Necesidad de la asepsia

Despite nearly two decades of reforms attempting to shift Indian government schools from a teacher-centred to a more learner-centred paradigm, as discussed in Chapter 1 the average Indian classroom has failed to show a significant shift. The next section analyses the potential reasons for this apparent failure of reform efforts, drawing from international research on barriers to LCE implementation in other developing contexts, as well as analyses of the challenges besetting pedagogical improvement in Indian education. In the latter literature, one emerging line of discourse is that of blaming teachers for the low quality of teaching and learning – with political leaders and media attributing the problem to teacher absenteeism or teachers’ low motivation to work, and proposing stronger accountability systems as one solution (in Ramachandran, 2005). Another set of arguments, often employed by teachers themselves to explain their low use of learner-centred pedagogy, is to blame students, citing barriers such as irregular student attendance, too many students, students at different levels and lacking basic skills, or the background of poor students which makes them less inclined to learning (Burns, 2007; Ramachandran et al, 2005).

The present analysis seeks to avoid both these accusatory discourses, looking instead at the larger systemic factors in the way LCE has been approached and implemented, that have raised barriers to undermine its own success. Even within the five systemic factors identified below, there is a further distinction depending on the analytical lens used to approach the issue. The first three are the most commonly cited reasons for explaining lack of pedagogical change, both internationally and in India: resource constraints shaping the school

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environment, lack of systemic alignment around LCE, and inadequate teacher education programmes. For example, Vavrus (2009) concludes that,

In this era of advocacy for social constructivist approaches in Africa, it is critical that policy makers recognize that the examination system, the material infrastructure of schools, and the length and the quality of teacher education programs limit the likelihood of a fundamental shift from formalism to constructivism. (p.309)

Similarly, Burns’ (2007) examination of barriers to LCE in 4 Indian states found the impediments most consistently cited by teachers were large multigrade and under-resourced classrooms, the pressure to complete packed syllabi, and training that exhorts but does not demonstrate learner-centred methods.

In contrast, scholars such as Tabulawa (1997, 1998) argue that the above explanations are what he terms ‘technicist’ explanations which, although important, ignore the wider socio-cultural context, values and relationships that influence pedagogic change. According to Tabulawa, the technicist approach, which for decades was the dominant framework for understanding pedagogic change, falls under a behaviourist input-output model rooted in a positivist technical rationality paradigm, which believes that complex social problems can be solved through the application of technical inputs. Such criticisms have been made of both international and Indian policy frameworks for focusing more on easily measurable inputs and outputs rather than the complex processes mediating the two (Alexander, 2008; Kumar, 2008a). The tendency to treat pedagogy as objective and value- neutral rather than as socially and historically grounded, is what often results in the discourse that blames teachers for the failure of pedagogical innovations despite many inputs received (Tabulawa, 1997). In contrast, Tabulawa (1998) argues for a constructivist, ‘classroom ecology’ approach to analysing pedagogical change, that seeks to understand classroom practice from teachers’ own perspectives, seeing teachers as purposeful meaning-makers who constantly construct ideas to negotiate their classroom contexts. When viewed through this lens, two other potential but less-often-cited reasons emerge for the unsuccessful implementation of LCE in India: the top-down nature of the reform process which denies teachers’ agency, and the socio-cultural context that shapes teachers’ practice.

1. Constraints in the school environment

LCE as it is typically promoted presupposes a low pupil-teacher ratio, adequate space and varied teaching resources, which is often not the case in many developing countries (Ginsburg, 2006; O’Sullivan, 2004; Siraj-Blatchford, Odada & Omagor, 2002). The high disjuncture between the ideals of LCE and the physical constraints of many classrooms in the developing world has led several authors to suggest that perhaps LCE is simply an unrealistic policy option that may be feasible for high-resource classrooms in the West but not for the global South. Some have used this to advocate instead for less ambitious changes that

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teachers can realistically make given their existing material conditions, or for a ‘contingent constructivism’ that focuses on bringing improvements within rather than attempting to replace teacher-centred approaches (Barrett, 2007; Johnson, Monk & Hodges, 2000; Vavrus, 2009).

