Understanding Social Responsibility towards Teaching and Learning, Part 1: The role of Community Actors.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This series of two linked panels uses data and learnings from an ESRC-supported project in one district in rural Uttar Pradesh, India, to explore different aspects of the central question of accountability for children’s learning. This first panel focuses on questions and issues related to community and parental engagement in supporting learning, while Part 2 focuses on similar questions from the point of view of school actors.
Different models of social accountability discuss the central role of parents and other community actors in enabling a more direct, efficient and transparent provision of education for their children. Yet, how parents and other community members frame and engage with the concepts of “teaching” and “learning” is central to children’s educational experience, especially for young children. Current models of social accountability or social responsibility start with the premise that all educational actors perceive teaching and learning from the same principles, using the same analytical lenses, and potentially discussing common solutions. However, it is not clear how parents and community members think about learning, or their views on their own and other actors’ role in supporting children’s learning.
This panel unpacks the role of parents and other community members in enabling children to achieve foundational skills in rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, India. The panel will begin with a paper from Pratham on the community and school intervention in 300 villages of Sitapur district in Utter Pradesh, which aims to support community and school actors with pedagogical tools and methodologies proven to improve learning outcomes for the most marginalised. The paper will include discussion of how this intervention has evolved over time and its current form. Particularly important are questions about the activities planned as a part of the intervention with parents and other community members. The paper aims to provide insights from those working in the field and closer to participants about the responsibility of education for children, and how an intervention aims to promote awareness of the importance of learning and tools to support foundational learning.
The second paper will comprise an analysis of primary data collected as part of the UK ESRC research funded project which is a randomized control trial evaluating Pratham’s intervention, and investigates community actors’ attitudes and perceptions on children’s learning. For example, does parental involvement influence children’s learning levels, even when accounting for the mediating effect of other factors, particularly parental perceptions of children’s learning? The presentation also includes evidence of the effectiveness of the intervention in changing parental perceptions and actions towards children’s learning. For this presentation, early results from the randomised control trial will be presented.
The final two papers focus on understanding the mechanisms that enable or impede change, and are based on qualitative research undertaken in a subset of intervention sites. The first paper discusses how mothers in rural India conceive of the importance of learning, of their own role and ability to support their children’s learning and the ways in which these conceptions are linked to their backgrounds and contexts. The final paper in this panel explores mothers’ awareness of and engagement with the intervention, as well as their interactions with different stakeholders, which help to contextualise the quantitative results from the RCT.
With these presentations we hope to increase our understanding of the concept of “shared responsibility” for improving learning. We do so by investigating whether parents develop a sense of shared responsibility for improving their children’s learning and their responses to an intervention aimed at providing parents with the tools to support their children.

Sub Unit

• South Asia SIG

Chair

• Suman Bhattacharjea, ASER Centre

Individual Presentations

• Learning is Everyone’s Responsibility - Arjun Agarwal, Pratham Education Foundation; Faiyaz Ahmed, Pratham Education Foundation

• The role of parental perceptions and parental involvement in children’s learning - Preeti Manchanda, ASER Centre, Pratham Education Foundation; Laura Cashman, University of Cambridge; Purnima Ramanujan, ASER Centre

• Unpacking mothers’ conceptions of education and learning - Ankita Jha, ASER Centre; Poorva Shekher, ASER Centre; Purnima Ramanujan, ASER Centre; Suman Bhattacharjea, ASER Centre

• Creating stronger community engagement for children’s learning: Understanding drivers and limitations of sustainable and effective programs - Suman Bhattacharjea, ASER Centre; Purnima Ramanujan, ASER Centre; Ankita Jha, ASER Centre; Poorva Shekher, ASER Centre

Discussant

• Caroline Dyer, University of Leeds