Global Initiatives Grant Report – Towards a Pedagogy of Care – Capacity Building in Indian Higher-ed Academia for Ethical and Inclusive Pedagogical Framework

The idea of “pedagogy of care” emerged out of a series of conversations between the two grant recipients, where we often found ourselves swapping notes about our experiences of working in Indian higher-ed universities. While many of these were about classroom occurrences and our interactions with students, in-class activities that worked or didn’t, etc., we noticed an emergent pattern. There were complaints and concerns about feeling overworked, the steady extension of admin and service tasks in our schedules, the pressures to publish, lead student field-trips, and offer quick “how-to” methods workshops to familiarize students with ethnographic fieldwork. These are familiar scenarios and occurrences in universities across countries, and often encouraged within the framework of “pedagogical innovations”. However, in our conversations, we realized that while this framework proposed to extend “care” to students, it was often constrained within a consumerist imagination, and that faculty were often excluded from considerations of care except in the role of caregivers to students. The burden of this falls most heavily on early-career and insecurely employed academics.

Towards a Pedagogy of Care thus emerged as both an idea and a site to critically evaluate varied experiences with innovative pedagogy and to propose an alternate framework that extends forms of care to students, faculty, as well as the practice of the discipline of anthropology. This project was mindfully centered on the Indian experience of higher-ed institutions, both private and public, that increasingly cater to interdisciplinary students, where courses on anthropology and sociology are offered with an eye on skill-development of research methods and critical thinking, and that employ a significant number of ad-hoc and short-term faculty. The project organized its first introductory symposium in New Delhi, May 17-19, 2024. We actively sought to prioritize early-to-mid-career faculty and to reach out to universities across the country.

The symposium was divided into four thematic sessions and one keynote dialogue where the speakers deliberated on the past, present, and future of Indian academia, drawing from their own experiences (see attached program).

Experiences and Challenges of Teaching in India: In the introductory session, papers focused on participants’ experiences of teaching in India. These included working as an “ad-hoc” in Delhi University, where uncertainty of employment and poorly paid salaries are further compounded by increased workload, expectations of hierarchical subservience, and constraints on academic freedom. Others drew attention to the changing ethos of university education with a renewed focus on “skilling” that is encoded in the National Education Policy (NEP) of India, 2022. Speakers addressed the tussle of care and ethics that is a constant part of their teaching journey, particularly with students from minority and historically marginalized communities, as well as experiences of taking a “masterclass” on ethnography with design students and realizing the commonplace-ness of fieldwork sans discussion on ethics of research and conduct.

Disciplinary Reconfigurations: This session explored how the structural shifts in Indian academia (through the rise of private universities, the implementation of the NEP with a focus on employable skill-building, larger political shifts) have mapped on to teaching practices and disciplinary valuations. Speakers contended with whether disciplines like sociology and anthropology are experiencing a “crisis” where they are seen as less relevant, less employable, and more susceptible to being discontinued. These give way to pressures to make disciplines marketable, and speakers explored how this, alongside the rise of private universities with a high fee structure, is creating less diverse classrooms. The ramifications of these on what topics are taught, generate interest or discomfort, or fall off the radar, such as with village studies, were discussed during this session. The session picked on an interesting paradox: the rising popularity of ethnography as a qualitative skill-set and of anthropological jargon with students that exists alongside a steady devaluation of the discipline as such, and generated a rich discussion on the churn in the discipline in current times.

The Politics of Teaching: Speakers approached the “politics of teaching” as both teaching in a  politically-charged climate as well as everyday politics that are encountered in classrooms and institutions, and across institutions. Some topics that were addressed included navigating political opinion with students, shifts in students’ politics and the state of collective representation among faculty. Altering power dynamics between faculty and students were discussed that highlighted friction as well as collaboration among faculty, student body, and administration. Participants spoke of dynamic “disciplinary technologies” that are activated with faculty, such as student evaluations, course popularity, and assessments of caregiving in which faculty are engaged but for which there are rarely any clearly laid out guidelines or expectations. In conclusion, the session addressed a core question: how does/can one teach and care in and about a tenuous, friction-ridden world.

Teaching as Care-work: The papers and participants in this session delved into what teaching as care-work looks like. Themes that were addressed included how care is offered in a gendered way (prioritizing male students) in STEM-focused institutions, and learning how to offer care from students who come together in a classroom from very diverse socio-economic backgrounds, needs, and expectations of care. An emergent theme in this session was the absence of an institutional framework of care, especially for students with compelling needs, such as hearing and sight impairment, familial pressures, and those facing peer harassment and social stigmatization. The faculty found that they had to navigate and figure out “best possible” ways to offer care in these scenarios with minimal institutional support. This also exacerbated exhaustion and apathy among faculty who were tasked with offering care and empathy as part of their job but without a clear institutional support structure.

In Conversation: Indian Academia – Past, Present & Future: The speakers in the keynote dialogue comprised retired and current faculty in Indian public universities to historically contextualize the shifts in Indian academia. Drawing from their experiences as well as other presentations, some themes that were discussed were other forms of disciplinary “crisis” that have beset anthropology and sociology in India, shifts and continuities in the university power dynamic, the politics of the university and the steady falling away of union-based collective action, perceived shifts in faculty role, and in the expectations of ethnographic research, both in how, with whom, and for how long research is conducted, and publication pressures.

We are grateful to the Wenner-Gren Foundation for this grant as it enabled us to organize this symposium and initiate a meaningful dialogue around care in higher education. The relevance of it was stressed by each presenter who participated enthusiastically despite the end of semester exhaustion. After the successful completion of the symposium, we have the following plans going forward: a) to publish papers based on the symposium, b) make such conversations a regular and periodic event to facilitate increased communication among academics, and c) to set up a global network of scholars interested in thinking about pedagogy of care. More information on the symposium can be accessed here.