Beyond the Surface: Rethinking Pedagogy with Dr. Pushkarni Panchamukhi
Amit V Kumar, Sreehari Ravindranath, and Apoorva Bhatnagar
Education is a dynamic process that evolves with time, context, and culture. In an insightful conversation with Dr. Pushkarni Panchamukhi, Associate Dean, School of Economics and Public Policy at RV University, Bangalore, we delve into her perspectives on pedagogy, the challenges of teaching in India, and her vision for fostering a thriving educational ecosystem.
Pedagogy is often viewed as the visible act of teaching—methods, tools, and techniques educators use to impart knowledge. Yet, beneath these practices lies a hidden layer of factors deeply rooted in culture, societal norms, prevailing learning theories, and education ecosystems. These Invisible Pedagogical Mindsets(IPMs) profoundly shape teaching and learning, even though they often remain unacknowledged and unspoken about.
The Center for Universal Education, at The Brookings Institution spearheaded the SPARKS Research Policy Collaboratives (RPCs) in Egypt, India, and Mexico, which aim to uncover and address these invisible dimensions. By bringing together educators, researchers, policymakers, parents, and students, SPARKS explores how local contexts such as culture, ecosystems and learning theories influence education and works to co-create solutions that bridge research, policy, and practice.
During our conversation with Dr. Pushkarni Panchamukhi, offers profound insights that align with the SPARKS project. Her reflections illuminate challenges and opportunities in transforming education systems through culturally sensitive and context-aware pedagogy.
Beyond Content: Connections
Dr Panchamukhi shares that the effective teaching process involves delivering more than just content or knowledge, regardless of what age, grade, or level the teaching takes place. She challenges the misconception that pedagogy becomes less relevant as students’ progress in their educational levels. “You may have fantastic content, but unless pedagogy is in place, you will still not get across to students,” she emphasizes.
Further, she underscores on importance of “connections with students, the subject matter, and facilitating connections among students.”, and defining them as the foundation of an engaging classroom that supports deeper understanding and learning. The widespread belief that only content drives the learning process, is often taken in ignorance of other critical factors that are required in the pedagogical reforms- akin to IPMs such as the local cultures, ecosystems, and learning theories.
Addressing Diversity: Local Contexts
This challenge is profound for a classroom catering to a diverse set of students. “The dominance of English in Indian classrooms often marginalizes students from vernacular backgrounds,” Dr. Panchamukhi observes. This linguistic divide affects learning outcomes and perpetuates inequities. She calls for more structured approaches to bilingual education, stating, “We need to embrace our linguistic diversity and develop teaching methods that support multilingual learners.”
In addition to the language-based diversity, the social and cultural context in the Indian education system too needs be addressed; “Students from urban, affluent backgrounds share spaces with peers from rural, economically disadvantaged communities. This inequality creates a gap in access to learning opportunities,” Dr. Panchamukhi notes.
She advocates for pedagogical strategies that address these disparities, emphasizing, “True education must create opportunities for every child, regardless of their background.”
A classroom that fails to address these diversities fails to resonate with the realities of the learners. This perspective aligns with the SPARKS project on designing reforms rooted in the local realities, context helping students overcome language-related and systemic barriers. SPARKS collaborative work seeks to bridge these divides by developing inclusive and context-sensitive teaching frameworks.
Pedagogical Reproduction: Breaking Patterns
Dr. Panchamukhi identifies the most important challenge as pedagogical reproduction—the perpetuation of outdated teaching methods across generations. “The quality of teaching a student experiences tends to be repeated across generations. Breaking this cycle is essential to fostering innovation in education,” she explains. The quality of teacher trainings, she feels has been following similar social and learning patterns; perpetuating the same challenges, and mindsets to repeat themselves inside the classrooms. The urgency to break this pattern mirrors the vision of SPARKS project to challenging entrenched pedagogical norms and equip educators with tools to embrace modern, adaptive practices.
Local Contexts to Global Insights: From Invisible Barriers to Transformative Change
SPARKS, along with Dream a Dream as a facilitating partner in India, explores on how Pedagogical Mindsets shape the conceptualization and implementation of pre-and in-service teacher education reforms proposed by India’s National Education Policy (NEP) and their impact on classroom practices through research policy collaboratives (RPCs). These collaborations enable the co-creation of collaborative research methodologies and solutions tailored to unique challenges faced in the Indian education system.
She also points out the need to empower students to think critically and independently. “Most often, we tell students what to think and do. But if we empower them to reflect on life’s challenges, they will learn to make thoughtful decisions rather than acting on impulse,” she says.
Dr. Panchamukhi and the SPARKS RPC model share a commitment to understanding context as the foundation for transformative change. She observes, “Our education system is built on a uniform structure of expectations and delivery, but diverse contexts demand diverse approaches.”
SPARKS seeks to uncover how Invisible Pedagogical Mindsets influence teaching and learning, developing adaptable frameworks that resonate with local realities while gauging the global connections for enhancing methods for and of learning.
A Shared Vision for the Future: A Way Ahead
Dr. Panchamukhi’s advocacy for curiosity-driven, context-sensitive education complements SPARKS’ goals. By collaborating with key stakeholders, SPARKS strives to transform classrooms into spaces of empowerment, critical thinking, and adaptability. These initiatives have the potential to redefine pedagogy as a truly inclusive and transformative process, enabling young people to thrive in this compelling world.
As Dr. Panchamukhi aptly notes, “True change begins with understanding and addressing the invisible forces shaping pedagogy. Only then can we create education systems that serve all learners equitably.” Re-affirming the need for exploring the unseen barriers that influence learning and classroom practises to ensure education systems are inclusive, equitable and cater to providing meaningly experiences for young people.
Acknowledgements
We express our sincere gratitude to Dr. Pushkarni Panchamukhi for taking the time to engage in this conversation and share her valuable insights and perspectives with us. A special mention to Ms. Sudeshna Roychoudhury for her meticulous transcription, that contributes to a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities in education across India.
This blog is part of the ongoing SPARKS initiative, which reflects on the invisible yet impactful aspects of pedagogy and how they can collaboratively create more inclusive and effective learning environments.