This event is part of the School of Education's Bristol Conversations in Education research seminar series. These seminars are free and open to the public.

Co-hosted by CIRE / School of Education and TESF.

Speaker: Professor Poonam Batra (Professor of Education at the Central Institute of Education, University of Delhi, India)

Chair: Professor Leon Tikly (UNESCO Chair on Inclusive and Quality Education for All and Global Chair in Education, University of Bristol)

The Covid-19 pandemic has made visible the sharp economic, health, caste-based, gender, and educational inequalities that the disadvantaged face in India. Curriculum is ordinarily viewed as a tool for regulating and adapting modern educational systems to society’s needs and trends. But most governments have been unwilling to rethink post- pandemic education, despite the loss of livelihoods, food, and shelter – accentuated by educational inequality and institutionalised via neoliberal reforms. The current pandemic compels us to examine the meanings and purposes of education from a socio-historical perspective, to understand how questions of equity and justice, rooted in India’s Constitution, can be woven into curricula and pedagogic approaches. This article reflects on the role that curriculum can play in enabling an ecologically and socially just and connected world. This curricular response includes cognising the significance of subaltern disciplines and imagining transformative pedagogies that can help reclaim education spaces and sustain epistemic justice.

Professor Poonam Batra is Professor of Education at the Central Institute of Education, University of Delhi, India. Her work spans multiple areas of knowledge: public policy in education; curriculum and pedagogy; social psychology of education, teacher education and gender studies. Professor Batra was a Nehru Memorial Fellow, member of the Indian Supreme Court’s Commission on Teacher Education and co-author of key education policy documents. Her recent research examines coloniality in the episteme of Indian educational reform, comparative education imperatives; and the politics of school and teacher education reform. She is Co-I and India lead on the GCRF Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures (TESF) project.