Power Dynamics in Education: Shaping the Structure of School Education in India [1 ed.] 1032136707, 9781032136707

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface and Acknowledgement
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Schooling and the Power Dynamics
PART I: Contextualizing Power in Schools
1 Power and Educational Policies: Rethinking NEP 2020
2 Understanding Power Through Bricolage
PART II: Power and Identity
3 Emotions, Authority, and Education
4 Stereotyping, Prejudicing, and Othering
5 Violence in Education
6 Dehumanized Identities and Empowerment
PART III: Decolonizing Educational Psychology
7 Marginality, Aspiration, and Choice: An Implication for Educational Psychology
8 Critical Pedagogy, Curriculum, and Social Justice: Reflective Educational Psychology in Action
Index

Citation preview

“This study of power as imbedded in and as shaping the structure of school education in India is invaluable; few studies take this approach. The innate radicalism of questioning power will come as a jolt to everyone interested in Indian schooling. The author has contextualised his approach in the relevant literature and in the Indian situation and then gone on to make original connections between what we observe around us and how we should deconstruct this reality. This book fleshes out many contemporary studies of Indian school education.” — Prof Nita Kumar, Brown Family Professor of South Asian History at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, CA

Power Dynamics in Education

The educational domain provides a platform for social mobility and social change. This book investigates the new National Educational Policy (NEP) to understand how it can bring social justice and transform education in a meaningful way to match the imagination of students from diverse groups. The author discusses matters of emotion and authority in education and argues for the need for educational psychology which takes into account the self-conscious emotions of students and teachers. The book reflects on important topics such as critical pedagogy, dehumanization, power in education through bricolage, and legitimacy in education, all within the context of critical educational psychology. Through research and observations, it discusses the socialpsychological aspect of stereotyping, othering, and prejudices in the educational domain. The book will be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers working on education, school education, sociology of education, and educational psychology. It will also be useful for academicians, educators, policymakers, schoolteachers, and those interested in the politics of education. Chetan Sinha is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the OP Jindal Global University, Sonipat. He holds a PhD in Social Psychology of Education from ZHCES, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Power Dynamics in Education Shaping the Structure of School Education in India

Chetan Sinha

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Chetan Sinha The right of Chetan Sinha to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Routledge. Authors are responsible for all contents in their articles including accuracy of the facts, statements, and citations. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-13670-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-45701-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-37829-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003378297 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

To my parents

Contents

Preface and acknowledgement List of abbreviations Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics

xi xiii 1

PART I

Contextualizing Power in Schools

15

1

Power and educational policies: rethinking NEP 2020

17

2

Understanding power through bricolage

33

PART II

Power and Identity

53

3

Emotions, authority, and education

55

4

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering

74

5

Violence in education

96

6

Dehumanized identities and empowerment

120

PART III

Decolonizing Educational Psychology 7 8

141

Marginality, aspiration, and choice: an implication for educational psychology

143

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice: reflective educational psychology in action

171

Index

199

Preface and acknowledgement

The agenda of writing this book is to critically address the social psychological challenges in the Indian education system in the current gearing up of the NEP 2022. The vantage point of idea provocation is the social psychology of education that anchors and positions the argument. Some of the arguments of this book are based on my post-PhD work in Vidyashram-the Southpoint school, Nirman, Varanasi, and my interaction with students, teachers, family members, and school principals. This is an amalgamation of theory, general observations, discussion with my longtime friends, and teachers. Researchers stated that government bodies and policymakers only believe in numerical data, and they rejected something which looks subjective and qualitative. Now we are in the time that these numerical data need to be integrated with the subjective experience of people for efficient policymaking. Here, I discussed different avenues of power in education. My agenda is to prepare our children, teachers, and policymakers to understand the psychology of education critically. I provide arguments which are necessary to bring into attention the challenges faced by the marginalized, working class, or any students who had faced the wrath of faulty education. Chapters 7 and 8 are modified and extended version of the published articles which made the case for democratic educational psychology through the perspectives of underrepresented and marginalized groups. This journey of writing the book was possible because of the consistent support and encouragement of my family members. I am thankful to my teachers, professors, and colleagues in the universities I studied and worked. I am very grateful to Professor Arvind Mishra, Yashpal, Mohit and Sanjay with whom I had wonderful discussions and critical engagements on varieties of issues. Special thanks to my students in different universities I taught. Their engagement in the form of classroom inquiries and critical approach was immense. The support of my spouse Monika both intellectually and emotionally throughout the writing has less words to express. The stress of writing this monograph was relieved with the frequent and

xii  Preface and acknowledgement innocent intervention of my three-year-old son Shravak, otherwise it would have been a daunting focus. My parents, brother and his family are the consistent source of unconditional love and good memories. I like to mention Kavya for her inquisitive mind. This work is possible through the support of team members of Routledge India. I am deeply thankful to Lubna Irfan, Shloka Chauhan, and Shoma Choudhury for their help in the production of this book.

Abbreviations

BBBP CCE DNTs DPEP DSE EFA GAM NCF NEP NPE RTE SCA SDO SES SSA TEI UNDP UNESCO UNICEF WHO

Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation Denotified tribes District Primary Education Programme Department of School Education Education for All General Aggression Model National Curriculum Framework National Educational Policy National Policy on Education Right to Education School Chalo Abhiyan Social Dominance Orientation Socio Economic Status Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Teachers Educational Institutions United Nation Development Program United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund World Health Organization

Introduction Schooling and the power dynamics

The advent of the industrial revolution and the dominance of industrialization led to the shaping of the institutions and educational systems where cognitive ability, marks, and exhaustive competitions override the meaning of education. In one way, a new modified form of Galton’s Eugenics has shaped the picture of education where institutional violence overpowered the democratic educational spaces. The constructive dissent, critical dialogue, and consciousness were discouraged and put to the anvil by the state-driven oppressive, disguised as, a therapeutic system. This is not to say that educational policies do no good but the conjectural limitations and the control system in the name of authority and forced legitimation hijack the freedom to learn and the will to offer a critical argument. Power relationship among different social groups also depends upon the norm settings shaping the schools’ context (e.g. Reynolds et al., 2017; see also Sinha, 2021; Sinha & Mishra, 2015; Tiwari, Kumar & Mishra, 2017). If the norm is of nurturing aspiration, respect for diversity, dignity for human beings, acceptance of others’views, and social justice, power relation will be more democratic and sharing. In the case of identity and cultural dominance, the power relation shall be facilitated to the exclusion of the oppressed. Keeping this power relation in mind and act, an attempt is to help to understand, interpret sophisticated texts, and identify arguments which may further gear up the understanding of the nature of power and critical consciousness together with the understanding of activism learning and group solidarity. The attempt is to explain the nature of social influence such as voluntary or forced obedience, leadership, and justice in the educational settings, which seems to have relevance for all domains since power and formal education have inevitable and forced influences on our lives. We will be engaging in the questions like, “are educational institutions the place for building new social order which creates future leaders who represent the group, realise the group goal and reflects upon the current individual, social and environmental situations”? This may provide additional benefit to understanding the meaning of collective human resources which comprises collective mindset, consciousness, social interaction patterns, and intentionality. These are not a neutral conglomeration of philosophical concepts but are embedded in

DOI: 10.4324/9781003378297-1

1

2  Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics one’s experiences, and cultural and social context and one can derive the deep critical meaning of one’s and other’s actions in an educational setting. Overall, to understand the context under which humans, as sociopolitical beings are associated, are framed in the power structure, and politicized in a different form either as an activist or as conformists. For example, one of the examples of power in education is the exam system and the deceptions prevalent in the system where students instead of engaging and getting scaffolded by the experienced other are finally assessed on their memory and institutionalized form of ideology. Students nowhere are seen outside the power nexus and neither the condition is created where power dynamics are made fluid and student-oriented. Further, a marking system is simply an assignment of a number as a marker of students’ ability and knowledge to standards decided by the curriculum designed by the authorities. Even the test must be engaging and help the student to keep their dignity. Marks and tests also humiliate. Segregation based on disability, different cognitive ability, and then the designation of tests to show them sympathy will not help students in the long run. The problem is in the context of power hierarchy and not the student. We need to question all this since nowhere it is clear that the given school knowledge is final knowledge and most of the time this gives and takes of knowledge is constructive based on maturation. It also doesn’t mean that schools are not important, since they provide meaning to the students’ and teacher’s academic life. According to Kumar (2014), Education is the field of domination par excellence. Education is a practice that defines the boundaries of truth, establishes the authenticity of the chosen areas of knowledge, and selects the methods for the knowledge to be taught and learn. It would be really difficult to make a case for any system of education as not being based on power as it defines, selects and establishes these areas and procedures. (p. 150)

Power dynamics, identity, and education Power is not a pure entity laden within the individual but a relational concept (Reicher & Haslam, 2015; see Rich, Mavor & Webb, 2017; Sindic, Barreto & Costa-Lopes, 2015). As a political concept, power is primarily an influence process either as a challenger or procuring maintenance of the already established structure. Specifically, it is something which has control over the outcome and actions of another person (e.g. Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). Power materializes either as personal power or social power but it is linked together reciprocally. In the context of policymaking, the agenda generally is to empower and regulate the behaviour in the necessary format. The choice of schools by the parents to prepare their children with the required skills can be called empowerment but it also equips students

Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics  3 with a sense of personal power. This personal power implies perception and possession of some legitimate and preferred resources such as the ability to inflict pain or pleasure, having any position gained through competition or ascribed dominant identities, knowledge, and expertise (see French, Raven & Cartwright, 1959). Social power can be interpreted as more relational where there is a dynamic of dominance but also the notions of group empowerment. Guinote and Vesico (2010) presented how social power is prominently understood from three interlinked vantage points. These are quantitative capacity views where the amount of power one possesses. This is also a dependency-based view which shows an asymmetrical accumulation of power. For example, landowners, capitalists, and dominant castes which has considerable power over different groups. The next one is the consent-based view which is a subordinate’s endorsement of power. Through this view, we can infer how in history some identities and ideologies occupied the people’s awareness and socialization patterns. This view connotes stability and potency since the possession of power is taken as legitimate. The third view is identity-based where the process of social identification is a major force of social power. Here the shared social identity is the creator of power through the social influence process, unifying needs and interests and gaining an ability to act (see Turner, 2005). Social power is not always controlling but has the potential to be a creative and constructive force for the group’s wellbeing. The investment of identity to enhance social power has a positive influence on the group members (Simon & Oakes, 2006); however, this does not seem as a universal process if the sociocultural influence is also utilized in the understanding of power. In some sociocultural terrains, possessing an ascribed identity led to the forced preoccupation with the stigma and threats associated with it (Breakwell, 1993). For example, the research on stereotype threat indicated towards the social powers due to possession of one’s dominant identity which has a remarkable negative impact on the subjugated identities in the everyday social space where the latter are forced to adjust. This is an inadvertent display of one’s subjugated identity in the categorized social space. In the Indian educational domain, the introduction of a new National Educational Policy (NEP) with substantial political intervention is programmed to change the structure of education by bringing a novel solution to a current political agenda and also to cover students with a new kind of pragmatism. Idea is to equip and empower, the intention is to go beyond this to bring uniformity in scientific thinking, ideology, and preferences for self-sustenance. Here the role of power as an acting political force influences the prominent institutions which are in everyday association with the people’s life. It is interesting to point out that the power influence is immense in the construction of history. History is about interaction, communication, and also the dominant discourses in the ambit of power relationships. These discourses emanate from the everyday meaning-making between institutions (e.g. schools) and different stakeholders who are emotionally

4  Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics associated with them (e.g. students, parents, teachers, and community). School education has always been the zone of thrill and anxiety for parents and students. In times of rising neoliberalism and expensive education, the everyday discourses on achievement, cognitive abilities, and linguistic skills have become more pronounced. The meaning of education has shifted to excellence, competition, and comparison. Recently, an attempt to redesign school education through the NEP intervention 2020 is welcomed by policymakers, school administrators, teachers, parents, and people in other government and private sectors. Research and talks have happened in the forums on how to regulate and shape the student’s behaviour and thoughts, improve schools’ infrastructure, and improve and standardize curriculum and pedagogy, bringing equality and equity in education. The efforts are parallelly made to boost wellbeing and mental health. The holistic movement to cover all the requirements efficiently is a new vision for educational improvement. In the Indian context, marginalized students mostly belong to Dalit groups, tribals, religious minorities, and oppressed genders. In the postcolonial period, the mission of democratic education is still a distant aim (Kumar, 2014). The dominant discourses which occupied the educational domain are built upon powerful identities with little space for the marginalized. The urgent need to decategorize these divisions requires rigorous interventions through upliftment and greater investments. However, this looks like a homogenous appropriation of one’s roots and may lead to the vicious cycle of fitting into the social dominance and justification. Eventually, the chances are high to be discriminated against under the garb of homogeneity and imposed uniformity. It is the diversity acceptance and nourishment that will give a sense of equality. Decategorizing may be a short-term program but generally, people are reluctant to lose identity and their sociocultural roots. The process of amelioration must be made more meaningful and decentralized. When schools’ intervention for equality is programmed, it makes sense when the power is shared in terms of decision-making, dissenting rights of the voiceless stakeholders, expressions of emotions, and cocreations of a healthy educational space. When the agenda of policies is to make education systematic, there are also possibilities of more controlling, continuous monitoring and coercion in the disguise of accountability. To be systematic is to believe in the received knowledge, legitimize it, and communicate it through various agents. The agents need to be authentic but not necessarily hold much power. The power which affects the mind of the regulated has a forceful influence on these stakeholders’ emotions through these agents as mediators. The power comes from the institutions nurtured by certain perspective and authenticity that is qualified to systematically occupy the everyday understanding of people. Any form of dissent to that perspective is meaningless till the time it makes a persistent minority influence (Moscovici, Mugny & Avermaet, 1985). Schools become important when it addresses the need of students and staff rather than inciting toxic

Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics  5 emotions and overgeneralized understanding about the underrepresented and prejudiced group.

Addressing false consciousness Power is linked to other variants straightforwardly such as status quo, institutions, social norms, policymaking, status quo, hierarchy, authorities, God, knowledge, education, hegemony, officials, and nation. Overall, with various evidence (French, Raven & Cartwright, 1959;Lukes, 2005; Reicher, 2016), we can see power is a relational concept and not some essence within an individual or qualitative content but its presence is deciphered in a social context, interaction, silence, and hegemony and so on. People cannot identify power on its own but in actions and reflections. Here, one of the methods of dialogue makes sense when people experience it allows them to understand the power’s true meaning. Next, we will discuss “what power is not” and how education in its varieties imbues the power relationship. Here we will be using the empirically derived meaning of power evident in various policies and group relations in the space of institutions. As discussed earlier, power is an influence process and not a fixed entity. Its nature changes in terms of perception when there are shifts in the equilibrium of structures and resource possessions. This objectified relation also, for example, resource, as power commodity, is questionable, as it is not always necessary that resource possession is individual possession. It can be group/community possessions too where every member feels equally responsible and rightful over the resource, but it is problematic when there are strict divisions between holders of resources making them powerful and others powerless. It is a matter of concern about the dominance of the group and its members who believe their authenticity as a true marker of possessions of commodities and resources. Possessions and ownership can be a space where the memory of dominance is associated, it can be present where social, economic, and cultural capitals are in control only to regulate the weak “other” or oppressed. So, power is not where the situation seems neutral or political, power is not where the situation is ahistorical or there are no engagements of the past in the present. Power is not a struggle for identity construction or self-exploration, but it is the imposition of already concretized identity in a social space over others whose identities are defined as nothing by the former. Power when used for the establishment and maintenance of social hierarchy is suppression and subversion of devalued others. Power is nurtured in the domain of ingroup and outgroup, dualities, and antinomies. Power is not liberation but confinement and contraction if it categories human agencies and identity as fixed. Power has dominant space, it constructs the space through its language of dominance, which is a comfort zone of the oppressor. The language of power needs to be deconstructed, its language has to be redefined and re-nurtured, and its domain of interpretation must be liberating. But

6  Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics the deconstruction may make the dominant powerful holder of resources uncomfortable and threatened. So, what can be done? What is the future of power relationships? Two perspectives about the power relationships seem essential here: (a) power display, imposition, and its defence by the powerful or the sense of being powerful in the present and future and the existential anxiety about losing control over the other, and (b) power in the mind, action, and discourse of the powerless. Since power itself doesn’t have any liberating theory, so, the defence of power imposed by the powerful, rationalizing it and succumbing to it may be the only option left for the controlled, regulated, oppressed, or powerless. The language of the powerful is a communication tool entitled to have an impact on the powerless, in disguise, luring them with their unintelligibility, through fascination and fancy. In an ideal sense, this pattern of delivering is nothing but power dominance, quite prevalent in the institutions. Institutions rupture the diversity and dominate it with the language of the powerful. The future course of events may either enhance the powerful idealism or change the language through its heightened criticality, through the dialogues for the creation of a better society where both the dominant and dominated become one, not in the sense of past dominance but a new form of liberation.1 Sometimes these power relations are so subtly embedded in our social system, and the power makes its impact, so legitimate, in our everyday life, that it is hardly noticed or reflected upon. The context of power seems to be leading to the same result of dominance and control in varieties of situations. Considering the institutions such as schools and universities, power works in an autocratic manner. The institutions are spaces that make the people conscious of their roles and identities and here power has its effect. Freire (1970) discussed the anti-dialogical scenarios of these institutions where identities and roles are never questioned for the action in the dominance. Recently, in his book “pedagogy of dissent” scholar and philosopher, Ramin Jahanbegloo discussed a pedagogical approach to freedom and dignity (Jahanbegloo, 2021). Providing space, acceptance, and empowerment seems to have a remarkable effect on the people’s ownership of their destiny and mind. The establishment of institutions, schools, programmes, and ideologies have been found to engage in controlling way to the people’s minds. Controlling, though is one of the tools to shape and design the sociality and hence education. The concern of this book is how much the agenda of improvement and therapeutics does good to the wellbeing and ownership of students belonging to the oppressed and marginalized group in our society. In the last few decades, educational psychology has blurred its disciplinary boundary; alternatively, critical movements and reforms have given researchers a new perspective to theorize on behaviour and thinking in the school context. But still, educational psychology in India is under the custody of reductive metatheory inadvertently nurturing the research consciousness. That implies regulating and fitting into the given model which defined

Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics  7 social categories in absolute or monopolistic terms rather than differentiating (see Allport, 1954). In the background, it is people who are involved in the policymaking in education, designing of the research program, entries of interdisciplinarity, and adoption of an approach to curriculum design and pedagogical practices. The educational system in India, particularly school education, is mostly directive and emphasizes disciplinary control, self-regulation, and dependence. It is often observed in the research in educational psychology which deals with the model building in which the students, teachers, and schools, in general, are forced to fit. As we will see how educational psychology and its neutral models are not a-contextual, rather they are driven by ideological forces like methodological individualism and as Michael Apple called “conservative modernization”2 (Apple, 2012). Since it is circular to emphasize individual enhancement and, at the same time, discriminate based on belongingness to the social group. In the case of marginalized students, it is paradoxical to talk about meritocracy and upliftment when there are fewer avenues of socioeconomic mobility. The resistance towards affirmative action on different avenues, such as fees, books, right to good education, and resources to attain skills like their better counterparts belonging to privileged groups, demonstrates the systematic alienation and sociocultural exclusion. Power surrounds us and socializes us in such a way that we have taken it as an unchangeable reality. Any attempt of the minority or authentic indigenous group to problematize this power relation, because they have experienced the domination and they have their vocabulary of resistance, is taken as antisocial, anti-structural,and anti-national by the dominant majority. The most prominent method like dialogical understanding through dialogue between powerful and powerless will act as levelling ground for both groups in terms of understanding, power-sharing, and exchanges. Here the powerful is no more powerful and the powerless are no more powerless. Both have liberated themselves and become free. This, however, rarely happened as the powerful method to dehumanize the oppressed has given him the status of being authentic. The term dialogue has been reduced to the term “reconciliation” which is a buzzword of the dominant identities to show the international audience their move of sympathy and development. In the educational domain, power dominates in a more literary sense. The holder of power works in a systematized and institutionalized manner where their acts of subjugation are taken as legitimate, despite many incidents of students’ protest. As Freire (1970) showed that students are not considered to have any value by the administrative authorities, they are considered disorganized and irresponsible. Their image is more like some animated box where discipline must be stored with some kind of knowledge. They are considered machines of the future that are designed in some way to serve the legitimate and the powerful. The works like “The pedagogy of the oppressed” (Freire, 1970), “The pedagogy of hope” (Freire, 1992), “Education for critical consciousness”

8  Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics (Freire, 2015), “The school is dead” (Reimer, 1971), “Deschooling society” (Illich, 1971) have touched the critical side of human consciousness but became side-lined in the neoliberal context where family, job, money, house, and land become the prime motives. The abovementioned books talked about equality and liberation which has a reductive and narrowed meaning which is easy to see without any attention to the wider social contexts. Power ventures in the history of education through its institutions. The formation of institutions is mistaken as an uncritical government enterprise, where land is acquired, department and official spaces are designed, people are recruited, the core value is decided by the group of people, and particular philosophical assumptions (e.g., neoliberalism) regulates all. This is another matter that this land was acquired, may be forcible; evading the memory of the people living on that land; mainstreaming philosophy and cultural values; and developing a system not representative of oppressed, powerless, and diverse. We can see how power manifests in the power relation and dehumanize the oppressed, in the disguise of welfare, nationality, and neutrality. This psychological-historical analysis results in the interpretation that doesn’t lie in the past but is interpreted in the present (see Thapar, 2014). We can infer that history is not black and white but colourful. Its image is vivid and comprises varieties of experiences some documented and preserved and many undocumented, ignored, and subdued. Psychology has a deep relationship with history and often we speculate whether the psychology of people is the result of historical edifices or history communicates the tone of psychology. However, neither history nor psychology has any meaning in itself unless loaded with the interrelations of people, the role of education, and power differentials in terms of identity dominance, accumulation, and distribution of resources. If it is not interpreted but taken as it was documented, it loses its nature and becomes rigid and regulatory. History is about the past documentation of power relations, culture, and way of life but its stagnancy is questioned in the present. Power is not a-contextual and its meaning is developed in a situation, through active discourse where one group controls the other without any intention to lose its position or resource. Power in itself can’t be defined unless its nature is interpreted based on its dependence on some entity or artefacts such as political situation, capitals, social networking, historical positioning, or dominant social categories. So, if one holds some influential position, the person has the resources, or she/he belongs to some influential or dominating social group, the nature of power is evident. This is in one-way disempowering the people at the other end or whom the powerfulness and impositions of the dominant group occupy their everyday consciousness. It’s a coercive imposition of one’s superiority over others. This imposition of one’s group value in the name of authenticity and expertise on others completes the picture of oppression in which violence has always the position to emerge anytime during the offering of any kind of protest from the

Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics  9 other side. As per Freire (1970), this is not freedom, liberation, or love. This is dehumanizing and against the value of true humanity. Power is not only in what we search for in any entity, whether metaphysical or material which is assumed to have control. Power seems to be in the activities which snatch the memory, space, and time or, more appropriately, it is a systematic erosion of the time of the victim with the time of the oppressor. If in the educational domain as Biesta (2013) problematizes learning discourses flourishing in the neoliberal times overpower our consciousness and lead to the era of “learnification”. This further led to the question of what to do? Shall we drop the discourse of learning? This looks absurd and beyond the logic of educational change. The discourse of learning is an ever-expanding phenomenon that needs to be studied along with the various disciplinary advancements.

Structure of the chapters This book takes the critical educational psychology vantage point to venture into the power structure embedded in the educational settings. It imagines educational psychology which actively situates its boundaries out of reductive silos and derives its assumption from the work of protagonists who imagined and strived for all forms of equality in education. Their activism offered a critical perspective on the modern liberal state’s approach to controlling, providing therapeutic cures and predicting aspirations. Their focus was on emancipatory nurturing (see Williams, 2013). Eight chapters are dealing with interconnected aspects of power dynamics in education. The theoretical approach which mostly became the basis of the chapters corresponds to social identity, critical pedagogy, and cultural-historical perspectives. The metatheory of social identity impelled us to reflect upon the issue of power and policies, bricolage, emotions, prejudicing, violence, dehumanization, marginalization and choice, and critical pedagogy. The chapters are divided into three broader themes. They are (a) contextualizing power in schools (Chapters 1 and 2), (b) power and identity (Chapters 3–6), and (c) decolonizing educational psychology (Chapters 7 and 8). These themes situate agents of education in a social context. Agents such as teachers, policy designers, administrators, scholars and educationists, students, and parents are driven by certain responsibilities. They are also the active agents who construct their identity and act on it. These constructions and acts are political roles which give meaning to the idea of education. Themes through its discussion show the goals of education, changes, current politics and marketizing trends, and the role of educational psychology in the future. The first theme aims to contextualize power relationship in education. Chapter 1 discusses how the therapeutic educational psychology regulates the classroom engagements. An emphasis will be given to the NEP

10  Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics to understand how it can bring social justice and transform education in a meaningful way. An attempt will be made to show the crisis in the education system and how power relation thwarts or facilitates social cognitive justice. Here it becomes important to understand how policies in the educational domain can be empowering and addressing to the psychology of change rather than becoming agents of the status quo and unrealistic high expectations. Next aim of this theme is to discuss how pedagogic engagement can become democratic,matching the imagination of students from diverse groups. Chapter 2 aims to show the meaning of power, promote the need to bring the indigenous way of understanding discipline and develop a sense of resistance to the power hidden in various formats through the approach of “Bricolage”. Here the new solutions are created by effective use of resources and identities already existing within our collective consciousness and experiences. The idea is to see how power relations have been transcended with the emergence of active, radical, and non-deterministic views. The chapter also argues for the imagination which is congruent to the reality of the oppressed rather than the powerful, however, at the same time, advocates for identity sensitivity and dialogue. The second theme situates education in the ambit of power and identity. Chapter 3 looks into the matter of emotion and authority in education and argues for the need for educational psychology which takes into account the self-conscious emotions of students and teachers which directly connects to their social identity. The rejection of basic emotion by the authority as irrational also rejects the lived-in collective emotions as irrational. Chapter 4 ventures into the social-psychological aspect of stereotyping and prejudice in the educational domain. Research and observations showed how stereotyped and prejudiced beliefs against any group led to systematic exclusion, discrimination, and othering. Further, it addressed these identity issues as one of the major tasks in the shaping of the school structure. Chapter 5 elaborates on violence in educational settings such as schools. Students from minority and disadvantaged groups are also the victims of both physical and cognitive violence based on their social category. The trend of the education system to regulate the cognitive and social space of students is a new form of epistemic violence. The educational domain provides a platform for social mobility and social change. This chapter takes the social psychology of power perspective to explore the construction of educational spaces which either facilitate or interrupt violence in schools. The role of authentic educational leaders and their transformation of power into empowerment will be understood in the context of schools. The effort is to highlight the mechanism of accountability to translate power into nurturance and empowerment for students from different backgrounds. Chapter 6 discusses the context of dehumanizing experiences of school agents from marginalized social identities. The dehumanization of students from the historically oppressed background whose social identity is objectified and interpreted from the stereotypical lens is addressed. We will also

Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics  11 be understanding resistance in the educational domain through constructive inclusion. The chapter will conclude on the current model of education where the dehumanization of minorities and lower classes of students can’t be denied and which is quite influenced by the enactment of governance. It is imperative to bring equality in both the methods of education whether offline or online but a lack of resources and proper mechanism to impart efficient education to the marginalized students is itself an act of dehumanization and mismanagement of power in the educational domain. The third theme constructs a debate on decolonizing educational psychology which usually provides systems to regulate and control children behaviour. Schools have become the hub of shaping the psychology of students in one direction rather than bringing multicultural experiences in teaching and learning. This unidimensional approach emanates from the powerful identities which ultimately benefit their own kind. Doing educational psychology based on the homogenized understanding of cognition, development, and experiences has perilous impact on the social mobility of historically oppressed. Chapter 7 highlights the role of alternative and critical education which addresses the social class and power disparity in the educational domain. This approach reorients the students into cooperative learning, new meaning-making, and collective participation for greater equality rather than creating ability-based divides. In the Indian context, where students are studying in different categories of schools, government, semi-government, Madrassa, alternative schools, and private, it can be argued that social class, choice, and commodification of education have a diversified impact on students and parents, as in the neoliberal time’s upper-class schools cater to the need of the student to survive in the future competition as compared with the students from lower classes. Seeing the circumstances of the pandemic, the students of marginalized groups living in slums or scattered in different parts of the country without any resources are very much affected in terms of their education, health, and social exclusion. Thus, the chapter will also present “a contemporary debate reflecting the conditions of education in the time of Covid-19”.Lastly, Chapter 8 makes a case for educational psychology as a politics that imbibe the spirit of sensitive and critical pedagogy in the teacher’s leadership and activities. How educational psychology can be social as well as critical? The current scenario of educational psychology is department-based and aloof. Its theorizing is based on the search for something which is within the human agency such as ability, aptitude, and creativity thus facilitating the idea of meritocracy more strongly. There is no room for understanding or collaborating with the scholars of critical pedagogy. If any approach to integrating with other disciplines happens, it is limited by its metatheory of individualism. The need is to work upon educational psychology in India to be critical, social and constructively innovative. To bring movement in better understanding and empowerment shall be an approach for social change.

12  Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics

Conclusion The imagination that schools bring to the student is excellence and socioeconomic mobility. There are many hurdles when it comes to the fulfilment of students’ career aspirations. These are located in their socioeconomic situation, caste-based backwardness, and gender-based oppression. The resistance offered by the victims of these historical and socioeconomic hassles becomes faded and vanishes if there is no social and political support for their imaginations. The resistance to liberation and survival from the dominance of identity-based subjugation in the schools needs immediate attention. The present book utilized a systematic approach to substantiate its argument through the experiences of different agents of schooling. Since educational psychology needs to be pro-diverse and integrated with critical social science it manages to show how power when shared with others has a remarkable impact on critical learning and scientific thinking. This is an effort towards social change pedagogy.Educational policies need to be understood within their context, goals, and feasibility to be implemented. The perspective under which these policies will be addressed is their ability to fit into the experiential model of marginalized students. Policies are important but their feasibility to be applicable for inclusive and sustaining properties needs to be rigorously checked. The agenda here is to bring in an inclusive approach to policymaking in education and transform the meaning of power.An effort is made to analyse the policies to show the manifested status quo and power. In the Indian educational context, some of the authors aptly bring evidence where marginality, oppression, and coercion are clearly shown. This book will critically define the meaning of power and how it is interwoven within the ambit of relevant social psychological domains which policies shall loudly imbibe and situate in decision-making accountability, which are anyway followed without much reflection on it by the school administrators and teachers. In all the cases, it is the students and teachers who are in the immediate power relationship but are broadly influenced by the macro-level features. The democratic form of education in the Indian context will be dealt with from the social justice framework comprising representation and the right to education. Its agenda has to be conceptually and pragmatically understood. Schooling and education have positive features which prepare students for the future along with skill learning and ethics. The book envisages our school education shall address the limits imposed on the varieties of imagination which becomes redundant to the imposition of dominant learning and pedagogical culture. School is also a platform for critical thinking and one of the important spacesfor nurturing emancipation and collective learning. The idea is to integrate the macro with the micro to humanize educational psychology rather than let it be limited to the dominant discourses about abilities, meritocracy, neoliberalism and stereotypes related to one’s social groups.

Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics  13

Notes

References Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. New York: Basic Books. Apple, M. W. (2012). Education and power. New York and London: Routledge. Breakwell, G, M. (Ed.). (1993). Threatened identities. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Biesta, G. (2013). Interrupting the politics of learning. Power and Education, 5(1), 4–15. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York and London: Continuum. Freire, P. (1992). Pedagogy of hope: Reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Bloomsbury. Freire, P. (2015).  Education for critical consciousness. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. French, J. R., Raven, B., & Cartwright, D. (1959). The bases of social power. Classics of organization theory, 7, 311–320. Guinote, A., & Vescio, T. K. (Eds.). (2010). The social psychology of power. New York: Guilford Press. Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. New York: Harper & Row. Jahanbegloo, R. (2021). Pedagogy of dissent. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. Kumar, N. (2014). The construction of the subaltern through education: Historical failure of mass education in India. In A. K Pandey & A. K Pandey (Eds.), Subalternity, exclusion and social change in India (pp. 149–170). New Delhi: Foundation Books. Lukes, S.  (2005).  Power: A radical view.  Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Moscovici, S., Mugny, G., & Avermaet, E.V. (1985). Perspectives on minority influence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reicher, S., & Haslam, S. A. (2015). May the force be with you: Social identity, power and the perils of powerlessness. In D. Sindic, M. Barreto, & R. CostaLopes (Eds.), Power and identity (pp. 117–139). London and New: Psychology Press. Reicher, S.D. (2016). Oh dear, what can the matter be? A commentary on Pratto’s ‘On power and empowerment’. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 55(1), 21–26. Reimer, E. W. (1971). School is dead: An essay on alternatives to education. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

14  Introduction: schooling and the power dynamics Reynolds, K. J., Subasic, E., Lee, E., & Bromhead, D. (2017). School climate, social identity processes and school outcomes: Making the case for a group-level approach to understanding schools. In K. I. Mavor, M. J. Platow, & B. Bizumic (Eds.), Self and social identity in educational contexts (pp. 55–69). London and New York: Routledge. Rich, E., Mavor, K. I., & Webb, L. (2017). The social construction of teachers’ identities: Finding connections in social identity and post-structuralist perspectives. In K. L. Mavor, M. J. Platow., & B. Bizumic (Eds.), Self and Social Identity in Educational Contexts (pp. 341–355). Oxon: Routledge. Simon, B., & Oakes, P. (2006). Beyond dependence: An identity approach to social power and domination. Human Relations, 59, 105–139. Sindic, D., Barreto, M., & Costa-Lopes, R. (Eds.). (2015). Power and identity. London and New York: Psychology Press. Sinha, C. (2021). Knowledge about family and school contribution in academic achievement: The context of schooling and social representations in India. Journal of Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/00220574211025977 Sinha, C., & Mishra, A. K. (2015). Social representations of academic achievement and failure. Psychological Studies, 60(2), 160–169. Thapar, R. (2014). The past as present: Forging contemporary identities through history. New Delhi: Aleph Book Company. Thibaut, J. W., & Kelley, H. H. (1959).  The social psychology of groups.  New York: Wiley. Tiwari, M. K., Kumar, S., & Mishra, A. K. (Eds.) (2017). Dynamics of inclusive classroom: Social diversity, inequality and school education in India. Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan. Turner, J. C. (2005). Explaining the nature of power: A three-process theory. European Journal of Social Psychology, 35(1), 1–22. Williams, A. (2013). Critical educational psychology: Fostering emancipatory potential within the therapeutic project. Power and Education, 5(3), 304–317.

Part I

Contextualizing Power in Schools

1

Power and educational policies Rethinking NEP 2020

Policies are social constructions and are framed within the ambit of the power domain. One of the threats of some policies directed towards educational change is their singular way of understanding school. Their attempt to reform the schools seems to be a therapeutic exercise for a cure. This process promotes the dominant educational psychology and retains the academic achievement divides in the school, further stereotyping students from diverse backgrounds. The policies showcase uncritical acceptance and controlling agenda of the state. Contemporary research in the social psychology of education and education, in general, has brought a critical understanding to improve the situation of schools. It catered to the requirement of students from the marginalized but was not very successful at the policy level where the biases and the worldviews of policymakers intervened formally. Gerth and Mills (1953) pondered on the ascriptive property of power as an influence process where the conduct of “other” is regulated and controlled and even against their will (p. 193). The present chapter is designed to understand the psychology of power relations in an educational context. The objective is to build up an intellectual capacity to be reflective and critical of the dominant educational trends where power and politics are rampant in the name of neutrality and value education. It is not a myth that power relations shape and design our consciousness which we consider reality. Though we may either succumb to it or get critically aware of its neutrality politics through our everyday interactions and the various alterities we are exposed to. The construction of the objectified reality of society and education due to a continuous exposition of the power structure around us through various social agents makes the nature of power relationship taken for granted. This objectified reality of society and education is not the scientific positioning of some artefacts where reasons for its existence are simplified and reduced, but it is a process of making complex ideas more simplified, unfamiliar, and more familiar for the sake of certainty (see Moscovici, 1984). The notions of power seem to have two broader perspectives, one which is objectified, taken for granted, certified, structural, and the second is critical, socially constructed, and anti-oppressive. The first

DOI: 10.4324/9781003378297-3

17

18  Contextualizing Power in Schools perspective of power limits the idea of social change where new ideas and criticisms are taken anti–societal, and the second one seems to be progressive to viewpoints of powerless and make them empowered. Freire’s (1970) notions of conscientization referred to the second perspective where marginalized and oppressed groups become aware of their rights which is one of the essential markers of social movement (see Prilleltensky & Nelson, 2002). They don’t take for granted the imposed values and marginalization and offer resistance to building up a new social identity.

Policies and power Easton (1953) opined those policies are some imposed values in the context of power. Further, policy is both text and discourse (Ball, 1993). As a text, policy is the process of interpretation and translation of policy through which school actors enact policy (Ball et al., 2011; see Weaver-Hightower, video on What is education policy?). As discourse, policy is “the ways in which teacher subjects and subject positions are formed and re-formed by policy and are ‘invited’ (summoned) to speak, listen, act, read, work, think, feel, behave, and value” (Gee, Hull & Lankshear, 1996, p. 10) in particular and specific ways (Ball, 2015). One of the locations of power in the educational domain is a policy from which power displays its legitimacy. In the last couple of shifts in the political regime, the school has become the place of anchoring ideologies. Power works in a group context to sustain and endure one’s historically acquired position. The therapeutic project as implied in various educational policies is important in terms of state-sponsored formal literacy but it also exploits and regulates (see Williams, 2013). Though it sounds unsystematic, policies under the garb of power relations reproduce identity distancing (Williams, 2013). The approach of critical social psychology is to empower the people rather than to fall into therapeutic control of the powerful educational system. During the interaction with the teachers,1 who are earnestly working for the children of labourers, weavers, and other working classes, the Director aptly stated: Yeh bache bahut danger mein hain Enke gharo mein haaath se kaam hota hai jaise silai kaa kaam, butcher shop, majdoori, yeh kaam pushtaini kaam hota hain Hum log chahte hai ki yeh log working class ke bandhan ko todh ke middle class me pravesh karen Yeh actually bahut mushkil hota hain… jo duniya me bahut kum bache kar paaten hain [These working-class children are in danger Usually, manual work happens in their house, for example, sewing, butcher shop, manual labourer These works are ancestral

Power and educational policies: rethinking NEP-2020  19 We wish that these children should break the bondage of being in working class and move to middle classes This is actually very difficult where children rarely able to cross the boundary] Ek acchi cheej yeh hai ki en bacho ne bahut ache se padha hain Problem inme nahin hain Problem hain hum logo ko planning se hain Kis tarah se plan banaya jaye [There is one thing, that these children had studied well Problem is not in them Problem is there in our planning How best to make the plan?] Inn bacho ko koi bhi support nahi mil raha hain apni family se Pyaar milta hai Woh bhi sabko nahi milta hai Bahut se problems hain Unko emotional security mil bhi jayee lekin arthik, shaikshik, samajik, manovaigyanik sahyog nahi hai [These (working class) children have no support from their family They get love…but this is not with everyone There are many problems Even if they get emotional security but they are deprived from financial, academic, social, psychological support] Empowerment is to make the people equipped with their agency to the fullest where education works at best. It is not always about the skills. Skills don’t decide the education. If educational leaders mobilize the equipping of skills as education which also empowers, it is an important step but it is not education. It is simply a skill. The definition of education gets constructed in a sociocultural context. The children of peasants and farmers learn the skill to work directly in the field, and it is passed from one generation to another. However, the outliers are also there. The learning of skills and technologizing may come under the domain of capability (e.g., Nussbaum & Sen, 1993) but does it nurture and empower in the power context? The skill learning has to be rephrased by taking into account the politics of social class and how skill learning and reproduction of skills nurture the social class distancing. For example, the learning of farming skills by the children of peasants or learning of computer skills, software, by the children of a computer scientist is simply not learning as such and it is not holistically education in itself. Learning skills are acquired through various indigenous/local practices or with the aid of formal schooling. Cultural reproduction is quite evident and other research showed its link with identities and contexts. Skill learning is good for the sustenance of living in the time of crisis or to avoid the crisis but it doesn’t empower. Paulo Freire (1970) in the “pedagogy of the oppressed” discussed the authenticity

20  Contextualizing Power in Schools of pedagogy which brings insight and develops critical consciousness into everyday discourse and understanding. Do policies emerge from the powerful or it is the result of the need of the people? The study of power involves a focus on the securing of discrete and observable policy outcomes in a specific decision-making process (Scott, 2014). We can assess the utility of policies under five possible conditions: 1 Power relation turns around into empowerment and the rejection of the policies which seems to be regulating and feeding to the benefit of regimes. For example, political parties in power regulate various ministries to amend the policies or bring new policies spending huge amounts of public funds. 2 Policies affect different groups differently. If policies are directed to provide access to the resources which were needed by the people from deprived and disadvantaged groups, it fits to the criteria of a meaningful policy. If policies are imposed to gain political benefit it is simply disempowering. 3 The policymaking, committee formation, and representation of members from different social groups. 4 The link between education and poverty has to be detailed. Expansion of education, freedom in education, cost of the education, and the encouragement of indigenous skills which is not an education broadly but can be promoted to the dignity of people. 5 Policies are not made in a vacuum. There are issues connected to the social identities where commonality of interest is accommodated into the plan of action. If the culture and identities are represented by the people, it seems representative, otherwise, it becomes valueless. Why not the grand theories and policy help in the eradication of inequality at the system level, other than acting as a token to offer help? Do policies fulfil the function of education and make the students skilful equivalent to students who studied in expensive schools? How can the act of policymaking feed into the status quo ideology and be translated into dialogical programmes? The very act of policymaking and the state-level movement for implementation is straight away linked to a one-way flow programme, regulatory, mechanistic, and overpowering. These attributes of power inherent in the policy and its implementation seem to be hidden. It works in a hidden manner under the umbrella of social change, mass upliftment, and creation of human capital. One of the biggest threats of some policies directed towards educational change is its one way of changing perception and taking it as the best therapeutic exercise. The critique of educational policies is their uncritical stance and fulfilling the state political agenda. Policies have utilitarian value in the long run. An empowering policy may at the outset look like a result of the power domain but may have emancipatory touch.

Power and educational policies: rethinking NEP-2020  21 For example, the policies like “right to education” work as a fundamental right under which students enrol in school and get a formal education. There is also a provision of mid-day meals, school dress, and books for the children. This is one step towards empowerment. What matters most is the actual empowerment happening feeding positively into the subjectivity of the students. However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, these children suffered even in securing their basic rights, deprived of education as compared with the higher classes. Their parents who are mostly poor migrant workers, labourers, and domestic workers were unable to secure daily needs which were provisioned in the school such as mid-day meals. Also, the children of the lower middle classes suffered the brunt of the pandemic which affected their wellbeing. In one way, it looks like the creation of an efficient choice system for working-class parents and students to opt for school education for their future social mobility and change. This is an effort by the government to carry forward the agenda of formal education where students have the freedom to go to school and take their education. If we take an alternative view, students are in the situation of compulsion to go for the formal education system. There are possibilities of a culture clash. As a form of policy implication, students enrol in the education programme most of the time not as a choice as such but as an immediate need-based approach. This is logically clear that these approaches are not intrinsically driven movements to learn. If the choice is not intrinsic then the possibilities are that this is driven by some external factors. As per the critical pedagogy and the movement for critical consciousness, it is the same appropriation of intelligence and cognitive enhancement methods in the name of educational development. The policies are usually constructed by people in a powerful position and this process is not decentralized. The details of policies are based on observation by the researchers and officials. It will be helpful if more representations of people working at the ground level and stakeholders who are generally othered such as underprivileged community members, parents, and students from the socially marginalized group are included. The display of stereotypes and prejudices at the subtle levels has the possibility of being part of policymaking. This attempt may offer better help to reshape the structure of education from the rampant therapeutic exercise of controlling others who are generally labelled as cognitively deficient. The dualistic model of education, as succinctly shown by Guru (2002) as a theoretical brahmin and empirical shudra seems to apply here, where the privileged and powerful control the mind of the powerless. It is a live example, wherever we see that power relation has shaped the history of humanity and not the humanity shaping the power and bringing meaningful relationships in our sociopolitical and economic world. This stamps the presence of the hierarchical reality of our social space, often questioned, but re-emerging often even in the most representative sociopolitical systems like democracy. The current argument is not to place democracy as a nurturer of hierarchy in a

22  Contextualizing Power in Schools subtle way, but to question the legitimacy of some identities in a democratic representative system. The debate between absolute and perishable or in a more different way axiomatic and questionable is not new in the educational system. Cartesiandualism 2 differentiated the universe into two substances, the immaterial mind and material body, where the former is connected to absolute, unquestionable, and does not follow any physical law, while the latter makes trajectories into time and space, perishable, and regulated by the physical law. In the dominant theology, dualism always persisted and some may extend this concept to the various sociocultural entities such as caste, race, class, and gender and concretized it. Returning to the current argument about educational policies and power relationships, the idea here is to identify more concretely the problematic aspects of policy prevalent in an educational domain in India and its regulatory aspects. How do the power influences occupy the classroom through the policies? Educational policies to educate students from marginalized backgrounds have one of the mechanisms of controlling through the syllabus or curriculum. The design of the curriculum and its uncritical pedagogical utilization has many consequences. First, it deskills teachers and students at the same time. Skill is a matter of expansion and association with the context and not just uncritically embarking on the same method. A space where students are from diverse backgrounds needs to have a syllabus that informs the subject in a multicultural way which requires flexibility. As Kincheloe, Steinberg, and Villaverde (1999) noted that most school works on memorization principles rather than connecting education to the lived experience. They explained further about the uncritical pedagogy and use of imposed curriculum, driven by a banking system of education marked by drudgery and repetition where isolated students work on joyless and meaningless lessons painfully tied to their development level (p. 238). Is there any scope for students and teachers to contest the established knowledge together? Knowledge and ideas are meant to be challenged rather than absorbed and reproduced. The idea here is to make education (1) inclusive, (2) equitable, (3) empowering, and (4) grounded. The role of educational policies must be:

Power and educational policies: rethinking NEP-2020  23

Revisiting educational policies New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 seems to be offering an approach to educational reform. At the same time, it is based on the criteria and mandates which shows the inherent power dynamics which occupied the educational discourses. These power dynamics connect to cultural inheritance, history, identities, and marginalization. How do policies integrate, regulate, systematize, and marginalize? This will be the agenda in the next sections. For the sake of brevity and avoiding complexity, the current discussion broadly is based on criteria such as how much the policy is representing the need and concerns of children from a marginalized group, and in what way it is empowering and liberating. The broader agenda of social justice, development of critical ability and scientific understanding, an association of knowledge with one’s self and observation will be covered in the above three criteria. If the above criteria are fulfilled through the policy in question, the given agenda is attained or has the potential to be attained in the future. Conversely, if the criteria are not fulfilled through the given policies, the agenda is not fulfilled and the power dynamics show the regulatory and forced form of approach in education. Policies are made by humans who live their identities and have a different status in society. It is also important to note who is powerful in different domains in the majority of cases and how their cultural values affect the designing of policies. Whose perspective or combination of perspectives has maximum influence in the policymaking and what is the role of democracy? Since effort is made to critically analyse the influence of dominant educational psychology in the decision-making, how policies are taken by different stakeholders and how much it matches with the people’s experiences and thought processes. Do the people of marginalized sections who hold certain views about schooling and education matter to the dominant policymakers? Questions like this may be used as a critical vantage point to dive deeper into the authenticity of the policies and the future of education in India. Power is everywhere and manifested in the forms of different kinds of relationships (see Vescio & Guinote, 2010). Education is everyone’s area so it must be represented well in the policies to make it equitable. The psychology of education has got a new dimension, trespassing the old rules. The Covid-19 times have influenced the idea of education that was normally prevailing in the pre-Covid times. The interface of students and teacher interaction has changed but does it also change the power dynamic of school-teacher-students? Through various mechanisms, the tight relation between provider and consumer is sustained, where policymakers, government, and schools give education and fulfil the need of students and

24  Contextualizing Power in Schools parents. Though this relationship is not as linear as it seems. The coming of national educational policy 2020 during the Covid-19 times seems to be pathbreaking for many educators and educational leaders. It talks about value education based on a balanced amalgamation of traditional and modern knowledge. Though it nowhere mentions the role of the mediaeval period in the making of education and culture.3 The phases of history contain different periods with different sociocultural memories. The educational policies can encounter historicism with the diversified understanding of the culture of different social groups, instead of homogenizing them into one way of understanding. The historical amnesia can be resolved through the deconstruction of inscribed power relations (Popkewitz, 1998). The policies such as NEP 2020 give the aura of progressive, liberal, and egalitarian education. In one way these are imaginations of people who longed for liberating education, non-imposing, and giving forward to democratic learning space. How these imaginations are going to be in place if it is formulated and made formal? It is also important to note how the imagination of students is met with the imposition through the policies constructed through the adult imagination.4 The rush to do fixing and correcting may be contrary to the idea of everyday meaning-making and taking into account the collectivities of children. However, this effort to see the feasibility of NEP 2020 in the changing times needs to be discussed along with other policies which were in the debates. For many decades, education which is a social science has become the playing ground of policies. Education has been formalized and enumerated in the terms of policies. The rise of the counting culture may have its merits when it comes to the formal education of students from all sections especially the deprived ones. Even the current policies talk loudly about the sociocultural aspects in education where it prioritizes the role of culture in the children’s behaviour without much emphasis on the development of a critical approach towards what has been forced to learn through socio-educational channels. The agenda is also to have meaningful education which nurtures an ability to scientifically approach any problem with a deep appreciation of people’s agency. The culture has its importance if it infuses a capacity to be critical but it can also be a paradox where to be critical cannot go along with blind acceptance. Education is regulated by marks, ability, and aptitude which are the hallmarks of mainstream educational psychology which in some way essentialize something natural within the person, but under that garb, something is taught through training or therapeutic education which goes contrary to be critical towards object and beliefs which have graded people into different categories. An effort to put education as per the child’s need has also invited storms of an idea from different thinkers. Some homogenized the child’s needs and advocated for policies that facilitate didactic education, common test, cognitive hierarchies, and school as an agent of recognizing abilities. Few

Power and educational policies: rethinking NEP-2020  25 democratized the pedagogy for the children’s needs and longed for giving freedom to students especially from diverse groups to systematically understand the subjects as per their abilities without creating hierarchies and self-stereotyping. In both the cases, one thing was common, that is, the relationship between teacher and students got moderated or regulated as per the administrative interventions of policies. India has a history of policies from colonial to post-colonial times. This was done to bring coherence to society. During colonial times, policies were motivated by the need of the state or government to train people according to their administrative purpose. The agenda of social reforms seems bleak in front of the government’s needs. Though it is an irony that some of the educated people looked inward for the socio-educational reforms and that was inadvertent. Still, in the post-colonial times, the agenda is motivated by the state-driven purpose but social reform as per the need of students consciously comes into the picture. The shift was also towards equality and inclusion in education. The agenda for quantitative expansion was earlier also, however, in colonial times it was limited to a few social categories, for example, males from the upper strata of society. From the post-colonial times till the present which included the NEP, sarva shiksha abhiyan (SSA), and right to education (RTE), it was financially regulated by the central government with the help of the state government to have a maximum enrolment of the students (see Kumar, 2018). Earlier in the colonial times, the choice was limited to a few in comparison to the present whereas the choice to have quality education is still less for most of the parents and children from marginalized sections, the overpowering policies prioritize maximum enrolment. In the Covid-19 times, the situation of the students from the marginalized section who cannot afford the quality online education shows the disenchantment of the agenda just meant for increasing enrolment rather than providing a good education. These are the right of those children to have equality in education. Teachers and school administrations are expected to treat students in a controlled manner. The mechanism of control is dictated through the policies and pedagogical practices. We often get the impression that teachers are reprimanded if they are not able to control students. Controlling is expected through strict teaching methods, regulation of behaviour through the marks, taking disciplinary actions against the students, or sometimes treating students in an objectified manner where their needs and cognitive diversity are stereotyped under one schema, which is framed from the power perspective. Some of the protagonists of policies take the pro-government stance and stick to their idea of bringing homogeneity, and uniformity to education, which is assumed to be possible through state intervention in the form of the policies. The irony in the democratic state is that it expects uncritical acceptance from the citizens which comprises diverse groups and any form of oppositional take is rejected as antigovernment and undemocratic. The current emphasis of policies such as NEP 2020 is to build up

26  Contextualizing Power in Schools the character which seems to have been lost in the humdrum of fast life (see Patil & Patil, 2021). The symbolic meaning of any text also emphasized the structure formation. The use of signs and symbols in constructing the meaning of the system is strongly indicated in postmodern research. However, the choice of signs and symbols from history and adamantly persistent on them to revive the old history or construct something in the name of novelty is seen in the current line of educational policies. The current educational policies try to portray themselves as a regulatory force for new India. Under the influence of present political and institutional regimes, the current educational policies may delink itself from the past educational reform but the process which was formed through the socialization of past policies and interventions of different stakeholders whom themselves got educated or versed in the past ways of education cannot be denied. New policies go into the discourse through these stakeholders. To break something which was in the linear process through new interventions also needs powerful influence.

