Why this English-medium-veri di?

I was (am) an English teacher and the language opens doors for me. But I am very concerned about the increasing mania for instruction in English.
This editorial was published in July 2012 in The Open Page. Read it below or at  (http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=366045620135137&set=a.366045226801843.83548.136382846434750&type=1&theater)

Why this English-medium-veri di?

Admission to English-medium schools has rocketed by 280%! We all want to send our children to schools in which all subjects are taught in English. Why? Why this craze for English-medium instruction? Do our children learn better and more when taught in English as against in Gujarati or Hindi? Do they become smarter or cleverer? Parents with children in English-medium schools in various states in India have their own ideas. Let us see if you agree with them.

Why English-medium schools?

For economic capital. First of all, English is absolutely necessary for my child to get a job. The kind and level of jobs available without a command of English are not good enough for us. I would also like my child to be able to work all over India or the world; without English, my child will be confined to living in one or two states.

For academic capital. All higher education is in English only, especially professional courses like medicine and engineering or in IT. For my child to go to college, he will need to have studied all subjects in English. This is even more important if he is to abroad for higher studies.

For social capital. All of our friends’ kids go to English-medium schools. How can I be left out? What kind of friends will my child have if he does not go to the same kind of school? Who will he play with? Who will invite him to birthday parties?

We feel proud when our children speak English in company. At a party at home or a family wedding, when my child sings an English song or recites a poem, all the guests are impressed. It won’t be the same if they recited a poem in Hindi or sang a song in Gujarati.

Cultural Capital. Let us face it. English-medium schools are more sophisticated than regional language schools. They are stricter, with more discipline and better facilities. The teachers are more refined and classy.

Learning English vs Learning in English

I entirely agree that English is essential for a better job prospect, for higher education and for a wider educational experience. I can also sympathise with the need to keep up appearances.

But there seems to be a small problem here. My friends are confusing ‘learning English’ with ‘learning in English’. Learning English is to be able speak, read and write English fluently. Learning in English is to study all subjects such as maths and science and conduct all school activities such as games and drama in English. So, knowing English is not the same as studying all subjects in English.

And there are two problems with studying in English-medium schools. The first is that research says very clearly that learning both the content and the language at the same time doubles the difficulty for students. Once students know the content, they can easily learn to express the ideas in English. So your child may be better off learning the fundamentals of math and science in Gujarati first in primary school. In the higher classes, students could then learn the English words for the ideas and concepts they already know, which would be much easier for them.

And how many times have you complained about the teachers’ standards of English? The fact is that we do not have required number of teachers to teach all subjects in English. While the teachers may know the subject, not all of them have a good command of English. Thus, teachers teach math in the English they know, which may not be very much. So the students end up learning neither math nor English very well. On the other hand, if the teacher taught in a language she is comfortable with, the content would be well taught.

So perhaps we need to seriously consider providing a regional language medium for the primary classes and the moving the students to English-medium for the high school. And good schools with high-standards will open up if we create a demand for it.

As for the social aspiration of having children be proficient in learning to speak English fluently, that is where tuition classes can be useful. If these were to focus on conversational English, students could learn songs and poems to their parents’ hearts content without their academics being affected.

Where sophistication is concerned, my friends have a right to their opinion. But how important is that for the primary schools? Isn’t it more important for our children to get a good grounding in the subjects?

So let us see if we can build good schools that help children learn to be bright and intelligent and know math and science and social studies very well – in the regional language. Then we can send them to English classes to learn to be socially proficient. By ending this kolaveri for English-medium education, parents and students can win!

Fearful Students Fearing Teachers

We expect our students to be proficient in all genres of writing. This year I stretched myself to see if I could write differently. I write 'academese' for scholarly journals. My writing in The Hindu was a journalism feature article.
This is a third level of casualness I am attempting, and perhaps the most difficult for me.
The Open Page (http://www.facebook.com/#!/TheOpenPage) is newspaper meant for parents, students and teachers publsihed in Ahmedabad, India. This article on corporal punishment is only about 500 words but keeping the research down and 'talking' more than 'writing' is breaking down barriers for me. Check my article out in the May issue (http://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?fbid=332034043536295&set=a.308809069192126.72803.136382846434750&type=1&theater).

Sri Lanka: Overlaying Impressions of Radio Ceylon

I grew up listening to Binaca Geetmala every week. And hearing Devika pronounced differently. Radio Ceylon was a staple of my adolescence. And then came LTTE in my adult days. Going to Sri Lanka for two weeks was the beginning of a third phase of connections to and impressions of the island.

