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The Right to Education – Whose Learning Matters? The Unintended Lessons of Student Learning and Teacher Quality

Education in India is valued as a transformative tool for upward mobility, increased opportunity and individual freedom. A variety of education policies over the years have sought to ensure greater equity with varied impact. Student learning has suffered across the country in part due to differences in regional access, linguistic ability, and family income. Furthermore, India lies at the intersection of aspiring ambitions of international influence and vast inequities ensuring many sectors of the populations lag far behind the “modern” aspirations of the middle class. In this conflicting space, Indian policy-makers established the Right to Education Act in 2010 as an effort to create broad and sweeping change in educational policy. This chapter seeks to look critically at the main components of the act, now 10 years in, to evaluate how some of the most controversial aspects of the law, have affected student learning, through the lens of teacher quality, including teacher preparation, teacher professional development, teacher dispositions, and teacher’s attitudes and perceptions of students. Vignettes from teacher experiences will be used to illustrate challenges and recommendations will be provided to support teacher educators working to ensure a more equitable and socially just education for Indian students.