NEP, educational structure, and cultural identity The current trends in policies emphasize more on behavioural control through cultural intervention. In one way, this is a shift in controlling through the arrangement of power which actively involve infusing in the students the acceptance of tradition and critical towards the ideas which are not local. NEP has both political and cultural insinuations through which the idea is to construct a sense of indigenous identity with the set of given social practices. However, the understanding of indigenous can be flawed, as in a true sense indigenous are the people who were historically deprived and disadvantaged with the rise of different kinds of cultural colonialism. The emphasis on the development of critical ability is not neutral or unbiased. It’s coming into the policies though without much clear-cut guidelines that need to be contextually understood within the available power relationship. Popkewitz (1995) noted, “various interpretations to critical research…are not only about the knowledge …to be valued; the stances towards research ‘tell’ of the social relations and conditions of power in which critical traditions are formed” (p. xvii). The ability to think critically has to be relooked from the perspective in which alternative and unsystematic way of pursuing reality is located. This will be from the experiences of people who are a minority and marginalized. If these minority experiences are not counted the education system implies an undemocratic stance of representativeness. Even critical thinking is pro powerful if it embraces the perspective of powerful identities and away from the openness to counter oppressive regimes. Of course, if teachers and students together oppose the policies which somewhere discriminate based on cognitive superiority or identity superiority, their voice may not be of much value to the powerful who manufacture the policies. If their stance is an uncritical acceptance

Power and educational policies: rethinking NEP-2020  27 of what is given or imposed, they will be a part of a majority group that lives in the belief that what is there in front of them is fair, legitimate, and justified. Critical thinking is also a political practice having two sides, one is built on faith towards the powerful where people are critical of the past regimes, and the second is more direct towards the regime which is powerful and in operation. In the second case only, true criticality is developed which has the potential to bring social change. The NEP 2020 emphasized the development of advanced cognitive skills such as critical thinking along with social skills and ethical dispositions. However, what they scratched out was the deep-seated psychology of the people which is embedded in the traditions and past. Traditions and pasts are interpreted and lived in the present. Past is difficult to define and the present is the best option to explore one’s internalized self that goes side by side with the political, cultural, and social practices. Reviving the past is an elusive stance since it is the present political purpose and stance that derives the psychology of the people. NEP didn’t itself critically deal with what is promised or pulled out from the aforesaid past. What comes out is revivalism, reestablishment of what got shaken by the critical or opposing, and prejudices under the guise of social change. In the NEP, the restructuring of 10 + 2 to 5 + 3 + 3 + 4 is done to promote inclusiveness in education. Earlier many dropouts happened before the completion of primary and elementary level schooling. However NEP facilitate students to be in the educational system till they attain all the requirements of education. This starts from the play learning to discovery learning to synthesis and experiential learning to choice-based learning. It shows the promise to bring the dropout children back to school. However, any suitable mechanism is not clear except for some sets of bodies that will regulate at different levels. NEP makes a bold statement with an eclectic outlook towards education where everything seems to be fitting in one flow. It paradoxically emphasizes regulatory mechanism and at the same time emphasizes critical thinking and deregulating education. It seems to be a good play of words somewhere denoting outcome-based education. It is not clear whether the outcome is value education, skill learning, discovery learning, etc. If its outcome is to produce students who have values, what kind of values it tries to infuse is not clear. At the same, if the idea is to have a discovery learning approach, what will be the process of that discovery. Though NEP also emphasizes quality teachers and enriching the teacher education programme. Do teachers have that ability to go for discovery learning? Since the emphasis on discovery learning is situated at the second level of the proposed educational stage in school, what is the guarantee that all students will have an equal opportunity to learn those skills? In anyway, NEP doesn’t direct how the dominant paradigms of ability and the identity-based stereotype associated with it can be tackled in its grand move. The research shows that situation plays an important role in neutralizing the negative

28  Contextualizing Power in Schools ability-based stereotype prevailing in the educational domain. This is also called a stereotype threat or social identity threat (e.g., Steele & Aronson, 1995) which is a situational predicament in which the person is at the risk of confirming the negative stereotype linked to their social group. How does NEP 2020 help students in tacking these situationally produced stereotypes against one’s identity and ability? Research also showed that infusing or having a fixed view of cognitive ability or intelligence reacts to failure very differently than people who view their intelligence as malleable (Dweck, 1975). If students hold a fixed view of their intelligence, then on failure give up and assume that they don’t have that ability (see also Aronson, 2002) as compared with those who hold a malleable view as they relate failure to lower effort applied rather than anything like fixed intelligence. NEP’s outlook seems to be more political with all the decorative elements starting from cognitive performance, improving educational space, and making students prepared for the job. If observed closely, more layers are added which looks unnecessary and redundant. Some studies showed how schools can be a motivating ground for students from diverse backgrounds. It was shown that despite living in conflicting zones, students in Palestine had great faith in schooling. Schooling as a platform for educational nourishment is also a zone of neutralizing the prevalent prejudices in our society. The NEP though hinted at the diversity (caste, gender and tribes, including the native languages), the address of rampant stereotypes and prejudices was not sufficiently touched upon. Since the policy is prepared by the human being, it is also important that a proper effort should be made to have inclusive and diverse groups to have a healthy dialogue on the subject matter. One study showed how the inclusion of people from diverse groups in jury meetings helps in more pro-diversity decision-making. The presence itself makes the judges listen to the group member from different racial backgrounds. Though NEP 2020 advocated for neutralizing the regulatory forces with a new form of regulation where committees and boards have members from different backgrounds without any external influence, the representatives of people from oppressed groups and gender were hardly mentioned. The developmentalism in education has a far-reaching impact on policy, even in the case of policies claimed to be progressive. It seems that NEP relies heavily on constructivism as an approach to dealing with learning. In its agenda, developmentalism is paramount. It strongly believes that age determines higher cognitive development and rationalities. In the previous year, students will be encouraged to explore through play and discovery. However, this is somewhere similar to the earlier approaches in the educational policies. It assumes that the development of children follows the universal pattern as we see in the Piagetian approach. No doubt, it is the commonsensical cognizance of Piaget’s (2002) constructivism that had to overpower the conscience of policymakers. It is the genetic epistemology as promoted through the Piagetian approach that still

Power and educational policies: rethinking NEP-2020  29 reverberates the policies. The rise of alternative education, as it assumes to deescalate regularization and power, seems to rely on more progressive assumptions about the children’s ability to learn with the help of capable adults. This is scaffolding and quite prominent in the Vygotskian tradition. Though NEP 2020 in its eclectic interface talks about quality teachers and the mechanism through which quality learning can happen, the pedagogical interventions are still elusive. One of the explanations is giving freedom to the teachers and school administration a free hand to deal with classroom learning. The bag full of progressive terminologies doesn’t guarantee representations, empowerment, and liberation. As observed, it’s a paradox to have on one side words like empowerment, de-regularization, and freedom and on the other side full intervention to infuse values, regularize standard curriculum, and creation of committees without mentioning the representatives both from the teachers and students side. The prominent terminologies used in NEP 2020 such as “cultural preservation”, “critical thinking”, “knowledge and an employment landscape”, “technology”, “affordability”, and “private philanthropy” are constructed ones and they don’t reach any concrete or substantial meaning. Though designers of NEP 2020 seem to be aware of critical traditions in the field of education, the state agenda cannot be denied when it comes to cultural revivalism. Under the garb of state-sponsored politics, NEP 2020 is as political as any other policy. However, the intention is to show the incomplete picture of NEP 2020 where all the prevailing terms and terminology which show diversity and progressivism are explicitly stated but their meaning to the general audience and mediators is not clear. The context in which critical thinking develops is also important for scientific progress. The role of educational leaders at different levels of education can provide a meaningful approach to understanding the diversity of learning, oppression, and state quo. NEP 2020 can be tested at the pilot level to see the impact on the educational domain. More diversified views shall be taken to see how the idea of true education shall not be sidelined or misinterpreted in the times of neoliberalism and ideological interventions. Norm-governed schooling, the norm of social justice, excellence, achievement, social norms, or normative influence matters in the student’s approach to learning (McNeill, Smyth & Mavor, 2017), the context of schooling, indigenous people, and their representations in the curriculum design. How does the NEP 2020 address these questions? In an interview with Frontline, Krishna Kumar (2020) noticed how norm matter in schooling. In the case of RTE where the comprehensive child-centred curriculum infused new hope of representativeness and availability to all children, the NEP may offer a scheme which can deprive children of that hope. 5 In the current times, the rise of online learning through various interfaces and portals such as learning management systems and commercial sites such as Byjus classes and Unacademy has captured certain populations who can afford education of their children in a more enriching manner. Conversely,

30  Contextualizing Power in Schools the rise of these systematic online learning interfaces is also creating an academic achievement gap between students from different classes. This rise of online learning has also created a forceful competition and anxiety to stay updated with the new courses for the social classes who have the potential to afford the new demands of education. This power disparity can be addressed by the NEP revision through the free allocation of the instrument, internet, and online portal for education with regular monitoring and update by the agents. The agenda must go beyond the circularity of policies to make it more representative, addressing the needs of children of displaced workers, and affordable good education at all the levels guaranteed by NEP 2020.

Conclusion This chapter critically addressed the mainstream conception of competence, ability, motivation, and dominant culture reflected in the policies is discussed through the critical lens. The agenda is to differentiate two histories of the educational journey. First, educational psychology which is therapeutically embedded in the mainstream pedagogy, curriculum, and policies and second, critical educational psychology which is emancipatory and caters to the need for diverse social identities. Chapter advocated for the latter one which directly addresses the concern and needs of students and teachers in the creation of the educational design. The proposed design needed to nurture their choice and agency as intrinsic as well as related to their experience. The idea is to translate power into dialogical programmes and not simply in a vacuum. The question about making the education more dialogical and collaborative among all the stakeholders in the schools will be addressed in the next chapter.

Notes 1 During the fieldwork in Nirman, Varanasi (a society comprising academician, Vidyashram – the Southpoint school, centre for post-colonial education) a focus group discussion happened between the director and school teachers. These excerpts are part of those discussions held in the direction of helping students of marginalized groups to have meaningful education. The steps towards enhancing their educational skills, socioeconomic mobility and moving beyond the demeaning work that was done as ancestral work. 2 Rene Descartes’ extending perishable body and absolute mind formed the essence of dualism. This very idea has had occupied the society and its various intuitional domains. 3 NEP 2020: High on rhetoric by T.K. Rajalakshmi, Frontline, August 28, 2020. 4 Prof Nita Kumar: https://nirmaninfo.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=201908-26T23:38:00%2B05:30&max-results=7&start=21&by-date=false 5 Krishna Kumar, 2020, interview to the frontline on NEP 2020. https://frontline. thehindu.com/cover-story/it-offers-more-of-the-same-remedy/article32305017. ece

Power and educational policies: rethinking NEP-2020  31

References Arendt, H. (1963).  Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. ­Penguin Books. Aronson, J. (2002). Stereotype threat: Contending and coping with unnerving expectations. In J. Aronson (Ed.), Improving academic achievement: Impact of psychological factors on education (pp. 279–301). Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. Ball, S. J. (1993). What is policy? Texts, trajectories and toolboxes. The Australian Journal of Education Studies, 13(2), 10–17. Ball, S. J. (2015). Policy actors/policy subjects.  Journal of Education Policy, 30(4), 467. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2015.1038454 Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., Braun, A., & Hoskins, K. (2011). Policy actors: Doing policy work in schools.  Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32(4), 625–639. Biesta, G. (2013). Interrupting the politics of learning. Power and Education, 5(1), 4–15. https://doi.org/10.2304/power.2013.5.1.4 Dweck, C. S. (1975). The role of expectations and attributions in the alleviation of learned helplessness.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(4), 674–685. Easton, D. (1953). A system analysis of political life. New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York and London: Continuum. Gee, J. P., Hull, G., & Lankshear, C. (1996). The new work order: Behind the language of the new capitalism (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/ 9780429496127 Gerth, H., & Mills, C. W. (1953). Character and social structure: The psychology of social institutions. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Guru, G. (2002). How egalitarian are the social sciences in India? Economic & Political Weekly, 37(50), 5003–5009. Kincheloe, J. L., Steinberg, S. R., & Villaverde, L. E. (1999). Rethinking intelligence: Confronting psychological assumptions about teaching and learning. New York and London: Routledge. Kumar, K. (2018). Routledge handbook of education in India: Debates, practices, and policies. Oxon: Routledge. Kumar, K. (2020). Interview to frontline on NEP 2020. https://frontline.thehindu. com/cover-story/it-offers-more-of-the-same-remedy/article32305017.ece McNeill, K. G., Smyth, L., & Mavor, K. I. (2017). The complexity of medical education: Social identity and normative influence in well-being and approaches to learning. In K. L. Mavor., M. J. Platow., & B. Bizumic (Eds.), Self and social identity in educational contexts (pp. 320–337). Oxon: Routledge. Moscovici, S. (1984). The phenomenon of social representations. In R. Farr & S. Moscovici (Eds.), Social representations (pp. 3–69). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nussbaum, M., & Sen, A. (Eds.). (1993). The quality of life. England: Clarendon Press. Patil, V. K., & Patil, K. D. (2021). traditional Indian education values and new national education policy adopted by India.  Journal of Education. https://doi. org/10.1177/00220574211016404.

32  Contextualizing Power in Schools Piaget, J. (2002). The language and thought of the child. Oxon: Routledge. Popkewitz, T. (1995). Forward. In P. L. McLaren & J. M. Giarelli (Eds.), Critical theory and educational research (pp. xi–xxii). Albany: State University of New York Press. Popkewitz, T. S. (1998). The culture of redemption and the administration of freedom as research. Review of Educational Research, 68(1), 1–34. Prilleltensky, I., & Nelson, G. (2002). Doing psychology critically: Making a difference in diverse settings. London: Macmillan International Higher Education. Scott, W. R. (2013). Institutions and organizations: Ideas, interests, and identities. Sage publications. Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797–811. Vescio, T. K., & Guinote, A. (2010). Power: New understandings and future directions. In A. Guinote & T. K. Vescio (Eds.),  The social psychology of power (pp. 428–453). New York: Guilford Press. Williams, A. (2013). Critical educational psychology: Fostering emancipatory potential within the therapeutic project. Power and Education, 5(3), 304–317.

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Understanding power through bricolage

Previously, we addressed the issues of power relationships and new educational policy and made the case for transformative educational psychology through the approach of critical pedagogy and social justice. However, the attempts to address the crisis in educational psychology are not like a piecemeal system but require a complete overhauling. The power dominance in educational space and educational psychology provided a control mechanism to discipline and regulate students and teachers. It has not led to any social change except for those students and teachers who either became the victim of unhealthy globalization and capitalism or the supporters of capitalism at the cost of value education which cater to the diversity and environmental needs. The rise of neoliberal values and market-oriented learning has led to burdening on students to innovate and create in terms of the market. This is nothing but embracing power and status quo to the extent that students internalize it and take it as part of his/her self. Attempting to understand the shifts in the power relationship through new methodological diversity of bricolage is a need of modern schools in India. Bricolage as a methodological process was discussed by Denzin and Lincoln (2000). Though it was earlier actively used by Du Bois who was one of the designers of critical pedagogy in the context of racism.1 He employed diverse research strategies to develop better engagement campaigns for social actions and emancipation of the oppressed. Kincheloe expanded its horizon in the process of critical pedagogy which has a broad connection to education. It is more or less about open inquiry and action research by freeing oneself from dominant perspectives prevalent in the educational domain about ability, deservingness, meritocracy, ownership, and culture (see Kincheloe, 2001, 2008). The idea is to decentre and deescalate to re-emerge something invisible, unnoticeable, and discounted. This is done to break the powerful forces that have hegemonized the consciousness of people both in the school and in the larger society and habituated them into fixedly using the symbols and artefacts. When the process of bricolage is promoted by freeing oneself and others a new way of seeing the world emerges and has the potential to change the sociocultural dominance with better space for learning.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003378297-4

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34  Contextualizing Power in Schools

Transformative schools and bricolage Bricolage, according to Kincheloe, doesn’t exclude even the “monological methodology”, as it is itself “an act of subversion”. The routes to understand something depend upon the situation under which schools are embedded. During the time of crisis and mass uncertainty, schools with clear-cut programmes and manifestos were able to bring order to the life of students. Schooling also provided a sense of belongingness and identity to the students. It was noticed that societal power relationships affected the teaching and learning process and some can negotiate with it as compared to others. In the case of students from the marginalized section of society, school is a place of excessive demand to prove their ability and many times students despite having the capacity to excel are excluded. The rising competition and demands for creative and innovative education have also weakened the democratic school and pupil relationship, especially in the case of the marginalized. In one of my discussions with student2 from the weavers community group which is a marginalized occupational class, he stated, Kabhi insaan haar maan jata hai Apne se pressure aata hai Phir kaam karne kaa mun nahi karta hai Mentality ho jaati hai ki toot jaate hain under se Phir humse… acha… koi kahen ki isme nahi usme jao Under se lagta hai ki hum ab hum yeh nahi kar paye to who bhi nahi kar payenge Mentality bun jaati hai ki hum isme achieve nahi kar payen to usme bhi nahi kar payenge [Sometimes human give up We feel pressurized Then it doesn’t feel like working It becomes a mentality and feels like broken from inside And then if someone says to go to some other domain From inside it feels that if we cannot do this so neither we can do that It becomes a mentality that if we cannot achieve in this domain, so we cannot do in some other domains also] The best design and innovation warrant inclusion of all students in an efficient manner, but the rising neoliberalism has widened the gap and hence the prospects of future for the marginalized students. The power relationship in the school system is systematically embedded in the unquestionable routines and formal rituals, such as time in and time out, syllabus, exams, marks, dress code and hygiene, attendance, spoken language, promotion of certain types of discourse, seating arrangements, and so on. These types of behavioural markers situated in the context of schooling are observed in most of the schools, especially coming under the range of middle to upper classes. They also depict the sign of prestige, social class, history,

Understanding power through bricolage  35 and culture. In other schools which are situated in slums and ghettos and also to some extent the much criticized government schools where fees are less and the schools are at the mercy of government funds, attention to the aforementioned behavioural markers is less. Students in the latter case are taken for granted and it is already assumed that they will continue with whatever work their parents were doing. To some extent, this can be the case in upper-status schools where the parent are from the high-status group and expect their children to contribute to those traditions. Here is the belief that school can facilitate their aspiration for their child. The aspirations are there in the parents also and they see a school with hope but the power dynamics which are derived from the deep-seated sociocultural system act as a hidden marginalizing force. How the bricolage may help in surfacing these power dynamics in both the categories of schools and in society generally? Can this continuity of inequality be diminished? What are the deconditioning forces that help break this power relation taken for granted and create better transformation? These are the questions much debated upon and change is seen in the consciousness. The children and parents from the lower class are becoming more aware of their rights and a form of radicalness is seen in their discourses. On the other hand, if not radicalness, a sense of guilt is observed among the higher class. The need for bricolage may bridge this gap to the extent that equal availability of high-quality teachers, infrastructure, and extra push for the student from the marginalized section may infuse a sense of esteem and efficacy which is needed for the future. However, not all students need to be prepared for the same kind of prestigious jobs valued in Indian society, the perception to equally see all kinds of occupations with dignity and respect shall also be the main agenda of schooling. Here bricolage can play one of the important purposes to defeat this deep-seated attitude and stereotype towards jobs and identity. The idea is not giving any first-hand blow to the middle-class notion of aptitude and interest, because in most cases students from marginalized sections and to some extent from the middle-class struggle with career choice, where the former accepts what is imposed and the latter look for some pathways to attain what it wants. It is not clear how much people are successful with their interests and career choice in the case of the middle classes but it is obvious that children from marginalized groups and lower classes are deprived of their ambition and choices. These circumstances for them are infallible without much hope for their mobility and material consequences to accept some rebelliousness towards their destiny.

Bricolaging, emancipation, and justice Is justice natural or socially constructed? The historical debate led us to the discussions. Some posited justice as a social construction and some positioned that justice is natural and seated in everyone’s conscience. In one of

36  Contextualizing Power in Schools the discussions on social change with the teachers, one aptly stated, “we all want to be transformed and wish for social change”. That was true in her spirit to bring change both in the transformation of self and to the limited world in which we operate in our capacities. Justice has a foundation and it follows certain pathways. In the context of schooling, it is evident that schools have the potential to raise the students’ academic performance and future success by adopting student-oriented programmes and interfaces. There are studies and observations which showed the contrary picture, where students are dropped out, unable to cope with the school demands, showed disidentification and devaluation. In the latter case, many studies adopted the deficit model to explain the students’ low achievement and underachievement. Though it is the matter of perspective adopted that directs the nature of explanation. As we saw in the earlier chapter that policies are driven by certain assumptions constructed in sociopolitical conditions. The pathways adopted are influenced by the “neo-positivistic and reductionist model of evidence-based research” (see Kincheloe, 2012a). The way education is imparted, the rush to complete the syllabus or just as tokenism without much human engagement of students and phenomenon is the normative plight of today’s education system. What we see are the rush and anxiety. These are not at least the marker of education which was imagined. Here the typical mainstream psychology dominates, something esoteric to know oneself but in a limited manner in terms of cognitive ability, creative potentiality, and accumulation of degrees including the certificates offered. No doubt education seems to have a direct correlation with the fit into the job market. With lots of debates and writing in the educational domains, it seems that education for the future got its pathway with all the necessary and substantial elements situated. These aspects are prominently mentioned in the lectures, policies, educational debates, newspapers, everyday discourses, new applications, and so on. Despite showing the cloud of progressive concepts and to some extent materializing through the pedagogical interventions, the linear progression seems to be on the track of neoliberal assumption. During the fieldwork in Vidyashram, Varanasi, one of the parents (Markendey)3 who was white washer by profession expressed his feeling about the school in which her daughter (Prema) was given opportunity to study in English medium. He expressed: Nahi Naukri mile nahi sahi, lekin hamare bacho ko padhna aa gaya Yeh koi nahi kahega ki yeh unpadh hai Koi nahi kahenga ab hume Pehle aise hi sub kehte rahe Hum hindi medium nahi padha paate, English medium kaa to sapna hi nahi tha Mohalle mein ache paise waale bhi nahi padha paate Bhayanker English me padhai hoti hai

Understanding power through bricolage  37 Madam kitabo ke beech mein rahti hain [Even if they don’t get job, my children know how to study No one will say that they are illiterates No one will say this to us now Earlier they use to say just like that We were not in the position to teach in Hindi medium, teaching in English medium was not even in the dream In my locality even who are earning well doesn’t have the capability to get this kind of education Teaching-learning happens in (excellent) English Madam (Director) lives among the books] To equip the student with so much information and certificates who can afford this and make them ready for facing the insurmountable barriers of the job market. Even if they are not able to advertise their worth, at least, they already have gained the skills to create their independent startup. This is what happens with the students of lower classes also but through different terrains. They may take the education, of whatever capacity that their school provides, and then they continue with what was already in their visual field, for example, their parental activities. It is the task of the teacher to infuse interest among the students, but actually, it is sparked in very few students from the lower classes. Markendey further expressed that: Jaun shiksha aur gyaan dusro ka dukh dard samajh naa paye woh kaun kaam ka? Main apne bacho ko achi shiksha doonga taki who yehi kar paaven Teen raste hai, teacher, doctory aur afsar Doctory aur afsar to croroepati ke bachen hi jaate hai agar who sapna dekhen Woh jayen Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, Bombay Yahan to ek din ke joota ke polish ka hisabh naahi hau [Any education and knowledge if facilitate understanding the pain of others of what use it is? I will give good education to my children so that they can do this Three pathways are there, teacher, doctor and officer The children of billionaires become doctor and officer, if they dream They shall go to Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai and Bombay Here we have not even the account for one day shoe polish] However, he showed hope with the education. It is the student’s identification and interest to excel in education. He used example from his profession that he doesn’t paint by fearing the building height. Parallelly he was realistic about his present socioeconomic and structural limitations. He gave example of his daughter who wishes to do well in her studies and get a better and meaningful job. It is the school and efficient policy which may help

38  Contextualizing Power in Schools these parents and students from the depressed and working classes to cross the barriers of the socio-structural boundaries. He conveyed as follows: Aadmi ko himmat nahi harna chahiye Aagar hum building dekhi ke haar jaye ki yaar itna uchaan kaise hoga to hum upar nahin chadh payenge Kar ke dekhna chaiye Shauk hain, jajba hai, kehl mein nahi padai me busy rehna pasand karti hain [Person should not lose courage If we give up after seeing the building that how this much height be done then we can never go at the top of the building One should try and see Interest, courage derives my daughter. She is interested and busy in studies and not in play] His daughter Prema stated4 (both English and Hindi) that his father gets rashes and ulcers on his finger and foot and she wants to study and get out herself and family from the demeaning and unhealthy situation. She stated: [My father think that my child should not struggle like this My grandfather didn’t make him study One should concentrate on studies Chaale pad jaaten hain [suffer with sores and rashes] It is not a good work No one in my family studied, but he will help and support But one should stand on their own] Studies showed how students and parents from the working classes in the Indian context identify with the schools. This is done to transform their current socioeconomic position in the future. Students see themselves standing at some point on the socioeconomic ladder and take education as a bridge for transformation and doing social good. This is hope for social mobility which gets materialized as per the given circumstances of education. The question is whether this hope is materialized. What are the complexities and inner educational mechanisms that give students a platform to fulfil their expectations? Schools in general follow certain patterns of teaching and learning which are universally applied to all the students. In some cases, schools assign low performing students to special classes or put extra load of tutorials. It is a progressive attempt till the students are stereotyped as low ability because students deem unfit on the ability based normative school climate. However, studies also showed that students’ identification with schooling is a matter of honour and community emancipation but the structure of schooling and other socioeconomic

Understanding power through bricolage  39 repercussions act as a barrier to their future educational pathways. As Cook-Gumperz (2006) noted, “classrooms are readily associated with the transmission of knowledge, both the official curriculum of academic subjects and the unofficial, or ‘hidden’, the curriculum of cultural values and social norms” (p. 197), the value which schools, in general, communicate in its hidden form is mostly mismatching for the students from the diverse background.

Pedagogy, power, and bricolage The power structure of the school systematically arranges the relationship between teachers and students. In one way, all the members and agents of schooling are aware of many possibilities of teaching and learning but to sustain the power relationship, they discourage an eclectic approach. Usually, the mainstream pedagogical process is uncritically taken forward. It also gives a sense of standardization and certainty to all the stakeholders in the school system. Principal gets the reason to systematically run the school to answer the parent anxiety and future consequence, teachers get the reason not to take pain to be creative enough to engage students directly with the phenomenon under study and the students get the standard curriculum and pedagogical style to have a clarity of format for their future purpose. Alternatively, there are school members and students who are excluded from this normalizing process of pedagogy and curriculum. The eclectic approach and method to understanding the social process of teaching and learning together with the engagement with the subject collectively have the potential to enhance justice and fair learning in the school. In the standardization process, if not carefully understanding the cultural experiences and identity of teachers and students from the deprived and marginalized sections, then the agenda of schooling as a democratic platform for justice and social emancipation will not be fulfilled. The avoidance of monological reductionism (see Kincheloe, 2012a, 2012b; Kincheloe & Steinberg, 2007) is one of the main agendas to sustain the democratic, ethical, and participatory school climate. One of the ways to venture into the terrains of experiences of teachers and students is the creation of a democratic space where the awareness of deep social structure and the complexity of everyday life is allowed to be in the conscious space of all the agents of schooling. One of the examples is how teachers crossed their boundaries and engaged with the students in enriching their understanding of discrimination against people of colour. In one of the classic approaches, a teacher named Jane Eliot did the classic classroom experiment to demonstrate the meaning of discrimination through one’s colour of eyes, Blue or Brown. It was aired as a documentary in 1970. She demonstrated how the behaviour of children changed when they were either told

40  Contextualizing Power in Schools that brown eye children are superior to blue eyes and vice versa in a week. Though this information communicated by the teacher was not true, it was just to make the students realize the feeling of being discriminated against based on colour. This experiment by Eliot showed how children can also understand what discrimination is and how it feels. Eliot said somewhere that much is talked about race but what is more important is to realize and be mindful, to practically understand the plight of the oppressed. This approach to understanding collectively ourselves and how much we are biased towards any social group is an authentic exercise that is only possible in school, where teachers and students of whatever age group negotiate the meaning of social category. Similarly, this is possible in other instances also such as environment and climate, respect for all jobs, avoiding blind race behind the marks, and respecting people and their agency. School with its able educational leadership provides a platform for demystifying and delegitimizing some of the dominant upper-class knowledge. Schools can provide a meaningful platform to students without burdening them with knowledge and policies based on the adult imagination. The parent, Markendey, aptly situated his views as: Isme karmathi vyakti chaiye padne wala bhi aur padhane wala bhi Koi kaa mehnat kharab hone wala nahi hai Dono safal hoga Hum peeche peeche lage rahte hain dakha dekar ki Chalo…yeh aage badhti rahen…hamari jeevan ka do...chaar, panch saal aayu badh jayega Shanti tabhi milengi jab koi tarakki kar lega Bachho ka ban jaye Aur nahi… to jis tarah naali kaa kida hai …wohi tarah se rahenge [School needs hardworking and able people, both as teachers and students Nobody’s hardworking will be at stake Both will be successful I am always push and act as a support system Let her achieve. My life will be extended to four to five years more with her achievements I will be in peace when anyone will be successful Let my children get what they want Or else, the way we are insects of gutter...we will be like that] Padhne likhne se kya hoga Kya hoga bataiye Usse kya hoga Phir wohi tarah sub chele jayenge Saab bekar hai Sab narak hai chalo

Understanding power through bricolage  41 Yeh to paise wale kahte hai ki santosh karo…chalo santosh karo Waise bhi sabhi garib santosh karte hain Usme kaun si nayi baat hai ? [What will happen after taking education Tell me what will happen What happen with that Again they will go like that Everything is worthless Ok, if everything is hell Actually, rich people ask us to be satisfied and content…be satisfied Anyway, all poor people try to be content of whatever they have Is there anything new in it? (Laughs)] Markendey indicated towards the value of strife and social support. Children from marginalized aspire to do better and schools are the provider of the valid context and space to materialize their aspirations. In a society based on caste, gender, and social class hierarchy, it is common to notice that people from the better classes advice or expect the poor to be content. However, from his response, it is evident that in the struggle for survival it is important that proper standards and reservations must be provided so that the aspiration of children and parent from the oppressed community should not fall to the dominant power divides that has occupied our society. Paulo Freire’s (1970) approach to going beyond the banking system of education can be similar to what Ivan Illich advocated for de-schooling society. A society that is based on caste, class, and gender hierarchy needs to be schooled with the help of a teacher who should be empowered to help students in building up leadership to make society a justifiable and egalitarian space. Observing the working of an alternative school, Vidyashram, Varanasi it was evident that schools are important and can be a meaningful educational spaces. However, schooling from the perspective of students from oppressed backgrounds matters. In other words, researchers have proposed to build “strengths-based school–family–community partnerships” making way for democratic collaborations and partnerships (Bryan & Henry, 2012; Henry & Bryan, 2021). In recent times, many debates and discussions happened in the school’s situation about the relevance of different approaches in pedagogy. The knowledge has different forms and the emerging idea doesn’t come from anything but has a base. That base can be a well-established knowledge commonly communicated through different mediums. Sometimes the medium itself acts as a creative scaffold that gives way to novel solutions. In the current times with the advent of superior technologies, the same knowledge base is given a new turn for effective learning. Bricolage is a process that gives way to unsystematic, less prevalent, or minority knowledge new energy to collaborate with the mainstream and

42  Contextualizing Power in Schools empower the views of diverse groups (see Sanchez-Burks, Karlesky & Lee, 2015). It is not that what is already established knowledge was always the same. It may also be the result of the continuous collaboration of different knowledge. However, the knowledge which is relentlessly situated as hegemonic and regulated by the historically powerful identities is coercive or forced knowledge. Bricolage in educational psychology was always a rare event and those protagonists who took sociocultural facets into account together discounting cognitive ability as the dominant model of students’ assessment were themselves a minority group of critical educational psychologists. Their contributions were in minority and taken as anti-development. Since development is based on the economic approach in terms of cost-benefit and monitory profit, doing critical educational psychology was taken as unsystematic and contrary to the knowledge which helps in giving jobs or creating one. Indian society is diverse in many ways but homogenized into a dominant value system where deep caste and gender-based identities are entrenched into the human mind. It is to be noted that whatever structural social categories we live in, which include, caste, gender, and social class, “cannot be assumed as given, but are themselves categories that are historically constructed within power relation” (see Popkewitz, 1995; p. xix).

Critical understanding and transforming power dynamics In the Indian context, a power relationship is seen in the schools where one form of knowledge construction emanating through monologic practices between the knower and learner is encouraged. Learners’ curiosity is regulated by the knowledge that the knower delivers. The reciprocity of the learner is corrected if it deviates from the knower and is appreciated when it conforms to the knower signifies the tradition of the teacher-student relationship or Guru-Shishya Parampara. Though the new educational policies and curricular framework also encouraged the role of critical thinking and students’ participation in the classroom, the systematic evaluation and the exam-oriented culture worked paradoxically against these suggestions. Schooling is often substantiated by the assessment of the knowledge of the students. Its success depends upon the pass percentage of students in the examination. Schools compete among themselves by showing the ability and capacity of their students to pass the examination, achieving high percentages and creating records in popular domains like science, mathematics, and technology. This lures other prospective students to join that school as it systematically portrays itself as high achieving domain creating high standard students. The schools which encourage learning in a collaborative manner, where marks and competitions are kept secondary, are observed to work for the students from the marginalized community. Since children from the marginalized community find it hard to be included in high-status schools, they either find a place in the government schools  or alternative

Understanding power through bricolage  43 schools. In the former, education is formally encouraging but with less infrastructure. In the latter, however, infrastructure is limited except for the diversity of learning tools and methodology. These schools may have limited space as compared to big private schools or government schools. The children’s aspirations are not fulfilled by these schools unless the aim is to get an enrolment or learn English or teachers and staff of these schools can reach out to the students. The agenda in these types of schools is to learn in a diversified manner and offer a challenge to the mainstream way of schooling and parental aspirations. Bricolage as a methodologically pluralist approach to understanding any phenomenon offers a superior platform for knowledge building. However, the agenda of mainstream schooling limits the career aspiration of students and parents from the middle classes, which requires a set way of learning. It is based on the cognitive marker of one’s agency along with the crude discourses prevalent in our society emanating from the influence of neoliberalism and the rise of managerialism (see Piper & Sikes, 2015). As we may infer that the dominant discourses shape policies and school practices, they may also subscribe to the ideological biases that exclude people from the marginalized sections. What is the use of great knowledge and expertise in science and social science that aid and facilitate prejudices? Promoting bricolage through the diversified learning programme may widen the horizon of knowledge of students as compared to the focused learning programme. The cost can be the delegitimization of the competitive learning method to deep learning which is both pragmatic and emancipatory. Bricolage seems to be based on the following assumptions in the school context: 1 Education is the freedom to learn what one wants to learn. 2 The school has the potential to provide a space where children can understand what is taken for granted in their everyday life. 3 What happens when students are marginalized based on their identities, both at the macro level and the micro level? It shows that they are the victims of exclusive pedagogy and the dominant cultural value system. 4 Research showed that group-based discrimination has socio-emotional and health repercussions, parents who are less educated have to face many problems at the social, economic, and health levels and so do their children. Bricolage is the inclusiveness and involvement of the all stakeholders such as parents, and community members in changing the discourse of the dominant learning system in education. Encouragement of bricolage signifies stability (Carstensen & Roper, 2021) and actors keep the institutional logic intact. This means bricolage is a psychological process of gaining knowledge via emergent methods making their institutional presence in the current paradigms. Schools in India have differentiated among themselves through their social status. The same kind

44  Contextualizing Power in Schools of curriculum is dealt with in different ways as per the demands of parents and the student’s career choices. The low-status schools which are composed of students from lower socioeconomic groups don’t face many demands from parents and students. Students in these schools can learn and move forward with their imagined careers but become victims of their disadvantaged social position. This further affects their self-esteem and self-efficacy to work on building their career choices. As compared to low-status schools, middle- to high-status schools are composed of students who are in the position to make their career choices and have the necessary more than sufficient resources. Their parents are educated and have better and structured work affiliation. The parents in the case of lower status schools are less educated and mostly work in an unstructured work environment or at a subordinate position in the organizations. The system of education and curriculum engagement in these different categories of schools varies to the advantage of students from a better socioeconomic background. The power influence is observed in both the scenarios of schooling, whether high status or low status. Other contextual features have a powerful influence on the schooling processes such as belonging to the social groups which are historically oppressed, for example, being from the minority caste, religion, and gender. These are the social categories that form the structure of Indian society and it is well placed into the psyche of people, in their actions and rituals. Even the schools and higher education systems come out with reports about caste and gender-based discrimination apart from the socioeconomic influence. Bricolage emphasizes critical understanding of the presence of different stakeholders in the classroom and the diversity they enact. The way they make sense of the situation and how their approach to understanding classroom activities are matched and mismatched. At this point, the role of teachers will be to understand the classroom dynamics as a competent researcher. The debates in educational psychology revolved around different ways to impart conceptual knowledge to the learner. The national curriculum framework and the current new educational policies though advocated for activity-based learning, however, even during the learning and teaching mechanism, the systematic and implicit influence of biases are reported. This rise in complexity of power relationships from simple pedagogical influence to multiple interventions in the classroom corresponds to the different educational programmes and policies which influenced the school dynamics. Though upper-status schools targeted students’ achievements in terms of marks, sports, and other activities, the lower status schools’ influence is limited by the teacher-student disconnected relationship. The power influence is systematically present in both the cases of schools, though in some cases its direction is moderated by the school climate and the context. Howarth and Andreouli (2015) indicated the connection of macro sociopolitical context, meso local context, and the micro context of social interactions where they advocated for the best practice models to address the local issues. According to education in itself

Understanding power through bricolage  45 provides a micro context, the broader sociopolitical context also matters that design the educational system. Students’ inability to pay attention in class is assumed to be their problem and teacher may generalize this as inattentive behaviour. I remember when I was a student, I was not able to understand the lessons and the teacher called my presence in the class unfortunate for the classroom process.5 “hamara durbhagya hai ke aise chaatra kaksha me shiksha ke liye aate hai” [Unfortunately, this type of student comes for education in the classroom] The process of categorizing students as durbhagya is not new but it was narrated widely by the students. Students in the classroom become the victims of the dominant ideologies and it happens mostly with the students of minority groups. Though in the Indian educational system the role of teachers from time primordial was one-sided dictation to the students which they further carried on to their students. The activities in the learning process comprised serving the teachers and being a good listener. The school engagements in the current times can also be the result of deep-seated paradoxes embedded in the history of education in India from pre-colonial to post-colonial times. The times of Vedas are still reflected in the psyche of teachers and students in some or the other way. During the Vedic times, education was imparted within the realm of sacred texts. There were no intersecting or interdisciplinary approaches as such but the students were socialized to the systems of knowledge derived from the cultural practices and the scriptures. The education of students depended on the approval of the teacher and there was no letter grading system as such. Even the dialogue and discussion among the students were only possible once the students had attained a certain level and appropriated by teachers. It was in most cases an all or none effect of education, that is, the students were either considered fit to take education or not. The markers and benchmarks of fitness of taking education depended on the social positioning of the students who usually came from upper varnas. The story of Eklavya and Dronacharya shows the hierarchical structure of the society and caste divides in ancient times, though this situation often emerges in contemporary times in various domains. Schools, universities, and other organizations have witnessed caste-based atrocities in the current times, showing how deep-seated is the dominance of social hierarchy. Some scholars highlighted that the Indian social system prefers hierarchy and that’s what makes them adapted to the system. The family culture itself corresponds to the hierarchical relationship where the role of father and mother shapes the expectation of children from different people in different gender roles, even if they are occupying the authoritative position in any domain, such as principal, teacher, manager and, so on. Modern education

46  Contextualizing Power in Schools in India has a link with the past and it also reflects the continental philosophy of education. Blake et al. (2003) stated that schooling was mostly based on the notions of childhood and maturity, which means that maturation implies the child’s moral and cognitive development. This kind of developmentalism in the school context was prevalent in the Indian school systems especially due to the influence of colonial powers in education. Earlier, as the varied accounts narrate was the paramount influence of teachers in shaping the virtue of obeisance among students. We may speculate that the power influence through the Guru-Shishya relationship in India was well adjusted to the expectations and norms of society, where one makes students well versed with the available knowledge and at the same time students needed to be part of that custom of power relationship.

Pedagogical design and democratic educational psychology Bricolage is a new pedagogical design for democratic educational psychology. Bricolage, as we infer from the premodern times, was not to offer criticism to the power of knowledge but to systematically engage in the dialogue to bring new avenues to the existing knowledge system. We can see several schools of thought emerges in different period or co-existed together in different periods but what became prominent created a new system not by breaking the already existing but by parallelly operating in the same sociocultural space. The preferred guidance strategy for the teachers in the Indian context is neither minimalist nor approving but engaging and disapproving to the extent it is uncritically to the designed criteria of evaluation and curriculum (see Joyce & Showers, 1985; see also Beaman, Wheldall, & Kemp, 2010). The critical inquiry has become a buzzword, though its display seems to be usually horizontal. Indian educational system portrayed a sense of didactic teacher-student relationship without preference given to questioning or contesting what the teacher was dictating. Bricolage as a process of including the alternative way of inquiry in the mainstream learning processes presents a logic from the minority perspectives. The way children learn science in the elementary classroom is more textual and syllabus driven. Promoting bricolage is like bringing in the children’s perception of the physical world together with their attempt to understand the dynamics of the objects existing in the environment. The preferred and non-preferred knowledge in the classroom has created ample learning and pedagogical divides. Some students do well in recalling and recognizing the received knowledge, however, the classroom is also comprised of students who are average but have a better understanding of practical knowledge. Though theory practices go together, still it is not very clear how theory is understood by the students. Either it could be memorizing, relating to the experience, or critically taking into account. To engage in a critical inquiry, students need to be given space to reflect upon their experiences along with the students who may not do well with

Understanding power through bricolage  47 the received textual knowledge. As we can accurately assume that there is nothing like zero knowledge and we also know that every little knowledge that we may have if properly channelized can contribute to the understanding of the problem. Similarly, seeing students as a participant and creating a space of engagement to cultivate a barrier-free contribution of whatever capacities the students can also be called bricoleurs (see Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Levi-Strauss, 1966). Students at the different levels of schooling have both formal and informal experiences, which are derived from the different types of parenting styles (see Bowlby, 1988) and teachers’ interventions. Parents adopt different methods of engaging with their children and further it depends upon their practices and styles where parents use specific behaviour to socialize with their children and at the same time generate an emotional climate. Most of the studies homogenized the student categories engaging or disengaging with the school activities. Schools add further formality to the child’s behaviour through disciplinary incursions. As Bricolage is the innovative method of meaningfully adapting children’s understanding of the phenomenon along with the teacher’s guidance, it also creates deep emotional bonding and trust. This emotional affinity has a long-term effect on the children’s efficacy and self-esteem. Vygotsky’s sociocultural approach integrated social to the developmental approach as the latter was dominant and added to the historical and commonsensical understanding of the child’s learning process. While engaging in the classroom process, children are active agents in the transformative agenda of the schools. The children are also an activist for social change by situating their cultural experience to the classroom experience. In this context, there is a need for more empathic teachers who don’t create a homogenous kind of space through the ability divides. What is suitable in the classroom process and the ease of pedagogical practices with less disruption has become an agenda of classroom proceeding eventually producing students who lack the critical ability and scientific enthusiasm. Most of the schools in India are based on models which are uncritically forming a backbone of school education, that is, maturity and cognitive capacity. This is linked to the Piagetian model of constructivism, however, the general trend in our society to see and expect a child in terms of age sequence was also criticized as incomplete and common-sense understanding. Even the child’s rebellious act is taken as abnormal and undisciplined. It is an influence of parental and school power that give legitimacy to formal education and the culture of acceptance and obedience. There is large scale evidence that uncritically shows how formal and received knowledge shapes the student’s mindset. For example, Dweck (2006) showed how a fixed mindset towards intelligence is regressive and rigidifies the progressive agenda of education. Scholars showed how adopting a growth mindset helps in self-affirmation and crossing the barriers of self-handicapping. This progressive thinking and situational intervention enhance identification with schools. The understanding is that students

48  Contextualizing Power in Schools and teachers who form an essential social group in the learning process are also meaningful and active agents who experiment with the received knowledge. They are activists of their experience and give a new edge to the knowledge. The process of bricolage gives meaningful space to these agents to form a collective understanding of the phenomenon under observation. It’s like a rainbow with different combinations of colours. Schools in modern times have seen both regimental influences together with the influence of progressiveness. In the regimental context, schools systematically offer a curriculum bounded education with set patterns of evaluation of children’s knowledge. This further led to the ability-based stratification where some students are average, few meritorious and few low achievers. The agenda is to scale students based on normal probability distribution. One can situate its direct link with the social morphology of intelligence and achievement in the Indian society, where there are ample divides in terms of rural-urban, social classes, gender, castes, and tribes. The bell curve designed to appropriate the social structure of ability was also reflected in the school systems. Somewhere schools carried forward the objective of society to sustain the segregation as compared to the schools that provided a space for inquiry and tried to include diversity, clear guidelines for promoting equality, and developing an ability to engage in collective inquiry towards the ability and identity-based segregation. Progressive schools follow mostly Deweyan’s (Dewey, 2004) approach of pragmatic understanding of what is happening around us. The advocates of progressive schooling believed in observation and empirically situating the ideas. Progressive education imbibes the spirits of critical thinking and also encourages dissenting of the unscientific knowledge which emerges from the majoritarian views. It is the politics of social change in education through the introduction of alternative voices which usually don’t fit into mainstream education. Though progressive education offers critique to the power strongly defining the educational system where students take education formally to enhance their skills and get fit into the ability dominant society.