Arrival in Sri Lanka

Did I feel important! When I landed, an official appointed by Dr. Hemamala Rattwatte was waiting by, who ushered me through immigration, customs and into a cab, which flew through the city. There was a slight hiccup in neither the cab driver nor I knew where I was supposed to go and I didn’t have Hemamala’s phone number. But that was soon resolved and I reached Open University of Sri Lanka safely. My host Dilini Walisundra came by to discuss my schedule and take me out to a real Sri Lankan dinner of kottu and curry. And my first shopping trip to buy – a towel!

My presentations

I had two presentations to university faculty, at OUSL and the University of Jaffna, and three to English teachers in Kurunegala, Jaffna and Zahira College, Colombo. A total of 5 which involved travelling across the country and meeting very different groups of people. Each workshop was attended by 30-60 teachers.

Kurunegala - The workshop was in closed room, 50 people and no air-con. But the participation was enthusiastic. Though the day began with one participant who fainted as we were talking. No, I didn’t scare her; she forgot to take her blood pressure medication.

I am even more convinced, if I needed to be, that teachers over the world are asked to be doers and not thinkers. And then we complain that students and our young people are getting less and less capable of critical thinking. What I do not practice I will not teach. And while all teachers may not be from the top of their class, they are capable of thinking, they have definite ideas of who they are as teachers and if we don’t value their beliefs and expect them to articulate them and act on their beliefs, which are mostly conducive to commitment to teaching and students, we will be left with an uncritical, unthinking, unmotivated group of people who treat teaching as a career and will be content to remain the warm bodies in the classroom that we allow them to be. Our loss, in effect.

Galle

I went there the day after the England-Sri Lanka match, pity. But I was able to see the grounds which are in the shadow of the fort. It was amusing to see boys and girls in a mixed team playing cricket just outside the fort walls against a magnificent background of the Indian Ocean. The spectators sat on the walls of the fort in the blazing sun.

My enduring memory is of drinking wood apple juice, which I haven’t seen since I was a child. I remember my grandmother scolding us for picking unripe wood-apples, which tasted sour, if not bitter. But we couldn’t wait for the ripe ones which we would have mixed with jiggery. Delicious.

Sigiriya and Dumbulla

Kandyan Reach in Kurunegala has to be the best value for money. The hotel was clean, the room spacious and clean, and the food good. Most welcome after a hot day out. In case you don’t know, I am not at my physical fittest right now. And climbing umpteen steps at both places was taxing but worth it, if only because I could pride myself on having done both places in a single day, which I advised not to. The frescos at Sigiriya reminded me that buxom is good and I don’t have to worry about not being reed-thin, a hangover of living in the US. Dambulla with it myriad statues of the Buddha was impressive. After the climb, done in the full glare of the afternoon sun, I needed to rest my feet. As I sat on my haunches and cross-legged in turn in each of the caves, other visitors presumed that I was praying and walked around me softly. And I can hear my family and friends cackling at my projection of piety.

The bus rides were fine and cheap. I paid more for each auto ride than for the bus rides put together. And if I was getting fleeced, it was no more than I could afford.

Kandy

I had many claims to interest in Kandy: the elephant orphanage in Pinnewala; the Temple of the Tooth; the train ride. All of them lived up to my expectations. Hemamala had provided contacts to finalize a car for the day (and it took 3 attempts and four people to pull this off) and it was most useful. If I had had to take a bus to Pinnewala, I may have taken a rain check on it, it was so hot.

Meeting Deepika was meant to be a pro forma, my sister’s friend. But we were in the car for 7 hours and didn’t stop talking (No, I don’t want to hear So why is that a surprise?)

Jaffna

I am the first Fulbright scholar to go to Jaffna in recent times sponsored by SLELTA (no pressure, folks!). Just getting here was an adventure and quite fraught. Dilini tried to prevent me retracing my steps from Kurunegala to Colombo but I had no choice. So that day was a 4 hour Kurunegala-Colombo bus ride followed a couple of hours later by another 10 hour Colombo-Jaffna ride. Fortunately, the second was a very comfortable air-conditioned bus. I went into my presentation without much rest but was enthused by the faculty of U of Jaffna ELTC department.

