यह अंक कक्षा में बच्चों से खुले सवाल पूछने और सोचने के महत्त्व जैसे कुछ प्रमुख मुद्दों की उपयोगिता को सामने लाता है। वैज्ञानिक स्वभाव के मायने क्या है और यह कक्षाओं में कैसे प्रतिबिंबित होता है, कक्षा में विभिन्न पृष्ठभूमियों के बच्चों के बीच संवाद के अवसर कैसे बन सकते हैं, जैसे मुद्दों पर भी इस अंक में लेख हैं। इसी के साथ बहुत सारे लेख कक्षाओं को अच्छे से चलाने के तरीक़े सुझाते हैं, जिनमें बुनियादी गणित शिक्षण से जुड़े उदाहरण / लेख भी शामिल हैं। 

This issue brings out the importance of some key issues like importance of open questioning and thinking by children in classrooms. What does scientific temper mean and how does it get reflected in classrooms? How can diverse backgrounds get to dialogue in classrooms and along with that many articles that suggest ways of conducting meaningful classes including many examples from foundational mathematics.

How was oxygen discovered? When was it first recognised as a chemical element? 

How do we transform the science lab into a space that encourages students to learn about germination by designing and conducting their own experiments? 

How do metaphors, explanations, and illustrations in textbooks and our classroom instruction shape common misconceptions about the atomic theory? 

What role do empathy and care for local places have in addressing the ecological crisis? 

Join us in exploring these and many other questions. 

This issue is about a term that is very much in the minds of educators today: Socio-emotional Learning (SEL), and which has become an integral part of learning and school life. Schools have ​‘Happiness Curriculums’ to develop self-awareness, enable effective communication, and work collaboratively towards collective goals instead of individual ones to bring equity to the learning process by becoming inclusive and empathetic. Teachers are looking at children as citizens who need to take their place in the larger social setting and learn to contribute to society while themselves leading meaningful and mindful lives.

Construction of a Tunnel through a Mountain- a broad theme for the power of mathematics to help you solve daily life problems.

This study examines the performance of MGNREGA during the Covid-19 pandemic in eight blocks across four states of India, viz. Bihar, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. MGNREGA functioning is analysed along the following dimensions: overall impressions of the programme among job card holding households, extent of unmet demand, wage payments, changes in programme functioning during the pandemic, and effectiveness of MGNREGA as a safety net. The blocks were chosen from a list of blocks in which Civil Society Organisations part of the NREGA Consortium are working. All blocks on this list were ranked based on their performance in MGNREGA as reflected in the Management Information System (MIS). Highest and lowest ranked blocks were chosen in each state and are referred to as high performing and low performing blocks in the study The blocks chosen were — Phulparas (Madhubani) and Chhatapur (Supaul) in Bihar, Bidar (Bidar) and Devadurga (Raichur) in Karnataka, Khalwa (Khandwa) and Ghatigaon (Gwalior) in Madhya Pradesh, and Wardha (Wardha) and Surgana (Nashik) in Maharashtra. A two stage random sampling was followed in the chosen blocks. In the first stage, five Gram Panchayats (GP) were randomly chosen in each block based on the Census 2011 list. In the second stage, 50 households were randomly selected in each GP from the MGNREGA MIS list of job card holders. The sampling method ensures representativeness of the results at the block level for all job card holding households. The survey was conducted in November-December 2021. Two reference periods were employed. The first covered the pre-Covid financial year (April 2019 to March 2020) and the second covered the Covid financial year (April 2020 to March 2021). This also includes executive summary of the report.

Download full report here

Download Executive Summary here (English, Kannada, Hindi).

Download Press Release here (English, Kannada, Hindi).

Download slides of key results

Press coverage of report findings

Batesian mimicry imposes several challenges to mimics and evokes adaptations in multiple sensory modalities. Myrmecomorphy, morphological and behavioral resemblance to ants, is seen in over 2000 arthropod species. Ant-like resemblance is observed in at least 13 spider families despite spiders having a distinct body plan compared to ants. Quantifying the extent to which spiders’ shape, size, and behavior resemble model ants will allow us to comprehend the evolutionary pressures that have facilitated myrmecomorphy. Myrmaplata plataleoides are thought to closely resemble weaver ants, Oecophylla smaragdina. In this study, we quantify the speed of movement of model, mimic, and non-mimetic jumping spiders. We use traditional and geometric morphometrics to quantify traits such as foreleg size and hindleg size, body shape between the model ant, mimic, and non-mimics. Our results suggest that while the mimics closely resemble the model ants in speed of movement, they occupy an intermediate morphological space compared to the model ants and non-mimics. Ant-mimicking spiders are better at mimicking ants’ locomotory movement than morphology and overall body shape. Some traits may compensate others, suggesting differential selection on these mimetic traits. Our study provides a framework to understand the multimodal nature of mimicry and helps discern the relative contributions of such traits that drive mimetic accuracy in ant-mimicking spiders.

