Legitimizing a New Universal for Post–Market Reform India: From Academic Proficiency to Conversational Skills

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

In this poster, I examine how language-in-education reforms in contemporary India undermine first generation English learners’ literacy acquisition in the post-market reform context where historically marginalized groups have gained unprecedented access to English schooling (Nambissan, 2011; NCERT, 2006). Analyzing the provision of English pedagogy in state-funded and private schools in the southern Indian state of Kerala, I first trace emergent curricular emphases on conversational skills and orality, which is a radical departure from earlier emphases on academic proficiency and literacy skills. Then, I scrutinize the justifications and assumptions underlying this shift. On the one hand, the disciplinary affiliations of second language acquisition promote assumptions of the primacy of orality (Harklau, 2002; Kern & Schultz, 2005; Pennycook, 1994). On the other hand, conflations of “traditional” literacy instruction with “memorization” were used to justify the ascendance of orality-centered pedagogies. In effect, state produced curricular materials reified these configurations to transfer literacy instruction outside the formal delivery system of the state. Further, I detail how the institutionalization of orality-centered pedagogy and market dependent literacy instruction is as advantageous for internationally mobile elite Indians as it is disadvantageous for first generation and low-income English learners. Theoretically, I conceptualize “reforming” as a construct in marginality wherein “deviant” or “backward” groups are reformed to fit “universal” categories, which however entails the normalization of the cultural norms and agendas of dominant groups (Appadurai, 2013; Delpit, 1988; Kumaravadivelu, 2006; Li, 2007; Pennycook, 1989; Sreenivas, 2011; Tickoo, 1986).

Author

• Leya Mathew, University of Pennsylvania