[MLE] A thorough paper on the MLE program in Orissa/Odisha

Dear MLE friends,

I don't think I have ever come across such an extensive analyses of the MLE programme in Orissa as the one from Dr Urmishree Bedamatta presented at the 2nd Philippine Conference Workshop on Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education  held February 16-18, 2012 titled:


The author does base her analyses on field visits, interviews and a wide range of literature study. Her analyses is critical. The abstract states:
The analysis of the MLE programme with reference to classroom transaction, the teacher and the teaching learning materials led to the following conclusions: (a) the use of the mother tongue is a strategy to improve statistics on access with little concern for retention, (b) the use of the mother tongue does not guarantee the use of local cultural knowledge for academic learning, (c) local cultural knowledge is transformed to assimilate with knowledge legitimised in the curriculum, and, (d) the role of the teacher as an agent of change is ignored: the ‘MLE teacher’ is a means to cope with teacher shortage in the tribal areas. The mother tongue in the MLE programme thus faces the threat of being an instrument ‘in the service of an institutional cause’.
The paper is 59 pages. If you like to respond to it feel free to use the comment option below the article here or at the original here

Regards,
Karsten
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Document
Karsten van Riezen
Education Consultant, LinkedIn Profile
SIL International, South Asia Group

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