In a homogenised imagination of human aspirations, development interventions replicate popular models, including intensive farming in Adivasi landscapes. In the process, they try to sedentarise and individualise Adivasi communities living in the forest peripheries. Even as modernisation remains an elusive target in most of the tribal belts, ethnic socio-ecological institutions become redundant, leaving the community deskilled — ecologically, socially, and economically. Adivasi’s concerns about this conventional development process entailing detribalisation are seldom deliberated in literature and among the community. 

पाठशाला भीतर और बाहर के तेरहवें अंक में भाषा और गणित शिक्षण के कक्षा अनुभवों पर कई लेख हैं। संवाद में, कोविड के दौरान स्कूलबन्दी से विभिन्न स्तरों पर हुई सीखने की क्षति के प्रभावों व भरपाई के लिए सम्भव उपायों पर, शिक्षक प्रशिक्षकों के विचार शामिल हैं। अंक में ऐसे लेख हैं जो बच्चों की विविधता को दर्शाते हैं। विशेष रूप से एक लेख वन क्षेत्र के बच्चों बारे में बताता है कि स्कूल के लिए समय निकालने में कठिनाइयों के बावजूद, उनमें पर्यावरणीय अध्ययन और गणित विषय की अपनी समझ को लेकर बहुत आत्मविश्वास और क्षमता है। एक और दिलचस्प लेख, विज्ञान, वैज्ञानिक सोच और विज्ञान शिक्षण पर है, जो इस मसले पर हमारे सामने आने वाली चुनौती की गम्भीरता को सामने लाता है।

The 13^th issue of Pathshala Bheetar aur Baahar carries many articles on classroom experiences of teaching language and mathematics. It carries a dialogue among educators on the after effects, programs initiated for and lessons for education arising from the COVID episode. There are articles that reflect on diversity of children and in particular an article on children of forest areas points out that in spite of difficulties in finding time for school, they have a lot of confidence and competence in EVS and even in Mathematics. Another interesting piece is on Science, Scientific temper and Science education which brings out the seriousness of the challenge we face.

Bas saaru, Uppina saaru and massoppu are curries made of mixed greens, and are staples in the homes of Bengaluru residents. But these greens are not always bought in the market. They are also gathered from sidewalks, little strips of soil beside the road, drains, and around lakes. The act of gathering such edible plant species from private or public spaces in the city is called urban foraging, and it is a common practice across the globe.

In Bengaluru, it is mainly middle-aged or older women from low-income backgrounds who forage. These women are vital knowledge holders and experts on the local wild plants around them. They know what parts of the plants are used for food, medicine, or cultural uses, and which is the best season to forage. They also have delicious recipes, of curries, chutneys, and pickles that have been passed down through the generations.

Sadly, as the city has developed and urbanised, these foragers are losing access to the spaces where these greens were found. 

Yet, so many people still forage for wild plants across the city. It is a dying art, one which needs to be repopularised.

Chasing Soppu is a guide to wild edible plants of Bengaluru. In this book, we provide an introduction to 53 forageable species in the city. For each, we provide a guide for identification. We also share a collection of local recipes, shared by women foragers we spoke to, which can be used to cook these plants. In addition, we share some home remedies as well. 

We investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on income levels, poverty, and inequality in both the immediate aftermath and during the long uneven recovery till December 2021 using high-frequency household survey data from India. We find that the average all-India household income dropped between 30 to 38 percent during the months of the nationwide lockdown of April and May 2020. The subsequent recovery remained incomplete and was unevenly spread over the population even twenty-one months after the start of the pandemic. Households, on average, continued to make 16 to 19 percent lower cumulative income in the post-lockdown period, but have mostly recovered after the second wave in the second half of 2021. Poverty more than doubled during the lockdown and was 50 to 80 percent higher in the post-lockdown period in comparison to the pre-pandemic levels. In the post-second-wave phase, poverty was still slightly higher than in the pre-pandemic period, and any progress in poverty reduction that would have been achieved under normal circumstances over the two years was lost. Inequality too spiked during the lockdown, but returned back to the pre-pandemic levels. Using an event study model we find that the initial shock of the lockdown was more severe for the bottom of the income distribution, but the bottom also experienced a faster recovery. On the other hand, the top end of the distribution experienced smaller declines during the lockdown but they have been slow to recover. The bottom deciles in any period typically constituted households working in contact-intensive, informal, less secure occupations that were hit the hardest during the lockdown, but were quick to recover when the economy opened up. The upper end of the distribution constituted households working in less contact-intensive, formal, secure occupations that were shielded from the sudden shock but were slow to recover.

Authors:

• Mrinalini Jha
• Rahul Lahoti

This paper revisits a part of the analysis by Banerjee et al. (2020), in which they examine the consequences of the nation-wide scale up of reforms to the funds management system (e‑FMS) in India’s national workfare programme, using a two-way fixed effects specification. They report a substantial 19 percent reduction in labour expenditures. We exploit the recent literature that highlights the limitations of the TWFE estimator in the presence of staggered roll out and effect a Goodman-Bacon decomposition of the TWFE coefficient, to pinpoint sources of identifying variation. We undertake a detailed examination of subsamples of six constituent and valid DiDs based on timing of treatment that are averaged into the TWFE coefficient to identify heterogeneity in treatment effects. This disaggregated subsample analysis does not support the conclusion of any reductions in MGNREGS labour expenditures, suggesting that the TWFE coefficient based on the full sample is indeed biased.

Authors:

• Deepti Goel
• J.V. Meenakshi
• Zaeen De Souza

This issue of the Learning Curve tries to answer some hard questions about the present environmental crisis : who can we turn to make the changes required? How can we attempt to restore some of the lost balance? How can we make sure that this planet does not become extinct by the next millennium? Schools across the country are doing their bit, beginning with primary school, to create a well-informed, environmentally-aware generation. 

The Lens of Computational Thinking teaches us to look at the same things with fresh eyes, the July 2022 issue invites you to do just that!

Historical experience suggests that a sustained rise in per capita incomes and improvement in employment conditions is not attainable without a structural transformation that moves surplus labour from agriculture and other informal economic activities to higher productivity activities in the non-farm economy. In this paper, I analyse India’s performance from a cross-country comparative perspective, estimating the growth semi-elasticity of structural change. Using a cross-country panel regression, I estimate the effectiveness of growth in moving workers away from agricultural and informal activities as compared to other developing countries at similar levels of per capita income. I show that the performance in pulling workers out of agriculture is as expected given its level and growth of GDP per capita, but the same is not true for pulling workers out of the informal sector. I also propose the following five indicators that need to be kept track of when evaluating the growth process: the growth elasticity of employment, the growth semi-elasticity of structural change, the growth of labour productivity in the subsistence sector, the share of the organised sector in total employment and the workforce participation rate. Comparing these indicators across periods, states, regions or countries, allow us to understand which sets of policies have worked better than others to effective improvements in employment conditions. When taken together the indicators allow us to set structural change targets as well as to say whether the current pattern of growth is going to be sufficient to meet those targets.

Multilingual education is an urgent and pressing concern in the Indian educational scenario. While the National Education Policy (2020) acknowledges multilingualism as a resource in educational contexts and reiterates earlier policies calling for mother tongue-based education in elementary classrooms, it does not provide guidance in terms of how to productively accommodate multiple languages in the classroom. Multilingual education will be much stronger if it is based on a strong understanding of multilinguality — the idea that the human mind is fundamentally multilingual in nature. A new, but substantial paradigm of scholarship addressing multilinguality is that of ​‘translanguaging’, which views named languages as socio-political constructs and argues that multilinguals have a unified linguistic repertoire that they flexibly, creatively and adaptively draw upon. Accepting the grounding assumptions of translanguaging would has important implications for curriculum, pedagogy and assessment in educational spaces. In this article, we describe and critique the translanguaging perspective, even while acknowledging its positive contributions. We point out, especially its failure to provide guidance in terms of how to productively accommodate translanguaging in classrooms.

