test

1. Literacy for or against the
poor?
Language, literacy and social
equity in Indian government
schools
Presented by Caroline Dyer
(University of Leeds, UK)
on behalf of the literacy research
project, Diganter, Rajasthan

2. Literacy is…
• A key determinant of well being
• An important social entitlement
• A goal of human development
• To capability theorists - a necessary
condition of well being and human
development
But
International evidence suggests that many
schools are not delivering either enough,
or the right kind of, literacy to enable
development

3. Points of departure..
• Why do schools struggle to provide
individuals with the literacy skills they need?
• What is literacy – uncontested, a set of
technical skills; or multiple and competing
perspectives?
• How are ‘literacy’, schooling and
development connected?

4. Frames of reference..
Literacy trends
Language contexts
Schooling for the poor
Poor schools

5. India’s ‘literacy’ rates (2001)
Literacy
rate
Male Female
National 64.84 75.96 54.16
SC (16.3% of nat’l popul’n) 54.69 66.64 41.90
ST (8.2%) of nat’l popul’n) 47.10 20.56 11.82
All Rajasthan 61.03 76.46 44.34
SC (SCs = 17.2% of Raj
52.2 69.00 33.87
population)
ST (STs = 12. 6% of Raj
population)
44.7 62.1 26.2
What is literacy?
How is it counted?
Improvements due to National Literacy Mission
of 1990; and/or to improvements in enrolment
and retention?

6. Language context
http://www.ling.su.se/staff/lju
ba/maps/india-langs.jpg
1,652 languages in Census 1961
22 listed in Constitution under Schedule VIII
Article 350 A: primary education must be in the
pupil’s mother tongue
Three language formula (TLF) guides educational
provision
• mother language or regional language;
• an official language, either Hindi or English;
• another modern language, Indian or foreign
Hindi = Scheduled language, officially subsumes
47 languages.
In Rajasthan
Hindi widely spoken, is official State language
Rajasthani officially – and controversially -
considered a minor language of Hindi
Rajasthani itself a collective name for a cluster of
18 languages.
Project area languages: Hindi, Rajasthani,
Marwadi, Dhundhadi

7. Schooling for the poor
Expansion of private sector
Government still main
provider of education - often
the only provider for socially
marginalised groups
Disproportionately high
representation of children
from ST, SC, and OBC
groups – de facto ‘poor’.
Government schooling
‘synonymous with
disadvantage’ – flight of the
powerful – poor schools for
poor children

8. Poor state schools?
Facilities
Statistics
Qualitative views
Outcomes
Mean achievement rates Stds. 4-5 are 40-51%.
‘Unacceptably low’
Learner retention (2002-03)
Lower primary drop out 34.9%
Upper primary drop out 52.8%
Processes
Teacher absenteeism
Textbook as ‘sacred icon’
Automatic promotion
Home – school links?

9. From outcomes to processes –
investigating literacy for development
In India
• Research on literacy acquisition dominated by
work on English rather than regional languages
• Research focusing on the pedagogical
implications of acquisition of Indian languages
very rare
• Nascent state of social constructivist educational
research not yet able to contribute qualitative
detail about teaching and learning in the school
– How literacy is actually taught and learned
– Factors affecting documented achievement
levels

10. Literacy as communicative and
cultural practice
Dominant view
Literacy, singular and decontextualised – as ‘individual
psychological practice’ defined in relation to a set of ‘testable
proficiencies’ (Street’s (1984) ‘autonomous’ model)
Alternative view
Literacy as communicative practice, involves repertoires of
socially, culturally, historically situated practices (‘ideological’ –
illiteracy is a social injustice)
Pedagogical implications: Becoming literate always involves
1) ‘code-breaking’ but needs to go beyond that to:
2) meaning-making
3) using texts
4) analysing texts (Freebody and Luke, 1990, 1999)

11. Research into early years literacy
‘What are the links between learners’ achievements in
literacy and the ways in which teachers approach in
practice, and understand in theory, early years language
and literacy teaching?’
2 year, ICICI-bank funded, sited in Diganter NGO in Rajasthan
Baseline in 51 schools -> ethnographies of 10, Sanganer block, Jaipur
1 Map
• the socio-linguistic environment in which these schools are situated
• the ‘literate environment’ beyond the school
• aspirations of children + families for their future and role of education
in achieving them
2 Observe and document early years language learning and literacy
practices in Stds 1, 2 and 5 of select primary schools
3 Work with teachers to understand factors that guide their classroom
practices, including their:
• perceptions of textbooks and supporting materials,
• own theories of language / literacy teaching/learning,
• constructions of children of these communities as learners and users
of literacy now and in the future

12. Project processes and emerging
findings…

13. Language, literacy and the
early years syllabus
The old: Minimum Levels of Learning (MLLs)
outcomes-based, behaviourist; intended to refocus teaching
away from memorising content and towards considering
learning outcomes
Competencies – atomised, stress accuracy of recall,
repetition and technical competence. e.g.
3.1.1 – To identify and read alphabets individually or in
combined form (with ‘Matra’ and without ‘Matra’)
- Code breaking!
The new: NCF (2005) advocates constructivist pedagogy,
distances itself from MLLs
In Rajasthan’s classrooms
syllabus dates from 2000, new State textbooks published
2007 - both reflect the MLL approach

14. Theory of literacy acquisition reflected
in the Rajasthan syllabus
Content analysis of
textbooks
Atomised competencies
No conceptual framework
focusing on reading
competence.
Successful reading anchored
in encoding and decoding
text
Participant classroom
observation
Literacy in the classrooms –
rote and memorisation.
Sub-text: Literacy = attaining
correctness in the standard
language
How do teachers see these
learners?
How is language used /
valued?
Language as a resource, or a
barrier?

15. Achievement tests
and error analysis
Baseline - develop and administer short
tests in Hindi of children’s level of
attainment of stipulated competencies.
Many schools unable to provide a random
sample of 10 children per class although
this many were on the roll.
All questions scored high proportions of
‘no attempt’ - needs further
investigation.
Researchers administering the tests
needed to use local languages to help
children understand the requirement of
each question.
Influence of local language via
vocabulary and pronunciation.
‘Dhundhadi’ unofficially used as the
language of instruction.

16. Work with teachers
Bigger picture: a crisis of government teacher education
Previous research in state-managed District Institutes of
Education and Training:
• Teachers’ pre-service training largely geared to improving
students’ grasp of subject content, pedagogy neglected.
• Language work focuses on improving grasp of H – not
pedagogical implications of students speaking L
• Linguistic diversity of classrooms not addressed
• Teacher preparation lacks contextual relevance in contexts
of socio-economic and linguistic diversity
Perpetuation of prevailing inequalities through (demotivated)
teacher judgements about these children as learners, and
their place as citizens

17. Social mapping
PRA methods in villages
Literate environment
Languages spoken in private and public
domains
Literacy audit in homes
Parental aspirations for children – where
does schooling fit in ? (gender sensitive)

18. Work with children
• Focus on very small sample of children
and follow their specifically in classrooms
and outside
• How do home and school lives link?
• What aspirations do these learners have
for themselves?
• What knowledge and language resources
could be available for teaching and
learning?

19. Partnership working – academic
and NGO
• Developing research capacity
– Action vs reflection>action
– Objectivity and outrage
– Existing relationships with power structures
• Training ethnographers
– Substantive experience
– Depth and detail
– Language of observation, reporting and critique
• Impact, outreach and dissemination