I was sleep-deprived since I cannot sleep on a bus, and our accommodation that night was in a fairly clean but closed-in room in which the electricity went off at least three times. The second night the accommodation at the Christian Theological Seminary in bucolic surroundings with birds chirping was very pleasant, once Dilini got the rooms cleaned and dusted, and arranged for fresh bed sheets.

Hearing Tamil widely spoken, and being able to connect to the Tamils here through the language is exhilarating.

The effects of war are to be seen everywhere. There are portions of the outlying areas that are still abandoned, and have been since 1990. Locals point to all the derelict buildings that had been occupied by the army for more than a decade. The railway line was torn up by the LTTE for girders to build bunkers and the train station looks neglected and forsaken. Roads are being re-laid but the progress appears to be slow. 

We met one family that had lost all its male members. The women had spent 22 years in and around Jaffna, staying in no place longer than a year, and finally came back to their house a year ago. They have set up a small roadside shop selling sweets and crisps with the government compensation and are hoping to be able to settle back into their own lives.

There is a lot of residual fear. We had taken an auto to see the areas that had been cleared out by the army. I temporarily lost sight of two of my friends. The auto driver drove back and forth along the road frantically peering into every disused building and overgrown bush. His sigh of relief when we spotted them was audible and heartfelt.

There are still a lot of regrets. Every person we met had lost a family member, from the auto driver to university personnel. The scars have not healed and it is unrealistic to expect them to forget their losses, even if they have moved on in certain ways. We also happened on an orphanage attached to a temple. The girls there are orphaned or certainly do not have a mother. They looked well-groomed. One of them sang in the temple and looked the picture of devotion. The head of the orphanage is a retired principal of a local school and his wife works at the U of Jaffna. Another woman has opened her house to blind children. One of her protégés is now a lecturer at a local university.

Signs of regeneration and growth are slight but promising. Schools were permitted to be re-opened in cordoned off areas about 10 years ago, and now everyone has access, not just students and teachers. The school we visited was the first missionary co-ed school in South Asia. New buildings have been built and they are well maintained. There is a kitchen garden in the centre of the ground, and growing something so eminently practical and home-oriented was indicative of how much normalcy the people ache for.

War-affected children were provided counselling in schools for a year or so early in the millennium but nothing since. And they have no help in processing their memories and their losses as they grow up. Teachers feel the need to address issues related to the effects of the war but are not encouraged to do so. No one talks about it professionally. They have to input into how to deal with suicidal children. The English curriculum and materials are bland and devoid of all mention of the war or its effects. How can we talk about authenticity in such an approach to teaching and learning which ignores such powerful personal experiences of teachers and learners?

If the Sri Lankan government means to integrate Tamils into the society, they should move faster. Destroying all reminders of the 30-year war such as cemeteries and statues of LTTE leaders may be convenient in the short run but the Tamils are resentful that they are being wiped of all historical landmarks. The events are too close to them yet to renounce their past, though they do not want to go back to being war-torn. And the psychological scars of war must be addressed faster and more specifically, with both short-term and long-term plans.

Sri Lanka is tidy and clean, and that to me was the main difference from India. I could walk around without having to watch my step, wary of stepping on rubbish and filth. Even the restaurants and rest rooms in the areas more remote from Colombo are clean.

The food in SL is heavenly, and I have been very lucky, especially in Jaffna. My insistence on no-onion-no-garlic prompted about four queries of whether I am a Brahma Kumari. I had to regretfully claim personal preference and whimsy rather than a mandate by religion. In Jaffna, I had two delicious home-cooked meals. Jaya and Prof. Bhavan provided idlis with the works, chatnis, molagai podi and madras sambar. Vani cooked up a storm with two sauces, vegetables, chatnis, rice, pittu, curd and a delicious home-made lemon pickle.

However, in one respect it reminded me Indonesia – Like Jakarta, Colombo appears to be the only major city in the country. Sophistication is confined to the capital with its choice of cuisines, shopping arenas and transport. All the other places are more like smaller towns in India; in fact a Tamil compared Jaffna to Trichy. The further you are removed from Colombo the less modernity is evident. And it doesn’t look like the Sri Lankan government plans to share elements of modernity with Jaffna, which may be one way of healing the wounds of war.

The people who made my visit possible (Dilini, Hemamala and Shyamani) and those I met by chance (Vimansha, Paranthaman, Prof. Bhavan, Killi, Daniel, Deepika among others) were responsible for my thorough enjoyment of SL. (No, this is not a vote of thanks, though ti is starting to sound like one.) The place was beautiful and the people ever so helpful. How else would I have been able to attend a doctoral defense back at UWG? I worked hard, played hard, and came back with a tan my grandmother would not have approved. 

