Understanding children’s talk in the classrooms of a Government school in Delhi

This thesis makes an attempt to understand children’s talk in the classrooms of a Government school in Delhi. In India, the understanding of children’s talk and seeing it in relation with the development of children has not been explored. In Indian educational context; talk is still seen as a negative thing thus to look at it with a different lens is a unique contribution of this study. This study addresses a major research lacuna by bringing the child at the forefront of the classroom talk based research. This thesis is based on an ethnographic study conducted in the classrooms of a Government school from August 2018 to Feb 2019. The chief participants were the students of class 8 and class 3 along with the teachers teaching these two classes. The socio-economic profile of the students was mostly from the low middle income group. During the field work I conducted extensive classroom observations, focus group discussions, sociometry and write-ups with students and interviewed the teachers; all with focus to understand children’s talk.