Peers, teachers and coping strategies of Dalit students in higher education: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT

This article presents a qualitative study concerning the experience of three pre-service Dalit teacher trainees with their upper caste classmates, programme instructors and coping strategies adopted by them to counter social and academic challenges at a well-known public university in India. Data for the study were collected through interviews with the Dalit and upper caste trainees and three programme instructors and observation of classes. Although no evidence was found to indicate any caste-based discrimination by the upper caste classmates and instructors, it was evident that the instructors were not empathetic towards the academic needs of the Dalit trainees. The trainees had individual coping strategies which included obtaining help from their upper caste classmates, maintaining self-motivation and staying away from people around them.

KEYWORDS:

• Dalit
• India
• higher education
• discrimination
• coping strategies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Santosh Mahapatra teaches academic language skills and guides research at BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus. His research interests include teacher education, language assessment, critical pedagogy and English for academic purposes.