Abstract
A majority of children in India are enrolled in schools; but are they learning well? Building on Pratham’s ‘Learning to Read’ methodology interventions to do away with the disconnect between schooling and basic learning, the Hybrid Learning initiative encourages discovery based learning of children in grades 5 through 8. This intervention focuses on digitally-aided group based ‘Learning to Learn’ activities in partnership with 400 local communities in three Indian states, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. This chapter outlines the participatory nature of the experiment with 26,000 child participants. Following the Participatory Action Research (PAR) philosophy, the flexible design of the program facilitates the intimate interaction between researchers and children who are invested in the decision making process. The Hybrid Learning experiment enquires into scalable solutions to overcome two primary barriers of quality learning across rural parts of India—poor access to materials and the absence of a learner-centric learning environment.
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Singh, R., Sharma, N., Verma, K. (2017). Chapter 6 Learning and Evolving in Hybrid Learning: A PAR Perspective. In: Kidwai, H., Iyengar, R., Witenstein, M., Byker, E., Setty, R. (eds) Participatory Action Research and Educational Development. South Asian Education Policy, Research, and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48905-6_7
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