Institutional births increased in India from 39% to 79% between 2005 and 2015. Drawing from 17 months of fieldwork, this article traces the shift from home to hospital births across three generations in a hamlet in Assam in Northeast India. Here, too, one finds that most births have shifted from home to hospital in less than a decade, aided by multiple factors. These include ​‘free’ birthing facilities and financial incentives offered by government schemes, idiosyncratic changes within the hamlet, such as the introduction of biomedical practices through home births where oxytocin was used, and changes in cultural belief systems among local people. The exploration reveals significant transitions between (and fluidities of) categories such as local/​global, tradition/​modernity, past/​present and nature/​technology, creating a complex and ambivalent narrative of change, in which the voices of mothers should not be ignored.

Increasing community and parental connection with schools is a widely advocated means of improving levels of student learning and the quality and accountability of education systems across South Asia. This paper draws on a mixed-methods study of accountability relations in education in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Bihar. It explores two questions: what formal platforms exist to enhance connections between socially disadvantaged families and the schools serving them; and (how) do they influence engagement with student learning? It finds that various platforms have proliferated across public, low-cost private and non-government schools. But, while they promote enrolment attendance and monitoring, a substantive focus on student learning is empirically demonstrated to be missing everywhere. The paper argues that an apparently surprising similarity of (dis)connection is located in system features that are common across school types, locations and social structures. It proposes that this is a ​‘field’ in which connection, facilitated by various platforms, is performed according to bureaucratised norms of accountability that even pervade family and community responses. Seeing this as a socially constituted ​‘field’ that constrains meaningful discussion of learning across schooling provision for disadvantaged families contribute new insight for accountability-focused reforms in education.

This chapter discusses collective and multiactor interventions by local communities in Bengaluru, in conserving urban ecological commons — specifically, urban lakes — which provides a range of services to residents, as well as protecting the overall resilience of the city. Bengaluru, which once had an agrarian ecological landscape nourished by a large network of interconnected rainwater harvesting structures — tanks or lakes, has now grown to a megacity. Rapid urbanization has been accompanied by conversion of many of these lakes into other forms of land use, with a decline in the functioning of lakes and their surrounding reliant socio-ecological systems. With the import of piped water to the city since the early 20^th century, lakes lost much of their perceived relevance for policymakers. Waste discharge and sewage eventually polluted most of the lakes and choked the overflow channels that connected lakes along a topographic gradient, reducing the flow of water. In recent years, spurred by a resurgent awareness of the importance of lakes, a growing number of civic and community efforts have resulted in lake restoration, in collaboration with the Government.

पाठशाला भीतर और बाहर, जून 2022 के अंक में शिक्षणशास्त्र और कक्षा अनुभवों पर दिलचस्प लेख हैं। ये लेख शिक्षा की समसामयिक चुनौतियाँ और उनसे पार पाने के उपाय सामने लाते हैं। इस अंक का संवाद शिक्षा में कोरोना के बाद की चुनौतियों को सामने लाते हुए इनसे आगे बढ़ने की राह सुझाता है। इसमें जातिगत और भाषा की विविधता को सम्बोधित करते, समावेशन और सहभागिता के परिप्रेक्ष्य आधारित लेखों के अलावा एक शिक्षक का साक्षात्कार भी शामिल है। इस साक्षत्कार में शिक्षक ने अपने जीवन के समृद्ध अनुभवों को रखा है, जिनमें उसकी शैक्षिक यात्रा, खुशियों, चुनौतियों और सीखों की जानकारी मिलती है। 

The June 22 Issue of Pathshala carries interesting articles on pedagogy and classroom experiences. They bring out contemporary challenges and ways to overcome them. The Samwad is also focused around the post corona challenges and way forward. Apart from perspective articles dealing with inclusion and participation involving caste and language diversity, the teacher interview brings out the rich life experience of a teacher who traces her journey, joys, challenges and learnings. 

What role do ​‘chemical experiences’ play in helping children grasp the particulate nature of matter and use this idea to explain observed phenomena?

How do we use the art and aesthetics of lithography to introduce children to chemical reactions? What skills would children learn from this multisensorial and fun approach to science? 

Why is it important for teachers to trace the history of evolving definitions of elements and atoms, and communicate the conditional nature of their validity? 

Can we use poetry to teach chemistry? How would it change the ways in which students engage with science? 

Join us in exploring these questions in three sections of our latest issue – Our Chemical World, I am a Scientist, and Snippets. 

