Researchers often point out a wide rift between school culture and students' home culture, especially for Adivasi students whose culture, language and knowledge systems are played down by the mainstream discourse. We believe that such deficit perspectives must be countered to work towards an equal and just society. For this purpose, in this study,…

So far research on school choice sets (decision about choosing a school from an available set of schools) has primarily regarded parents as key actors. Moving beyond, this article emphasises that children are important actors as they inform parental decisions to co-produce certain choice sets. This article foregrounds how school-going Muslim…

Learning about components and processes of complex biological systems is challenging and requires abstraction through mediational tools such as text, visuals, models and visualisation experiences. The 'systems concepts' necessitate building coherent relations and anticipating consequences, requiring greater mediational support. This article…

This article discusses the pedagogic practice of ability grouping in government schools in Delhi. Despite practical evidence against homogenous student settings, ability grouping is implemented as a policy solution to reduce the huge variance in students' learning levels within a classroom. Research data is drawn from interviews with 110…

This article asks the following questions: What pressures do teachers face from parents and senior administrators? How do the pressures teachers face from parents and senior administrators affect how they teach students? Specifically, how does this affect the methods they engage in to generate 'good' student outcomes? It answers these questions by…

This article aims to understand the reasons and experiences which contribute to dropout among Muslims in India at the secondary school level (grades IX-XII). The focus of this article is low-income Muslim men, who have left school at the secondary level, in a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood of Jamia Nagar, Delhi. The context of this article is…

Formal education has always been the principal model through which societies educate their young. Today, however, schools are seen as non-analytical and are being replaced by logic-based approach of competitive examinations. In India, the growth of shadow education, which is preponderant at the level of secondary education, is providing informal…