Indeed, when one considers the physical conditions in many Indian schools to this day, it is not surprising that teachers struggle to implement LCE. Recent government statistics (NUEPA, 2012) show that 11.8% of Indian primary schools are single-teacher schools (with figures for individual states as high as 61% in Arunachal Pradesh and 31% in Rajasthan), while 15% of all documented primary schools have a Pupil-Teacher Ratio (PTR) of over 60:1 (with as many as 75% in Bihar). While the average PTR in primary schools is only 32 for the whole country, this hides significant inter-state variations with numbers as high as 58 in Bihar, 46 in Uttar Pradesh and 43 in Jharkhand. Overall, 42% of primary schools have a PTR above the RTE-mandated norm of 30:1 (88% in Bihar, 68% in Delhi, 66% in Jharkhand), while 39% of Indian primary schools have a Student Classroom Ratio of over 30:1 (72% in Bihar, 59% in UP, 56% if Jharkhand, Delhi and West Bengal). Overcrowded classrooms often mean that the typical seating arrangement involves children sitting crammed on long benches or on the floor, in rows facing the teacher at the front, with little space available for activities. In terms of classroom conditions and facilities, in rural India12, 20% of classrooms are in need of repairs, 45.6% schools do not have a playground, 48.4% schools do not have a library, 54.8% do not have electricity, and 83.8% do not have computers (NUEPA, 2013).

In examining why training programmes in various Indian states have not resulted in changed classroom practice, both Burns (2007) and Dyer (2004) point to large class sizes, multigrade classrooms, and limited availability of materials and time, as major reasons for the lack of change towards learner-centred approaches. Similarly, Ramachandran et al (2005) found that major reasons for low teacher motivation contributing to poor quality teaching were the poor working conditions, multigrade classrooms and high PTRs that many teachers faced. Another was the high amount of non-teaching duties assigned to teachers such as helping to conduct various elections, government schemes, polio drives, etc. in addition to maintaining data-related paperwork, all of which kept them out of the classroom for substantial amounts of time. Singh (2006) found that the biggest impediment reported by teachers in Bihar to translating training inputs into practice was the large amount of non-academic engagements that kept them away from their classrooms for nearly half the working days in a year.

2. Lack of systemic alignment around LCE

Another key factor to be considered is whether the learner-centred paradigm has been applied consistently throughout the system, with alignment of curricula, textbooks, examinations and teacher supervision systems around a single coherent vision. Often LCE

Rural schools constitute the majority of schools in the country, and approximately 85% of schools covered by DISE data (NUEPA, 2013; 2015), which covers nearly all government and private recognized schools in India

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reforms in developing countries have failed due to the inconsistency between the progressive pedagogies being advocated, and the information-memorization orientation embodied in the examination system or curriculum (Ginsburg, 2006; Johnson, Monk & Hodges, 2000; Leu & Price-Rom, 2006; Schweisfurth, 2011). Foreign donor projects have been critiqued for expecting to bring change in classrooms primarily through teacher training, while ignoring the larger structural reforms needed to support this change. In India, LCE has indeed been driven primarily by teacher training under SSA, without an integrated vision for educational development implemented systematically across the system. This lack of integrated vision, according to Ramachandran & Bhattacharjea (2009), is reflected in the absence of either horizontal or vertical linkages between different institutions in the education system, resulting in educational activities that are implemented piecemeal by a large number of sub-systems.

Although in recent years many states have supposedly revised their curricula and textbooks based on NCF 2005, such efforts have often been fragmented, with the vision of NCF 2005 rarely truly penetrating across levels and systems (GoI, 2012a). Textbooks continue to be information-heavy, content-driven and overly ambitious of what they expect children to know, while teachers continue to treat the textbook as sacrosanct, and to feel constrained by the pressure to ‘complete the curriculum’ (Bhattacharjea, Wadhwa & Banerjee, 2011, p.84), all of which restrict teachers’ perceived freedom to implement activities outside the textbook. In terms of reforming examinations, which Johnson, Monk & Hodges (2000) claim is the single- most cost-effective way of changing what happens in classrooms, RTE does mandate a shift from rigid examinations to a system of ‘continuous and comprehensive evaluation’ (CCE). However, the implementation of CCE has been wrought with difficulties; many education planners themselves do not understand its essence and have typically issued guidelines which take a reductionist and technicist view of CCE, placing almost as much burden as earlier on teachers and children (Nawani, 2013). For the most part, marks in the high-stake Class 10 and 12 examinations continue to be viewed by society as the major determinant of future life success, leading to enormous pressure on teachers to adequately prepare students for these examinations right from early grades.

