Bibliographic Information
Title: Indigenous Critical Pedagogy in Underserved Environments in India
Author: Madhulika Sagaram
Year: 2020
Citation
Sagaram, M. (2020) Indigenous Critical Pedagogy in Underserved Environments in India. In Steinberg, S. R., & Down, B. (Eds.). (2020). The sage handbook of critical pedagogies (pp. 236-255). SAGE Publications, Limited.
Realms of Application
Summary
Sagaram describes a comprehensive accelerated education program for children of underserved communities in India. Starting from a description of the community’s context, she describes her influences from indigenous pedagogies, learning theories, methodologies for Accelerated Learning Programs (ALPs), and her sociopolitical motivations before expanding on her course in detail.
Sagaram starts her article by portraying a vision of the Context in which her pedagogy takes place. She analyzes the socioeconomic condition of the community she works with, the historical effect of colonialism and cultural hegemony over the identity of the community and over the health of indigenous Indian pedagogies, and the failings of the public school system in providing an adequate education to her students. This analysis serves to motivate her own program and connect each aspect of her pedagogy to her context. All of her conceptual tools are thus linked not only to their environment, but also to each other through their relation with the socioeconomic, cultural, and political status and history of her community.
She turns her attention to questions of Learning early on, and clearly highlights her commitments to “constructivist approaches, such as arts-based learning, place based learning, social constructivist approaches and various Indigenous approaches in India” (p. 454). Place-based learning is of particular importance, since the learning theory links her community and her commitments to traditional Indigenous pedagogies with the west-imported abstracted conceptions of learning:
Quote
It is interesting to note that Sobel (2005) describes place based education as using the local community and environment as a starting point to teach, engage and learn, through all the disciplines, various concepts that are entwined in themes across the curriculum. This paradigm of learning is quite like the Indian systems of learning that have been discarded in favor of a homogenized education system. Uprooting from cultural context is one of the major outcomes of the kind of cultural hegemony now rampant across all learning settings in India.
- p. 456
By comparing her understanding of how Learning should work with the status quo, Sagaram highlights the failings of a culture that seeks a homogenized education across culture and social class. These reflections lead her to clearly state her Theory tools. In short, “education is not just about finding a job; it is about life” (p. 457). Her course then evolves from these three keystone tools: a commitment to engaging with the sociocultural conditions of her students, a constructivist, place-based understanding of Learning, and the idea that education should not just teach mechanistic skills, but rather facilitate the life of her students.
Sagaram then describes her tool for Methodology: a model for designing Accelerated Learning Programs (ALPs) that prioritizes Integrating body, mind, emotion and energy; minimizing baggage of emotions and thoughts; emotional development through complicated conversations; perceptions and sublime environments; art|culture|heritage|experiences; and proprioception and kinesthetics. Each of these aspects informs some of the activities completed during the course, and provides a framework for understanding how they facilitate learning, how they connect to the context of the ALP, and how Indigenous methodologies are integrated into the pedagogy. Sagaram highlights emotional development and sublime environment as being of paramount importance, and connects their implementation to the Sanskrit concepts of vishay (Content), sandharbh (Context), and aakar (Form).
Individual Lessons and activities then flow from these base concepts. For example, she describes how activities based on physical interactions with materials facilitate acquisition of other types of knowledge as well:
Quote
Origami, paper-bead making, painting and tribal art were used to connect mind, body, heart and senses together to help children internalize the process of learning. The whole body engages in learning and, during the study, several approaches were developed that engaged the children. Several fine motor skills development activities were linked to the development of mathematics proficiency.
- p. 461
Ultimately, Sagaram’s approach reconnects her tools of Methodology, Theory and Lesson back to an idea of the primacy of Context in determining how the educational activity is pursued: “A major learning from the study has been understanding the balance of features between the arrangement of the learning environment and sublime perception” (p. 464). Through the idea of sublime perception, she proposes that the context in which her students learn must balance logic and sublimity, or divergent thinking. If there is a lack of balance between the two, the learning experience will be either superficial or disordered. Instead, “The balance between logic and sublime perception is the key to creating a sublime learning environment; in other words, a balance between convergent and divergent processes is key” (p. 464).
Sagaram’s article stands out not just because her influences are atypical for critical pedagogy articles, embracing constructivist theories, praxiological methodologies and the concept of the sublime, but because her approach makes explicit how different tools inform each other. Her understanding of the Context and of Learning questions leads her to state her Theory commitments clearly, which she actualizes into Lessons through the use of Methodology tools. Each tool is built from those that influence it, and each adds complexity to the educational activity and allows the author to consider the effect of her intervention along many different avenues of impact –social, personal, cultural, emotional, developmental.