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Voices of Teachers and Teacher Educators
Volume IV Issue 1 April 2015
Published by:
National Council for Teacher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development,Government of India, New DelhiPreparation of the publication at Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur.
Cover Design: Jaya Rathore and Rajesh SenLayout Design: Rajesh Sen and Preeti Misra
About the publication
The launch of the journal �Voices of Teachers and Teacher Educators� is an initiative of
the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) to highlight the vital role of
teacher education in India, as the country is poised to provide quality education to all
its children, irrespective of gender, caste, creed, religion and geographies under the
Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RtE), 2009. The large influx
of teachers necessitated under RtE represents the biggest opportunity to bring fresh
life into schools for decades to come. The challenge is to enhance the role of teachers in
shaping the social transformation India is witnessing, as well as have a long lasting
impact on the quality of education, also making it significantly more equitable. Teach-
ers and all those in the system need to recognize that their ownership and voices are
important and that they can and do learn not only from their own experiences but also
from each other through collective reflection and analysis. The publication attempts
to lend voice to teachers, their educators, researchers, administrators and policy mak-
ers in the varied institutions: Schools, CRCs, BRCs, DIETs, IASEs, CTEs, SCERTs etc.,
and make visible their engagement in accomplishing extraordinarily complex and
diverse tasks that they are expected to perform. Contributions are welcome both in
English and Hindi and there are plans to produce the journal in a multilingual format
in the near future.
Call for contributions
This publication is for all of us: teachers, teacher educators, administrators, researchersand policy makers. It is to provide a platform and also to build a network for ourvoices, ideas and reflections. Since the idea is to make this journal reflect all ourvoices it would only fulfill its purpose, if we contribute to it in as many ways as wecan. We look forward to all of you contributing with your experiences, questions,suggestions, perspectives as well as critical comments on different aspects of teachereducation and schooling. This could also be through comments and reflections on thecurrent issue. Your contribution could be in the form of articles, reports documents,pictures, cartoons or any other forms of presentation that can be printed. We lookforward to your inputs to make this journal truly reflective of our voices. It is proposedthat this be a quarterly publication. We would like to receive contributions for thenext issue by 31st July, 2015. We also look forward to comments and suggestions forimprovements of the publication to make this a participative endeavor and improveits quality. These can be sent to the following:
[email protected]@gmail.com
Editorial Team
Dr. Janaki Rajan is Professor of Education at Jamia Millia Islamia. She was Director,
State Council of Educational Research and Training, Delhi from 2000-2006. She holds
Master�s degrees in English Literature, Psychology and Education. Her research, publications,
teaching and activist interests lie in the areas of gender, inclusive education, curriculum
and cultural studies, women and child rights.
Hriday Kant Dewan was formerly Education Advisor, Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur,
Rajasthan. He is now Professor, Azim Premji University. He has a Ph.D. in Physics from
Delhi University. He is involved in strengthening SCERTs and DIETs, textbook development,
teacher and teacher educator training and research and dissemination in education.
Dr. Manish Jain is Assistant Professor, School of Education Studies, Dr. BR Ambedkar
University, Delhi (AUD). He has previously taught at Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Mumbai and has been a school teacher for a decade. A recipient of Shastri Indo-Canadian
Doctoral Studies Fellowship and CSDS doctoral fellowship, he has been part of textbook
development teams at SCERT Delhi and NCERT. His research interests and publications
are at the intersections of history, sociology and politics of education and also include
education policies, comparative education, gender and social science education.
Assistant Editor: Preeti Misra, Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Centre, Udaipur,
Rajasthan.
Publication Coordinator: Ms. Anamika Singh, Ministry of Human Resource Development,
Government of India.
Contributors
Shubhra Mishra, Azim Premji Foundation, Uttarakhand.
Sheshagiri, K.M., Unicef, Raipur, Chhattisgarh.
Karthik Venkatesh, Guru Ram Dass Public School, Bathinda, Punjab.
Kuldeep Garg, Digantar, Jaipur, Rajasthan.
Library Resource Group, Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Center, Udaipur, Rajasthan
Vijaya S. Varma, formerly University of Delhi, Delhi.
Illustrations
Prashant Soni, Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Centre, Udaipur, Rajasthan.
Contents
Editorial
Section I: Inside the classrooms - Experiences of teachers, trainees and teachereducators
1. Experience of working with adolescent girls of a government upperprimary school : A report
Shubhra Mishra 1
Section II: From practitioners, researchers, policy makers
2. The CCE conundrum
Seshagiri K.M. 6
3. Running an English Medium institution in a rural area: Challenges,dilemmas and reflections
Karthik Venkatesh 14
Section III: Schools: Ambience, Management, innovations
4. Teaching Maps: A Reflective Engagement with Geography at AdharshilaLearning Centre
Kuldeep Garg 19
Section IV: Reports of conferences, seminars, workshops
5. A workshop on capacity building of library educators: A report
Library Resource Group, Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Center 30
6. How should Physics be taught to facilitate understanding?
Vijaya S. Varma 35
Editorial
The effort to improve education in schools is centrally located on the efforts put in for the capacitybuilding, involvement and motivation of the teachers. There is recognition of the need to buildcommunication across the educational network. And as you are aware, Voices of Teachers and TeacherEducators (VTTE) is one such effort. In response to meeting the challenge of hearing the views of differentsegments and getting people on the ground to articulate their ideas an extra issue of VTTE would bebrought out this year. While it means more opportunity for articulation it also implies the need for morepeople to join the effort to write. The spirit of VTTE is to be broad-based and the purpose is to shareinformation, experiences, thoughts and exchange ideas among those who are working towards makingaccessible quality education to all in order to celebrate and consolidate democracy and the ideas andideals enshrined in the Constitution.This particular issue flags and elaborates some major issues. The recognition of the need to include allchildren is a major concern and the present issue shares the experiences of some efforts in this directionthat have had mixed success. The article by Shubhra Mishra brings out the complexities arising out of themultiple aspects that affect the adolescent girls. It examines the nature and extent of the distance betweenwhat she needs to know and what the society is willing to allow, creating in them a reluctance that is deepseated. It shows how given the opportunity girls can begin to talk about themselves and absorb ideasabout changes in themselves. It also shows how girls after recognising these ideas can help others breakout of their shells which is central to the way we can help girls become educated in these areas. Theseideas are important as the current incidents of violence against women in various parts of the countryand the social response of putting the blame on the girls themselves have shown the need for girls to beaware of themselves and have the self-confidence to defend themselves. There is a need for programs likethis that give the girl children both individuality and self-esteem as well as a collective spirit to help andshare with each other. This would enable them to make choices about their life and all decisions may notbe imposed on them under different pretexts as inevitable.No discussion at this moment on school education can escape or avoid CCE. In the article the CCEConundrum by Sheshagiri, we are again required to revisit the question of why should children go toschool from another dimension. What constitutes a meaningful schooling and how do we make thatpossible? It interrogates the place of assessment and examination in education and the question of whatis at the heart of the assessment of the schooling experience. It raises the question whether assessment canbe at the center of reform and explores the issues with assessment in the past that led to the idea of CCE.It opens up the layers of CCE and advocates CCU, comprehensive and continuous understanding of thechild and all that it entails. It also argues that rather than pushing reform it requires trust and capacitybuilding in the teacher to take up the CCE, leading to her being able to chart the direction she should movetowards, in her work with children.Karthik�s article gives us the viewpoint of someone who runs and heads an English medium school in asmall town. It describes the context in which such schools emerged in rural regions where they mightappear misplaced. These schools try to strike a balance between local needs and implementation of theCBSE curriculum, which is national in orientation and the balancing act is described eloquently.From a small town in Punjab we move to a small adivasi village in the state of Madhya Pradesh. Thearticle by Kuldeep uses teaching of maps an illustration of unique pedagogical innovations andexperiments of Adharshila Learning Centre. Their work is not merely described but also analysed usinga three dimensional frame. It helps us consider the critical aspect of materials and how they can aidengagement.The final two articles are based around workshops and seminars, so vital in establishing and continuingacademic discourse. One is a report of a workshop that was part of a larger programme towards developingthe capacity of library educators. The idea of library and the way it would be used is intrinsically linkedto the purpose and process of learning. The criticality of the library, the way it may be used and alongwith that the need to have well prepared library educators is essential. The second is an extract from theproceedings of a seminar on construction of knowledge that discusses how physics can be taught tofacilitate learning. We hope the current issue that has presented different experiences and perspectives ofworking in school will be useful for all who read. We welcome your views and articles. Please send themat the following ids:[email protected]@[email protected]
1
Shubhra Mishra
Experience of working with adolescent girls of agovernment upper primary school : A report
Abstract
The article describes the experience of trying to create a conducive environment among adolescentgirls in an upper primary government school in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand. Different modes of intensiveengagements - a day long workshop, talks, question box and letter writing - were used to developrapport with the twenty girls of class 8th . We believe that this will support us to plan further work. Thediscourse brought up many concerns: What and how they want to know; what and how we can tellthem about what they want; to know and what they needed to know. It also brought up how the socio-cultural background of the girls impact issues of adolescence. We looked at national policies and thecurriculum document for effective planning. We found that there was a lack of openness in discussingsuch issues with sensitivity and that throwing information and facts in isolation perpetuates differentsocial myths, perceptions and ambiguity on the subject. Reinforcing peer learning, we tried to developa self-sustaining model where senior girls would orient the junior girls to help out during puberty.For the purpose of analysis, although there are a number of threads to consider, the article is limitedto the queries of girls revealed through the question box and the social profile of the girls.
Introduction
I work with the Azim Premji Foundation with agoal to provide quality education to all withequity. The team I am part of also works on settingup dialogues and habit of reading and discussionamong various groups like teachers, educatorsand children through the Library ActivityCenters.
These Library Activity Centers (LAC) have beenconceptualized to promote holistic developmentof learners and work is done here on readinghabits, painting, craft work, origami etc. SuchLACs have been set-up in the premises of oneselected government school premise in each blockof the district. Students visit LAC and involvethemselves in various activities during and afterschool hours. However, in one of the LACssituated in an upper primary girls governmentschool, we were told that our interactions withthe girls had to be limited to school-hours andcould not be extended. On probing the issue, we
found that some eve-teasing complaints had been
reported within the premises. Consequently,
school authorities had decided to not allow any
involvement after school hours. We realized how
a group of adolescent girls is deprived at various
levels. It led us to initiate some thought-provokinginteractions with the adolescent girls about theiremotional and social issues, on access to a safephysical space, opportunities for development,and adult trust during puberty.
Why work on this issue
The purpose of education can be considered asholistic development of a human that nurturesher/his all capabilities to sustain a quality life inthe society. Adolescence is a transition phasefrom young to adult, bringing critical physicaland psychological changes with a need torecognize the sense of oneself in the society.Adolescence related issues are always embeddedin all National educational polices - sometimesopenly under this name or sometimes underassumed headings in order to neutralize socialpolitical pressure.
In 1980, adolescence concerns were raised duringthe National Population Education Project(NPEP) across the country. NEP (1986) visualizedit as the thrust area of school education. Post2005, some controversies around sex educationrestricted it to Adolescence Education Program(AEP) for equipping the students to deal with real
2
life situations. NCF-2005 guides the schoolcurriculum to consider it an integrated part ofschool education. Moreover, NCERT hasdeveloped a framework and a set of documentssuch as a teacher module to deal with the same;however appropriate training is a challenge.
Interactions in LAC
Over the six month period from September 2014to March 2015, we interacted with the girlsthrough a daylong workshop, monthly follow-ups through direct conversation, question box,letter writing and over the telephone. Theinteractions revolved around some activities,games, screening videos, reading relevant textsand discussion to comprehend as well asincrease aware of the subject.
Soon, it became very obvious that opendiscussions and attempts to sensitize the groupdemands that a rapport be built among thestudents as well as with the facilitators. Moreover,there may be two major challenges underlyingsuch problems. On the one hand, studentsgenuinely lack understanding of reproductive
system and on the other hand the social structure
they belong to does not provide any space to talk
about such issues and creates a resistant mindset.
Consequently, a strategy was devised to develop
a sustainable model to propagate awareness in
the school. The strategy aimed at rapport
building, increasing biological/content
knowledge and providing a platform for their
voices.
In this sequence, we regularly visited and
interacted with the girls of class 8th, put a question
box in the classroom and gave the responsibility
of looking after the box to one of the girls. Within2-3 weeks, we got a positive response; the questionbox had many questions, the girls seemed to bemore confident and responsible, some paintingswere drawn on the question box�s surfaces andsome stuff was put in too.
We went through the class 8 state science textbookto grab any opportunity to thread the topic withthe syllabus. We found the second chapter"Jeevon Me Vansh Vridhi" of state textbook -which talked about different ways ofreproduction in plants, animal and then inhumans - to be loaded with facts and information.In contrast to what is advocated in NCF-2005,the topic has been dealt in a very isolated mannerwithout connecting to real life of the students.
To reduce the abstractness of the topic and tomake learning more effective, permanent andeasy audio-video technology was resorted to. Thechallenge lay in the selection of a video that couldfulfill the demand of the group. Since Hindilanguage was preferred rather than English, wedid compromise with the quality, choosing twoHindi videos followed by an English one thatbetter illustrated the content. However, we stillneeded to explain the terminology that was beingused and therefore, kept intervening throughoutthe screening.
Most of the queries related to biological contentwere responded to in the videos. This led to manyand different questions in their minds. An opendiscussion was initiated which revolved aroundsome personal issues and unusual biologicalchanges observed in their body.
In order to provide an atmosphere to voice such
issues and the importance of peer learning, we
planned that each girl of class 8th would orient at
least one girl of class 7th in the same manner -
having informal conversations, reading some
related books etc. One query arose that why 7th
class girls would share their personal talks. We
responded that they would if assured that you
would tackle it with adequate sensitivity;
moreover they too must have genuine needs.
However, it was not compulsory for everyone and
those with deep reservations and resistance
could skip this activity. One of the girls came
forward to coordinate this project. A register and
a pen was given to her to maintain the records
3
which included the name of class 8th girls alongwith their chosen protégé from class 7th. EachSaturday, the girls would report to thecoordinator the progress and record it in theregister.
Other Activities
Activity 1: The activity started with a round ofintroduction. There were 25 girls and each onehad to tell her name, her mother�s name, the nameof her maternal grandmother and the one thingthat they liked most about themselves.
We found that many did not know their maternalgrandmother�s name. The introduction itselfserved the purpose of addressing the issue ofpatriarchy. During the discussion several socialrituals like Shradh, Antim Sanskar and surnameetc. were mentioned and how all these rituals areperformed or decided by males in the family. Wedid refer to some matriarchal societies and theirrituals. We summed up the discussion by talkingabout the importance of questioning and criticalthinking before following any practice.
One issue that we wanted to address throughthis activity was that of self-esteem and for thiswe had asked each girl to mention what she likedabout herself. We questioned the actual practicesat our home where girls have to facediscrimination and discussed how a girl is alsoa human being and has equal right - to have food,clothes and education as same as a boy.
Lastly we wanted to discuss the issue of who isresponsible for birth of a girl child. For this, werequested the girls to share any story/eventrelated to their birth that their mother or familyused to tell. A few of them did share however itwas not as intense as we had expected. Wetherefore headed to a planned activity toelucidate this issue.