Conclusion Bricolage is one such approach where the concept of multicultural education is more pronounced and liberating for students of diverse backgrounds (see also Parekh, 1986). This chapter showed that it is a representative pedagogical design that is authentic to the idea of value-based education. The future of bricolage is in the activities of bricoleurs, where the decoloniality of people directly corresponds to their desires and experiences. In one way it is the process of understanding a child as a responsible being. The societal understanding of maturity and morality, maturity and cognition, and hence the responsibility is based on the flawed understanding of the agency of the child. Children are also responsible for a representative of their will,

Understanding power through bricolage  49 however, the societal and schools’ impositions of capable adults will only restrict the children’s activities in the social space. How the regulatory system in schools privileges particular methods of pedagogy and learning along with the examples from one alternative school that debunked the power influence of authority and gave freedom to the students to construct their pedagogy and classroom activities. Some prominent educationists from pre-independent India, for example, Gijubhai Badheka (2009) introduced the Montessori system of education in India, equivalent to Vygotsky’s approach (Vygotsky, 1978) to address the power dynamics and his idea worth in shaping the school structure. Transforming power through bricolage implies a progressive approach to educational psychology which had dominantly shaped the school environment. In the process of educating, it also matters how the outcomes of education affect a child and his/her community. Education emphasizing learning through cognitive metaphors considered the child as a passive learner to reproduce knowledge uncritically. Prominent progressive theorists of education added to democratic educational psychology by considering a child as a responsible being and an activist to explore his/her curiosity. We need more empathetic educational psychology that enhances justice and empowers students and parents beyond the boundaries of the formal environment of schools. Collective attempts in this direction will make education inclusive through efficient bricolage and removal of unnecessary power influence in the classroom practices in the name of nurturing culturally based stereotypical expectations based on gender and caste-based roles. It is important to identify the perspective or dominant models deriving classroom practices and how the activities create a shared space for the students and teachers. Some of the interesting approaches have the potential to nurture the introduction of bricolage in the classroom. For example, the balance between minimal guidance and guided instruction, the discovery of learning and culture of education, multicultural education, bringing interdisciplinarity and special education need (Macfarlane, Macfarlane, & Mataiti, 2020; Riddell, 2003). It is also important to decategorize the dominance of ability-based success and failure through active participation in understanding the meaning of discipline and how children learn discipline, reducing cognitive load and emergence of the culture of dialogues. Students’ and teachers’ engagement in the critical understanding of gender, caste, race, and suppressed sociocultural experiences. The success of bricolage is possible through social, emotional, and instrumental support which will remove the gap based on power removing the hindrance to true learning and nurturing classroom as a civically engaged and safe space (see Ehrenworth, Wolfe & Todd, 2020). These social psychological aspects which get shaped in the context of power will be further elaborated in the coming sections. The next chapter will investigate how emotion is an essential psychological force affecting the schools’ everyday consciousness and meaning making.

50  Contextualizing Power in Schools

Notes 1 Du Bois (1899) in his book “The Philadelphia Negro” used bricolage to form critical pedagogical movement to address the Black emancipation from slavery and colonialism. 2 During an interview with the students and parents in Varanasi, the role of schooling, success, and change was discussed. The students were studying in the same class. Intezaar belong to the family of weaver community who are usually marginalized and live with the continuous socioeconomic burden. 3 Markendey does white washing and lives near the Luxa area of Varanasi. He has lots of hope from schools which care for his children and provide education in a true way. 4 Prema described the hardship faced by her family member and narrated the influence of schooling in achieving her future goals. The democratic and student-centred schooling had equipped her with the skill to speak in English proficiently and hope to do better in the career of her choice. 5 One of the incidents was cited based on my memory when I was student.

References Badheka, G. (2009). Divaswapna. Rajasthan: Sarjana Bikaner. Beaman, R., Wheldall, K., & Kemp, C. (2010). Recent research on troublesome classroom behaviour. In K. Wheldall (Ed.), Developments in Educational Psychology (pp. 135–152). Oxon: Routledge. Blake, N., Smeyers, P., Smith, R. D., & Standish, P. (Eds.). (2003). The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of education. Oxon: Blackwell Publishing. Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development. New York: Basic Books. Bryan, J., & Henry, L. (2012). A model for building school–family–community partnerships: Principles and process. Journal of Counselling & Development, 90(4), 408–420. Carstensen, M. B., & Roper, N. (2021). The other side of agency: bricolage and institutional continuity. Journal of European Public Policy, 29 (8), 1–21. Cook-Gumperz, J. (2006). The social construction of literacy (Vol. 25). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2000). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed., pp. 1–28). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Dewey, J. (2004). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. New Delhi: Aakar Books. Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House. Ehrenworth, M., Wolfe, P., & Todd, M. (2020). The civically engaged classroom: Reading, writing and speaking for change. Porstmouth: Heinemann. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York and London: Continuum. Henry, L. M., & Bryan, J. (2021). How the Educator–Counsellor–Leader– Collaborator creates asset-rich schools: A qualitative study of a School–Family– Community partnership. Professional School Counseling, 24 (1–3). https://doi. org/10.1177/2156759X211011907

Understanding power through bricolage  51 Howarth, C., & Andreouli, E. (2015). ‘Changing the context’: Tackling discrimination at school and in society. International Journal of Educational Development, 41, 184–191. Joyce, B., & Showers, B. (1985). Teacher Education in India: Observations on American innovations abroad. Educational Researcher, 14(8), 3–9. Kincheloe, J. (2001). Describing the bricolage: Conceptualizing a new rigor in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 7(6), 679–692. Kincheloe, J. (2008). Critical pedagogy primer. New York: Peter Lang. Kincheloe, J. (2012a). Teachers as researchers (classic edition): Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. London: Routledge. Kincheloe, J. L. (2012b). Critical pedagogy in the twenty-first century: Evolution for survival. Counterpoints, 422, 147–183. Kincheloe, J. L., & Steinberg, S. R. (2007). Cutting class in a dangerous era: A critical pedagogy of class awareness. In J. L. Kincheloe & S. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Cutting class: Socioeconomic status and education (pp. 3–69). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Levi-Strauss, C. (1966). The savage mind. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Macfarlane, A., Macfarlane, S., & Mataiti, H. (2020). Cultural and sociocultural influences and learners with special needs. In A. J. Martin, R. A. Sperling, K. J. Newton (Eds.), Handbook of educational psychology and students with special needs. New York: Routledge. Piper, H., & Sikes, P. (2015). Education, neoliberalism, and ‘truths.’ Power and Education, 7(1), 3–6. Popkewitz, T. S. (1995). Teacher education, reform and the politics of knowledge in the United States. In B. Lindsay & M. B Ginsberg (Eds.), The political dimension in teacher education: Comparative perspectives on policy formation, socialization and society (pp. 54–75). London and New York: Routledge. Riddell, A. (2003). The introduction of free primary education in sub-Saharan Africa. Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, 4, 1–24. Sanchez–Burks, J., Karlesky, M. J., & Lee, F. (2015). Psychological bricolage: Integrating social identities to produce creative solutions. In C. Shalley, M. Hitt, & J. Zhow (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship (pp. 93–102). New York: Oxford University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Part II

Power and Identity

3

Emotions, authority, and education

Emotion is a somewhat neglected topic in the domain of educational psychology. Though somewhere there are hints towards the emotional regulation of students and teachers in the educational space. Emotion in itself is not considered as an issue to be taken seriously in the formal structure. Further, it is taken as a domain of psychologists and counsellors whose approaches are themselves driven by the therapeutic assumption about human behavioural control. As the current research depicts that emotion is an essential aspect of any organization and schools are not apart. The demarcation of emotions into basic and self-conscious has to be looked into along with the collective emotion. I remember when I was working in a school, the director called me and asked me to bring detail about one child. This boy was seen as disruptive and disobedient. My task was to understand that boy, talk to his family and friends around, and see what is the reason that makes the boy did not adjust to the school system and logic. It was challenging and curious for me to get to the roots of the problem. I went to the boy’s house along with him, met his family and friends, and roamed around his locality. I found that the boy was living along with his other brothers and sisters and parents in a small room where there was no space for studying. Parents were daily wagers and didn’t have much control over the child’s academic development. There was a small television in that room and some programme was going on. People were talking and eating food, there was no space to keep a book and it was lying on the floor. I went to the locality where the boy usually visits his friends. I talked to his friends, passed some jokes, and roamed around near the Ganges and that’s it. I noticed the little boy was holding my finger and showing me the way and taking me here and there…. It was an emotional moment for both of us, where I was earlier seen as a teacher and the boy as a student but as I explored the boy’s space, the boy became my friend and assured me that he will not be disruptive in the classroom. Why this boy who belonged to a lower caste was not able to adjust in the classroom? Did he not value education or found the company of other students in the classroom not friendly as compared to his other friends who were not part of the school? The assumption that school is a platform that

DOI: 10.4324/9781003378297-6

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56  Power and Identity homogenizes students’ experience, especially their informal way of understanding something under the formal system of schools, is both flawed and meaningless. When I interacted with the boy informally, went to his house, and talked to his family member, the negative emotion which the boy felt in the classroom resulted in liking. The everyday humiliation of being from a different sociocultural experience and the adoption of anger as an emotion of rejecting others who don’t understand his experience is not a new observation in schools. Though this school is considered to be based on democratic values and all the students are treated well, equally, and with full teacher-student engagement. The instruction of the director to involve me in bringing more triangulated pictures of the boy is unique for this school. There are many schools, both government and private which doesn’t go beyond the boundaries of formal teaching and learning and, further, create barriers to bringing education to its emancipatory level.

Emotion and schooling The students’ disobedience and lack of motivation to engage in the classroom activities results in reactionary responses from the school authorities. In one of the incidents, it was reported that the schoolmaster hanged a student upside down from the first floor of the school. This kind of punitive and violent action is both against the right of the students to express themselves and against the agenda of learning. This is one of the most systematic, coercive, and violent displays of power and emotion in the school. Some of the views from people when they heard about this incident were as: “Either you should control your anger or leave the profession” “May he be a small boy otherwise students of higher age might have reacted back” “Punishment is necessary but not to the extent it crosses the limits of student-teacher relationship” “Punishment till class eight is prohibited” “In another incident, it was reported that schoolmaster holds a thick stick in his hand and call students to report on the ground where students were severely beaten” “Long time back disobedient students were severely punished and sometimes mercilessly” In the teacher-student relationship, emotion finds its way. Emotions usually didn’t find much space in the formal school context. Teachers’ display of emotion towards the students and vice versa can be taken as irrational and unsystematic, however, other times it often finds its way into the expressions. Teachers’ displays of anger or students’ expressions of happiness are the common emotional responses. The benevolence of teachers towards the students is also a combination of power and emotion which also was less

Emotions, authority, and education  57 reverberated in the educational domain, especially in the Indian school context. The role of the teacher was not seen in the universal attire but within the categories of social identities the teachers held. Female teachers, male teachers, upper-caste teachers, and Dalit teachers were more pronounced in the classroom proceedings. The power hierarchy was just not limited to the roles but also the identities. Similarly, for students, the way they are categorized according to their social class, gender, caste, and other social categories has created a culture of category division. Social categories imply emotions that further give meaning to the context. Emotions define the identity of the students (see Jogdand, 2018). In the classroom, emotional suppression is the result of formal teaching and learning environment. It creates a climate of fear and unwanted evaluation with which children are burdened. Fear is one of the most regulatory emotions that children have to undergo, whether it is an evaluation or the threat of being a low performer, prevalent stereotypes in our society based on ability are linked to gender, caste, race, disability, and social class. Emotion is not simply an individual response to various events but also a social process that is shared. Belonging to a particular group that had been historically oppressed and stereotyped from the side of dominant knowledge systems has confirmed those notions. As Tiedens and Leach (2011) showed how “social situations frequently generate emotional episodes”, it is aptly fitted into the children’s presence in the educational space. Even in the times of pandemic (Covid-19), it was evident in the online classroom proceedings where students had to do regular classes, the students whose socioeconomic situation refrained them from getting their education continued during the pandemic, they felt a systematic humiliation of being excluded. The emotions of fear and humiliation are observed during the classroom processes for the students belonging to social groups which are prejudiced. In this process of teaching and learning, power is displayed in the enaction of pedagogy, microaggressions, blaming and gossiping, stereotyping based on ability, group belongingness, and predicting the future of students. The school system in India is hierarchical and influenced by a bureaucratic design of control. Though some emotion displayed by the authority is considered legitimate like anger towards the people in the lower position and the students, the expression of emotions such as feeling humiliated by the excessive control seems to be invisible or not encouraged. The question is how the emotion of the powerful is considered legitimate and emotions of the powerless were never cognizant in the school systems. When the platform of experiences is based on hate and admonitions of others’ identities and this hate is recognized in the school systems, the emotions will be more downward looking rather than egalitarian (see also Heaney & Flam, 2015). School is itself an arena where varieties of emotions can be imagined and so the control mechanisms are strong under the systematic rules and regulations. Discipline training is an essential aspect of schooling whether it is the training of conduct, building of character, or academic socialization.

58  Power and Identity The sources of emotional experience in schooling can be systematic regulation of the children’s freedom, their choice of interests, motivation, and representations in the classroom activities. Camacho-Morles et al. (2021) showed through a metanalysis of 68 studies that achievement emotion is linked to academic performances. Activity-related emotions such as enjoyment, anger, and boredom have different kind of impact, where enjoyment of learning and academic performance has positive relation; anger and boredom have negative relation. In this case, we can infer that the school context may create the situation of enjoyment, anger, boredom, or hopelessness. Chomsky (2003) described the prevalent school system in terms of the indoctrination system. He stated, “the entire school curriculum, from kindergarten through graduate school, will be tolerated only so long as it continues to perform its institutional role” (p. 233). The school’s emphasis on discipline, control and regulation. In one way these aspects of schools gave meaning to the existence of schools. Society and its units whether parents, teachers, or legal agents always want children to be well disciplined and law-abiding. Any divulgence of the societal norms may prove antagonistic to the established ethics of the society. Society is a cultural system under which all the stakeholders operate. Even the political culture is in a way a manipulation of morality and the established social ethics. The school acts as a signpost where students get directions to move in a particular direction. Chomsky narrated how a school in the post-industrial revolution seems like a factory where students were taught discipline and self-regulation based on the model and assumption of the assembly line system. The Indian school system disciplined students to be part of the sociocultural system and be fitted into the structure of society. The modern Indian education system though emphasized diversity, creativity, and criticality in the classroom, the idea was to develop students for limited career options available, especially, based on the values of the middle and upper-middle classes. These systematic changes happened in the school system which created ample divides between different categories of schools. Some schools were well-equipped to answer the needs of middle-class parents and students and some schools were under-equipped. The availability of resources in schools significantly relates to the students, taking admission from different backgrounds. There is little indication that parents who can afford education admit their children to low-resource schools. However, parents from lower socioeconomic status (SES) don’t find any opportunity to admit their children to more resourceful schools. The mismatch of educational attainment and socioeconomic divides are systematically placed within the social structure. Even there are fewer subsidies allocated to the schools to make them resourceful and inviting for the people from underprivileged classes. Though NEP 2020 strives for the long-term future of education conducive to all, the matter within its implication zone is circular and not clear. For example, the development of critical thinking ability among students is hard to be accountable for and possibly regulated by

Emotions, authority, and education  59 the power dynamics of school and maybe the meaning of critical thinking is given a different token of understanding as compared to the development of scientific acumen against the majoritarian common sense. The movement to equip schools with required resources tried to attain equivalency in education for the students who were coming from the low socioeconomic status background. This is one example of the structural divide based on social class positioning, affordability, and accessibility. The channelizing of students’ emotions is also a matter of how they perceive their social position and hence their ability. Observation indicates that the students from the lower SES background who are admitted into schools experience a kind of collective emotions which are either directed towards the privileged others such as anger or directed inwards in the form of shame when compared with the former. The emotions of the privileged correspond to pride and guilt, however, this can also be observed among the underprivileged when any of the group members cross the socioeconomic barrier and achieve any success. The pride of achievement for the underprivileged is also linked to the self-affirmation which further acts at the collective level. This means that the struggle of students to survive in academics and perform well is a matter of honour and pride for their community. However, many students from the marginalized section become underachievers in their struggle to survive in schools, which was further noticed gravely during the pandemic times when online education was affordable to some students. In the Indian context, where maximum representations of students in the highly resourceful1 schools are from a high-status upper-middle class, any achievement from the students from the underprivileged social class and gender group can be an achievement emotion and a matter of self-esteem perseverance or enhancement.

Control of emotions in schools School can also be a critically reflective space where identity, power, and emotion had an integrative role. This is what is experienced in the teacher’s association with the schools’ authority and the students in the classroom (see Zembylas, 2014). It is well stated that the powerful are less on perspective-taking and emotional recognition of the powerless. Sometimes the objectification of emotion is a matter of power dynamics where the powerless is not able to generate an authentic recognition of their emotion which usually emanates from the oppressive sociocultural and sociostructurally driven contexts. Schools are one of the units of the sociocultural system where under the umbrella of didacticism, therapeutic education, discipline and control, and the broader discourses are laden in power and identities. The current enforcement of various policies especially NEP 2020 to develop certain values among children is also an indication of a new kind of colonization of the children’s minds. As the research suggests that emotion and cognition are interlinked, the impact of value colonizing on

60  Power and Identity the marginalized students is also a denial of emotions the children experience. The role of emotional engagement in education adds to the knowledge and understanding of the social relationships in schooling. As we saw in the earlier chapters where power is understood and transformed into integrative function is a collective emotional process that helps in the building of new knowledge (e.g., Cliffe & Solvason, 2020). The importance of emotion in cognitive thinking has been explored in the last couple of years (Schutz & Pekrun, 2007) where the case is made for the role of emotional context in the educational space. They aptly stated, “an educational context is an emotional place, and emotions have the potential to influence teaching and learning processes (both positively and negatively)” (p. xiii). The recognition of emotion as irrational, if the child deviates, devalues, or discounts education through disobedience and disidentification, the school system systematically either neglects the student or develops a therapeutic programme to control his/her emotion and behaviour. The current research on the educational context and emotional spaces has the potential to open up a new dialogue in the educational system of India. Greenberg (2012) stated that the process of emotional change involves novel experience and understanding. In the case of students whose emotions are regulated by the school system, too much control will devoid these students of creative thinking, forming healthy social relationships with diverse groups including teachers, and involvement in collaborative thinking. It is to be noted that being overwhelmed by emotion is contrary to the wellbeing of the students and the progressive philosophy of education. In the Indian context, the progressive and heterodox schools of philosophy emphasized the balance of thoughts and emotions. The idea we derive is just not to regulate and control emotion as irrational but to create an efficient design of schools to neutralize bias and cater to the emotion of students and teachers. This is possible as Greenberg (2012) suggested that emotion should inform one’s life rather than control them. Also, the school intervention in controlling emotion or labelling it as psychopathological breeches the universal idea of transformative ethical practices (see Niesche & Haase, 2012). It also shows responsibility towards the students’ ethical self-actualization, right to be reflective, and their belongingness to the sociocultural experiences. The discourses in schools where only one kind of value system is popularized directly indicate the powerful control of others’ experiences and denying their sociocultural rights. As observations suggest that emotions are a primary meaning-making system, action tendency, and communication system, it is important to see their adaptive function rather than controlling (see Greenberg, 2012). The mechanism of controlling emotions is a systematic avoidance of students’ ability to adapt to the context and thus putting a barrier to the construction of a new meaningful connection with the education. The agenda of schooling is to create a good citizen vis-a-vis work better when schools channel the students’ emotions towards participatory citizenship to

Emotions, authority, and education  61 justice-oriented citizenship (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004). Westheimer and Kahne (2004) noted that the personally responsible citizen acts responsibly in his/her community, work and pay taxes, obeys the law, and volunteers during the time of crisis. Further, the participatory citizen becomes actively involved in community work, organizes to help promote economic development, involve in cleaning effort towards the environment, have sufficient knowledge about civics matters and government bodies, and engage in strategies for collective tasks. In comparison to the first two citizens, justiceoriented citizen engages in critical thinking, abstract forms of morality, logically engage in dialogues, assesses social, economic, political and cultural norms of the society, put effort to address the areas of injustice, and have tolerance towards diversity. They have a positive understanding of the social and collective movements needed for social change. The schools in India and most of the cultural context prepare students to be good and lawabiding citizens. Through the routine classroom, uniforms, weekly designed curriculum, and co-curricular activities designed to develop the citizenship consciousness, schools’ shapes and homogenize the collective consciousness, and hence regulate emotions. The art of being critical and thinking at the abstract level is considered to be a matter of maturity. The school’s assumption of critical thinking development or engaging in logical and factual analysis is limited to the subject till the point students are engaging in some discipline-related problem-solving. Going beyond the texts and the disciplinary boundaries, questioning the school structure, or the hidden assumptions about the imposed policies is out of the imagination. However, students and teachers make sense of the structure and its regulatory agenda under the name of reforms. Confirming to them is important for their academic survival.

Emotion, education, and rationality The education system in school is to cultivate a sense of pride in their national identity along with the emotions related to one’s achievement and academic outcomes. It also generates a sense of collective and conscious emotions depending upon the school discourses. If the dominant discourses in the school are about ability, achievements, and competition, the emotion of the students is standardized accordingly. For example, the student’s capacity to take others’ perspectives, understand others’ states of mind, and be empathetic is standardized under the larger context of achievement ability discourse. So, the students’ emphasis will be to succeed, gain power and status, surpass others, and live based on the given dominant social standards. In the classroom, as we discussed in the previous chapter, students’ experiences matter to the extent it is facilitated through efficient educational design. Students are also autonomous agents and not simply the carrier of what is taught. They are not the shaped entity out of the dominant discourses too. They are an entrepreneur of their experiences, interests,

62  Power and Identity and emotions. If the schools attempt to standardize their emotion to the will of the powerful authorities, it simply doesn’t neutralize the subjective emotions that one has accumulated through the varieties of knowledge systems and just not the schools. The idea is to get off from the boundaries of deep-seated social divides which has been centred in the schools and despite the students’ performance overpowering their historical identities. The attempt to build up one’s individuality beyond the given standards is also the marker of the students crossing the boundaries of conventional systems and reaching the new model of thinking which requires an abstract and critical view of understanding society and the received meaning of one’s self. Harre (1993) stated the general meaning of our socially constructed actions as the fact that people are created by other people and that their actions are in essence joint actions does not mean that the actions people perform are socially caused. People, as we construct them, are built to be capable of autonomous action, to engage, usually with others, in the reflective discourse on the possible course of action, and to be competent in the discursive presentation of and taking up of personal responsibility. (p. 3) When the students utilize their ability to question the legitimacy of a school authority or in other words cross the stage of standardized expression of emotions, he/she is going beyond the social construction of the given identity. The dominant discourse of achievement and ability is the social construction students achieve in the discursive space of the school. Students with different experiences when meeting school authorities they engage in the inhibition-confrontation process. They either inhibit their emotions due to the authority’s influence or confront it. This occurs especially during the case of negative emotions which dominates their behaviour in the schools. If students feel humiliated because of identity-based subjugation, he/she may avoid and inhibit it because of the fear of impunity which may have long-term negative influences affecting their health and ability to cope with the novel situation. Some students confront and reappraise their felt emotions due to the influence of authority and imposing academic relationships like peer pressure. The development of critical ability among the students is an enactment of felt autonomy that students from the minority group gain due to long struggles in the social and educational world. Sometimes facilitation of critical thinking among students is a matter of the right to think and express and just not facilitation. Historically humiliated students in the school conform to the values of dominant castes and standardizing their will to the dominant norms in the name of pride development is paradoxical enforcement of regulation.

Emotions, authority, and education  63 Some psychological model of emotion observes the emotions of others, label them in terms of basic level feeling, and individualize them. These are the popular models of emotion which are felt by the individual and taken as personal without giving any reference to the sociocultural context. In a similar context, some psychological model observes emotion as a social process with three levels of sociality such as interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup (see Tiedens & Leach, 2011). Further, scholars observed emotion as a situated self, a meaning-making system that makes sense of itself in the continuity of cultural context. For example, Jaggar (1989) not only elaborated on emotion as an intentional entity but also as a social construct situated in the history of groups, in the active social engagements and sometimes regulated by the authority. The way emotion is taken as an individual behavioural marker, it is at the same equally social. Social, however, is an umbrella term in which all the three levels of sociality operate within the ambit of power dynamics.

Emotions and identity Social psychological models of emotions state either how an individual feels about in the given circumstances or how society is emotional. Jaggar (1989) noted about conventionally unacceptable emotions or outlaw emotions as experienced by people who are subordinated by the status quo. School systems are the reflection of the status quo and people adapt to it at the cost of their health and wellbeing. She aptly gave interesting examples, such as, “people of colour are more likely to experience anger than amusement when a racist joke is recounted, and women subjected to male sexual banter are less likely to be flattered than uncomfortable or even afraid” (p. 60). In the school’s situation, we can infer that if the student from the marginalized section is the victim of casteist microaggression, it may be normal for the people from the upper caste, but that student will feel humiliated. If schools standardize the emotion of the upper caste’s everyday experiences, then imposing will cost the wellbeing of the marginalized students. In this context Jaggar (1989) stated “when unconventional emotional responses are experienced by isolated individuals, those concerned may be confused, unable to name their experience; they may even doubt their sanity” (p. 61). Feeling pride as others are feeling, or getting angry as one peer group are given way to more paradoxical emotions and hence impressions about one’s ability. If the female student sees her female peer excelling in the task usually stereotypical seen as a male domain, will show pride. This pride differs from the standardized one or which fits the display rule sanctioned by the schools. In the case of Dalit students in the classroom, the everyday casteism in varieties of forms (explicit and implicit) has generated a series of emotions among the students from shame to anger. However, this shame, humiliation, and anger felt by students are the result of the collective historical process which is individually seen as an individual response.

64  Power and Identity The invisible power which regulates people’s life and any of their emotional expressions is taken as the victim’s lack of obedience and hence lack of potentiality to become a good citizen. This is ironic that the schools don’t provide space for identity expression. It attempts to construct an identity that is meaningful to a privileged few but not all. Schools in India may cater to the need of diverse students, however, schools for different socioeconomic classes of students are different and the very idea of promotion of diversity within the schools itself is ad hoc and unfulfilling. In the songs, dramas, books, and curricula, the actual presence of students from different backgrounds is a missing factor. Emotional diversity hence is also missing in the schools or constructed through the dominant discourses. The question can arise whether emotional diversity is a matter of one’s identity or anyone can face varieties of emotions. The answer to this kind of question depends upon how the meaning of emotional diversity is understood in the sociocultural space. The social identity of students seems to take many pathways. One of the pathways is socialization through cultural values, for example, caste and rituals. The direction and intensity of emotions also depend upon the social context. In any social system, different emotions are nurtured and nourished depending upon one’s social position. Even in the context of teacher–students formal relationship, the social hierarchy situates the emotions of different stakeholders. For example, there were instances when teachers become the target of anger by some of the upper caste majoritarian groups, if teachers adopted a critical approach towards the oppressive history. Any attempt to factually correct the dominant history and critically looking at the received knowledge had invited intense emotional feelings. Also, if any student from a marginalized caste or religious group attempt to correct the teacher holding a prejudiced view, that students become the target of aggression and mockery.  This anger is the result of deep seated prejudices towards the oppressed and marginalized groups which may be the result of faulty socialization. Similarly, if teachers feel embarrassed along with the students against the student from a tribal group calling for economic expansion through the special economic zone as a move by the government and industry to create more jobs, this emotion has a different context compared with the first one. In both cases, the expression of the emotion of anger is directed towards the person belonging to the historically oppressed group. It is also demeaning to the emotion and experiences of students and teachers from a marginalized group. Indian psychology is diverse however the way it is portrayed as systematic and homogeneously designed under one kind of framework contributes to its paradoxical understanding in academics. Its presence is seen in the school systems also. The psychology of people is also hegemonical where the everyday culture has an overriding influence on the activities of people. Falling into the paradoxes of theory and practice is living under chaos and it is human nature to resolve that dissonance (e.g., Festinger, 1957). The school system standardized the student’s emotional display, the inherent

Emotions, authority, and education  65 paradox where education standardizing the experience is difficult to resolve unless the problem is addressed at both the societal and educational levels. One can elaborate on the meaning of diversity as the presence of students (male and female; different castes) in the classroom but the diversity is also uplifting and representations of students from underprivileged, representative, and underinformed groups. Diversity corresponds to equality whether it is about admission in the school, scoring marks, playing with the peer group, eating tiffin, or respect for emotions. Any misfit to the above-stated factors limits the movement of diversity. The schools in India are diverse in their domain depending on the classes it represents and the fact is that most of the students in the classroom are from lower castes. This is not diversity as per the affirmative action and representative programme but the systematic segregation of schools. From the Indian context, the schools in India provide unrepresentative and uncritical space. The structural diversity and representations carry the deep feeling of discrimination only to be accepted and adopted as per the wider social norms. Schools that attempt to bring in diversity get limited by the broader societal structure. If the school opens its space for all categories of students and lowers the fees or funding to sustain the students’ academic and survival needs, the chances are still low that the agenda of diversity will be fulfilled. There were cases where parents from better social classes attempted to admit their children into the alternative schooling system. However, the reason was the low fees but at the same time quality teaching and proper engagement with the students. These schools work on the holistic development of children and try to promote diversity and democratic feeling; they fall short of facilitating the competitive structure needed to survive in the fiercely competitive world. The overall development of children is a misstated phrase as if students are helped to be part of the school, participate in school activities, bring their socio-cultural-emotional experience, and engage with the academic task in more collaborative but could not fit into the red zone occupied by the dominant schools catering to the ambitions of a privileged group of the society. The Trishanku model of schooling where the teachers and students either plunges into the disciplinary discourses or insightfully comes out from the shackles of the traditional Guru-Shishya model is ironic. Trishanku model gets back to the mythology where the protagonist Trishanku was stuck between worldly affairs and heavenly affairs. He was neither belonging to the earth nor heaven and got stuck in between (See Kumar, 2017). This can be located in the statement “man is not only a multidimensional being, but he is also an ambiguous being” (Chattopadhyaya, 1991). The duality of practice and thoughts was persistent in the Indian schools where the reason is not that reasonable when it comes to emotions and identity. Further, the social context  gives meaning to the self and identity. One can logically defend his emotion or feel guilty for acting emotionally, in the latter case, his approach towards being emotional is derived from rationality-

66  Power and Identity irrationality bipolarity. When questioning power and authority, the emotion of the questioner is derived from his identity and accumulated meaning of self and directed towards the powerful. His emotion is logical to him and is expressed through the vantage point of his activated social identity. Here emotion which is derived from his subjectivities is meaningfully connected to a similar kind of social identity which is critically questioning the powerful others. For example, if the students collectively feel that their concerns or needs are not met by the schools, they may launch protests or write on social media. Here the need of the student is transformed collectively which further engages them collectively. This may have both emancipatory and non-threatening consequences. In the first case, the authority might understand the student’s concern and acts accordingly or the authority might feel uncomfortable with the student’s movement and take disciplinary action. The conformists may be included and rebellions may be expelled or punished. Here we can see the interplay of power and emotion in the zone of schools. Sibia and Misra (2011) noted that emotional regulation is virtue and devotion (Bhakti) in the Indian context. Though there is a deep psychological paradox in being and behaviour, the model cultural templates such as whom to respect, how to behave, the role of teachers and elders, expectations from students, and worship of the received education have deep emotional significance in the Indian social system. When there is a difference in identity, emotion, and expression then there will be a distortion of the self. The notion of good citizenship behaviour has also its emotional significance. Sen (2005) indicated the epistemological limitations in the choice of action which may be linked to the derivative force such as emotion. This force becomes logical for the actors when the latter connects it to his identity. They derive meaning out of it for the sustenance of themself. In the educational space, the meaning of identity has an emotional significance that can be understood in the students’ responses and behaviour. In the standard environment of the school, students’ emotions are not eliminated but they find a way in another context. The students who faces discrimination or prejudice in the school may not express anger in the school’s standard environment but it may have a long-lasting effect on their interaction with others, everyday interpersonal relationships, health, and coping with similar kinds of systems. They may disidentify from schools and education, and due to lack of representation, they feel alienated. This directly implies the outcasting process where instead of Maitri or friendship creates separation and clashes of communitarian identities. In this clash, the victim is always the historically disadvantaged minority students. Though different emotions are experienced by people the dominance of few emotions based on identity is a frequent demeaning of one’s sense of agency. This frequent presence of aggressive remarks, microaggression, and humiliation are not the mark of oversensitivity but deep-seated prejudice prevalent in our society against the disadvantaged group members (see West, 2019).

Emotions, authority, and education  67

Understanding emotions in a cultural context The emotion of fear which had grappled our society finds its location in the “what if” analogy, where the fear of wrong training spoiling the child is very prominent among parents. Fear has uniquely dominated the emotional space in educational spaces. The responsibility of training, citizenship socialization, and schooling of children had been taken by the schools which also includes the skill development to make children prepared for future jobs. The rise of online education at an exponential rate is providing an enriched platform where technology and learning are effectively utilized to prepare students for the next level of a competitive world quite advanced as compared to the earlier generations. These hubs of education are emotionless and the students are the passive recipients of knowledge, though there are platforms for asking the question, however, the questions themselves may be directed to clear the misunderstood concept. There were other kinds of questions that take the discipline forward from the critical point of view where students’ questions are at the levels of the idea, taken for granted assumption, or faulty premises. The neutralization of emotion on the online platform is more or less the same as it happens in the classroom. The fear to be non-conforming to the majority, or of teachers reprimanding students on raising any critical points, and further the fear of public humiliation may result in a sober attitude on the part of students. When it comes to the actual classroom education in the school, as stated earlier, the agenda is to discipline the students through classroom etiquette and pay attention to the academic instructions. The humiliation of students based on their caste has been frequently cited through different categories of observations, both academic and narrative based. The systematic humiliation of the students from lower caste backgrounds is through the microaggressions where they are frequently insulted through gossip, lack of representation in the classroom when teachers are asking any questions or eye contact, and sarcasm about their ability. Observations also showed that non-conforming students were considered as low on ability, problematic, causing disturbance to the classroom proceedings, or unintelligent. Mostly they were not allowed in the classroom or seated at the back. Even the students who conformed were humiliated and insulted for their belonging to a low caste or stereotyped for their being from a lower social class. The idea of progressive education is also to provide an emotionally safe space and an environment of self-expression which is most of the time lacking in schools. The hurling of casteist comments on the non-conforming students is not uncommon in both the online and actual classroom. As per the situation where nationalism has started a new form of discourse among the people, schools have acted as a regime of controlling the students’ actions. Those who were non-conforming were considered illegitimate students and the controlling of students’ sense of emotions was operated both from the policy and school level. At

68  Power and Identity the psychological level, the identity of students was taxing on the students’ everyday academic activities. They are bullied and victimized and much of the time these microlevel oppressions are underreported and the students have to accept the burden of being from a particular sociocultural group and identity. The available sociocultural models in cultural psychology, as studied and researched by scholars in India, attempted to define identity from the cultural perspective and they redefined the available categorical understanding of the students belonging to lower caste groups and tribal groups. The scholars working to understand sociocultural psychology tried to bring equality of perspective from the cultural vantage point. However, culture is not homogeneous and within the same culture, there are varied experiences. The attempt to homogenize culture is usually observed in the school agenda. Sociocultural psychology deriving from the work of Vygotsky (1978), as one of the protagonists of the Marxist approach to the cultural understanding of human behaviour, situates students as a social being and their cognition as a culturally emergent phenomenon. Studies indicated that cultural diversity helps in the integration of emotion and cognition and helps students go beyond the restraints of formal and imposed curriculum (e.g., Mirza, 2016). For example, in the school where I worked earlier, there was no imposition of curriculum, and the pedagogy was activity-based where the teacher acted as a facilitator and collaborates with the students engaging on the problem at hand. Students in the class were from different classes, such as from the weavers’ community, children of domestic workers, and children of shopkeepers. Among them, however, many of them were from upper-caste backgrounds except the children of weavers and domestic workers. Some of the students who came from minority and Dalit backgrounds find it hard to adjust even to the environment where students were given space to put up their ideas, emotions, and experiences. The reason can be the whole schooling space flourished in a historical context of discipline, training, and epistemic violence based on identity and ability. These are not simple proxies to be taken as a cause behind these students’ lack of motivation or self-handicapping behaviour, they have deep historical connections constructed in the form of stereotypes and preserved in the zeitgeist and resulting ingroup labelling and hence self-labelling. The uniqueness of this form of schooling is its critical engagement with the students and offering a model of school which is not a school typically but a space of self-exploration and liberation. Liberation of learning is not an aimless exercise as some policymakers may attribute this form of schooling as lagging or regressive. The recent NEP 2020 is hinting somewhere about activity-based learning and the amalgamation of tradition and the modern. In the earlier educational movement at the policy levels, the national policy on education (NPEs) and later national curriculum framework (NCF) also pushed for experiential education where culture is in a more diverse form. In other words, in the last couple of decades, emphasis

Emotions, authority, and education  69 was on understanding the students’ sociocultural meaning-making. However, this effort formally at least in the academic research taken aptly by the Indian scholars working in the area of sociocultural psychology. Returning to the classroom context of education where the power dynamic is either one sided or dissipated through the empowering methodologies, the emotion gets shaped, co-constructed, and deconstructed at the same time depending upon the school values. In this process, emotions can be self-directed such as pride, ambition, happiness, sadness, and guilt or they can be other directed for example shame, compassion, and sympathy. In the case of the former, emotions emerge in the independent self-construal society and in the latter case, emotions emerge in the interdependent self-construal society (see Choi, Han & Kim, 2007; Markus & Kityama, 1991). Choi, Han, and Kim (2007) pointed towards the limitation or ecological fallacy of these kinds of comparative scheme which need not be a sweepy assumption about the deep sociocultural differences existing within the geographical boundaries. Emotions that are self-directed such as pride or guilt usually emanate among the students of high status who are powerful through their acquired social capital and teachers who have certain expertise and hold the authority to regulate students’ behaviour. Self-conscious emotions such as shame and humiliation are usually seen among the powerless and in the case of students who are from low-status groups, or low achievers and socially stereotyped. The systematic cultural humiliation and insults in the schools which are the result of deep sociocultural hierarchy may also result in the feeling of anger directed towards the powerful. When observed from the social identity perspective the anger among the students from minority and disadvantaged sections is the result of humiliation. These students want to identify with education and try to excel without any social and other kinds of capital; however, the situation of existing stereotypes prevalent against their group in society and school creates a large barrier both in terms of their present standing in education and their future mobility. In most cases, it results in disidentification and devaluation where it seems that anger has reshaped itself into escape and avoidance. In the school’s context, there are few cases of student protest especially from the sides of disadvantaged students regarding their rights because of the controlled construction of the school structure.

Understanding emotions and diversity in the classroom Kincheloe (2008) noted that educational leaders mostly control the school curriculum and funds allocated to run the schools. The monitoring and accountability of teachers fitting into the given standards of schooling and knowledge is a regular marker of power and control. Through this control of knowledge, teachers, and policies schools also control different kinds of emotional schemes. The systematic development of schools is in terms of the desires of educational leaders communicated through the

70  Power and Identity designs of schools and under the shape of rational action. From Bruner (1996), it can be inferred that schools are cultures themselves where there are toolkits that sustain their legitimacy. These toolkits are “techniques and procedures for understanding and managing” (p. 98) the school culture. They construct narratives and stories of success, which Nambissan and Srinivas (2013) discussed as the reproduction of structure and agency, which affects the students’ and teachers’ pedagogical relationships and discourses. The context of schools which don’t have a clear anti-discrimination policy may reproduce the culture of discrimination based on their established and model system of pedagogy and learning. The resistance and mediation by the possible democratic pedagogue such as teacher to work upon in tackling discrimination by addressing the students feeling, sometimes regulated by the authorities. This may result in teachers being given different tasks unrelated to academics or asked to resign. Any attempt to collaborate with the students’ emotions, especially, emotions that are demeaning to one’s existence in the school is preemptively neutralized by the powerful authorities. This is not to say that authority in itself is reprimanding all the time; however, the distribution of authority is an effective means to legitimatize all the agents of schools. Students as learning agents and teachers as pedagogical agents come into congruency through the active moderation of the school culture. Chawla-Duggan (2007) studied the children’s understanding of schools, how they develop their “learners’ identity” and the strategy they construct to adjust and adapt to the school’s circumstances. This study indicated that the children are not passive receivers and reproduce as the schools expect from them but are active constructors of their identity. In the process of understanding their place in the school both in terms of teacher-peer relationship and school identification, children manage their emotions also. For example, in one of my observations, when children from working-class parents were approached in the school, they collectively responded with their understanding of their space in the school. Though some were speaking and some were silent observers, they were well aware of their social position, the kind of job their parents do and what school means to them. As the above study noted that children are equipped with different social, cultural, and material resources which may further lead to differential success. However, these differences in the available resources or capital are situated in a comparative socioeconomic context, where children from low caste and social classes are homogenized into the same categories. The difference should be objectively stated in terms of where the resources are lacking. As this is a pragmatic understanding, at least in the sense of Dewey and Ambedkar, that deficit in resources, capital, and ability also needs to be objectively defined. The growth of research on emotional intelligence and self-regulation ventured into the academic domains. The research suggested that the role of self-regulation in academic and behavioural outcomes is direct.

Emotions, authority, and education

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Self-regulation featured as one of the causal factors of school readiness consists of focusing and maintaining attention, emotional regulation, positive response to the stress, reflection, and sustained positive social interactions with teachers and peers (see Blair & Raver, 2014). The congruence of both self-regulation and school readiness estimates the student’s success in academics. Exploring from the power perspective, the schools reward the student’s ability to self-regulate their emotion and behaviour. This is taken as a token for the student’s adaptability to the given school culture and norms. To adjust to the norms of power is a cultural outlook to see students as future citizens who are emotionally stable, normative, and participative. The terms like academic performance, cognitive fitness, academic adaptability, and efficacy are promoted and defined from the perspective of authority whether schools, parents, law, or society. In the process of self-regulation, it can be noticed that it is not happening completely as an individual phenomenon but has a deep sociocultural impact. Thus, the adaptability and adjustment to the above authority assumptions is a new shift in discourse towards the self-regulation.

Conclusion There is a strong link between emotion with power and it is evident that the powerful find the emotion of regulated people either invisible or threatening. Power has many faces and power defines the situation of the powerful and powerless. It is indicated how being powerful with resources such as psychological, social, and monitory defines the social interaction of the negotiators such as students and teachers, teachers and higher authority. In other words, exploring how the legitimation in education moulds the power dynamics in the educational domains and how this power relation is transcended in the future display important insight to the working of schools in the current times. The role of power is undeniably stronger in the shaping of thought processes and behaviour. Any divergence from the established normative way is against the will of authority and hence disordered. In recap, we can say that the school manages the conscious emotions of the students by providing a platform of learning which systematically homogenize their identities. We have observed how students from marginalized backgrounds come to school with their collective memory, sociocultural meanings, and identities. Managing their emotion through the general understanding available about these groups becomes contrary to the possible cooperativeness and diversity sharedness. One of the repercussions that students from marginalized group face is an exclusion based on their social identities. As a result, they become self-conscious of their excluded identities in the domain of privileged outgroup. This has a remarkable impact on their emotions leading to negative emotions (e.g., humiliation, shame, fear, disgust, and hatred). This further influences the construction of their self and social identity. In the next chapter, the issues of stereotyping, prejudicing,

72  Power and Identity and othering will be dealt which has a deep connection to their collective emotions.

Note 1 Resourceful schools in this context refer to the benchmark based on which any school can provide necessary and sufficient resources to the students which include well-equipped classrooms, skilled faculty members, clean toilets, an equipped library, playground, tutorial system, effective mechanism to involve parents and guardians, counselling facility, and security and effective mechanism to deal with microaggressions and discrimination.

References Blair, C., & Raver, C. C. (2014). Closing the achievement gap through modification of neurocognitive and neuroendocrine function: Results from a cluster randomized controlled trial of an innovative approach to the education of children in kindergarten. PLoS ONE, 9(11): e112393. Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Camacho-Morles, J., Slemp, G. R., Pekrun, R., Loderer, K., Hou, H., & Oades, L. G. (2021). Activity achievement emotions and academic performance: A meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 33(3), 1051–1095. Chattopadhyaya, D. P. (1991). Man: An essay in philosophical anthropology. In R. A Sinari (Ed.), Concept of Man in philosophy (pp. 1–11). Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation. Chawla-Duggan, R. (2007). Children’s learner identity as key to quality primary education: Eight case studies of schooling in India today. New York: Edwin Mellon Press. Choi, S.-C., Han, G., & Kim, C.-W. (2007). Analysis of cultural emotion: Understanding of indigenous psychology for universal implications. In J. Valsiner & A. Rosa (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of sociocultural psychology (pp. 318– 342). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chomsky, N. (2003). Understanding power: The indispensable chomsky. New York: Vintage. Cliffe, J., & Solvason, C. (2020). The role of emotions in building new knowledge and developing young children’s understanding.  Power and Education,  12(2), 189–203. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Greenberg, L. S. (2012). Emotions, the great captains of our lives: Their role in the process of change in psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 67(8), 697–707. Harre, R. (1993). Social being. Oxford: Blackwell. Heaney, J. G., & Flam, H. (2015). Power and emotion. London: Routledge. Jaggar, A. M. (1989) Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology. Inquiry: An interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 32(2), 151–176. Jogdand, Y. (2018). The drowned and the saved. Caste and humiliation in the Indian classroom. Women Philosophers’ Journal, N° 4–5, 304–311.

Emotions, authority, and education  73 Kincheloe, J. L. (2008).  Knowledge and critical pedagogy: An introduction. ­Dordrecht: Springer. Kumar, D. (2007). The Trishanku Nation: Memory, self, and society in contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Markus, H. R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition, emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 98(2), 224. Mirza, N. M. (2016). Emotions, development and materiality at school: A cultural-historical approach. Integrative Psychological and Behavioural Science, 50(4), 634–654. Nambissan, G., & Srinivas, R. (2013). Sociology of education in India: Changing contours and emerging concerns. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Niesche, R., & Haase, M. (2012). Emotions and ethics: A Foucauldian framework for becoming an ethical educator. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(3), 276–288. Schutz, P. A., & Pekrun, R. (Eds.). (2007).  Emotion in education.  Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press. Sen, A. (2005). Why exactly is commitment important for rationality? Economics & Philosophy, 21(1), 5–14. Sibia, A., & Misra, G. (2011). Understanding emotion. In G. Misra (Ed.), Handbook of psychology in India (pp. 286–298). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Tiedens, L. Z., & Leach, C. W. (2011).  The social life of emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. M. Cole, V. John- Steiner, S. Scribner, E. Souberman (Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. West, K. (2019). Testing hypersensitive responses: Ethnic minorities are not more sensitive to microaggressions, they just experience them more frequently. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 45(11), 1619–1632. Westheimer, J., & Kahne, J. (2004). What kind of citizen? The politics of educating for democracy. American Educational Research Journal, 41(2), 237–269. Zembylas, M. (2014). The place of emotion in teacher reflection: Elias, foucault and ‘Critical Emotional Reflexivity.’ Power and Education, 6(2), 210–222.

