published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Education

This thesis examines educational reforms initiated by British colonial officials in late nineteenth/early twentieth century India and the responses they ensued from Indian Muslim reformers. Focusing on the "woman question," British colonizers came to the conviction that the best method to "civilize" Indian society was to educate women according to modern Western standards. Muslim reformers sought to resolve the "woman question" for themselves by combining their own ideologies of appropriate female education with Western ones. Muslim reformers were also deeply concerned with the disappearance of Islamic identity owing to colonial educational policies. Reformers placed the responsibility of maintaining Islamic culture on the shoulders of women so as to both resolve the debate over the proper place of women in society and retain a distinct Islamic identity in the changing Indian context. This resolution limited Indian Muslim women's access to education as well as their participation in Indian society at large.

This thesis is a comparative study of the educational reforms initiated by the Aligarh and Muhammadiyah movements in India and Indonesia respectively. It covers three main points: Ahmad Khan's and Ahmad Dahlan's educational philosophy; the educational system of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (MAOC) and Muhammadiyah schools; and the impact of the educational reforms of the two movements to Muslim education in general in the two countries. As will be explained in this thesis, Ahmad Khan and Ahmad Dahlan were deeply concerned with economic and social problems faced by the Muslims due to colonial policies. Both scholars came to the conviction that education was one of the most important ways to solve those problems. The two scholars, therefore, each contrived to design a new system of education for Muslims, which would produce graduates capable of meeting the new demands of the changing socio-political context while retaining their faith. Their ideas were eventually realized in the establishment of the MAOC and the Muhammadiyah schools, respectively. Even though these two institutions were unable to satisfy all Muslim aspirations, they succeeded in making Muslims in India and Indonesia aware of the need for pragmatic education, which was to contribute to the empowerment of Muslims in the colonial era.

This is an ethnographic account of peer learning among a group of heroin 'addicts' in Delhi, India. This study responds to the limited attention given to 'naturalistic' or 'informal' peer learning patterns in the educational literature, and the lack of explicit exploration of the phenomenon among drug user populations. The study involved seven and a half months of fieldwork with the predominant use of participant observation and semi-structured interviews to generate data. Analysis was inductive and interpretive with the use of situated learning theory to 'tease out' patterns in the data. The participants were using and non-using addicts affiliated to SHARAN, a non-governmental organization (NGO) in the religious marketplace of Yamuna Bazaar. The group included approximately 300-500 members, 20 of whom were main informants. Analysis of the group organization revealed community-based and masculinity-based characteristics that enabled the group to manage stigma, promote 'positive' ideals, and co-construct nonhegemonic masculinities. Peer-based outreach was identified as a form of 'institutional' peer learning in which peer educators performed the roles of 'doctor', 'role model', and 'counsellor' during interactions with 'clients' that had the effect of disempowering clients in many cases. The practice of poetry in which peers created couplets in alternating exchanges was identified as one form of naturalistic peer learning that entailed processes of legitimate peripheral participation, meaning negotiation, and reflective learning. Street 'doctory' in which peers provided medical care in the form of procedures, illness discussions, and health consultancy was identified as another naturalistic peer learning pattern involving processes of legitimate peripheral participation, meaning negotiation, and learning through teaching. These findings suggest that naturalistic peer learning involved co-participatory processes that manifested in a diversity of everyday practices. It is recommended that engaging these processes and practices would be useful for interventions, while further research should explore such patterns in other contexts.

The National Policies of Education in India have recognized the need for teacher professional development. However, science teachers continue to look for innovative methods to improve teaching. Through collaborative action research with four science teachers at a girls' school in Hyderabad, India, the study explored conditions that enhance or inhibit the implementation of constructivist instructional methods. Data were collected through interviews, reflective memos, research journal, collages and found poetry. The study found that teacher background and experience, teachers' views on science education and the school environment played a role in teacher development. The use of constructivist instructional strategies affected teachers' views on science education. The teachers felt that acknowledging students' preconceptions helped them grasp scientific concepts easily. Also, constructivist methods made teaching more enjoyable and less burdensome. Teacher education institutes should consider creating collaborative networks between teachers and researchers and apply constructivist approaches to teacher education and development.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to better understand student learning in asynchronous computer-conference discourse (ASD) for non-native speakers of English in India through the Community of Inquiry (COI) framework. The study looked at ASD from an online course taught in the fall of 2015 to 25 students in a seminary in South India. All but one of the students were non-native speakers of English. The class consisted of 22 men and 3 women. Eight students spoke languages from the Dravidian family of languages (Malayalam, Tamil, Telegu and Kannada). Eight students were from the Northeastern states of Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura, where most languages are from the Sino-Tibetan family. Three students were native speakers of Indo-Aryan languages (Odiya and Assamese). Five students were from Myanmar representing several Sino-Tibetan languages. The COI is a framework used to understand learning in ASD, often used in online learning. To study the ASD of this group, critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used with the COI to capture the unique socio-cultural and linguistic conditions of this group. The study revealed that non-native speakers of English often reach the Exploration phase of learning but rarely show evidence of reaching the Resolution phase. This phenomenon was also observed in native English speakers as reported in the literature. Also, the structure of ASD showed that students took an examination approach to discussion shaped in part by their epistemology. This examination approach shaped how knowledge was constructed. CDA also showed that the discourse acquired an instructor-centered structure in which Resolution and Repair were initiated and finalized by the instructor. The study advances the COI framework by undergirding it with a theory of asynchronous discourse using critical discourse analysis and capturing cognitive, social and teaching presence phenomena for non-native speakers that were not observed through the traditional COI framework. These phenomena were driven by cultural, epistemological, and linguistic forces and require a rethinking of the COI for contexts outside of North America. The study also demonstrates that learning for non-native speakers in ASD is challenged by these very same forces. Therefore, design for online learning should account for these phenomena.