And now to find my way back...

No Place for Fear in Classroom

The wide spread use of corporal punishment as noted in the recent study by NCPCR and the long-lasting effects such punishment on children are the basis for the this article.
It is getting easier to write for the popular press, and not worry about not having references. This appeared when I was at the Central and South Asia Fulbright Conference. It gave us all a kick to see the Fulbright affiliation in print.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article2932688.ece

Where motive is profit, education takes a back seat

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/article2745141.ece
My first (and last) article this year as a Fulbright-Nehru scholar.
More to come in 2012.
Merry Christmas and a happy new year to all.

Mining in Odissa

Odissa and Konark have always attracted me. The chance to see them both was too much to pass up. It is also one of the first states to respond to the Right to Education Act and publish state rules. I had planned to visit school in the rural area, both government and private, which would enable me to understand the ground realities of RtE more clearly. Unfortunately, nature flooded out my plans. The schools were closed and teachers were off on ancillary tasks, in this instance providing flood relief to their students and their families.

However, there is always something new to learn. And I had the best guide possible in my uncle Mr. K.S.Ramachandran, with his long stint in Odissa. He had arranged for me to visit the iron ore mine and manganese smelting plant in Joda. He also has a wealth of information about the mines and minerals, which he has willingly shared. Look for the pictures on my Facebook.

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JODA IRON ORE MINE OF TATA IRON AND STEEL COMPANY

By

K. S. Ramachandran

Orissa Mining Corporation (1957-1964)

Joint secretary, Ministry of Mines and Metals (1969-1971)

Chairman, Mineral Development (1979-1981)

Chairman and Managing Director, National Aluminium Company, (1981-1983)

Tata iron and Steel Company (TISCO) was set up in Bihar State at Jamshedpur in the early part of the 20^th century. It is now in the jurisdiction of the Jharkhand state. Originally, the plant drew it its iron ore input from the Mayurbhanj district of Orissa. But after independence, when TISCO began expanding it steel production, it had to open new mines in Karnjhar district of Orissa. Joda East was thus opened up in that district in 1957. Iron ore despatches began in 1959 by which time the rail link had been extended from Barajamda Railway station to Banspani, which is about 3 miles from Joda East mine. Banspani railway station has been an iron ore outlet and has been serving an ever-growing mineral traffic since then.

Size Specifications

Originally, the steel plants of India were able to accept only iron ore of the size of 10 mm or more and these were described as lumpy or direct ore. A few years after 1960, they began to use the sizes between 0.15 and 10 mm after they were agglomerated or ‘sintered’ together, by the use of binders. These are called sinters. Recently, they have begun to accept sizes even smaller than 0.15 mm. These materials are ground down to a fine mesh and pellets are made with the help of strong binding agents and fired to harden them initially, before being fed into the blast furnace.

Total Resources / Minimisation of Wastage of Minerals

Joda East mine has an iron ore deposit spread over 6 square kilometres and contains one of the richest deposits in the region. It was originally provided with an ‘ore dressing plant’ capable of delivering 4.2 million tonnes/year (mty) of high grade lumpy ore containing 63-65% iron.  A few years after this ‘direct ore’ supply had started, TISCO had set up a sinter plant and so the sinter feed also began to be despatched from Banspani, thereby minimising the wastage of mined material. Still, substantial heaps of usable materials, which were less than 0.15 mm in size, had to be left at the mine end so far. 

Production Planning

Till recently, the steel plant capacity was 5 mty for which the iron ore feedstock of 8 mty was required. (one tonne of steel requires 1.6 tonnes of iron ore ) It was assembled from direct ore, sintered ore and some marginal purchase of ore from other mine-owners.

In the near future, maybe within a year, the steel plant is being expanded to produce 10 mty. The iron ore supply has accordingly to be raised to 16 mty. The Joda East mine is therefore being expanded to meet this demand. A new additional ore dressing plant with a capacity of 6 mty is under construction at Joda, through a construction contract awarded to Larsen and Toubro. When this becomes operational, then the total supply of direct (lumpy) ore and sinter feed ore will amount to 10 mty. This would leave a gap of 6 mty. For fulfilling this requirement, a new pellet plant of 6 mty is being built at Jamshedpur. A new washing plant is also being added at the mine end to wash and beneficiate (i.e, upgrade) the ultrafine particles, (less than 0.15 mm size) which had so far been thrown away as rejects. The input for the washing plant would be drawn both from ultrafines, being currently generated as well as from all the old dumps. The beneficiated ultrafines will be taken for being agglomerated at the new pellet plant at Jamshedpur.

