This volume captures the essence of schooling in a structural manner and explores the classroom life in the larger schooling context. The emphasis is to uncover the necessary framework of classroom that is significant to understand the place of textbooks in the Indian school education system. By the use of ethnographic vignettes, it brings out the multiple patterns of teacher- student's interactions as they occur in different textbook-based situations. Through this, it sheds light on the primacy of the textbook approach in the classroom processes.

The book also investigates the ways through which the students respond to the different pedagogic situations. In doing so, it explores the notions of student boredom, alienation, inclusion and exclusion, and the array of student-textbook experiences that are pivotal to the shape and reshape the classroom processes in the larger pedagogical discourses.

This book will be of interest to researchers, students, and teachers of education studies, sociology and politics of education, teacher education, childhood and youth studies, and urban studies. It will also be useful for education policymakers, and professionals in the development sector.