USRN-DU Regional Resource Centre for Elementary Education (RRCEE)

Educational practitioners in India have begun to question school practices that are steeped in 'routine action', guided by tradition, habit and authority. There is an evolving belief that qualitative changes in educational practice can come about only when teachers' 'conscious efforts' go into conceptualizing, operationalising and reflecting on their practice. RRC provides opportunities for elementary school practitioners to exchange views, voice their concerns, share their understanding and expertise and seek academic support through its various programmers, including Teacher Fellowships, Library Resource, Web-Portal, Public Lecture and Film Series and Academic Forum for Teachers.

RRCEE Activities Report

Teacher Fellowship Programme

The Teacher Fellowship Programme aims to start a dialogic process between teacher practitioners, research scholars and teacher educators engaged in elementary education. Classrooms as entities do not appear significantly in the current theoretical discourse of education. Though there are few sociological and psychological researches instituted in classroom settings, the tendency is to move either towards pedagogic issues or issues of subject-knowledge and organization of content, which when de-contextualized takes a life of its own. The over dominance of the discourse of educational psychology in pedagogic theory and practice has also contributed to the growing disconnect between educational practice and the wider societal context. There is need to include in the educational discourse the authentic voice of teacher practitioners and their grounded reflection in order to enrich processes of theory building and evolve a language of praxis. A series of research papers envisaged to emerge from the Teacher Fellowship Programme hope to bring the desired balance to the university knowledge craft by placing the classroom context at the centre of an evolving educational discourse in the Indian context.

Study Session Readings)| | Work Plan | Research Reports

Academic Support for Teacher Education Curriculum Renewal

Currently RRC is in the process of providing academic support to the SCERT and the DIETs located in the State of Delhi in their exercise of Curriculum Renewal of the two year DEd Programme of Pre-service Elementary Teacher Education. This partnership between the SCERT, DIETs and the RRC began with a two-day workshop aimed to arrive at a Curriculum Framework keeping systemic constraints and the feasibility of the proposed changes in mind. A Curriculum Framework for the two-year Pre-service Programme along with the scheme of courses, student contact hours and weightage in terms of marks has been finalised for further consultations with the DIET faculty. Fourteen sub-committees are working simultaneously on the task of developing the syllabi for each course and identifying readings.

Curriculum Draft Framework | Sub-Committees | Course Outlines

RRCEE Events

The RRC organizes Public Lectures and Film Screenings with Panel Discussions to facilitate communication between scholars and the wider education practitioner community. This section provides a glimpse of the events organized by RRC in the form of video clips, audio clips, text and images. Future events are announced in upcoming events and are indicated in the calendar.

Public Lectures | Film Screenings | Panel Discussions | Calendar

Academic Forum for Teachers

The Teacher Academic Forum is a small initiative of the RRC. Young teachers from across different schools in touch with each other via email wished to create a forum to discuss everyday classroom concerns with the aim to develop strategies to resolve and address issues of pedagogy, content, classroom organisation and management. Using the RRC as a platform for encouraging professional interaction amongst teachers, a small group has been formed. The RRC plans to take this initiative further by providing academic support in terms of reading materials, encouraging exchange and reflection on everyday classroom concerns. Teachers from within and across schools are welcome to share their experience of practices, exchange ideas, articulate their concerns, develop a common vocabulary and learn to reflect together, seek new ideas and academic support.

Inclusive Network for Elementary Teachers (I NET)

USRN-JNU

The University-School Resource Network (USRN-JNU) at JNU is located in Jawaharlal Nehru University and is currently engaged with the following two projects: Collaborative Linkages, Intervention and Research (CLIR) and School Health (SH). While the overall USRN-JNU is coordinated by Professor Geetha B. Nambissan, there are two project Directors: Prof. Geetha B. Nambissan and Dr. Rama Baru for the two projects respectively. The CLIR focuses on building linkages and providing support for academic collaboration of the USRN, undertaking pedagogic interventions in schools in mathematics education and language education, building academic support for teachers and conducting research studies on critical areas in school education. The objective of SH is to identify and study key areas for improving effectiveness of school health and mid-day meal programmes through building horizontal linkages and integrated zonal working plans.

USRN| Collaborative Linkages Intervention and Research (CLIR)| School Health

Pedagogic Intervention in Schools

USRN-JNU undertakes pedagogic interventions in schools in mathematics and language and builds academic support for teachers. It also conducts research studies on critical areas in school education. Pedagogical interventions are being undertaken using the activity-based method to help facilitate children’s understanding of the learning tasks as outlined in the syllabus and to evolve school practices that enable academic support for teachers and schools. The interventions are being undertaken in classes I and II in two MCD schools in Delhi that cater largely to an economically poor but culturally diverse settlement in the neighbourhood. The focus of interventions in mathematics has been to strengthen children’s understanding of the concepts of the number system through concrete strategies and greater involvement in the teaching-learning process. In the Language intervention programme attempts have been made to develop basic competencies in listening and speaking comprehension, self expression,reading and writing that will facilitate understanding of school subjects as well.

