This article stems from a classroom-based teacher research study that enquires into the challenges and possibilities of critically compassionate praxis. It highlights some curricular and pedagogic aspects of co-building a teaching-learning community with aspirants of Grade XII at an alternative school run by a civil society organisation in Madhya Pradesh. The members of this classroom are working youth belonging to Adivasi (Indigenous) and Vimukta (Denotified Tribal) communities. As a teacher, I draw upon the ideas and pedagogical strategies of authentic care, radical love and critical hope as situated within critical, feminist and Phule-Ambedkarite Feminist pedagogies. The study attempts to bear witness to the hopeful and critical ways in which students assert and reimagine their sense of selves, through some vignettes and reflections on the evolving nature of the teaching-learning community. Over the academic year, the classroom became a space for negotiating safety, agency, collective and reciprocal care, and possibilities for the future. The various voices emerging from the classroom highlight that imagining a compassionate and reflexive learning community and being pedagogically rigorous can be aligned goals and need to be pursued together to achieve educational justice.
Educability is typically understood as the perceived capacity of individuals to benefit from educational experiences, particularly within school institutions. Historically, however, the concept has functioned as a classificatory device through which children have been differentiated and judged. This has often resulted in deficit framings of those from marginalised backgrounds. Drawing on conceptual debates and empirical studies in education and sociology of education, this article examines how educability has been understood, critiqued and operationalised within schooling. It points out that despite sustained challenges to biological determinism and deficit explanations of learning, educability continues to function as an exclusionary construct. Even the shift from ‘deficit’ to ‘difference’ frameworks has not fundamentally displaced the assumption that individuals and groups possess varying degrees of educational potential. The article further argues that educability cannot be understood merely as an intellectual concern about learning and ability. It is also a socio-political and ethical question that shapes how legitimate subjects of education are produced and reproduced within sites of schooling.
In recent decades, schools offering international curricula such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge have significantly increased in India, a country with a highly stratified schooling system. Primarily serving expatriates prior to the 2000s, these schools are increasingly attracting local elite and aspirational middle-class families. Given their growing popularity, these schools play an increasingly significant role in India’s evolving educational landscape. Drawing upon in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 20 parents, the present study is a qualitative inquiry into the motivations and experiences of parents who had chosen international schools for their children in Pune, Maharashtra. It aimed to explore the sort of ‘sensemaking’ parents engaged in choosing these schools and to attend to their experiences with these schools. The narratives revealed the varying considerations of parents, ranging from avoiding rote learning to strategies for (re)producing social advantage in the current neoliberal regime. It also highlighted the power dynamic between upper-class parents and the schools’ management and teachers, which I argue plays a pivotal role in class (re)production. The parents’ experiences also suggest stratification within the international school landscape, with differential quality and fees indicating an expansion of this segment.
