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India faces a drought of research in the field of education
Indian education needs research on two fronts. Firstly, how to improve teachers and secondly how to overhaul the system so that learning outcomes are at the center of the curriculum and all governmental efforts.
It is said what can be measured can be improved. If we look at the research on education for a country the size of India, there is an extreme paucity of research efforts currently been taken whether private or governmental.
There can be broadly 2 types of researches that can be done. For the sake of simplicity we will call them the inside-out approach and the outside-in approach. The first approach researches from within the field of education. This is informed by educational thought and epistemic issues, the aims of education and its practices, and the perspectives of the students, teachers and communities involved.
The second approach takes the aims, concerns and practices of education for granted, and investigate the issues in education from the perspective of other disciplines. The bases and assumptions of such a research lie in that particular area of discipline and not education. Similarly, there is too little of research done using the first approach, as a result the second kind gathers disproportionate attention. It’s ironic that education is not the primary perspective of such research, in fact many a times, it focuses on issues of peripheral importance to education.
For research activities to truly bear fruit, a lot of attention needs to be paid to the first kind of research as the outcomes of that research will help in improving the learning outcomes of millions of students across the country. For this we need to consider two center points of Indian education –firstly, the teacher.
The first challenge faced by most Indian teachers is the mixed composition of the class. A typical class would need her to pay attention to 30 odd children, in the age group of 6 to 10. Which means teaching students across Classes I to V together. Many of these children are first generation learners who cannot hope to get any educational assistance from their parents. Then there is the category of student whose primary language is different from the language of instruction at school. Then the last category is of those children who attend school mainly to partake the mid-day meal provided by the school as that is the only square meal that they get in a day.
No matter how well trained or how well intentioned be the teacher who enters such a quintessential classroom, the teacher will have a tough time in prioritising and addressing the issues that she would face. For example: How does she tackle the issue of multiple languages? How does she support children who face acute deprivation? What support does she require and how can we make that happen? How can she deal more effectively with the local community? The answers to these questions hold the key to improving education in India as an appropriate teacher response will improve or stagnate the education system.
Like most questions in the context of humanities, there is no right answer to even one of these questions. Given the extreme variability and fluidity of education because of its human-human interaction, there can be no definitive, universally applicable answers. However, with increasing documented experiences and rigorous reflection, one can arrive at relevant (let’s call them) operating principles that can help in flexibly responding to multiple contexts and situations.
The second center point requires a deeper understanding of the overall education systems. This research has to consider the aims, values and concerns of education. The kinds of questions that emerge are, for example, how can the capacity of our 8.5 million teachers, who have a full-time job, be improved within the constraints and diversity of our education system and social reality? How does community engagement with schools become effective? How can schools foster constitutional values? How should schools be governed, recognizing fully that simplistic, industrial-mindset governance mechanisms are not only ineffective but also harmful to good education? How do we deal with the rot in the pre-service teacher education system? These and other important questions in Indian education are mostly about “how”, which is why immersion in practice and reality are critical to developing relevant understanding.
Educators and organizations, who have wrapped their heads around these questions, have developed a deep and nuanced understanding. Some have conducted systematic inquiry and so have been able to share usable knowledge. However, in comparison to the sheer multitude of these matters and their complexity, such inquiries have been few and far between. With a few notable exceptions, education in India faces a dearth of research on its most relevant questions.
Research in education must focus on the real and important issues within education. This requires educators themselves to become adept at asking and answering research questions, rigorously and systematically. If educators take responsibility for research, it will definitely cause a quiet revolution in education research and education itself.