Drawing on results from a panel of 2778 workers interviewed during and after the 68-day hard lockdown imposed in India, the following study examines the livelihood impact of the pandemic and the extent of subsequent recovery or lack thereof. Focussing specifically on workers located in the informal economy, the study is a useful addition to the burgeoning body of work on the economic impacts of Covid-19 by providing an insight into the employment and earnings recovery of those located at the margins. These findings are spliced across socio-economic groups to showcase the differential impact of the pandemic on different demographics within the informal sector.

Authors:

• Paaritosh Nath
• Nelson Mandela S
• Aishwarya Gawali

India’s 2009 Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act presents an idealised social contract which assigns roles to multiple actors to uphold a mutual duty, or collective responsibility, to secure children’s access to a quality school education. This article explores how the social contract assumed by the RTE Act misrepresents the conditions required to enact mutual responsibilities as well as actors’ agreement to do so. Qualitative data from Bihar and Rajasthan show how state actors, parents, community groups and teachers negotiate and contest the RTE Act norms. The analysis illuminates the unequal conditions and ever-present politics of accountability relations in education. It problematises the idealisation of the social contract in education reform: it proposes that if the relations of power and domination through which ​‘contracts’ are entered into remain unaddressed, then expressions of ​‘mutual’ responsibility are unlikely to do other than reproduce injustice. It argues that policy discourses need to recognise and attend to the socially situated contingencies of accountability relations and that doing so would offer an alternative pathway toward addressing structural inequalities and their manifestations in education.

This case study is of ​“India’s First Fully Solar Powered Village”2 — Dharnai. It is a case of the promises of and challenges facing the realisation of ​“energy democracy” — the idea that distributed renewable energy systems have the potential to democratise the economy and society.

In the list of new teaching methods that teachers quickly thought of for online classes during the pandemic, the worksheet emerged as a learning aid that is creative, and participative, making children want to use their minds more independently. This issue features articles that showcase tried and tested methods of creating and using worksheets.

Constitutional measures to ensure fair compensation and livelihood security to the land losing refugees of development processes, overlook the complexity of ​‘public purpose’ — the dominant rationale behind operationalizing ​‘eminent domain’ of the state. Popular perception of public purpose as urbanization muffles the de facto social citizenship around plural values of agricultural landscapes. Ignoring the enduring public purposes served by agrarian landscapes aids in underestimating the longterm welfare impacts on displaced farmers.

This report examines the changes in the producer company landscape in the last two years by analysing data on producer companies registered in the country from April 1, 2019 to March 31, 2021. The report examines changes in geographical spread and capitalization of producer companies in the last two years, in order to determine the extent to which the gaps in the previous promotion efforts have been addressed. It also analyses recent policies to understand their impact on the producer company ecosystem. The report identifies five focus areas to enable the sector to reach its full potential in enhancing the incomes and reducing the vulnerabilities of small producers.

Eight essays in this compendium, written by experts with long years of experience in administration and academic research take a critical view of governance responses during the three waves of Covid-19 pandemic in India and recommend measures to address governance challenges that India is likely to face after the pandemic. The essays survey the institutional, procedural, legal, and socio-political implications of the Union and the State Governments’ responses to the pandemic-induced crisis in a range of areas such as public health, education, environmental regulation, urban planning, management of vital statistics and reliance on technology-based solutions. A series of policy recommendations have been made in each of these domains to address the problems that the pandemic has left behind, and to make the governance system and processes better equipped for any such future catastrophe.

The compendium has been brought out jointly by the School of Policy and Governance (SPG) at Azim Premji University, and the Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), which is a is a group of retired officers of the All-India Services and Central Services.

पाठशाला भीतर और बाहर का ग्यारहवाँ अंक, गणित पढ़ाने और सीखने पर केन्द्रित है। इसमें, गणित और संस्कृति, प्रारम्भिक वर्षों में गणित पढ़ाना ​‚गणित के प्रति डर व इसकी उत्त्पति, गणित शिक्षण में ठोस सामग्री का उपयोग और गणितीय सोच विकसित करने के तरीकों और उनकी पड़ताल करते लेख शामिल हैं। हमेशा की तरह इस अंक में भी स्कूली शिक्षा के विविध आयामों पर कुछ और लेख शामिल हैं। 

The March issue of Pathshala is focused on Teaching and Learning Mathematics. There are article exploring mathematics & culture, teaching mathematics in early years, fear of mathematics & origin, concrete material and developing mathematical thinking. As always you also have articles on different dimensions of school education.