Leveraging an ecosystem for quality learning in private unaided schools in Ahmedabad India: From the perspective of social entrepreneurship

This research asks how private unaided school teachers leverage an ecosystem for quality learning in India, through both empirical and theoretical lens of social entrepreneurship. According to the UN World Population Prospects... [ view full abstract ]

This research asks how private unaided school teachers leverage an ecosystem for quality learning in India, through both empirical and theoretical lens of social entrepreneurship. According to the UN World Population Prospects (2015), the total population of India is estimated to outnumber that of China by 2022, with the greatest demographic dividend in the world. Indian youth’s capabilities to put learning into a real-world context lay the foundation for their social citizenship and economic competitiveness in the global society. The country’s 11^th Five-Year Plan (FYP) (2007-2012) encourages a growing number of private unaided schools to improve quality of elementary education (Grade 1 to 8). Quality improvement in the 11^th FYP particularly refers to advance quality of intellectual, social and cultural learning outcomes. Further, as suggested in the 12^th FYP (2012-2017), teachers may be more important than poverty to determine a student’s absenteeism or dropout in the Indian schooling context. This research thus draws upon secondary literature to map context, followed by a conceptual and analytic framework of social entrepreneurship developed. Three one-month fieldworks are conducted in and nearby Ahmedabad India during 2015-2017, where the qualitative case study of four private unaided schools is undertaken with participant observation, documentary collection and semi-structural interview with 35 teaching and administrative staff (who are regarded as social entrepreneurs, edupreneurs or teacherpreneurs). Accordingly, an ecosystem for quality learning is modelled, and dynamic interconnectedness is especially found among different model constituents (i.e. user-centeredness, competency-base, relationship, relevance, rigour, outreach and networking) which separately belong to three key pedagogic layers (i.e. value proposition, production and delivery) of the ecosystem. The creation and leverage of such ecosystem is seen as an entrepreneurial, replicable and scalable initiative to make students’ learning exceed teaching at students’ learning outset, throughout their learning process, in pursuit of quality learning outcomes.