Social Science Learning in Schools: Perspective and Challenges Review The essays in this book bring to us in brief the experiences of the Eklavya team in developing a curriculum and the reception of the resulting texts by students and teachers. This is accompanied by an evaluation of the textbooks-chapter-wise-by experts in political science, geography and history… The books on the whole sensitise children to the diversity of life, conflicts and contradictions therein. (The Tribune 2012-01-21)The exhaustive process that went into the making of textbooks in social sciences (studies) for Classes 6, 7 and 8 is documented minutely in this book-meticulously and threadbare… The unique contribution of this documentation is that it provides a guide and a perspective to those who are interested in what is transacted in the schools… the perspectives and insights that the book offers will definitely help the analyst or the student interested in examining curriculum and textbooks. (Contemporary Education Dialogue) 				    	 					         		         		         	                  	         		About the Author Poonam Batra is one of India’s leading elementary and teacher education academics with over a 25 years of experience in teaching, research, training, management and consultancy. She is Professor of Education at University of Delhi where she co-created the framework for the Bachelor of Elementary Education (B.El.Ed.), India’s much celebrated four-year professional elementary teacher education programme in the 1990s. Professor Batra was awarded the prestigious national Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 2007 for research on Teacher Education and Social Change. She has published internationally and domestically in areas of public policy in education, elementary education curriculum and pedagogy, developmental and educational psychology and gender studies. Professor Batra has co-authored a number of key educational policy documents including the Draft National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education (NCERT/NCTE, 2006; 2009); XI Plan Working Group Report on Teacher Education (Planning Commission, 2007); and the section on Education and Women’s Equality in review of the New Policy on Education (NPE, 1986). She has had a long association with the Eklavya elementary and social science programmes in Madhya Pradesh.