Similarly, LCE necessitates a teacher supervision and monitoring system where rewards and sanctions for teachers are also aligned to the vision of LCE. Often the authorities to whom teachers must report (headmasters, school inspectors or administrative officers) do not have a clear understanding of learner-centred pedagogy, and focus more on monitoring infrastructural or logistical rather than pedagogical issues. Consequently, teachers may receive contradictory messages about what behaviours they are expected to implement and are rewarded or reprimanded for (Ramachandran, Bhattarcharjea, & Sheshagiri, 2008). The lack of monitoring of pedagogical processes is seen right up to national levels, where progress in educational reforms is often judged on the basis of quantitative targets instead (Ramachandran & Bhattarcharjea, 2009). This is reflected for example in national government reports monitoring the progress in implementation of RTE (e.g. GoI, 2012b), which focus

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mostly on the quantitative aspects of the Act and largely ignore mention of the activity-based, child-centred learning processes that RTE also mandates. If at all quality outcomes (as opposed to inputs) are monitored at national levels, it is often done through looking at students’ achievement levels on large-scale assessment surveys (such as DISE reports or large-scale surveys conducted periodically by NCERT), which is a poor indicator for assessing the quality of LCE.

3. Inadequate teacher training programmes

Another major barrier identified in LCE reforms around the world is the inadequacy of teacher education programmes in preparing teachers with the understanding, skills and attitudes needed for facilitating a learner-centred classroom (Leu & Price-Rom, 2006; O’Sullivan, 2006; Vavrus, 2009). For successful LCE implementation, teachers need to be adequately equipped with the motivation and desire to implement LCE, a thorough understanding of the principles of LCE, opportunities to see and experience the approach for themselves, and to practise it with encouragement and on-going constructive guidance from mentors and peers. In many developing countries, teachers often are either untrained or receive training that is unable to address the demands of LCE. In addition, constructivist pedagogy requires deep subject matter knowledge, which is especially difficult to ensure at the elementary level where teachers often handle many subjects (Richardson, 2003).

In India the challenges for teacher education lie both at the pre-service and in-service levels. The quality of pre-service education is regulated by the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), a staturory body that has itself faced various challenges and charges of corruption (Vishnoi, 2011). Recent decades have seen a sharp increase in unregulated private TE institutions of dubious quality, with currently about 85% of TE institutions belonging to the private sector, although nearly 70% of elementary school children are enrolled in government schools. The Justice Verma Commission constituted by the Supreme Court of India in 2012 to review the state of teacher education in India, noted that the approach to teacher education has remained essentially unchanged for over half a century, in terms of isolating teachers from intellectual activity, and treating pedagogy as technique (GoI, 2012c). In-service teacher training has expanded considerably under SSA for up to 20 days a year, overseen by SCERTs and DIETs and transacted through BRCs and CRCs. Research on in-service teacher training in India suggests that despite two decades of training under DPEP and SSA, teacher training programmes have been ineffective in eliciting significant changes in traditional classroom practice (Mehrotra, 2006; Ramachandran, 2005; Singh, 2006). In fact, studies have found that teachers’ training seems to have little correlation with better teaching quality or learning outcomes (Bhattacharjea, Wadhwa & Banerjee, 2011).

Teachers themselves often see in-service training merely as a burden or ritualistic formality to be completed, rather than an opportunity to upgrade their skills. They claim the

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programmes add little value to their work, are generally not well planned and do not cater to their real needs (Ramachandran, 2005). Training modules are typically designed centrally by state-level planners with limited classroom experience themselves, and delivered through cascade across several tiers of trainers, with the same standardised module ultimately reaching thousands of teachers in an entire state or district. There is often a stark mismatch between the ‘ideal lesson’ scenarios described by trainers, and teachers’ practical contexts. Mechanisms for monitoring the impact of trainings on classroom processes are limited, and in some remote locations without any monitoring, teachers simply reach the training venue, collect their travel allowance, and the training activity is ticked off as completed (Ramachandran, 2005)

