This paper is an attempt to explore, encourage and put to practice an inquiry-based learning methodology, in the rural and indigenous contexts of two villages in Chhattisgarh, in central India. Here, I, and young women from the indigenous community work with young children in Open Learning Centers called ‘Srijan Shala’ (translated as Abode of Creativity). The idea of birthing these mixed-age group learning spaces within the village was to place students in the womb of community 'know-how’. However, the traditional and largely outdated methodology of delivering knowledge in a didactic form, has compromised the capacity to question and ask questions. Learning is still largely outcome driven and measured with the yardsticks of exams, assessments and marks. The child’s ability of constructing her own know-how and moving from sensory motor stage to concrete operational stage in a community-context – which has a rich repository of non-textualised know-how, to which the young of the community are active participants - is largely left out of the school context. As the rural schools in India, seek to replace this inherent inquiry based and cooperative know-how sharing in community-contexts with rote learning, memorisation and overload of information, the urban elite schools are reverting to the pedagogy of inquiry. This necessitated us to re imagine the teaching learning methodology at Hamar Srijan Shala where curiosity and inquiry replace the predetermined content, shifting learning to the learners themselves. This paper attempts to bring forward a pedagogy where questions guide the imagination of what shall we learn today?

Authors:
Aditi Mitra, Chinhari The Young India, India

About the Presenter(s)
Aditi is currently working as an independent scholar in understanding preschool education in the rural indigenous spaces. She is working towards understanding the need to rethink the way education is perceived and delivered in these spaces.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditi-mitra-736187356

See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule

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