INTERACTION OF MICROPOLITICS AND EDUCATION QUALITY: COMMENTARY ON INFRASTRUCTURE AND CURRICULUM

The aim of this paper is to uncover the interactional patterns between ‘micropolitics' and selected factors of ‘education quality' in two rural settings of Karnataka. These interactionalpatterns obtained are used to analyse existing policies relating to ‘quality frameworks' for rural schools as envisaged in The Right to Education Act of 2009 through mission mode program of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. This ethnographical explorationuses the micropolitical perspective on schools as descriptive and analytical lens to understand the manifestation on quality parameters. It examines the current strategies of improving school quality through better infrastructure facilities, curricular materials, and analysis of concomitant micropolitical behaviours. Field immersion to the selected villages, educational institutions, and district and sub-district level units helped the process of triangulation and insights to get concretised. Though the findings from the study are not fit for generalisation, they raise important questions relating to visualisation of education quality at the Meta-Policy level and associated interpretation of larger vision of quality at the implementation sites. For understanding, micropolitical designs at school and sub-district levels empirical works of Kelchtermans, G(2007), Iannaccone L (1975) and Blasé (1991) have been contextually used to explore the interactional patters. Descriptive reasoning forresultant quality expressions have been provided though interactive frame of quality and micropolitics.