Teacher values and value construction among low income female teachers in Bangalore, India: implications for reflective practice in teacher education in India

Reflective practice amongst teachers in India is inhibited by a summative learning approach characterised by exam performance emphasis and rote learning, leading to the teacher acting as intermediary to textbook material. It is crucial for teachers to possess reflexive skills to deal with changing political, social and economic environments and facilitate a continual learning paradigm with significant benefits to their teaching practice and professional development. This thesis examined the role of teacher values and value construction amongst low income female teachers in Bangalore, India to assess the potential for developing reflective practice within teacher education in India. Attitudes to achievement, aspiration and freedom of choice examined what teachers saw as important to them, their teaching and construction of their values. These values were foundational to enabling teachers with problem identification through a closer understanding and engagement with their professional role and responsibilities, enabled through reflective practice. Low income female teachers from two schools within the Lingarajapuram area of Bangalore, India were interviewed. Participants were first individually interviewed and lessons observed and then joined a scenario-based group discussion including other teachers from their school who were not interviewed. Data analysis found participants developed and enacted their values in three main areas, Social Relation, Internal-External and Authentic Knowledge and Transformation. These areas underlined ways in which participants understood and negotiated social relation between themselves and their students, conflict avoidance and collective representation and a distributed personhood of knowledge from textbook to teacher to student. Participants’ speech was seen as fundamental to values surrounding relationships, representation and teaching practice. Pedagogical emphasis on the teacher’s speech as an available resource used by teachers as well as part of a strong oral tradition in India, was put forward as potentially significant in developing reflective practice within teacher education programmes in India