It is now realized that, in the future, from considerations of conservation of minerals, even low grade iron ore (containing 45 – 58% iron) - which is not even reckoned as ore of iron nowadays -- should be upgraded and made useable in Iron and steel making. TISCO is now conducting research for this purpose. In limited quantities, even the parent rock, Banded Haematite Quartz (BHQ), which contains barely 35% iron, can be used. TISCO plans to use it in carefully controlled doses. The silicon content in the quartzite part of the BHQ serves to balance high alumina iron ores and improves the chemistry of the total charge into the blast furnace.

Mine Operation

At Joda East, the mine benches are of 10 metres height. Blast holes are drilled at intervals of 4 metres and spacing 3 metres between two rows of holes. Everyday’s iron ore requirement is about 30,000 tonnes (roughly 10,000 cubic metres, as 1 cu.m. of ore weighs 5onnes). This will be yielded, if a 100 metre face length is blasted off to a width of 10 metres, the bench height being 10metres. Normally, blasting is done once in 3 days and the output of iron ore for three days’ requirement is blasted on each occasion. In this manner, blasting is done only on 10-12 days per month. This minimises the risk to men and materials, by reducing the number of occasions, when the mining area and the 500 metres around it has to be cleared of men and machinery for conducting the blasting.

The explosive used is ammonium nitrate. It becomes explosive only when it is mixed with certain chemicals. The actual mixing is done only in the borehole itself. The ingredients are individually non-explosive, till they are mixed. Once the mixture is made inside the blasthole, it is detonated from a safe distance. This modern procedure minimises chances of accidents and injuries.

The blasting patterns and explosive charges are carefully calculated and designed to produce rock pieces of maximum 1 metre size along any axis. These rocks are picked up by 5.9 cubic metre shovels. In each pass, a shovel can pick up 15 tonnes of ore. The shovels fill up 50 tonner quarry trucks in three passes. The mine also has some 100 tonner trucks which need 6 to 7 passes of the shovel to fill up. These trucks carry the ore rocks to the crushing plant and back dump the ore into the hopper of the primary crusher there. There are also a few 10 cubic metre frontend-loaders which occasionally substitute for the shovel loaders.

Modern Management System at Mineface

The mine has a very modern control system. Employing this, a supervising engineer could watch the performance of every individual shovel or other machines in real time on the computer screens in his control room. He can even direct which shovel will dig where, in order to maintain the uniformity of the product mix. When drill holes are made, samples are drawn and these are analysed in the lab. The physical and chemical specifications of each section are recorded and a matrix of such data is prepared in advance. The supervising engineer uses this matrix to control the quality of the product in real time. The position of each piece of machinery is indicated by a GPS system. By controlling the number of passes in each section, he is able to achieve a reasonably homogeneous output, not only in respect of the iron content but even the average silica, alumina, etc.

Environmental Concerns

On the periphery of the mining area, fairly wide berms have been laid out to contain the dust pollution. Fruit trees and decorative trees have been planted on them, both for their screening ability and for aesthetic purposes. On roads used by quarry trucks, sprinkler vehicles regularly sprinkle water on dusty days to avoid atmospheric dust pollution.

Ore Dressing Plant

At the ore dressing plant, the large rocks brought from the mineface are subjected to  primary crushing. There is a rotary crusher which reduces the size of the ore to an average of 20 mm. After crushing, the material passes over a set of vibratory screens. These separate it into

a)      Larger than 40 mm size which goes for secondary crushing.

b)      10 to 40 mm size which constitutes direct ore and goes to the Rapid Loading System (RLS) for direct shipment to Jamshedpur.

c)      The fines is size between 0.15 mm to 10 mm are sent to a washing plant where they are washed to remove the superficial dirt. The washed material of this size range is described as “sinter feed”. It is despatched to the sinter plant.

d)     The ultrafines (smaller than 0.15 mm) are treated in a hydrocyclone to separate the heavier iron ore particles from all the other gangue (waste) materials. The washed ultrafines go to the pellet plant.

