources to learn, adopt and adapt useful mediational tools from. Thus,
school can be a place where a child can build a future for herself that is better than the

present bequeathed to her, and the past that her parents had.

For the vast majority of rural poor eking out a living on a subsistence level and barely
managing to physically survive, school and the education it provides is ofien the only
hope for a better future (Rampal, April, 2004). This study recommends a science
education that enables rural kids to acquire better tools to understand, question and
manipulate the material world around them. This will help them carve out a better life for
themselves in their own villages. It will help them become better homemakers, farmers
and cattle owners. And more importantly, by encouraging and empowering their innate
sense of inquiry, such a type of science education will also help them question the status
quo, the existing socioeconomic inequities that work to keep them where they currently
are, and work towards bringing about peaceful progressive social change. Thus, as
(Barton, Ermer, Burkett, & Osborne, 2003) has also argued, this study recommends a
science education in particular and education in general that acts as a force for restoring

social justice through peaceful means in a deeply iniquitous Indian society.

But, are rural schools in India really such schools? The study gives much contrary
evidence to support a negative response to this question. Kids in rural India, by their
intimate relationship with the material world, are uniquely endowed with a rich
knowledge and understanding of the world around them. If rural schools are able to
harness this tremendous resource for sake of their learning, students can indeed grow up
to become powerful agents for change - both in material and social sense. Unfortunately,

rural schools in India, as this study indicates, are doing a huge disservice to these

224

underprivileged students by not performing this role. The Indian state and society has
accorded high priority to providing universal access to schooling. That is good and
worthy of commendation. However, though necessary, easy access to schooling is hardly
sufficient to ensure a better future. Unless sustained efforts are made to improve the
quality of educational experiences students have at school, kids will continue to face
daunting challenges in carving a better future for themselves. Further, hopes for peaceful
progressive social change will not get the boost that progressive, good quality education
can provide — education that has been long promised in the national policy documents but
never delivered. Of course, schools alone cannot carry the responsibility of building a
better future. Other institutions, such as family, civil society and democratic institutions,
would have to chip in to successfully tackle this challenge. However, in a country where
farmers are being driven to commit suicide, and vast swathes of rural hinterland is
witnessing violent struggle over control over resources and political power, while urban
centers are being recognized and celebrated the world over for being powerhouses of
global economy, the cost of letting hopes for peaceful progressive change through better

schooling remain muted and flickering can be perilous.

This study encourages other researchers to ask similar questions about schools and
science education in other settings. It also supports existing body of research, done in
diverse contexts, that shows how science education in particular and education in general
can be of great service to students and society if it enables the students to become
informed bricoleurs who are able to pick, adapt and adopt the knowledge they need from
existing resources so as to transcend the destinies that happenstance of life and history

had bestowed upon them.

225

Of course, what constitutes ‘quality’ in good quality education is a moot point. The sort
of data Indian government agencies collect on schools seem to indicate that government
is currently seeing quality of education more in terms of availability of resources and
infrastructure, and academic performance in end of the year high stake tests than in terms
of the nature of educational experiences students have in the classrooms. While this study
agrees that better availability of resources and infrastructure goes a long way in
improving the nature of educational experiences in the classroom, it also advocates for
more focused attention than hitherto have been given, on improvements in the curricula,
assessment, curriculum material and teacher professional development. Otherwise, as
Kumar (2005) cautions, “the tendency to link quality with visible indicators and
accountability can only exacerbate the problem that the discourse of quality is attempting
to address.” The nature of changes in these areas can be guided by the existing guidelines
as formulated in the National Policy on Education (1986), or the current National
Curriculum Framework (2005) as the findings of the study support the prescriptions for

science education as outlined in these documents.

However, I am aware that translating visions for science education as sketched out in
these documents would be anything but easy and uncontested. Firstly, at policy level
itself there are indeed differences of opinions among political parties and in the society at
large on curricular issues. These differences are more acute and intractable in social
studies than in mathematics or science. However, significant differences on what
constitutes quality science education in Indian society cannot be denied or overlooked
(Rampal, 2002). Secondly, as the case of Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program

illustrates, when attempts are made to translate policy prescriptions into reality, existing

226

socio-political status quo gets threatened. This initiates a oppositional response by the
middle class and other groups that seem to benefit most from the existing dispensation,
and the issue of what constitutes quality in science education gets problematized at every
level of implementation (Mukhia, 2002; Rampal, 2002; Sadgopal, 2002). As I recall from
my days of working in this program, people working in this program not only had to
counter criticisms of inquiry driven science curriculum in local as well as national media,
but also had to respond to more direct challenges from middle class parents they met in
the street who viewed such a curriculum as a threat to the future of their children. As
Kumar (2005) argues, “the issue of quality cannot be seen in isolation from the socio-
cultural context of education.” In a deeply divided and highly iniquitous society such as
India’s, the socio-economic context of education has to be very complex and can only
pose serious challenges to any attempt to change the nature of schooling as it exists
today. Future efforts would have to carefully study attempts like the Hoshangabad
Science Teaching Program, to learn from their successes and failures so as to make more
successful and lasting improvements in the quality of educational experiences of students

in science as well as other subjects.

This study showcased the efforts of a teacher who tried to create meaningful learning
opportunities for his students whenever the existing constraints and resources enabled
him to do so. He too resembled a skillful bricoleur who contingently improvises workable
solutions from whatever is at hand. His teaching of science shows that even within the
existing circumstances, it is possible for a teacher to teach science, at least partially, in a
way that is personally meaningful and useful for his students. But then it would be naive

to expect every teacher to have the level of commitment and perseverance that

227

Raghuvanshi had. The plans for a better science education in schools in India (and
beyond) based on such an assumption will not work. What may be workable though is a
plan that seeks informed bricolage as a goal for teacher education and professional
development (Anderson, 2006), and works to create conditions in schools wherein even
ordinary run-of-the-mill teachers feel empowered enough to teach science that has

transformative potential for the lives of their students.

Such plans for improving education in government schools must begin from rural and
poor areas, if we are to create a socially just society. Here one would do well to
remember Gandhi's (1958) suggestion: “Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self
becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and
the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you
contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will
it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it
lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you

will find your doubts and your self melt away.”

228

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