Delving into the "black box" of schooling can help us better understand the paradoxical reality that schooling for girls can be simultaneously empowering and disempowering. Despite recent interest in developing innovative research methodologies within the field of comparative education, there has been less attention to and reflexivity…

This article reports on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) program in South India that provided information and communication technology (ICT) to rural elementary schools. The article examined the current status of rural, government-run elementary schools in India by reviewing reports like the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) in India.…

The article's purpose is to compare case studies of computer technology use at two rural elementary schools across two international settings. This study uses the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) theory to guide this comparative investigation of how elementary school teachers and students in East Texas and South India construct meaning for…

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…

This paper draws on the comparative and qualitative data from a triple case study carried out in three semi-rural early childhood education centres in Canada, India, and South Africa. The primary objective of this four year study was to provide in-depth understanding of the ways in which policy, practice, and culture intersect in semi-rural…

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 volume brings together scholars from around the world to juxtapose the voices of classroom participants alongside the voices of ruling elites with the aim of critically linking language policy issues with classroom practice in a range of contexts. The volume is suitable for postgraduate students, researchers and educators in a range of areas.…

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…

The Central Building Research Institute (CBRI) is one of the national laboratories of India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. CBRI has applied the techniques of partial prefabrication to school building programs in Uttar Pradesh, the state having the largest population in India. The plan provides that the elements of a basic…

Ever since it was first written into the new nation's Constitution in 1950, achieving universal elementary education has proven an elusive goal for India. This book examines the failure of the Operation Blackboard scheme to establish a minimum norm of essential facilities for primary schools but argues that, in spite of its failure, the scheme has…

This report synthesizes case studies of women teachers in rural areas of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. In each country, interviews and focus groups were conducted in selected states and districts with administrators and women teachers in rural elementary schools, as well as policymakers and community members. Following an introduction to…