Activity 2: Interchanging of two different typesof beans in different con-centric circles to explainthe role of chromosomes in reproduction.
We segregated the group of girls into twosubgroups - 1 and 2. The girls in these subgroupswere asked to stand in two concentric circles. Wedistributed two grains to all girls of each circlefrom bag 1 and bag 2 respectively. Bag 1 contained
only Rajma while Bag 2 contained Rajma andMoong Dal. Each girl had one grain in each hand.We sang the song "Milke Chalo Milke Chalo..."and walked in the circle while we sang. Whenthe song ended, each girl shook hands withanother girl from the other circle. Each pair had apair of grains in the joined hands. We announcedthat the pairs with only Rajma grains were blessedwith a baby girl. Then we explained that whatwas distributed to them representedchromosomes and bag 1 and 2 represented femaleand male. The group did not take much time tograsp the essence of the activity but we did haveto work harder in explaining the science ofchromosomes, genes and other governing factors,although we did not go into details.
Activity 3: Body Mapping to probe biologicalchanges during puberty.
The class was divided into six groups of 4. Onemember of each would lie down on the floor andothers outlined her body. Subsequently, they hadto map this body. Initially, we found that girlswere drawing Chotis (pigtails), eyes, eyebrows,lips, nose, nails, and bones and even the digestivesystem and so on but not drawing reproductiveparts. It was not serving our purpose so we keptprobing; can you see these parts of your body?Did you not leave any part out? Ultimately, oneby one, each group drew private parts.
We had a common discussion with all groupsand wrote down on a board what the groups haddrawn and what they did not. We asked about
the physical and emotional changes during
puberty. Few responses - becoming more caring
for elders, self-conscious, threading eyebrows,
using cosmetics, breast development,
menstruation were murmured. We added some
more like pimples, changes in voice, hair growth
etc. We mentioned the hormonal changes that
cause the physical and emotional changes
during adolescence.
We addressed the social beliefs and gave counter
examples also. Surprisingly, we found no one in
the class was aware of the basic process of
menstruation. We screened an animated video
clip related to menstruation cycle and went
thoroughly in details later.
4
Findings
It was seen that none of the girls knew the true facts and information related to the biological changesduring puberty. They reported orally the following:
1. The girls are not allowed to discuss such concern openly in the family.
2. These concerns are treated as fig leaf, one can only consult the females, that too in a closed room.
3. The female members of the family also side-line the issues and weave them with social norms.
4. Although a NGO visited the school it limited interactions to sanitary pads distribution and theirusage.
5. The girls did not have any authentic source to gather information.
c�Dl ls fudys loky
1- tc tehu ls ikS/kk mx ldrk gS rks Q�kZ ls D;ksa ugha mxrk gS\ GS1
2 ftl ij geus igyh ckr dh Fkh ge FkksM+k vkSj mlh ij ckr djuk pkgrs gS vkSj X, Y ckyk dqN gesa le>ugha vk;k Fkk vkSj T;knk ls T;knk yM+fd;ka dg jgh gS dh ns[k dj gekjs le> esa vk;k gSA CK1
3- D;k yM+fd;ksa dk ;gh /keZ gS fd yM+fd;ka pqi jg ldrh gS yM+fd;ksa dk /keZ D;ksa ugh tks pkgs cks ugh djldrh gSA SS1
4- D;k yM+fd;ksa dks gd ugha ckgj ?kweus dk\ ;fn dksbZ yM+dh ckgj ?kwes rks yM+ds u tkus D;k&D;k dgrsgSA SS2
5- tc yM+dh iSnk gksrh gS rks yksx ;g D;ksa dgrs gS fd yM+dh iSnk gqbZ ,slk D;ksa gksrk gSA SS3
6- tc rd fdlh yM+dh ;k vkSjr dks ,e lh ugha gksrh rks D;k cg xHkZorh gks ldrh gSA CK2
7- ihfj;M iwjk gks tkrk gS rks lQsn ikuh D;ksa fudyrk gSA CK3
8- tc i`Foh ij yksx ugh Fks rks i�Foh dSlh gksxh vkSj ;s i�Foh dgk¡ ls vkbZA GS2
9- ;fn nks rhu eghus rd ihfj;M gks rks D;k djk tk;s blls dksbZ ijs�kkuh rks ugha gksxhA CK4
10- vkdk�k dk jax uhyk D;ksa gksrk gS\ GS3
11- ftruh tYnh ?kkl mx tkrh gS mruh gh tYnh tks ge cht Mkyrs gS cks D;ksa ugh mxrs gS\ GS4
12- eq>s ,d eghus esa nksckjk ;elh gksrs gS es ugha pkgrh gq fd nks ckj ugh gksA CK5
13- Hksn Hkko D;ksa gksrk gS vkSj D;ksa fd;k tkrk gS\ SS4
14- yM+dksa ds vanj dkSulh chekjh gksrh gS ,M~l dkSulh chekjh gS vkSj D;ksa gksrh gS\ CK6
15- tc ihfj;M gksrk gS rks isV vkSj ihB esa nnZ D;ksa gksvk gS rk gS\ CK7
16- gekjs 'kjhj esa uk[kwu dgk¡ ls vkrs gS vkSj ;s dSls cM+ tkrs gS\ GS5
17- vxj ihfj;M iwjs ,d eghus rd yxkrkj gksrk jgs rks gesa D;k djuk pkfg, vkSj ;g lgh gksrk gS ;k xyrACK7
18- ge yM+fd;ksa dk e lh D;ksa gksrh] ,slk D;ksa gksrk gS\ CK8
19- tc esa MsV gksrh gq rks esjh ihB vkSj isV esa cgqr nnZ gksrk gS] ,slk D;ksa gksrk gS\ CK9
20- yM+ds yM+fd;ksa fd fdl djrs gS rkscks ek¡ cu tkrh gS ,slk D;ksa gksrk gS\ CK10
21- cykRdkj djus ls ek¡ D;ksa curs gS\ CK11
22- lc dgrs gS fd yM+ds yM+fd;ksa dks Nq ys rks ek¡ cu tkrh gS ,slk D;ksa dgrs gS\ ek¡ dSls curs gS crkvks\CK12
23- xqIr vaxksa ij cky D;ksa mxrs gS D;k ;g t:jh gS\ CK13
24- cpiu esa yM+ds vkSj yM+fd;ksa dk lhuk ,d tSlk gksrk gS fQj cM+s gksus ds ckn yM+dh dk lhuk ckn tkrkgS vkSj yM+ds dk lhuk D;ksa ugha cnrk gS\ CK 14
25- dHkh dHkh ,slk D;ksa gksrk gS fd dHkh rhu fnu esa ,elh lgh gksrh gS dHkh vkB nl fnu D;ksa yx tkrs gS,slk D;ksa gksrk gS\ CK15
26- gekjh ukd esa ukd dgk¡ ls vkrh gS ;g dqvksa curh gS vkSj D;k ;s t:jh gksrk gS\ GS 5
27- efgykvksa ds nkM+ha D;ksa ugh vkrh gS\ GS 6
5
Question box: The total of 29 questions were dropinto the question box from a class of 24, and aregiven in the table. The questions were groupedinto three categories:
1. Content knowledge coded as �CK�comprises the queries that need subjectexpertise explanations.
2. General Science coded as �GS� comprises thequeries that comes through intuitive ideas.
3. The voices against the social rituals/structure are kept under the Social Structurecoded as �SS�
Reflections:
1. One day long workshop or limitedinteractions have limited effectiveness
2. Audio-visual techniques are useful and helpthe girls to relate the content with the real lifeexperience.
3. The adolescents like to talk over such issuesand quench their endless queries.
Challenges:
1. We worked with class 8th girls and by thetime they showed the potential to orient otherjunior girls, they had to leave the school forhigher studies. Thus, in order to develop suchself-sustaining model, we should start in thebeginning of the academic year to get enoughtime.
2. There is a lack of quality literature in termsof illustration, language and content at the
children�s level to comprehend the biologicalchanges during puberty
3. Rapport building with students is timetaking and the family approval comes intoaccount.
4. The girls do not have adequate skills to readand write required documents.
5. Teachers encouraged us and providedneedful support yet it is difficult to find anyobservable change in their perceptions; thisis crucial as teachers are also part of societyand their personal belief impacts their job.
References
�Beti Kare Sawal� Gupta Anu, EklavyaPublication.
http://ncert.nic.in/ncert/aerc/ncert_ AEP.html
www.ncert.nic.in/.../aep/pdfs/Training_Resource_Materials_Prelims.pdf
Screened vidoes
www.youtube.com watch?v=6DiySYVEJjU
www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5-joreW93A
Acknowledgement
I am thankful to Rudrapur block team, especiallyHoney and Ashwin, that helped me in this programme.The girls and the school staff always welcomed mewhenever I visited the school and showed enthusiasmthroughout. I remember Anu Gupta with whom I learnthow to handle such issues with sensitivity. I expressmy great gratitude to all of them for being theredirectly or indirectly.
6
The entire enterprise of organized education, withits lakhs of schools, millions of teachers andthousands of department workers who constituteits bureaucracy at the national, state, district andsub district levels, who strive to make educationhappen in our country, can be said to be drivenat different points in time and in various waysby a few fundamental questions. These questionsactually flow from one to the other, and they areall interlinked. Each question can generate manydifferent and debatable responses, with thesedebates often going back hundreds of years atleast. There are no clear answers even today, andthat is what makes the task of educating childrenthat much more fascinating and complex.Everybody can have an opinion here. That is thebest as well as the most frustrating part.
The questions
The first and obvious question is: Why shouldchildren go to school? This has to do with whatwe usually term as educational aims or morespecifically, the aims of schooling. These aimscan be many and often they can be at crosspurposes, if you will. Ultimately, the aims wechoose are also a reflection of the kind of world
or society we want to create.
There is this belief that
education has a role in the
creation of that society, that
schools have a social role.
The Naxals, for instance, will
have a conception of
educational aims that will be
very different from the aims
a capitalist or industrialist
would articulate. Similarly,
democratic and dictatorial
regimes would have two
different conceptions of the purposes ofeducation.
The second question is: What should they bedoing there (in school)? How should they passtheir time there? This usually boils down to thequestion of what children should learn, sinceschools claim that they teach children this andthat � the passing on of knowledge is seen ascentral to what schools do. As part of thislearning, what kinds of experiences would wewant children to get at school? Again, theresponses are bound to be divergent, dependingon who is responding and under what conditionsthe response is being made. If a natural disasterstrikes, for example, there are often shrill cries forincluding disaster preparedness in thecurriculum. If there is a communal conflagration,then secular elements get emphasized. And so itgoes. It is a long list and it is controversial, as wehave seen in the instance of the heat generatedover the inclusion of the Ambedkar cartoon in atextbook prepared by NCERT.
Related to what is the question of how childrenshould be taught. If getting good marks andcracking the exams is the idea, then everyone willapply their minds to beat the exam. There will be
Sheshagiri K.M.
The CCE Conundrum
7
mock exams and the like, and the experts whohave cracked it earlier will have tutorial sessionswith the hopefuls. Bihar�s �Super 30� is a classicexample, where year after year children fromdisadvantaged backgrounds are coached to crackthe entrance to the IIT. If �developing criticalthinking� is a key aim, then teaching methods aswell as content will be different. Getting goodgrades in the exams may then become aperipheral concern. Of course, it can be arguedthat the two are not mutually exclusive. So thesecond question is the one that is concerned alsowith the methods of teaching and learning.
The third question is: How do we know if we aremoving in the direction we want to go�? This isreally at the heart of the assessment of theschooling experience. What should we do to findout if any child who is subjected to this systemcalled school, is actually becoming what has beenenvisaged under question 1 above�? This is acomplex one for it may be difficult to limit theresponse to the period of schooling. Given thevagaries of human nature, many things mayhappen after an individual has moved out of theinstitution of schooling. (Note here that we usethe word school to indicate the various stages offormal, organized education.)
Question 3 is inextricably linked to question 1 �if this is what we want for our children fromschool, we need to do something with them whichwill move them in this direction and, further �we have to develop a system which will enableus to find out if we are moving in the direction
sought. These aspects are all intimately linked
with each other, and cannot be seen in isolation.
I would like to mention here that the preparation
of teachers is at the heart of the education
enterprise and we will not be able to move an
inch if teachers are not prepared enough to
address the above questions in their day to day
practice. And since we have not yet reached a
stage where machines are teaching children (if
one goes by what hard core proponents of IT
sometimes have to say with regard to the potential
they see in digital technologies for education, it
would seem as there is no other alternative but to
substitute teachers with machines), we may still
consider the teacher challenge as the central one
in education for a fairly long time.
The question of assessment
I will primarily address question 3 and thedifficulties that come with it. Not becausequestions 1 and 2 are not important. They are,but at the moment, we are a bit obsessed withquestion 3, thanks to the emphasis on�Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation�(CCE) in the Right to Education Act. Perhaps veryfew of the many Education Acts enacted bycountries across the world mention exactly howchildren should be taught, and how what theyhave learnt should be assessed. Ours does.
Perhaps the easiest way of developing a systemof finding out if children have moved in thedirections we want them to go, (or, in more directterms, to find out if they �have made the cut�) is tohave exams. This is what we have been doing fora long, long time, with great effect. It feeds ourcollective anxiety and it has spawned a hugeindustry. Many years ago, when I was in schooland later in the pre-university course (11th and12th std.) we often heard that so and so college orschool in Bangalore was the �best�, or provided�good education�. Then we would hear somename or the other of faculty members who were�fantastic� and whose tuition classes if youattended would guarantee you good marks inthe public exams and a passport to a better life.
It dawned on me much later that this entirediscussion of best schools and colleges was moreor less centred round how many ranks theyobtained in public exams, and what percentagetheir �best students� got in those exams. �Goodeducation� therefore got focused on questions twoand three � for instance, what were the bestmethods of teaching which would lead to greatmarks? What kind of exams would ensure thatchildren would make the cut? Now, examperformance is not the same as academicexcellence, which is a much broader idea. Further,it certainly cannot be equated to �good education�,which can and does mean many more things.But a certain dominant interpretation of �goodeducation� can make it look as if examperformance is the main thing involved.Ultimately, every other consideration falls by thewayside. So it may not be uncommon to hearparents and teachers compare two schools andsay one is better than the other since it churnsout good results every year. It does not matter
8
how those results are churned out and if childrenhave understood (for instance) what they havestudied � or if they have inculcated along theway, a love for learning. They are treated muchlike the race horses which get whipped every nowand then to run faster and faster and cross thefinishing line.
I must delve a little more on exams � the systemof exams with their marks can result in certainamusing and painful results and realities. WhenI was in 12 th standard with a sciencecombination, we had two clear options �engineering or medicine. The IT industry had stillnot entered the scene in Bangalore in a big wayin 1987 when I cleared my 12th std. exams. TheCall Centres and various other options that thisthing called IT has spawned were still far away.So our teachers kept egging us on to do eitherengineering or medicine. It was made to look asif life would not be worth living if we didn�tbecome engineers or doctors. Since Karnatakathose days (more so now) had a greater numberof engineering colleges than colleges that madeyou doctors, the cut off percentage for engineeringwas lower than that of medicine. Those aspiringto become doctors had to study that wee bit harderand they had to get well above 95% or 97% if theyhad to secure a merit seat in a reasonably goodmedical college.
