Innovating in Education: NGO Interventions in New Delhi Government Schools
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Innovating in Education: NGO Interventions in New Delhi Government Schools The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40049977 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Innovating in Education: NGO Interventions in New Delhi Government Schools A dissertation presented by Anshul Kumar to The Department of Sociology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Sociology Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts January 2018 © 2018 Anshul Kumar All rights reserved Dissertation Advisor: Professor Christopher Winship Anshul Kumar Innovating in Education: NGO Interventions in New Delhi Government Schools This dissertation examines three education non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in New Delhi that attempt to innovate within the Indian government school system. The author uses immersive ethnography to understand how school-level phenomena can enable or constrain student learning. First, the author argues that “tightly managed,” highly supervised teachers can engage and plan more with the schools in which they work, whereas “loosely managed,” unsupervised teachers act autonomously and engage less. Rigid curriculum causes teachers to teach faster than students can learn. Flexible curriculum allows teachers to adjust to student learning speeds. Second, the author finds that NGO and mainstream government teachers have distinct “cultures of learning.” Government teachers sort students into two categories: learners and non-learners, effectively blacklisting the latter and failing to cater to their needs. NGO teachers try to treat all students equally, despite high levels of within-classroom inequality in student learning levels. Importantly, the students themselves in both government and NGO classrooms usually tend to subscribe to the government culture of learning rather than the NGO one. Students themselves show evidence of having internalized their status as either capable or incapable of learning. There is no evidence to suggest that NGO teachers have been able to alter the approach that government teachers take to teaching and learning within government schools. Finally, the author points out that the NGOs studied are able to scale their programs up to more schools if they maintain strong administrative relations with government actors, secure independent funding, and establish their interventions at schools to merely a sustainable extent. It is not necessary for NGOs to gain any government teacher or student buy-in in order to scale up. iii Table of Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. Literature review on NGO-government relations 20 Chapter 3. Setting, Cases, and Methods 54 Chapter 4. Inside the NGO: How organizational structure 87 and policy shape in-school capabilities Chapter 5: A Clash of Learning Cultures: 148 NGOs versus Government Schools Chapter 6: Beyond the NGO: “Scaling up” versus “scaling down” 200 Chapter 7: Recommendations and Conclusions 269 Appendix 305 References 321 iv Acknowledgements Making a list of everyone, including names, who were critical in bringing this project to fruition would take almost as long as doing the project itself, because so many people from so many places were involved along the way. I met these remarkable champions of educational improvement all over India and the United States at universities, weekly dinner gatherings, in buses and trains, and of course in the schools and organizations that I studied. From trusted advisors to strangers I met on the Delhi metro who turned into friends, everyone played an important role. It definitely takes a village to do a PhD and I benefited from being part of a very supportive village. You know who you are and your contributions are highly appreciated and will never be forgotten. As you know, this project was only a starting point to working in education for me and I look forward to staying in touch or reconnecting with you in the near future to share more ideas and do work together. Important note about teachers When you are in the environments in which my fieldwork took place, it is hard to enter with a game plan and execute it without making some very severe compromises. The teachers I studied had to go to the same class in the same school every single day, with the responsibility on their shoulders of executing an impossible task. The constraints are too many. Teaching 60 students by yourself when your co-teacher is out sick is an impossible task. Using a new teaching method when nobody around you believes it is the right thing to do or is even willing to entertain it is an impossible task. The teachers and organizations I studied tried their hardest under these impossible conditions. They approached their work with the best of intentions and to the best of their abilities. They come in with enthusiasm and desire to make a difference. We know that this is the case because so many of them eschew lucrative alternative career paths to become teachers for a few years, if not more. You wouldn’t do that if you didn’t care about the problem. But the structural characteristics of the system truly do work against them. It is classic sociology, a classic case of structure overcoming agency. Therefore, it is important to keep in mind while reading this dissertation that any accounts of problematic or unproductive behavior on the part of teachers should not be interpreted as personal deficiencies, laziness, lack of caring, or lack of strong will on their part. Rather, these behaviors are merely an inability to exercise a sufficient level of agency given the structural constraints of the specific educational environments. The names of all teachers and other personnel who appear in this dissertation have been changed in order to protect their anonymity. Also note that in general, Teach for India and Simple Education Foundation personnel spoke with me in English. Aspire teachers and students spoke with me in Hindi while Aspire managers and other staff typically spoke with me in English. I have made efforts to indicate the language used in the quotations provided in this dissertation. v Chapter 1.. Introduction This dissertation examines attempted collaborations between education nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and government schools that provide primary and secondary education to poor populations in New Delhi, India. More specifically, I conducted a case study of three NGOs that are conducting education interventions with government school children in order to understand how they go about making change and what the observable outcomes are of these efforts. In this introductory chapter, I present 1) a puzzle that motivated this dissertation project, 2) an outline of the dissertation including the research questions investigated in each chapter and a brief selection of the most important findings, 3) the operationalization of the motivating puzzle into an empirical research strategy and a summary of fieldwork activities, 4) a summary of the setting in which the research took place, and 5) background information about education in India. Much of this information is then expanded upon in Chapter 3, which includes more information about the Indian government school system, my empirical cases, and research methods. The backdrop to this dissertation and to the Indian education system is a society that is plagued with issues of social inequality and poverty. For example, in 2014, the top 1% of earners in India received 22% of total income in the country while the bottom 50% of earners only received 14.9% (Chancel & Piketty 2017). Education, as an institution in which all children are meant to participate, has the capability to reduce this drastic inequality if it is delivered effectively. It is the job of the government school system to provide education to the children within the families in the bottom 50%. This dire level of inequality and the potential of a 1 well-functioning education system to combat it motivated me to investigate instruction and innovation at the school level. School-level behaviors of teachers influence learning outcomes of students. Positive learning outcomes can in turn give alumni of the education system better opportunities in the labor market, while negative outcomes can contribute to the perpetuation of inequality by keeping families poor. When this link between pedagogy and practices at schools, educational outcomes of students, and social inequality is considered as a whole, this topic of study reveals itself to be one of clear sociological interest. Schools in India can either fight against inequality or contribute to the maintenance of the current structure of stratification. Furthermore, this is an area in which sociologists can have an impact by conducting research that can help improve conditions. Leaders both within the school system and in education NGOs could benefit from an increased understanding, provided by sociologists, of how school-level forces lead to particular outcomes. These actors could then disrupt the forces that are found to be detrimental and foster the forces that are found to be beneficial. A puzzle in need of attention Many NGOs are carrying out effective education work without partnering with any government entities. In many cases, the work conducted by education NGOs is effective enough that it could be replicated in other areas with potentially great social benefit. For example, there are NGOs in New Delhi which have established themselves within a single neighborhood, where 2 they operate one or multiple small learning centers. Local students (or even young adults) can come to these centers after school each day for a few hours for additional tutoring in their school materials, preparation for standardized tests, and acquiring basic work skills for future use in the labor market.