“The peer can explain it better than we sometimes can”: Unpacking teacher perspectives on a peer-teaching intervention in Bhagalpur, India

• In Event: Voices, Agency, and Inclusion: Innovative Approaches to Teaching and Learning Across Contexts

Proposal

Introduction
As education increasingly situates itself at the intersection of peace and social justice, the urgency of shaping classrooms as equitable and socially cohesive spaces of learning becomes more pronounced. Rooted in the ontological understanding that knowledge emerges through social interaction (Kim, 2001), peer-teaching places students in teaching roles, disrupts traditional student–teacher hierarchies as well as fosters positive academic, behavioural, and social outcomes (Stigmar, 2016; Keerthirathne, 2018, 2020; Daniel et al., 2023). Peer-teaching holds particular promise in heterogeneous Indian classrooms, marked by diversity of class, caste, religion, gender, and ability (Bhatt, 2024). This paper examines the impact of a peer-teaching intervention conducted by Involve Learning Solutions in over 800 classrooms in Bhagalpur, India. Bhagalpur’s classrooms are shaped by systemic challenges: weak infrastructure, significant learning deficits, and persistent social divisions across caste, class, and gender. While the intervention focused on student-learning, teachers played a key role in its implementation. Positioned as the foot soldiers of education reform, globally and in India (Smit, 2005; Bhatnagar and Das, 2014), teachers have been consistently relied upon to operationalize macroscopic policies, including the Right to Education Act (2005) or the National Education Policy (2020) (Batra, 2016, 2023; Dar and Jan, 2023). Yet, policy discourse often overlooks teachers’ perspectives, and many teachers perceive themselves as implementers rather than co-creators of policy (Hinnant-Crawford, 2016).

Foregrounding teachers’ voices, this paper asks two interrelated questions:

What are teachers’ experiences and perspectives on peer-teaching intervention?
What is the impact of the intervention on teachers and students?

Methodology

Theoretical Framework & Data Collection
To understand the holistic impact of the peer-teaching intervention, this study draws on the Ecological Framework of Teacher Agency (Pantic, 2015, Pena and DeCosta, 2021) which conceptualises teacher-agency as shaped through teachers’ interactions across multiple layers of their environment: the micro (classroom and students), meso (institutional and community), and macro (policy and structures). Drawing from Tripathi (2025), we added an additional ‘Individual’ layer into the ecological model (Pena and DeCosta, 2021) to understand teachers’ experience of the policy across four layers: four interconnected layers: Individual, Micro, Meso, and Macro. Semi-structured interviews (25-30 minutes each) with 35 teachers were conducted in Hindi and audio-recorded. Recordings were transcribed and translated into English using manual and AI-assisted tools for accuracy.

Data Analysis
Interviews were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2012) multi-method approach, combining inductive and deductive thematic identification. Initial inductive codes were generated through iterative open-coding of the first five interviews, while deductive codes were informed by the research questions and theoretical framework. A codebook was subsequently developed, aligning emergent themes with the four layers of our framework.

Findings

Individual Layer:
Individually, teachers reported a significant improvement in their experience of teaching as well as a shift in their perception of themselves and their role as educators. On the one hand, teachers’ view of the teacher-student hierarchy shifted; they positioned themselves into the role of a “facilitator” and even admitted to peer-teachers yielding better outcomes. On the other hand, some teachers perceived themselves as leaders, transitioning into the role of a “mentor”.
“The peer can explain it better than we [teachers] sometimes can” - Teacher-F
“Since being made mentor teachers, we’ve felt that sense of leadership overall too” - Teacher-C

Micro:
According to teachers, classrooms became more interactive and inclusive, with visible improvements in attendance, participation, and motivation. Learning from peers not only increased students’ comfort in raising doubts and produced academic outcomes such as improved literacy, but it also improved soft skills like confidence, responsibility, and leadership. In many cases, student-leaders began directing lesson flows and taking greater responsibility.
“Studying in groups…is making them interested and involved [in the class].” - Teacher-D
“[Weaker students] hesitate to ask the teacher, but easily ask their classmates. They feel more comfortable.” - Teacher-C

Meso Layer:
Despite feeling supported by school leadership and colleagues, teachers reportedly struggled against systemic barriers, including staff shortages, increased workload, resource deficits, scheduling conflicts, or even chronic student-absenteeism. However, demonstrating adaptability, most teachers found unique solutions to these challenges, such as sharing workload with colleagues or independently reorganising schedules to accommodate the intervention.
“We get assigned different duties in between [of PT classes]…creates disruption among the children” - Teacher-A
“We’re given so many classes to take that we don’t get enough time [for PT class] - Teacher-D




Macro Layer :
At the policy level, teachers expressed faith in peer-teaching as a viable reform, acknowledging its impact on students’ academic and social development. Critically engaging with the reform, teachers suggested several small-scale modifications, like changes in group formations, and large-scale policy recommendations, including more frequent student assessments, improved resource allocation, and additional staff support:

“Instead of six months, there should be tests every two months [in the program]”- Teacher-S
“If there were additional [mentor] teachers available, that would be good” - Teacher-I


Discussion and Implications
As education grapples with questions of peace and social cohesion, the imperative to create inclusive and equitable learning spaces learning emerges simultaneously at the level of classroom practice and educational policy. At the classroom level, the findings illustrate how peer-teaching fostered equity by collapsing the traditional student–teacher hierarchy and nurturing collaboration among peers. By creating spaces where all learners could participate meaningfully, the intervention enabled classrooms to function as microcosms of social cohesion. Importantly, peer-teaching was not only a student-centred pedagogy but also a teacher-centred reform. It enabled teachers to reimagine themselves as facilitators of learning rather than transmitters of knowledge, while recognising students as capable leaders. At the policy level, however, teachers faced significant structural challenges, including workload pressures and infrastructural limitations. Their adaptive practices underscore their role as active co-creators rather than passive implementers of policy, reflecting the agency teachers exercise in advancing inclusion and cohesion even within constrained environments. As teachers struggle against a systemic deficit of support and resources, the burden of building inclusive and equitable classrooms continues to rest on them, even in the case of peer-teaching models. Policies seeking socially cohesive classrooms must, therefore, move beyond the ‘teacher-as-implementer’ paradigm and instead position teachers as “agents of social change” (Pantic, 2015), thereby investing in their holistic capacity building.

Authors

• Anna Daniel, Involve Learning Solutions Foundation

• Smriti R. Sharma

• Tarang Tripathi, University of California, San Diego