So, we had a system which decided who wouldbuild bridges and design machines and whowould look after people�s lives, based just on amischievous combination of their exam marks!No other attributes necessary to these professionswere considered. And that is how I became anengineer, only to leave the profession some yearslater. The system has not changed a bit since thosedays.
The second thing about exams, which someargue is very practical, is that they play the roleof the perfect filter for the educational system.Not everyone who starts out in school stays longenough ends up doing the same things. Imagineif they did! There is the rural-urban divide, thereis the boy-girl divide and then there is a dividedepending on which community you come fromand where you are located. The system thenresembles a pyramid, and children keep routinelyfalling off it as they try and negotiate its steepand treacherous climb. Only a few get to the
pinnacle. This, the exams achieve perfectly. Don�tjust ask what happens to the ones who fall offthe pyramid. They do not get the goodies that theothers get. They get this message that they aresecond rate performers, relegated to some menialjobs. Knowing fully well that we have a systemthat produces inequality, we still go on sayingthat education is the fundamental right of everychild � as if by just saying it things will fall inplace!
CCE as Saviour
This limited approach has been the cause of someconcern for many years � that we have thegrandest of educational aims, enshrined in thevarious documents that we have routinelyproduced for more than a hundred years, but hadthe narrowest and harmful ways of ascertainingif we were moving in the directions we wanted togo. Of course, there are problems with the kindsof textbooks that the state produces, as well asthe ways in which teachers are prepared. Alongwith this, no one had cracked the puzzle ofassessment � how can we put in place a systemwhich reflects the educational aims that we setout to achieve?
In the nineties, much before the struggles forinstituting a law that recognizes education as afundamental right in our country occurred, westarted hearing about �Continuous andComprehensive Evaluation� (CCE). The usuallament was: �How can we just go on with asystem that pronounces judgment on that oneday and within those few hours�? We need tohave a system that is fairer and which just doesn�trely on marks at the end of the day�� To add tothis was the other refrain that the current systemwas not looking at the child as a �whole� � exams,at best, tested short term memories whereas thechild was much, much more than a person whowas expected to give standard answers and
repeat what was taught. So the terms �continuous
and comprehensive� came into being.
The idea behind the term continuous was that a
child�s learning must be assessed continuously
instead of only relying on term end tests and
exams. This cumulative assessment would then
provide a truer picture of the child�s abilities,
difficulties etc. and would also provide the
9
teacher useful reference points to intervene in casethere were difficulties that needed to beaddressed. The idea behind the termcomprehensive was that so far we were assessingchildren only on the subject matter areas � math,language, science and so on. That focus onassessing children through school subjectsraised several questions. Would this provide acomplete picture of the child�s abilities? Waseducation all about learning only these subjects?Obviously not! So went the arguments for analternative or more comprehensive way of findingout where children were going. �Comprehensive�was then understood in terms of expanding ourunderstanding of what children could actuallydo, other than engaging with and learning the�core� subject matter, other than just reading,writing and arithmetic � things we made themdo.
I remember the jokes that usually did the rounds.�What�s the fuss anyway?� Someone asked. �Allthis is important if teaching takes place in thefirst place!!� Indeed, that was one concern whichmany were just not prepared to look at in the eye.Where was teaching happening? Survey aftersurvey showed how little children learned, evenon the most basic aspects of reading, writing andarithmetic (the three R�s, as we called it) evenafter 5-8 years of schooling. We talked about
teacher absenteeism, non-teaching duties of the
teacher and the poor quality of teacher
preparation. What was the point of erecting a
grand plan for evaluation with ill equipped
teachers who could not even manage the basics?
We seemed to have assumed that the basics were
all in place, and that schools were now prepared
to do this CCE. But there was also this argument
that this examination paranoia was mostly
applicable to urban areas fuelled by unhealthy
competition.
Anyway, in workshops, meetings and many
formal and informal interactions, we kept hearing
this clarion call for CCE. It was seen as a part of
what was broadly termed as �education reform�
� the set of policies and actions that were needed
at all levels to improve the education that children
got which we were all unhappy about. Many
years passed, but CCE didn�t find the light of
day. There may have been smaller experiments
and pilots but these did not end up influencingday to day practice on a larger scale.
Meanwhile, document after document lamented
our insensitive system of assessment which
stifled all creativity and created distress instead.
Much was written about it in 2005, the year that
saw yet another National Curriculum Framework
document being prepared. There were these
�position� papers � 21 in all, that elaborated the
main document. One of them was entirely about
examination reforms � how to make exams more
appropriate for the �knowledge society� of the 21st
century, and so on. The position paper on
�Curriculum, Syllabus and Textbooks� carried, in
the end a very angry and powerful quote from
the Scottish pilot turned educator, David
Horsburgh thanks to whose efforts in a small
school in Andhra Pradesh many states are now
attempting to follow �Activity Based Learning�
based on his ideas (that is a different story
altogether!):
��evaluation has been one of the most importantforces in the gradual degeneration of all school
education�the whole antiquated evaluationprocess, should as speedily as possible be hurled
lock, stock and barrel out of the windows of oureducational system in just the same way as the
chamber pots were emptied in eighteenth centuryLondon��
CCE travelled some distance before we saw it
appear as part of law � the Right to Education
(RTE) Act, in 2009. The Act stated in no uncertain
terms that in order to find out what a child was
learning, one had to do it continuously and in
non-threatening ways and not just use term end
tests and exams. You could talk to the child and
get her involved in assessing what she had
learnt, observe from a distance the various things
that the child did and note them, provide
descriptive feedback, give exercises of different
kinds (useful things that we do very little about),
or you could resort to some paper-pencil activity
that was really engaging (again, something
teachers don�t do much of).
10
All these methods could be employed together orseparately � but they had to be done again andagain, and not just once or twice in a year to brandthe child in any which way. One had to build upsome sort of a history to construct a more completepicture. And then, the whole process had to be�comprehensive� � one had to look at the �whole�child, something that we are woefully lacking inat the moment.
It is interesting to see the initial scramble thatresults when anything becomes a law. Suddenly,something changes in the air. The RTE Act, whichcame into being after a tortuous journey, becamethe reference point of sorts after August 2009. Inworkshop after workshop, we started hearingstatements like this one, which we started usingin our various interactions as well: �This is not ascheme�it is a law. And do you know what willhappen if this law is violated�? You can bepunished � Ye Dandaneeya hai!!� Further, weunderstood that the compulsion andresponsibility of providing education is on theGovernment, and that Government alone isanswerable � as if it was not all these years!
While the Act has several provisions along withclear timelines and targets, parameters related toquality come into effect immediately. So we canstart taking the government to task right away,and fill the court rooms with all sorts ofpedagogical cases! There will be interesting courtcases, I�m sure, if one takes the judicial route asthe last resort to change the educational system.I�m not sure if this will alone work, though. Inorder to do this well, we will need to embark on ajourney of preparation of the judiciary, in whichthe nuances of the educational question will needto be explored for a shared understanding toemerge. I believe this is a worthwhile pursuit.
The aspect of Continuous and ComprehensiveEvaluation sits squarely within the notion ofquality of education because this is what helpsus find out, using various ways, the inherentabilities and potential of the child, and also ifwhat we are doing in school is having the desiredresults in the directions we have set out. As I writethis, state after state has, among other things,attempted to do something about CCE which wason the backburner for all these years. Workshopsand trainings have been held galore and manystates have developed manuals for teachers. The
CCE lexicon sounds like this � formative andsummative evaluation, scholastic and co-scholastic areas�rubrics and tools forthis�phew! All of these are supposed to take careof CCE. I wonder if we have all got so lost in theseterms that their significance is lost in themechanical need to �complete the CCE task�,month after month, and term after term. It is nowbecoming a nice business and manyorganizations are beginning to become �experts�who will deliver �CCE Products� for our thankfulconsumption, both online and throughworkshops.
Assessment as a tool for reform�?
A question that has consistently bothered me is �how fundamentally different are thesedevelopments from what we have been up to sofar? It is one thing to define or lay out the aspectsthat we would want to assess in a child. Thiswish list can be really long, and we can includeall our fantasies of �good education� in it. Theissue, however, is whether the teacher is preparedto do it. From all accounts, the answer to this is inthe negative. I do not believe that teachereducation and preparation, both pre-service andin-service, is simply not geared for the task ofCCE as it is laid out now. We need a calibratedand phase wise approach and cannot ask for thesky just because something needs to be done.
I do not wish to take stock of the results of effortsover the last twenty years to improve whathappens inside the classrooms, but I do believethat the outlook is still gloomy. For one, if wemap what children learn on even the most basicaspects � such as 3R�s � reading, writing andarithmetic, we find worrisome gaps. We knowthat children at the end of five years barely endup learning stuff that is equal to grade 1 or 2.Further, there are many studies that show justhow un-child friendly, monotonous and
inequitable our classrooms are, barring some
exceptions. In such a scenario, one wonders if
reform which uses assessment as a basis is going
to make any difference. In fact, it may only end
up causing more confusion.
So far, CCE looks like old wine in a new bottle,
which is what happens when we do tinkering.
The earlier tests and term exams seem to have
11
now morphed into this formative and summativeevaluation business, which is now called the�CCE method� of teaching! It is interesting thatCCE is seen as a new method/pedagogy or a newscheme or program for teaching, and not as aprinciple. This new thing (CCE) is another boxthat has to be ticked and shown as �done. This iswhat happens when we do not pay adequateattention to how new and intricate ideas arecommunicated within the complex system ofteacher education in a hasty manner. The existingspirit, therefore, does not fundamentally change.To add to this, teachers seem to be makingeffective use of the �no detention� policy � that achild should never be detained in a classroom, atleast till he reaches the eighth grade. The spiritbehind this no detention policy was that the childshould not be penalized for under achievementor no achievement. The argument was � whywouldn�t any child want to learn, provided wemade learning interesting, engaging, meaningful,and provided all obstacles in the family, schooland community, were removed? The problemwas thus located outside the child. Fair enough.But teachers seem to have interpreted it quitedifferently, and this has resulted in �automatic�promotion from one grade to the other � nevermind if the child has learnt anything or not! Inmany ways, this is an excuse for not teachingwhich teachers can exploit. Why this happensinvolves much reflection on how the teachingcommunity is located within our society.Increased political patronage of the teacherinsulates the teacher from any sort ofaccountability. There is then this sense that�anything goes� and that �nobody will askquestions�. The occasional administrative dandacan create some pressure and some fear, but thisis short lived. What is perhaps needed issustained pressure from parents andcommunities, and from the education departmentby way of enhanced school monitoring, academic
support and engagement with the teacher.
Teachers have so far been adept at giving paper-
pencil tests and scoring answer sheets using red
ink. It gives them a sense of pleasure, of power, to
be able to point out mistakes and slot the child.
Even here, we can ask if understanding is assessed
on these paper-pencil tests and exams. Currently,
it is assessed in limited ways, since that is not
the emphasis in teaching. Now we are sayingthat the teacher should move away and not belimited by this. We are saying that the nature ofpaper-pencil exercises and tests should changeand assess whether the child has understoodsomething or not. Secondly, we are saying thatthere is something beyond the so-calledscholastic/subject matter areas � any child comesto school with a range of abilities � children canexpress and imagine in a variety of ways, andthey may be good in certain kinds of physicalactivities and so on. These must be recognized(we use the term �co-scholastic� to underline this)and must contribute to the overall assessment ofthe child. So, if a child draws a three headedelephant using his imagination, or if a childdraws a parrot with red feathers and a green beak(which I have actually seen in a school inChhattisgarh some years ago), what do we expectthe teacher to do�? How does one evaluate thisin CCE? What is the reference point? First of all,how does one evaluate the expression of a child,say, a drawing? I have a problem with this. Wemight at best say that the child can do such andsuch a thing, and make a record of his abilities,and celebrate these. It would be such a pity if ateacher seesthese drawingsand says, �Butthis is wrong!Such animalsdon�t exist!What have youdone?�
Teachers, who
have a very clear
conception of
�right� and
�wrong� (and
most teachers
seem to belong
to this group),
and who are
schooled to
believe that
there is only one
right answer,
will take such
children to task.
They have not
??
12
been prepared for this. Similarly, if children startasking questions which the teacher may not beable to answer, what is the teacher supposed todo under CCE? So far, we have shut them up. Butare we prepared to let them ask?
The more I think about CCE, the more I aminclined to believe that it is much more thanevaluation. It is first of all about understandingthe child � where she comes from � herbackground, her family, her identity, her variousabilities and the challenges that she faces as shenegotiates school and its requirements. So let meadd CCU � Continuous and ComprehensiveUnderstanding of the child, as a pre-requisite toCCE. Without this, can we say that ourevaluations are going to be sound and helpful tothe child? Secondly, is everything aboutevaluation? I suppose, no. Like I mentionedabove, not everything that the child does needsto be judged on some grading scale. We maydescribe and narrate what the child does. Thisbecomes a cumulative record of that child�sexperiences and abilities as she passes throughschool. A well-kept record will read like a storyof that child. It tells us a lot, actually.
To take this idea further, let me suggest threethings that every teacher should learn to do. Theyare not very daunting, but will need a definiteplan (at least in the medium term) in terms ofteacher education and preparation. The firstaspect is that teachers should learn to observechildren in various settings, most importantly,the school setting. What they do there, how theyinteract with their friends and teachers, how theylearn�all of this demands the attention of theteacher. Closely related to this is the ability tolisten to the child. So many interesting narrativeswill then emerge, which the teacher can usemeaningfully to further enhance the quality of
his or her interactions with the child. So, teachers
need to learn to have some conversations withchildren. Third, can one get teachers to write
about each children based on their observations
and conversations? Writing does not mean fillingout formats mechanically. Writing means telling
a story, even if it is told in a simple manner, and
even if it only has a few lines written. The teacherdoes not have to write reams of pages but can
reflectively focus on aspects such as the child�s
behaviour, attitudes, his or her learning related
achievements and difficulties and so on. As aparent, I have always valued this narrativefeedback in place of some tables and graphs thatare that much more time consuming to prepareand which, at the end of the day, may not addmuch value either to the teacher or parent. Let usremember that parents (in most cases, semi ornon-literate, need to know what is happeningwith their children. So the whole process needsto be de-mystified so that all those concerned inthe child�s education can play a meaningful rolein it.
Just to re-emphasize, in terms of teacher education,the focus therefore should be on teachers gettingto know children better � through observations,discussions with children etc. Further, teachersshould be enabled to deepen their understandingon four or five crucial lines � understanding ofeducational aims, disciplinary knowledge,pedagogical content knowledge (theunderstanding of teaching-learning itself), socio-economic and cultural backgrounds of childrenand their families and communities, and lastly,self-knowledge (where do I come from...? what ismy identity...? Why am I the way I am�? Whatshould I do to change�?). I believe these are thecore questions around teacher education, and I�mnot very sure that we have dealt with themcomprehensively enough despite decades ofteacher education and preparation.
