The talk in classrooms between teachers and children is important because it defines what knowledge will become a part of ‘school-related knowledge’ and whose voices will be allowed to shape this. But the value is in more than simply allowing children to speak and share their experiences.

When children’s talk is heard in the context of an ongoing discussion they realise that their experiences and perceptions are important and develop the mental skills needed to think and reason independently and to construct knowledge. This is particularly important for children from rural and underprivileged backgrounds. As their cultures are often poorly represented in official school textbooks, classroom talk could play an important role in including their knowledge and life experiences within their education.

Indian classrooms, like those of many Asian and developing countries, are known to be dominated by the ‘textbook culture’, where teachers use their authority to ensure learning textbook knowledge remains the focus of classroom activities. One would therefore expect to hardly hear children’s voices in classrooms, except when they answer the teacher’s questions. An ethnographic study from the University of Delhi of an Indian village primary school, found that classroom negotiations are not always so simple.

Observations made over six months, of the classroom transactions of children between 9 and 11 years old, revealed that some teachers used a great deal of information from sources other than textbooks. Their classrooms were also quite noisy, but although children said a lot, the teacher used subtle techniques to ensure that their contributions were excluded. For example, a teacher might ignore a child, to suggest that what he or she was saying was not worthy of consideration: commenting on a student’s contributions might suggest that there was something of value in what was being said.

Other tactics observed to exclude children’s voices were:

• bracketing out the child’s voice, claiming that he or she was breaking a communication rule, with comments such as ‘Is this a class or a playground? (He) talks too much’.
• disqualifying the information, claiming it was based on false criteria and therefore invalid knowledge. For example, a class were reading about Martin Luther King:

Teacher: His only sin was that he was black.

Manoj: Discrimination on the basis of colour ji!

Teacher (Mockingly): You were not born then. How do you know?

The latter technique was particularly effective in silencing the child’s voice, because the teacher suggested that the speaker had pretensions and was lying.

Children’s observations ‘hung around’ the ongoing lessons, never becoming a part of ‘official knowledge’. It seemed that their knowledge was not valued by the school. These tactics did not silence children completely, yet most of them seemed to believe that knowledge was primarily information to be gained from others ‘who know better’, like teachers and officers. Students also seemed to believe that knowledge is information to be memorised, rather than understood. A small minority thought out answers for themselves, but most children believed it was essential to repeat only those dictated by the teacher. This occurred to the extent that the few children who reasoned and wrote their own answers were thought to be immoral and trying to find easy ways out.

A further effect of the way the curriculum is structured, with teachers excluding children’s voices, is that school knowledge remains separate from everyday knowledge. While in school, students would say, for example, that all plants grow from seeds, but outside school, they asserted that weeds don't grow from seeds but come up on their own. When students were asked to locate their own village within the geography of India, some students were surprised by the mention of their village with reference to knowledge that seemed to belong only within school.

The research indicates a need for encouraging teachers to become more sensitive to and respectful of children’s learning. However, the practices which cause children to be passive learners and separate school knowledge from everyday knowledge are supported by shared beliefs of teachers, community, and even the children themselves, about the nature of learners, of learning and knowledge. Alternative practices will only become possible when there are alternative belief frameworks to support them.

Source(s):
'Constructing School Knowledge: an ethnography of learning in an Indian village', by P. M. Sarangapani, New Delhi: Sage, 2003

id21 Research Highlight: 12 September, 2003

Further Information:
Padma M Sarangapani

Tel: +91 80 360 4351
Fax: +91 80 360 6634
Contact the contributor: psarangapani@hotmail.com

Other related links:
'Class struggles: the challenges of achieving schooling for all', Insights Education #2

See the id21 links page on inclusive education