Cultures of Learning Mapping the New Spaces of Critical Pedagogy in India

This book looks at educational institutions and their role as sites of learning in times of moral and political chaos. It highlights the erosion of critical pedagogical traditions in universities in India and registers the ongoing responses and struggles as educational experiences.

This book develops a critical approach by redefining education from the perspective of learning as a political act to experience the complex network of learning activities beyond the confines of educational institutions. It also locates caste, gender and religious hierarchies in schools and universities in India. The book explores the extremely contradictory experiences of academic spaces that have resulted in the development of uncharted sites of learning. Being mindful of these multiple strands, the authors examine the culture of learning and reflect on the space for critical learning, activism, dissent and self-reflexivity in schools and universities in India. The goal of diverse experiences of learning is to derive new meaning to the conceptions of critical pedagogy as a political act for democratising education.

This transdisciplinary book will be of interest to students and researchers of education, sociology, history, political studies and public policy.

Acknowledgements

Introduction: In Search of Critical Pedagogy

Suresh Babu G.S AND arunima naithani

Part I

Place of Learning in Critical Pedagogy

1 Recounting Critical Pedagogy and the Culture of Learning

Suresh Babu G.S

Part II

Vocation of Teaching: Reflection on the Pedagogic Journey

2 Teaching, Learning and Thinking in Contemporary Times: A Conversation with Avijit Pathak

Nabanipa Bhattacharjee AND Suresh Babu G. S

3 A Gender Perspective as Critical Pedagogy: Reflections on a Research Course

GEETHA B NAMBISSAN

4 Why Critical Pedagogy matters in History Classrooms? Challenges of Undergraduate Teaching in Delhi University

Levin N R

Part Iii

Transgressing Boundaries: Politics, Pedagogy, Ethics

5 ‘Casting’ Mentors: Critical Pedagogy and Caste-Categories in Indian Higher Education

Ratheesh Kumar

6 Alienation as Freedom: The Dalit Vagabonds

Harish S. Wankhede

7 Dalit Assertions and Critical Pedagogy: Learning from Dalit Students Struggles in University

Chandraiah Gopani

Part Iv

Tensions In and Out of Classroom: Adaption, Integration and Coercion

8 Storytelling for a Critical Literacy in Primary School

Prachi Kalra

9 Technology in Education: Critical Reflections

Jagjit Kaur

10 Decoding the Hijab Ban: Student Resistance and Pedagogical Possibilities in Contemporary India

P P HASEEB

PART V

Politics/Pedagogy: Students, Youth Mobilisation and Subaltern Resistance

11 Student: Politics or Pedagogy

Praveen THALLAPELLI

12 Digital Activism: Political Mobilisation of Youth in Uttarakhand, North India

ARUNIMA NAITHANI AND DEVAM THAPA

13 Pedagogy of Critical Resistance: Learning from the Subaltern Protest

SURESH BABU G.S

Index

Suresh Babu G.S is faculty of Sociology of Education at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His major publications include ‘Education and the Public Sphere: Exploring the Structures of Mediation in Post-colonial India’ (Routledge UK, 2020), and ‘Contextualising Educational Studies in India: Research, Policy and Practices’ (Routledge, 2021). He has been visiting scholar (2015 & 2017) at the University of Cologne, Germany; former expert committee member for Tamil Nadu State Education Policy and consultant for SCERT Kerala school textbooks. Currently, he is a member of the editorial advisory board, Policy Press, University of Bristol.

Arunima Naithani is a doctoral research scholar at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral research focuses on social history, regional development, higher education and youth, in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand. She holds dual master’s (education and rural management) along with M.Phil. in Educational Studies. She has previously taught undergraduate students (sociology and psychology) and also holds professional work experience in the social development sector (NGOs and research consultancy). She continues to actively undertake research projects and her academic interests include education, urban sociology and digital technology.