In terms of specifics, children�s trajectories canbe best captured through a monthly narrative thatthe teacher writes for each child � a couple ofparagraphs at least about what the child has donein the course of the month (we can have four orfive broad points as a reference for the teacher touse) � �This month, she has done some creativework in her drawing class...for example...� Or, �He
is still struggling through addition of fractionsbecause...and I have done this to help him�� Notall comments are evaluative, and the real ideahere is to describe what children are doing, not
doing, the difficulties they face and so on. Thiskind of narrative also forces the teacher tounderstand in a deeper way the learningexperiences of the child. This will no doubt still
be a challenge, but we at least know that we aregetting teachers to do CCU as an integral part ofCCE. CCU is what helps the teacher tocontinuously keep evolving his or her approach
13
to that particular child, enabling that child toscale greater heights with each passing day. Weshould at least experiment with this idea on asmaller scale and see how the teachingcommunity can be involved in it.
What is currently happening in the name of CCEis sad. We have centrally developed manuals andformats which the teachers have to fill outroutinely. There is very little of remedial teachingor support to address problems. Ideally, if we usethis (CCE) approach, we should be able to mapout each child�s abilities, challenges and prepareplans to help the child overcome these challenges.We must also be in a position to truly appreciateeach child as a person. But �filling the format�has become the end rather than the means.
In order to look at the child differently, and in amore wholesome manner, the teacher�sconception of education, its purposes, itsprocesses and its possible outcomes, has toundergo radical changes. This, I believe, has nottaken place. All these years, we have focusedmore on techniques of teaching. There has beenvery little discussion on the �why� and �what� ofeducation and how the teacher sees these things.Further, we have also not looked at the teacher aswe would want the teacher to look at the child.Teachers, like children, need to be nurtured.Instead, we treat them with distrust at best.Further, we need to develop systems that canaddress teachers as a mixed group rather thanas a homogeneous group. Not every teacher is atthe same level of motivation, understanding andability. This necessitates that we develop adifferential approach to training. Those teacherswho are motivated and are keen to do more andmore, need a different set of inputs anddevelopment experiences. In the preparation ofCCE too, this needs to be taken into account. So,teacher preparation inputs need to be calibrated,with a basic set of �non-negotiables� in place fordoing CCE.
To sum up, it seems pertinent to ask � how willyou measure or evaluate something when in thefirst place you are not doing most of what isrequired to make that thing happen? We aretrying to evaluate the outcomes of a teaching-learning process which is meant to be childcentred but which is actually anything but that,which still requires children to learn by rote. Thenwe add a few things we need to measure underthe so-called �co-scholastic� domain withoutseriously asking whether we are doing them(sports, music, art and craft and the like) in thefirst place in our schools. These aspects, whichshould actually be central to the educationalexperience of every child, are relegated to mereformalities.
You cannot just do something all of a suddenbecause some law or Act requires you to it.Presently, everyone is running around preparingCCE manuals and the like, hoping that thesemissing elements in a child�s education willsomehow appear in the classroom once trainingon CCE is done. We need to dig deeper and askwhy, in the first place we were not doing thesethings earlier.
I believe that the route to reforming, changing,improving or transforming (call it what youwant) classrooms cannot come alone fromassessment. Something else needs to happen firstin the way children are taught. This contains theseed for measuring what they have learnt.Assessment cannot be seen isolation, as we areseeing it now.
Which is why, I say that CCE as it exists nowwill remain at best another scratching on thesurface. We have put the cart before the horse.Then we have missed the wood for the trees. Theyexist together and cannot be seen in separation.
(This article was initially conceptualized and the firstdraft written in August 2012. The author is currentlybased in Raipur, Chhattishgarh.)
14
Background
My journey in education began in 2005 when Ijoined the institution set up by my father-in-lawnear the town of Bathinda.
Bathinda lies in the Malwa region of Punjab (notto be confused with Malwa in the state of MP).The Malwa region which largely comprises ofthe southern districts is Punjab�s largest region.It is significant politically, but backward on mostother parameters, especially when compared toPunjab�s other two regions, Doaba (Jalandharand its surrounding districts) and Majha(Amritsar and its surrounding districts). InDoaba, the soil is fertile, landholdings small andconsequently, in the post-independence era andto some extent even before that, this area haswitnessed a great deal of outward migration.Majha is Punjab�s religious heartland, more akinto Doaba than to Malwa. Malwa standssomewhat apart from these two regions. InMalwa, huge landholdings are not unusual. But,the soil is less fertile and in the districts borderingRajasthan in particular (Bathinda included), asemi-desert like ambience is not unusual.Tubewells and canal water, courtesy, the BhakraDam have transformed the region, yetoccasionally one catches a glimpse of what musthave been. On educational parameters, Malwahas lagged considerably behind the other regionsand this therefore has created a unique set ofchallenges for educational institutions in thisarea.
The idea for establishing the school emerged outof a deeply personal context. My father-in-lawwho hailed from a village near Bathinda and hademerged from a farming background to becomean army officer had ideas of inspiring childrento join the army as an officer like him. In Punjab,joining the army isn�t unusual, but becoming anofficer like him was a rare occurrence for his area.
Soldiers were a-plenty, but officers were not. Thatwas one source of motivation. It also helped thathe had served in the Army Education Corps andso, he had experience both in teaching cadets aswell as managing Army Schools and KendriyaVidyalayas. He also had ideas that seemed toconnect Malwa�s educational backwardness toits poor proficiency in English. In some sense, itwas his own personal experience. While, this isonly half the story and there were other morepersonal reasons, but these two reasons were animportant source of motivation for him to startthe school. There was a fair measure ofenthusiasm in the neighbouring villages andsoon, things were on track. The school began in2004. I joined soon after. The school was his baby.But, family circumstances put me in the hot seatin 2007 as Director and there I have been since.
I now head the school. My own background israther different. I grew up in Bangalore and amcity-born and city-bred. My understanding ofrural life was minimal, to say the least. Coupledwith this was the fact that Punjab is far removedculturally from my own cultural and linguisticbackground. So running the school is a dailychallenge that requires me to carefully analyseeach situation that comes my way and then act.My instinct has often proved wrong and so, Iscour the details before acting.
Our school
The students who enroll at our institution aremostly from middle-class agriculturalbackgrounds. They are largely from families thatare attempting to provide an English mediumeducation to their children for the first time. Ourstudents come with little or no cultural capital interms of awareness of English as a language, itsnuances, its cultural legacy et al. English is largely
Karthik Venkatesh
Running an English medium institution in a rural area :Challenges, dilemmas and reflections
15
seen as a passport to mobility. There is a sensethat it could provide a �better� job. A job that paysbetter than agriculture, certainly. And since,government jobs were increasingly out of reach,this would do.
Our teachers also hail from similar middle-classagricultural backgrounds. Teaching in privateschools is largely viewed as women�s territoryand this brings with it some challenges. For some,school-teaching is a stopgap before they aremarried. Some are truly interested in teaching,but are unable to stay for very long on account ofdisplacement post-marriage. For some, it is a stop-gap before they secure that coveted governmentjob or head for foreign shores. Canada andAustralia are preferred destinations and theeasiest route for youngsters is by way of
admission to institutions of dubious repute
offering courses of dubious quality. Some others
are coming back to teaching after a number of
years caught up in child-rearing and family
responsibilities. Teaching as a career is not
aspirational and enthusiasm remains limited.
Still, one can�t complain. Things could of course
be better. But, things could be worse too.
A considerable portion of time has to be devotedto teacher-training in institutions like ours.Classroom training is less effective thanpersonalized one-on-one sessions with teachers,something our school�s most valuable resource �the Principal � is good at. More than subjectknowledge, it is attitude that concerns her and agreat deal of time is spent on this crucial aspect.In addition, orienting teachers to thinkempathetically in terms of children�sbackgrounds and understanding, effectiveplanning and classroom management are otherareas that require regular interaction.
Why English
But more than the background of students andteachers, the issue that requires a great deal ofpondering is this business of English mediumeducation. English is not merely a language. It isa phenomenon. It has always been, in modernIndian times, that marker of privilege. Thatsignifier of modernity. For the �nativists�, it hasbeen a target of hate. For the pedagogicallyinformed, it has been a problem. How do youteach in a language that is not your own? Howwill students learn? Can genuine learning evertake place in such a situation? The issues aremany. The idea of an English medium institutionin a rural area like ours itself seems misplaced.But there is a background to why English-medium schools have been established in largenumbers in rural areas throughout the country.
Schools like ours have emerged in the context ofthe liberalisation, privatization and globalization(LPG) reforms of 1991 and the changes in India�seconomic scenario thereafter. Globalisation has
created certain kinds of opportunities for which
English is perhaps necessary. This coupled with
the decline of agriculture and shrinkage in
government jobs has created a context for the
emergence of the rural English medium school.
In the past, English medium schooling was an
urban phenomenon. Post 1991, it has made its
presence felt in rural areas. The decline of
government schools have also contributed. There
are other reasons that have to do with social
mobility and economic prospects i.e., good jobs,
since that English helps in getting jobs is a widely-
held notion. Given these factors, the robust vote
16
of confidence that our �Convent� school receivedin its very first session, it seemed to be an answerto local prayers.
There was also a specific local context for thepopularity of English medium institutions. TheMalwa region was not party to the 1950s/1960semigration from Punjab. That was largely fromthe Doaba and Majha belts. In the late 90s,Malwa woke up to this possibility. And presto, anascent wish for English education began tomake itself felt in the belief that knowledge ofEnglish would ease the rites of passage to foreignshores. Needless to say, all those dubious coursesof dubious quality in Canada and Australia areall in English, of course.
To put it in a nutshell, the reasonsnotwithstanding, response to the school wasgood and so it was time to deliver.
Given the milieu, teaching in English appearedto be a problem to me. But, the school was a legacyand I was unsure whether I could alter itsfundamentals. Its fundamentals at that time wereEnglish medium education and a CBSEaffiliation. The local education board was largelyperceived as �vernacular�. English and StateBoard didn�t go together in local perceptions.CBSE affiliation gave any school claiming to teachin English the required gravitas.
In addition to the issue of English mediumteaching, another issue loomed large. The CBSEcurriculum has many merits and with the NCF2005, it has only become better. But ultimately,the curriculum is national in its orientation. So,here were a group of first generation English
learners, learning in a language that had virtuallyno local context and to top it all, they had to
contend with a curriculum that did not have any
immediately identifiable �things� in it. Its contentconsisted of things that at first sight appeared to
be extremely remote from the lives of students.
The challenge at the school level was two-pronged. Could we teach in English and would
it be possible to give this curriculum the required
local flavour and contextualization to ensure truelearning took place? This was at the institutional
level. Then there was my personal discomfort with
English medium education in this context whichI had to overcome to do full justice to the legacy
that I had been the recipient of.
The challenge and the �solution�
I view the kind of English medium education thatwe provide as something of a democracy inaction. People have in a sense �voted� for Englishmedium education by choosing to join us. True,this self-justification at some level rings hollow.Have parents really �admitted� their children tothe school or has their hand been forced? Havedeep-rooted anxieties about the failing nature ofthe agricultural profession driven them to thisdecision? Are there other systemic flaws that I�munaware of? While all of these issues are worthdebating, what is very real are the hopes ofparents for something �good� to emerge as a resultof the schooling that they wish to provide to theirchildren. And it was my duty to do justice tothem.
Teaching English in a milieu like ours was largelygoing to be school driven. Parental supportwould be minimal, at best. At the entry leveltypically, children are admitted to LowerKindergarten (LKG or its equivalent) at the age offour or thereabouts. Upper Kindergarten (UKG)follows and then Class I. These two years ofkindergarten appeared to be insufficient.
When children joined Class 1, the level of comfortwas not adequate. They still struggled to readwords that were more than three letters long. Theystruggled to make sense of full sentences. Thisresulted in something of a blame game whereinClass 1 teachers appeared to blame thekindergarten teachers for not being rigorousenough with their teaching. Kindergartenteachers on the other hand had their own issues.Prime among them was the fact that parents wereno help at all and that the totally vernacular
environment that the children went back hometo made English learning a very tall order. Among
the UKG teachers in the early years, another
complaint was that we were admitting a numberof students to UKG on account of their age, but
these students were not equipped enough to deal
with what was being taught in UKG. Theytherefore left UKG insufficiently prepared.
This was a serious challenge. A solution was
proposed. To assist in English learning, a bridgeclass was created prior to LKG. Three years of
schooling prior to Class 1 in place of two. At first
sight, it appears to be quite an imposition. But
17
consider this: pre-schools are an accepted featureof urban life. They predate LKG which is thenormal starting point for English-mediuminstitutions in urban areas. What we wereattempting was a �pre-school� within thepremises of �the school�. Pre-schools in urbancentres �prepare� children for entrance exams tomuch-sought after schools and �guaranteedsuccess� thereafter. We were using this time thaturban schools earmarked for �pre-school� toinduct children into the English medium. It reallyisn�t too much of an innovation. It could even belabelled a money-grabbing ploy. Private schoolsare often derided as �teaching shops�. But it wasa calculated risk worth taking.
Close to a decade later, the solution appears to beworking. As time has passed, students emergingfrom this three year early schooling initiativeseem to be more comfortable with English. Issuespertaining to reading words and understandingsentences have largely disappeared.Kindergarten teachers have grown used to theirrole as the sole teachers of English that the childhas. There is no expectation of parental support.Attitudes have changed. What has helped at theschool level also is results on the ground. A fairnumber of students have passed through thisthree year programme and are more comfortablewith English. Teachers in higher classes nolonger complain of inadequate rigour at thekindergarten level. An environment of trust hasboosted everyone�s confidence. The school hasgrown. Many children in the higher classes have
siblings and cousins in the lower classes. The
current lot of students in the lower classes
consequently have more support at home.
Let me reiterate at this juncture that I am
operating within the thinking that I cannot alter
the fundamental premise of the institution: the
promise of English medium education.
Pedagogical issues arising out of a non-mother
tongue education are mine to ponder over and
come to terms with. What I have here is something
akin to a �solution�. Atleast in the short-term.
As stated previously, the CBSE curriculum
sometimes appeared far removed from the local
realities of many of our students. Many of our
students have limited exposure, opportunities to
travel, access to books at home etc. So an attempt
at contextualization has been made to just givethem comfort with the subject matter through alocal context. These have been classroom levelattempts. Small projects have been undertakento map local soil types, local crops, local historyand so on. Local drama, songs etc. have beenused in cultural programmes. In the higherclasses where assessment of speaking andlistening is part of the English curriculum, thishas taken an interesting turn at times. Forinstance, one of the questions that wasrecommended by the CBSE for a speaking testwas a situation which read: �Discuss how yourgrandparents feel when they are left behind athome alone when the entire family is away atwork or school.� This was unfamiliar territoryfor most students who come from joint familieswhere several people live together, women rarelymove out of the household and even the men ofthe household are in and out of the house all dayto their agricultural fields and back and a definednotion of �office time� for men therefore does notexist. The situation was therefore modified to suitthe local context.
This segment of our work � blending the universalwith the local � needs far more legwork. It isperhaps something that the institution needs todevote itself to in the near future.
Imagining an institution �differently�
Operating within the parameters of mainstreamEnglish medium education, could one imaginean institution differently? Does English mediumhave to necessarily mean a hyper-competitiveinstitution where rote learning and entrance exampreparation are the practices and a corporatecareer, the ultimate goal? Is there scope for an
English medium institution that takes a different
view, attempts to blend local insights with
�Knowledge�, takes a shot at instilling values of a
more equitable world and does things differently?