4

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering

Students and staff who are the victims of prejudice may have negative interpersonal relations, lower academic outcomes, and less identification with schools and have lower academic efficacy which can affect their wellbeing. As we see later that there are researches that showed students coping mechanisms by devaluing school activities and affiliating with their social groups, the outcome for the minority and marginalized students is more oppressive. In one sense, stereotyping and prejudicing based on people’s belongingness to marginalized groups make them others and sometimes invisible and voiceless. The recent row on the high court order in Karnataka, not allowing Muslim girl students to give exams wearing Hizab and Burka is a new expression of prejudice in the name of discipline and uniformity. It is indicative that this form of regulation in education has nothing to do with the vision of education and learning which was imagined by Gandhi, Phule, Ambedkar, or any progressive social reformer. The rise of social media trials through trolls represents the surface level but deeply prejudiced understanding of minorities and culture. The use of majoritarian religious symbols, for example, tika in the educational and formal spaces does not draw attention or protest, though perhaps these too should come under the uniformity of appearance in the formal contexts like schools. It directly led us to the segregation of mind, faulty education system, and powerful influence on the people who are struggling to have their constitutional rights accepted. Even the courts sometimes come out with prejudice guarding laws under the umbrella term of justice. The prejudice connects with stereotyping and othering in the complex underplay of ingroup and outgroup. Though it gets always simplified and overgeneralized (Allport, 1954). The prejudicing and othering of Dalits, Muslims, and Christians are common systematic exclusionary process experienced by these social groups in different domains. In the case of Muslims, students face the gazes of othering. It seems that the schools are meant only for upper-caste Hindus. Though there are madrasas where most of the students are boys, their education is homogenous and its agenda is

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003378297-7

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering  75 to discipline, self-regulate, and respect (e.g., Allam, 2013; Gupta, 2015). Allam (2013) noted: It is through the internalization of the norms of the madrasa that students feel that they gain respect in society. After all, it is the madrasa which gave them knowledge through which they can discern what is good and ignore what is forbidden. (p. 240) In the heterogenous schools, though Urdu is mostly not taught, the Muslim students are limited. In the affluent schools’, Muslim students are few in number and from an upper-middle-class background. The government schools in India mostly comprises students from the working class and among them, the Dalit and Muslim student are unevenly distributed. Earlier village maktab consisted of both Muslim and Hindu students but in today’s time, the deep ideological and political upheavals have politized the knowledge into religious propaganda (see also Rajan, 2021). The enumeration of representations of castes, communities, religions, and gender in different categories of schools such as missionaries, government, middle, and lower status private schools are well documented and systematically figured region-wise (see Gupta, Agnihotri & Panda, 2021; Kumar, 2018; Ramachandran, 2021; Rao, 2016; Shah, Bagchi & Kalaiah, 2021; Shah & Bara, 2021). The social-psychological aspects in the school contexts of India need further explanations. Though studies in the western domains intended to figure out the psychological metrics for the issues of self and social identity in the educational context (e.g., Mavor, Platov & Bizumic, 2017). This chapter will engage with both subtle and blatant social-psychological nuances in the Indian educational system. Further discussing on the schools which fulfils the need of marginalized people, one of the parents expressed his anger for the schools which feel shameful and practices discrimination in admitting students from the working class and marginalized group.1 At the same time, he expressed his respect for the schools which look after and take care of children. He stated: Yeh to nahi kahenge daave ke saath ki yeh school kiske liyen banayagaya hai Magar yeh kahenge iss school mein jo itfaak se bhi chalaan ayaa Aur school se acha to yeh school hai Kaun sa videshi log school mein padhayenge yeh bataien Tarah tarah ki language me padhai hoti hai Teachers sabhi bacho ko padate hain Aur private school ki apeksha yeh school acha hai Garib bache un private school mein padha hi nahi payenge Woh private school garib bacho ko lega to uska beijjati ho jayega

76  Power and Identity Apna position banata hai Lekin iss tarah ke school me dekhaua nahi hai [I will not say with confidence that for whom this school was built But I will say that if someone comes to this school by chance This school is better than other schools Tell me in which school foreigners are coming and teaching students Teaching and learning happen in different languages Teachers teach all the students In comparison to private schools this school is better Poor children could not take education in those private schools If those private school admits poor children, it is a disrespect for their image They built their position But in this kind of school, there is no show buzz] He expressed his determination, confidence, and sense of pride in his children who are taking education from South point which provides low-cost quality education, food, and employment. Iska koi mukabla nahi hai Hamare chaar bache hain English ke Main dava karta huun sabhi schoolon se Hamari paas aukat 101 rupaye ke hai par puuri duniya ke samne hum aukaat dikhaiyenge Hamari beti ka mukawala koi karle? Bata denge kis school ka beta hai...bacha hai [There is no comparison We have four children who are studying here I challenge all other schools We have lower level but we will show our level to whole world I challenge anyone compete with my daughter We will tell from which school my daughter, my children are] The response showed an integration of emotions towards the perceived discrimination by mainstream schools and respect for the school which caters to the needs of the working class. There is not one domain where prejudice is not experienced, but it spreads in different domains. Schools are the site of power display and prejudice is systematically woven into the system. Schools are not apart from the broader social structure and the platform that school creates to educate students, itself becomes the vantage point of prejudice expression and biases. In the Indian school system, this social-psychological marker of intergroup relation is seen between teacherstudent, student-student, and other staff. The data shows the rise of students from diverse backgrounds in the schools. However, as referred to in the previous chapter, schools in India are of varieties where there are

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering  77 distributions of high, middle, and lower status schools. Among them, there are private and government schools. Diversity in the Indian context is not always pluralistic in the educational domain but segregating. Prejudice is observed and felt on many occasions by the students and staff. Among the students of a minority group discrimination based on intergroup prejudice is rampant. The systematic studies on stereotyping and prejudice in the school system have a direct link with the wider social system. Though stereotyping and prejudicing are known concepts, their impact is insurmountable in almost every domain where people make a hasty judgement based on their preconceived notions about the people belonging to different social groups. Allport’s (1954) work on the nature of prejudice was remarkable and exemplary. He situated people’s judgement in the context where people don’t give a second thought to the outgroup’s reality. The reality is framed, historicized, and deep-seated to be critically self-noticed. Schools are the domain where stereotyping and prejudicing operates at the everyday level. In the Indian situation, there are no neutralizers systematically designed where people become conscious of these phenomena and vilify them. Students are the victims if they belong to the social group which is historically oppressed. In other words, the phenomenon under question is banal and hegemonized. School space is also a domain of identities where a different form of identity processes works simultaneously. Apart from that identity with which children are associated is controlled by the school authorities and the factions outside the schools. Schools act as homogenizing agents through common pedagogy and curriculum. In that act, the students from the prejudiced identities further face marginalization where they face discrimination in the name of homogenization. Identity matters and is not stagnant, the way it is appropriated and concretized in our society. The next section will discuss the meaning of the identity process in the context of power and education.

Identity process: social identity perspective Identity serves two functions. At one level it acts as a signifier of one’s self and at the other, it acts as an operating agent falling into the processes either inimical or favourable to the person. The process through which an individual’s assigned social identity interacts with social context and is shaped by it lies in the perspective which has more explaining potential. The social identity perspective was developed within the metatheoretical framework of European social psychology (Hogg et al., 2004, p. 249). It rested upon certain assumptions concerning the nature of people and society, and their interrelationship, maintaining that society comprises social categories which are situated in power-status relations to one another (Hogg & Abrams, 1988). The social identity perspective in social psychology is commonly viewed as an analysis of intergroup relations between large-scale social categories, which rests on a cognitive definition of self, the social

78  Power and Identity group, and group membership (Hogg et al., 2004, p. 246). Working at the meso-level of analysis (Pettigrew, 1998), social identity of the person acts as a channel between macro-social factors and micro-psychological analysis (also see Simon, 2004). In other words, macro-level variables such as social institutions, political, and economic systems and micro-level variables such as individual motivation, feeling, and behaviour interact with each other through the medium of social identity. Thus, the social identity perspective opposes any kind of reductionist approach to explaining psychological phenomena. This cycle of macro-meso-micro together denotes the identity process (Simon, 2004) based on one’s accentuation of similarity between self and the ingroup (Hogg & Abrams, 1988). However, the situation plays a predominating role where individuals self-categorize themselves based on the relevance of social categories, that is, an individual’s perception of the “fit” of the category, where the concerned social category becomes more cognitively accessible (Oakes, 1987). The social identity perspective has its conceptual origins in research by Henri Tajfel on perceptual accentuation effects of categorization (Tajfel, 1959), cognitive aspects of prejudice (Tajfel, 1969), effects of minimal categorization (Tajfel et al., 1971), and social comparison processes and intergroup relations (Tajfel, 1974). Drawing on work by Berger (1966; Berger & Luckmann, 1971), Tajfel first defined social identity as “the individual’s knowledge that he belongs to certain social groups together with some emotional and value significance to him of this group membership” (Tajfel, 1972, p. 31). In the social identity tradition, groups are defined as collections of people sharing the same social identity, which is, having similarity in the association with highly preferable social categories (Hogg et al., 2004). According to Turner (1988), the original intergroup theory which analysed intergroup conflict and social change focused on the group’s competencies with one another for positive distinctiveness. The nature of the competition, and the strategies used, depends on people’s beliefs about the nature of intergroup relations (Hogg et al., 2004). This general idea, which became the social identity theory, later became the “social identity theory of intergroup behaviour” (Turner et al., 1987). However, the more recent self-categorization represents a general theory of group processes based on the idea that shared social identity depersonalizes individual self-perception and actions (Turner, 1988). As pointed out by Hogg and Abrams (1988), “social identity is a formally defined and theoretically integrated set of processes and assumptions explaining the relationship between sociocultural forces and the form and content of individual social behaviour” (p. 13). Of the above development in the structure of social identity perspective, two of the major developments were social identity theory and self-categorization theory which complemented each other in understanding identity processes. Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering can better be discussed through the understanding

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering  79 of social identities and where its activation is felt by the concerned group members who become the target of the social categorization. At the current time, some scholars may speculate that there are enough studies on stereotypes and prejudices. In other words, they may insist that there is a point of saturation in the understanding of these concepts. However, the more it is believed that the prejudices are saturated and easily reconciled, the more its roots are strengthened and are felt in the normality of everyday life and the private homogenization of people belonging to the outgroups. Since stereotypes and prejudices are linked to the social process which involves intense emotional reactions towards the outgroup, the number of instances in the school dynamics witness to its ever-increasing effect. The socio-political times, the rise of the discourse of market influences and intersecting ideologies are not operating in its mechanism but they have a deep influence on the identities and power. For example, in the times of neoliberalism, the value-loaded terms such as market regulation and the upliftment of meritorious have de-emphasized the social identities and stereotypes associated with them. The backroom boys involved in the actual transaction of prejudicing becomes invisible under the influence of neoliberalism. Prejudice involves negative emotion towards the outgroup and this social influence is pronounced in the form of action towards the powerless. In the chapter, the influence of prejudice is understood in the school context where there are clear-cut dynamics of teacher-teacher, teacher-student, and student-student. This will be understood under the dominant influence of power, operating hegemonically within the school premise and also from the structural level. The concept of prejudice was heavily challenged in western research and had made a remarkable entry into educational policies. In the educational domain in India, some of the works addressed the issues of prejudices in the subdomains of multilingualism in education, pedagogy, and curriculum in different cultural contexts. However, the direct social-psychological challenges like stereotype threat and prejudice have been less addressed at the policy level. It was indicated earlier that efficient policies are necessary for the social and emotional development of students in the classroom. However, policies also adumbrate the dominant ideology. If the issues of prevalent prejudices will be addressed through the policies, it may act as a boomerang effect on those dominant ideologies which shaped the policies. The inherent paradox of educational reforms and non-address of prejudice has largely occupied the Indian educational domain. The studies done to see how stereotype threat effect and prejudice operate in the Indian educational domain didn’t address the power dynamics of the dominant social structure. The innovative education programmes seem to design an educational system nurturing mediocrity and the latter is one of the reasons for the fostering of prejudice rather than tackling it at a holistic level. The sources of prejudice are strengthened in the neoliberal times rather than

80  Power and Identity diminished. Though the sources of prejudices are located in some cognitive, emotional, and behavioural components, it is systematically observed in everyday practices such as casteism, sexism, nationalism, job discrimination, hate speeches against minority groups and migrants, bigotry, authoritarianism, and homophobia. Researchers in the western tradition highlighted these markers of prejudices and had greatly contributed to the policies. To learn in an environment, where rampant stereotypes and prejudices are operating on an everyday basis, is a systematic prevalence of oppression in which the students are trying to survive. This is an indicator of stiffened power dynamics based on identities. The possible worlds of children, as indicated by Jerome Bruner (1986), become limited to the environment of prejudice prevalent in schools. These prejudices are the result of social categorizations that concretized through practices and rituals. The possible meaningfulness which can be derived through the prejudice neutralizer is the marker of expansion of the children’s world. It is the creation of new avenues taking out the children from the grip of psychological disadvantages that has occupied the consciousness of the marginalized being. The notions of belongingness in the school are a co-constructed phenomenon where the meaning of prejudice can be understood through groupings and categorizations. In the same classroom, some students know that they belong and others are in ambivalent situation. This is further facilitated by the teachers and staff who may intentionally or unintentionally promote these notions of authenticities. Prejudices are nurtured in varieties of ways and the school agents such as students, teachers, parents, and staff together co-construct its meaning. For example, the meaning of high achiever is just not what the students showed through the marks but also their social group belongingness. Usually, it is observed that high achievers in the school context are students from a higher caste as compared to students from a lower caste. This statement may not be misinterpreted in terms of essentialism of abilities but the real cause is the availability of resources, historical devaluation, and negative stereotype that has occupied the educational domain. Since school provides a platform for equality, as it is ideally indicated, the difference in the performances and unequal treatments are the markers of the practices which is fuelled by various forms of prejudices. The essentialist’s view about human agency and also as a matter of group belongingness situates the knowledge about any person like a person. As Rorty (1989) critically discussed how knowledge is a constructed entity and is not the “mirror of nature” (see Olson, 2001). Prejudices put blockades to the children’s intellectual growth and possibilities of scientific exploration unless the child gets some space for expression and resistance. Prejudice is absorbing, creates social-psychological boundaries and limits contact. In the process, the agency of the group members is objectified. Thomas Nagel (1986) in his work on “the view from nowhere” stated at the start, “something peculiar happens when we view the action from an

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering  81 objective or external standpoint. Some of its most important features seem to vanish under the objective gaze” (p. 110). The words of Nagel have a transformative effect. It suggests the possibilities that Bruner imagined for the meaningful future of the child where the school has the potential to play an important part. Educational psychology, even today, dominantly neglects social influence. It is based on certain factors which are assumed to be measured, diagnosed, and cured. The fictionalized and ideologized image of human agency, according to Martin-Baro (1994), missed the history of the oppressed and limited the people to individuals only. Prejudice is not a problem to be cured within the person. The personality dimension of prejudice such as authoritarianism (Adorno et al., 1950) has essentialized it as some trait that is loaded with conventionalism, authoritarian submission and aggression, tender-minded, superstitious and stereotypical, identifying with dominant and powerful, destructive in approach, and so on. Further, Altemeyer (1981) extended it in the form of a scale to measure right-wing authoritarianism with reliable dimensions such as authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. So, if someone is showing the mentioned behaviour in a social relationship, the person is categorized based on some mentioned trait, disposition, or personality dimensions. This is possible in schools where the teachers and principals may show the mentioned trait in their actual behaviour. They design curriculum, decide pedagogy, engage in actual classroom behaviour, regulate marks based on performance, and design timetables. The most needed aspects of classroom interactions and school culture remain undocumented. The process of surveillance and continuous observation of students has also occupied the school system. Though the actual process of prejudicing seems an individual psychological response towards the other, it is a social process mediated by social identities (see Augoustinos, Walker & Donaghue, 2014; Duckitt & Mphuthing, 1998). The power dynamics between the social identities in the school system are also an exchange of discourses and values, where prejudice is communicated and perceived. Usually, this happens between an authority figure and the subordinates. In the school context, this subordination can be linked to either teacher from a marginalized background who becomes the victim of peers’ and students’ preconceived notions. It is also rampantly seen between the teachers, especially teachers from the upper-status background are prejudiced towards the teacher from the lower status group. Some people advocate it as the oversensitivity factor rather than the frequent facing of prejudices in different forms. For example, not giving enough space to the student to question, negatively judging the marginalized, double-checking if the student performed well, caring for some students who carry positive stereotypes, back-benching students, holding a stereotypical view about the girl students, and practicing untouchability in some forms. Prejudice manifests in many forms, as we see in the school contexts. Mostly it encircles around the identities and powers, where the dominant

82  Power and Identity identities manipulate the oppressed identities into their agenda of sustaining societal power in one form or the other. The case of Dalit students in India is one paramount example where there is a double impact of social exclusions. This further systematically excludes the girl child and embeds them into various social pressures adumbrated through gender, regional, linguistic, and social class dominance. Since power has many faces, some visible and some invisible, the deep-seated prejudice against the Dalit students in society has dominated the space of schools. At least in the university domain, the chances are high that students with the help of a student union may protest, but in the school context, the protest and movement to address the issues of prejudice at various levels of schooling is hard to see. Educational reform is mostly seen at the higher level but at the school level, the policies have only regulated rather than liberated the minds of students. Starting from early childhood education to the higher secondary level, students generally are punished or sometimes violently controlled in the name of discipline and self-regulation. Prejudice as we may infer has a common global meaning but it operates at the cultural level. In Indian schools, prejudice is manifested and rigidified in the existing stereotypes. For example, if the upper-caste students in the classroom get to know that one of their classmates is from the Dalit group, the activation of the existing stereotypes is quite common which further impact the social relationship. The very interaction patterns create a situation where the simplified meaning is constructed based on the identities and further blocks the understanding. This can be tackled through efficient interventions where one group tries to venture into the experience of others and come to the truth. However, prejudice has a stronghold on the mindset and is nurtured through various alterities such as parents, grandparents, teachers, neighbours, and all the interventions model fails at addressing the roots of prejudice. There were several attempts to tackle prejudice, which is assumed to link to various other social and educational challenges such as violence, academic failure, bullying, pedagogical domination, unrepresentative curriculum, and students’ disidentification. Education is not the problem of school alone but is the social problem. Education is sometimes nurtured through the social identities through the lens of prejudices taken as normal and unquestionable. The making of education in the neoliberal times as driven by the market forces is the problematic placing of identities as a neutral concept. Education is not ahistorical and neutral. It is political and critical. When we conceptualize education as neutral, anyone can learn, and standardize its didactic format, we underestimate the power of social identities which played a very important part in that manipulation of knowledge. The power dynamics is not just a mechanism but a display of the rule of dominant identities. The situating of identities in different commercial and economic conditions preserved the group-based prejudices in varieties of activities. The schools in the Indian context become the platform for capacity building apart from the idealist agenda to promote values derived

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering  83 from the dominant ideologies. It represents varieties of values from cultural asceticism, acquiring knowledge, and skills to the consumption of skills. However, in all these historical processes, prejudices also continued. Still in the 21st century where the aura of modernity has taken new turns of interpretations, that is, from idealism to materialism and then the integration of both in the social activities of people, the prejudices have taken a new form and interestingly taken forward by the current generations. The quest of becoming a true human being to the manipulation of an idea to make it practical for individual economic gain is shaping the new culture of human relationships. Some schools are good at facilitating this agenda and many schools are alienated hence they serve the everyday need of the people who cannot afford expensive education. Neoliberalism, if understood to have an overpowering influence on all, the alienation of identities, in the documentation and everyday behaviour, is contrary to the agenda of equality. All the system has a face and we can see it only if the mask of neutrality and market is removed. Thus, the comprehensive account that neoliberalism is the situation of the profit motive, merit creation, and other forms of creativity is nullified once the identities agenda is also included. Neoliberalism in education can mask the identities in the name of neutralities but we need movements to unmask the same. Prejudice against the students belonging to any oppressed group seems to take a “substantive mode of mentality”. It is “the tendency to account for or describe events (social or otherwise) in terms of the ‘essence’ of things instead of in terms of related process” (cf. Sherif, 1948). The unscientific appropriation of human nature as a group nature to which the person is a member has always sustained and nurtured prejudice. In the classroom process, the tendency to observe others in an uncorrected way is an inclination to get the reified look only. This is an approach to sustain the social structure and retain the social position both for the person and his generations. The future generations are socialized in those terms of seeing the members of oppressed and marginalized groups as uncompetitive and further creating a system of exclusion and incompetency. Though social identity theory showed the positive effect of group on the wellbeing, self-esteem, and efficacy of the students (see Mavor et al., 2017), the overpowering effect of prejudiced intergroup relationships has always created divides in the classroom. Researchers, activists, teachers, and even the policies intervened in this direction but the oceanic influence of the social structure negatively influenced the future social relationship where the latter is an important marker and facilitator of social change.

Power dynamics, schooling, and prejudice In the classroom process, the prejudices against the person work in a powerful and authoritarian context. In the actual classroom settings, the available prejudices are internalized by the members of the target group and form a part of their social selves. Though this may not be communicated by the

84  Power and Identity family members the varieties of the domain in which the child enters equip him with self-prejudicing by providing cues. These cues are loaded in the everyday teacher-student and student-student relationships such as sitting arrangements, eateries, and food distributions. These social cues if asked, the sender rationalizes into neutrality. Prejudice operates both explicitly and implicitly, where the former is the direct expression in the public moderated by the time, and the latter is like a reflex response sometimes privately expressed. It may be possible that the prejudiced students may express their positive self-concept on the explicit measure rather than the implicit measure of a social stigma (see Ashburn-Nardo, 2010). This can be further generalized in the case of classroom prejudices. Here, the group of students interacts as per the social norms, established schemas, and common sense understanding of one another. Unless this interaction is deeper and dialogical the swift impression about one another in terms of ingroup and outgroup categorization is common. The studies showed how a participant persists to carry on with the dispositional attribution about others despite the availability of situational information which they usually overlook (see Jones & Harris, 1967). Prejudice is hard to combat due to one’s tendency to confirm one’s prevalent preconceived notions about others. The school’s role in the identification and prevention of prevalent stereotypes and prejudices adds to human rights. However, the methods which are best suited to address these issues are based on an incomplete understanding of the meaning of stereotypes and prejudices. They may serve as curative functions based on threats and punishments only. The more inter-dialogical approach to understanding their roots is hardly facilitated in the schools. Some schools undertook a task to address these issues of prejudices at the model level and they explicitly portray their school as non-discriminatory based on caste and gender. The “anxiety of incompleteness”2 (Appadurai, 2006; p. 8) is coped with the alignment to the belief one holds about others. One of the recent examples of a caste-based prejudice in the Indian school3 showed how students from upper caste refused to take mid-day meals cooked by the Dalit cook (bhojmata). They wanted their meal to be cooked by the upper-caste cook. At the school level where children are assumed and expected to show obedience and conformity expressed their socialized form of a deep-seated caste-based prejudice in their refusal to take food from the lower caste cook. This move was rejected and contested further by Dalit students as an anti-caste movement who refused the food cooked by the reappointed upper-caste bhojmata. In the Indian schools, this was one of the rare moves where students participated in the social movement against the prevalent palpable prejudices observed directly. One of the reasons is the social power in which the students from the upper caste are socialized led to the sustaining of prejudices. The prejudices are either shown explicitly or implicitly preserved. It depends upon the kind of mechanism which emerges during any intergroup interactions. One of the studies (Guinote, Willis, & Martellotta, 2010) noted that the group

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering  85 who is perceived to be powerful hold a positive attitude towards powerful identities. They even hold the same attitude towards the identity having a positive view about those powerful identities. In the case of schools, if the mechanism of neutralizing any expressed prejudiced intention among students or teachers is effective, the chances are high that this may be carried forward. Though the larger social milieu is strongly fabricated with the caste structure and this mechanism of neutralizing prejudice may be diluted, the global effort is certainly going to help. In the event of Dalit students protesting the food cooked by the upper-caste teacher was the reaction in the form of identity assertions. This is possible because of the critical consciousness and the political will of the group members which is possible when the oppressed group members experience some social power or derive their inspiration from their leaders. In both situations, the mechanism of social power either facilitated the prejudice or contested it with resistance, as in the latter case of Dalit students. Though psychologists may find roots of prejudice within the parent-child relationship and mirroring of the existing parental and familial stereotypes, the interventions of schools in creating a better platform to make an unbiased choice is crucial for the student’s wellbeing. At the policy level, attempts had been made to make education accessible to all. The effort was to make the educational agenda more global. Conferences and seminars were organized and the discussed themes were transgressed into the actual pedagogical practices and curriculum. One of the examples, as discussed in detail by Sadgopal (2005) was revisiting the knowledge agenda of globalization. Attempts were made to arrive at a common line from where a major regulatory decision could be made. The world declaration on education for all (EFA) framework discussed reaching the basic learning needs. Another forum that happened in the past after the formulation national policy on education (NPE) (1986) guidelines and programme for action 1986 were Jomtien Declaration and Jomtien framework (Thailand and Dakar) which was jointly convened by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), and World Bank. This was done to know the progress of EFA. According to Sadgopal, these frameworks were the “new policy-level international guide post”. Though the emphasis was on the market forces as discussed above, the verge to fit education into the global economic order was not fully unsuccessful. The sociocultural expectations were not met with the new imposition of orders. The policy acted as a standard safety net rather than as a force to tackle the barriers to fulfilling the agenda of just not basic education but education with dignity. The nature of education is shifted through many terrains. Despite the agenda of bringing in social change, whether it was for uplifting and equipping girl children with necessary skills, or helping Dalit children to get good and dignified educations and skills, the stereotypes against them

86  Power and Identity didn’t vanish from the everyday discourses and activities. The starting of the district primary education programme (DPEP) in 1993–1994 was only a structural adjustment programme based on a design offered by the World Bank. The neoliberal interventions only violated the basic principle of equality and social justice. The basic agenda of “Buniyadi Shiksha” and Gandhian Nai Talim where integration of the world of work and world of knowledge (see Sadgopal, 2005) was just not the upgradation of mere literary skills but arriving at meaningful education for children from all sections of society. Some of the policies are rooted in “ambiguous notions of basic learning needs and basic education” (Sadgopal, 2005, p. 87). The recent spearheading of NEP 2020 in the educational domain starting from primary education to higher education has systematically tried to change the image of education. In the process of changing the structure of the educational system, the agenda of education is revivalism of the tradition and at the same time making the students skilled and meritorious to fit into the evanescent job market. However, these are also the agenda of the current government to show its audience the new toolkit of reform. Whatever may be the case, nowhere the reality of discrimination based on stereotyping and prejudicing was addressed. Indian society doesn’t need designs of policies to impress the powerful and enchant the audience with hollow drums. Designs and structures are already there and the need is to shape the idea of social justice which can address the concretized social divisions in the schools. One of the major worldviews linked to the marginalized students’ dropouts and disidentification with schooling is because of systematic structural exclusion. The right of the student to move out from the oppressive schooling system is a social cognitive act which is also a collective act. The progenitor of neoliberalism and market regulatory forces makes the cause invisible and removes the human element responsible for the decisions of students as a mark of self-respect and honour is missed out in the literature on educational psychology. The notions of academic achievement and failure were earlier limited to the human individual agencies. Over time with increased awareness, social movement and progressive research, the role of group history, persistent inequality, lack of resources, opportunities, and societal structure also came into the description of academic achievement and failure. Some looked into the matter of academic achievement differences away from agentic and cognitive sufficiency to social constructionist, identity, and social representations viewpoints (see also Sinha & Mishra, 2015). The social identity of the child, one that he/she comes within the classroom and the other which was formed through the school interventions seem to be interrelated. The students from the lower caste if found any opportunity to study in the school carried the burden of being from the lower caste and all later engagements with the classroom situations were derived from their social identities (see Hoff & Pandey, 2006).

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering  87

Gaps in learning and performance In the educational psychology literature, the academic achievement gap has been explained mainly from a deficit perspective. The metatheoretical assumption of the deficit model is that all human behaviours can be explained in terms of their traits and ability. Winne and Nesbit (2010) categorized the available explanation of school performance as “the way things are” and “the way learner makes things”. The first domain emphasized the psychological phenomenon that was seen as universal and not under learners’ control, for example, cognition, socioeconomic status (SES), home environment, school structure, etc. And thus, this domain was portrayed as deficient in character. The second category domain emphasized the psychology of “the way learners make things”. In that category, Winne and Nesbit (2010) considered learners as agents. These agents were expected to shape their learning environment by choosing between tasks and psychological tools. Accordingly, when those choices were made and acted on, new information was created and feeds forward. For example, children’s metacognitive monitoring, motivation, and interest were considered as individuals’ agency to make choices and to operate in their environment. But what if the social and historical experience of an individual doesn’t allow shaping his/her environment? The mechanistic interpretation of success and failure as due to efforts or ability by making choices was considered insufficient and problematic. The cognitive endowments, as it was earlier identified, valued intra-individual constructs dominating over outward achievement. The efforts not to overlook the social context and identity processes in shaping cognition is the current trend of shaping the school discourses. The more equipped justifications had been advanced in the last two decades within the four distinctive theoretical models. These models tried to explain the gap by situating cognition under the social structure. These are, namely, Doise and Mugny’s (1984) genetic social psychology, Monteil and Huguet’s (1999) social regulation of cognition, Sidanius and Pratto’s (1999) social dominance theory, and Steele’s (1997) theory of stereotype threat. Despite a focus on slightly different problems, these theoretical perspectives shared the view that cognitive ability as responsible for students’ academic achievement is not the fixed entity as it was once considered (e.g., Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002; also see Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Van Laar and Sidanius (2001) documented a more general theoretical perspective on this issue of status and performance. Drawing from social dominance theory, they argue that social psychologists need to become aware of the various social and psychological factors that may transform low social status into low academic achievement. On the other hand, Brenninkmeijer, van Yperen, and Buunk (2001) took a quite different approach where the major social factor which had an impact on students’ academic performance was located in the teachers’ agency and sociocultural experiences. Therefore, it was asserted that

88  Power and Identity if student-teacher relations were difficult, learning and performance on the part of the students may get suffered. Guimond and Roussel (2001) raised the issue of gender and the role of gender stereotypes in the perception of academic achievement. While this theme has perhaps been studied mainly from the perspective of the teacher, Guimond and Roussel (2001) argued and provided evidence from three studies to suggest that gender stereotypes may affect how students perceive their very own performance and abilities in math, science, or language. Thus, if characteristics of the teacher (Brenninkmeijer et al., 2001) and those of the wider social structure (Van Laar & Sidanius, 2001) can have a definite impact on the academic achievement of students, the psychological significance of the task at hand can also determine performance (Huguet, Brunot, & Monteil, 2001), and the performance itself can have different psychological meaning (Guimond, 2001). Further evidence for the role of stereotypes in intellectual performance is presented by Croizet et al. (2001) in their overview of recent research on the theory of stereotype threat. After the first generation of research established the basic effect of stereotype threat on cognitive performance, they introduced what may be the beginning of a second generation of research (see Guimond, 2001), geared towards understanding why the effect occurs, and thus setting the stage for some possible interventions aiming at reducing the negative impact of stereotype threat. In introducing the topic of social influence in aptitude tasks, the work of Quiamzade and Mugny (2001) makes it clear that teaching is a social influence process, and that much is to be gained by focusing on the social influence dynamics that may improve learning and cognitive performance. Buchs and Butera (2001) also illustrate this view in some of their results from their research programme on cooperative learning. Their contribution is significant at the theoretical level as they attempted to specify the ingredient in cooperative learning that makes it work, and also at the methodological level as their experiment shows how one can observe and quantify some genuine and complex pieces of the educational process. Further, Monteil and Huguet (1999) pointed towards the social regulation of cognitive performance. Integrating 20 years of research, they argued that cognitive performance, in general, is as much dependent on the social context under which it takes place as on any generic cognitive ability. The above theoretical position respected the social nature of cognition as context-dependent. But even those theoretical perspectives have shown their location in the same observers’ perspective. However, their presence as an explanation of reasons behind low academic achievement highlighted the gap where understanding actors from the actor’s viewpoint becomes more prominent. Steele’s (1997) work offered an alternative explanation for the academic achievement gap keeping the group perspective more pronounced at a deeper level of explanation from the actors’ perspective. As identity processes because of the accessibility of actors’ social identity in the evaluative

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering  89 situation, like school, becomes an important parameter to be explored in this direction. Therefore, it becomes imperative to understand the social identity perspective to better explore the psychological processes in academic achievement, first at the level of metatheory (what kind of a theory is it?), and then at the level of theory (what does the theory itself say?) (See Hogg & Abrams, 1988). Unless we have prior knowledge of the contrary about one’s social identity and its situational manifestations, students who achieve poorly on tests or acquire bad grades in school would probably appear untalented or lazy (Aronson & Steele, 2005). These impressions supporting the actors’ position from the observers’ viewpoint may be correct only some of the time, but in many cases, as in the earlier examples, there is more to the story. Powerful social forces are at play that may be hard to see or appreciate, but that nonetheless undermine people’s academic achievement in important ways (Aronson & Steele, 2005). The perspective under which the observer’s tradition worked ended as a-social and de-contextualized, affirming the discourse of psychometric community shaping educational psychology. This view supported the cognitive epistemology of human behaviour as it appeared sophisticated in its outlook and result. Even the literature in social psychology and education was full of examples regarding objects that influenced social relations and students’ motivation, learning, and performance, but too often we failed to appreciate these kinds of social forces (Aronson & Steele, 2005). It is generally assumed that students’ intellectual achievements are the products of internal forces like intelligence or competence, rather than situational ones, like an encouraging social climate (e.g., Dweck, 1999; Jones, 1989). In their quest for a positively valued social identity and positive distinctiveness, individuals are thought to be bound by and take into consideration the nature of group status and group boundaries (Schmid, Hewstone, & Ramiah, 2011). Previous research investigating the sole presence of individual factors responsible for achievement rejected other possibilities of academic achievement. Children’s social identity and cultural context have been a powerful voice in the context of academic achievement. Children’s psychological disengagement with the academic domain was interpreted as a lack of cognitive/motivational factors but not as the product of different contexts and the quest for positive social identity. Ogbu and Simons (1998) identified two types of minorities, i.e., voluntary and involuntary where voluntary minorities have more permeable group boundaries but involuntary minorities don’t. The feeling of perceived social mobility has varied chances of its implications. Thus, when group boundaries are seen as permeable, individuals of low-status groups who didn’t identify with their group mostly engaged in social mobility strategies and attempted to join the higher status outgroup. However, in case of perceived impermeability of group boundaries, group members may engage in other strategies to enhance their social identity, for example, social creativity or social

90  Power and Identity competition (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). It can be inferred that students who perceived their group belongingness as stable have remained in it involuntarily by psychologically disengaging their self from the domain of academics. In other words, there was the possibility that students’ search for positive meaning to their selves allowed them to search for a positive social identity. However, those states of mind may not exist for students who believed that their chances of social mobility as their enhancement, thus deriving their sense of worth in pro status activities. In the last case, these students valued the system based on their socialization and their belief in the non-cognitive resource they received from home (e.g., “work hard if you want to exist in competition”). Here, there is ample chance for them to identify with their group taking it as a psychological resource and not as a liability. Students who think their chance of success in the other group domain is low engaged in other strategies of enhancing social identification.

Social identity, schooling, and performance: empowerment in action The issue of social identity or sense of group belongingness as a possible factor in students’ academic performance was not adequately identified as it was taken as a separate entity to deal with, categorizing it as a contextual factor. However, Shih, Pittinsky, and Ambady (1999) stated that it is the stereotype associated with the group in the particular domain which is responsible for stereotyped behaviour and not the identity itself. The processes of identity led to two trajectories. First, the knowledge of belongingness towards their group as stereotyped one may lead to increased effort to come out from that situation and second, which we have seen among AfricanAmericans, as disidentification from the academic domain. The latter part can be better associated with psychological disengagement comprising two behaviours, i.e., devaluation of the academic domain and discounting of the academic domain. The way this factor was dealt with in literature is entitled to further examination. Further, in the recent literature pointing towards the process of group identification as a result of group devaluation, the opposite pattern was more prominent (see Leach et al., 2010). It was noticed that members of the devalued group increased their ingroup identification after (perceived or actual) group devaluation is an assertion of a (pre-existing) positive social identity that counters the negative social identity implied in social devaluation (Leach et al., 2010). Belonging to a group that is devalued in society is widely expected to have deleterious psychological consequences, for example, stereotype threat, low academic efficacy and identification, low self-esteem, and low academic performance. In the Indian context, it was found that despite group-based stereotypes particular categories of people excelled and performed better or equally with their high-status counterparts (Hoff & Pandey, 2006). Researchers have seen the effect of stereotyped identity as the main source of perceived

Stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering  91 academic bias and thus their psychological disengagement from the academic domain with a low level of school identification (e.g., Schmader, Major, & Gramzow, 2001). Overall, from social identity theory, it can be inferred that members of the stereotyped group when perceive devaluation identify more with their social group. So, to keep their self-esteem intact they identify with their most preferred social categorization. But this is not implied generally because it seems to vary with context and culture. Also, it varies with a social identity which became more surfaced in the particular situation. Jones & Nisbett (1972) asserted that when it comes to explaining people’s behaviour, there is a big difference between the “observer’s perspective” – the perspective of a person observing the behaviour – and the “actor’s perspective” – the perspective of a person doing the behaviour. Jones and Nisbett (1972) pointed out that as an observer we look at the actors in explaining their behaviour. Thus, the actor dominates our literal and mental visual field which makes the circumstances to which the actor is responding less visible to the observer (as cited in Steele, 2010). It could be inferred that we emphasize things about the actor characteristics, traits, etc. that seem like a plausible explanation for the behaviour and deemphasize, as causes of his/her behaviour, the things we can’t see well namely the circumstance to which person is adapting.

Conclusion Designing the thing into cultural metaphors has limitations in addressing the problem at the global level. This chapter showed that stereotyping, prejudicing, and othering in varied forms are observed universally and their mechanism of operation is almost the same in varieties of cultural contexts making it a global phenomenon based on social identities. When we see any problem only from the cultural angle, it may dominantly situate into the embedded dominant discourse and has elements of truism. Rescuing the phenomenon from the cultural bewitchment makes the schools a better place for the people who were the victims of historically driven stereotypes and prejudices. The shaping of the school structure which goes beyond didactic control requires intervention at both the cultural and global levels. Global, here is taken as a universal value that derives from the idea of ethics and social justice for all beings and not the market regulation, colonization, and neoliberalism. Many of the students from marginalized backgrounds face the situation of “you don’t belong here”. There is very little space to question these social influences in the actual classrooms. The intersections of social identities which has historical significance when positioned in the classroom give way to varieties of power dynamics some at the individual and some at the contextual level. The aspects of academic achievement differences are not just ability-based but it is linked to power and identities. The classroom process is a social process where there are ample identity

92  Power and Identity influences and this shows the dynamics of power-laden within the school and societal circumstances. In the Indian context, identity is not easily diluted, especially in the case of marginalized and oppressed ones which is loaded with the emotions like humiliation. The school space seems to be designed as neutral and combinations of diversity but it is more or less a platform of identity politics also. Since many incidents of institutional and academic violence showed rampant display of power and microaggressions in the educational spaces. For example, categorized attacks, based on caste, gender, and other minorities in the educational spaces in India has a direct link to one’s social identity and categorization. Further, the violence in education will be discussed.

Notes

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5

Violence in education

Violence is a global problem and its presence is seen in different domains, including educational spaces. In one sense, violence indeed blatantly enacts power. Undeniably violence is socialized by the power relationship; it is nurtured and created in the social realm of power. Violence has many faces and it is acted out and in. There was a different interpretation of violence, for example, objective and subjective, individual and social, macro and micro, and legitimate and illegitimate. One aspect which connects all the serious thinkers on violence is its direction and impact. We saw in the chapter on emotion and education, how sudden and intense spurt of emotions such as anger is directly linked to violence. It also denotes how the context of power further gives direction to emotion and results in violence, coercion, discriminations, and so on. As Markova (1987, p. 291) argued that antinomies are an essential feature of thought because we form knowledge by distinguishing between opposites – “every concept makes sense only in the context of its counter concept” (see also Kadianaki & Gillespie, 2015). The construction of space and how group affiliates can also give meaning to the violence in the shared domain. The making of collective memory and identification with the space may create the authenticity of being a true bearer of that space. In the school domain, this situation is observed where the privileged and those who think that they have the required social capital embark upon the education space and give way to the culture of dominance. However, this making of the collective space and discourse has not emerged as a matter of ownership only. There is a complex connection. Some of the examples highlighting collective memory of social space, such as communalism based on religion (see Varshney, 2001) or violence in educational space based on the dominance of religion and caste which was considered to be true space and no one else can build any memory on that space. This is problematic and hard truth to understand. Violence indeed blatantly enacts power. Undeniably violence is socialized by the power relationship; it is nurtured and created in the social realm of power. Violence as a variable attracted much attention in the social sciences, especially among the model constructing disciplines like education psychology. Some scholars looked at its nature but others its effect.

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003378297-8

Violence in education 97 In the social sciences, especially among the political scientist and sociologists, violence is more or less taken within the power gambit in different domains like family, caste, gender, labour movements, economic policies, and other intersections like peace and security studies, criminology, and social policies (see Kannabiran, 2016; Lohmeyer, 2020; Walby, 2013). The latter strived towards the descriptions and the cause was identified within. Though economics as a discipline also works efficiently on the platform of the power structure, it always operates in the background. Its impact is lethal if it works for the power asymmetry. Violence was less dealt with in mainstream psychological literature where it was operationally defined and related to variables that were hypothesized to cause the event. Though mainstream psychology seems to be a closed ally of economics, their relationship was always intense and subtle enough to be realized by the public. The subjective understanding of violence was reduced to the impressions of quantitative arrangements of variables. Events of violence and its descriptions, memories and its politics were more or less the domain of these social sciences rather than psychology as a discipline. When it comes to educational psychology, the portrayal of violence became the element of cold storage.

Conceptualizing violence Violence as a variable either to be experimentally manipulated or selected became routinized. This exercise is done to look for the exact science in educational psychology. Violence as a historically embedded phenomenon and as a matter of power dynamics was limited to the psychoanalytical traditions and judgement in psychology. This kind of phenomenal explanation doesn’t seem systematic and applied to the immediate problems of a child in the educational psychology stream. Manipulations of variables, deception, and operationalization were more attractive and fitted into the model construction rather than the grand approach of addressing the subject under question. This is not to indicate that the grand approach offers a holistic explanation and solution to the educational challenges, however, when it comes to societal phenomena like violence which has both individual and group level impacts in different domains, they have the potential to understand these problems at the transformative level. Violence is seen as a crude and archaic form of power (World Health Organization (WHO), 2019).1 Violence had been witnessed and narrated in different histories. Some narrated it as a matter of self-esteem and some narrated it as a scar on their memory and human agency. Nelson Mandela had devoted the whole twentieth century to violence. He stated that violence thrives in the absence of democracy, respect for human rights, and good governance. Popular psychologists like Pinker had compared the history of violence in different centuries concluding that the intensity of violence or its impact has decreased with time. It is another matter that the outcome of violence shows the

98  Power and Identity inherent asymmetrical relationship of power (Bagade, 2021; Pratto, 2016; Reicher, 2016; see also Simon, 1957; Singh, 2021). Is violence rooted in the culture? If this is so then the culture has to be understood through the subaltern lens which critiques the power asymmetry being rampant among different social groups. Since culture is not the agenda to be provoked here, its influence on the meaning-making and everyday social cognition in different domains, such as education, is systematically laden. Violence in the psychological literature is defined in terms of action and production, if not by the Aristotelian ethics, then by the observation of the behavioural outcome. Any action seems to be non-violent if it doesn’t produce an observable effect of harm. Though actions that have the high potentiality of harming the system where the chances of harm, both physical and psychological, are high shall be considered legally as an attempt to harm. However, if any act comes under the realm of self-defence or unintentional factors where the person is harmed is not violence because it is not acted and designed wilfully (see Hamby, 2017). The deterministic debates surrounding violence as human nature used as a defence by the perpetrators are derived from evolutionary sensemaking. These include factors such as genes, culture, brain structure and neurodevelopment (e.g., Raine, 2013), and hormonal influences. During the presence of hostile and emotionally provocative stimuli, neuroscientists even situated the cause of violence in the reactive aggressive tendency of the person whose frontal cortex is impaired and has little control over the controlling limbic system. Whatever the cause and mechanism of violence are, its impact on the social beings resulting due to structural power and context is an integral part of how society through its institutions is functioning. At least in the case of violence, nothing is negotiated but asymmetrically imposed. Students, teachers, and, to some extent, schools are examples of this collective imposition in the guise of self-regulation, disciplining, agentic rationality, cognitive control, over objectification (e.g., Nagel, 1986), and the politics of meritocracy. Not complying with this results in harm. Some are programmed enough to comply through their social and human capital. Alternatively, many others suffer the collective victimhood of this power structure. Hamby (2017) indicated four elements (intentional, unwanted, nonessential, and harmful) to define violence as a behaviour. Violence is defined through a different approach, such as through examples like sexual abuse and assault. The social-psychological approach mostly took the intention to harm approach that is aggression to define violence from the evolutionary psychology perspective (e.g., Buss & Shackelford, 1997) as compared to violence which is an aggressive act. DeWall, Anderson, and Bushman (2011) took the social-cognitive approach to understand aggression and violence in their general aggression model. They critically approached the adaptive nature of violence and insisted on the intervention to reduce it. Though these approaches cater to the reduction of violence at the individual level, the structural and macrolevel systems of violence seem to be

Violence in education  99 embedded in the social, economic, and political contexts. Gordon Allport (1954) located the cause of violence in intense emotion which converts intentions into harmful action. The embedded prejudices under the influence of emotions generated through whatever social mechanisms and intersectionality may incite an act of violence. Violence is an act of prejudice along with other negative actions. Allport stated, “the more intense the attitude, the more likely it is to result in vigorously hostile action” (p. 14). If violence is a translation of fear, rage, hatred, and despair, the chances are high that the social system along with its legitimate institutions and state mechanism may make it official. The tyranny of the state can be reduced to lesser levels of oppression if these contagious emotions (e.g., Hatfield & Rapson, 2012) don’t incite prejudice and dealt with the active involvement of the institutions. If these institutions, such as schools, imbibe these prejudices, then any form of emotional elevation may result in more victimizing of the marginalized students. For example, violence such as forced displacement. Dr Ambedkar’s effort to emancipate Dalits from the historical atrocities was a collective effort. His approach fuelled the social movement for social change at all levels of society. In the educational domain, he longed for the full development of Dalits. As Dalits education was confined to primary education due to structural exclusion, humiliation, and alienation, Ambedkar’s call was to create a space for achieving higher education. Even in the current scenario, Dalits are less educated, face maximum dropouts from the primary level education, maximally humiliated, and ostracized. The violence they face due to the prevalent prejudices creates a hurdle in their educational, social, and economic pathways. Looking at the data, these marginalized and oppressed students find it maximum difficult to attain higher education because of the biases, constraints, violence, and exclusions at the school levels. The school has its importance in facilitating diverse students to attain higher education parallelly addressing their economic and social constraints. The shaping of the structure of school needs the social-psychological pathways paved with the essence of the constitutional preamble such as justice, equality, liberty, and fraternity. Since this seems to be the highest form of ethics that any social system and individual can attain, why the location of power is embedded in the authority and why the violence shaped through this authoritative resemblance is legitimatized? Allport (1954) clarified how prejudice can lead to negative actions. If a teacher from upper status is prejudiced towards the lower caste students, he/she may engage in the behaviours like expressing antagonism with other teachers and students, avoiding those students, discriminating based on marks, and refraining from allowing participating in school programmes, physically punishing them. The objectification of students and teachers from the lower status group, despite being part of the school fraternity, points towards the theoretical self-constructed in the caste-based hierarchical structure. Caste becomes more important than human agency and dignity. Dignity seems to be for those who have a position in the societal

100  Power and Identity hierarchy based on caste and economic accumulations. In this process of showering violence of varieties, it is forgotten or intentionally repressed those rights given by Indian constitutions to be treated in a dignified manner by all the stakeholders, whether students or teachers or any member of whatever diverse group the person belongs to. Violence has many faces and it is acted out and in, without much causal understanding as understood through research. There were different interpretations of violence, for example, objective and subjective (see Zizek, 2007), individual and social, micro and macro, and legitimate and illegitimate. One aspect which connects all the serious thinkers on violence is its openness and subtleness. What we see is objectively interpreted as violence and the whole context of violence which plays its parts such as diffusion of identity dominance into the self-understanding is coming into the consciousness at the meta-level. For example, the rising violent incidents in educational setting shows the clash of a theoretical model of groups’ understanding of the context which is more or less simplified as the display of power over the other group members. Its history lies in the understanding of the present use of available social symbols by different groups and how at one end it is taken as a right and needed, and at the other, wrong and dissenting. The understanding of violence as authentic, legitimate, godly, divine, as explicit in some the religion combined with the state’s use of this symbolic violence move coercively at their ends. The protest, dissenting movements, disobedience, critical arguments against the status quo by the minority groups are taken as violent action against the peaceful state, shaking the idea of a democratic country which sustains the dominant oppression in the name of religion and caste identity as a nationalistic idea taken as fact due to its combination of the power of reasoning, history, and institutionalization of those ideas. The following sections will deal with the understanding of violence in education, the power enactment, and legitimation of violence. Further, we will see kinds of violence in a school context and the case for the transformation of power will be made to empower teachers and students with the help of educational leaders by promoting an inclusive and threat-free educational space.

