Abstract:

Students coming from under-served homes and studying in schools serving populations at the bottom of the pyramid typically do not learn the critical soft skills, knowledge and behaviors that might enable them to confidently move beyond the environments that they are born into. Critical skills that are not always related to academics, but essential for upward socio-economic mobility; skills that are unconsciously picked up at home and in communities by their more affluent peers. Without these skills, under-served children encounter a huge social chasm as they try and integrate into a world of opportunities once they graduate.

This paper presents findings from a project that attempts to use the sociological concept of the `Third Space’ to address this lacuna. The impoverished homes from which these children come, which are their 1st space, are incapable of providing those critical soft skills that they need. Similarly, the schools which such under-served children attend, and which comprise their 2nd space, provide them with academics of varying quality and little else. Thus, the 3rd space, defined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg as `a place that is outside home (first space) and school (second space) ….neutral places with few formal obligations’ offers possibilities for teaching underserved children the critical life-skills that they cannot learn anywhere else.

The authors believe that 3rd spaces present an innovative way to solving this problem. Spaces outside school hours, managed by instructors who are not school employees, and using methods that are fun and interactive represent a viable and sustainable option for teaching critical skills to children who would otherwise not learn them at all; in a way that is enjoyable and easily sustainable in under-resourced schools.

This paper will present findings from an exploratory project implemented at the 4 K-12 schools run by the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a Bangalore based non-profit. The schools are completely free catering to about 1500 children coming from 105 slums in the city. Initial data from the study clearly indicates that critical skills not taught in schools due to scarcity of resources, and because they are not even recognized as being critical, can be taught effectively using the Third Space model – more effectively even than if they were taught in the traditional setting of the school. Moreover, with an increasing availability and quality of distance education tools, engaging multimedia content and the ubiquity of mobile phones, distance and physical presence are no longer constraints. The authors hope that the paper will help build a model which can be replicated in schools everywhere that cater to children from BOP homes. The model aims at building awareness of the criticality of these skills, teaching them without straining the infrastructure and teachers at poor and under-resourced public schools, while ensuring that students enjoy the process and come back to these sessions on their own.

Keywords:

Third space, Parikrma, critical soft skills, under-served populations.