M Ed Two Year Programme
P.5.6 : Marginalization, Schooling, and Education
Maximum Marks: 100
Course Vision
Given the increase in India’s demographic diversity, especially in educational institutions, it is
critical for an Education Programme to include an understanding of diversity and marginalization
within the classroom and recognize the need to develop sensitivity towards this aspect. However,
classrooms today are ill equipped to handle this need. Classroom teaching and practice operate
with an assumption of homogeneity. The teacher maintains what she considers the ‘norm’.
Students are encouraged to be part of the ‘mainstream’. Any deviance from the norm is
disregarded and even scoffed at. Many children thus have a traumatic relationship with
schooling. Schools construct their learning environments without recognizing the complexities of
the lives of children, the socio cultural backgrounds from which they come and very often negate
their ways of knowing, leading thereby to their marginalization. This course, thus, aims at
highlighting the need to understand diversity and develop an understanding/ sensitivity and
appreciation of difference. There is an attempt to view schooling and education from the
perspective of marginalized groups. It will help in building an understanding which will equip
them to work effectively with students from diverse background including cultural, religious
minorities, linguistic and different socio-economic groups.
This Course can also include a practical component.
Objective: Upon completing the Course , students should be able to do the following:
Define and analyse the concept of diversity and marginalization in the context of
education and schooling.
Understand the need to appreciate and respond to difference and its implications for
children.
I. Understanding Exclusion and Marginality.
Social, cultural, political, and economic dynamics of Exclusion
Language and Marginalization: Education and language, politics and
language
II. The Learner’s Profile: Recognition of Diversity, appreciation of difference
and differing perspectives, Examining the differences based on social,
cultural, political, and economic factors.
III. Culture of Schools and Classrooms. Assumptions about students'
backgrounds. Differential participation and achievement in schools.
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Theories regarding the “marginalized” groups participation and achievement
in schools: Deficit model and its critique, discontinuities/mismatch and its
limitations, multilevel comparisons of different groups.
IV. Understanding Diversity in the School
Discounting Diversity, transition from home to school Possibilities of
Exclusion.
Construction of the ‘Other’ – Assumptions, Stereotypes, Prejudice,
Humiliation
Forms of discrimination and ‘de-valuation’
Schooling and its meaning for the ‘Other’
Resistance and Counter School Culture
V. The Silenced Dialogue : Power and Pedagogy
Classroom Processes and School Texts
Schooling and the Hidden Curriculum
VI. Towards a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy - Addressing diversity in schools.
Multicultural Issues in Education – Shaping curriculum for Diversity
Communicating across cultures.
The language Issue – Lost in translations
Need for Segregated schooling – Inevitable or avoidable
Internship in a diverse school setting – linguistic/religious/caste/rural
Seminars - Designed to explore and reflect upon issues that arise during their internship.
Essential Readings:
Christine Sleeter, Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay, Arvind K. Mishra & Sanjay Kumar (
Edited). School Education, Pluralism and Marginality. Comparative Perspectives. Orient
BlackSwan, 2012
Geetha B. Nambissan. Equity in Education? Schooling of Dalit Children in India.EPW,
April 20-27,1996
Geetha B. Nambissan. Exclusion and Discrimination in Schools: Experiences of Dalit
Children. Working Paper Series,Vol.1 No.1. Indian Institute of Dalit Studies and
UNICEF, 2009
Herbert Kohl. I Wont Learn from You. The New Press, New York. 1994
James A. Banks and Cherry A. McGee Banks (Edited): Multicultural Education. Issues
and Perspective. John Wiley & Sons, NJ, 2010.
John Ogbu
Jonathan Kozol. Savage Inequalities. Harper Perennial, 1992
Kancha Iliah. Why I am Not a Hindu, Samya, 2003
Kaushalya Baisantri
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Lisa Delpit. Other People’s Children
Lisa Delpit. “Multiplication is for White People”. Raising Expectations For Other
People’s Children. The New Press, New York, 2012
Meenakshi Thapan(Ed.). Ethnographies of Schooling in Contemporary India. Sage, New
Delhi, 2014
Paul Willis. Learning to Labour. How working Class kids get working class jobs. , 1997
Sylvia Ashton Warner. Teacher, 1963
Suggested Readings
Amartya Sen. Social Exclusion: Concept, Application, and Scrutiny. Social Development
Papers No. 1, Asian Development Bank, June 2000
Gopal Guru (Ed.). Humiliation. Claims and Context. OUP, 2009
Gurpreet Mahajan (Ed.). Accommodating Diversity . Ideas and Institutional Practices.
OUP, 2011
Homi K. Bhabha. The Location of Culture. Routledge, 1994
Naila Kabeer. Social Exclusion and the MDGs:The Challenge of ‘Durable
Inequalities’ in the Asian Context, March 2006.