Understanding violence in education As we answer this question, it is worthy to relook at the meaning of education and how violence has become an integral part of this valued domain. Education was said to be the praxis of liberation though it comprises the whole domain of formal teaching and learning where people are fixed into different stages of the hierarchical education system. Violence doesn’t have a fixed face and it is a matter of power in action and discourse which makes the violence fixed upon the social identities. This is an irony that violence in itself becomes difficult to question and its origination becomes an attribute of the person. Here, ideologies become an important part of social research

Violence in education

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where violence is linked to the person representing an ideology and not the hegemony of ideology is taken into account by researchers interested in understanding human and group behaviour. The education system is an institutionalized system where some values and ideologies take a lead due to many cultural and political factors. For example, few institutions claim that their core values are synonymous with the national culture and few symbolize their existence to the tradition, which in turn is taken as national culture (see also Altbach, Reisberg, & Rumbley, 2010). This is promoted to neutralize any alternative culture to counter the established way of schooling. Violence has many forms and it was seen in many domains. Violence is an act of aggression directed towards self and others. Though there are many incidents of self-injury and suicide in the educational domain, its causal factors in a more systematic form of discrimination are less highlighted in the educational psychology literature. Aggression against others is also an act of violence against people belonging to different groups. In India, the aggression directed towards people from historically marginalized and minority can be seen frequently and many of them are underreported or taken for granted. Violence occurs in many forms such as bullying, emotional degradation, microaggressions, punishment by authorities, abuse, and rape. The most common primary emotion which instigates aggression and violence is noted to be anger. Anger is noticed in both authority and power as well as powerless. However, anger displayed through the powerful authorities is an act of violence when it is directed towards powerless minorities. In the latter case, the perceived secondary emotion is a humiliation which is also a form of felt violence by the oppressed. From individual to the group level, violence towards the other was seen to be a blatant course of action and was cherished by the powerholder when it comes to regulations. Teachers giving punishment to disobedient students is taken as a legitimate exercise by the authority. It happened in the past narrated in the epic of Mahabharatha when Guru Dronacharya, who was considered an authority and one of the brilliant teachers of warfare. When Eklavya, who was the poor tribal, couldn’t access warfare education from the guru, practised himself in front of the guru’s sculpture. When he displayed his self-acquired skill to Dronacharya and since he didn’t belong to the Kshatriya class who were considered to be an authentic recipient of knowledge and skills, he was asked to amputate his thumb, a vital finger for aiming at the target. In one way, from the cultural vantage point, this was appropriate and the marker of culture and obedience, and at the same time, it was a display of casteism and violence. The instigation to give guru dakshina in the form of thumb and not anything else showed how casteism, power, society, and emotions are linked together. As time changed, the act of punishment or danda also gets reformulated, however, it never vanished and both implicitly and explicitly took its recourse. Stanley Milgram (1969) in his famous experiment on obedience to authority displayed the pressure that an authority

102  Power and Identity creates on the follower that it may even lead to extremes of punitive acts. Violence under the course of legitimacy, legitimate leaders, representativeness, and authority is exhibited and systematically authenticated. Violence follows the routes of different narratives. One route serves as a legitimizing function and the other delegitimizing. In the case of authorities, violence becomes appropriate and authentic. It serves social positioning and sustenance of culture and traditions. For example, “punishment is necessary to keep the students disciplined”, “the baton of policemen cures all the intentions of doing crime”, “evaluation and marks are important indicators of students’ academic learning”, and likewise. The second route is situated in the actions of outgroups such as the protest by the union members and students. The latter route is most of the time seems threatening to the majority who look for protection in the state’s mechanism. Though studies indicated that the protagonists adopting the second route are mostly peaceful and powerless, they are taken as against ethics and democracy. The roots of these two mechanisms are embedded in the dynamics of power, where the former is socially sanctioned and fitted in to the culture as compared to the latter. The route adopted by the powerless is also anarchic and challenges the status quo. Though anarchy is also judged from the different ideological and experiential lenses, for the sake of understanding the meaning of violence and power dynamics in education, this chapter will take the lens of the subaltern and the socioculturally disadvantaged. There are cases of continuous violence against the Dalit students in the schools. Assault and segregation practices such as beating, scolding, castebased insult, and alienation from classroom collectivity is a usual behaviour from the school authorities. 2 These kinds of violence are the signifier of deep caste-based prejudice and discrimination prevalent in the Indian social system. The rise of atrocities against Dalits based on reported cases of violence captures the picture of prevalent caste-based discrimination. The meaning of atrocities in the above cases is limited to physical violence. Other forms of violence and aggressions apart from physical intimidation are less reported and neither taken seriously if put forward by the victims. Verbal abuse, gossiping and imposing demeaning tasks on students and teachers from oppressed group symbolize how prejudice is channelled through different modes. Though there is a report of a slight decrease in violence against the tribals, they are also a constant victim of discrimination and violence. Korra (2021) noted: While attending the schools and colleges, children of Denotified tribes (DNTs) experienced various shades of discrimination from fellow students and teachers. They often felt that they were despised. Some fellow students and teachers called DNT students by their tribe’s name with a derogative connotation. A few of the teachers asked them to sit on the backbenches in the classroom. There were instances of DNT children even being asked to clean the classroom in the disguise of manual

Violence in education  103 work, to sit separately while taking the mid-day meal and not to take water from the common pot or use the common glass in school. (p. 172) School matters for children and their parents for some reasons such as comfortable living in the future, a better source of livelihood, a bright future, social mobility and change. If the educational context is segregation based, discriminatory, violent, and alienating, the basic right of the child is thwarted. This happens because the right to education is a constitutional right and to sustain motivation to endorse their right, children need to be treated with respect and dignity. Their agency is important and any event to dehumanize their identity and cultural experience is contrary to the idea of education. Education is not ideology-free and it cannot be for the sake of representations. If one ideological stance is governed by the fascist motive of homogenization then the resisting ideology is needed to situate the context of the marginalized in that dominant and regulatory system. According to Olson (2003): Both individuals and institutions may be viewed in intentionalist terms with rights and responsibilities, entitlements and obligations. Whereas the actual working within an institution such as school is to be explained in terms of the intentionality and subjectivity of the individuals involved, the policy and organization of bureaucratic institutions are carried on more or less independently of the subjectivity of the individuals involved. (p. 277) The imposition of subjectivities of the powerful as an objective rule is an act of epistemic violence leading to many behavioural outcomes. The students who have to forcibly comply with the values become the victim of the homogenized school structure. When there are mismatches or lack of congruency between different values, the role of the school is rather a facilitating diversity. However, most of the time, it doesn’t happen and students from the lower status, marginalized and oppressed groups either have to compromise with imposed values or disidentify. Either one can observe the compromise wrongly as coexistence, or come out with an invitation for a dignified diverse mode of existence in the classroom. Any organizational system and schools are one of them and signify a system of control where the pupils are tested. Their inner resistance is neutralized with that control mechanism. Sometimes, in class, when students confront discrimination and violence, they resist and disobey. From the control point of view, this is pondered upon the student as lacking in discipline or coming from a family and cultural background seems to be valueless and unrestrained. The cultural symbols which form an essential part of schooling, such as flags, uniforms, badges, classroom design, prayers, slogans, and names

104  Power and Identity of the houses of different sections, form an impact on the student’s identity. It has both surface and deep meaning (see Gabriel, 2000). Offering respect to the national flag of India can either infuse a sense of pride in our unity and diversity or it may be taken as a symbol of nationalism or both. Depending upon the construction of discourse around the symbol, the meaning is internalized and narrated. In the conflicting zones, for example, Palestine schools have contributed immensely through discipline and regularity. It had become a space of hope and transformation despite the frequent violence and harassment from the Israeli military (Skovdal & Campbell, 2015). Skovdal and Campbell (2015) showed how schools are not nascent entities but the microcosm of a wider social context. They asserted: We argue that schools cannot be viewed as a ‘magic bullet’ capable of tackling the impacts of complex social problems without significant resources and outside support. We caution against regarding schools as islands, out of the context of their location in the wider communities in which complex social problems are located. In many ways, schools may sometimes be part and parcel of the wider social systems that generate the very ill-health, discrimination or conflict that impact negatively on learners. (p. 181) However, this is not the final view about the schools but they are also capable of bringing change. Schooling is simply not the standard mechanism but can willingly contribute to society through its agents. In other words, school agents such as teachers, principals, and students have the potential to bring all-encompassing value.3 They further concluded: We point to differences in the views of contributors who suggest that schools have little power to protect children from social problems arising from factors beyond the control of teachers and school-based interventions, and those who see the potential for school-based programmes to not only protect children but also to contribute to the tackling of wider social problems. (p. 182) Though the paradox is sensed here, schools when working as a community become representative of all the community member. If it excludes in the name of common values or the common sensemaking of symbols, it becomes unrepresentative at the same time. In the Indian educational context, varieties of schools operate within the sociopolitical system, but the latter’s influence intrudes in some other ways. Nevertheless, it is in the will of the school to be capable of representing the history of diversity and work for a peaceful and nurturing educational climate. Though Olsen (2003)

Violence in education  105 indicated that schools are institution where standards of dominant values prevail. He stated: How schools as institutions, far from the social practices of everyday life, define new sets of roles, rules, norms, entitlements and obligations that are attuned to the structures of modern bureaucratic society. Further, it allowed the possibility of addressing the fundamental concern of modern critics of education, namely, the issue of accountability of the schools as institutions to the citizens who pay for them-schools are not only environments for growth and development, they are environments for mastering the norms and standards set by the dominant institutions of the society. (p. 277) Looking into the historical conundrum, schools promoted vidya or knowledge and stimulated a deep sense of obedience to the authority of the guru or teacher. Schools are the space where the guru and shishya acted on their environment to make it a domain of learning. It was collective sensemaking. At the equal level, there were the stories of exclusion, avoidance, and punishments. Further, there was evidence of violence carried over the students from the oppressed community both by the upper caste students and teachers. History of oppression was never neutralized but was present in the praxis and socialization. The norms and standards if not cater to the dignity of the marginalized students can be inferred that standards are syndicated through the biased lens of stereotypes. The portrayal of the dominant model as authentic by homogenizing, neutralizing, and imposing values does not address the everyday life of people from oppressed groups. In another way, it is a new form of exclusion in the disguise of exclusion, which exactly happens in the schools. The values of upper caste authorities are taken as a basis of modern education too. The quest to shape the structure of school education is not just infrastructural design but also the mindset. Powerful people and authorities shape the school structure through policies and everyday pedagogies. The structure of the school can’t be neutral to the societal structure under which it operates. However, schools that create the standards to neutralize violence through representative models of diversity may offer society an ostensive and new model for social change.

The power enactment and legitimation of violence Violence in the school context is not only the personality dynamics as seen in most of the educational psychological literature. The extraction of individual characteristics from the macrolevel features such as situations of cultural interactions, politics of ideology, and social history is a reductive exercise. The violent act can be based on political intention and actions. For example, removal or modification of history in the history textbooks with

106  Power and Identity the history of power is also surmised as an act of violence. The attitude towards some established order, rules, cognitive systems, and behaviours is taken for granted when it is legitimized. These mindsets are somewhere linked to the desirability of a stable environment. In the case of schooling, the variety of violent acts indicated the will of school authorities towards both cultural and social permanence. Permanency in the social structure requires legitimacy and normalcy where the institutions have a leading role. Schools are one of those sites where knowledge is shaped and, in most cases, violence is an inherent part of its practices. The relationship between knowledge and violence takes a new turn in understanding the meaning of education. Pressures on the students to adapt to the curricular and pedagogical demands, reprimanding through marks and attendance, the rise of digital pressure, no fee-no education, promoting competition at the cost of mental health of diverse and marginalized are some of the categorical violence commonly experienced in the school context. Apart from this, the segregations and inequality due to systematic deprivation of opportunities for the disadvantaged group members are benign forms of violence that led to difficult and dangerous life. In the latter case, children are most susceptible to the violation of their rights based on their development, care, protection, rehabilitation, and social integration (see Bajpai, 2017). The prevalent just world assumption about the social divides, segregation, casteism, disadvantaged situation of marginalized, gender oppression, and poverty has occupied the mindset. The socialization with this mindset has fuelled the tendency to discriminate against others as a token of sociocultural integrity. The powerful authority through the institutions like schools caters to the mindset derived from the available social arrangement. However, this creates an image of a normal and socially balanced world which the schools imbibe within the children. The culture of obedience, discipline, classroom hierarchies, notions about ability and illusory correlations among ability, agency, social class, gender, and caste have occupied the everyday classroom interaction patterns and sociocultural relationships. The schools’ engagement with the students is mediated by power struggles. Teachers through their pedagogical imperatives stimulate the social hierarchies and at other times students from privileged backgrounds exercise their dominance over the students who seem to be socially and intellectually weak. To be out of the evolutionary alters, it is the conscious social engagements that construct the reality of power dynamics and division. Michael Apple questioning the movements of legitimizing educational homogeneity and imposed neutrality indicated the design of methods and actions well suited to promote legitimatizing the structural basis of inequality (Apple, 2010). Indian constitution preserves its right to be legitimate where it authenticates the meaning of rule of law. However, if violence is seen as a legitimate method of controlling and disciplining, those actions by the authorities breach the legitimacy of the constitution which longs for

Violence in education  107 justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity. Even an agenda is to steer towards discipline and knowledge, any form of violence in the schools is unconstitutional. The praxis of education is a culmination of an effort to explore, right to ask questions, and even disobey if authority tries to regulate through punishment and fear. Why do we search for patterns in the chaos? Is it the will to organize? Why we don’t accept the chaos that we witness? The agenda of schooling is to bring pattern, engage in organization, and infuse an ability to audit anarchical thought through disciplinary desires and formulation. It is in the history of schooling to bring violence to nurturing the mind of students. A situation of civilizing violence through the legitimatization of institutions like schools is what education has formally witnessed. Formalism in education corresponds to the shaping of society through shaping the cognition of children through the coercive intervention of dominant values. These dominant values believe in meritocracy, neoliberal assumption about development quickly assuming that the children’s basic rights will also be covered which in itself is a flawed notion of bringing equality. The history of antagonism and violence based on identities has shaped the nature of the intergroup relationship. School context which has given a variety of memories of violence, indifference, and discrimination is also preserved in the history of education apart from the pattern and discipline it offered. Violence as an instrument of prejudice and discrimination has both intentionality and will to act against a member of an outgroup, especially if that member holds a subordinate category in that social context. Vice versa it takes the form of resistance under the appropriate situation of collective awareness of being historically discriminated against. If the violence both objective and subjective, as in Zizek’s (2007) formulation, intervene in the classroom process in terms of beating, punishment, sarcasm, microaggressions, “illegitimate” assimilations (Tajfel, 1981) where even the contact among people carrying different social identities fails despite the ideal proposal of equality by the schools. However, this doesn’t guarantee equity and authentic promotion of students to be protected from prevalent violence in the schools. Even the idea of meritocracy becomes limited under the homogenizing agenda of schooling. Inside the school, the intergroup relationship is strong enough to defy equal treatment and led to the shattering of hopes that students and their parents gathered at the outset. Tajfel’s explanation about the psychology of minorities and who are minorities clears the picture of illusory correlations based on stereotypes between the groups where the majority group revile the minority (see Tajfel, 1981). The story of Om Prakash Valmiki explains the violence against Dalit students and when any Dalit student tries to explain his/her position or ask a critical question to the upper caste teacher, they were handled with an iron hand and punitively (e.g., Krishna, 2012). People were homogenously against any view portrayed by the Dalit students resisting the explanation given by the teacher. This double impact, one from the oppressive social system and second from the schools which were the space of hope for these children,

108  Power and Identity showcased the paradox of educational values getting swayed by powerful social identities.

Kinds of violence: school as a therapeutic agency The engagement with the question of violence in education is derived from the macrolevel facets such as cultural norms, institutions, and power. It can be observed through a different lens. For example, the countries identifying themselves as post-communists find it difficult to go into the memory of stagnancy. The homogenization of schools, children’s uniform, prayers, people having the job of the same kind, houses, and other amenities as equal to their neighbours, and prohibition for them to work in other countries created collective despair. The hope of mobility, for them, was systematically encountered by the authorities. That was a kind of totalitarianism that inhibited one’s potential to express one’s free will. However, alternatively, in the capitalist countries, the verge of neoliberalism somehow kept the social mobility hope intact but at the same time created an invisible hurdle in the name of merit and markets. The person lives in the hope of expressing the free will and simultaneously stopped. This is a kind of epistemic violence that along with another genesis of race, caste, and gender flopped the idea of free will for the powerless. Powerful is always triumphant when not questioned through the collective effort. Violence in institutions like schools’ manifests in varieties of formats. There is no scepticism that macrolevel facts have a hegemonical impact on thoughts and actions. Tiwary, Kumar and Mishra (2017) indicated towards social violence prevailing in education uses coercive methods such as punishment, discriminatory awards, forced shaping of thoughts through internalization of inferiority, and making students believe of their being belonging to socially prejudiced and ascribed as inferior. These are the pedagogical violence often categorized as punishment only. The conglomerations of instances like beating and scolding, insulting, power display of bullies to gain higher status among the peer group, discriminating and denial of opportunity, neglecting, gossiping based on gender and caste-based identity are also categorical forms of violence inherent in the school pedagogical practices. Along with that, the same categorical form of violence is also faced by the teachers both from the students and other staff who seem to be outgroup in some way under the established norms. Peer victimization and intentionality behind the violent act is a marker of embedded aggression built upon the history and socialization of prejudices (Nambissan, 2009; Pal, 2015; see also Pal & Swain, 2009). The frequent prejudice and violence faced by the Dalit students have its limit. A feeling of resistance and rebellion is also part of human nature and that was observed among the oppressed group of children. They feel like reacting to the social ostracism frequently regulating their oppressed self. Similarly, the educational context is more or less a reiteration of equality

Violence in education  109 and at the same time facilitator of the stereotypical gender roles. If these roles are revolutionary contested, the embedded prejudice against the girls becomes more punitive and violent (e.g., Bhog, 2020; see Manjrekar, 2020). Dalit girl students and Muslims are seen as a scavenger and impure. This has loaded the imagination of the school with a false impression about the oppressed students from these categories. They are seen as low achievers, uncultured, and without any emotions. It is not uncommon that these students face everyday humiliation and anger frequently only to be justified by the schools as they are oversensitive. The doubling of discrimination against Dalit women in education requires reconstruction (see Paik, 2014). In the western racial context, West (2019) showed how the sweeping judgement made against minorities frequent encounters microaggression as hypersensitivity. In the Indian context, Sohi and Singh (2015) similarly reported invisibility, distress, and self-stereotyping among the people from Northeasterners in India. The rise of violence against these students accounts for the biases taken as a fact about minorities and alienates them as others. The violence against the marginalized corresponds to the internalized prejudices through socialization, education, and everyday meaning-making with the biased form of discourses. The dominant emotions resulting in violence showed how the dominant identities taking the authority positions in the school materialize their emotions in the name of disciplining and learning politics. This is not to say that discipline is not important in the dignified engagement of both teachers and students, however, the hidden biases which skew the ability to neutralize violent emotions and prejudices hinder the objective school as a platform of equality. The rampant expectation biases and stereotype threat has occupied the schools which sometimes reminds what Illich (2021) reasoned for de-schooling society, though for a different note. He opined, “school has become a social problem; it is being attacked on all sides, and citizen and their governments sponsor unconventional experiments all over the world” (p. 66). The discipline of minority students more frequently as compared to the same behaviour committed by the privileged group shows the internalized and deep-seated biases affecting the ability to judge in a balanced way (see Jarvis & Okonofua, 2020). Contesting the production of identity capital (Warin, 2015) through the removal of violence is required in the shaping of the school structure. Fear is an emotion when induced among the students through school practices becomes political. This is because by this politics of terrifying emotions the supremacy of the authorities is established. Sometimes, when students don’t obey or show indiscipline, the subject teachers call for the class teacher or any teacher having a dominant demeanour. Students’ account in both the government and private schools shows frequent beating and scolding, as such these actions are the only marker of schooling. It may be activated through different domains such as full school uniform, haircut, cleanliness, polished shoes, and so on. One of the efforts by school

110  Power and Identity teachers such as “Bal Katai Divas” infused a sense of self-discipline among boys students to have a haircut regularly. However, if this discipline is not followed, the chances of any form of reprimand may arise (see also Gupta, 2017). The expectations are especially from the students who are from poor families and their parents don’t have time to engage in this disciplining process. Sometimes, these students become the target of violence and add further to the existing stereotypes. Though largely violence in schooling is defended logically by school agents such as staff, teachers, and already disciplined students. This is also a marker of culture and respect. For example, “what I am today is because of my school and punishment was the medicine to cure”. The curative agenda of schooling and the medicine metaphor has displayed school as a therapeutic centre where students are shaped, cured, and made sane members of society. For this, the teacher-students connection is a power relationship like a psychiatrist-patient relationship. Students are taken as immature and inexperienced, so they need to be engaged in a therapeutic exercise to make them obedient. Here, the therapeutic exercise is meant as engaging in a violent act such as punishment or reprimanding. However, there is another counselling exercise where the violent students are treated as patients or forced counselees. The social system of schooling becomes the individualistic improvement programme rather than the culturally responsive teaching (Ladson-Billing, 1992; Mishra, 2017), democratic, and critical engagements (see Kincheloe, 1999).

Role of educational leaders The critical exploration of how the meaning of educational leadership integrates both colonial and dominant cultural values in the Indian educational space is an important tryst to neutralize identity-based violence. This violence can range from belongingness to any oppressed social group to diversity in body structure and colour, religion, and cognitive functioning. Educational leadership indicates the power and authority along with the sensibility to have a vision and authentic approach to vilify any unconstitutional methods in dealing with the children. Further, a case for decolonizing educational leadership also matters which goes beyond the politics of individual traits to the cooperative communal intermingling and dialogicality. The contexts influenced by power, identity dominance, and cultural values bifurcated indigenous as well as minority social groups and it adversely shaped the fabric of schooling. The idea is to decolonize the educational system by taking the relevant critical perspectives which require an authentic leader, which Haslam, Reicher, and Platow (2011) suggested as reflecting, representing, and realizing. These leaders reflect through the point of followers, their understanding of the context, aspirations, grievances, and hopes and do not rush to assume authority. It is also important to ascertain that the leader is not living under the false impression that he understands the followers completely, which only alienates him further from the pupils.

Violence in education  111 The acceptance of the leader is central to the proper group functioning. If the teacher who is also a leader finds difficulty in understanding a diverse group of students, he/she will alienate himself as unrepresentative. For example, when students were verbally encouraged as a future of the nation, a sense of correspondence to their aspiration becomes activated, and at the same time, reduced to hopelessness if in action and non-verbal ways only a few privileged ones are promoted. This is not the true reflection of the student’s aspiration of whatever diverse background they belong to. Refection led to meaningfully representation of the groups. In the school context, if the educational leader is not able to connect with the experiences of the historically marginalized students, the representation is limited and the situation of academic alienation or feeling of psychological disengagement may arise. Since psychological disengagement is a defensive detachment of self-esteem from one’s outcomes in a domain such that self-esteem is not contingent upon one’s success or failures in that domain (Major & Schmader, 1998; Major et al., 1998; see also Steele, 1997). As part of a larger class of self-protective strategies, psychological disengagement is more likely to be evoked in evaluative situations that threaten a person’s self-view. Thus, by psychologically disengaging one’s view of oneself from an evaluative domain, a person can maintain a previous level of self-esteem despite information that implies one’s inferiority in that domain. Psychological disengagement was viewed as a general strategy that may be applied for coping in any kind of self-threatening environment, for example, a performance evaluative environment. This psychological disengagement processes decrease students’ motivation and interest in the school proceedings which they think is not their area (see Ogbu, 2003; Schmader, Major, & Gramzow, 2001). Thus, if students psychologically disengage their self-esteem from academic outcomes, there may be another possibility of higher belongingness with the ingroup with whom the school outcomes seem unjustified. In this regard, future academic affiliation together with the performance outcome shall be severely hampered, thus leading to increased dropout and academic marginalization. Furthermore, any student might face the individual threat of incompetence that leads him/her to psychologically disengage self-esteem from academic performance that may create additional group level threats in the form of negative stereotypes of intellectual inferiority (Steele, 1997). Steele has suggested that members of a minority group who felt their identity threatened at the group level in the intellectually evaluative situation might disidentify with, or chronically disengage from, the academic domain to escape the anxiety that results from performing under the weight of cultural stereotypes of inferiority (see Ogbu, 1991). As high-status groups mostly do not face these same group level threats in the academic domain, it can be predicted that levels of psychological disengagement from the academic domain will be greater among negatively stereotyped groups than among their non-stereotyped peers (Schmader, Major, & Gramzow, 2001).

112  Power and Identity Students’ social identity plays an important role in the process of academic disengagement. From the viewpoint of outgroup members, lack of social support and authentic leadership in schools, the academic self-efficacy and motivation may be reduced which is misattributed to the agency, cultural values and social identity of the students as lack of ability, not fit to take education, culturally inferior. There is also the possibility that school structure may impose a threat to the student’s social and cultural identity and that’s why they disengage from school, disidentify with the schooling, and their academic self-efficacy gets lowered. School itself becomes the platform of social identity loss for the marginalized students through the continuous violent acts of different kinds. Educational leadership is also about the realization of what prototypical categories are especially represented. Realizing identity leadership involves, according to Haslam, Reicher, and Platow (2011), “achieving group goals and creating a world for the group that reflects its identity” (p. 206). Educational leaders in the schools, who are mostly appointed and follow the government orders and policies, sometimes re-represent it to the particular sections of students. The lack of understanding of the situations and experiences of marginalized students along with the surface-level knowledge of the policies led to the subtle form of discrimination. It can be the hypothesis that the violence emanated in the schools may be a quick interpretation of the policies through the cultural lens. In one way, these behavioural aspects may be congruent to the policies where the latter are also the product of culture and ecology (cf. Weaver-Hightower, 2008). This inadvertently fails to realize the goals which need to be collected and meaningfully shall be derived from the Indian constitution. Educational leadership research in recent times is showing a new transition. What was considered a single grand approach to theorizing leadership is integrated with other perspectives. Educational leadership in contemporary times got shifted in its imagination from a diversity of perspectives and different disciplinary domains. As pedagogy and curriculum differ for different disciplines so the imagination for the future of educational leadership also differs for these domains. For example, how doctors need training and the kind of environment to enhance their skills depends upon the nature of their discipline. Mainstream doctors are expected to be skilful, expert, and at the same time humane. Similarly, the much sought-after profession in India such as management, engineering, and law has different pedagogical needs. The educational leadership model considered to be universally applied has suffered a failure. It is imperative to note that diversities in the disciplines are not limited to the curriculum at different levels but it also comes in the student’s needs and interests together with their demographic circumstances such as socioeconomic status, gender, and caste. Diversity in educational leadership research is not new and much writing has been done. However, when it comes to practice, the universal model of

Violence in education  113 educational  leadership  becomes  paramount. A universal model of educational leadership is a matter of what people are doing in their actual educational engagement, for example, teachers covering the syllabus, school principals managing the teachers and other staff, standardization of policies regarding online education in the time of pandemic or presence. The spirit of educational leadership as a process of influence is limited by the singular model of practice in terms of some dos and don’ts. The feedback, questioning, and critical engagement are contrary to the established model of educational leadership in schools. In the present work, the established model of educational leadership is critically addressed without denying its importance to the extent it helps in reforming the oppressive structure. In most cases, the model in preference is western and based on the different cultural domains. An attempt to look into the process of decolonizing educational leadership is needed to look into the best possible cultural avenues which have the potential to become global. However, in most of the contemporary writings on educational leadership where diversity is the main agenda, researchers indicate the cultural experience of people from a diverse group. In this process, they try to make diversity visible, for example, they mention gender, race, and other diverse but oppressed groups but when it comes to practicing those proposed models, these diversity issues are absent. We can infer that these groups are fashionably mentioned but their politics of emancipation in actual life is treated with dismay in the educational settings. What Billig (2013) stated, “people are doubly absent, for they are even absent when they are being written about” (p. 158). Though Billig’s statement in the context of academic writing, I feel it is equally applied to the practice of educational leadership where the agents of academic discussion also become the agent of change. What is read in the running sentence as something as nominating is need to be materialized into a verb or action, for example, words such as liberation and emancipation become emancipating and liberating to the oppressed group out of the mega word diversity. Can we plan an educational leadership model? And how this model fits with the everyday life of students and constructs a non-violent space of every kind? The traditional model of educational leadership shaped the working of teachers as isolated members of the school community. They were equipped with the established design of the schools and engaged with students in a prescribed format. The schools usually provided a template for them in terms of duties and interaction with the students. For example, taking classes routinely for fixed hours, completing the syllabus, assessment of students and engaging them in extracurricular activities. Though teachers’ engagement was based on a formalist assumption about the students, somewhere they also have a deep impact on the student’s life, both positive and negative. As detached personnel, teachers had a quick view of the students; their leadership was of one kind. They influenced students with their task in hand, for example, teaching and pedagogy, but found

114  Power and Identity themselves overpowered by the given template of schools and policies at large. Their approach was uncritical, systematic, and sometimes coercive. The political situations have long affected the educational climate. Though historical context displays the dominance of culture, the making of group differences and construction of social identity was not possible without the active interventions of schools along with the family (see also Sinha, 2021). For example, in the case of the Roma community, their historical picture shows stigmatization, violence, and discrimination in various domains. They are not given dignity and respect in society. They are excluded from society and have near negligible employment opportunities. They were the victims of genocide in history. Some have linked them to the northwestern Indian people belonging to the Dom community. For example, one genetic study showed European Roma descended from Indian ex-untouchables (Dalit community) belonging to the Dom community (Rai et al., 2012). The linking to the community in India through the genetic study shows that the status of the Roma community is non-transformative and their stigmatized identity is overlapping with the stigmatized identity of Dalits in India. Roma community members are facing intense anti-Roma prejudice and discrimination in the school context (Lasticova, 2016) which has deeply seated into the mind of people. There seems to be the internalization of these negative stereotypes among the Roma people which may lead them to conform to the existing picture. Children of the Roma community don’t get proper education and their status is similar to the Dalit poor children in India where they are discriminated against in everyday social life. The dearth of effective leadership, social movement, and collective effort for the community’s wellbeing both from the people of the Roma community and at the mainstream societal level show the grim picture of their social reality. The need is to understand the economic and social story and mechanism of the Roma people and how it is managed by the effective education leader. It is a common understanding among the people that the Roma community doesn’t have aspirations and they are destructive. Also, it is important to understand that when and under what circumstances Roma community people, who are negatively defined group, “define themselves in terms of their group membership and act collectively to challenge their disadvantage” (see Haslam, Reicher & Platow, 2011, p. 50). The role of educational leaders in handling prejudices, discrimination, and violence in education for minority groups plays a significant role. First, the need is to see in what domain prejudice is high and then in what way it has reduced due to the educational leaders’ intervention. Focusing on the educational setting, there are schools in India where minority students (Dalits and other oppressed groups) are highly discriminated against and excluded and it affects their performance and overall wellbeing. In a similar case, the minority students in the European context, for example, Roma children, are highly discriminated against both in the educational domain and the future occupational domains. It

Violence in education  115 is important to see what are the identity dynamics which led to different kinds of repercussions and how these dynamics leading to the discrimination are regulated by the educational leaders. The need is to argue for the role of an effective educational leader who may innovate and nurture a capability to re-categorize the demeaned and devalued identity of marginalized students into inclusiveness and dignity. As the transformation of identities is the need at present, it is imperative to understand the dynamics of categorization and re-categorization (Haslam, Reicher & Platow, 2011) and what education leaders do for it.

Conclusion As we see violence in education was promoted and encouraged in the history of education. It took the symbolic, structural, and physical (Hughes, 2020) and political turns parallelly with the different reforms and policies. The punishment tradition (Danda Pratha) is common in Indian schooling along with the codes prescribed for every behaviour not suited to the normative design of schools. Since schools were the marker of codified and disciplined behaviour, any transgression was taken as contrary to the culture and traditions. Earlier schools worked for the sustenance of culture; today it tries to fulfil the agenda of globalization through the middle-class hybrid values, though it mostly fails either to nurture the traditional values or the modern values. Since it is difficult to inculcate what is traditional and falls short of what was carried on by the post-enlightenment period. The populist and majoritarian agenda which is quick and based on popular norms are inculcated in the students’ school practices. For example, schools engaging students to do Gandhigiri in the skits and what the satyagraha meant seems to be is paradoxical. Also doing yoga in school due to the rise of revivalism skips the meaning of yoga meditation. Students may learn some posture (e.g., doing Patanjali ashtanga) but don’t find any engagement with the meaning of “Chitta Vritti Nirodh”. How many times during the national festivals do the schools talk about the role of Dr B R Ambedkar? Why there is intentional reluctance to go into the history of the preamble in the school? Violence can be regulating, hiding, and alienating suiting to the populist agenda to normalize something to the ideology of political culture. The school started by Phule in Maharashtra addressed this violence embedded in education long ago and gave respect and dignity to every child of whatever caste or gender. The development of a culture of conformity, fitting into the established model of successful personality based on one’s social identity, derived from the history of caste, and promoting silence are the violence on the agency of the child. Not confirming results in punishment, expulsion, and dehumanization. For some social identities, who are not meant to come into the culture meant for upper castes, dehumanization is inherent in its process. This is not to say that becoming human is like becoming upper caste because the resistance to the cravings to have a

116  Power and Identity dignified life and the force to conform to the ascribed biased self, given by the dominant social system, give rise to deep inner conflict. People either resolve it by affiliating it to their rebellious self or internalizing the ideology of dominance and losing their self-esteem. The suitable measure to address the context of equality and dignity may facilitate school system from everyday dehumanizing. This is a categorical violence in education where one’s agency is not respected and gets dehumanized by the school system itself, which will be elaborated in the coming chapter.

Notes 1 World Health Organization Report (2019). School-based violence prevention: A practical handbook. https://www.unicef.org/media/58081/file/UNICEFWHO-UNESCO-handbook-school-based-violence.pdf 2 https://www.deccanherald.com/national/north-and-central/in-this-up-schooldalit-children-face-constant-violence-1036108.html 3 All-encompassing is not homogenization in any sense but bringing compatibility in the social experiences of all the stakeholders in the school, which also include the provision of space for dissent.

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6

Dehumanized identities and empowerment

Dehumanization is a process of reducing the agency of humans or depriving the person of his/her rights. This is also an act of dominance through various mechanisms and standards, creating an unequal space in the society. The next aim is to understand the various influence process in education in which power demands conformity and obedience. In this process, the students and teachers become the victim of oppression without any channels for countering back. Dalit students, students from lower classes, and teachers from minority groups and gender are rampantly victimized through the act of dehumanization. Dehumanization of others belonging to an oppressed and marginalized community is an influence of power. It is embedded in the historically powerful identities taken as a reality of any social system that trickles down to the educational system. School requires a check to filter away this trickling of power and identities and strives for creating an overhauling and empowering system. Some of the suggestions derived from the literature on decolonizing approaches (e.g., Phillips, Adams, & Salter, 2015; see also Martin-Baro, 1994) may correspond to the agenda of liberating educational psychology from the societal constraints and attaining an identity respecting culture. These are beyond the conventional prescriptions that make the marginalized invisible and permanent bearers of oppression. Dehumanization operates at various levels. It is a social psychological process that affects the person’s socio-political positioning. In many instances, despite being meritorious, the students’ ancestral occupations create barriers to social mobility. The occupation which is devalued in society (e.g., butcher, manual scavenger, domestic worker, leather worker) has also a seemingly dehumanizing impact. These students are dehumanized based on their occupational identity. Dehumanizing seems to be a distinct form of prejudice laden within the structure of power and dominant institutions. Wilde, Martin, and Goff (2014) indicated that these are the worst form of intergroup outcomes where the powerful outgroup prejudice categorically leads to the dehumanization of the powerless outgroup. These groups are present in all the available domains including the

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Dehumanized identities and empowerment  121 schools where there are both soothing and degrading interpersonal relationships. Soothing of the relationship may show the neutralizing of subtle and blatant power dynamics and effort for the dignity of all. Otherwise, it is degrading and sometimes destructive. The power dynamics in education is the result of many facets of life, for example, family relationship, community, and neighbourhood where we see people bring the values through which they are socialized. The memory of power relationships shapes the mindset and lifestyles. When power is materialized into the process of degrading the powerless and marginalized others, its effect is toxic and intended towards the human agency. Power is embedded in the symbols which are adopted by the power which further lives in our conscience. This is what teachers, parents, policymakers, judges, and other authoritative agents of society communicate to one another and their followers. In one way, it looks like a human thing, an authentic assumption of social reality, and system justification. However, this is the perspective used either to demonstrate the inferiority and othering of powerless identity or criminalizing if one doesn’t conform to those imposed values. From the powerful and hegemonical point of view, this is a system of righteousness but at the same time from the subalterns’ view, this is a system of oppression. In the technical psychological vocabulary, this is dehumanization which is a dehumanization is the repudiation of even the basic human potential to be like a dignified human being (Formanowicz et al., 2018; Haslam, 2006; Kelman, 1973).

Dehumanizing, power, and schooling Dehumanization is a form of maltreatment of the powerless and objectified others. They are seen as having no agency, uniqueness, or human nature. Since for the marginalized, this is an everyday experience, the acceptance of this denial of humanity needs to be highlighted out of the framework of normality on which the society and its institutions are based. During dehumanization, both the individual and a social group suffer indignity and objectification. They are the true victims of power indiscriminately imposed on them and remove them from their agency both cultural and individual. It happened every time; history is the witness and has an emotional and social repercussion. The perception of students by the school authority is constantly in a downward direction and in an evaluative way. Students’ perception of authority is loaded with fear and rage. It is not that students don’t respect authority or authority doesn’t appreciate students. But this relationship is not linear as it is understood through the schemas of cultural morality as one is socialized. The account of Dalit students tells the story of dehumanization. As in the case of Valmiki, he narrated the incident in the classroom when master Saheb was narrating the plight of Dronacharya when he fed his son the flour mixed with water. When Valmiki

122  Power and Identity cut across that emotional scene with the legitimate question about Dalits who drank mar, infuriated the teacher. The teacher instantly symbolizes the era of Dalit questioning the upper caste narrative as a time of Kaliyuga. He immediately used animalistic labelling (you mouse – “Chure Ke” to attribute Valmiki and his imposed group identity as untouchable) (Krishna, 2012, p. 55). Dehumanization becomes the everyday part of schooling where the students are labelled as animals and insects. This is not new as it has shaped the model of education in terms of venting out the emotion and prejudices on someone who seems not to fit into the established framework of ability, agency, and identity. Students are not considered human despite having full potentiality and the possibility to grow and live a life of dignity without any preconceived notion ascribed to them. In this process of labelling, ascribing, and targeting, there is a swift alignment to the whiggish history of the marginalized group and connotated in terms of something which is negatively embedded within this group that makes them inferior. This happened with the Jews, Dalits, women, third binary gender, poor Muslim girls, Dalit Christians, and other working classes. These are not simple categories to be numbered but identities to bear and carried without many avenues to decategorize them. One of the fundamental rights is to get educated. In other words, to grow to one’s potential to be a responsible and self-actualized being. Dehumanization from the powerful, who holds the resource and distribute at their will, is the discounting of the agency of the powerless recipient. Agency is striving to achieve one’s goals (Abele & Wojciszke, 2014); however, it is also just not an individual thing. If an agency is demeaned, it affects the group which continuously defines the taken-for-granted individual agency. As per Formanowicz et al. (2018), the construction of meaningful and stable social relations is the effect of communion which also refers to group affinity and bonding. The role of this group bonding was shown to have a detrimental effect on individual members, both as social support and social cure. Conversely, if the group is a low-status group, it hurts the individual member provided there is a strength-building mechanism through social power. Any group shows its strength through its emotional bonding, values, and knowledge of its history of struggle. Dalit groups though try to come out from the shackles of shame through their identification and collective pride associated with leaders, their everyday humiliation is a reminder of their social identity projected from the past as devalued and from the present as assertive and political. In schools, it is normal and acceptable to conjecture ability with identity. The identity of the student is seen as stagnant and to the wish of teachers how they construct according to their will and experience. The case of Valmiki is not nascent or one of the incidents but it is an everyday part of students who come to school, take the dehumanizing label and bear it. Research has attributed the cause of disengagement, disidentification, and prejudice along with the socioeconomic and sociometric factors in the

Dehumanized identities and empowerment  123 dropout. Dehumanizing is the result of all these factors combined and project the marginalized students as unsuitable for formal education. The social dominance theory (Pratto, Sidanius, & Levin, 2006) showed how the desire to be powerful and superior to others led to the demonstration of social dominance over the “other” which is thought to be less in social status and coercively regulated. The methods for this are many and apply to diversified domains. To dehumanize can also be explained with the help of the social dominance approach and further; the acceptance of the wider population of this oppression is a justifying orientation to live in the hegemonical climate and approving it. Jost and Banaji (1994) indicated the latter more precisely as “the participation by disadvantaged individuals and groups in negative stereotypes of themselves” (p. 1) and the phenomenon of outgroup favouritism (Jost, 2019, p. 263). This suggests that sometimes even the unjust is justified and legitimized with fine logic for survival in the climate of the powerful influence of dominance. However, this seems to be a paradigm shift where people accept and go on. But does history indicate the same movements in politics? Resistance was made, the protest was done, self-government (Swaraj) was announced, the politics of boycott (Bahishkar) was adopted and in the current time youths, students, and labour protesting in some other form shows that justification is not always the universal phenomenon and that too when people work in collective. There are reciprocities of cause and consequences; superstructure emerges out of substructure, and the politics of memory does not stand on just one kind of narrative, as it happened in the case of colonized (see Fanon, 1963). Schools also lived on many narratives and the most outrageous ones are built upon the embedded prejudices and dehumanization experienced and preserved. The silence of the students echoes the deep struggle to change the situation of their life, both academic and social. The values imposed on them may not be private acceptance as it seems important for the school to create a just society where what was there will be as it is. Dehumanization put a mask on the students’ faces, which corresponds to acceptance, but behind is the face of resistance and misery which is looking for a change in education. The reciprocal influence of dehumanization is shown through different studies (e.g., Kteily, Hodson, & Bruneau, 2016). In the words of Formanowicz et al. (2018), “both dehumanizing others and feeling dehumanized have negative consequences and can contribute to the escalation of the conflict” (p. 102). Dehumanization has been connected to many repercussions such as aggression, prejudice, and discrimination, a decrease in prosocial behaviour, decreased support for pro-dehumanized policies, and sometimes mass killings (see Bandura, Underwood, & Fromson, 1975; BarTal, 1990; Costello & Hodson, 2011; Opotow, 1990; Vaes et al., 2003; cf Formanowicz et al., 2018). Educational psychology is also social science, and in the last couple of decades, it has alienated itself from the wider debate in social science. The process of dehumanization is in the standards

124  Power and Identity of schooling. It is mechanistically processed in interpersonal interactions such as violence like bullying, corporal punishment, attaching animal-based labelling, and false consciousness about other experiences and identities. The study showed how dehumanization is an interpersonally controlling and regulating mechanism also. According to Moller and Deci (2010), it is “often used to keep individuals in line, ostensibly to create a safer, more civilized society” (p. 41). They showed that the dehumanizing tendency has a confirming effect on stereotypes held by the regulators. We can infer that the inner resistance of the silent student, who is the victim of dehumanization, is another form of reciprocal effect which fits the biases of the dehumanizer. Though this resistance can take many forms such as showing oneself as disidentified, showing oppositional values, being less polite and non-conforming to the values of school (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Ogbu, 2003; See also Hairston, 2008), in the case of historically oppressed students, they are dehumanized at various academic and social levels, which adversely affects their wellbeing and ability to resist. The pathways of resistance, coping, confirming, fitting, and identification with school for the group honour are not the same for all the students belonging to different social groups. This is established research that the social boundaries are not permeable for all to face the wrath of dehumanization with supporting social pathways. The family environment, parent-child relationship, and social dominance orientation (SDO) predict the higher-status group children’s tendency to dehumanize lower-status children. For example, White children dehumanizing Black children depends upon the levels of SDO in the family (see Costello & Hodson, 2014).