In this scenario, teacher training programmes in India are currently unable to adequately equip teachers for successful LCE implementation. Although teachers have imbibed terminology such as ‘joyful learning’ or ‘child-centred learning’, many do not have conceptual clarity on what learner-centred principles look like in practice. Much training time is devoted to learning songs or poems or making teaching aids, often as ends in themselves rather than as a means to improving children’s learning (Dyer et al, 2004). Burns (2007) found that despite numerous trainings on LCE, the overwhelmingly major reason cited by teachers for their failure to implement LCE is that they don’t know how. Training fails to provide basic skills of how to design and facilitate activities, manage group work, develop higher order thinking, etc. within the existing curriculum and classroom conditions. Often the training is delivered through lectures or transmission of knowledge by experts; thus teachers never get to see or experience themselves the leaner-centred approach being advocated. A recent review of Bihar’s teacher education found that the methodology still used in pre-service classrooms is similar to what one sees in school classrooms: student-teachers sitting in rows passively listening to the lecturer at the front dictating ‘correct’ answers to be memorised (JRM, 2013).

4. Top-down reform that denies teacher agency

Several commentators on LCE reforms in the global South have pointed to the very nature of the reform process as one possible reason for their failure (O’Sullivan, 2004, Schweisfurth, 2013; Tabulawa 1998). Typically, pedagogical models are developed by a central team with little input from practising teachers, and expected to be rigidly implemented by teachers with little attention to the actual process of change, the complexities of ground realities, and what teachers themselves know and think about their own classroom practice. Often reformers tend to be unrealistic in what they expect teachers to do, and how quickly they expect change to happen.

Teachers’ agency and professional autonomy has been cited as a key missing piece in Indian educational reforms (Batra, 2005; Dyer et al, 2004; Ramachrandran et al, 2008). Ramachandran, Bhattarcharjea & Sheshagiri (2008, p.6) maintain that the crux of the problem

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in Indian pedagogical reform lies in how the education system views teachers: as ‘lowly recipients and implementers of instructions and content designed elsewhere’, expected to comply with predefined tasks rather than to analyse their own teaching practices in light of students’ learning. Batra (2005) argues that this top-down discourse seeps even into the NCF 2005, which despite its commendable vision, views teachers more as ‘passive agents of the state who are expected to be “persuaded and trained” to magically translate the vision of the NCF 2005 in schools’ (p. 4349). By failing to articulate the processes and programmatic interventions needed to operationalize its ambitious vision, the NCF 2005 (like many policy reforms in India) unfortunately undermines its own fulfilment. Teachers who themselves have never been enabled to exercise autonomy or critical thinking can hardly be expected to develop these skills in children (Batra, 2006; Kumar, 2005a). Teachers’ lack of autonomy creates a culture where teachers feel compelled to strictly follow prescribed curriculum and textbooks, restricting their ability to adapt teaching content and methods to local needs, as expected by LCE. It is perhaps not surprising that Batra views focusing on teacher agency and empowering them as public transformative intellectuals as ‘the most important component of reform of Indian public education without which very little can be achieved’ (2006, p.6).

Various factors have contributed to shaping and reinforcing teachers’ low degree of professional agency. Kumar (2005b) traces its roots to the bureaucratic colonial system that enforced centralisation in both employment-related matters and in academic matters like design of curriculum, textbooks and examinations. Another oft-cited factor has been the policy decision by several states to introduce a system of professionally unqualified and underpaid locally-recruited ‘para-teachers’. This was introduced during DPEP as a quick-fix managerial solution to rapid educational expansion in the midst of fiscal crisis, but which today is seen as a threat to the dying professional cadre of teachers in several states (Ramachandran et al, 2005). Teachers’ professional status and motivation are further undermined by the low status of teaching as a profession, increasingly chosen as a last resort by unemployed youth or women seeking a part-time socially-acceptable occupation. Coupled with this is the increasing politicisation and corruption rampant in the education system, where teachers often must pay bribes, curry favour with politicians or pursue court cases in order to secure jobs, preferred postings, promotions or transfers. Often, the honest and motivated teachers are the ones saddled with non-teaching assignments or transferred to difficult areas (Ramachandran et al, 2005). These various complexities of teachers’ working realities are rarely confronted in public documents, yet as Ramachandran points out, ‘a demoralised, unmotivated and burdened teacher cannot turn the system around’ (2005, p.2144).

These various factors lead to several stages of ‘disjuncture’ that take place between the ideal and the real (McCowan, 2009). Disjunctures occur between the vision for Indian