Language | Mathematics

Research and Documentation

Building capacities for documentation and research is an integral component of the USRN-JNU. Research is conducted on specific themes in school education and intervention practices. Efforts are also initiated to strengthen capacities for research and documentation. A baseline study was conducted as part of the programme planning phase of the USRN to understand the problems and concerns of schooling of children in four MCD schools in Delhi which admits children largely from urban slums. The study aimed to map the social and economic context within which the urban poor access educational facilities for their children, the extent of participation in schools, the dynamics of classroom processes and understanding of teachers’ perspectives as well as the assessment of competencies of children of Class III and V in Language, Mathematics and EVS. Underscoring the economic and social context of educational deprivation of communities in the poor settlement, the baseline study identified many critical issues relating to community context and schooling of children.

Working Papers | Publications | Field Report

School Health

The School Health Component under the USRN JNU Project is a research and intervention effort that seeks to address issues of children’s health and nutrition in the context of the school. The broad objective of this initiative is to address ‘felt needs’ regarding children’s health by engaging with the School Health Services and the Mid Day Meal Programme. Efforts are being made to address issues of malnutrition, morbidities, mental and emotional well-being and classroom hunger. Programmatic concerns regarding variations across socio-economic contexts, lack of basic health infrastructure (e.g. toilets, water) in schools and implementation issues are to be addressed through building of linkages and strengthening the voice of the communities and schools. The effort so far has seen the use of various strategies such as undertaking a baseline survey and study across different schools, building linkages with programme staff, rapport building in schools and retrieval of morbidity data from school health services. Based on this broad objective, the team decided to focus first on understanding the functioning of the two government programmes across different contexts and to build relationships with the programme staff. It was felt that interventions in the next phase would not be restricted to the school level and would in fact be at the programmatic levels. Therefore this first phase of understanding and building linkages was crucial.

Baseline Survey | Process Reports

Mid Day Meal Programme

The Mid Day Meal (MDM) programme is one of the two major programmes under study in the School Health Project. The objectives of the MDM are educational advancement, child nutrition and social equity. This programme has a long and varying history across the country and was formally launched under a centrally sponsored scheme in 1995. In response to a public interest litigation on the right to food filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (in a context where chronic malnutrition and hunger coexisted with overflowing FCI godowns), the Supreme Court ordered, in 2001, that every child was entitled to a cooked mid day meal consisting of 300 calories and 8-12 gms of protein per day for a minimum of 200 days in a year. In 2003, the Court had to haul up the states that had fallen behind and not been able to implement the scheme. Now over the last few years many of the states have complied and implemented this programme. Our study essentially deals with the programme implementation in Delhi through the Municipal Corporation in primary schools. However our research and review extends to understand and explore the plurality of models across states and contexts. The overall aim is to formulate policy suggestions on the various aspects of the programme,its content as well as delivery.

Reflections| Intervention

School Health Services Programme

The School Health Services Programme can play a vital role in both health and education of children. In India the School Health Services dates back to 1909, when it was started in the Princely State of Baroda. Since then and post independence, one finds that various models have been tried across different states of India. In the USRN School Health Project we are looking at the School Health Services provided in Delhi MCD Schools. The broad objective of the Programme is detection, treatment and prevention of various diseases among school going children. The activities are supposed to include health checkups, immunization, malnutrition monitoring, maintaining health report cards and health education. One finds that there are many gaps between the actual programme functioning and the felt needs of children. We have been trying through interviews in schools as well as with the programme staff to understand the functioning and constraints and come up with recommendations. Different models of delivery are also being studied.

Reflections | Intervention

USRN-IHE

The Institute of Home Economics (IHE) is the third component of the University School Resource Network. USRN-IHE has been working for the development of certificate course in English language, translation of readings and interviews with alumna, collaboration with USRN-JNU for resource centre setting up, collaboration with Mirambika for materials development.

USRN–IHE collaboration with Mirambika has been engaged with the development of innovative materials on certain themes of importance at the primary level classroom, particularly environmental science. Materials have been developed by the third year students of BElEd Programme in collaboration with teachers at Mirambika, as part of their course requirements of Material Development. The various themes for primary school that have been taken are: Meri Dilli; Traveling in the City and Food. The themes for the middle school are: Agriculture, Mountains, Transport, Food, Plains and Plateaus, Health and Hygyiene, Maths, Occupation, Painting, Fibre to Fabric and Housing.

USRN-IHE in collaboration with JNU and DU works on the development of DIET Curriculum, B El Ed Internship Programme, and Teacher Fellowship Programme etc.

Report | Curriculum Material | Research