Padma M. Sarangapani

Tooley, Dixon and Gomathi on private education in Hyderabad: a reply

Tooley, Dixon and Gomathi maintain that private unrecognised unaided schools in Hyderabad, India, catering for children of the poor, provide a better level of education than do their government counterparts. We examine this contention and argue first that Tooley et al.’s conceptualisation of education and its benefits is flawed and second that the evidence selected and provided to prove the empirical side of the case is one‐sided and unrepresentative. We conclude that their case remains unproven and that flaws in the argument and its evidence provide no substantial case for their contention.

History of the quality debate

The term ‘quality’ as used in recent education discourse has its origins in the factory floor and production, as a measure of control of the features of merchandise produced. In the form of measureable specifications, it is used by national bureaucracies and international aid and lending agencies as lending itself to scientific management of and monitoring investments in education. Going back to the concept of ‘quality’ as the essential character of a thing, the paper argues that quality has always been integral to the concept of education, deriving from what is considered worthwhile as an aim or experience in education. The paper traces the history of the term beginning with important changes in the concept of education influenced by education thinkers and moving to the role of the concept in the context of universalisation of education, the growing importance of democracy as a political choice, and economic globalisation. The final section of the paper draws out implications for teacher professionalism, influences onpolicy, the idea of accountability and the place of philosophical perspective and cultural sensitivity in education.

Quality Concerns National and Extra-national Dimensions

The paper analyses the varying meanings of quality in policy discourse since the term’s appearance as an operational element in planning programmes for educational reform, in the Indian context. It argues that the narrowness of meaning now associated with the term has its origins in the management–accountability approach of western donor agencies to third world education, especially as State provided education is increasingly seen as limited to the poor. Such a minimalist conception leads to limiting the possibility of fundamental reform in education.

Soft Disciplines and Hard Battles

Many of us who conduct research on and teach education in institutes of higher education have been socialised to think of education as a discipline. Yet not only do we find this status disputed, but we also frequently encounter challenges to our claims as experts and to the form and structure of our discourse, both by members of the public and, more disconcertingly, by fellow academics from other disciplines. Some of these experiences can be explained through the idea of ‘soft discipline’. More recent work on the characteristics of, and interactions between, disciplines, drawing on their epistemological, sociological and economic dimensions, further helps to put these encounters in perspective. I will present and discuss this issue here. I will then examine the experience of education and identify new dimensions of interactions between disciplines in the context of funding and interactions in the public sphere. I will end with reflections on the debate on according a disciplinary status to education and the nature of education, knowledge and action.

Re-evaluating Constructivism and the NCF: An Examination of the Arguments

Sadhna Saxena in her paper in the special issue of Contemporary Education Dialogue 4(1) claims that more than the concerns regarding local knowledge which followed during and soon after the National Curriculum Framework 2005 was brought out, it is the confusion in the representation of ‘pedagogy, cognition and epistemology in the NCF that is of serious concern’ (Saxena 2006: 54). Her main contention in the first part of her paper seems to be that the constructivism espoused by the NCF 2005 overemphasises the primacy of the child in knowledge construction and thus does not acknowledge the need for instruction and teaching in learning, or the learning processes involved in the different disciplinary areas (ibid.: 57). She seems to be in agreement with Matthews

Book Review: PPP Paradox: Promise and Perils of Public Private Partnership in EducationGopalanPrithaPPP Paradox: Promise and Perils of Public Private Partnership in Education. New Delhi: SAGE Publications. 2013. 176 pages. ₹495 [HB].

Contemporary Education Dialogue, 11, 2 (2014): 235–249 recommended by the NKC and instead seeks to continue to exercise its role as the sole regulatory authority for universities in India. The contours of this disagreement and the subsequent churning in Indian higher education—including the recent fiasco at Delhi University and the rise of new government-financed as well as private universities— serve to reveal vividly that the work of committees, commissions and reports provides a less than accurate map of the directions in which we are headed. In light of this, the event-specific immediacy of analysis that frames most of the articles in this volume is better understood and appreciated, although it would be useful to have a new body of research that emerges from and builds upon the dense empirical analysis it offers.

Amartya Sen’s capability approach and social justice in education, edited by M. Walker and E. Unterhalter, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 292 pp., £19.99, ISBN 978-0-23-010459-4

Melanie Walker and Elaine Unterhalter’s edited collection provides essential reading for those who wish to understand the progress and journey of the field of education in relation to the capability approach (CA) and social justice. The book develops theoretical understandings of the CA and education, focusing mainly on developing children’s capabilities through education, leadership and administration, gender equality and the role of higher education. In this sense, the book does not give a comprehensive overview, but rather uses the selected examples to demonstrate some of the key strengths and challenges of applying the CA in education. In terms of structure, the book is divided into three key parts. Part I tackles ‘Theoretical Perspectives on the Capability Approach and Education’, with three broad theoretical chapters and two gender-oriented chapters. Part II moves on to consider applications of the CA. Chapter Seven considers the role of capabilities in the management of trust, while Chapter Eight discusses education and capabilities in Bangladesh. There is a chapter on gender equality (Chapter Nine), one on children’s capabilities (Chapter 10) as well as a chapter on women’s access to higher education (Chapter 11). Part III of the book consists of a concluding chapter, written by editors Walker and Unterhalter. This is followed by a helpful bibliography at the end and; although this bibliography is now somewhat out of date, the editors have helpfully included the web address of the Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA), where a more up-to-date bibliography on education and the CA is maintained. The editors are keen to point out that the CA is not a complete theory of justice (3) and posit that Sen’s famous question, ‘equality of what?’, encourages us to think about the kind of equality we wish to pursue. Thus, in education this might relate to ‘equivalent learning opportunities’ (3), but arguably also to experiences and consequences of education. In the opening pages, Walker and Unterhalter helpfully outline some of the fundamental concepts within the CA including the nature of equality, capabilities, British Journal of Sociology of Education Vol. 33, No. 4, July 2012, 607–619

Characterising Literacy: A Study of Western and Indian Literacy Experiences

Dr R. Narasimhan, one of Indias pioneers in the area of computing and artificial intelligence, is also among the few in the country to have researched and written about fundamental issues in language behaviour (see Annexure 2 in the book for an autobiographical note). In Characterising Literacy he brings together his insights on the nature of literacy, informed by literacy and orality as manifested in Indian cultural artefacts and practices. For a country with a vast non-literate population, a rich oral tradition in performing arts and crafts and an inheritance of scholarship developed almost exclusively in the oral mode, there is much work on literacy, but little that goes below the surface to understand and explore its cognitive and societal consequences. We have accepted the need for achieving total literacy, and we cite low literacy levels as indicative of our poor human development records. Narasimhans reflections are suggestive of the reasons why acquiring literacy, particularly through schooling, has become an essential aspect of the modern world. Moreover, he draws attention to different types of literacy and to the interlinkages between literacy and orality.