The increased participation of women in higher education in India since 1947 has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. Since independence, there have been shifts--dispersal and clustering of women students in various disciplines in higher education. There is a need to understand the processes of decision making regarding schooling,…

The idea of school health is re-imagined with an emphasis on the need for children's health programmes to be rooted in an understanding of the social context. Such programmes must address health, nutrition and education in a comprehensive manner. The article details findings and insights emerging from a qualitative study conducted in…

This article presents evidence from a linguistic analysis conducted on the National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCFTE) 2009, and explores the dialogic characteristics of the document driving the current reform of teacher education. I address one orienting research question: in what ways and to what extent are the aims and…

Is there a strong correlation between caste and class in access to education, especially higher education? This is the broader question addressed by the study in the context of Kerala, the southernmost state in India, with impressive conventional indicators in education. Micro-level insights based on the study of a village in Kerala show that old…

This article is an empirical study of science teaching practices using a Bernsteinian framework. It provides a comparative analysis through ethnographic examination of pedagogic recontextualisation in different school types--government, private unaided and international. Bernstein drew attention to the process of pedagogic recontextualisation and…

Although schoolchildren in India perform poorly in reading/writing tests, little attention is paid to early literacy instruction. This article describes literacy instruction in an English-medium school; through classroom observations and children's artifacts, it documents what four children in Lower KG understand about literacy in English, a…

Reading and writing difficulties are markers for some forms of learning disorders, and measuring the distance between the child's performance and an expected level of attainment is a common approach to diagnosis. However, there are several problems with relying on the gap between achievement and expectation for arriving at a diagnosis, not…

The article presents an ethnographic study conducted in a class in a government-run primary school in Delhi. It was found that a chief concern in the school was that of disciplining children. In the observed class, this took the shape of controlling children's bodies and motor movements. It is argued that through disciplining, teachers were…

Visual representations, including photographs, sketches and schematic diagrams, are a valuable yet often neglected aspect of textbooks. Visual means of communication are particularly helpful in introducing abstract concepts in science. For effective communication, visuals and text need to be appropriately integrated within the textbook. This study…

The encounter between the pre-colonial education system in India, dominated by poor teachers and students, and the British education system, which defended and perpetuated the "English class system", created a complex and problematic relationship. This article explores this problematic relationship between poverty and education in the…