Identity and consequences of dehumanization in education The dominant discourse on academic performance can be associated with the dominant assumption about identity and ability, though this is mostly a matter of situation that is in the school climate and occupied the logic and understanding of authorities and pupils. When we look for humanity and look forward to constitutional rights, the great aspects of humanity are taken into account. The process designed to address humanity is also a design platform for the humane treatment of people living in a collective, shared, and public space. In the popular language, the breach of this right of being a human by the powerful is dehumanization (Amanvikaran). Dehumanization describes the whole systematic process of reducing humanity into something which does not consider to have agency, mind, and dignity. Dehumanizing is a verb through which the person objectifies and categorizes others into simplified categories of different classes of animals. Students’ understanding of education may offer important insights into existing power dynamics. Dehumanizing of any form is demeaning and insulting to their agency. This is not human and it is in the person who holds the power to collect diversity into a dignified social space. The

Dehumanized identities and empowerment  125 educational domain also pertains to motivated cognition (see Kunda, 1990) and the students from the diversified group have hope to join the school for their social mobility. This hope is blatantly rejected once the student joins the school with lowered self-esteem and self-efficacy. It is dehumanizing in itself to hold the notion that the students from poor and marginalized groups join the school for the mid-day meal or any other amenities provided by the school. They join the school to study and fulfil their hope to break the barriers of caste and gender-based oppression. However, that hope is systematically suppressed through the application of prejudice, oppression, and dehumanization, removing any hope for enhancement and leading to dropout. Though we have reported on the students’ dropouts, these social psychological factors are rarely taken into account. Data in itself doesn’t’ say anything unless appropriated with psychological aspects. Educational psychology missed this point of inclusion of subjective factors under its rush to limit itself to cause and effect relationships. This is also applicable to other social science that missed to connect education with psychology. In the book, Fugitive Pedagogy, Given (2021) narrated the story of absconded Black slaves who resisted the socio-legal, political, and economic dominance. Their mind was reduced to animals which have to serve its master and any kind of behaviour like running away, learning, or education was considered contrary to their nature. Even in the stories, they were “narratively condemned”, overexploited, and debarred from their human agency. The founding of oneself through resistance, disobedience, and accepting their fugitive self was so-called fugitive pedagogy. The cultural-historical approach (Ogbu, 2003) was the approach of resistance and asserting the collective identity. The Black students opposed the White value system which led to the history of oppression. Similar to the history of Black people in America, the Dalits also opposed the Brahmanical orders embedded in the caste system. Their pedagogy is not shaping themselves through the acceptance of the ascribed identity and systems but the rejection of oppressive symbols. To look at school students as a silent spectator is a discourse of authority. The informal life of students shows a deep resistance to the dominant discourse about agency, identity, and ability. Dehumanization is a matter of power and identity. It is a matter of reflex to degrade others under the influence of power. In reciprocity, dehumanized either strive to keep their view in front of the powerful, invite them for the dialogue, or assert their identities in opposition to the impositions. Freire (1970) indicates the conscientization and dialogues between the dehumanizer and dehumanized. He showed how oppressors dehumanize themselves while degrading others. When dialogue and critical consciousness are emphasized, rehumanization happens in both cases. The instrumental impact of dehumanization in schools may be connected to the cognition of the students. It affects the thought process and motivation of students to utilize their agency for the hope which is associated with the schools. They hope for facilitation and encouragement to

126  Power and Identity enhance their social status. Schools are the platform of nourishment of hopes. However, schools fail also and in the world across schools presented a dual picture of success and failure. Since schools are formalized structures, it is the pupils who adapt to their context and not the schools. In this process, many aspects of identities which include prejudice and dehumanization become formalized and unquestionable. This ubiquity of power in the form of humiliations and dehumanization in the design and structure of school shows its normative presence. In the systems of institutions, power is invisibly present as something permissive, liberal, and change-oriented. In the schools, the discourse that it provides freedom, opportunity, following the new policy initiative suppresses the alternative account of most of the invisible and highly oppressed students and teachers. It may say that despite the opportunities, schools’ initiatives and hard work, students and teachers of some kind are not able to adapt and neither progress. The whole responsibility is laden on them as deemed fit to fail. Success and failure are not simply individual responsibility but it is also power dynamics in education that operate subtly through the given standards of education designed for the privileged. As per Han and Butler (2017): Wherever power does not come into view at all, it exists without question. The greater power is, the more quietly it works. It just happens: it does not need to draw attention to itself. (p. 17) According to Kunda (1990), motivation affects reasoning. If authorities and power-holders are motivated to dehumanize, their reasoning will be framed according to the held biases. In the school context, the biases against some particular sections of students may lead to different forms of dehumanization, though the power structure and the hierarchical social system based on caste is taken as one of the potent reasons for the biases one held and thus dehumanize. This may happen in the case of upper-status students against the lower-status teacher also. The society of control standardizes its inherent biases which have lots of different repercussions. Research indicated that dehumanizing mechanistically and animalistically has cognitive, emotional, and motivational consequences (Zhang et al., 2017). This usually led to cognitive destruction, sadness, and shame. It was also indicated how self-esteem held by the target moderates the emotions of sadness and aggressive tendencies. Those targets, who had high self-esteem, experienced more sadness and aggressive tendencies than those who were low self-esteemed to be mechanistically dehumanized. In the case of the effect of animalistic dehumanization on cognitive deconstruction, self-esteem played a positive role. Though some studies indicated the presence of dehumanization in one’s perception of self, for example, thinking of self-harm, in the case of school agents, the recipience of dehumanizing treatment may be led to thinking about self-harming. This is called self-dehumanization which

Dehumanized identities and empowerment  127 is associated with aversive self-awareness, cognitive destructive states, and feeling of shame, guilt, sadness, and anger (see Bastian & Crimston, 2014). There are acts, especially in the case of sexual harassment and other forms of objectification. These justice systems try to protect people from self-harming due to the presence of a party that inflicts discrimination and engages in dehumanization. However, their impact is consequential and like a deterrent only. The distortion of self-perception and motivation to belong is thwarted, as the result of the dehumanizing experience of being ostracized. Here, the feeling of denial of human nature and to some extent human uniqueness led to the feeling of dehumanizing treatment (Bastian & Crimston, 2014). The experience of the target of dehumanization matters in the holistic understanding of the power dynamics in the educational domain. Also, when it comes to the marginalized group, the vocabulary and grammar of dehumanization aligning to their subjectivity need to be retrieved in a format of their personhood. Bastian and Haslam (2011) considering dehumanization as an interpersonally enacted and experienced phenomenon noted: Experiencing ourselves as a human is fundamentally connected to our interpersonal relationships, and ruptures or insensitivities in those relationships have the potential to undermine fundamental aspects of our personhood. (p. 302) The metaphors utilized to symbolize students from the marginalized group can also be constructed on the line of inanimate objects (Waytz, Epley, & Cacioppo, 2010). Dehumanization is reducing the human category to something which doesn’t seem to have agency. This can be animals, inanimate objects, or even identities and social categories considered to be of lower status, untouchables, and historically crushed down. When it comes to the attribution of students who belong to marginalized and historically oppressed, dehumanization may take a comparable stand regarding these children as compared to animals of disrespected categories. The latter is a kind of infrahumanization in which the ethnic and higher-status group “reserve the human essence for themselves” (Haslam & Loughman, 2013). Students from the marginalized group, especially, Dalit and tribal, are continuously deprived of basic human rights. Denying the constitutional and human rights of having quality education with dignity indicates the psychology of education which is driven by colonialism, racism, sexism, and casteism. These latter categorizations and objectification of social identities based on culturally constructed ascriptions and dominance are the deliberative form of dehumanization whose impact is direct and systematic. This denial of basic rights is conscious and intended, since to preserve the structure of society, the education system has mostly preserved the signs and signifiers of the established social system. The image of the school as a safer,

128  Power and Identity contextualized, emotional, and human space can be misleading, as in most cases, it has homogenized the education to the values of dominant identities. In the context of power and education, Paulo Freire (1970) described that the basic relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed is based on prescriptive elements. The school context despite being the system of discipline and values results in mechanistic learning culture along with the associated psychological attribution of abilities based on the students’ identities. These attributions are categorical and symbol-based where the stereotypes affect the knowledge about the presence of others in that educational space. The prescriptions are made with this constructed knowledge. He further stated: Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness. (p. 20) As we have seen earlier, these prescriptions can be curative, therapeutic, regulating, and even dehumanizing. Prescriptions are given in the power hierarchy where the taker complies with the giver based on the needs of the former. Prescriptions can be imposed and a threat to the self also as it happens in the case of students of subaltern and marginalized groups, resulting in the oppositional culture. Ogbu (2003) stated that it is a result of historical underrepresentation and the glass ceiling by the dominant/ majority group.

Dehumanizing to transformative education Dehumanization may result in self-handicapping behaviour among students resulting in non-compliance with these prescriptions. Somewhere this affects the students’ self-efficacy belief to go by the schools’ standards which some of the other time has dehumanizing outcomes. In an act of dehumanization, these students are deprived of their indigenous cultural expression (e.g., Ausubel, 1964). One of the facets of colonialism was dehumanization where the indigenous groups were largely reduced from their human agency by the colonizer. They were signified as animals, objects, numbered or zeroed. Dehumanization mostly directed at the oppressed crosses the basic limits of ethics on which any society shall be based. It is also implied through animal metaphors on the tyrannical, who systematically affects the agency of people. Sometimes, the connotation of the beast is metaphorically used against the progenitors of capitalism who predates on the agency of common people. Of the dehumanization of various kinds, the perpetrators also dehumanize themselves by acting as a predator and dehumanizing others by reducing them to victims. When these assumptions of power relationships

Dehumanized identities and empowerment  129 are standardized, objectified, and prescribed, it becomes institutionalized and legitimate. Though students can create or transform their imposing contexts and situations, it needs a sociopolitical will to make the system of education less prejudiced, rehumanizing, and transformative. For example, in Sherif’s Robbers cave boys camp study, the boys wanted to create competition as soon as they learn of the existence of another group and before competitions were organized by the experimenters (Sherif & Sherif, 1969). The context was not external as it was portrayed in most educational psychology studies. In some reviews and literature, the context has been given a separate (outside) stand which impels some behavioural outcomes, but it seems through various studies and experiments (Reicher & Haslam, 2006, Steele, 1997) that context is not a separate entity but collective, shared, and emerge out of the interactions themselves. It is in constant motion of construction and co-construction. It is not that people will get driven by the context by behaving in a set of ways and losing their capacity for critical judgement. Also, Everhart (1983) ethnography focussed on students who create overtly oppositional forms in schools but he focussed on those who compromised with school culture, giving the bare minimum, and taking care to complete necessary assignments without causing undue trouble. He stated that schools are a place to meet friends and to relate in activities not related to the official learning process. Though he does not overtly reject school context or form, does not mean that they are involved with the process of schooling not that their valuation of achievement is any different from that of others. According to Everhart: Students create their own cultures within schools and their culture has a great deal to do with the production of academic outcomes with what students ‘chose’ so to speak, to value. It is not simply within school factors (teachers, curriculum) that create students success as the current students produce themselves. He further stated: Opposition/rejection may occur from an unconscious realization that while working-class youth can succeed as an individual, schooling will not work for the working class as a whole. Only the destruction of the entire class structure could do the latter. (p. 121) The forms of dehumanization in the school context become sociopolitically and institutionally sanctioned. Ogbu (1987) explained from the students’ subjectivities as a: Feeling of aversion, revulsion and disgust they (negative images of other racial groups) evoke come to be incorporated into the culture of

130  Power and Identity all dominant group and children learn them “naturally” as they learn other aspects of their culture. (p. 260) In the Indian context, the children of daily wagers, labours, and other migrant workers are on the verge of displacement. In comparison to the children positioned better on the social class ladder, these children have to face continuous difficulties, as their parents have no secure occupations and they witness the wrath of the house owners, landowners, and their employers. For example, workers and their children residing in the slums (Jhugis) are often asked to look for some other place as the owners are constructing new buildings or any shopping complex. Finding a new place to settle is not only difficult because of the high cost but also because their social class and status are detrimental to getting a better and dignified space. The rooms they live in are crowded, noisy, and unhygienic. This directly affects the wellbeing and education of children. Sometimes, workers had to travel far and they find it difficult for their children to get admission to government schools. The manual labourers who work in unstructured job conditions without any amenities, health insurance, and basic facilities needed for any human being are the victims of maximum prejudice and dehumanization where their agency and identity are greatly reduced and deprived of human standards of living. They are the victim of their occupation and power domination in India. Most of the parents are either from poor Muslim or Dalit communities who are working in urban or semi-urban areas. They don’t have a meaningful occupation in their native homes and many of them migrate to the city for any labour work. Some of them work as a street vendor to earn their daily living. How do children of these domestic workers and labourers form their identity? What hope does education give them? How this hope is fragmented/ changed by the continuous displacement, and lack of support at the policy level and also at the social level? The community angle is not discounted but the dehumanization, helplessness, and misery are observed at the collective level making the whole agenda of social mobility unworkable under the daily struggle for survival. Domestic work, unstructured job, dirty jobs, and jobs of labourers and loaders is not just context but historical and systematic. They are the most wretched kind of occupation and they emerge randomly without any systematic design. In another form, it is jobless who engage in these works. The stated work is not a job but an honourable engagement to earn a living. Education is not seen as valuable prospects in these endeavours, which does not go to give any positive meaning to the self. The work which doesn’t require any professional skill and identity is a matter of choosing between survival for food or otherwise. The current rise of Covid-19 suspended the opportunity for their children to continue with their education and that too in the hopeless times of displacement, stigma, and utter dehumanization and infrahumanization.

Dehumanized identities and empowerment  131 As compared to these working-class children, there is no provision from the government schools to create the condition for teacher-students engagement with the learning process. This depicts the class-based identity degradation where the right to learn is limited to the availability of equipment needed for the current need of the upper class to learn online. This stark difference in the availability of educational context is further limited in the current times and the future for these children. The blatant displacement, unstructured employment, and the lack of past infrastructural development for the domestic worker laid a severe impact on their children. Since there is no structured policy for domestic workers, the time of Covid crisis has a major impact on the future hope of these children which they derive from school. In the times of lockdown, when classes were suspended for children, there was little learning happening as the home condition is also not conducive enough to provide an environment of learning from their little or no educated parents. Together their parents have no work to earn for their daily living and many of them are migrant workers displaced from one place to another. They are also seeming to be vulnerable to having a high risk because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The way it said that the development process increased the labour, made them more labour, their children labour, snatching all possibility of education and mobility. This was a grave reality in India and still it is. Development increased the new format of labour, the speed of money flow increased in some sections but with the increased speed the money cashed out in daily living. Still the children of labour take education, if they get admission, and suddenly they are displaced after the completion of work. The struggle to look for new labour jobs, settlement of the family and children, and daily humiliation and dehumanization has become an uncritical part of their life. Some groups engaged online, and much loss of time happens due to a lack of proper support system. It was observed that many students had their school closed and they had no proper help/resource to continue their education. Social distancing got a new connotation. Deeper impact of Covid-19 is observed in the changing dynamics of social relationships. Struggles don’t have the same meaning for all the classes. This trend is also increasing among the tribal groups who lost their hold on the forest-based survival means and their community got dispersed in the search of occupation. Though research holds that tribals are not indifferent to formal education but their isolation and invisibility from the mainstream only create the barrier. Formal education is important for their children’s education; however, the forced displacements don’t keep them in the loop. The rise of enrolment in schools showed a positive picture and children are taught according to their understanding, but the standard format of educational curriculum and mismatches in the policy implementation keeps the possibility of disidentification in schools (see also Bara & Bara, 2021). The difference in the readiness and suppression of motivation is most of the time contextual. The contextual impact

132  Power and Identity on the students from these marginalized communities was such that they enrolled in the government schools in their very locality but their readiness and recognition of the worth of education become lowered due to several social psychological factors. One of the factors which seem to create maximum impact on the will of students was the continued exclusion of their cognitive capital and their sociocultural identities. In the case of parents who become migrant workers, their children had to suffer the administrative and other forms of bureaucratic complexities. Sometimes, they are asked to produce certificates and proofs of their identifications, which requires complex channels of submissions. Apart from this, the emergence of hopelessness with the education system as a means to enhance their aspiration becomes thwarted in the competitive and neoliberal situations where the chances for success are only high for the students who are better positioned on the social class ladder. Group affiliation and community engagement factors are absent from the manual job workers when they are the victims of displacements and forced migration. The community feeling is based on the collective memory and that should be enacted in the community. This happens in spurts as the basic facilities of communications, affiliation with the hometown, and continued struggle to survive in different cultural context make the person vulnerable to economic and social stability. Memory is important but it does not give food. The rest of the things become secondary and tertiary to the demands of the dominant classes in the new communal and spatial regimes. When explored further the meaning of dehumanization, these socio-structural aspects play a leading role in the objectification of marginalized people. If school regenerates an integrated identity through the enabling mediators, which Gupta (2015) aptly connected to the school education of Muslim girls in India, the Gandhian Nai Talim is possible through the amalgamation of sociocultural values with modern education. However, Nai Talim gets a different meaning where the revivalism of the past which divided identities, oppressed people, and their sociocultural experiences, schools may be heading towards the dehumanizing spree by discounting the cultural memories with the forced values. Further, these forced values may shape students into a format that is designed to promote only the privileged and historically dominant categories of people. Gupta stated: We are now in a position to assess what education can achieve in its role as an enabling mediator-a mediator between the responsibility of a modern state towards its citizen, on one hand, and culture on the other. (p. 141) She indicated the clash felt by girl students belonging to the Muslim religion while adapting to the school values. The struggle between school-generated aspirations and also adapting to the religio-cultural/religio-gendered

Dehumanized identities and empowerment  133 framework describes the crisis and resolutions in the life of these students. An enabling mediator can be a fad if in actual life it creates dilemmas and situate these students in the direction of what is expected from the community. As in the cases of students in poverty situation, schools’ aspirations require community support to materialize the same. The ethics of school stays with the systematic integration and nurturing of the students’ values. If either the aspiration or the values which are derived from the community is marginalized or systematically rejected as culturally lower, illiterate, or cognitively demeaning, led to another form of dehumanization through the mismatches of values and dominance of school middle-upper class cultural capitals. According to Vaes, Bain, and Leyens (2014), the minds of victims of dehumanization are: seen as less intense, less causally impactful, and less objective than one owner, a phenomenon that they coin the lesser minds problem. (p. 323) Government should increase infrastructure equivalent to the high-status schools. Here, the meaning of necessary and sufficient is not the same, what seems sufficient for the government schools is of course insufficient for the high-status private schools in India, and so there is a shift in the meaning of education based on the infrastructure, class practices, and markets.

Signs of dehumanization There are some instances when dehumanizing shows its presence. Since dehumanization is associated with oppression and harassment on an everyday basis, it is important to act consciously to recognize the patterns of discrimination, which affects the students’ selves. Some of the signs are as follows: a b c d

e

School authorities don’t give space for self-expression. Doesn’t allow marginalized students to engage in everyday school activities as compared to the preferred ones. There is a lot of administrative bullying and harassment of students based on their identities such as caste, gender, and belongingness to the oppressed social groups. The school doesn’t value social identity or categorize students based on social hierarchies emanating out of social prejudices. For example, Dalits are dehumanized for their choice of food, excluded in the classroom, and treated as animals loaded with prejudices derived from the history of untouchability. Reducing students to invisibility if their social class is lower or if the students belong to an educated group, their identity is reduced to the same caste and gender-based stereotypes.

134  Power and Identity f g h

i

j

Creates hurdles in the achievement efforts of the marginalized and renders them choiceless. School authorities don’t recognize the students’ indigenous ways of doing the academic task, and if they move forward with any leadership role, they are considered as worthless. If the students have any concern, they are avoided, excluded, silencing them, doesn’t address their concern, remove from the channel for expressing any grievance, and rejected their voice as meaningless or inappropriate. Doesn’t help in enriching their academic and social mobility aspiration, shows comparative evaluation, discouraging any imagination of their being in a better position on the social ladder, systematically demeaning and suppressing the students’ interest in the school task leading to dropout, disidentification, discounting, shame, and humiliation. These are the aftereffects of the power hierarchy derived out of the context of historical oppression. As animals are threatened or punished to discourage them from doing something not approved by their owner, similarly students and members of marginalized groups are epistemically threatened and negatively reinforced shaping the negative intergroup relation and contact.

These are aspects that deprive the students and members of the marginalized group of full human status leading to “intervened constructions of shame and injustice” (Murray, Durrheim, & Dixon, 2022). Though the wider enhancement of social status, mobility, and group-based authentic pride have positive consequences in the school in terms of improving intergroup relationships, the structural barriers, socialization, and sustenance of intergroup conflict have always depleted the hope for group enhancement and expression of marginalized and Dalits. Student voice as a research methodology (Smyth et al., 2014) makes sense when the vantage point to decipher the voices in an egalitarian framework. In the context of marginalized gender and schooling in India, research had showed both promising and alarming pictures (see Manjrekar, 2020; Paik, 2014). The systematic degradation of students and staff from minority and historically oppressed background is not new in the educational domain, though some authentic protests emerge when a group of students and staff resists the oppressive policy through active social movement. Some scholars (Bhatia & Priya, 2018) highlighted the role of neoliberalism in diluting the resistance. This is a picture of movements while it rests on the neoliberal agenda of making society and its artefacts more driven by the pulse of the market. The market has to be understood critically as its reach is just not in the flow of capital but also in the psychological terrains of humanity. Every aspect of society has become victimized due to market control. In critically discussing the market and its paternalistic intrusion into the mindset, the focus was on two major societal domains, first, group

Dehumanized identities and empowerment  135 relationships and collective movement, and second on educational spaces. Then, the focus is on the presence of market influence in our daily lives and the construction of our everyday reality. The best possible effort to centre the meaning of the market is to look at its invisible influence operating in a hidden manner and the regular discourses in the domains like schooling. This has further affected our everyday engagement with various facets of life such as family interaction, construction of aspiration, and attributions about agency and ability. Tileagă (2007) indicated that the dominant ideologies of moral exclusion happen when the concerns of the marginalized are not taken into account. The digression from the perspective of oppressed identities through the imposition of dominant values is an active attempt to depersonalize, delegitimize, and dehumanize. It is embedded in the social practices, rituals, and philosophies which continuously frame the mindset prevailing in the institutions. Schools are not apart from this situational construction of deservingness and authenticities. This further accounts for the degradation of abjection that has occupied the history of inequality. Franz Fanon (1963) in the context of cultural estrangement and colonial intervention stated: Colonialism is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content. By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of the oppressed people and distorts, disfigures, and destroys it. This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today. (p. 169) Are schools legitimatizing this order in the new format of cultural colonialism? The idea to bring the marginalized from the darkness to light through the cultural shaping of native ideas is no less than the colonialism of the past. Though the oppressed group members see the new wave of modernity offered by the schools as enlightening and promising (Jeffery, Jeffery & Jeffery, 2008) because it is taken: as an important factor for economic mobility and changing the landscape of hereditary affiliations mandated mostly by ascriptive identities. (Venkataraman, 2014; as cited in Rout, 2021, p. 34). However, the deep categorization is already done as education remains a potential site for the social reproduction of inequalities and discriminations, particularly for SCs and also for other marginalized social and gender groups (Rout, 2021, p. 35). Dehumanization is laden in the history of human present experiences, it is an arena of a privileged oppressor who engages in a screening process of who is human in their term and who is not. Schooling, politics of curriculum, controlling of pedagogical and classroom activities, uniformity, degradation of community culture through

136  Power and Identity controlled schooling methods, possession of indigenous capital were coercively discouraged, changed through dominant institutionalized culture, the culture of punishment, discouraging of native language due to the influence of a kind of Eurocentric culture and further marketization of education in the service of the dominant identities. In India, the way elite upper caste adopted Eurocentric values and the way Dalits who were educated adopted the same has a difference. Eurocentric values adopted by the dominant classes in India situate their greater control of social hierarchies and control. For Dalits, it’s annihilation of the oppressing hierarchical values and connecting to the idea of modernity, egalitarianism, and emancipation. Malott (2011) indicated that the targeted victims have always fought back demonstrating the persistent fixed or biologically determined nature of the abstract notion of free will (p. 75). The danger of conditioning through the historical domination in all the domains including education had imposed behavioural control on the children of the marginalized based on societal expectations and prejudices. Freire (1998) insisted to be conscious of our conditioned consciousness. Schools have the potential to create a culture of resistance to the demeaning and dehumanizing value system. Students are the active member of the school and reducing them to a passive unit is contrary to the idea of education and emancipation. Churchill (2004) noted that the native children were not merely the passive victims of all that was being done to them (p. 51; as quoted in Malott, 2011; p. 75). This counter hegemony-essence of revolutionary hope indicates: The larger purpose of domesticating, dehumanizing behaviourist psychology is worth revisiting for transformation comes from the ashes and rubble of deconstruction. (Malott, 2011, p.75) The colonialist legacy of psychology in the neoliberal age of global capitalism needs a critical turn in questioning ourselves and our ways of seeing. We talked about learnification, where lifelong learning has become essential for everyone. But how we learn whether passively or actively/critically matters much in the context of critical pedagogy? The age of predetermined and prepackaged knowledge and facts within student minds shows what Roth (2007) stresses the importance of being aware of the socially constructed schemes that mediate the knowledge production process of individuals rendering the notion of objective science absurd (Malott, 2011; p. 79). Further, the continuous exposure to the hegemonic ideologies led to the homogenization of one kind of mindset without giving way to diverse thought and dignity for the human agency. According to Malott (2011): because we are all exposed to roughly the same dominant cultural texts and messages through the mainstream corporate-controlled media, as researcher and educator or teacher/researcher we find consistent and

Dehumanized identities and empowerment  137 predictable similarities between the schema of most people within a given society. (p. 79) Here, social class is seen uncritically as a permanent structure and minds are linked to it, for example, the rich are rich because of superior intelligence and the poor are poor because of biologically determined deficiencies. Neoliberal context corresponds to individual differences, and hard work, without giving any cognizance to the overpowering context. Critical pedagogy, which we will see in the chapter ahead, helps cross the dehumanization and learnification trap.

Conclusion The Freire’s approach to rehumanize education was strongly built on the foundation of society which is not stagnant but always in flux. As a recap, our school system works on both formal and informal models of social relationship. First, there is an ability approach which is built upon the students’ active engagement with the schools’ proceedings. Second, there is something in the air which connects or categorizes people. Dehumanization was observed rampantly in the school systems where the students from the oppressed community or low on academic achievement were always labelled to the animalistic categories. Dehumanization has a direct relationship with the identities, whether based on belonging to community or related to one’s cognitive categorization. As Apple (2012) hinted that the schools are not factories as it is generally observed in the mechanisms employed to regulate and control students and teachers. To respect the agency of all the stakeholders and school agents is to help them sustain and contribute their best part to education. Students learn when they are given better space and full respect. They are the active agents of social change. However, as we see that snatching one’s agency in the name of shaping and controlling and reducing them to the stereotypical animal categories has added to the school design. This categorizing to the same social constructions negatively influenced the consciousness of society and the meaning of education. School nurtures the aspiration and provides platform for active learning and choice making. By encouraging dissent and creating the pedagogy of hope, schools can provide ample psychological capital to the marginalized groups students and teachers. We look next how educational psychology connects to the identities and contexts to nourish better pedagogical practices.

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Dehumanized identities and empowerment  139 Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanization: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 252–264. Haslam, N., & Loughman, S. (2013). Dehumanization and infrahumanization. Annual Review of Psychology, 65, 399–423. Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, R., & Jeffery, P. (2008). School and madrasah education: Gender and the strategies of Muslim young men in rural north India. Compare, 38(5), 581–593. Jost, J. T. (2019). A quarter century of system justification theory: Questions, answers, criticisms, and societal applications. British Journal of Social Psychology, 58(2), 263–314. Jost, J. T., & Banaji, M. R. (1994). The role of stereotyping in system-justification and the production of false consciousness.  British Journal of Social Psychology, 33(1), 1–27. Kelman, H. C. (1973). Violence without moral restraint: Reflections on the dehumanization of victims and victimizers. Journal of Social Issues, 29(4), 25–61. Krishna, M. M. (2012). Pedagogic practice and the violence against Dalits in schooling. In C. Sleeter, S. B. Upadhyay, A. K. Mishra, & S. Kumar (Eds.), School education, pluralism and marginality: Comparative perspectives (pp. 54–82). New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan. Kteily, N., Hodson, G., & Bruneau, E. (2016). They see us as less than human: Metadehumanization predicts intergroup conflict via reciprocal dehumanization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 110(3), 343. Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480–498. Malott, C. S. (2011). Critical pedagogy and cognition: An introduction to a postformal educational psychology. New York: Springer. Manjrekar, N. (2020). Gender and education in India: A reader. Delhi: Aakar Books. Martin-Baro, I. (1994).  Writings for a liberation psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moller, A. C., & Deci, E. L. (2010). Interpersonal control, dehumanization, and violence: A self-determination theory perspective. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 13(1), 41–53. Murray, A. J., Durrheim, K., & Dixon, J. (2022). Everyday dehumanization: Negative contact, humiliation, and the lived experience of being treated as ‘less than human’. The British Journal of Social Psychology, 10.1111/bjso.12524. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12524 Ogbu, J. (1987). Variability in minority school performance: A problem in search of an explanation. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 18(4), 312–334. Ogbu, J. U. (2003). Black American students in an affluent suburb: A study of academic disengagement. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Opotow, S. (1990). Moral exclusion and injustice: An introduction.  Journal of Social Issues, 46(1), 1–20. Paik, S. (2014). Dalit women’s education in modern India: Double discrimination. Oxon: Routledge. Phillips, N. L., Adams, G., & Salter, P. S. (2015). Beyond adaptation: Decolonizing approaches to coping with oppression. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 3(1), 365–387.

140  Power and Identity Pratto, F., Sidanius, J., & Levin, S. (2006). Social dominance theory and the dynamics of intergroup relations: Taking stock and looking forward. European Review of Social Psychology, 17(1), 271–320. Reicher, S., & Haslam, S. A. (2006). Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study. British Journal of Social Psychology, 45(1), 1–40. Roth, W. M. (2007). Doing teacher-research: A handbook for perplexed practitioners. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Rout, B. C. (2021). Education among scheduled castes in India: A review of literature. In G. Shah, K. K. Bagchi, V. Kalaiah (Eds.), Education and caste in India: The Dalit question (pp. 23–40). Oxon: Routledge. Sherif, M., & Sherif, C. W. (1969). Social psychology. New York: Harper & Row. Smyth, J., Down, B., McInerney, P., & Hattam, R. (2014). Doing critical educational research: A conversation with the research of John Smyth. New York: Peter Lang. Steele, C. M. (1997). A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. American Psychologist, 52(6), 613–629. Tileagă, C. (2007). Ideologies of moral exclusion: A critical discursive reframing of depersonalization, delegitimization and dehumanization.  British Journal of Social Psychology, 46(4), 717–737. Vaes, J., Bain, P. G., & Leyens, J.-P. (2014). Understanding humanness and dehumanization: Emerging themes and directions. In P. G. Bain, J. Vaes, & J. P. Leyens (Eds.), Humanness and dehumanization (pp. 323–335). Psychology Press. Vaes, J., Paladino, M. P., Castelli, L., Leyens, J.-P., & Giovanazzi, A. (2003). On the behavioral consequences of infrahumanization: The implicit role of uniquely human emotions in intergroup relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(6), 1016–1034. Venkataraman, L. N. (2014). Caste, class and education: The intersectional implications of capabilities formation in a south Indian village. In H. U. Otto (Ed.), New approaches towards the good life: Applications and transformations of the capability approach (pp. 107–125). Germany: Barbara Budrich Publishers. Waytz, A., Epley, N., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2010). Social cognition unbound: Insights into anthropomorphism and dehumanization. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 58–62. Wilde, V. K., Martin, K. D., & Goff, P. A. (2014). Dehumanization as a distinct form of prejudice. Testing, Psychometrics, Methodology in Applied Psychology, 21(3), 1–7. Zhang, H., Chan, D. K. S., Xia, S., Tian, Y., & Zhu, J. (2017). Cognitive, emotional, and motivational consequences of dehumanization.  Social Cognition, 35(1), 18–39.

Part III

Decolonizing Educational Psychology

7

Marginality, aspiration, and choice An implication for educational psychology1

Earlier works have discussed how the preference of choice is shaped by the market. In the domain of educational psychology, this causation is further elaborated in the form of corrective behaviour through therapeutic methods. For example, the power dynamics can be seen in the role of school administrators either in promoting the program which is more conducive to the dominant group or promoting efficient measures to cater to the need of diverse students. Educational psychology in India as an established sub-discipline of psychology provides little knowledge about social-psychological facets such as social class identity and social power which shapes the student-teacher relationship and choice, curriculum and pedagogy. Educational institutions are also the platform for commodity production where knowledge is manufactured as per the market. We will discuss the power relationships in the context of social class privilege and available choices in education. How marginalization is constructed and how does being marginalized go along with the children’s aspiration and choice-making in education? The present chapter questions the legitimacy of formal education and examines the dominant notion of educational psychology shaping the structure of schooling in India, for example, academic achievement, cognitive ability, cultural capital, choice and the culture of uncritical acceptance of knowledge. An attempt is made to critically address the dominance of educational psychology that has occupied the mindsets in the school. It is important to revisit the reform processes that correspond to the respect for diversity and needs, going beyond the myopia of legitimizing limited forms of disciplinary culture. The rise of expectations from parents, teachers, and society that children will perform well and show high cognitive and language skills is somewhere contrary to the ethics of agency and the child’s right to express himself/herself. The ethics of justice and respect for the agency of others is one of the fundamental aspects which can be a future agenda of schooling.This is observed in the NEP 2020 with its ambitious long-term educational reforms. There is a possibility of reverting to failed attempts of improving students’ performance as the existing structure has not been questioned. Issues of identity and sociocultural experiences of students from disadvantaged backgrounds

DOI: 10.4324/9781003378297-11

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144  Decolonizing Educational Psychology have not been addressed openly, thus limiting education to increase in literacy rate only. However, the scheme of continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) had embarked on flexibility for schools to plan their academic schedules as per specified guidelines on CCE, the possibility of the negligence of low-performing students not fitting into the school value system can’t be denied. NEP 2020 seem to address this issue by reshuffling the structure of schooling and escalation to a higher degree. Reshuffling the structure of education into layering doesn’t solve the problem of exclusion and marginalization. Neither does it give a freedom of choice until basic challenges of social and psychological representations, acceptance, expression, dignity, and cognitive justice are addressed.In one of the excerpts, it is stated: The Policy acknowledges the importance of interventions to promote the education of children belonging to all minority communities, and particularly those communities that are educationally underrepresented. (p. 25) The approach of the policy in addressing the needs of marginalized children directly led to the inconsistency in the application of justice in education. The policy in its statement is less explicit about the experiences of minorities and how they are going to be represented in the long term. However, the agenda to be representative may have a valid addition to the educational psychology that has systematically subsumed the schooling activities. During the focused group discussion with the director and teachers of Vidyashram, Varanasi, it was observed that they are committed to the students from the working-class background who need support at different levels. 2 It is a mutual understanding between students, teachers, schools, and the policies. It was discussed as follows: To woh sab kaam hum log ko apne upar leke karna hai Unhi ke umar ke log ya parivaar ke log kah sakte hai ki kya fizul mein padh rahe ho Abhi to bahut din padhna padega Abhi yeh kaam shuru kar do Agar family ko lagega ka ki hamara vision bahut clear hai, planning bahut thos hai Saath saath pocket money bhi paa rahen hain hai To woh aage ki padhai karenge [We have to take all the responsibilities for those works People of their age or their family members may say that why you are wasting your time in studies You have to study for many days

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  145 You must start this work now If family members see that our vision is very clear, planning is solid Side by side their children are earning also So, they may allow for further education] Most of the marginalized children don’t get new opportunities to come out from their present disadvantaged situation, occupational structure, and low hierarchical portrayal of their occupational status which are less preferred in the society. The preference of education for children who have higher status is not to go for these low-status jobs, so basically it confined as low status and as working class. The condition of marginalized children, ghettoization of poor Muslim, and other disadvantaged group came out with many psychological burdens and the release of those burdens becomes a necessary priority of the schools through education and promotions. Sometimes, children are not able to cope with the difficult school environment; they disengage from rigid structure of schooling which often denotes values which may not be congruent with their cultural experiences. The motive is to uplift these children’s social class status and self-esteem so that they enrich their identity. Teachers also discussed about their interaction with the parent. They described: Kuch parents Kahte hain ki mera beta cellphone repair karnemein, welding job mein, transport meinachahai Lekin yeh sub working class profession hain Hume yeh bilkul encourage nahin karna hai Sun lo lekin encourage nahinkarna hain Working class ko working class mein nahin bhejna hai Working class kaa ek level hain Unlog ko jo bhi idea hai who galat hai Teachers job me bahut jyada security, status, and progress kaa sambhavna hai Uske saath kuch bhi karen ek dusra life style ho jata hai [Some parents say that their children are good in cellphone repair, welding, transportation But these are all working class profession We will never try to encourage this Listen to them but don’t encourage to engage in manual occupation We are not here to send working class children to working class profession again There is a level of working class Whatever idea they have is wrong In teacher like job there are much security, status and the possibilities of progress Along with that if they do anything the new life style will be there]

146  Decolonizing Educational Psychology Even if the rate of literacy in India increasing (see Kingdon, 2007), the current debate has more aggressively inclined towards the quality education. The movement to educate children has been in progress but it also seen in the recent times that the divides in education also increased. The pace of movement to educate and the quality education has taken a new turn where the accessibility to quality education is still determined by the agenda of the powerful identities. The psychological reality of people is still underscored or sometime exaggerated. More psychological understanding is needed at the level of policy implication for the school. According to Kumar (2007), the real solution to the problem of under achievement lies largely in a classroom structure where time is provided to deal with social needs. The solution lies largely in making the classroom activities of such high levels of attractiveness that motivation arises from even among those indifferent to learning. The solution also lies, and in connection with the above, in pulling together the real-life experience of children with the academic skills, they need to learn (p. 307). The commitment to bear all the hurdles to uplift the students is not very much seen pragmatically in the policies, and sometimes it is the school who opts to take these responsibilities. They are fully involved to make the planning better to have students’ quality and interdisciplinary education, so that the students can become capable in arts, teaching, design, entrepreneur, and start-ups. However, they insist for the quality trainer who can engage in the process of apprenticeship development. The attempt to empower students through effective pedagogy, curriculum design, and different co-curricular activities occupied the working psychology of the school system. The new educational policy mentioned the term power and related term such as empowerment more than 30 times in the script. A few examples are stated below: empower teachers and help them to do their job as effectively as possible. (p. 4) promoting multilingualism and the power of language in teaching and learning. (p. 5) a ‘light but tight’ regulatory framework to ensure integrity, transparency, and resource efficiency of the educational system through audit and public disclosure while encouraging innovation and out-of-the-box ideas through autonomy, good governance, and empowerment. (p. 5) It indicated the structural improvement of school space so that the above agenda can be fulfilled. According to NEP, this can be possible through decentralization and distribution of power to different working bodies,

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  147 rather than being limited to a single institution such as the department of school education. NEP 2020 stated: At present, all main functions of governance and regulation of the school education system – namely, the provision of public education, the regulation of education institutions, and policymaking – are handled by a single body, i.e., the Department of School Education or its arms. This leads to a conflict of interests and excessive centralized concentration of power; it also leads to ineffective management of the school system, as efforts towards quality educational provision are often diluted by the focus on the other roles, particularly regulation, that the Departments of School Education also perform. (p. 30) As we see some educational programs such as “beti bachao, beti padhao (BBBP), sarva shiksha abhiyan (SSA), school chalo abhiyan”, mandatory yoga classes, voucher system of education, new educational policy 2020, and policies for disabled and minorities students, the bringing of marginalized categories such as gender, social classes, minority rights, and disability can be appreciated. At the same time, how much these policies render to the empowerment through the access to high-quality education, design of  similar and inclusive spaces of education through equal representations of diversity, facilitating better resources to marginalized students to freely opt for the school of their choice is also to be facilitated on regular basis. The reproduction of oppressive relationship based on the same class, caste, and gender mindset happen through the social structural looping that had gripped the social relationship. Changing the structure of school through the design of educational space will not address the broader problem of exclusion unless students from the marginalized group get social and psychological support. NEP didn’t list the prejudice neutralizers to bring equity nor does it show its influence on the broader policies and budgeting on education to bring representation and affirmative-justice action. Some of the technical phrases are observed in the NEP 2020 document such as “cultural preservation”, “promotion of critical thinking”, “knowledge and an employment landscape”, “technology”, “affordability”, and “private philanthropy”. Raina (2020)3 noted: In detailing the vision, content and processes for school education NEP 2020 envisions that child must not only learn but also ‘learn how to learn’.For this, it recommends an ‘experiential, holistic, integrated, inquiry-driven, discovery-oriented, discussion-based, flexible, and of course, enjoyable’ pedagogy. It recommends a broad-based school curriculum which includes ‘basic arts, crafts, humanities, games, sports and fitness, languages, literature, culture, and values, in addition to science and mathematics’ for a well-rounded education.

148  Decolonizing Educational Psychology Academic engagement, aspiration, and choice of students were judged from the cognitive perspective. The question frequently explored in the educational psychology literature and educational discourse that “why do some students get difficulty in adjusting to the school environment which results in either dropout or low academic performance?” The answer to this question has been explored through various approaches, such as cognitive (e.g., Kintsch, 1988), motivational (e.g., Dweck & Master, 2008), contextual (e.g., Sirin, 2005), and cultural (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2004; see also Vygotsky, 1978; Kityama & Uskul, 2011). If contextual and cultural factors are included in the educational domain, the cause of psychological processes, both cognitive and non-cognitive, can be better understood. However, it was observed that these two factors have been interrogated as separate entities rather than as macro-level forces shaping the individual level phenomenon.It is becoming a fact that individually represent society and any behaviour can be accumulated as societal input but still mainstream psychology separated its form and structure (see Winne & Nesbit, 2010).

Equality and equity in education The main obstacles to excellence and equity in education depend on grasping the complex nature of how social inequality is socially organized and sustained (Portes, 2005). Taking a glance at the reforms in the educational sector, we may notice that despite the efforts in improving the quality of education and wellbeing of children, the all-encompassing achievement problems persist. The most common problems of the academic achievement gap faced by students were often categorized as either genetic or socially driven. Even those who refused the dominant role of genetic influence metaphorized it in other forms. The historical forces shaping the socialpsychological aspects of students have been rather placed under the umbrella of evolutionary degeneration. This portrayal of a wider academic achievement gap was positioned under the individual genesis of vulnerability and deficiency. Thus, the observance of the academic achievement gap in terms of the performance of students became the governing marker of students as well as national development. Critical observation of school by students and their detachment from the forced entity of the educational system was taken as something gone astray in the students themselves, and educational policies were designed on that basis. In one of the discussions with the father of working-class student, who has a tailoring shop at home, he expressed his financial problem in educating his children4. He believed in his child’s ability but due to family and financial constrains felt hopeless with the current educational system. He said: Aamdani koi theek nahi hai Saal sahih hai to aa jaata hai

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  149 Kaam karte hai to aa jaata hai nahi to nahi aata hai [Income is not stable If year is fine then money comes If we do work then we get money otherwise there is nothing] This is plight of working class, even though some studies talk about the community affiliation. Since all the working-class parents have to struggle a lot to give the manual service, even if they have a community, income generated is meagre enough to sustain the needs of family, though they have faith and trust over those schools which are working hard to raise the levels of working-class children to middle class through education. However, many constraints are with these schools, especially the financial. They survive on donations, fundings, and approval from the government institutions. Even if they prepare their students well holistically, the exam system conducted by major governing bodies becomes the challenge for them both in getting the affiliation and collection of necessary exam fees, clothing and food for the working-class students. The agenda of social mobility and upliftment become the distant dream without the full-fledged government support in keeping the independence of these schools intact and decentralized. The missing link between working-class and oppressed community parents, schools, and government make these marginalized children return to vulnerability. The present educational system has legitimized its mainstream ideology which intentionally or unintentionally deprived the right of groups, portrayed as unconventional or from diverse backgrounds. However, it has been untenable approach to include the widely debated ideology into mainstream education as a new approach, as it was seen as unthinkable and oppressive on the part of victims. For example, the recent positioning of different theories, one of which is a sociocultural theory, into the national educational programs such as NEP 2020 and earlier such as the national curriculum framework (2005) needed a critical understanding of the metatheoretical assumption. This may lead to a better conclusion about the open and democratic forms of education. The academic achievement gap of socially disadvantaged students has varied social consequences such as failure (Ogbu, 1992; Steele, 1997), dropout (Dreze & Sen, 2008; Janosz et al., 2000), lack of motivation and interests (Carr & Dweck, 2011; Stipek & Tannat, 1984; Wigfield et al., 1997), and low academic identification (Ogbu, 2003; Steele, 1997). These factors are the result of systematic deprivation of marginalized students from their aspirations and rendering them choiceless. Nevertheless, their ontogenetical basis seems to be under the same systematic discrimination on the part of the school (Portes, 2005). The above-mentioned challenges placed before future educational reforms posed major obstacles to equity and equality in education. Effects of colonial and occidental (westerner interlocutor) notions of competence and achievement, till now, have been the major dominant feature in the social

150  Decolonizing Educational Psychology representation of academic achievement. Therefore, the representation and reification of the dominant perspective of education as commonsensical knowledge on the historical time plane became the toothless ideology of the mainstream educational system, representing dominant identity (Moscovici, 1998; Moscovici & Hewstone, 1983). This process of legitimization of education by the more dominant social group in the society, gradually, became part of the educational discourses of educational psychology.

Questioning the formalist agenda of education The father of Prema (Markendey)5 expressed his view on achievement by conforming to the commonsense understanding prevalent in our society. He stated: Safal vidhyarthi wohi hai jo teacher ki baat mane, padhe likhe, field me rahe Padhega to safal hoga life mein Jo padhega nahi, kisi ki baat nahi manega, teacher log ka respect nahi karega Woh Asafal hoga Aajkal safal aadmi kaa hi ijjat hai Samajik bhi hona chaiye Yeh school acha hai Padhai hoti hai aur be gatividhi hoti hai Kum pasie me humare bache achi shiksha paa le rahen hai [Successful student is that who obeys teacher, study, be in the field If study, he will be successful in life One who will not study, disobeys, disrespects teachers He will be unsuccessful In the current time, those who are successful are respected One should be social This school is good Education happens along with other activities In low-cost children are getting good education] What are the principal reasons for the persistence of inequity in educational outcomes for students in a society which seems to stand on the platform of democratic values? The formalist system of education is influenced by the dominant worldviews of the psychometric tradition of measuring human agencies and attributes. These dominant worldviews are appropriate to the tradition of inequality (Kincheloe, 1999). In this regard, Portes (2005) raised the following questions on the present status of education and the persistence gap in achieving systematic equality in representations and persistence in the educational domain. Indian social system has been the progeniture of the colonial mindset derived from the meritocratic and ability

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  151 agenda of educational psychology, though the recent awareness programs facilitated through plays, writings, or photography are in the process of leaving a gradual impact. For example, the movie “Three Idiots” (2010) conveyed one interesting message to its audience that the present system of education still embarks on its pedagogy which Freire (1970) indicated as the “banking style of education which is a barrier to creativity”. These authoritarian styles of education sustained the motives to subjugate the people of a historically oppressed group. After so many years of important educational revolution worldwide by pioneers such as Vygotsky in Russia, Paulo Freire and Joe Kincheloe in Latin America, John Ogbu in North America, the education system silently subscribes to the same functionalist approach, for example, “education promotes equality; schooling provided the means of socializing young adults into roles required by society; schooling ensure social cohesion and harmony by moving us closer to equity and social justice; and, above all, schooling accomplish this without prejudice to race, gender, or class”. This represents commonsense knowledge regarding the role of school in education. These aspects of schooling have created much ado in the context of education and become part of the educational dialogue. Other aspects are the sociocultural influence on the cognitive structure of a child. The formalist system of education is still the dominant force in the societal representations of academic achievement. Therefore, the answer to the question that “Why one form of education which is prioritized in the mainstream is always legitimized and valued and not others in the society?” can be traced under the social constructivist model.

Constructivist and social constructivist perspectives Psychologists have long been interested in knowing the causal factors behind the high and low performance of students in the classroom. These causal factors dominated the domains of education and schooling positioning them in the dominant worldviews. Two of which were quite prominent representing traditional and realist epistemology, namely, the organismic and mechanistic nature of human agency (Prawat, 1996). The organismic view holds a Piagetian or schema-driven brand of constructivism in which self-organization was an inherent feature of the organism– a tendency most evident in the activity of the human mind which was nurtured under the paradigm of rationalism. The mechanistic worldview was tailored under the academic regime of realism which was the philosophical antithesis of Piagetian constructivism. These worldviews were observed to be more individualistic rather than social in orientation and were placed under the deficit model of achievement (for other views see Kitchener, 1991). Apart from the traditional and realist worldview, the alternative worldview comprised sociocultural aspects, symbolic interactionist worldviews, and “mind in society” worldviews. This alternative worldview was more context-driven,

152  Decolonizing Educational Psychology though they were positioned under the postmodernist paradigm (see Blumer, 1969; Cobb & Yackel, 1996; Gergen, 1985; Harre, 1986; JohnSteiner & Mahn, 1996; Toulmin, 1995; Vygotsky, 1978). Social constructivist perspectives focus on the interdependence of social and individual processes in the co-construction of knowledge (Palincsar, 1998). Since knowledge is either prescribed or self-created, Everhart (1983) noted them as either reified knowledge or regenerative knowledge. Former is a knowledge that treats abstract, tenuous, and problematical as if they are concrete and real. Regenerative knowledge is the production of students. It is based on mutuality of communication and created, maintained and recreated through the continuing interaction of people in a community setting because what is known is in part dependent upon the historical forces emerging from within the community settings (Everhart, 1983). Regenerative knowledge is experienced by students as socially constructed. They feel that they have a hand in its creation. Students’ regenerative knowledge is oppositional to school knowledge while students exert no control over reified knowledge (either its production or the process through which they are supposed to consume it), they exert substantial control over regenerative knowledge. Regenerative knowledge and its creation and recreation among students reveal that the deterministic forces of the school, as exemplified by reified knowledge, do not always take root and, in fact, may scarcely be paid any attention to at all. The student culture and the regenerative knowledge that grows from it may serve to resist that alienated aspect of learning by creating oppositional forms that contradict the mechanistic processes of school learning. The work of social constructivists comprises mainly Piagetian and Vygotskian accounts here. However, presently the focus shall be on the Vygotskian notion of academic achievement and also an effort shall be made to interlink and differentiate it from other perspectives of post-formalist and cultural-ecological approaches.Apart from these perspectives of education, rest shall be presumed to be inherently the area of the formalist agenda of mainstream educational psychology (Kincheloe, 1999). The reason behind this categorization as formalist and post-formalist educational psychology is manifold. One of the reasons which impelled the present discussion in this direction is not universal but more or less based on a sociocultural understanding of schooling and academic achievement. The formalist forms of education, though, are fiercely debated in diverse disciplinary circles, at the practical level place, and compare the student under the same mainstream and middle-class educational value system.It was implied that those who are not fitting under this formalist system of education are enough to be projected as a deficit, thus strengthening the existing legitimizing myths portrayed by the dominant class and culture (See Beteille, 2007; Tyler, 2006). These formalist approaches are dominant in the educational system due to colonial impacts demeans the cultural and linguistic diversity of historically marginalized students (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996)

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and became reified as commonsense knowledge. These representations of education in the form of academic achievement disregarded other aspects and paradigms of education. For example, the category of students involved in proper education, their achievement as compared to underachievers or low achiever, their cultural representation in schools and not others, and their politics of social identification never had become part of people’s understanding of academic achievement. The urgent need to understand other aspects of education and their representations is the need of the present hour. A practical illustration of the present educational system is its classroom effect which has sustained the legitimacy of the past educational system in its discourses. In this sense, the representation of formalist education weakens the position of students from marginalized and low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds and labelled their underperformance in school as deficit and not as different from the children from un-marginalized and high SES backgrounds (see Meacham, 2001). Some cultural arguments problematically define certain ethnic-racial identities and cultures as subtractive from the goal of academic mobility while defining the ethnic cultures and identities of others as an additive and oriented towards this goal (Warikoo & Carter, 2009). This has shown that the dominant formalist force accepted the superiority of the students coming from the privileged socioeconomic background (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1993). In the process of judging students’ academic achievement, the larger educational context was never questioned in which students were seen in terms of their fitting/unfitting to the education system rather than fitting education to the diverse needs of the students. This is observed to some extent in the current NEP 2020 as: The goal of the school education regulatory system must be to continually improve educational outcomes; it must not overly restrict schools, prevent innovation, or demoralize teachers, principals, and students. All in all, regulation must aim to empower schools and teachers with trust, enabling them to strive for excellence and perform at their very best, while ensuring the integrity of the system through the enforcement of complete transparency and full public disclosure of all finances, procedures, and educational outcomes. (p. 30) Earlier, Meacham (2001) argued from the Vygotskian perspective that a culturally diverse learning environment, in contrast to the tradition of deficit, may embody important advantages in higher-order conceptual development (p. 190). Researchers often ignored factors in psychological studies that could have reconciled the gap in terms of cultural assumptions of non-mainstream communities and those of the school regarding learning, which could be beneficial in literacy achievement based on gender,

154  Decolonizing Educational Psychology caste, and other minority identities in various cultural contexts (see Heath, 1983; Manjrekar, 2020; Moll, 1992; Moll & Whitmore, 1993; Nawani, 2016; Paik, 2014).Nawani (2016) noted: The job broadly requires a deeper understanding of children-their developmental need, sociocultural contexts, individual differences among them and so on-which then needs to be factored in for providing them with appropriate learning support. (p.19) It was indicated that the children’s aspirations are also somewhere linked to parental aspirations and needs. The policies catering to their aspiration genuinely cater to their need. Conversely, if it imposes the needs of dominant classes and caste, somewhere it is alienating the marginalized from their aspirations which directly affects the community’s social mobility. As we will see in the next chapter on critical pedagogy that how teachers’ leadership is a political action and how teachers’ intervention matter despite the overpowering policies and the school’s agenda. At the outset, it seems that people of minority and disadvantaged backgrounds held motives derived from the outgroup to justify the present system of education. Thus, they legitimately succumb to justifying the present system (see Jost & Banaji, 1994; Jost, Banaji & Nosek, 2004) of education. This justification of underachievement by people of disadvantaged backgrounds undermines their sociocultural experience as a deficit. Though, varied paradigms comprising sociocultural underpinnings also need to be vigorously debated.

