The Primary and Elementary Education area constitutes grades 3 to 8 ( age group 8- 14 years) representing the years when children need a lot of exposure and exploration through which they can develop higher abstract thinking, understanding self and the agency of self and the collective and inquiry-based aptitude. In our approach, we believe that here, along with mastering content knowledge, application of skills, active reflection and collective learning becomes very important as aims as the development of knowledge, skills, and attributes develop them as learners who have the abilities to autonomously carve out a path for themselves in the later years of their lives. We try to develop a culture of mutual learning and exploration with a focus on fostering the values of social justice, equity, and commitment to the larger good.

Along with the core curricular areas, we have a comprehensive and integrated curriculum where areas of art, music, drama, physical education, scientific aptitude and technology-aided learning are seen as integral parts of the teaching–learning of every subject area and separately as well.

Bodh, from the beginning, in the process of running its network of schools (Bodhshalas) and working with the mainstream school teachers and teachers of other non-governmental organizations, has been working intensively on the area of teacher development through engaging in the long term ( as long as six months residential programmes/ 3 months residential training programme/ 1-month residential training programme) and short term orientation/ capacity-building programmes that are of the duration of 15 days or lesser.

Bodh’s approach to teacher development and teacher engagement has been consistent with its stand on how humans learn and how the learning of an individual and group can be facilitated. So, the curriculum and pedagogy of the teacher development programmes are comprehensive, with a focus on the development of knowledge, perspective and skills and also the required world-view that is needed to work closely with the local communities to manage the schools.

Bodh has strong orientation and in-service teachers’ development programmes and has a separate unit that works on building curricular skills/knowledge in the teachers, development of the pedagogic skills and the required value frame and attitude to work as a democratic and sincere teacher.

According to Bodh, teachers are the front-line cadre of the organization whose development is most crucial for ensuring the change on the ground. Bodh believes in the ability of the humans to think for themselves, spot and solve problems, reflect, plan, innovate and grow with time. So, most of the inputs are more in the direction of the genuine capacity building of the teachers, as compared to giving them ready-made solutions to implement.

Programmatic researches, classroom researches, action researches and theoretical researches for gaining learning from the large pool of the educational literature, constitute the core areas of the work for our research and development department. The department works on theorizing the practice through research and also engages in practicing as per the existing researches and studies. External researchers and organizations have been engaged in the past and are engaged regularly to gain insights into the impact of the programme, bottlenecks, and areas of strengthening.

The research fellows working on the departments that correspond to main education core-areas like Language, Math, Arts, Physical education, ECCE, etc work more on subject-based researches and researches for gaining insights into teaching-learning of these areas. The programmatic fellows mainly support in programme conceptualization and implementation while sharing research insights through the macro lens.

Present a research-based intervention for developing a robust strategy and package at secondary level is being done in partnership with department of education and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.