Integration of Culturally Responsive Pedagogical Practices among the Sabar Community for Promoting their Education
Abstract
Education is a prominent weapon for nation-building. No nation can move forward without quality education among its people. In India, several commissions and committees have been established, and numerous recommendations have been made to spread equal educational opportunities among all sections of society. It indicated that education is the means of promoting inclusivity within society with respect to casts, creed, gender, and geographical constraints. But it is a very pathetic and sorrowful situation that many indigenous communities are lagging in education, especially the ‘Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group’, or PVTG (previously known as a primitive tribal group). Their educational status is very low, and their condition is inferior, deprived, and increasingly endangered and marginal. Thus, it was evident that educational opportunities are not equally distributed. The tribal community has still not benefited much from education. The Sabar community is one among them. They thought education was a luxury for them. Under the guise of education, it's merely time-wasting, with no practical application or connection to real-life situations. The tribal community is fed up with this modern education. They do not show interest in this education system. As a marginalized tribal group, the Sabars have their own culture, knowledge system, and tradition, which affect their education. Their storytelling, folklore, rituals, daily life experiences, and lack of education are significant. Education through these programs helps increase their social cohesion, motivation, and life skills, among other benefits. The objective of this research is to identify and analyze the indigenous pedagogical practices among the Sabar community, and this work also highlights how indigenous cum cultural context pedagogy helps them to bring mainstreaming in education. Keeping the above objectives in mind, the researcher employed an ethnographic research design and collected data through participatory observation, focus group discussions, and field notes. This article shows that, in its cultural context, indigenous pedagogy has the potential to promote education among the Sabar Community. So, it's our responsibility to identify their informal ways of knowing and incorporate them into the modern educational process, allowing them to find their culture and ways of living within the institutional framework.