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lack of education acts as a constraint to achieve targets of other sectoral programmes.
Investment in education is seen as a means to achieve targets of other sectors.
Therefore, education is no longer the monopoly domain of the educationists and
education departments alone.
In later years the education for all (EFA) programmes brought to light several
social and economic issues related to education access. The focus of education
research by social scientists shifted more to equity, student diversity, discrimination,
governance and management and innovative financing. Similarly, studies leading to
right to education were done more by social scientists than educationists.
A recent global survey of inventory of research on higher education (Rumbley
et al. 2014 ) while identifying 217 centres/institutes included three Indian institu-
tions from India. They are Centre for Higher Education in Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, Mumbai; Centre for Policy Research Higher Education (CPRHE) in
National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), New
Delhi; and Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies (ZHCES) in Jawaharlal
Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Another institution devoted to education and
higher education research is the National University of Educational Planning and
Administration (NUEPA). The research priorities of these institutions confirm the
belief that higher education research in India is carried out by researchers working
in departments and discipline other than education.
To sum up, the trends and focus of educational research by education depart-
ments and by social science departments varied. Educational research by education
departments in India focussed on what is happening in the classrooms. The external
influences of what is happening in the classroom were not a major concern for edu-
cational research and not a focus of their investigations. The social scientists, on the
other hand, tried to analyse educational processes from a larger political, social and
economic context. There has been a substantial difference between the way educa-
tional issues were seen by researchers of education departments and social scientists
interested in educational research in India. Their mutual interests were marginal and
interactions were rare. Educational researchers did not step out of classrooms and
social scientists did not step into the classrooms (Varghese 1992 ).
Education is one of the powerful instruments in legitimizing the status quo. The
pedagogy dominated, and classroom-based research did not question the status
quoist and legitimizing role of education. It can be argued that their focus on peda-
gogical issues indirectly supported the legitimizing role of education. The orienta-
tion of psychologists also supported the legitimizing role of education. However,
economists and sociologists questioned the potent role of education in legitimizing
the existing social inequalities. For the social scientists, the questions such as what
is taught and why it is taught are equally important as how it is taught.
N.V. Varghese