Hitherto, alternative schools were the vehicles
for such thinking. Could a mainstream school
do this, especially, a mainstream school that has
emerged in the LPG context wherein it was this
poorly-articulated, but deeply-felt need to belong
to the urban milieu (read English speaking,
corporate career type) that had brought children
to the school in the first place?
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To get to the heart of the matter and arrive atsomething akin to a compromise, there is an issueto begin with. The nomenclature of �alternative�and �mainstream� itself is in some sensepuzzling. How do you �mainstream�? Wheredoes �alternative� begin? What is it that the�alternative� provides that the �mainstream� doesnot? Could the �mainstream� imbibe certain�alternative� notions? These are the ideas that Ihave wrestled with over the last few years. Ourattempts at this point are to evolve a mix. There isan attempt to imbibe certain �alternative� valueslike for instance, to tone down school-level andclass-level academic competition that is a givenin �mainstream� schools. But, some �mainstream�practices like regular conventional examinationshave not been done away with. This is an ongoingexercise. It needs more thinking through.
I have attempted to imagine a certain place forEnglish medium education in my specific context.I take the view that English could help liberatestudents from the narrow parochialism of acertain view of �Indian culture� and that the�English� view could actually help in viewingour own culture better. Parochial views here andI daresay, perhaps everywhere are usually of the�my daddy the strongest� variety. There is a beliefthat one knows all there is to know. One�sreligion/culture/language (sometimes all ofthese) is seen as the repository of all wisdom andnothing outside of this is worth knowing. Thereis a certain disdain for education that apparentlycuts you off from your moorings. But equally, thereis an anxiety about the future and a feeling thatEnglish medium education alone is the key tosuccess.
This mixture of irritation and anxiety manifests
in different ways. There is a questioning of the
content of education and something akin to
irritation/disappointment at the limited
importance given to regional history, geography
and traditions. There is a feeling that it deserves
more importance. There is also a feeling especially
in parents of under-performing children that all
�this� (the English-medium curriculum) is too
much for the child.
This irritation/disappointment at limited local
content can be said to be coming perhaps from
lack of exposure. But, when it manifests itself inan attack on �others� and their �stupidity�, itsmacks of parochialism. Does English mediumeducation correct this? My view is that it does sopurely by giving access to the wider world. Doesit do so entirely? That�s a moot point. It does opena door though. It would be difficult to sayanything beyond this. For instance, Punjabiliterature is rich, but unlike Tamil or Kannada(two other languages with which I have a fairdegree of familiarity), it lacks a culture whereinbooks from other languages are translated intothe language. This situation also stands correctedwhen one knows English. Exposure is possiblevia English. This exposure might tone down theparochialism.
This is not to say that the �parochial� view is thestandard. Most definitely not. But nevertheless,it is very much there and here, perhaps Englishmedium education does help. These are perhapsnot the right things to say. Even if they are, theyare dangerously loaded opinions. Opinions suchas these have implications. Given the loudproclamations of our own greatness, why do weneed to view �ours� with a different lens andthereby discover its �greatness�? And as a parentmight put it to me by cutting to the chase, will allthis cogitation get my child a �good job�? Thissecond question needs to be answered.Eventually, I hope it will be.
I must confess this business of delivering Englishmedium education in a context as outlined earlieris an ongoing project. I�m as yet unwilling to alterthe fundamentals. English medium, the schoolshall remain. The challenges in running a privateEnglish medium institution in my specificcontext are many. Some are personal. Some aresituational. But, I will continue to attempt toimagine this English medium educationdifferently and attempt to transact thingsdifferently. That is my promise to myself and mystudents.
19
Kuldeep Garg
Teaching Maps: A Reflective Engagement with Geographyat Adharshila Learning Centre
Abstract
This article presents an analysis of some pedagogical experiments of Adharshila Learning Centre.Adharshila Learning Centre is known for its pedagogical practices that help the students in knowledgegeneration through local history and geography. I wished to understand how such a curriculum isplanned, designed and transacted in the classroom. Therefore, I visited the center for two weeks to tryand understand the nature of teaching-learning processes of Geography and the role of teacher indesigning, visualizing and transacting the same in primary classes located in an adivasi context.
The Context
Adharshila Learning Centre is situated in verysmall adivasi village called Sakad, block Chatli,tehsil Sendhwa and district Badwani in the stateof Madhya Pradesh; geographically at the end ofhierarchal order of scale. However, the foundersand the head teachers of this school do not seetheir school�s location at the end of such order;on the contrary, they assume it in center of aspecific societal struggle, a struggle for dignifiedand independent life of local communities.According to the head teachers of AdharshilaLearning Centre, we need to have simultaneousefforts at two fronts- one at the level of the largercommunity to fight against all odds that hampera dignified and independent community life;second at the level of the school where the nextgeneration could develop such physical andcognitive abilities that enable them to sustain thesame struggle in future until it achieves its goals.
The Projects: Holistic Means of Learning
Projects are the major means of learning in this
school. Projects are conceptualized as
opportunities to explore various aspects of a
given context e.g. market, money, maps. At the
same time, projects are conceptualized as spaces
where various subject knowledge related to the
given context can be integrated and learned. The
projects usually, depending on the topic, are
developed based on the children�s queries about
some subject recorded at the beginning. A project
usually stems out of curiosity of children andtheir questions, however; they are also wellthought-out and planned according to thesyllabus set by the State of Madhya Pradesh. Aproject is usually planned keeping the followingquestions in mind.
Aims of Project:
Groups:
Which subjects can be covered by thisproject?
Language: (Local words, Hindi and Englishwords, contextualized sentence structures, poetry,etc.)
Aesthetics: (Which drawing, painting, origami,music etc.)
Science: (Which experiments, observations,concepts etc.)
EVS/Social Sciences: (Which concepts,observations etc.)
Mathematics: (Which concepts, operations etc.)
Play: (Which play and activities)
Outcome: (At the end of the project, what childrenwill be developing- charts, paintings, models etc.)
Exercises: (Various exercises for children forassessment.)
Material/Resources: (What material andresources is required in this project.)
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Therefore, a project becomes an integrated activitycontextualized around a macro issue which isstudied deeper unto the level of micro intricaciesfrom various lenses of school subjects. Here, theprocess of exploration or the process to knowsomething becomes more exciting andfundamental than knowledge itself. And at theend of each project, students get some tangibleoutcome in the form of their work (poetry, model,chart, painting, understanding, etc.) and becomemore curious in a certain area of their interest.The main purpose of the project approach is topresent a topic in a holistic manner and notfragmented into school subjects. This helps indeveloping a multidisciplinary approach in theminds of the students.
A Project on Maps
Project Map at Adharshila Learning Centre wasspecially conceptualized for about 22 studentswho were drawn from various classes (4th to9th).These students were working on maps forthe first time. The project consisted of 3 levelswith subsequent activities:
Level 1 - Directions: Level one comprised ofunderstanding directions with seven activities.In the first activity the teacher wrote East, West,North and South on all four wallsof the classroom. All the studentswere made to stand at the centreof the room and when the teachersaid �North�, all the students rantowards the wall. In the secondactivity, the students step out ofthe classroom and stand havingtheir face towards the east. Theteacher, then asked students toindicate the directions that hespoke loudly. Here, teacher kept
correcting the students if some
wrong answers came from the
group. The third activity consists
of a poem recited by the teacher
himself and in between wherever
comes the reference of directions he used his
hands to indicate the same. Akkad bakkad bumbay
bo, assi nabbay purey sau, sau mein laga dhaga, chor
nikal kar bhaga, chor bhaga purab mein. Here teacher
indicated towards east and waited for students�
responses. The students spoke loudly- �purab�(east). Police bhagi paschim mein. Here, teacherindicated towards west and again waited forstudents responses. The teacher kept askingabout various directions till the end of the poem.In activity four, the students sat in perpendicularlines and the teacher asked one student randomlyto locate the direction of �x� child with referenceto him/her. The fifth activity required thestudents to draw a circle on the ground and writethe name of their village �Sakad�. Then studentswere asked to locate the north direction withreference to village Sakad. The moment studentsmarked it, they were asked to mention the namesof those villages that fall to the north of villageSakad. Similarly, the other directions andneighbor villages were explored. The sixthactivity; however, made the exercise morecomplex as well as interesting. The diagram givenbelow was made on the blackboard and studentswere asked to copy it on their notebook. Arrowindicated the north direction. The all childrenwere asked to explore the maximum number ofoptions of various ways to reach the house. Thestudents were also asked to figure out the numberof turns they taken; the directions of those turnsand number of kilometers (each box representsone kilometer) they walked for to reach the home.
The last activity introduced the new directions
to the students. Four students stood facing
towards the all four directions- North, East, West,
and South. The other students spoke aloud the
name of each student and the direction he or she
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represented. Now one by one, a student stoodbetween two directions (e.g. North and East) andall children were asked to tell him/her thedirection she/he represented. The students gotconfused here. Here teacher helped them bytelling the names of these directions e.g. North-east (between north and east).
Level 2 - Mapping: Level second was a higherorder learning exercise where students wereintroduced to the fundamental experiences ofmap making through five different activities. Infirst activity, a bottle was kept on the ground andstudents asked to look at it from above vertically.They observed the bottle and its shape they couldsee this way. Later they drew it. It came like this:a bigger circle and a smaller circle inside.Similarly, the other objects (e.g. box) were takenand same exercise was repeated with them. In
activity second, some bricks were arranged insuch a way that looked like a layout plan of ahouse. Students then drew it as it was on theirdrawing papers.
Later in third activity, the students were asked toimagine a half-built house. Then students wereasked to imagine that their classroom was half-built and they were looking at it from somewhereabove. The students were asked to draw suchimaginations on papers with detail of provisionsof for doors, windows and other relevant things.Fourth activity led students towards measuringthe length of the classroom wall with the help ofa stick or with their hands. Such measurementswere converted into �inch� scale later by thestudents. One hand or stick was equal to one inch.Finally, students drew the sketch of rooms basedon their scale. The fifth and final activity of thislevel guided the students in making the maps oftheir own houses. It was a big exercise that hadtaken almost 4 days. The children, first of all,made only rooms, stores, sheds etc. Then theywere asked to show doors, windows, showcasesas well. Then, one by one, living spaces were
taken e.g. room where they sleep, kitchen and
their intricacies were drawn up. For example,
students drew the Chullah and space where the
food was stored. All such things were drawn up
there with the help of symbols or signs that
children were free to develop on their own, just
with a condition that these had to be clear to
anyone who look at them.
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Level 3 - Map Reading: Level third brought aboutmore complex and interesting experiences of maplearning through five activities. Here, studentswere exposed to the skills of map reading. In firstactivity, the maps of block and tehsil were takenand studied. The students were asked to studyabout the scale of this map, find out local rivers,major roads, major towns, landmarks, etc. Theywere asked to measure their length with the helpof a thread or scale and find out its real lengthwith the help of given scale of map. In secondactivity, the map of District Barwani was studiedvery deeply. Hundreds of questions related to
rivers, mountains, places, rail-tracks, roads,temples, etc. were asked in the form of joyfulactivities. The third activity exposed the studentsto the state map of Madhya Pradesh. Here againthey were given similar tasks as mentioned abovein other studies of block, thesil and district maps.
The fourth activity dealt with the map of India.Here, besides the usual exercises, children weregiven various tasks to recognize the states�shapes. In starting, some exercises were given toidentify the mosaics of states and put themtogether to complete the map of India.
A Three-Dimensional Analysis Frame
I tried to understand the assumptions and
deliberations of teachers that inform their
pedagogical decisions in selecting, visualizing
and transacting the content of Geography. For
this purpose, I had drawn upon three major
insights e.g. cognitive processes, cartographic eye
and post-representational cartography
perspective, developed by the works of Carlson
(2007), Liben and Myers (2007) and James Corner
(1999). These three insights together worked as
theoretical lenses enabling me to identify the
fundamental dimensions of teaching-learning of
Geography.
A very brief description of those three dimensions
will help us to understand their nature and
relevance:
23
Dimension I: Cognitive Processes
Carlson (2007) identifies some very basic cognitive processes involved in some activities of spatial
information (Carlson:2007, pp. 249)
Carlson says that �the spatial relations among objects, people, and places are critical�the usefulness
of spatial information depends upon a connection between an underlying internal spatial
representation and the external information available in the world. For example, in reading a map,
one must link the symbols and relations that are specified on the map to their corresponding entities
and relations in the world.� (ibid pp. 248-49) However, it is only possible when enlisted initial
cognitive processes that operate upon the spatial information are given enough space to be invoked
and accomplished. The activities shall be conceptualized in such a way that can provide such space.
Without such spaces no cartographic understanding can be developed properly. You will notice
from the above table that conventional transactions of school geography are so abstract and isolated
or foreign to children that none of the enlisted cognitive processes get initiated and consequently
whole process of map learning ends up in boredom and rote learning. Therefore, it becomes very
useful to analyze any geography activity from this point of view whether there is such space available
where these cognitive processes are being initiated.
Spatial Information Cognitive Processes
Location of other students in relation to theself and to objects around Identifying Objects by their location
Memory of location of sun, neighbor villages Formulating a spatial description thatspecifies the correct direction/location
Location of home Locating and updating one�s positionwhile navigating
Symbols on maps and their relations Connecting map symbols and real-worldentities
Boundaries of states Estimating and comparing spatial features
Dimension II: Cartographic Eye
Liben and Myers (2007) believe that any map
teaching and learning face many challenges.
Collectively these challenges can be understood
as the challenges of �Cartographic Eye�. In fact,
any map learning is incomplete if it could not
enable us to recognize or appreciate three key
spatial qualities of maps viz. viewing distance
or scale, viewing angle and viewing azimuth.
Liben and Myers define �Cartographic Eye� as
the ability to recognize or appreciate these three
key spatial qualities of maps.
Further, with the help of a diagram, they explain
these three qualities as follows (Liben & Myers:
2007, pp. 195-96):
i. Viewing distance or scale, which is referred to
the ratio between �environmental space�
and �representational space� (e.g.1:1000
scale). Therefore, this attribute of the map
helps us to understand the metric systems of
the maps.
ii. Viewing angle, means the angle from a
�referent space� is viewed. These angles vary
from zero to ninety degree. The �plan map�
is made from an 90 degree, a �straight-
down�, angle
24
(source: redrawn from Liben and Myers: 2007, pp.196)
Similarly, if this angle is 45 degree, the map willbe called as �oblique perspective map� that areusually found in the form of city tourist maps.These maps help the users to get the details oftopography of landscapes and landmarks.Whereas a map made with a zero degree angle iscalled as �elevation view� map which providesan �eye-level� view of the landscape.
iii. Viewing azimuth, represents �the directionfrom which the referent space is depicted(e.g., whether a continent is depicted withnorth or west at the top of the page).�
Given the central importance of cartographic eyein map teaching and learning, it becomes logicalnecessity to study any map teaching-learningprocess from this dimension too.
Dimension III: Post-representationalCartography Theory
Post-representational cartography is anextension of representational cartography. Inrepresentational cartography, we have two majorapproaches that counter to each other. Oneapproach assumes maps as objective truth wherea cartographer is a transmitter who encodes thespatial information on maps and map userdecode them. The map user here happens to be areceiver of spatial information through maps.This approach looks at cartographic techniquesfrom a positivistic point of view. It assumes thatthey are objective and value neutral.
