Prevailing Arguments and Types of Conclusions of Parent\u2013Child Argumentation

This chapter examines the types of arguments used most often by parents and children and the different types of conclusions of their argumentative discussions. The conceptual tool adopted for the analysis is based on the integration of the pragma-dialectical ideal model of a critical discussion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004) with the Argumentum Model of Topics (Rigotti & Greco Morasso, 2019). The integration of these two tools of analysis permits to reconstruct the inferential configuration of the arguments used by parents and children and to identify the types of conclusions of their argumentative discussions. Exemplary argumentative sequences that bring to light the results obtained through the qualitative analysis of a larger corpus of argumentative discussions between parents and children are presented and discussed

Understanding teachers and teaching in South Asia

This chapter reviews key themes regarding the work of teachers in South Asia to contextualize the section of the handbook with its focus on the state of teachers, teaching and teacher education in the region. In the first theme we discuss the challenges and complexities confronted by teachers in the region, the conditions under which they work, and the preparation and support received for teaching. The second theme is concerned with the precolonial and colonial legacy of teachers and the discursive construction of teachers and their work, drawing on Foucault’s idea of discursive knowledge-power formations that are embedded in practice. Particular attention is paid to how the colonial and post-/neo-colonial discourses frame the work of teacher in the region givens its diverse precolonial histories. Attention is paid to how such discourses reshape teacher professionalism, teacher identity, and teacher accountability. The third theme examines the discourses of professional development including initial and continuing professional development, situating these in a historical and contemporary context. The chapter concludes by outlining prospective research and policy agenda for teachers and teaching in the South Asia region contoured to the ideals of critical humanism and social justice

Continuous professional development of school teachers: experiences of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan

The chapter reviews the current status of teacher development, with a specific focus on continuous professional development (CPD), in three South Asia countries: Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. The view taken is that CPD is a process of supporting teachers and their development, and is inclusive of the range of approaches, modalities, and institutional arrangements operating in the region. The school structure of the three countries is presented first as CPD has largely evolved historically from inspection and around a deficit model of the teacher. The structure is based on administrative units of schooling and responsive to its demographic changes. The next section reviews the evolution of CPD, and it is argued that this is intimately linked to the political economic history of mass education, and specifically to the emergence of international aid driven activities from the 1990s onwards. The extensive presence of nongovernment agencies is noted. The third section discusses the dominant forms of CPD: the cascade model of training and teacher resource centers. The chapter concludes with reflections on the challenges of funding, quality, working at scale, absence of coherent policy, and emerging trends in usage of ICT

School system and education policy in India : charting the contours

India has had a long history of a larger institutionalized school system of more than 150 years, starting from the colonial times to the present. This system has not only been influenced by its colonial history but also been shaped by different sets of political, economic, and social changes ever since Independence. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the above trajectory with a more detailed focus on the changes that have taken place in the school system over the last three decades. These decades have seen unprecedented expansion of the school system; emergence of newer complexities in the reshaping of relations between the state, market, and non-state actors in education and also a sharpening of tensions between values of social justice and equity; and a rights-based mandate of education as a public good on the one hand and market-based reforms on the other. The chapter outlines the nature of these changes and the continuing challenges faced by the school education system within a framework of the constitutional provisions and the policy mandates that have been the guiding blocks for educational reform agendas