Rapid Loading System at Railhead

A Rapid Loading System (RLS) has been set up at the railway siding of the company at Banspani railway station. It can load a full rake ( i.e. a freight train with 55 wagons of 58 tonnes capacity each) in 90 minutes. The wagons move slowly under the outlets of the RLS and the hoppers discharge through bottom openings into the wagons. A weight-feeder measures the discharged material as flows out and ensures that each wagon receives exactly 58 tonnes. This system minimizes the loading time, so as to enable the RLS to receive and load the maximum number of rakes per day. 9 or 10 whole rakes have to be despatched every day.

Conservation of Water

TISCO has set up a rain harvesting system, so that it could draw its water for the washing plant etc. mostly from its own water tank, thereby minimizing the water drawal from the local river. In this way, the lower riparian rights of downstream villagers are affected to a marginal extent only. Even the use of the water in the washing plant is economised in the best possible way by recirculation, settling tanks, etc.

Personnel Management System

TISCO has set up a management system which keeps a daily watch over the performance of each member of its personnel, under a large number of prescribed heads of activity. This affords every employee an opportunity to make up for inadequate achievement on any day or days, by exerting a little extra in the subsequent periods.

Social Consciousness

The company has also been a leader in social consciousness. An excellent hospital has been built up at Joda. There are several schools, a good residential colony, roads, water supply, etc. During our visit, there was an unprecedented heavy flood in the valley. The company offered substantial relief to flood-affected population.

The Basis of RtE: Pedagogy for Inclusion

My doctoral students are often tired of hearing me say two things: 1) The more you read on your topic, the less you will seem to understand the issues, and 2) It takes a long time to finalise research questions. They will be pleased that I have been experiencing the same frustrations going through the same process, giving myself enough time to understand what the real and immediate issues are with RtE, and the programmes that impact long-term changes in teacher. So here is my research study in it latest avatar.

Pedagogy for Inclusion - Philosophies and Practices of Teachers and Teacher Educators

Success in education is defined as not only affordable access to opportunities but as the learning that happens in classrooms. This is dependent primarily on effective teachers who in turn are impacted by their experience in the teaching education programme. However, the connections between knowledge acquired in the teacher education programmes and teacher performance in the classroom have been largely unexplored. Though government policy in the last decade through the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Right to Education Act (2010) has made inclusion an important part of its agenda, the focus has been on systems of education rather than the act of teaching and learning. Thus, the effort of creating a pedagogy of inclusion that is relevant to India is marked by a lack of literature on the topics essential for an understanding of the issues.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to identify the knowledge base that supports teachers’ pedagogic decisions regarding inclusive education, describe how teachers practice the principles of inclusion, and detail ways in which their teacher education programme has prepared them to address issues of diversity. This study will also describe teacher educators’ perceptions and knowledge of, and pedagogic practices related to, inclusive education.

Research Questions

1.     How do primary school teachers’ define inclusive education?
2.     What knowledge base supports primary school teachers’ pedagogic decisions regarding inclusive education?
3.     What pedagogic practices characterise primary school teachers’ design and implementation of inclusive education?
4.     What connections do primary school teachers make between theory and practice of inclusion?  
5.     How do teacher educators define inclusive education?
6.     What knowledge base supports teacher educators’ pedagogic decisions regarding inclusive education?
7.     What pedagogic practices characterise teacher educators’ design and implementation of inclusive education?

Sample

Teachers

§  The list of graduates of B.El.Ed. programme who are presently teaching Grades 1-3 in MCD/NDMC and private schools in Delhi will be formulated.
§  The final marks of these graduates will be obtained from the B.El.Ed. programmes to identify the top 10% of each graduating class.
§  Teacher educators in each college who are knowledgeable about their graduates, and principals of schools in which the teachers work will rate the above sample on their perception of a) overall teacher performance, b) popularity of teacher among students, and c) teacher’s effectiveness in connecting with students.
§  Triangulating all data above, one teacher from each programme will be invited to participate in the study, for a total of eight, including both MCD/NDMC and private schools in Delhi.

Teacher educators

§  Each of the 8 teachers will identify a teacher educator who was most influential, for a total of eight.

Data Collection

§  Teachers: Observation (3-5 days each); Interviews (pre-observation and post-observation)
§  Teacher educators: Interviews; Documents (e.g. course syllabi, assignment and task descriptions and instructions); Artifacts (e.g. student work samples, student test papers)