Changes

( Vidya is a research scholar at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, JNU )

( Vidya is a research scholar at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, JNU )

The discipline and practice of education has largely been circumscribed within discussions privileging its role and importance in the growth and development of a country’s social and economic status. Few studies have sought to examine its evolution and inter-disciplinary nature that finds its theoretical underpinnings in philosophy, sociology, economics, history and psychology. This book is a novel attempt to trace the trajectory of the sociology of education in post-independent India. The initial chapters focus on the ambiguous contours of the discipline as it sought to separate itself from the mother discipline of sociology and consciously made attempts to develop and maintain theoretical integrity. Where early on the study of the processes and effects of education lay embedded within sociology, Suma Chitnis locates the first steps towards the establishment of the field to the appointment of the Education Commission in 1964. She reminisces on her engagement with noted scholars M.S. Gore and I.P. Desai in the nationwide project set by the Commission to advise the Government of India on how education could be used as an instrument of national development.

The discipline and practice of education has largely been circumscribed within discussions privileging its role and importance in the growth and development of a country’s social and economic status. Few studies have sought to examine its evolution and inter-disciplinary nature that finds its theoretical underpinnings in philosophy, sociology, economics, history and psychology. This book is a novel attempt to trace the trajectory of the sociology of education in post-independent India. <br>

 

 

The initial chapters focus on the ambiguous contours of the discipline as it sought to separate itself from the mother discipline of sociology and consciously made attempts to develop and maintain theoretical integrity. Where early on the study of the processes and effects of education lay embedded within sociology, Suma Chitnis locates the first steps towards the establishment of the field to the appointment of the Education Commission in 1964. She reminisces on her engagement with noted scholars M.S. Gore and I.P. Desai in the nationwide project set by the Commission to advise the Government of India on how education could be used as an instrument of national development.

It is interesting to read this chapter alongside Geetha B. Nambissan’s chapter on transitions in the sociological study of schooling in India. Where Chitnis combines her personal and professional trajectory with the growth and development of the discipline, Nambissan foregrounds her observations in a larger historical context noting theoretical movements within the discipline from the structural functionalist perspective to symbolic interactionism and phenomenology.

It is interesting to read this chapter alongside Geetha B. Nambissan’s chapter on transitions in the sociological study of schooling in India. Where Chitnis combines her personal and professional trajectory with the growth and development of the discipline, Nambissan foregrounds her observations in a larger historical context noting theoretical movements within the discipline from the structural functionalist perspective to symbolic interactionism and phenomenology.