Abstract
This paper presents a case study of science teaching in an eighth grade school classroom in India. It comes out of a larger ethnographic study done in 2005 that looked at how science was taught and learned in a rural government run middle school in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India. Subscribing to a sociocultural perspective, the paper presents a narrative account of how a science teacher negotiated and made use of the existing discourses that influenced his teaching practice to construct learning experiences for his students. It is a portrait of him as a bricoleur, engaged in making-do with what is of available to conform to prescriptive discursive norms as well as engage in situated, contingent and collaborative pedagogical improvisations with his students. Through a discursive analysis of Mr. Raghuvanshi’s teaching practice, this paper presents his bricolage as a feature of everyday sociocultural practices, and as an instance of glocalization of decontextualized school science discourse. It also offers a case for creation and strengthening of material conditions that support enactment of teacher agency for construction of meaningful and relevant learning experiences for students.
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Notes
One reason for the Block Education officer’s emphasis on ‘covering’ the course could be the fact that the academic year was coming to a close.
Teachers often extended or shortened their class periods with concurrence of other teachers.
This and all the following dialogues quoted in this paper happened in Hindi language, and thus appear here in translation. However, use of English words wasn’t uncommon. Words or phrases in quotation marks represent those that were spoken in English.
“Kisan torch” is a torch light with rechargeable battery that is commonly used in Indian villages. The word “kisan” means a farmer.
MBD and GPH referred to by Raghuvanshi here are test preparation guide books that were popular with students.
Many male students in the class had experience of soldering electric circuits at home.
For instance, about 54% of children population in the age group 11–14 years that should be enrolled in and attending middle school, are out of school in India (Mehta 2005).
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Acknowledgements
I owe a debt of gratitude to several the students and teachers of the school where this study was conducted, to friends in Eklavya Foundation, Bhopal, India for making the study possible, and to Andy Anderson for his precious and vigilant guidance. Irfan Muzaffar, Danielle Ford, Eric Eslinger, Kelly Grindstaff and the editors of this journal also helped a lot in improving this paper by their valuable comments and suggestions.
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Sharma, A. Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur: A case study from India. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 3, 811–841 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-008-9120-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-008-9120-2