(source: redrawn from Kitchen, R. et al: 2009, pp. 06)
On the contrary, the other approach counters thispoint of view and reveals that maps are highlypoliticized entities. They are value loaded actions.They are subjective and social constructs. Theyare products of power. This approach raised verysharp questions on issues that have been takenfor granted earlier. What is being represented, howit is being represented, why some things are beingrepresented while some are being left, whoseinterests are being fulfilled, etc?
However, post-representational cartographytheories extend this debate further and posit veryinteresting formulations. James Corner (1999)argues that cartographic theory has been lookingat maps in terms of �what they represent andmean rather than what they do�. Heproblematised this whole standpoint andconceptualization of maps as representations. Hefound that maps are separate from territory theyrepresent. He argues that:
�...a territory does not precede a map, but that spacebecomes territory through bounding practices thatinclude mapping. Moreover, given that places areplanned and built on the basis of maps, so that spaceis itself a representation of the map, the �differentiationbetween the real and the representation is no longermeaningful�. Maps and territories are co-constructed.Space is constituted through mapping practices,among many others, so that maps are not a reflectionof the world, but a re-creation of it; mapping activatesterritory. [The] maps [do have an]... unfoldingpotential; as conduits of possibilities; as the sites ofimagination and action in the world. The �function ofmaps is not to depict but to enable�; �mappings do notrepresent geographies of ideas; rather they effectactualization.�
(Kitchen, R. et al: 2009, pp. 17-18)
Overall, all these three dimensions togetherrepresent a holistic picture of teaching-learningprocesses of geography in general and maps inparticular. Therefore, I had examined how theseactivities were going to help children in initiatingcertain cognitive processes that needed to beinvoked and accomplished for the developmentof concrete understanding of maps. Second, howthis project could help children to develop acartographic imagination or eye which consistedof some of the essential spatial qualities of maps.Third, how this project looked at the maps? Whatwere their purpose and use being conceptualizedby the teachers?
25
The Analysis: Culminating the Major Findings
1. Evoking the Spatial Cognitive Process: A Fundamental Beginning in Geography
The first part of this project is Level 1 which is devoted to the understanding of all four cardinaldirections (N, E, S, W) and all four intermediate directions (NE, SE, SW, NW). It consists of total 7activities that are mostly participatory and sequential. This study observed that all the discussions,while these activities were being transacted, were held in local language and some difficult termswere delivered in the mother tongue of the children. The overall environment was so informal thatstudents and teachers were often cracking jokes. If you look at the activities, they are sequenced inhierarchical order in terms of time and complexity-from simpler and smaller to complex and lengthy.First of all, children were made to do these activities in the classroom, then outside in school campusand then stretched up to an imagination level where children were asked to analyze various spatialinformation. Three students, youngest in the group, could not complete the entire task as fast asothers could do. However, the teacher gave them more time and made a separate group of them.Others went ahead. I take it as a good example of freedom of learning as per the child�s own pace.
Similarly, all the students were frequently repeating various mistakes in identifying the directionse.g. identify south as north. They were also coming up with many queries.
Transactional Procedure and Its Outcome: A Three-Dimensional Analysis
26
However, the teacher appeared very patient andasked counter questions seeking justifications ofchildren�s formulations. For example, one studentidentified north as south. Teacher asked him verypatiently why he thought so. Here child repliedand explained his argument. Though the answermay be wrong here, however, such dialogue, Ibelieve, helped to invoke all those cognitiveprocesses that Carlson talked about. These arethe spaces that are usually missing in teachingand learning of geography in schools.
As far as specific cognitive processes areconcerned, I observed that following the activitiescould invoke certain cognitive processes andprovide enough space for them:
• Activity 4 where students were asked to
locate other students in relation to themselvesand other objects around were helpful toinvoke the processes to identify objects bytheir location
• Similarly Activities 1, 2, 3 and 4 where
children need to remember the directionwhere the sun rises and sets as well as thelocation of villages were helpful informulating a spatial description thatspecifies the correct direction/location.
• Moreover, Activity 6 where a child need
search various alternative ways to reachhome seems to be helpful activity in locatingand updating one�s position while navigating.
We can say, given the analysis, this level of theproject do not only work as foundation wherefurther map learning can be built upon, moreover;it is conceptualized in such a way that it becomesa space where children are able cognitively tooperate upon the various spatial information andto look for relationships between theirrepresentations and referent spatial entities intheir world around. Therefore, it is not rotelearning, instead, a concrete initiation intofurther map learning which is more abstract andcomplex.
2. Developing Appropriate Cartographic Abilities
and Perspectives
I found the second level of the project most crucial
for two reasons: first, its design and transaction
is very innovative and joyful; second, it deals withall three dimensions of my analysis frame, viz.cognitive processes, cartographic eye and post-representational cartography theory.
At this level of the project the students have 5activities that deal with all basic understandingof how to generate a map. Here, it would be betterif we discuss this section under the followingheads:
Transactional Procedures: Besides the featuresdiscussed above in analysis of level one, in thispart of the project, the teacher�s insistence forminute observation of intricacies was remarkable.For hours he corrected the mistakes, told thechildren to do it again and again, help thechildren to visualize by providing a lot ofexamples. When children were drawing thevertical view of bottle, bricks and other objects;the teacher was even looking for intricacies suchas: how the brick is tilted, what is written on it,etc. The teacher also insisted to have suchdispositions among children to observe minutedetails as well.
Cognitive Processes: a step by step learning upto the activity 5 strengthens the child�sunderstanding of map symbols and theirconnections with real-world entities. Allactivities are designed in such a way that they letallow the child�s cognitive processes to operateupon the spatial experiences and its encodingand decoding processes. For example, activity 5where children are set to make a map of theirhouses opens up the excellent opportunity toimagine each and every spatial aspect of theirhouses and provide the freedom to create symbolsto represent them on the map. They give symbolsto their cows, beds, sacks of grains, poultry andrepresent them on map with due reference oflocation/direction. Here, children learn to see theconnections between symbols and the real worldaround them.
3. Cartographic Eye:
Viewing distance or Scale: There was no activitythat helped to develop a sense of viewing distance.However, while children were working onactivity 4, where they had to measure the wallsof the room with the help of a stick, the teachertalked about the map scale. In fact, he once
27
informed children how images are now beingtaken from satellites. During such discussions,children, of course, raised the question ofdistance as a hurdle to capture the picture of earth(itni door se vo kaisye photo le leta hai?). Rather Ithink that the children gained a sense of mapscale through activity four.
Viewing Angle: All activities except number 4 ofthis level focus on the development of the secondcrucial component of the Cartographic Eye-Viewing Angle. Activities 1 (to make diagramsof bottle, boxes etc. looking at them from abovevertically), 2 (to make diagram of brick-madelayout plan looking at vertically from above); 3(to visualize a half-built house from above) and 5(to visualize own houses from an aerial view)are the activities where all children were set tolook at things from some point above at a distancethat provides a straight-down view or they wereset to imagine themselves at a point above fromwhere they view the rooms or houses vertically.Such practices, I believe, are nothing but a processof development of geographical imagination thathelps children to view the spatial entities fromcertain angles. This way, children becomesensitive towards the forms of spatial entities andtheir representations on the map. However, onecan say, by observing the mentioned activities,that these activities only develop perspectivesfrom above at 90 degree. This is true, but in myopinion there may be two responses of such acomment. One, this 90 degree perspective, Ibelieve, is most crucial for a student of geographysince most of the maps are made with thisperspective, therefore, the children, in future, willbe using and reading most of the same maps.Second, which is more important for me, we needto look at this process as an initiation instead ofas an end towards the development ofcartographic eye. I believe that schools do notusually initiate students on such a geographicimagination. Given the scarcity of pedagogicalsupport, I consider such exercises as rare andvery important in geography learning andteaching.
Viewing Azimuth: This is not only an abstract
element of cartographic eye but also a rare
phenomenon in the teaching-learning of
geography at school level. However, I find that
activities 2 (brick-made layout plan), 3 (half-built
house) and 5 (house maps) categorically involvethis element at pedagogical level. The teacher wasvery particular about the fact that how childrenare imagining things with reference to thedirection of north. He always insisted thatstudents need to remember that they are lookingat spatial entities from south to north whilemaking a map. This insistence with regularcorrections of mistakes made by students helpedthem a lot to depict the referent space in a standardway prevailing in the community of geographersas well as it provides the students a solidjustification to make an arrow representing thedirection of north on top right hand side of a map.
Overall, all three elements of the cartographic eyewere recognized and accomplished through thepedagogical practices of the teacher. Thisinitiation in a sense of cartographic eye is crucialin laying down the foundation of some coreabilities in students that required in doinggeography in future.
Post-representational Cartographic TheoryPerspective: This significant step of geographylearning is rarely practiced in conventionalschooling processes. Throughout this project andspecially in activity 5 (map making of houses) inlevel 2, it can categorically be observed that thisschool does not consider maps as only a processof coding and decoding of spatial information.However, it considers maps also as �conduits ofpossibilities�, �the sites of imagination andaction in the world� as well as �the function ofmaps is not to depict but to enable� as Corner(1999), a post-representational scholar, proposed.
I observed that during the activity 5 when childrenwere generating the maps of their houses, theteacher was not only focusing on cartographicskills (cartographic eye) but also, towards the endof the activity when almost all students finishedtheir maps, trying to create an atmosphere wherehouses of individuals could become a house foreveryone. Let me explain this in detail. Childrenwhile codifying the spatial attributes of theirhouses in individual maps were looking for eachand every intricacy of their houses and doing sothey were asking the teacher various questionsfrequently. Similarly, the teacher was also askingso many questions. And the same questionsbecame an opportunity for the teacher to generatea dialogue among all children regarding the
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housing conditions that actually represent theliving conditions of the children�s families andcommunity. It would be worthwhile to examinethe some of the major and representationalexamples of the questions raised by the childrenand teacher. For instance, some of the children�squestions were: �Shall I make the cow-shed herein my map?�, �Shall I show our cattle here in mymap?�, �We have no door in our house. Howshall I show this in the map?�, �How shall I showthe sacks of food-grains here in my map?�, �Wehave not lintel roof in our house. How shall Ishow thatch-roof in my map?�
The teacher�s questions to the students were:�Where do you keep your spices in kitchen?�,�How many cows you have?�, �How manycharpai you have in your house?�, �Where do youkeep drinking water?�, �Where is the source ofwater?�, �What kind of material has been usedto build walls?�, �Is there any drainage system?�,�Where does your mother cook the food?�,�Where do you people sleep?�
These questions may appear very simple at first,
however, we need not to forget the fact that these
are being raised by the students and teachers of
elementary classes. Secondly, the purpose these
questions serve is of more importance.
When such a question is raised, it becomes a site
of exchange of information about the living
conditions of individual households, viz. the
nature of building material, size and type of
houses; common availability/non-availability of
certain features of houses in terms of number of
rooms, space of cooking, sleeping space, cow-
sheds; common availability/non-availability of
resources in terms of food grains, food items,
household goods, provision of common sanitary
facilities; common availability and non-
availability of household resources in terms of
cattle, crop production, poultry etc. I observed
that all this exchange of information took place
in a group. Here, one by one each student of the
group finished his/her map through this process
of sharing the information about his/her house.
Now, gradually, all this individual piece of
information got stored in the collective psyche of
the group. And, this way, individual experience
become a shared experience as well as a part of
repertoire of the understanding of the children
that later help them to understand the overallcommunity.
Therefore, we need to look at these questions asa part of the process where children are learningthat what and how to be codified in map as wellas how the same map is to be emerged as a�conduit� to individual life experiences tocommunity life experiences. Here the map�sfunction does not remain confined to depictsomething only; however, through the access tothe larger life of the community it actually enablesthe students to have a collective understandingof their life, their resources, their pains, concerns,risks and problems. And in fact, we need to keepreminding ourselves the role of the teacher here.He has played a key role here in bringing thepersonal experiences of children into the domainof collective reflection that consequently helps indeveloping a collective consciousness.
4. Excelling in Map Reading and its Uses
The children now enter into the third and finallevel of the project where they learn to use themaps through four activities. All four activitiesare designed in a hierarchal order. The firstactivity is devoted to the exercises related to onlyblock and tehsil maps; the second is devoted todistrict maps, while the third is related to state(M.P.) maps. Similarly, the fourth is devoted tonational maps.
The most striking feature of this part of the projectis that it is a space where the teacher puts aconstant effort to generate joyful and innovativeexercises and activities so that children canengage themselves with maps and can enjoy theirearlier learning by using it here. In fact, theteacher�s efforts do not end here; on the contrary,it is required for the persistent guidance andmonitoring to check whether children are goingwrong or not. And after every step of correctionand guidance, the children feel an �aha� momentand they enjoy their journey of learning.
Similarly, it has been found that activity 4 (to putmosaics of states together) expose the children toa challenge where they have to identify a spatialentity by its shape, estimate its location in anarrangement and its order in a certain direction.All these challenges actually indicate towardsthe cognitive processes related to what Carlson
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called as �estimating and comparing spatialfeatures�. Therefore, again, this project managedvery swiftly to accomplish one of the majorcognitive processes that are essential to initiate aconcrete learning of geography.
Conclusion
Constant monitoring, hassle free approach of theteacher; the untiring effort of the teacher to correctthe mistakes of children; constant dialogue,interaction, questioning and the patience of theteacher who takes the mistakes of children asnatural and a part of learning are some of themajor attributes of transactional processes herein this school. They pose the challenges requiredfor the accomplishment of cognitive processeswhich is necessary for a concrete initiation intofurther learning of geography which is moreabstract and complex.
These attributes are needed to be considered as adevelopment of dispositions and geographicalimagination necessary for understanding theintricacies and the connections between symbolsand the real social world that leads childrenbeyond the coding and decoding of social andgeographical text and debates and helps them tolearn critically and to develop a collectiveunderstanding of the social and geographicalworld.
It also constructs a space whose legitimization isimportant for imaginations and expressions ofchildren � a space that is perhaps non-existentin mainstream schooling. It is the reproductionof social marginalization and not its challengesthat is mostly experienced in conventionalschools. And Adharshila works out pedagogiesthat are very creative and inspiring for the learner-levels which a mainstream school yet has toaspire for.
References
Adharshila Annual Report-1998-99
Carlson, Laura (2007): �Commentary: LinkingInternal Representations to the ExternalWorld via Spatial Relations� in Plumert,Jodie M. & Spencer, John P. (eds.), TheEmerging Spatial Mind (New York: OUP), pp.248-260
Kitchen, Rob, Perkins, Chris & Dodge, Martin(2009): �Thinking about Maps� in Dodge, M.,Kitchin, R. and Perkins, C. (eds.) RethinkingMaps (New York: Routledge), pp. 1-25.
