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This study is set in Madhya Pradesh, India, where development policy is inspired by the work of Amartya Sen, and education is valued as a mechanism for the equitable transformation of gender identities and relationships. The investigation is a mixed method case study focussing on two government elementary school classes. It explores the educational aspirations and practices of girls, their teachers and families; their formation; the achievements enabled by the intersection of these aspiration and practices and the factors shaping girls' different achievements. Sen's capability approach is used to access state pnonl1es and the foundational distributional, professional/institutional, knowledge and gender regimes of 'the social arrangements for education'. Connell's social embodiment paradigm frames deeper exploration of gender regimes and the construction of gender identities, focussing on power, production, emotional and symbolic relationships. Fieldwork was conducted over three phases, totalling thirteen months. Analysis of policy, statistics and textbooks provides the framework for ethnographic observations in schools, classrooms, offices and communities, supplemented by structured classroom observations, semi-structured interviews with teachers, pupils and families, and background data. The thesis focuses on Indian gender and education literature; state policy and programmes and their negotiations; schooling, gender, bureaucratic and professional regimes; families and family regimes; focus-school teachers and school regimes; focusclass teachers and classroom regimes and girls' aspirations and achievements. Dominant distributional, professional/institutional, knowledge and gender regimes discouraged any transformations, yet girls, families and teachers were dissatisfied with the status quo and inclined towards change. These fragile inclinations were undermined where teachers' de-professionalised positions compromised practice, school quality undermined family commitment and classroom regimes and curricula discouraged girls' success and persistence. When teachers, schooling and curricula enabled academic success and rendered girls' aspirations realistic, family commitment was encouraged and girls manipulated opportunities for greater autonomy. This 'virtuous circle' was significantly enhanced by one teacher's gender-sensitive practice.

The centralised control over curriculum framing and pedagogy, the generally poor quality of teaching with little sensitivity to children’s sociocultural environment; and very high drop out rates, even at the primary school level, are some of the challenges facing school education in many of the regions of India. However, one of the successful approaches to these challenges has been the Digantar school system, working in rural communities. The study is based in one Digantar School in Rajasthan and employs concepts derived from the Vygotskian tradition to interrogate the methods employed in Digantar school system. The study took Edwards’ (2010a, 2011, 2012) idea of common knowledge and Hedegaard’s (2008, 2012, 2013) idea of institutional demand in practices as conceptual lenses through which to investigate the components of the pedagogical practices that help Digantar teachers to align the motives of the school with those of the child in classroom activities. In doing so it analyses the institutional practices that lead to the development of common knowledge that in turn facilitates how teachers engage pupils as learners. Data were gathered over six months and comprised around 120 hours of school-based video data together with interviews and detailed observations with teachers and community members. Data were gathered in classrooms, teacher meetings, meetings between parents and teachers and at school-community meetings. Analyses focused on the construction of common knowledge and the use made of it by the school to achieve a mutual alignment of motives between the practices of the school with the community and the families. The study has revealed that teachers’ engagement with the knowledge and motives of other teachers and community members helped to create common knowledge, i.e. an understanding of what mattered for each participating group, which facilitated teaching-learning in the school. The analysis also points towards a form of democracy, which enhances children’s participation in their learning. It was found that building and sharing of common knowledge and creating a socially articulated ‘space of reasons’ (Derry 2008) produced a pedagogical model that engaged children in creating their social situation of development, seeking and recognising the curriculum demands being placed on them.