Sociocultural factors matter? Literacy acquisition has been the central concern of sociocultural theory (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996, p. 202). Scribner and Cole (1981) in their analysis of the relationship between literacy and the cognitive development of a child expressed the possibility that literacy acquisition can be independent of schooling and have contextual implications in the development of cognitive competencies. Sociocultural approaches emphasize the interdependence of social and individual processes in the co-construction of knowledge (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996, p. 191). One reason attributed was that “children from working-class and lower-socioeconomic-class homes do not ascribe the same importance to the mental functions required by intelligence tests or achievement tests and academic work in the same way as do middle- and upper-middle-class students” (Kincheloe, 1999, p.2). Working-class and poor students often see academic work as unreal, as a series of short-term tasks rather than something with a long-term relationship to their lives (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 2). Studies showed that school failure resulted from the cultural inferiority of the poor or the marginalized and teach us that power relations between

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  155 groups (based on class, race, ethnicity, gender, and so on) must be considered when various aspects of schooling and students’ performance and activities are studied (e.g., Zweigenhaft & Domhoff, 1991). The social context and power relations of the culture at large and the school culture, in particular, are central in the attempt to understand the class and cultural dynamics of student performance (Block, 1995). Kincheloe (1999) emphasized sociopolitical cognitive theory which tried to understand the way consciousness and subjectivity are shaped by the world around the human agency or entity. This emphasis on sociopolitical theory rejects the mechanistic worldview that is embedded in the cause-effect, hypothetical-deductive system of reasoning. Lev Vygotsky theorized in the 1930s that individuals do not develop in isolation but in a series of interconnected social matrices in which cognition is viewed as a social function (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 9). In a socio-psychological theoretical context, Vygotsky’s work creates a space where integration between macro-social forces and micro-psychological forces occurs. Analysis of these integrated spaces becomes a central activity for a democratic post-formal educational psychology concerned with the way identity is formed by large social forces and mediated by individuals operating in a specific environment (Kincheloe, 1999, p.4). Such understanding allows us to imagine pedagogies that move individuals to greater understandings of themselves and their relation to the world, to higher orders of thinking previously unimagined (Driscoll, 1994; Marsh, 1993; Vygotsky, 1978; Weisner, 1987; Werstch & Tuviste, 1992). The most fundamental concept of sociocultural theory is that the human mind is mediated (Lantolf, 2000, p.1). The sociocultural revolution focused on learning in and out of the school contexts and on the acquisition of skills through social interaction (Voss, Wiley, & Carretero, 1995). Failure of the educational system has resulted in new revolutions which deviated from the established framework of looking at education. Vygotsky (1978) argued that human beings do not act directly on the physical world but with the help of cultural tools and labour activities. This gives us the freedom of self to operate on its ecology and systems and to change it. The use of symbolic/ cultural tools or signs, to mediate and regulate our interaction and operation with others, is the major hallmark of the sociocultural paradigm. A child’s mind seems to be, as pointed out by various sociocultural theorists, culturally shaped and it is the matter of plasticity of the child’s brain which happened to grasp the utility of the artefacts when operating in his/her environment. In this process of understanding children in their school contexts, Vygotsky reasoned that an adequate approach to the study of higher mental abilities is through genetic analysis (Palincsar, 1998). Although sociocultural theory recognized four genetic domains viz., phylogenetic domain, sociocultural domain, ontogenetic domain, and microgenetic domain, most of the research has been carried out in the ontogenetic domain (Lantolf, 2000). For example, focusing on exploring how abilities such as voluntary memory are formed in children through the integration

156  Decolonizing Educational Psychology of meditational means into the thinking process (Lantolf, 2000). However, these four aspects were found to be interwoven together in the development analysis from the Vygotskian perspective (Palincsar, 1998). Hence, it is with the application of ontogenetic analysis that the complex interplay of meditational tools, the individual, and the social world is explored to understand learning and development and the transformation of tools, practices, and institutions (Palincsar, 1998). According to Lantolf (2000), their mental system had been reformed as a result of their participation in a culturally specified activity known as schooling (p. 5). A well-established fact of child cognitive development fragmented in the stages was challenged by the notion that learning is not the result of the pre-established stage of a certain form of maturation but rather a result of social interactions and socially learned phenomena giving impetus to the inner development of the child. The sociocultural theory argues that thinking and speaking are tightly interrelated in a dialectic unity in which publicly derived speech completes privately initiated thoughts (Lantolf, 2000, p. 7). Context has an important role to play in ascribing varied meanings to the individual or group performing the task, though the task may be the same in its structural form. The point is that while people from different contexts could copy the model imposed in the process of teaching and learning but the activities people are engaged in are not the same because the motives and goals underlying the behaviour are different (Lantolf, 2000). Activities in different settings (e.g., classrooms) do not unfold smoothly but there is a chain of one activity reshaping itself into another activity in the course of its unfolding (Lentolf, 2000). The shift in inactivity can give rise to the need to discover different meditational tools for carrying out a new activity. Palincsar (1998) asserted that the peer collaboration resembled interactions between teachers and children, resulting in the generation of new story elements and more mature forms of writing than children had demonstrated alone. Furthermore, the researchers speculated that the peer interaction was more facilitative than teacher and child interactions, given the shared perspectives and life experiences that the children were able to bring to the collaborative writing process. (p. 349) Behaviourists and latter constructivist agendas were limited in their discourse of teaching and learning as they ignored the more potent factors of the entity such as cultural-historical-political force. In the classroom discourses, students form a shared identity with each other which can be a very effective factors to be utilized for effective learning through dialogues and discussion. Gee (1990) suggests that as researchers and teachers we must go beyond mere recognition of discourses’ role in producing or potentially

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  157 challenging hierarchies of power. We must take theoretical and pedagogical stands against oppressive forms of discursively produced power hierarchies in and out our tacit theories about students and their abilities to learn that help inform and construct these hierarchies and specific classroom learning environments in the first place (p. 195). Therefore, it becomes foremost to look into the basic tenets of the child which have their genesis in the sociocultural configuration and experiences (Cohen, 2009). This sociocultural format has been dominantly synchronized by the children’s socioeconomic positioning. Recently Mahadevan, Gregg and Sedikides (2021) showed that sociometric status such as respect, admiration, and importance are more potent and probable predictors of one’s self-esteem than SES based on education, income, and occupation, though they also showed that sociometric status mediated the link between SES and self-esteem. This may lead us to think that SES as a sociocultural indicator remains important in one’s expectations about sociometric needs. Here, the role of schools as a platform of meaningful inclusion of the students from the marginalized group may infuse a better social relationship among the diverse group of students. We can infer that students not only received an education and aspiration fulfilment but also respect and dignity which the school is capable of promoting if it effectively takes responsibility in addition to the policy didactics. This SES definition emphasizes the contextual, sociocultural, and subjective aspects rather than its linear treatment in the formalists’ domain. Burkit (2008) pointed towards social class as a fit for a certain category of capital essential in one’s understanding of social selves. Categorization of SES as an objective criterion for measuring one’s hierarchical position is based on a set of variables that are clustered and complementary. Thus, for the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the social class differences and distinctions between individuals that influence their biographical trajectories and identities are not just based on the ownership or non-ownership of material capital, or on the person’s relation to the division of labour, but also depend upon the possession of cultural, social, and symbolic capital (as cited in Burkit, 2008, p. 138). These capitals can be associated with Vygotsky’s sociocultural and post-formal theoretical assumptions given earlier than Bourdieu’s thesis. However, these associations of capital decide the social position of the individual in any social situation such as a classroom. According to Bourdieu (1993), each individual occupies a position in a multidimensional social space or fieldwhere he or she is not defined only by  social class  membership, but by every single kind of capital he or she can articulate through social relations. These invisible and visible accumulations of capital include the value of social networks, which as Bourdieu showed could be used to produce or reproduce inequality. According to Snibbe and Markus (2005): cultural models are sets of assumptions that are widely (though not universally) shared by a group of people, existing both in individual

158  Decolonizing Educational Psychology minds and in public artefacts, institutions, and practices. At the individual level, these cultural models provide implicit blueprints of how to think, feel, and act. When people act according to these blueprints, they reproduce the public models, thereby perpetuating the cultural context from which both were derived. (p. 704) The above definition of the cultural model has been described into three major forms, namely, religion, SES, and region (Cohen, 2009), where SES has been seen as of major practical importance. The American Psychological Association’s (APA) Task Force on Socioeconomic Status (2006) noted that differences in SES and social class have important implications for human development, wellbeing, and physical health. In research on SES and social class, these are commonly operationalized as combinations of variables such as income, education, and occupational prestige. When investigating social class and SES, many investigators also probe subjective social class, or individuals’ estimation of their social class (Cohen, 2009, p. 197). People may perceive their social class to be different from what objective indicators might suggest (Cohen, 2009). Thus, socioeconomic and class inequity may be perceived not only in terms of tangible resources such as income but also in terms of structural aspects such as power, privilege, and social capital (American Psychological Association (APA), Task Force on Socioeconomic Status, 2007; Cohen, 2009). Cohen (2009) highlighted: Whereas much attention has been paid to the effects that socioeconomic status and social class have on domains such as health, development, and wellbeing, psychologists have not often taken a culturally informed approach or considered the rich culturally textured beliefs, values, and practices of higher versus lower social class individuals. (p. 197) Snibbe & Markus (2005) through various experiments had shown how people of low and high SES differ in their views of the agency. It was found that high SES people are more able to control their environments and influence others, whereas those of low SES are more likely to have to adapt to their surroundings and maintain their integrity because of their inability to directly control their environments (Snibbe & Markus, 2005). Thus, Snibbe and Markus (2005) claimed that the culture of high SES values control and agency, whereas the culture of low SES values flexibility, integrity, and resilience (Cohen, 2009). It can be concluded that children of different SES are enculturated to have different values (Snibbe & Markus, 2005). Providing meaningful education for all children sets the agenda for a more diverse form of education for the child (Palincsar, 1998). In this context, Moll (1992) asserted,“in studying human beings dynamically, within their social circumstances, in their full complexity, we gain a more complete

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  159 and a much more valid understanding of them” (p. 239). Failure of the school to serve children from all diverse backgrounds has been explained through the following sociocultural explanations such as(a) discontinuities between the culture (values, attitudes, beliefs, and SES) of the home and school (Gee, 1990; McPhail, 1996), (b) mismatches in the communicative practices between children of lower class and SES and mainstream teachers who represent monolithic value system of middle social class that lead to miscommunication and misjudgement (Heath, 1983), (c) the internalization of negative stereotypes by minority groups or people of the working class who have been marginalized and may see school as a site for opposition and resistance (Steele, 1992), and(d) relational issues, such as the failure to attain mutual trust between teachers and students (Moll & Whitmore, 1993) and a shared sense of identification between the teacher and the learner (Litowitz, 1993). Adding to the above sociocultural explanations of mismatches between the value assumption of the child and the school, the children co-construct their knowledge system in the social processes with their use and familiarity with the artefacts. Thus, we may call for an alternative view that reconsiders the tradition and scheme of schools and provide major overhauling through awareness. This is required to have a shift in the perceptions of an observer and to value the agency of the child which is the actor and bearer of the oppressive situations. Therefore, it becomes important in understanding a child’s appropriation of his/her cultural values and to provide better education from a diverse perspective. The cult of prescription seems to be present in all other circumstances of schooling. The key phrase is “to do as you are told” (Thomas, 2006).6 Recently the rise of anxieties among middle-class parents is observed. The reason is whether to trust formal schooling or not. Some textbooks on unschooling and homeschooling are published. The merits and demerits of schooling are discussed in the seminars and conferences along with the policies on education, though schools have always fascinated the people in their children’s career advancement, learning, and disciplining. Even sociocultural psychology emphasized the role of culture in educating the child. The family and community values were strictly followed in the parent-child education spree. Some viewed that formal education may be a dilution of the family value and the child may digress from the community bondage with the colonial and modern form of education. Our NEP 2020 has also attempted to bring the elements of Indian ethos derived from traditional schooling to its modernizing agenda. Though it didn’t elaborate on unschooling and homeschooling but called for the state’s intervention in nourishing the cultural values through policy efforts. Though it emphasized prevailing wishes to revive the traditional ethos based on Hindu psychology, somewhere it missed the cultural values of many other diverse groups from tribes and religious minorities. The question is: will it be a loss of community-based and collective learning as it happened in the formal learning environment? Who can do homeschooling

160  Decolonizing Educational Psychology and of what kind? Homeschooling sometimes happens as a parallel process along with the school. It happened among parents, family members, and the community for a long time. So, it is not something new, and it is actively followed. For example, the caste-based occupational intervention was strictly followed in the communities and sometimes schools played an active role in encouraging the occupational roles of the community. Taking into account, the movements in some schools to help students from the working class to enhance their social status to middle class is valid. Schools are essential zone to have a better life style. However, the constraints like mismatching of values and sociocultural experiences push back these students to join their family work. So, there is no concrete data to show the enhancement of students to the middle class despite a number of efforts from different agencies. Homeschooling may become same as a family engagement to manual works as they were doing from long time. It results into caste-based occupational engagement for daily wage earning if schools become hopeless and the parents and children from working class didn’t find any proper employment opportunities. It is evident that if given opportunity parent and children from marginalized group strive to study, identify with the schooling and takes maximum care for their children routines and regularity so that their education should not be missed. However, the scope of formal schooling itself becomes the barrier. Even in the case of open schools, alternative schools or any other schools, which help meritorious students from the poor background and rural areas, become hopeless for these children and parent, if long-term support like financial, academic, emotional, and psychological is not placed. The NEP 2020 seems promising but much accountability and allocation of fund is needed to help these working-class and socially marginalized children across the social, psychological and financial barriers. Markendey further stated7: Subah bhore me padhti hai aur school ke liye nikalti hai Hum bhi chilaate hai chaare baje har Mausam mein Heater to hain nahi ki paani garam hoga Hum log kisi ko kya banayenge Dil ki baat…kaam kar ke haatho mein cheda ho jata hai Agar aisa school sabhi garib bacho ko mil jaye to bachon ka bhala ho jaye Hum bhi karkhana kholna chate the par jagah hi nahi hai Ek kamare me rahte hain [She studies in the early morning and go for the school I also shout at 4 am in every season (Laughs) There is no water heater to boil the water What manipulations we will do to others Saying from the heart, the work I do creates holes (sores) on my hand If school like this is accessible to all the poor children everyone will be having a positive effect on their wellbeing

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  161 I also wanted to open factory but there is no space We live in one room] From his view, it is clearly indicated the motivation of parent and children for education. The depressing picture about these children is that due to lack of opportunity and other constraints, they are pushed out from education, their hope, and career aspirations.Alternatively, some view that these children don’t trust in education and schooling. However, that is not the complete view as many parents and children struggle and routinize themselves for education and career aspiration, as we can see through the excerpts mentioned above. In the words of Markendey8: Hum apne ladke ko sab kaam sikhayen hai Naukri nahi milenga apna kaam kar ke jee lega Kisi ke adhin nahi rahega who Imandarr hai aur kaafi mehnati bhi hai Jitna mehnati hai utna imandaar hai Naa galat ravaiyaa hai kisi tarah kaa, na koi bada shouk, TV dekhta hai, kaam karta hain Dosti bhi nahi, sab bekar Sab paise se dosti karte hain Hai garib kaa bacha, shauk nahi hai Aur shaouk hai bhi toh zaahir nahi hone deta hai Sab badhiyaan aadat hum hi dalenge [I taught all the work and skill to my boy If he will get employment, he will survive by doing this work He will not be dependent on anyone He is honest and hardworking He is equally hardworking and honest Neither he has bad behaviour and character, nor any big desires, watches television and do his work No friends also, its worthless Everyone does friendship with money He is the child of poor, no desires Even if he has desires, he doesn’t show I will teach all good habits] These parents from working class are people of honour as we can decipher from above. Though they don’t have many choices and are in the disadvantaged position, they teach their children to be self-sufficient so that they may survive and earn their living. At the majority of scale, children from the working class carry on with their family occupation due to hurdles at different levels of education and career. The fear and anxiety among parent and children is emanating from their socioeconomic position in the society which is both unstable and condescending. It is congruent at the level

162  Decolonizing Educational Psychology of perception of their SES and in objective sense (see Sinha, 2017). The behavioural, social, and emotional consequences of their current position is derived by concatenation of factors which at one stage is full of hope and second the insecurities and inequality which is deriving their everyday activities. The coming of modern education and formal schooling created a class of gentry who aspired all other generations to be of one kind. According to Richards (2020), “Unschooling is a child-trusting, anti-oppressive, liberatory, love-centred approach to parenting and caregiving. It is a way of life that is based on freedom, respect, and autonomy” (p. 54). Though in the Indian context, homeschooling or unschooling9is possible for the affluent and not for the people who are from lower-status, both economic and social. Family occupation may be important but what about thedirty work such as manual scavenging which is demeaning and devalued work by society. Wood (2011) expressed her concern regarding homeschooling as not turning into a biblical hub for family unity where the child is excluded from the other avenue of life and ideas which will be called unwanted and contrary to the family’s religious values. She opined that homeschool promoters as a whole have raised important questions about what state schooling is doing at present and politicians and educationalists must listen to those concerns. But it is also important to recognize some of the tensions that opting out brings. It is not obvious, for example, how homeschooling promotes a more equitable, just or tolerant society. (p. 129) Homeschooling is also the schooling of one kind and there is a need to see it from a critical point of view. It is not unschooling in Holt’s way or de-schooling in the Illich standard. In one-way, schooling matters also for the children who are migrants, manual workers, and Dalits, who were marginalized in social, educational, and political domains. In one sense, they are forced out of the dignified occupational zones. They did manual service to the upper sections of society. Homeschooling is not applicable here unless there is an intervention to make their environment free from poverty and indignity. Here, the global impact of capitalist power through formal schooling or any other controlling mechanism advocating neoliberalism needs a creative amendment and provides a secure space for the children to democratically express, learn naturally, and develop the culture of a healthy community. The good boy-good girl image construction as anedifice of morality through obedience, discipline, and respect for tradition is encouraged and expected from students. This is hidden from the formalities of policies which in the current time insist on building critical ability. Critical ability is an activity of dissent and a scientific way of exploring one’s

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  163 curiosity. If this is possible and encouraged in schools, the agenda of education will work better in the schools. Though critical activities are one form of unschooling method and it links with critical pedagogy can be a part of policies of future.

Reconsidering sociocultural tools for literacy Positive results were obtained when the method of “reciprocal teaching” was applied in the shared endeavour between students and teachers in which questioning, clarifications, summarizing, and predicting strategies were used to construct text-based knowledge (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996; see also Olson & Torrance, 2009). Kasten (1992) illustrated the high dropout rate among Native American Indian children not because they were handicapped or had a learning disability but the incongruency of the value system between the Native American Indian children and the mainstream American Educational system. Compatibility of the native belief system with the principle of whole language learning was the major issue highlighted by Kasten (1992). Sleeter (2005) emphasized a pluralistic form of education which includes cultural and historical respect for the entity involved in the learning processes. Multicultural education includes the curriculum and pedagogies which is compatible for every student from diverse backgrounds, historical roots, and culture. These students find themselves different from others in terms of the use of the tool to supplement their cognitive processes when they are dealing with the knowledge to meet the same result with equality and equity. This form of education refutes the inflexibility in the education system of one-fit-all notions of the state-sponsored pedagogies and facilitates the student’s indigenous way of dealing with their environment. Sleeter (2005) differentiated between standards of education and standardization of education in which she emphasized pluralistic and culturallyresponsive forms of education conducive to every student. Standard education is based on quality where the teacher can facilitate students to engage in the school activities and achievement goals. Standardizing maylead to bureaucratizing and inflexibility in the education system which lay opposite effects on every unit of the educational system, especially children. This is not to say that standards should not be stated, but its agenda must be clear and inclusive. Sleeter (2005) asserted that bureaucratizing schooling may lead to low-level knowledge engagement and skills which are commensurable to the capacity of normative reference tests. However, Sleeter (2005) warned that sometimes standards become unquestionable which in turn leads to inflexible curricula and teaching strategies violation of home culture and language of students and de-professionalization of teaching. Teachers face a dilemma when they try to teach in a culturally responsive way to help students in acquiring the knowledge and skills needed to perform successfully on state and national standardized tests (Wills, 1977). If they ignore the tests, low-achieving

164  Decolonizing Educational Psychology students will become further marginalized within school and society and the existing social, political, and economic structures will be reproduced (Wills, 1977). Leistyna (1999) indicated: Educational institution continues to perpetuate cultural racism through their curriculum (e.g., which and where values, beliefs, voices and representations of history, identity and differences are included), teacher assumptions and teaching styles and de facto segregation of racially subordinated students via tracking. (p. 58) Group prototypicality and identification is natural processes on the part of the individual in a group to raise their voice in concern for the educational reforms making it more plural and compatible for all groups to identify themselves in the learning process in the broader political discourse. In an ethnographic work in an Indian setting, Sarangapani (2003) found that children’s use of their cultural artefacts in their ecological setting doesn’t find a place in the textbook they encounter during their classroom setup. However, the use of artificial signs and symbols was evident in the formal classroom setups (Sarangapani, 2003) making them more vulnerable to the natural process of education. In recent times, researchers have attempted to look into the arguments presented here through different cultural contexts, yet many questions remain to be answered. This topic is one with manifold aspects to it ranging from broad ones such as cultural issues, government policies and plans, to teaching strategies and curricula. So, teaching in a culturally responsive way is major agenda of today’s serious educators to fill in the gap created by the banking system of education which is in the proposed agenda of the standardized education system of government plan and policies. Hence, future researchers may consider the employment of collaborative but critical effort from social scientists belonging to various disciplines so that the different issues associated with the subject may be dealt appropriately. The socio-medical crisis of Covid-19 resulted in a major shift in the thinking and activities in the majority of domains. One of the most affected domains is education starting from schools to universities and professional institutes. Previous research showed the meaningful relationship between students and teachers where the teacher scaffolds the activities of students with demonstrations and led them to examine the phenomenon under examination. Cultural-historical psychologists like Lev Vygotsky, symbolic interactionists like John Mead, cultural ecologists like John Ogbu, and discovery learning psychologists like Jerome Bruner situated the context of education in the student-teacher relationship. Some other theorists from the critical pedagogical metatheory rejected the formalist form of education and emphasized the dialogical engagement between teachers and students. This engagement transforms knowledge and gives new meaning to the

Marginality, aspiration, and choice  165 context, better critical understanding of the sociopolitical situation. The whole technology of education in their terms was to devise a dialogical engagement for emancipation. So, technology needs to be engaging in a better way so that one is free to question, see the context in collectivity and devise active space for needed movements. The rise of Covid-19 in the world affected this idea of engagement with the so-called social vaccine-like distancing which is leading to the online learning process with an ever-increasing reliance on the technology where one can do conferencing, meetings, write questions, and chat. This mode of learning, which was a kind of aid to the learning process, especially to the upper classes who can afford these devices and was also a matter of choice now makes it compulsory presence among the upper class and further expands the class gap in the learning processes. We know that upper classes are better equipped in online marketing and the new crisis of Covid-19 deriving these classes forming a more confined form of education. What was learned in the schools with teachers’ engagement was the context of meaningful social interaction, identifications, and construction of student identity for all the classes. High social class schools have the privilege to devise a method for teachers and students who get to the system well adapted. In the case of schools, where students from working classes read, these possibilities are less and with the rising competition, coming from other forms of online teaching methods, new emerging disciplines are well taken by the equipped class who don’t have to engage in the manual labour. The student-teacher relationship for the working-class students had not yet created the possibility of social class mobility at the grand level and many class constraints impel them to unstructured manual labour. However, the changing consciousness, coming of the social policies, and involvement of the community give the hope of social climbing with the tools of dialogue and activity-based engagement along with the teacher to these students. We will further elaborate on this aspect in the next chapter on critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice, a debate that was hardly part of mainstream educational psychology at the movement and activism level. In the process to demystify the regimes and power dynamics in education, the debate was limited to critical social science. Educational psychology adopted the metatheory of individualism to be placed in the domain of science which largely ignored the social context, identities, and power dynamics which heavily influenced educational psychology operationalization of human aspects.

Notes 1 This chapter is a modified version of the published article “Sinha, C. (2013). The sociocultural psychology as a postformal theory of academic achievement:An interrogation into the legitimacy of formal education. International Journal of Educational Psychology, 2 (2), 221–242.

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8 Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice Reflective educational psychology in action1

The importance of pedagogy and curriculum is immense when it comes to representations of identities. The overpowering neoliberalism has made these representations a victim of meritocracy and nurtured hidden curricula and hidden reservations in educational domains defying the agenda of social justice. As we saw in the earlier chapter, the education domain is dominated by the formalist assumption of educational psychology. This assumption reduces the human agency into competencies, abilities, and sometimes into caste and race-based superiority and inferiority. They more or less have a strong link with constructivist, deficit, and positivist assumptions. This chapter will argue for new educational psychology which is social change oriented, adopts a critical pedagogical approach (e.g., Singh, 2017) respects the basic rights of minorities and is transformative. During the discussion with students from working class, 2 studying in an alternative school as mentioned earlier, one of the students indicated the need of student-friendly pedagogy through which one can achieve what one want in the future. He expressed the meaning of success as: Humko kisi bhi kaam ko karne ka woh hai, passion hai Jaise ki hum ko wildlife photographer banana hain Aur jus din hum uss uplabhi ki taraf badh gaye aur hum ko laga ki hum uski taraf jaa rahen hain Jarroori nahi hai ki hum pahuch gaye hai, woh hai Agar uske taraf step badha rahe hain Under se feeling aati hai success ki taraf badh rahe hain Phir humko pressur nahi rahta Hum santusth ho jaate hai Agar hum badhiyaan photographer ke saath intern kar rahen hai To hum success ki taraf badh rahen hain [We have a passion to do any work For example, we wish to become wildlife photographer And the day we orient towards that achievement and felt that we are moving towards that goal

DOI: 10.4324/9781003378297-12

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172  Decolonizing Educational Psychology Not necessary that we actually reached, that is the thing If we are making step towards it A feeling come from inside that we are moving towards the success Then we don’t have pressure We become satisfies If we are interning with good photographer Then we are moving towards success] Education is one of the most important tools for social change but at the same time due to the continued devaluation of historically disadvantaged students, schools may become a site of disidentification and lowered selfesteem requisite for future social mobility. The recent circulation of the draft on NEP 2020 under the influence of current political power nowhere gave a proper standard for self-affirmation intervention to help these students. Current neoliberal discourse in the school in the form of pedagogical exchanges, policy interventions, and curriculum design is removing the possibility of any self-affirmative intervention in the school. How do one’s group identification and school climate provide a self-affirmative context and how does this help affirm their social identity and improve identification and performance in the power domain of advantage? Schools’ inclusive capacity-building programme, facilitation of students from disadvantageous communities, and improvement in academic performance through academic identification matter in tackling the blatant power divide.

Leadership and power in education: shaping of critical pedagogy Can a teacher be an authentic leader who enhances the capability of the students to be critical? In the context of educating others, the tool of subjugation is none other than some form of pedagogical intervention. Generally, pedagogical style relates to the action of powerful educational authority directed towards the students who are supposed to be the taker of the given values, either willfully or not. Students’ and teachers’ relationships emerge and are primed in the context of power dynamics. The interesting aspect is the way they perceive the power dynamics in schooling when the priming is already been done at the societal and cultural levels. However, the role of schools and teachers as activists can offer a better platform to politically introduce a pro-diversity and empowering approach to encountering the rise of neoliberal values. The task needed in the school is to understand the link between power as a relational process and leadership as a social influence process, empowering and justice-oriented. Leadership in itself is the term that broadly denotes empowerment, representations, belongingness, changes in orientation, and identity dynamics (see Jogdand & Sinha, 2015). However, it is sometimes translated under the realm of power dynamics of haves and have not. The arguments are in favour of leadership

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  173 that is authentic and as a collective process with the transcending power of equal distribution rather than capitalizing on one person representing the dominant groups. Teachers are leaders and have the potential to be a justice agent in their forwarding of the idea of social change. The roles of educational leaders such as teachers, principals, and mentors in handling the negative stereotypes and prejudices about the marginalized students through inclusive curriculum designs and representative pedagogical practices. Educational leadership can be defined as a process of social influence that happens among various actors in an educational context. The actors can be teachers, students, principals, or parents who together agree about the meaning of schooling and education. However, the story of leadership in an educational context doesn’t end in this agreement only but there is an acute role of social structure and the sociopolitical system. The impression and intervention of the dominant system regulate the meaningmaking of the actors about their leadership roles. The meaning of leadership seems to be in the eye of the beholder and the way this appreciation is communicated to the agent who is expected to bring the required change. The basic question “who is my leader?” comes out with many associated answers and fundamentally points towards the need for change among the followers (Sinha, 2020). Change is not just the revolutionary ideas or acts but change sometimes also denotes the authentic resistance towards the dominant and powerful ideologies that may be perceived to be oppressive to the culture and identities of the people or collective. The attempt is to understand the role of leaders in the educational domain in bringing social change by resolving prejudice and discrimination and creating a culture of democratic expression and learning. According to Fullan (1993), teachers are the change agents who mobilize new ideas and moral purposes. He recommended that teaching and teachers’ development are fundamental to the future of society (p. 11). In the opinion of Lieberman (1988), teachers must be organized, mobilized, and led. However, it matters to understand that teachers are the most important change agents with the capacity to empower students. There are narratives of the marginalized and stigmatized students where the role of the teacher was immense in terms of students’ emancipation. Though the majority of incidents in the Indian school context also show the teacher’s bias towards the caste of students leading to negative and positive stereotyping. It is significant to critically acknowledge the role of teachers as educational leaders who manage these stereotypes to help students understand the curriculum better and in a democratic environment. There are incidents when students of marginalized backgrounds face rampant discrimination, both open and subtle, resulting in large-scale dropouts and disidentification (see Bandyopadhyay, 2017; Gupta, 2017; Gupta, Agnihotri & Panda, 2021; Mishra, 2017; Shah, Bagchi, & Kalaiah, 2021; Shah & Bara, 2021). The research in India also discusses how the major policies have the potential to improve the situation of marginalized students in the classroom. It is important to know how various educational

174  Decolonizing Educational Psychology policies are understood at the social-psychological level of students, parents, and educational leaders and in what way they engage in dialogue without any psychological barrier. Deriving from Joe Kincheloe’s postformalist and Tajfel’s and Ogbu’s social/collective identity approach, it is argued that the need for understanding the educational identity of marginalized students matters. One of the versions of teachers’ leadership is its significance to represent the psychology of the followers such as students. For example, teachers are the representative of identity and they engage in activities that show maximum variance for the student’s needs. However, it is another matter when these leaders’ activities got intervened by other factors leading to the heightening of individuality. Broadly, leaders are representative of the followers’ identity in the context and when the context changes the expectation about leaders changes and thus the leader’s behaviour. Similarly, the current trends in the educational leadership literature discuss the teachers’ role as a leader and their actions in the classroom as political initiatives. When teachers are considered a leader in the classroom, for example, their interaction patterns, perception of roles, values, and norms are viewed from the cultural and societal point of view leading to the expectation of them as an agent who changes, sustain, or resists the classroom dynamics. The presence of a teacher in the classroom can be dominating and empowering depending upon the contexts such as social class match and mismatch, caste and gender structure, and administrative burden. The teacher-student interaction signifies the programme of social influence in the classroom through the pedagogy style and curriculum management. However, this social contract has a greater impact on the social structure which led to stereotyping and prejudices. Though in some schools the power displayed from the teachers’ side is shown to be discriminating in terms of marks distribution, discouragement of students to other extracurricular activities, and sustaining the unhealthy social relationship in the classroom among the students. As this is not the case always, few students from marginalized backgrounds located their leaders in discriminating environments and became conscious of their oppressed identities and struggled for social mobility. This signifies the chain of leadership exemplars, inciting the motivation among the generation of marginalized students to improve their social status. The role of teachers in the classroom is of immense importance and they are the important identities in which paradigms of discriminatory worldviews get shifted.

Teachers as an educational leader: how they can bring change? Teachers, as a leader, display power and extend the horizons of their politics into different matters connected to education and other social domains. In

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  175 some of the incidents where students were bullied or discriminated against based on their affiliation to the marginalized social group, the role of educational leaders became quite important in the development of sensitivity among the students and the development of the common ingroup identity (see Royal & Davis, 2010). The domain of education was not unaffected by the control of the orthodoxy of the religion and there are stories about anti-paganism. Scholars and teachers in both ancient and modern India faced the threat and most of the time unrecognition due to their belongingness to the social group lower in the social strata, for example, Dalits in India. In the post-industrial society, the effect of colonial expansion and its method led to the metaphorization of labour as a mechanical system and not as an experiential being. The same effect intervened in the mindset of people associated with the educational setting. The rules for profit in industries as described by F. W. Taylor (1911) influenced many other domains too. Taylorism in the educational context was bringing in the era of systematization and monitoring and gradually more corporatization (see Wrege & Stotka, 1978). It was reflected more politely in NEP 2020 as: The culture, structures, and systems that empower and provide adequate resources to schools, institutions, teachers, officials, communities, and other stakeholders, will also build concomitant accountability. (p. 31) The effect of scientific management theory was so strong in the history of organizations that the dominant philosophy of management had missed out on the meaning of social identity and group effect, which to some extent found a place in the human relations movement. Scientific management theory is a theory constructed to explain the nature of labour and the goal of an organization, that is, to increase profit and individual sensemaking. In the education domain, the reframing of formal education is made in such a way as to train the students who can compete or give maximum output to the industry. Education is the programme that develops a sense of we-ness, collaboration, love, empowerment, and democratic learning practices (Dewey, 2004; Freire, 1970; Kincheloe, 1999) and not just commercial and market-oriented type of competency-based learning (see Gadotti, 2008; Mayo, 2013b). The identity of being a teacher and as an agent who influences the students’ thinking process has a categorical implication too. The role of the teacher is also as a social category manager. The influence of teachers may be in one group to portray a bias and in another group as a pro group. In an Indian educational context, there are instances when teachers’ identities and group stereotypes are reflected in the classroom discourses. Teachers in the school and other contexts represent themself as identical to the identity of students who generate biased viewpoint about their fellow students from

176  Decolonizing Educational Psychology a marginalized background. One of the many experiences of Dalit students, reported by the Human Rights Watch report (2014) highlighted that: teachers asking Dalit (marginalized and socially oppressed) children to sit separately, making insulting remarks about Muslims and tribal students, and village authorities not responding when girls are kept from the classroom. (From India Today report) The teachers’ leadership influencing the students to form a democratic and common ingroup is a difficult movement. Since this influence is itself regulated by many intervening factors such as teachers’ caste and class association, sociopolitical affiliation, value orientation, and religious affiliation. The role of teachers to create identity binaries such as cultural and subcultural matches and mismatches led to stereotypes and prejudices which may mark the classroom dynamics. In the educational literature, we often find educational leadership and academic identification as important features of educational epistemologies. If one is on the leeward side then the other is at different positions. It was however unfortunate that it has not been pointed out in any literature dealing with the psychology of education. Educational leadership has been narrowly confined to the leaders’ traits or political vanguards or both and it has also never been tried to get associated with the children’s performance. What educational leadership presented was confused and unfocussed orientation towards looking at the broader educational context. Similarly, the progeniture of the psychology of academic achievement never focused their attention on the facets of educational leadership irrespective of their frequent observation of the social side of the educational psychology like stereotyping or discrimination. It has been observed that factors or dimensions associated with educational leadership have heavily given way to the cultural and contextual features posing a challenge to the individual traits or critically following the inclusive agenda for traits and other individual markers of academic excellence. Educational leadership when limited to the school context concentrated all its efforts on the principal or head of the institution. This incomplete observation of school conditions limited its agenda for the satisfaction of teachers and staff who are the main units answerable to the higher authority. This higher authority having all the power collapsed under its arms is the main agent of a hierarchical system. This authority however was very much an imposed figure and manages the institution with the skills vicariously borrowed from the old colonial but very much valued bureaucratic system of leadership. The nature of authority was to sustain the system as it is and to make it more controlled. Any effort for change was taken as undisciplined and challenging to the system. Though this scenario is taking

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  177 a turn and making a vibrant effort to understand the present structure of school organization, as in the NEP 2020 proposal: In order to improve and reach the levels of integrity and credibility required to restore the prestige of the teaching profession, the Regulatory System shall be empowered to take stringent action against substandard and dysfunctional teacher education institutions (TEIs) that do not meet basic educational criteria, after giving one year for remedy of the breaches. By 2030, only educationally sound, multidisciplinary, and integrated teacher education programmes shall be in force. (p. 42)

Teaching as a political action A critical inquiry of educational leadership is vital in the context of the dominant beliefs, curriculum imposition, and teacher-student power dynamics from the social-psychological and critical interdisciplinary perspectives. This is required to make the current policies workable and addressing to the need for democratic educational psychology. The role of the school in the present neoliberal context is to frame and impart knowledge that may lead to economic growth, capacity building, and usefulness. The role of the teacher, when approached from the metaphors of systems, is observed by some form of input-output entity. It seems that the teacher is a result of a didactic system of education and he/she transfers knowledge to the students. They operate on the efficiency principle where knowledge is taken as a commodity to gain and pass on successfully. Teachers’ role becomes limited to a bearer of information rather than as a leader who visualizes change and develops critical ability among students. The school’s expectation from teachers is to comply with the school administration and hierarchy. The vision of teachers systematically limits the dos and don’ts of school policies. The idea of teaching is bounded to the delivery of knowledge, completing the syllabus, and engaging in the given administrative responsibilities. Teachers in the Indian school system are respected but they are not seen as a leader by the conventional definition of leadership. Leadership is seen in the position of principal or head of the institution (Sinha, 2007). Even the definition of leadership is culturally embedded and context-driven. Since India is a hierarchical society, the incumbency and holding of power positions matter more in the leadership. The task of the teacher is expected to deal with the curriculum and be bounded by the classroom proceedings. It is a stereotypical understanding that the teachers are not the vehicles of decision-making at the policy level. Critical pedagogy research emphasizes the systematic deprivation of teachers in mainstream educational psychology. Since teachers are the facilitator and shaper of the students’ aspirations, their role as a pedagogical leader is simplified as a pedagogical

178  Decolonizing Educational Psychology manager,  who manages the course taught effectively and assess or grade students. It is revolutionary to see the teacher as a critical pedagogue who is not limited by the power position but goes beyond. Critical pedagogy is an approach and a way of life. It is the process that guarantees a justice-oriented outcome. Somewhere it was reflected in the progressive attention to schooling insisted by John Dewey’s pragmatism, John holt’s unschooling, Paulo Freire’s (1970) dialogue and conscientization, Martin-Baro’s (1994) “Liberation psychology”, B R Ambedkar’s “Annihilation of caste”, Gandhi’s Nai Talim, and Jyotirao Phule’s denouncement of Brahmanism in education. Bagade (2021, p.197) in his work on “seeking freedom from slavery and ignorance”, inspired by Phule’s philosophy of education, restated that: Phule’s method imbibed the analytical and conceptual tools from enlightenment rationalism and combined it with critical directedness of anti-caste tradition. (Bagade, 2010, p.158) This is exactly the core of critical pedagogy which is needed for emancipatory education in India from the bondage of caste superiority and inferiority and leading to “Sarvajanik Satyadharma” (Bagade, 2006). Critical pedagogy’s meaning can be culturally situated. In collectivist countries, it may be inferred that pedagogy is situated in the act of silent acceptance and respect towards authority. In contrast, individualistic cultures are expected to be expressive and dissenting. However, we have seen how in both cultures people have raised their voices against oppression. Critical pedagogy is an act of resistance to something which is oppressive, whether, any ideology, action, or attitude. This act of resistance is non-violent but persistent and it matters in all the states of affaire where violence, discrimination, and oppression exist. Schools may be an undemocratic space where the facilitation of discriminatory ideology may be encouraged and an emancipatory approach towards oppressed diversity is systematically suppressed. There are other examples where people in the schools’ encouraged dissent and persisted in imparting value education despite the crisis and difficulties (e.g., Skovdal & Campbell, 2015). Paredes-Canilao (2017) indicated how the culture of silence and passivity of the East is misunderstood when it comes to social movement and critical pedagogy. Silence is not always passive and has the potential to be liberating from ignorance. When any system nurtures ignorance through the impositions of dominant values, which is the pedagogy of social control, then silence and ignorance are facilitated through the hegemony of power. Narasu (1907) inspired by the essence of Buddhism, called for the sharedness and free acceptance of one another which is also the marker of progressiveness. Thus, critical pedagogical engagement through the teacher’s leadership is the co-construction of an idea that emerges through the facilitation of the space of equality. It is like unconditional acceptance of

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  179 one another which results in liberation. The silence that is the result of liberation and emancipation is a form of Dharmakaya, which is: the totality of those laws which pervade the facts of life, and whose living recognition constitutes enlightenment. (Narasu, 1907; p. 212) Thus, it is the norm of all existence, the standard of truth, the measure of righteousness, the good law. (p. 213) In this context, Paredes-Canilao (2017) stated that Asian and indigenous culture has the culture of critically engaging pedagogies. She wrote: First, Asian liberationist knowledge(s) can engender truly critical and radically utopian pedagogies that help create new forms of ethical and political communities. Second, they can offer fresh solutions to current aporias faced by critical pedagogy, namely, how to bridge the gap between knowledge and emancipation (theory and praxis), and how to effectively engage/direct differences whether marked as racial, ethnic, gender/sexual, political, and cultural under the goal of radical democracy. Third, Asian and Western critical pedagogies substantively differing in their conceptions of freedom can share resources to engender truly transformative and emancipatory pedagogies. (p. 2) It was visualized for critical pedagogies and the teacher’s intervention as a pedagogue of resistance against oppression and as a political identity is not some postmodernists’ language game but a pragmatic attempt to bring change in the educational innovation. It is needed that theoretical construction must critically advance the movement for social change and this is possible through the acceptance of the teacher as a political being and not a mechanistic entity who works in the school like an assembly line operator. In the Indian educational domain, an attempt to decolonize the pedagogy is possible through critical pedagogical interventions. There is an avenue that encourages activism, both in the critical silence and the voicing of arguments. The history of India indicates the critical engagement in the philosophies such as Lokayat and Nyaya. In the Lokayat, it was resistance and opinion of the masses which was seen as passivity. The concept of liberation (moksha) was rejected by the Lokayat. However, this form of liberation is difficult to explain and is mostly unclear. Critical pedagogy initiates activism that showed responsibility and accountability to the students and society. It led to the liberation psychology where the social change matter. In

180  Decolonizing Educational Psychology the Nyaya, it was seen in the Vad-Vivad, Vitanda, and Jalpa. Though there was one more category of engagement which is Samwad, which may be connected to the Freirean critical pedagogies. The difference in expression is a matter of culture, however, the critical sensemaking with the phenomenon and the object of contention depends upon the context and domain which is facilitative or inhibitory. In the words of Kincheloe (2008): The development of a theory-driven conceptual framework that helps us implement critical complex professional education is essential. Interaction with such frameworks is important to everyone involved with a teacher education program-students in particular. (p. 121) The role of the teacher is not limited to passively following and communicating the mainstream values but involves constructing a new participative identity through critical pedagogical engagement and by acting as an active agent of social change. Much of the discussion in educational debates in India has been based on norms that assume teachers uncritically follow the established value system. The expectations about the teachers as a passive follower of schools’ policy and curriculum are a social construction that does not reflect the praxis of politics shaping the role of teachers. For example, in one of the studies conducted in the Vidyashram, Varanasi, it was noted that teachers were following the discipline of the school but got immense freedom in their educational praxis. The idea was to empower teachers in the school so that they will empower students. Teachers use to engage students in the class and then discuss their everyday memory of classroom activities with the peer group that included teachers from the different classrooms, the director, and the manager on regular basis. There was an efficient system of accountability and responsibility which was directed towards making students efficient and capable in different subjects including drama, dance, music, sciences, social sciences, English language learning, and speaking. To say that alternative schools are soft schools shows the dominance of educational psychology with its emphasis on cognitive ability and merits. These alternatives schooling also emphasize cultural aspects of learning (Lave, 1988). However, there are certain number of alternative schools that help in the collective critical engagement with the disciplines like natural science and social science. They are in the process of critically understanding the established models and coming out with a novel understanding of the phenomenon with the help of teachers. Martin (2014) noted that anything like self-esteem, self-concept, ability, and self-regulation are not the private property of an individual as it is portrayed by mainstream educational psychology. It has two meanings that need to be understood. One is that these facets of education are highly recognized in the school system and advertisement does not get enhanced linearly by the schooling. They are simply the preferred

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  181 attributes for future career enhancement and the school portrays itself as a rightful facilitator. Second, these attributes are social constructions and they are socially represented through everyday discourses. These are the capitals that are reproduced in the educational and family environment. Most of the marginalized students become deprived of the conducive situation, capital, and proper support system, leaving them in a state of disadvantage. Fewer children from Dalit and marginalized communities succeed in the occupations which were usually occupied by the higher castes and upper-middle classes (Thorat & Neuman, 2012). Most of the disadvantaged children are Dalit girls and boys, labourers, and domestic worker children who don’t find a better opportunity for their social mobility. The pathways here are linear starting from the school’s pushout, underachievement, low achievement, and future career choice, despite their effort to engage and identify with the education. Ogbu’s (2003) active white notion of rejecting what was not emanating from their cultural experience of oppression doesn’t apply to all contexts. In India, children from deprived groups want to study and fulfil their aspirations but the crisis in the leadership, lack of teachers’ intervention, and school reluctance make them fit into the category of an underachiever. In one of the study, research has shown how the children from poor weaver community when given proper opportunity and attention from teacher excels in mostly all the subject which their parent and their community member never imagined. It was observed that the children of minority community’sdon’t have proper resources to carry on their education in the schools usually meant for higher classes. Their parents are usually in debt, do unstructured jobs, and are mostly the victims of prejudice based on their social and occupational identity. For example, the parents of these children are not even able to complete their school education and most of them are limited to primary level schooling. They engage in their parents’ businesses, for example, meat shops, motor mechanics, bicycle tyre puncture makers, carpenters, leatherworkers, and workers who make musical instruments like drums (dholak) and tables. With the rise of a more conservative political regime, their work got heavily affected and they become the victims of social ostracization, financial crisis, and ghettoization. Educational reform didn’t particularly focus its attention to cater to the needs of these children. The attributes of likeability and self-regulation are loaded with social contextual features like poverty, exclusion, prejudice, and discrimination. The neoliberal agenda emphasizes that it is within the person’s choice and has pushed the role of the social context of poverty and context aside. For the enhancement of children, the new policies have started the curative business derived from individualistic educational psychology. People are reduced to a machine that is assumed to run efficiently with proper fuelling and maintenance. Schooling has taken responsibility for this curative agenda which most of the time homogenizes diversity and those who are not able to cope are rejected as less emotionally intelligent,

