With the complexity and contradictions associated with conceptualizing learner-centered (LC) education, teachers need support to transform their teaching into LC. Teachers who are expected to teach using teacher-centered practices, like teachers in India, also need this support; however, little is known about these teachers' LC knowledge,…

Researchers who wish to become insiders to children's cultural worlds need to genuinely engage with the difference in social power between them and their participants. Most published accounts of adult positionality have been provided by those who have explored children's school practices. The ethnography discussed in this paper focused on the home…

This paper presents a case study of science teaching in an eighth grade school classroom in India. It comes out of a larger ethnographic study done in 2005 that looked at how science was taught and learned in a rural government run middle school in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India. Subscribing to a sociocultural perspective, the paper presents…

In this paper I respond to Ajay Sharma's "Portrait of a Science Teacher as a Bricoleur: A case study from India," by speaking to two aspects of the bricoleur: the subject and the discursive in relation to pedagogic perspective. I highlight that our subjectivities are negotiated based on the desires of the similar and competing discourses…

In India, like in most other countries in the East, lecturing used to be the predominant method of classroom instruction. This practice was rooted in the cultural values that posit a teacher as one who is venerable, flawless and unquestionable. When students construct knowledge from active participation in a course, real learning and critical…

This paper provides a critical review essay of Ajay Sharma's "Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur: A case study from India." The main focus is two fold. First, arguments are presented to draw attention to how little advances in science teaching and science learning research have impacted teachers' practice and student…

In this paper, in response to Ajay Sharma's paper titled "Portrait of a science teacher as a bricoleur: A case study from India" and associated reviews, I address the value of bridging two narrative styles for describing teacher development, discuss questions of over-essentializing an Indian school context, propose that teacher and…

This essay examines problems of the system of higher education in India, focuses on its need to adapt to changing conditions, and discusses various teaching methods, emphasizing the importance of the student rather than the teacher. Among the methods discussed are the creative dialogue, project, workshop and seminar methods. (JMD)

In this response to commentaries by Ali Sammel, Jhumki Basu and Alberto Rodriguez, I present my perspective on three important issues raised by the commentators. These issues relate to the role of a researcher in her field settings and society, the critique of science and science education as oppressive dominant discourses, and co-opting…