Concept Note for Special Issue of Seminar on Inclusive Classrooms for Socially Diverse Children

1. The Context/ Problem Elementary education in India has witnessed a steady growth over the years in enrolment of children from all sections of society, particularly from weaker and disadvantaged sections such as girls, SCs, STs, and linguistic, ethnic and religious minorities. Owing to the increased inflow of children from weaker and disadvantaged sections, classrooms and schools are becoming increasingly diverse. This increased diversity presents new issues and challenges in curriculum design, teaching-learning practices and processes, learning materials, and teacher education to make classrooms and schools responsive to, and inclusive of, the learning needs and interests of diverse learners. Teaching children from diverse backgrounds requires a tremendous amount of flexibility in teaching practices and processes as well as in curriculum design and learning materials to respond to their diverse learning needs and interests. Children learn in different ways owing to their experiences, environment and socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, there is a need to use a variety of teaching methods and activities to meet the different learning needs of children from diverse backgrounds. We need to know the different ways in which children learn to help us develop teaching-learning practices and processes that are more meaningful for the children, and assist all children. In doing so, there is a need for special focus on children from communities who have been historically excluded from education. Children from all ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds come to school with already-constructed knowledge, including their home languages and cultural values, acquired in their home and community environments. No child comes to school who has not learned anything at home or in their community. Such knowledge and skills should serve as the framework for constructing new knowledge and understanding. Prejudice and discrimination can also be reflected in our curriculum and learning materials. For classrooms to be fully inclusive, it needs to be ensured that the curriculum is accessible to and relevant for all children in terms of what is taught (content), how it is taught (method), how the children learn best (process), and how it relates to the life experiences of the children and the environment in which they live and learn. The teaching materials need to be made inclusive by making them responsive to the diverse cultures and socio-economic backgrounds of all the children and relevant to their learning needs and interests. Instructional quality in a diverse classroom can be improved by using multi-cultural and multi-ethnic examples, scenarios and vignettes to illustrate academic concepts, ideas, and skills. This can be a powerful strategy for incorporating diversity into the heart of teaching, because examples are fundamental to and consume much of the actual time devoted to teaching in all subjects and school settings. Relevant examples can link school knowledge to the lived experiences of diverse students, and improve their academic achievement. Teaching diverse children also crucially involves reflecting on and examining teachers own personal and professional beliefs about diversity, based on caste, class, gender, ethnicity, language and religion, and analysing how they influence their behaviour and relationship with children from diverse backgrounds. However, the attitudinal awareness and skills to teach diverse classrooms cannot be 1

simply developed and absorbed through a one-off course during initial teacher training or in-service training. Instead, in order to facilitate inclusive classroom practices and processes, there is a need for continuous teacher support to develop among them an awareness and understanding of the issues of diversity and differentiation within classrooms, and the different learning needs and constraints of children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. The challenges involved in teaching diverse children and ensuring quality education for all are clearly recognized in the major national policy documents. The Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009 talks about the pedagogic factors that act as barriers to learning of children, especially from disadvantaged social backgrounds. The Act envisages a child-friendly environment, and states that the curriculum should provide for learning through activities, exploration and discovery. Earlier, NCF 2005 too had recommended a child-centred pedagogy giving primacy to childrens experiences, their voices and their active participation. Recognizing the changing social context of the classrooms, it observed that many schools now had large numbers of first-generation learners whose parents could not provide them direct support in their schooling, and therefore, the pedagogy must be reoriented to meet their schooling needs. More significantly, the National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE), 2009 clearly states that there is increasing recognition of the worth and potential of social context as a source for rejuvenating teaching and learning. Multi-cultural education and teaching for diversity are the needs of contemporary times. However, studies of primary schools show that the current teaching-learning practices are characterized by a perspective that does not take into account the social context of the classroom. Teachers appear to have little understanding of the issues of socio-economic differentiation and diversity within the classroom. For instance, many teachers in government primary schools seem to believe in the concept of ascribed learning potential and ability of children, and perceive children from marginalized communities as being learning deficient or uneducable. As a result, teachers have very low or no expectation of learning achievement from these children, and develop an attitude of neglect towards them. The classroom transaction processes of teaching and learning are also found to be mainly characterized by the centrality of the teacher and the textbook whereby rote-learning and memorization, copying and repetition are the basic learning activities. The teachers are found to be the sole communicator, and childrens voices and experiences do not find expression in the classroom. There is little effort to draw parallels between the content of lessons from textbooks and the experiences from everyday life and socio-economic context of children. These teaching-learning practices and processes appear to alienate children from the learning process, demotivate them, adversely affect their learning potential and achievement, and gradually push them out of the school. There is thus a lack of a perspective that understands and values social differentiation and diversity within the classroom, and recognizes the differential learning needs and constraints of children from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Consequently, teachers view their professional accountability in terms of only transmission of the content of the lessons in the textbooks without any concern for the resulting learning achievement of children. This lack of a perspective also often leads to mistrust and even antagonistic relationships between the school and communities, particularly the marginalized ones. The current government provisions for empowering local communities and promoting their active involvement in the planning and management of schools is found to be largely ineffective. Parents, particularly from marginalized communities, feel powerless within the local power structure and relations, and are unable to become active participants in school affairs and influence its

decisions. The schools need to develop an attitude of accountability towards communities they serve and be oriented towards building a cordial and organic relationship with them. 2. Issues/sub-themes for papers The following is a tentative list of issues/sub-themes to be covered by papers in relation to the theme of inclusive classrooms for socially diverse children: i) Policies and perspectives ii) Caste iii) Tribe iv) Gender v) Poverty/ Class vi) Language vii) Religion/ Minorities viii) Disability 3. List of probable contributors i) Prof. R. Govinda, Vice Chancellor, NUEPA, New Delhi ii) Dr. Madhumita Bandyopadhyay, Assistant professor, NUEPA, New Delhi iii) Prof. Christine Sleeter, Professor Emeritus, Carleton College, USA IV) Dr. Peggy Mohan- Eminent Linguist, New Delhi v) Mr. Dhir Jhingran- IAS & Chief Programme Officer, Room To Read, New Delhi vi) Prof. Imtiaz Ahmad- Former Professor, JNU vii) Sister Cyrill- Principal, Loreto Day Public School, Sealdah, W.B. viii) Dr. Suman Sachdeva, Care India ix) Ms. Mini Srinivasan, Linguist and social activist, Pune x) Deshkal Society, New Delhi xi) Prof. T. K. Oommen, Professor Emeritus, JNU, New Delhi xii) Dr. Savyasachi- Associate Professor, Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi xiii) Prof. Geetha Nambissan, Zakir Hussain Centre for Education and Research, JNU, New Delhi xiv) Prof. Gauri Srivastava, NCERT, New Delhi xv) Prof. Pramila Menon, NUEPA, New Delhi xvi) Dr. S.B. Upadhyay, Associate Professor, IGNOU, New Delhi xvii) Dr. Arvind Mishra, Assistant Professor, ZHCES, JNU, New Delhi.