Quality Schooling for the Poor: Teachers for Inclusive Society
June 29, 2019
Bringing children from the disadvantaged sections into school is a challenge. Once they are in, being in the school does not necessarily mean that they learn. Teachers play an important role in retaining as well as in bringing back children to school and making them learn. There are several such teachers in the system. The purpose of the Quality Schooling for the Poor: Teachers for Inclusive Society project has been to document the work of those teachers in the government schools, who have done and are doing exceptional work in providing access and quality education to children from the disadvantaged sections of the society.
This reflective documentation was captured through first-person professional conversations and re-constructed to reflect the lives of these teachers who make a difference to the education and well-being of children in the Teachers for Inclusive Society section of the University Practice Connect initiative. These narratives carry the imagination of the children in classrooms and schools in the public education system, teachers’ knowledge about a range of aspects besides their pedagogical content knowledge, an understanding of beliefs and attitudes in the context of their work, challenges and resilience in going against the odds of their profession, their socio-political and economic contexts, their professional identities and their wisdom emerging from the experiences in their relationship with students, parents and the local community.
The knowledge-sharing workshop on June 29, 2019 proposes to bring together the ten project-participant teachers, some selected teachers from each of the districts that these teachers belong to, field institute members and university faculty to engage collectively, share and learn from one another the ways to strengthen the quality of our public education system which a majority of the nation’s children attend.