This book describes a participatory case study of a small family farm in Maharashtra, India. It is a dialectical study of cultivating cultivation: how paddy cultivation is learnt and taught, and why it is the way it is. The paddy cultivation that the family is doing at first appears to be ‘traditional’. But by observation and working along with the family, the authors have found that they are engaging in a dynamic process in which they are questioning, investigating, and learning by doing. The authors compare this to the process of doing science, and to the sort of learning that occurs in formal education. The book presents evidence that paddy cultivation has always been varying and evolving through chance and necessity, experimentation, and economic contingencies. Through the example of one farm, the book provides a critique of current attempts to sustain agriculture, and an understanding of the ongoing agricultural crisis.
Karen Haydock is retired from the faculty of Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research), Mumbai, and is a Senior Fellow of the Indian Council of Social Science Research at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. Her research focusses on understanding school-level learning/teaching of natural and social sciences and art (particularly evolution, agriculture, and environmental science) in a few places in urban and rural India. Her research is related to her work developing materials and methods and teaching both children and teachers. She is also an artist, and has written and illustrated numerous books for children.
Abhijit Bansode is working on his PhD in Development Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, where he previously completed his MPhil in Development Studies and MA in Social Work in Dalit and Tribal Studies and Action. He obtained his BA in Political Science (First Class) from the University of Mumbai. His MA and PhD research has focussed on studying the nutritional status of Tribal children in different districts of Maharashtra.
Gurinder Singh is a research scholar pursuing his Ph.D. in Science Education at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai. Gurinder’s Ph.D thesis, looks into the process and dynamics of student questioning and its role in doing science. He is interested in studying student talks/discussions/arguments and investigation/exploration initiated by students’ authentic questions (questions for which they do not know the answers) and how such an understanding can help in constructing meaningful contexts for classrooms in which students' questions acquire a central role. Before joining the Ph.D. program, he taught Physics for about 8 years at secondary and senior secondary schools in Ludhiana, Punjab (which is his hometown), and Mathematics briefly in UK. He has a Bachelor of Education and Master of Science in Physics. Heis working with Navnirmiti, a Mumbai based NGO, for projects on teaching of Science and Mathematics to middle school students of government schools. In these projects he is mainly involved in teacher training programs and development of science modules.
Kalpana Sangale was a Project Scientific Officer at Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, working on the project to study the learning of paddy cultivation in her native village, Rudravali, District Raigad, Maharashtra. She has a BSc in Agriculture and an MSc in Horticulture from Krishi Vidypeth, Dapoli, Ratnagari. She is now in service in a bank in Mumbai.