182  Decolonizing Educational Psychology cognitively deficient, lazy, or not able to self-regulate themselves. As Martin (2014) stated: consistent with this emphasis on psychological explanations, highly publicized research and intervention programs in educational psychology in areas such as self-esteem, self-concept, self-efficacy, and self-regulated learning have promoted inner psychological and biological causes of student conduct, experience, and learning and minimized social and cultural constituents of student’s educational experiences and outcomes. (p. 168) The expression of teachers’ beliefs and sociocultural experiences in the classroom has rarely been acknowledged in formal education (Myers, 2009). The critical pedagogical discourse highlighting teachers’ sociopolitical experiences and social identity has found less space in mainstream policymaking. There has been little examination of the context in which teaching practices are shaped and the extent to which it corresponds to the identities which help students identify with the educational domains. This has resulted in the reinforcement of stereotypes and stigmatization in the educational domain based on student identity and has led to student disidentification (see Steel, 2010). Smith et al. (2005) argued that much of the focus on teachers’ learning has emphasized formal subject knowledge (e.g., Shulman & Shulman, 2004) rather than teachers’ relevant life experiences and informal learning outside school. The aim is to create a space of action where the teacher acts just not as a facilitator but also as an active participant in enabling social change by developing critical consciousness among students. It is based on the premise that teacher-student collaboration is the result of sociocultural matching and a process of social identification where the teacher acts as an agent of collective struggle striving to cultivate a common identity for social change. However, the tendency of the individual to see oneself as an authentic representative of identity may lead to an end to the nurturing of diverse values. It is argued here that the teacher’s role should be seen to be nurturing diversity and not propagating a dominant identity in the name of a global identity. In one way, the teacher’s role as a critical pedagogue and educational leader is not an individualized and agentic understanding but indicates the culture of participation, inclusion, and equity. Though this is reflected in our NEP 2020 very clearly, however, its implementation avenues become unclear under the paradoxical intentions. NEP 2020 states clearly that: What is also required is a change in school culture. All participants in the school education system, including teachers, principals, administrators, counsellors, and students, will be sensitized to the requirements of all students, the notions of inclusion and equity, and the respect,

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  183 dignity, and privacy of all persons. Such an educational culture will provide the best pathway to help students become empowered individuals who, in turn, will enable society to transform into one that is responsible towards its most vulnerable citizens. (p. 28) It becomes difficult to understand at one point how reshuffling the structure will cater to equity and at the same time reliance on derivation from traditional Brahminic ideology shall bring social change. Even though the Indian philosophies had many variations from orthodox to heterodox, the meaning adjusted in the NEP 2020 was limited to the one way of regulation derived from the dominant scriptures. So, when it emphasis knowledge why it doesn’t explore deeper into the critical understanding of caste and occupation-based dominance (e.g., Pal, 2015)? Also, what limits NEP 2020 to explicitly stating the importance of people philosophy laden in the everyday meaning-making and dissent . It seems that the following assertion by NEP 2020 needs further critical dialogues from different stakeholders to make a better praxis of shaping the educational system of India and transforming the power dynamics. Teaching-learning processes in India are mostly based on one-way interaction between teachers and students, where it is assumed the authoritarian work style of the teacher fosters leadership ability among the students (see Chamundeswari, 2013). Sometimes teachers engage in coercive methods to deal with students leading to academic disengagement and eventually loss of interest in taking formal education. There have been some incidents reported where teachers’ discriminatory behaviour against the minority and marginalized students in the classroom led to dropout. These dropouts occurred because low-status students belonging to a lower caste and class background perceived they were being discriminated against because of teacher-student social identity mismatch (e.g., Redding, 2019). Many observations and studies have reported caste-based discrimination among Dalit students (the historically oppressed and low-status group who are conscious of their caste identity) in India, with students being made to sit and eat separately in schools and face psychological humiliation from upper-caste peers and teachers (see Gupta, 2017; Jogdand, 2016; Nambissan, 2009; Ramachandran, 2021; Sharma, 2015). In India, together with religious diversity, the caste-based social structure has played a major role in educational settings. Caste cannot be reduced simply to the available structural hierarchies such as that which distinguishes between Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and Shudras, for example, but has deeper connotations concerning the position on the social ladder (see Jodhka, 2015). Its effect has been witnessed in different religious groups. This perception of people on the social ladder has created many divisions and inequalities in society, especially in the educational context. Awareness of the importance of societal structure in the present educational context and how people

184  Decolonizing Educational Psychology identify with the social structure plays a major role in understanding the available interaction pattern and can also act as a catalyst to cross the boundary in pursuit of better social mobility and change. Historically the approaches to educational reform were teacher-student discourses under the dominant paradigms of transformation. This neglected the subtle dynamics which shaped the experiences and created many divergent viewpoints (see also Billig, 1987). Thus, the accuracy of knowledge is also decided based on communication processes whereby teachers authenticate the knowledge. It is assumed that the validity of any system of knowledge was inferred from the identity of the teacher-student discourses. However, it has also been observed from ancient and contemporary texts that knowledge-building and authenticating processes depend upon teachers and students identifying with the dominant value system. So, it also depends upon the situational and sociopolitical context in which the values, emotions, and awareness of the available knowledge are constructed. Thus, the reification of knowledge and the emerging consequences, such as inequalities, stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination, and aggression, have left little room for the other possibilities brought by having an understanding of the knowledge and theory for the same observable phenomenon. For example, the compulsory inclusion of the Hindi language (derived from Devanagari Script and spoken in most of northern India) in the course curriculum across the Indian States, despite the states having different mother tongues, created many protests across India against the dominance of one language. This was perceived as a bias against the children’s sociocultural experiences. There has been some flawed analysis of teachers’ practices in diverse cultural and political settings, for example, on pedagogical practices in India as a marker of the Guru-Shishya (teacher-student) relationship, where this has been exaggerated as the only act of deference and purity and not as identification with values. This relationship between teacher and students operates in a context of power relationships where identity dynamics nurture a hierarchical relationship in which one ideology is eulogized in the name of authentic knowledge and cultural adaptations. The rhetorical process, begun during the pure Sophist tradition, affected the basic nature of teaching and many of the inferences made were just the persuasive effects of language. The different philosophical schools that explain the context within which education is conducted, such as empiricism, rationalism, constructivism, and social constructivism, have not interacted in such a way that they might provide a common platform for understanding the issues of inequality in education. Schools of thought and metatheories that support western capitalism in modern society have a marked impact on the educational system. Since contemporary thinkers consider collaborative interaction between teacher and students to be ideal, the stratification of the Indian society in terms of caste, social class, gender, religion, and so on has only featured as categories in educational psychology and has not been subjected to active experiential analysis. Researchers

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  185 suggest that corresponding methodological approaches such as critical ethnography, the collaborative narrative-building approach, or experimental understanding can be used to capture the current educational scenario. Here teachers and students do not passively adapt to the curriculum but create human beings who cognize and rationalize the curriculum, develop pedagogies catering to the need for diversity, and engage in critical activities. As teachers are the product of society, they are not beyond prejudice and thus need to be critically conscious of their prejudiced selves, formed by society, and engage in dialogue with students to protest against culturalism and conformity to a dominant ideology that has led to various prejudices. In a research article, Leix (2015) reported that multicultural education places a demand on teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and prejudices which influence students’ beliefs and multicultural competence. Hence, the meaning of education is co-constructed together by teachers and students, where teachers’ understanding of diverse identities becomes the dominant marker of student representations. However, teachers have the potential to develop students’ ability to raise critical points, go beyond the established paradigms of science, cross the boundary of laboratory-based understanding, and connect with society using an evidence-based approach. For example, the development of critical consciousness among computer science students enables them to connect with the societal culture and develop their understanding of the meaning and dominance of technology for those who cannot afford to access it. It has been reported that the middle classes in India were very receptive to the western values of enlightenment and modernity (e.g. Harriss, 2008), where it was assumed, social challenges were to be tackled with the help of modern education without giving in to the oppressive rationalities of traditional discourse on caste, class, and gender issues in India (see Fernandes & Heller, 2008). The modernity that had its hold on the mindset of educators became a mode of production for a tool for the progressive future society. So, the methodological assumptions and the urge to search for objectivism had an important impact on teachers’ values, leading them to be influenced more by the dominant discourse as a means of survival. The current discussion does not explore the assumptions of modernity as many teachers have but moves away from the norms of conformity and calls for a social change in which the teacher’s pedagogical style, language use, and interaction with students. It could be combined to create a conscious mode of persuasion, a kind of politics that teachers could use to persuade and mark their identity as a teacher. The concern here is to consider the nature of that persuasion and the tools and intentions which drive the interactional processes and reflect on the praxis of empowerment, justice, and wellbeing. As has been reported in some of the studies on values, action, and psychological consequences that people in individualistic and collectivistic cultures feel dejected when their embedded values are violated. However, it also shows a more promotion focus in an individualistic culture than in a collectivist

186  Decolonizing Educational Psychology culture like India, where the promotion and prevention focus goes together (see Higgins & Spiegel, 2004). Beliefs about the self in terms of society’s aspiration and prescription play a very important role in terms of the match and mismatch of values held by teachers and students, leading to the mobilization of matching social categories for different ends. Studies show that the teacher acts as a mediator, linking the values of the society with the individual values of the students and engaging in collective meaning-making. One of the studies on the risk of caste-based stereotypes emphasized the situational priming of the ability stereotype among low caste students in an evaluative context (Hoff & Pandey, 2006). However, when the value is altered through instructional manipulations the effect of the stereotype threatamong ability-stereotyped low caste students can be managed. The Indian context is believed to be a collectivist one in which values are interdependent and connected but this forms the basis of the individual’s identity in any sociopolitical context. It was observed that the Indian context is driven by the dominant values of caste, class, and gender, leading to rigid stratifications in which the hierarchy of values can be felt in family and work contexts.

Legitimacy in education and practice The present educational system has legitimized its mainstream ideology which inadvertently deprives the groups portrayed as “others”. The inclusion of different theoretical models in national educational programmes without any understanding of the metatheoretical assumptions of these approaches may limit the agenda for open and democratic forms of education. Thus, pedagogy and the role of the teacher as a leader for change are limited by the structure shaped by the social categories dominating the social, economic, and cultural boundaries. Turning to the meaning of the legitimacy of the institution and the broader social systems, under which the teacher’s role seems to be manipulated, we must go beyond the present philosophy of empiricism and see the identity of the teacher as part of a global movement seeking social change and respecting diverse forms of expression and representations. In explaining legitimacy, psychologists French and Raven (1959) referred to it as a social influence induced by feelings of “should”,“ought to”, or “has a right to”, through anappeal to an “internalized norm or value”. This has been observed in teachers’ approaches where the actions of the teacher embedded in the mainstream and dominant caste and class structure, and an opposing awareness of the diversity issues, have created a greater cognitive load leading to a subtle rejection of alternative voices in the classroom. However, the ambivalence of teachers from different backgrounds is neither representative nor even part of the mainstream value systems. This ambivalence has been expressed in two forms of behaviour, either as a carry-over effect in terms of accepting authority or in terms of becoming separated

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  187 from the domain. Suchman (1995) argued that “legitimacy is a generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of norms, values, beliefs and definitions” (p. 574). Referring to legitimacy as “authorization”, Kelman and Hamilton (1989) argued that when an authority is legitimate, “the duty to obey superior orders” replaces personal morality, with people allowing legitimate authorities to define the boundaries of appropriate behaviour in a given situation (p. 16). Or, more simply, legitimacy is the perception that one “ought to obey” another (Hurd, 1999). Hence, legitimacy is an additional form of power that enables authorities to shape the behaviour of others distinct from their control over incentives or sanctions (Ford & Johnson, 1998, French & Raven, 1959). Therefore, the construction of educational artefacts such as curriculum and pedagogy absorbed legitimate content, as expressed in the sociopolitical discourses, thus tapping into the roots of the prevailing constructivist paradigms. However, there are some observations in the critical pedagogy traditions that have gone beyond constructivism to include social content highlighting critical issues about the sociocultural aspects of teacher and student engagement (see Kincheloe, 1993, 2004). In the context of the legitimacy of mainstream pedagogy which seems to be hegemonic in its discourse, Giroux (2010) emphasized that critical pedagogy provides the context for generating a critical thinking ability among students that goes beyond the fear of consequences and is reflective of and reflexive towards the knowledge the students gain and the obligations they have in terms of social responsibility. Critical pedagogy recognizes that pedagogy is not about passively receiving (often empirically based) information but about engaging in a dialectical process of gaining a better understanding of the social issues from a multicultural and diverse perspective (see Banks & Banks, 2010; John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996; Mayo, 2013a). In contrast to this pedagogy of conformity, Kincheloe (1999, 2004) encourage teachers to adopt a critical pedagogy as an agent of change by expanding the imagination and the appropriation of knowledge in the form of self-reflection and self-determination, and thus collectively and critically shaping the social order which intervenes in the everyday pedagogy and teacher’s classroom management. Critical pedagogy recognizes that the standardization of curricula, knowledge, teaching, and social relations does an injustice to the multiple and varied narratives, histories, and experiences that students bring to schools. This is a pedagogy that begins from an understanding of students as individuals with enormous capacities to be critical, knowledgeable and informed citizens, workers, and social agents. The critical pedagogical approach evident in John Ogbu and Joe Kincheloe’s work (see Sinha, 2016) seems to have ample potential to help students from diverse ethnic and class backgrounds to engage in the classroom process with the help of teachers, without the feeling of acting like White and without disengaging their self

188  Decolonizing Educational Psychology from the educational domain (see Freire, 1970; Gallagher, 1999; Kaščák et al., 2012; Kincheloe, 1999). Consequently, schools and the presence of a teacher are viewed as crucial resources in a developing democracy, and teachers are valued as the front line of professional workers responsible for educating young people on the ideals, goals, and practices of a sustainable democratic society.

Contextualizing role of the teacher The act and philosophy of teaching are not contextual processes and are driven by the situations, cultural backgrounds, and sociopolitical factors regulating the institutions. Some major aspects of identity, as emphasized by Ogbu (2003), that is, voluntary and involuntary identities, have a major impact on the teaching and learning processes. For example, the involuntary aspects of caste or gender or both in teacher-student interactions and relationships (see also Myers, 2009) and social class divisions and the impact they have on the teaching-learning process or other factors such as religions, regions, and languages are important contexts that should be looked into. Attempts to understand the teacher’s role in situating the teacher-student relation in the wider social context of multiculturalism are well reflected in the philosophy of critical pedagogy. From the perspective of the philosophy of education, where questions are raised and the nature of knowledge is directed, the focus is on investigating the history which has shaped teaching methods and their political intentions. The basic tenets of the psychology of education, philosophically derived from the school of behaviourism, have limited it to shaping student behaviour under the prevailing mainstream value system, rather than encouraging it to develop the freedom to raise critical points. In this context, teachers were found to be the representative voice of the dominant discourses of the dominant identities, for example, social class, which overemphasized ability, meritocracy, authority, and paid less attention to sociocultural experience (Vygotsky, 1978), the development of critical ability and problems associated with the social structure and curriculum.

Critical pedagogy and hidden curriculum The framing of the curriculum and the teacher’s role as mediating between the acquisition of textbook knowledge and what goes on in the classroom has been a contested issue. Teachers, it seems, have been looked at as passive elements representing the dominant values of society, but it is also imperative to understand that teachers have a much larger role in bringing about social change in terms of facilitating critical consciousness among students. Teachers are educational leaders and their sociocultural experience and consciousness may not correspond to the students’ consciousness but the context in which teaching and learning occur provides ample

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  189 potential for a critical environment to develop where a common consensus can be built. This is not to oversimplify the fact that teachers are the most important element in social transformation through the act of educating. School teachers in India are positioned on the lower rungs of the social class ladder, and teachers from lowerstatus backgrounds in government schools are also often the victims of discrimination. Their role is limited to facilitating rote learning, and they are not paid enough to perform other activities, including buying and reading books. It has been observed that teachers and students from lowerstatus backgrounds are susceptible to many kinds of stereotypes and prejudices, and as we have discussed earlier are categorized as passive followers of the mainstream curriculum. There are hidden curriculums, which rarely come in real tangible forms and hidden biases, stereotypes and prejudices, and many other things that remain invisible in terms of policymaking and curriculum design. The hidden curriculum has been linked to teachers and their critical pedagogical style. There have been instances where students from lower caste backgrounds have become the victims of discrimination in school through various curricular sources, such as mathematics, where they are ability stereotyped (e.g., Hoff & Pandey, 2006). They have learned and internalized negative ability stereotypes about their social group and these have been associated with the mathematics curriculum. Teachers have a major role to play in crossing the boundaries of these kinds of stereotypes and they can either concretize the stereotype or help students to cross the barriers of these deep-seated stereotypes by ensuring an inclusive classroom environment. In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paul Freire (1970) called for a new kind of education that would create an empowering partnership between the teacher and the students through active dialogue and humanization processes. Teachers are to be considered agents of social change and, with the help of the curriculum, they give new meaning to the social-psychological discourse rather than simply endorsing the cultural legitimacy. For example, some of the work conducted in an Indian context has shown that teachers are the carrier of cultural resources in both a positive and negative light (see Gupta, 2006). Teachers’ pedagogical styles may vary because of the changes they encounter in the classrooms in terms of student diversity (see Ogbu, 1992). Their expectations thus undergo tremendous cognitive load and teachers sometimes find themselves succumbing to bias. These biases, for example not paying attention to students from lowerstatus backgrounds, scolding, beating, or giving fewer marks, are practices that may emerge due to the disconnect between expectations and the teachers’ own sociocultural experiences. Thus, the sociocultural imperatives are the result of a legitimate endorsement of beliefs and values which are not truly scientific but loaded by larger social structures. There are other cases in which teachers from diverse backgrounds have not been well accepted by the authorities and students from the

190  Decolonizing Educational Psychology dominant value system. However, it is rare for teachers from oppressed identity groups to deal with students with socially privileged identities. Most teachers from lower social class backgrounds deal with children from the same social class background. For example, recently Tukdeo and Babu (2015) have highlighted the restricted work conditions of teachers in Aanganwadis (courtyard shelter meant to take care and educate children and families in health and non-formal preschool activities) and depicted the reality of boundaries imposed on teachers contrary to the envisioning philosophy which drives the real teaching task. The point of contestation here is that the teacher’s role has been reduced to that of the bearer of information and not as a leader who should have the vision to highlight critical points and work on collaborative elements for social change (see also Sinha, 2013a). The basic teaching agenda has been hindered as the social structure has legitimized the continuity of differences. In other words, the role of the teacher and pedagogic intervention generally has not highlighted the hidden nature of the curriculum and has buffered critical viewpoints of the divisions in society. The teaching agenda has more or less been reduced to legitimizing identity and its sociocultural manifestations (Sinha, 2013b). Attempts to cross the boundaries of oppressed identities based on the contingencies of caste, class, and gender have more or less been resisted or have generally not been debated in mainstream school culture (see also Deshkal report, 2010). Dalit scholars in India have found that the social space, including the educational domain, is humiliating and historically exclusive, and shifts from the subtle to the blatant (e.g., Guru, 2009). The lived-in experience of students and teachers from oppressed backgrounds reveals the victimization that has occurred historically in educational discourses where higher status identities have rejected another person’s identity. There is therefore a need for individual identities to be asserted to ensure social mobility and consciousness-raising to regain self-esteem, and this is only possible if oppressive politics is rejected and a new kind of emancipatory politics is adopted (see Reicher, Jogdand, & Ryan, 2015). However, social identities play an important role when there is mutual interaction between identities in the shared space which is not yet the reality but is slowly turning into subtle discrimination and microaggression as a result of the open political participation and self-assertion of oppressed groups. The curriculum and teachers’ pedagogical styles intersect implicitly at the point where minimum learning happens. For example, Srinivasan (2015) has critically highlighted the issue of quality learning in schools under the supervision of higher administrative bodies, where the curriculum load is greater, and the role of education is one of memorization and repeating the tests. This information overload is more visible now, and students and teachers find themselves under increasing pressure. The freedom to bring about social change and identify issues of social justice in the culture is under the strict control of bureaucratic logic. Hidden

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  191 curriculums containing particular forms of knowledge, cultures, values, and desires which are taught but never talked about or made public (see also Bergenhenegouwen, 1987). Schools increasingly function as part of a power circuit that produces a school-to-prison pipeline (Giroux, 2010). Critical pedagogy provides the conditions under which students can think critically, take risks, and reflect on the connections between the knowledge they have gained and the obligations of civic and social responsibility while recognizing that pedagogy is not about passive reception. In this context, Giroux (2010) suggests that any form of transformative pedagogy can be viewed as dangerous by the established system. It can be inferred that critical pedagogy completes the missing link between formal and postformal education. An attempt is made to locate the pedagogical vehicle in the conscious activity of the teacher, who is believed to shape student awareness and knowledge and develop critical abilities. Thus, it has been questioned as to whether the task of the teacher is limited to teaching the curriculum or going beyond it and highlighting underrepresented issues in the educational system through activism and social action. According to McLaren (1998), teachers must engage in the critical and revolutionary pedagogic perspective by developing critical consciousness among students. In some post-colonial contexts, the issues of identity politics have raised immense discussion among people about the issues of representations and created subtle divides. The effects of colonization and the model of education sustained throughout history created a mechanistic outlook on education and the teacher-student relationship. In this context, Adams et al. (2015) have expressed the need to decolonize the mindset and invite us to see the diverse perspectives across the entire domain which has an important role to play in the politics of social change. Thus, the task of teachers as leaders of positive change is to help develop discourses that can raise and articulate the issues of identity in education (Giroux & McLaren, 1992) and the need for a social movement in an educational domain where the issues of marginalization in education (Sleeter et al., 2012) are clearly understood both at the level of critically conscious discourses and the level of the practices of teachers and educators. One example Kasten (1992) provides concerns with the high dropout rate among Native American children caused not by their having a physical or learning disability but by the incongruence between the Native American value system and the mainstream American educational system. In a similar context, Tandon (2000) highlighted an anti-colonial, grassroots, and ecologically sensitive approach in the Indian educational context. However, the importance placed on curriculums that represent the cultural values denoting dominant value systems and their compatibility with teachers’ educational experiences overlooks aspects of underrepresented identities. The need arises for an active re-categorization of social categories in the Indian educational context (Gillespie, Howarth, & Cornish, 2012). For example, the match/mismatch between teacher and student identities could be transformed if teachers

192  Decolonizing Educational Psychology were to transcend their hierarchical roles and merge their identities with student identities to empower participation. Sleeter and Stillman (2005) emphasize a pluralistic form of education that includes cultural and historical respect for the entity involved in the learning processes. This includes curricula and pedagogies which are compatible with all students from diverse backgrounds, historical roots, and cultures. These students will find that they use different tools to supplement their cognitive processes when dealing with knowledge to achieve the same results with equality and equity. This form of education rejects the inflexibility of an education system based on a one-fits-all notion of state-sponsored pedagogies and helps students pursue indigenous ways (see Kennedy, 2013; Korteweg et al., 2014; Oppong, 2013) of dealing with their environment.

Conclusion Teaching in a culturally responsive way is representative to the extent it also addresses to the lived experiences of socially marginalized. To be a critical is to see critically the social order which has hegemonized our being. The major goal for today’s serious educators is to empower and not overpower the diverse identities and cultural experiences. It is in their efforts to fill the gap created by the banking system of education which is generally on the proposed agenda of the standardized educational system and leads to the same social reproductions in classrooms and education (Collins, 2009). As group membership and identification are important precursors to collaborative interaction in the Indian educational context, there is a need to re-categorize powerful identities. Healthy participatory relationships are important. Thus, it is a major task for educational reformers and teachers to encourage a new kind of diversity in which a common ingroup identity and critical consciousness are created, so that all groups can identify with the learning process in the broader political discourse (see Bowskill, 2013; Tapper, 2013; for another view see Kelly, 2009). Thus, the task of teachers is to promote critical discourses and satisfy the need to produce a bricolage of experiences by integrating social identities (Sanchez-Burks, Karlesky, & Lee, 2013) and making an understanding of the educational task clearer. Thus, the role of the teacher as an entrepreneur of identity and an entrepreneur of awareness and change is one of the most important voices fulfilling the agenda of education.

Notes 1 This chapter is a modified version of the published article “Sinha, C. (2016)”. Teaching as a Political Act: The role of critical pedagogical practices and curriculum. Human Affairs: Post-disciplinary Humanities & Social Sciences Quarterly, 26 (3), 304–316.

Critical pedagogy, curriculum, and social justice  193

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Index

Aanganwadis 190 ability-based stratification 48 abuse 98, 101–102 academic achievement 86–89, 91, 137, 143, 150–153, 176; academic achievement divides 17 academic achievement gap 30, 87–88, 148–149 academic engagement 148 academic failure 82 academic performance 36, 58, 71, 87, 90, 111, 124, 172 academic self-efficacy 112 academic socialization 57 accentuation effects 78 accessibility 59, 89, 146 accountability 4, 10, 12, 69, 105, 160, 175, 179, 180 activism 1, 9, 165, 179, 191 activity-based learning 44, 68 activity-related emotions 58 adult imagination 24, 40 affirmative action 7, 65 affordability 29, 59, 147 aggression 64, 81, 98, 101, 108, 123, 184; general aggression model 98 alienation 7, 83, 99, 102; academic alienation 111 Allport, G. 7, 74, 99 Altemeyer, B. 81 alternative education 29; alternative schooling system 65 Ambedkar, B. R. 70, 74, 99, 115, 178; annihilation of caste 178 amelioration 4 American Psychological Task Force on Socioeconomic Status 158 anger 56–59, 63–64, 66, 69, 75, 96, 101, 109, 127

animal-based labelling 124 anti-discrimination policy 70 antinomies 5, 96 anti-Roma prejudice 114 anxiety 4, 6, 30, 36, 111, 161; anxiety of incompleteness 84; parent anxiety 39 Apple, M. 7, 106, 137 apprenticeship development 146 ascribed identity 3, 125 aspirations 9, 12, 35, 41, 43, 110, 114, 132, 149, 154, 161, 177, 181; schools’ aspirations 133 authentic knowledge 184 authentic leader 110, 172 authoritarianism 80–81 authoritarian styles 151 autonomy 62, 146, 162 Badheka, G. 49 Bal Katai Divas 110 banking system of education 22, 41, 164, 192; banking style of education 151 behavioural control 26, 55, 136 behavioural markers 34, 35 belongingness 7, 34, 57, 60, 74, 80, 90, 110–111, 133, 172, 175 Berger, P. l. 78 beti bachao, beti padhao 147 Bhojmata 84 bigotry 80 boredom 58 Bourdieu, P. 157 brain 98, 135, 155 bricolage 9–10, 33–49, 192 bricoleurs 47–48 Bruner, J. 70, 80, 81, 164 bullying 82, 101, 124, 133 Buniyadi Shiksha 86

200 Index capability 19, 37, 115, 172 care 75, 106, 129, 160, 190 career choice 35 caste-based: atrocities 45; backwardness 12; discrimination 102, 183; identity 108; prejudice 84; roles 49; stereotypes 186 categorization 78, 80, 84, 92, 115; re-categorization 115, 191 choice 2, 9, 11, 21, 25–26, 30, 35, 58, 66, 85, 128, 137, 143, 147–148, 165 choiceless 134, 149 choice of food 133 Chomsky, N. 58 classroom management 187 co-curricular activities 61, 146 coercion 4, 12, 96 cognition 11, 48, 59, 68, 87, 107, 125, 155; social nature of cognition 88 cognitive ability 1–2, 28, 36, 42, 87–88, 143, 180 cognitive justice 10, 144 cognitive load 49, 186, 189 collective consciousness 10, 61 collective emotions 10, 59, 72 collective inquiry 48 collective learning 12, 159 collective mindset 1 collective movement(s) 61, 135 collective victimhood 98 colonialism 26, 59, 127, 128, 135 colonial powers 46 common ingroup identity 175, 192 compassion 69 competence 30, 89, 149; multicultural competence 185 competency-based learning 175 competition 3, 4, 11, 30, 34, 61, 78, 90, 106, 129, 165; social competition 90 conscientization 18, 125, 178 consciousness 1, 6, 8, 9, 17, 33, 35, 49, 61, 80, 100, 128, 136, 137, 155, 165, 188 conservative modernization 7 constitutional preamble 99 constitutional rights 74, 124 constructivism 28, 47, 151, 184, 187 constructivist 151, 156, 171, 187 contagious emotions 99 continuous and comprehensive evaluation 144 cooperative learning 11, 88 courage 38

Covid–19 11, 21, 57, 130–131, 164–165 critical consciousness 1, 7, 20–21, 85, 125, 182, 185, 188, 191–192 critical dialogues 183 critical educational psychology 9, 30, 42 critical ethnography 185 critical pedagogy 9, 11, 21, 33, 165, 171–172, 177–179, 187–188, 191 critical thinking 12, 26–27, 42, 48, 58, 59, 61–62, 147, 187 cultural ecological 152 cultural-historical 9, 125, 156, 164 cultural identity 26, 112 culturally responsive teaching 110 cultural morality 121 cultural symbols 103 curriculum 2, 4, 22, 29, 30, 39, 44, 46, 48, 58, 61, 68–69, 77–79, 81–82, 85, 112, 129, 131, 135, 143, 147, 149, 163–165, 171–174, 177, 180, 184, 185, 187–191; curriculum design 7, 146; curriculum engagement 44; inclusive curriculum 173; official curriculum 39 Dalit cook 84 Dalit(s) 4, 68, 74, 82, 99, 102, 114, 122, 125, 127, 130, 133, 134, 136, 162, 175, 176, 181; Dalit community 114; Dalit christians 122 Dalit students 63, 82, 84, 85, 102, 107, 108, 109, 120, 121, 176, 183; Dalit scholars 190 Dalit teachers 57 decategorize 4, 49, 122 decentralization 146 deception 97 decolonizing 9, 11, 110, 113, 120 deficit 70, 87, 152–154, 171; deficit model 36, 87, 151 dehumanization 9–11, 115, 120–137; signs of dehumanization 133 demeaning 38, 64, 66, 70, 102, 124, 133, 134, 136, 162 democratic educational psychology 46, 49, 177 democratic learning practices 175 denotified tribes 102 Department of school education 147 Deshkal report 190 despair 99; collective despair 108

Index  201 devaluation 36, 69, 80, 90, 91, 172 devalued identity 115; devalued group 90 developmentalism 28, 46 Dewey, J. 48, 70, 175 didactic 24, 46, 82, 91, 177 dignity 1–2, 6, 20, 35, 85, 99, 103, 105, 114–116, 121–122, 124, 127, 136, 144, 157, 183 dirty jobs 130 disability 2, 57, 147; learning disability 163, 191 disadvantaged 10, 20, 22, 26, 44, 66, 69, 102, 106, 123, 143, 145, 149, 154, 161, 172, 181 disciplining 98, 106, 109–110, 159 discovery learning 27, 164 discrimination 10, 22, 39, 40, 43–44, 65–66, 70, 75–77, 80, 86, 101–104, 107, 109, 112, 114–115, 123, 127, 133, 149, 173, 176, 178, 181, 183–184, 189–190 disengagement 89, 122; academic disengagement 112, 183; psychological disengagement 89, 90, 91, 111 disidentification 36, 60, 69, 82, 86, 90, 122, 131, 134, 172, 173, 182 disobedience 56, 60, 100, 125 disobedient 55, 56, 101 disruptive 55 dissent 1, 4, 137, 162, 178, 183, pedagogy of dissent 6 distinctiveness 78, 89 distress 109 distribution of power 146 district primary education programme 86 diversity 1, 4, 6, 25, 28, 29, 33, 43, 44, 48, 58, 61, 64–65, 69, 71, 77, 92, 103–105, 110, 112–113, 124, 143, 147, 152, 178, 181–183, 185–186, 189, 192; cultural diversity 68; emotional diversity 64; nep 28; pro-diversity 28, 172; religious diversity 183 Dom community 114 domestic workers 21, 68, 130–131 Dronacharya 45 dropouts 27, 86, 99, 125, 173, 183 Du Bois, W. E. B. 33 dualism 22 Dweck, C. 28, 47, 87, 89, 148–149

eclectic approach 39 ecological fallacy 69 education 2; expensive education 4 educational leaders 69 educational leadership 40, 110, 112, 113, 173, 174, 176, 177 educational system 7, 18, 22, 45–46, 48, 60, 75, 79, 86, 110, 120, 146, 148–150, 152–153, 155, 163, 183–184, 186, 191–192 education for all 85 efficient choice system 21 egalitarian 24, 41, 57, 134 Eklavya 45, 101 Eliot, J. 39–40 emancipation 12, 23, 33, 35, 39, 113, 136, 165, 173, 179; social emancipation 39 emotional engagement 60 emotional episodes 57 emotional intelligence 70 emotionally safe space 67; bullied and victimized 68 emotional recognition 59 emotional regulation 55, 66, 71 emotion(s): collective emotions 10, 59, 72; negative emotion 56, 62, 71, 79; self-conscious emotions 10, 55, 69, 71; toxic emotions 4–5 empowering partnership 189 empowerment 2, 3, 6, 10, 11, 19, 20, 21, 29, 90, 120, 146, 147, 172, 175, 185 enrolment 25, 43, 131 epistemic violence 10, 68, 103, 108 essentialism 80 eugenics 1 Eurocentric values 136 European social psychology 77 evidence-based research/approach 36, 185 exam system 2, 149; exam-oriented culture 42 excellence 2, 4, 12, 29, 148, 153, 176 exclusion 1, 7, 10–11, 71, 83, 86, 99, 105, 132, 135, 144, 147, 181 experiential 12, 27, 68, 102, 147, 175, 184 false consciousness 5, 124 Fanon, F. 123, 135 fear 37, 57, 62, 67, 71, 99, 107, 109, 121, 161, 187

202 Index felt emotions 62 formal education 1, 21, 24, 61, 123, 131, 143, 159, 175, 182, 183 formalism 107 fraternity 99, 107 freedom of choice 144 free will 108, 136 Freire, P. 6–9, 19, 23, 125, 128, 136, 151, 175, 188–189 fugitive pedagogy 125 Galton, F. 1 Gandhi, M. K. 74 Gandhigiri 115 gender-based: oppression 12, 125; discrimination 44; identities 42; stereotypes 133 genetic analysis 155 ghettoization 145, 181 Giroux, H. 187, 191 globalization 33, 85, 115 gossip 67; gossiping 57, 102, 108 group belongingness 57, 80, 90 group membership 78, 114, 192 guided instruction 49 guilt 35, 59, 69, 127 guru dakshina 101 guru-shishya 42, 46, 65, 105, 184 happiness 56, 69 harassment 104, 133; sexual harassment 127 Harre, R. 62 hate 57, 80 hidden biases 109, 189 hidden reservation 171 higher mental abilities 155 historically oppressed 10, 11, 44, 57, 64, 77, 124, 127, 134, 151, 183 Hizab 74 Holt, J. 162, 178 homeschooling 159, 160, 162 homogenization 77, 79, 103, 108, 136 homogenous 4, 47, 74 homophobia 80 honour 39, 59, 86, 124, 161 hope 7, 29, 35, 37, 38, 104, 107–108, 125, 130–131, 134, 136-, 137, 161, 162, 165 hopelessness 58, 111, 132 human agency 11, 80–81, 97, 99, 121, 125, 128, 136, 151, 155, 171 human capital 20, 98

human nature 64, 83, 98, 108, 121, 127 humiliation 56, 57, 63, 66, 67, 69, 71, 92, 99, 101, 109, 122, 131, 134, 183 identification with schools 47, 74; school identification 70, 91 identity-based 3; segregation 48; stereotype 27; subjugation 12, 62; violence 110 identity construction 5 identity politics 92, 191 identity process(es) 77, 78, 87 ideology 2–3, 20, 79, 101, 103, 105, 115–116, 149–150, 178, 183–186 Illich, I. 8, 41, 109, 162 illusory correlations 106–107 inattentive behaviour 45 inclusive 12, 22, 28, 49, 100, 147, 163, 172, 176; inclusive classroom 189; inclusive curriculum designs 173 India 6–7, 11, 22–23, 25–26, 33, 43, 45–47, 49, 57, 60–61, 64–65, 68, 75–76, 79, 82, 92, 101, 104, 109, 112, 114, 130–134, 136, 143, 146, 173, 175–181, 183–186, 189–190 Indian 3–4, 11–12, 35, 38, 42, 44–46, 48, 57–60, 64–66, 69, 75–77, 79, 82, 84, 86, 90, 92, 100, 102, 104, 106, 109–110, 114–115, 130, 150, 159, 162–164, 173, 175, 177, 179, 183–184, 186, 189, 191–192; Indian constitution 106, 112 indigenous 7, 10, 19, 20, 22, 26, 29, 110, 128, 134, 136, 163, 179, 192 indignity 121, 162 individualism 7, 11, 165 industrial revolution 1, 58 information overload 190 infrahumanization 127, 130 ingroup 74, 78, 84, 90, 111, 175–176 inhibition-confrontation process 62 innovative education 34, 79 institutions 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 78, 98, 99, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 120, 121, 126, 135, 143, 147, 149, 156, 158, 175, 177, 188 intelligence 21, 28, 47–48, 89, 137, 154 intentionality 1, 103, 107–108 interdisciplinarity 7, 49 interdisciplinary 45–46, 177 intergroup relation(s) 76, 77, 78, 134 intersectionality 99 invisibility 109, 131, 133

Index  203 justice-oriented citizenship 61 Kincheloe, J. l. 22, 33–34, 36, 39, 69, 110, 150–155, 175, 180, 187–188 knowledge 2–5, 7, 22–24, 26, 29, 37, 39, 40–49, 57, 61–62, 64, 67, 69, 75, 78, 80, 82–86, 89–90, 96, 101, 105–107, 112, 122, 128, 136, 143, 147, 150–154, 159, 163–164, 177, 179, 182–184, 187–188, 191–192; regenerative knowledge 152; reified knowledge 152; vidya 105 Kumar, D. 65 Kumar, K. 25, 29, 75 Kumar, N. 2, 4, 146 learners identity 70 learnification 9, 136–137 legitimation 1, 71, 100, 105 liberation 5–6, 8–9, 12, 29, 68, 100, 113, 179; liberation psychology 178 liberty 99, 107 lifelong learning 136 literacy 18, 144, 146, 153–154, 163 Lokayat 179 low-status schools 44 macro-meso-micro 78 madrasas 74 maktab 75 managerialism 43 Mandela, N. 97 manual workers 162; labour 165; labourers 130; scavenging 162 marginalization 9, 18, 23, 77, 111, 143, 144, 191 marginalized groups 11, 35, 64, 74, 83, 125, 128, 134, 137 Martin-Baro, I. 81, 120, 178 Mead, J. H. 164 mechanistic learning culture 128; mechanistic outlook 191; mechanistic worldview 151, 155 mental health 4, 106 meritocracy 7, 11–12, 33, 98, 107, 171, 188 metacognitive monitoring 87 metaphors 49, 91, 127, 128, 177 metatheory 6, 9, 11, 89, 164, 165 methodological individualism 7 microaggressions 57, 67, 101, 107 mid-day meal(s) 21, 84, 103, 125 middle-class parents 58, 159

migrant workers 21, 130, 131, 132 Milgram, S. 101 mindset 1, 47, 82, 105, 106, 121, 134, 135–136, 147, 150, 175, 185, 191 minimal guidance 49 minority groups 45, 80, 100, 114, 120, 159 minority influence 4 missionaries 22, 75 monologic practices 42 monological: methodology 34; reductionism 39 Montessori system 49 moral exclusion 135 morality 48, 58, 61, 121, 162, 187 Moscovici, S. 4, 17, 150 motivated cognition 125 motivation 30, 56, 58, 68, 78, 87, 89, 103, 111–112, 125–127, 131, 146, 149, 161, 174 multicultural education 48–49, 163, 185 multilingualism 79, 146 Muslims 74, 109, 176 Nagel, T. 80–81, 98 Nai Talim 86, 132, 178 Narasu, L. 178–179 national curriculum framework 44, 68, 149 national educational policy 3, 24 national flag 104 national policy on education 68, 85 Native American 191 Native American Indian children 163 neoliberalism 4, 8, 12, 29, 34, 43, 79, 83, 86, 91, 108, 134, 162, 171 non-cognitive 90, 148 norm-governed schooling 29 north-easterners 109 Nyaya 179–180 occupational status 145; occupational identity 181; occupational roles 160 Ogbu, J. 89, 111, 124–125, 128–129, 149, 151, 164, 187, 188–189; voluntary and involuntary identities 188 online learning 29–30, 165 ontogenetic analysis 155–156 ontogenetical basis 149 oppositional culture 128 oppositional values 124

204 Index oppression 8, 12, 29, 80, 99–100, 105–106, 120–123, 125, 133–134, 178–179, 181; gender 12, 106, 125 oppressive social system 107 ostracized 99, 127 othering 10, 72, 74, 78, 91, 121 outgroup 71, 74, 79, 84, 89, 107, 108, 112, 120–121, 123, 154 outgroup favouritism 123 outlaw emotions 63 parental aspiration 43, 154 parenting styles 47 participatory citizenship 60 participatory relationship 192 pedagogical agents 70 pedagogical practices 7, 25, 47, 85, 108, 137, 173, 184 pedagogical style(s) 39, 172, 185, 189–190 pedagogy 4, 6, 7, 9, 11–12, 19–20, 21–22, 25, 30, 33, 39, 41, 43, 49, 57, 68, 70, 77, 79, 81, 112–113, 125, 136–137, 143, 146–147, 151, 154, 165, 171–172, 174, 177–179, 186– 189, 191; state sponsored pedagogies 163; transformative pedagogy 191 pedagogy of dissent 6 performance evaluative environment 111 Phule, J. 74, 115, 178 Piagetian 28, 47, 151, 152 policies and power 18, 22 positive distinctiveness 78, 89 post-industrial revolution 58 power and education 77, 128 power asymmetry 97–98 power disparity 11, 30 power dominance 6, 33 power dynamics 1, 2, 9, 23, 35, 42, 49, 59, 63, 71, 79, 80–83, 91, 97, 102, 106, 121, 124, 126–127, 143, 165, 172, 177, 183 power enactment 100, 105 power influence 3, 44, 46, 49 power relation 1, 2, 7–8, 10, 20–21, 35, 42, 71; personal power 2–3; social power 2–3 power sharing 7 power structure 2, 9, 17, 39, 97–98, 126 pragmatic 43, 48, 70, 179 praxis 22–23, 100, 105, 107, 179–180, 183, 185; praxis of empowerment 185; praxis of liberation 100 prejudice 10, 22, 66, 74, 76–85, 99, 102, 107–109, 114, 120–123,

125–126, 130, 147, 151, 173, 181, 185; against girls 109; anti-Roma 114 prejudice neutralizer 80, 147 pride 59, 61–63, 69, 76, 104, 122, 134; authentic pride 134; collective pride 122 pro-diversity 28, 172 progressive education 48, 67 progressive schools 48 protest 7, 8, 69, 74, 82, 100, 102, 123, 185 psychological capital 137 psychological metrics 75 punishment 56, 101, 102, 107, 108, 110, 115, 124, 136; corporal punishment 124; Danda Pratha 115 punitive and violent action 56 race-based superiority 171 racism 33, 127, 164 rage 99, 121 rationality 61, 65, 98 reconciliation 7 reflexive 187 regimental 48 regulatory system 49, 103, 153, 177 rehabilitation 106 rehumanization 125 resistance 7, 10–12, 18, 70, 80, 85, 103, 107–108, 115, 123–125, 134, 136, 159, 173, 178–179 respect 1, 35, 40, 65–66, 75–76, 97, 103–104, 110, 114–115, 121, 137, 143, 150, 157, 162–163, 178, 182, 192; self-respect 86 revivalism 27, 86, 115, 132; cultural revivalism 29 reward 71 rights 4, 18, 21, 35, 60, 69, 74, 84, 97, 100, 103, 106–107, 120, 122, 124, 127, 147, 171, 176 right to education 12, 21, 25, 103 Roma community 114 Rorty, R. 80 sarcasm 67, 107 Sarvajanik Satyadharma 178 sarva shiksha abhiyan 25 scaffolding 29 school-based interventions 104 school chalo abhiyan 147 school climate 38, 39, 44, 124, 172; school as a therapeutic agency 108 school readiness 71

Index  205 school structure 10, 49, 61, 69, 87, 91, 103, 105, 109 school-to-prison pipeline 191 school uniform 109 self-actualization 60 self-affirmation 47, 59, 172 self-categorization theory 78 self-concept 84, 180, 182 self-determination 187 self-discipline 110 self-efficacy 44, 112, 125, 128, 182; self- efficacy belief 128 self-esteem 44, 47, 59, 83, 90–91, 97, 111, 116, 125–126, 145, 157, 180, 182, 190 self-government 123 self-handicapping 47, 68, 128 self-injury 101 self-perception 127 self-regulation 7, 58, 70–71, 82, 98, 180–181; self-regulated learning 182 self-stereotyping 25, 109 self-threatening environment 111 Sen, A. 19, 66, 149 sexism 80, 127 shame 59, 63, 69, 71, 122, 126, 127, 134 shared space 49, 190 Sherif, M. 83, 129 Simon, B. 3, 78, 98 situated self 63 Sleeter, C. E. 163, 191–192 social action(s) 33, 191 social being 68 social categories 7–8, 25, 42, 44, 57, 77–78, 127, 186, 191 social categorization 79, 91 social change 10–11, 18, 20, 27, 33, 36, 47–48, 61, 78, 83, 85, 99, 105, 137, 171–173, 179, 180–191 social class 11, 19, 34, 41–42, 57, 59, 67, 82, 106, 130, 132–133, 137, 143, 145, 157–159, 165, 174, 184, 188–190 social class ladder 130, 132, 189 social class positioning 59 social cognition 98 social comparison 78 social construction 35, 62, 180 social constructivism 184 social constructivist 151–152 social creativity 89 social dominance orientation 124 social dominance theory 87, 123

social groups 1, 12, 20, 24, 44, 57, 74, 77–78, 98, 110, 124, 133 social hierarchy 5, 45, 64 social identification 3, 90, 153, 182 social identity 3, 9–10, 18, 28, 64, 66, 69, 71, 75, 77, 78, 83, 86, 89–92, 112, 114–115, 122, 133, 172, 175, 182–183 social identity loss 112 social identity perspective 69, 77–78, 89 social identity threat 28 social influence 1, 3, 79, 81, 88, 172–174, 186 social integration 106 sociality 6, 63 socialization 3, 26, 57, 64, 67, 90, 105–106, 108, 109, 134 social justice 1, 10, 12, 22–23, 29, 33, 86, 91, 151, 165, 171, 190 social mobility 10–11, 21, 38, 89–90, 103, 108, 125, 130, 134, 154, 172, 174, 181, 184, 190; social mobility aspiration 134 social norms 5, 29, 39, 65, 84 social-psychological 10, 75–76, 79–80, 98–99, 143, 174, 177, 189 social representations 86; representation and reification 150 social responsibility 187, 191 social science 12, 24, 43, 123, 125, 165, 180 social selves 83, 157 social stigma 84 social support 41, 112, 122 sociocultural approach 47; sociocultural psychology 68–69, 159 socioeconomic status 58, 59, 87, 112, 153, 158; socioeconomic barrier 59; socioeconomic divides 58; socioeconomic mobility 7, 12 socio-emotional 43 sociopolitical context 44–45, 184, 186 Sophist tradition 184 special classes 38 special education 49 standardized tests 163 status quo 5, 10, 12, 20, 33, 63, 100, 102 stereotype threat 3, 28, 79, 87–88, 90, 109 stereotyping 10, 17, 57, 71, 74, 77–78, 86, 91, 173–174, 176; selfstereotyping 25, 109 stress 71 subjugation 7, 12, 62, 172

206 Index suicide 101 systematic deprivation 106, 149, 177 Tajfel, H. 78, 107, 90 Taylorism 175; scientific management theory 175 teacher education institutions 177 teachers’ belief 182, 185 teacher-student engagement 56; teaching as a political action 177 therapeutic education 24, 59; therapeutic cures 9 threat-free educational space 100 transformation 10, 22, 35, 36, 38, 100, 104, 115, 136, 156, 184; social transformation 189 transformative schools 34 transparency 146, 153 Trishanku model 65 Turner, J. 3, 78, 90 underachievement 36, 154; underachievers 59, 153 unhealthy 33, 38, 174 unschooling 159, 162–163, 178

unstructured work environment 44 upper-status schools 35 utilitarian 20 Valmiki, O. P. 107, 121–122 value education 17, 24, 27, 33, 55, 178; value-based education 48; value orientation 176 violence 1, 8–10, 68, 82, 92, 96–110, 112, 114–116, 124, 178; cognitive 10; epistemic 68; institutional 1; physical 10 virtue and devotion 66 Vygotskian 29, 152–153, 156 wellbeing 3–4, 6, 21, 60, 63, 74, 83, 85, 114, 124, 130, 148, 158, 185 working classes 18–19, 21, 38, 70, 75–76, 122, 129, 131, 144–145, 148–149, 154, 159–161, 165, 171 wretched 130 yoga 115, 147 Zizek, S. 100