Liben, Lynn S. & Myers, Lauren J. (2007):�Developmental Changes in Children�sUnderstanding of Maps- What, When, andHow?� in Plumert, Jodie M. & Spencer, JohnP. (eds.), The Emerging Spatial Mind (NewYork: OUP), pp. 193-247
30
Library Resource Group, Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Centre
Workshop on capacity building of libraryeducators : A report
Background
The success of any library to a large extent hingeson the capability and motivation of the facilitatorrunning it. The facilitator needs to be aware ofseveral issues � from academic issues such asthe role that books play in children�s learning toadministrative ones such as record keeping anddata handling. Often the demands placed on thelibrarian/ teacher/ facilitator are vast and notenough support is provided. This could bebecause the organization lacks the resources orthe vision to orient and train its worker. Thereare various models of libraries across the countrytherefore it would not be wise to push anyparticular model of organizing and managing alibrary. Given this variety we need to promotevarious models of library in school, classroom,and community backed up by mobile librarysupport and/or a richer source library at clusterand block level. This was the perspective withwhich Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Centerwith the support of the Tata Trust developed acapacity building programme for libraryeducators. The third and final contact period ofthe programme was organized during 25-27 Feb2014. This was the last planned interactioninvolving all participants, therefore the sessionswere planned in a way that had scope ofpresentations of field projects done byparticipant, summing up the issues raised duringprevious contact periods and providing othersupport activities for library educators.
Session 1: Using a story book
The first session of the first day was started witha task based on �Using a Story Book�. Theparticipants were supposed to think and writeabout a story on which either they had workedwith the children or they had observed someoneelse. They were supposed to mention the name of
the story and describe the book/ story, reason forselecting that particular book, process andactivities around the book that were carried out.They also had to think about why they had beenasked to do this task. The session was facilitatedby Usha Mukunda. The participants realized atthe end of the session that they had a collectionof different activities around different books andthese could be used by anybody.
In the second half of the session the resourcepersons shared the criterion for working withstories while making plans. These included:Clear and focused objective of choosing; linkbetween pre-story phases, story phase and poststory; record of evidence of keeping the targetaudience in mind (age and other elements);
attempt to set the context to the story; use of readaloud strategies for prediction, think aloud, talkduring story time etc. They also described readaloud methods using pictures of the book; post
story activities linked to the core theme of the book
so the library resource persons could explore
books to their full potential with children.
The story �Dani Ped� was taken as an example
and in light of all the above mentioned criterion.
The participants tried to plan a session. They
31
realized that the criterion were guidelines but
can�t be applied for all the stories. Trying to
incorporate the entire criterion to all the stories
migh result in spoiling enjoyment. These are given
as a checklist and the teller has to adapt it
according to her own situation.
Session 2: Library Book Plans
In continuation of the first session, the
participants were divided into groups and had
to design a plan for pre-decided books:�Thathu
aur Main�, �Appukuttan ko Kaise Tolen�, �Shahar
me Mere Dost�, �Baag ki Sair� and �Jungle me
Dhariyan�. While making their plan they were
supposed to take into consideration the
discussed criteria.
As an example, the group that worked on �Thatu
aur Main�, planned to start work with children
through a discussion on family structures. Then
they read aloud the story page by page, pointing
to pictures. As a post-story activity they asked
participants to draw a picture of their
grandparents and to paste them on a soft board.
The session was well-planned with excellent use
of the read-aloud method. According to the group,
they chose this story as the context is familiar to
the children; it�s an emotional story and connects
with the children very well and easily. This kind
of text is also very useful for providing
opportunities to children for innate expression.
This is an easy book and yet the same discussion
on relationships can be used with older children
too.
Session 3: Library Data: Making Sense of it
What all constitute library data? Most library
facilitators struggle with data management �
identifying what constitutes data, how it should
be recorded and how it should be used. Thus, the
first focus of the session was on data
identification and the following categories were
recognized �1. Information related to children; 2.
Information related to books; 3. Attendance
records; 4. Types of books in library; read and
issued; 5. Surveys: children�s likes and dislikes
about books; 6. Activity lists; 7. Record of
parent�s/ teacher�s engagement with library; 8.
Physical records of library: sections, categories,
human resources and their capabilities; 9. Record
of other print material available other than book;
10.Record of growth of library etc.
What is the use of this data? An illustration in
the form of a presentation of Wing Partners
organization about the kind of information in a
library program and how it can be used was
shown. After sharing the presentation, a slide
was shown to the participants on �how can data
help us within the library program� and all the
things mentioned in the slide were also
discussed. The data could be organized as
follows:
• Library Educator � Exposure, shift in vision,
shift in context, knowledge, shift in strategies
• Members � Member details, home
background, school details, reading history,
book knowledge
• Performance � Attendance, link with number
of books, link with profile, link with outcome
• Collection � Book lists, cataloging, most
preferred books, missing books,
• Library Calendar � In line with vision,
systematic, built in documentation
• Budget � Loses, item head costing, cost per
child.
Remaining sessions
Other groups presented book plans around a
book and received feedback. Individual
presentations and planning also took place. It
was interesting that educators chose not only
fiction titles but also science related books and
planned around them. One presentation,
specially appreciated involved the laws of
physics which are normally difficult to
understand. Participants were able find the
connection between these activities and their own
libraries. They also shared resource material and
ideas with each other.
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�Baagh ki Sair� (poem), being a different form of
text, was challenging for the group to present.
The group member started with a formaldiscussion about picnic. It was followed by some
questions such as kya aap kabhi ghumne gaye ho,kiske sath gaye ho, vaha kya kya dekha etc. Thenthey read the poem page by page. While the poem
was very good and brought in children�s context
easily, the illustrations given werevery abstractespecially for young children. On the one hand
this poem talks about the things which children
feel and see in their surroundings, on the otherhand the text had difficult ideas such asghassbaten karti hain which the participants thought
were hard to tackle with children.
Some suggestions shared within groups on
designing activities were related to age groups of
children. For younger children, there could bemuch more discussion on animals which wouldbe more meaningful if they covered the animalsof immediate surroundings. They also noted thatduring story narration, questions andinterruptions by the reader should be done in amanner that does not affect the flow of the story.Library should not be treatedas an EVS class; thefocus should be on having fun while story telling.Many talked about the scope of using bilingualbooks and providing a space for multilingualism.
Book-pass activities: Groups were supposed todo an activity centered aroundthe book togenerate interest in it. The three suggestedactivities were:
1. Make an advertisement for a given book.
2. Read the book and narrating three facts aboutthe book, one of which will be wrong andothers have to identify it.
3. Reading the books given in the group andeach listener had to write a sentence aboutthat book.
The participants also modified these activitiesso that they could be used with different agegroups.
Bal Sahitya mane kya
This session was facilitated by Mr. Gurbachanfrom APF. He started with the question �BalSahitya Maane Kya� and �Iska Swaroop Kya ho� aswe all deal mostly with children. The responsesfrom the participants were as follows:
After this discussion the RP said that we havethree kind of material available for children, i.e.written, oral and pictorial.Children�s literaturehelps in formulating the perspective of childrenregarding world and their culture so it shouldconsider the current perspective. Usuallyemotions such as �happiness� and �sadness�are depicted as two extreme ends in the storywhile these two emotions often in real liferevealthemselves simultaneously. It is not possible atall there is no black or gray shade/mis-happening/pain/problem in the story. All theseare part of society and this social conflict shouldbe addressed in children�s literature too in anatural manner, not with manipulativewords.Even children writers can write thesekinds of literature given that it is meaningful andsharable with other readers.
33
�Totochan� and �Gilhari aur Mahawat� werementioned as good children�s books.
Then the discussion moved towards the forms ofwriting. Only stories and poems are not the forms
of writing for children�s literature, there could be
many more such as plays, small skits, humour,
novel, picture books, comics, autobiography,
game books, travelogue etc. The literature for
children should be such that should encourage
and motivate readers to read and explore further.
Panchatantra stories are appreciated by children
but in these stories the title are written in such a
way that push/modify the thinking of children
in a particular manner, in a particular direction.
It does not let the reader imagine about the events
and characters differently.
After this some other forms of writing were also
discussed i.e. what is a story, what is a poem,
what should be there in a novel. Some good
examples of these different forms of writing were
also discussed such as la mera chane ka dana, lakh
ki naak, Bhon-bhon khon-khon, ek dar paanch
needar, purion ki potli, chudibajar ki ladki, bado ke
bachpan, papa jab bacche the, nanhe khilaune,nachiteta ki sachitra kahaniya.
Notions/attitudes about children�s books
The bookGol Gol Goluwas selected and paneldiscussion organized around it - whether thisbook is good and appropriate to use with childrenor not. It was, in a way, a process of analyzing abook on different grounds i.e. content, context,relevance for children, font, font sizes,illustrations and the message communicatedthrough the book. Overall, the book was liked bymost of the people present but it is a matter ofperception that some people felt that the endingof the book was not good because it talked aboutpassing and failing. Though this issue was notdirectly addressed but children could perhapsperceive it like that. At the end of session therewere two groups having strong opinions foraccepting and disapproving the book. It washeartening that both groups were able tosubstantiate their stands using solid criteria andnot just base their opinions on a hunch.
Non-fiction books
We know but do the children have a cleardemarcation of �what is fiction?� and �what isnon-fiction?�, �what is story?� and �what is not-a-story?� Through discussion an effort was madeto develop an understanding regarding non-fiction text, what are their attributes and why andhow to deal with non-fiction books especially foryoung children. Discussion is summarized in atable:
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BGVS publications were suggested as a sourcefor non-fiction. Some writers were alsomentioned for their non-fiction writing i.e.Romulas Whitaker- Common Indian Snakes,Salim Ali- The Books of Indian Birds. ArvindGupta, Dilip Salvi- Science Fiction etc.
Reading with understanding and role of library
Through-out the program several discussionshad been held on the meaning of reading. As thecapacity of reading increases, library plays animportant role in the process and in the child�slife. Reading includes decoding and meaningmaking and it is nourished by capacity andinterest of child/reader. But this raised thequestion of: �how can we identified that whenchildren read, they read with understanding?�
The processes in reading were suggested as:decode the word (at avery initial level); readby prediction orguessing some words;understand thecontext and readaccordingly; use priorknowledge; talk aboutwhat they have read;read fluently; replacesome words by similarwords fromsurrounding orcontext while readingetc. They agreed thatthere is no order in these processes.
After this discussion it was concluded thatdecoding is important for reading but it shouldnot be the focus area. The other processes are moreimportant than decoding. As a library educatorwe need to motivate children to read more andmore and nourish their interest. Interest inreading would lead to better reading abilities.
Building a Vision of a Library
This question had been introduced during thefirst interaction and it was thought appropriatethat it be revisited in the last contact period. Atthat point of time, participants were surroundedby boundaries of their previous learnings, theirjob profiles and the professional courses. Thesewalls/boundaries were clearly reflected in their
then vision statement. Hence, this exercise wasmeant to explore how far we all had reached inbreaking those walls/boundaries and how thelearnings from the course helped us in it.
Participant shared the issues faced by them andhow these were overcome. For example, to meetparental demands reading activities were donewith children using books. But parents were alsochallenged in their notions and opinions thattextbooks should be given priority over storybooks. Efforts were made to convince them aboutthe relevance of story books. The importance ofgames, activities and library was also discussedwith parents.
Some of the participants said that exposure toother people�s work helped them modify theirwork as well as establish link between thethinking processes and actual practices of ideas.
Some participants hadproblems with school-teachers regardinglibrary usage. Theparticipants weresuccessful in motivatingthese teachers in usinglibrary and some bookswere also suggested andshared with them fortheir help. The courseand its learnings alsohelped in breakinginstitutional walls. Oneof the participants(Pradeep) started library
in his own village with the help of his personalsavings.
Those who had professional library degreesexpressed that earlier they were mere librariansand the course helped them become libraryteacher/educators. This course developedunderstanding of the children and books. Theywere left with feeling of discontent due to manyunanswered questions but it motivates andderives them to learn more. The boundaries ofthe four-walls of a library were levelled and bookscame out of the library and reached even theplaygrounds.
The resource persons felt that the feeling ofdiscontent should continue as this will lead tomore exploration and learnings and furtherexpansion of reading and libraries.
35
Vijaya S. Varma
How should Physics be taught to facilitate understanding?
When I was first asked to speak, I was suggestedthis topic How should Physics be taught to facilitateunderstanding? I thought that I would do muchmore than what I have actually been able to. So ifthe title turns out to be a bit grandiose, pleasebear with me.
Behaviourism was the dominant paradigm ineducation up to the middle of the twentiethcentury, both in the East and the West. Just at thetime I was leaving school,
something happened which had an impact onscience education throughout the world. This wasthe launching of Sputnik by the Soviet Union inthe mid 1950s. Of course it was a great thrill tosee this man-made object circling the world andgoing beep-beep-beep-beep, but what it did wasto trigger off a sense of insecurity and a challengeto the way science and technology was taught.The West perceived a threat from the SovietUnion because of this great progress epitomizedby the launching of the satellite and, I think, as adirect consequence, the 1960s saw the beginningsof a number of school science teachingprogrammes which in a sense revolutionized thewhole concept of how science should be taughtin schools. I refer specifically to the HarvardProject Physics, the Scottish Schools� Programmeand the Nuffield project in the United Kingdom.These programmes were very different from eachother, but what they had in common was thatthere was a deliberate shift in emphasis from themastery of facts and figures to a focus on the
learning and teaching of the structure of the
discipline. There was an emphasis on theprocesses of science rather than on its products
and an attempt to shift from mere rote learning to
investigation and experimentation. Didacticdiscourse in the classroom was de-emphasized
and people were, at least students were,
encouraged to develop notions of discovery andenquiry.
Context
In our country traditionally and very often evennow, science is primarily learnt as �ReceivedKnowledge�, as a body of facts which hasdeveloped over a long period of time and whichdoesn�t leave any question, or at least anyimportant question, unanswered. The nature ofthe curriculum, the manner in which youtransact it in a classroom and the kind ofexamination system we have, all conspire tobring this about. In the traditional frameworkthere is no room for experimentation orinvestigation or discussion because these aresimply viewed as wasted effort, which interferewith the efficient transaction of the curriculumin the classroom.
On the other hand, the curricula that weredeveloped in the 1960s, shared what we haveheard called the constructivist paradigm, and atthe heart of this constructivist view was the beliefthat conceptions held by individuals guide theirunderstanding. Knowledge about the externalworld in this paradigm is a human construction.It can�t be read directly off the �Book of Nature�.Every learner has to strive to build up a set ofconcepts through which he perceives the externalworld. There is of course a reality as it appears tous, possibly a many-layered reality, and of whichappearances are the outermost layer. Scientistsattempt to interrogate this reality with their probesand their experiments and then attempt to guessat what the reality is really like. These attemptsat modelling or theory building are tentative tillthey are shown to have predictive power and eventhen they remain contingent on the potentialitythat further experimentation may actually provethem to be wrong. The closeness of the prediction
of a model to the observations of the predicted
phenomenon is a measure of the goodness of the
theory that has been built. When the divergence
between what the theory predicts and what is
36
observed by experiment becomes large thenpeople feel that it is time to bring about a revisionof the theory in the light of the newexperimentation or the experimental results thathave come out. Therefore, in learning scientificexplanations, we need to learn both their area ofapplicability and the limits of their usefulness.The actual structure of reality forever remains amystery. There are only approximations of reality,theories of reality. And just as reality itselfremains a mystery, so too does the efficacy ofmathematical models as descriptors of reality, aswas first remarked by Einstein himself.
The constructivist programme had its impact onIndian education as well and I remember in 1967,there was a project undertaken by the All IndiaScience Teachers� Association, which wasactually funded by the NCERT. It lasted for threeyears, and it mainly ran in Public schools � Doon,Nabha, Ajmer, � and the project tried to mouldthe Nuffield programme to suit Indian conditionsand Indian circumstances. This then inspired aprogramme which ran for three years in someMunicipal Schools of Bombay and around theearly 1970s this in turn inspired theHoshangabad Science Teaching Programme,which was also very strongly influenced by theNuffield programme in the initial stages. TheHoshangabadprogramme, which started in 1972,managed to last for a much longer time but thatalso was closed by administrative fiat. So that,briefly, is the historical context in which I�m goingto make my presentation.
Now what happened was that with time, thecurriculum based on this kind of a programmecame under increasing scrutiny and criticism inthe West, which was driven by the realizationthat the design of curricula in the 1960s had beenless successful than expected in improvingstandards of science education, particularly inthe achievement of learning outcomes. Peoplestarted investigating why this was so. Andstudies thereafter seemed to indicate thatstudents� learning in many segments of thescience curriculum was substantially differentfrom the scientific concepts held to be correct byscientists. What this means is that even afterformal instruction, students hold persistentmisconceptions, which are now calledalternative
conceptions of reality, and which are verydifferent from the kind of concepts scientists hold,and designers of the curriculum expected thestudents to hold, after instruction. The surprisingthing was that these were not individualmisconceptions, these misconceptions that weare talking about seem to almost have universalcharacter and they seem to be very strongly held.They are intuitive and they are very resistant tochange. At that stage we also got interested inlooking at this phenomenon and we carried outa study on school students, undergraduatestudents, postgraduate students and,surreptitiously, even on some faculty membersin our Department. It was surprising howwidespread and how common thesemisconceptions were.
Misconceptions or alternate conceptions
At this stage I would like to give you at least twoexamples of what I mean by thesemisconceptions, so you can appreciate what I�mtrying to say. The surprising thing, as I said, wasnot only that these misconceptions were held,despite formal teaching, it was also that they wereintuitive and because they were intuitive theywere very difficult to dislodge. Very often it wasfound that students, after formal instructions,sometimes acquired the correct theory but heldboth the intuitive view and the correct theory intheir minds and the responses they gave toqueries could either be based on their intuitiveunderstanding or on the formal theory that theyhad been taught, depending upon how the querywas framed. This is what I would like to spendthe next five minutes talking to you about.
Consider the following problem: A rocket isdrifting with uniformly velocity in deep space.At a time t = 0 it fires its rockets in a directionwhich is perpendicular to its direction of motion.As a result of this the rocket acquires a uniformacceleration.
Students were asked to draw the trajectory of therocket. Suppose this straight line indicates therocket moving with a uniform velocity with itsengines pointing in a perpendicular direction.At time t = 0 when the rocket reaches this point, itfires its engines and as a result it acquires aconstant acceleration in the downward direction.
37
And if you ask students, �Will you now plot the
path of this rocket?� they invariably say that it
will go like this with a constant acceleration �a�
and continue in this direction (fig. 1). Now in a
sense, this is very like what is called the �road-
runner� effect. Those of you who read comics in
your youth or watched cartoon films will
remember that there is this road-runner which is
either running away or chasing something and
it comes to the edge of a cliff. Suppose this is the
cliff and suppose this is the road-runner and the
road-runner comes zooming along and goes
beyond the edge of the cliff, then after a time it
drops like a stone (fig. 2). This is a fairly
widespread view, which is also an intuitive view
of what the motion looks like.
On the other hand, suppose the same problem isposed to students who have undergoneinstruction in mechanics, but I don�t ask them to�draw the orbit�. Instead if I were to say, �Writedown the equations of motion and determine thetrajectory of this rocket�, then at least thecompetent amongst them who have given theanswer shown in the road-runner picture, willsay, �Let�s set up the x-axis along this directionand the y-axis in this direction. The distancetravelled along the x-axis is x = vt after time t = 0,
where v is the velocity in the x-direction. Of coursethere is no component of motion along the y-direction to start with, so it is a case of pureacceleration, and the distance moved along they-axis is y = ½ at2 (where a is the acceleration). Ican combine these two equations and get y = ½(av2)x2. Every student of mathematics or physicsrecognizes that this is the equation of a parabola.The student will plot this curve and show youthat the path is parabolic (fig. 3). The surprisingthing that I wish to bring to your attention is thefact that the same student will either give youthis latter answer which is the correct,scientifically accepted answer, or the earlieranswer, depending upon how you phrase thequestion. So clearly, it is not that the student hasnot understood. That�s a different problem. Even
students who have understood, why is there thisalmost
dialectical behaviour? What is happening here?You get this answer or that answer dependingon how you phrase the same question and this isone of the things that came out as a result of theseinvestigations into constructivist theories ofscience education.
Let me give just one more example, and then Iwill get back to more mundane things. This again,
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is something many people have tried. I take aball and I throw it in the air. Students afterinstruction know the trajectory is a parabola. SoI draw a parabola and I draw the ball at threedifferent locations on the parabola (fig. 4). Andthe question I pose is this, �The ball is moving inthis direction. Will you please indicate the forceswhich are acting on the ball in each of these threecases and what are the directions of theseforces?� Invariably the students will say, �Theball is moving in this direction. So the force must
be in that direction. The ball at the top of the
parabola is practically motionless so there is no
force acting on it. In the third case it is acting in
the direction the ball is moving.� Now I say �But
look, what is it that has changed? I mean, from
this situation (the ball going up) to this situation
over here (the ball going down). What is the force
which is acting on the object?� And they admit
that the only force acting on the ball is the force of
gravitation and the force of gravitation always
acts downwards and if you put the question to
them in this form, they will invariably come with
this answer. Yet if you just pretend as if you have
asked a casual question, then the response you
get is that the direction of the force must be in the
direction of the motion.
The reason why you are getting this split isbecause there is a kind of intuitive understandingof physics that students have developed, notthrough formal instruction, but through justmaking sense of the external world as theyencounter it during their life, during the time thatthey have spent before they came to school. AndI think that one has to be very careful aboutacknowledging that students, when they cometo class, don�t come with an empty mind. Thatthey are human beings, although small in stature,who have actually tried to develop a kind ofworldview of their own, trying to make sense ofthe physical phenomenon that they see aroundthem. Very often it is interesting that these viewsmirror the historical development of concepts inphysics. I say this because both these responsesare consistent with Aristotle�s view of motion inwhich every body remain in a state of rest unlessit is acted upon by a force. And the direction ofthe force is indicated by the direction of motion.That is, if a body is in motion it indicates that aforce is acting on it in the direction of its motion.I will come back to this later on. But this issomething that children build up intuitively andthis is the reason, I think, that Aristotle hadhimself suggested it. If you try to roll a ball on theground, you have to give it a kind of impetus forit to start rolling and the impetus theory then saysthat the ball keeps on rolling so long as the
39
impetus is acting on the ball. However, it getsused up in making the ball move and there comes
a time when the impetus goes to zero and that isthe point at which the ball comes to a stop. I willdiscuss later what is wrong with this line ofthought and what the correct interpretation of
this phenomenon is. But this is what I and yousee, what children see around them - that if youroll a ball you have to apply some effort and aftersometime the ball comes to rest. Therefore motion
is an indication of the action of the force.Therefore, if the ball is moving in this directionhere and is motionless there, it must be that theforce is acting on it in this direction over here,
that there is no force acting on it when it is at restand again here where it is moving downwardsthe force must be in the downward direction. Andsimilarly in the other example, the road-runner
had a particular impetus to start with which getsused up, and once it is used up, it is caught bygravity and then its motion is straight down.
There are seven statements listed, they may be
correct or they may be incorrect. The statementsare:
1. Plants get their bulk by taking food from the
soil through the roots.
2. Burning is a process in which matter isdestroyed.
3. The sun and the stars rise in the east.
4. Summer occurs when the earth is nearest thesun.
5. Electrical current is used up in lighting abulb.
6. Uniform motion in a straight line requiresthe action of a force to maintain it.
7. Heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones.
There are seven statements and what I wouldnow do is to give you two minutes to think andthen tell me how many of these statements youthink are correct and how many incorrect? Now,
I will take a poll.
After the poll, I find nobody thinks all sevenstatements are correct. The truth is that none ofthese statements are correct.
Let�s look at the third statement to start with. �Thesun and the stars rise in the east.� Now this isobviously not correct. To realise that it�s notcorrect, all you have to do is to look at where thesun rises and notice that it changes by almost450 as it moves across from being directlyoverhead one tropic to the other in the course of ayear. Also the pole star never rises or sets. Itappears when the light decreases after sunset,and it vanishes when the light increases beforesunrise, the pole star itself remains fixed. Alsoon the North and South Poles, the sun does notrise for six months, nor does it set for the next sixmonths. So clearly the statement is incorrect.
�Summer occurs when the earth is nearest to thesun.� I think that people who feel that thisstatement is correct are drawing analogy fromthe fact that the closer you are to a fire, the warmerit feels. So it�s natural therefore, to think thatsummer must occur when the earth is nearest thesun. But if you actually think about it, I mean,what you are saying therefore, is that the ellipticityof the earth�s orbit around the sun causes thechange in seasons. Everybody is taught that theorbit of the earth around the sun, in fact of everyplanet around the sun, is an ellipse. Any diagramyou see in a textbook gives you an exaggeratedview of the orbit and nobody tells them thatalthough the earth�s orbit around sun is anellipse, the distortion from a perfectly circularorbit is less than 1%. In fact when the earth isnearest the sun, that is, when it is at perihelion, itis actually winter in the Northern hemisphere.The statement can�t be correct, because if it weretrue, then summer would occur both in theNorthern and the Southern hemispheres at thesame time. And you know that when it is winterin the Northern hemisphere it is summer in theSouthern. So the statement �In summer the earthis nearest to the sun� - cannot be true. The
explanation of the phenomenon of the seasons
cannot be on the basis of proximity. It is on the
basis of the changing inclination of the earth�s
surface to the rays of the sun. You need to do this
experiment with children: take an object or a
surface and place it at different inclinations to
the sun at any given time and see in which case
the temperature increases more rapidly and it will
become clear that in this particular case
inclination plays a much greater role in
40
determining how hot something gets rather than
a change in the distance.
�Electrical current is used up to light a bulb.� I
think children develop this feeling, particularly
when they are using batteries. The battery gets
used up as a result of lighting a torch. They get
this impression but the fact of the matter is that
an electric current is a flow of electrons, and the
electrons are never destroyed. As a result of this
charge is conserved. So this is obviously not true.
�Uniform motion in a straight line requires the
action of a force.� I have discussed this already.
This problem was addressed by Galileo, whether
he actually did the experiment or not is disputed.
I think he must have done the experiment. What
he did was - he took an inclined plane and
allowed a ball to roll from a given point on the
inclined plane repeatedly so that he knew that
he was imparting the same energy to the ball
during the course of the experiment. What he did
was he first used a rough surface, then a less
rough surface and finally a very smooth surface,
and he noticed that the distance the ball travelled
along the surface after coming off the inclined
plane depended upon how rough this surface
was. So then, he argued, as the surface gets
smoother and smoother, the resistance that the
ball encounters to motion, becomes smaller and
smaller and it is not unconceivable that when
the surface is perfectly smooth, once the ball is
set in motion, it would forever remain in motion.
So he came to a very important conclusion about
the nature of inertia: the natural state of a body is
either at rest or in uniform motion, and that the
presence of motion does not tell you the presence
of a force, it is changes in motion which tell you
that forces are acting on a body. The reason why
it required a person of the ability of Galileo to say
this is because even when the ball is rolling over
a surface and slowing down, not many people
realize that there is a hidden force which is acting
on the ball and that this is the force of friction.
Because they don�t realize a hidden force is acting
on the ball, they feel that you need to keep pushing
a ball in order to keep it in motion. This is how
the concept of giving an impetus to the ball and
impetus being used up as the motion proceeds,
arises.
In the physics classroom
We all know how counter-intuitive this statement
is: �Heavier bodies fall faster than lighter ones�.
I want to show you an experiment, which Galileo
talks about. I don�t know whether he actually
did it. This is the famous experiment in which it
is claimed that he dropped a canon ball and a
small stone together from the top of the tower of
Pisa and showed that the two fell together. I think
he discusses this in his book The Two Sciences. He
criticizes Aristotle�s view that heavier bodies fall
faster than lighter ones. The interesting thing is
not only that he gives you a kind of theoretical
argument for saying that this must be false, but if
you read it carefully he seems to imply, �Even
what I�m saying is not completely true, not
absolutely true, but the error involved in my
statement is much less than the error inherent in
Aristotle�s view. Therefore, just the small error
associated in my formulation should not
encourage you to put my theory on par with
Aristotle�s.� Galileo is bringing in this concept
of closer approximation to physical reality. A
better description is one, which is closer to
experimental observation. That there is not
necessarily either this correct theory or that
correct theory, but that theories are progressive
and increasingly better approximations to
physical reality and that is the way in which the
physical sciences progress. So let me repeat
Galileo�s experiment for you.
Why should children not believe that lighter
objects fall slower than heavier ones? First I take
a sheet of paper, hold it flat in one head, hold a
notebook in the other and let both drop. I now
repeat this but hold the sheet vertical instead of
horizontal before dropping it. It is clear that the
speed of descent of this sheet of paper depends
upon how I release it. If I repeat this experiment
again but crumple the sheet of paper into a ball
you will find that the difference in the rate of fall
of the notebook and what was the sheet of paper
becomes indistinguishable.
I can now say that it is clear from this
demonstration that the shape of the paper is
playing a role and if you analyse it a little you
will realize that it is the resistance of the air which
is causing the difference.
41
To continue the demonstration I put the sheet ofpaper underneath the notebook and then let themboth drop. Clearly they drop together, but thesceptic will say that here was something, whichwas falling faster and I put the slower droppingobject underneath so obviously they will falltogether and I have demonstrated nothing. Sonow my piece de resistance - take the sheet of paper,take this notebook and put the sheet on the top sothat the notebook is not pressing the paper down.And as you can see they still fall together. So whatGalileo says is true. The point about this exerciseis that it is possible to do fairly simpleexperiments, which directly address themisconceptions that students may have and totry and remove them from their minds.
Let me conclude by getting back to the first of thestatements, �Plants get their bulk from the soil�.I had thought that there would be more in theaudience who would feel that at least thisstatement was incorrect. Let me, instead ofattempting an explanation, show a slide on whatRichard Feynman had to say about this. Feynman
says, �That the world looks so different afterlearning science. For example, trees are made ofair primarily�. What he means is that the bulk oftrees is carbon and the carbon comes from thecarbon dioxide in the air. �When they are burnedthey go back to air, and in the flaming heat isreleased the flaming heat of the sun which wasbound in to convert the air into tree�. This is theprocess of photosynthesis. �And in the ash is thesmall remnant of the part which did not comefrom the air that came from the earth instead.�This tells you whether burning uses up matter ornot. Feynman goes on to say, �These are beautifulthings, and the content of science is wonderfullyfull of them. They are very inspiring, and theycan be used to inspire others�. I will concludemy presentation with this.
April 18, 2004
The article is taken from the proceedings of the seminaron Construction of Knowledge organized by VidyaBhawan Society in Udaipur.
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