This paper presents a case study of science teaching in an eighth grade school classroom in India. It comes out of a larger
ethnographic study done in 2005 that looked at how science was taught and learned in a rural government run middle school
in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India. Subscribing to a sociocultural perspective, the paper presents a narrative account
of how a science teacher negotiated and made use of the existing discourses that influenced his teaching practice to construct
learning experiences for his students. It is a portrait of him as a bricoleur, engaged in making-do with what is of available
to conform to prescriptive discursive norms as well as engage in situated, contingent and collaborative pedagogical improvisations
with his students. Through a discursive analysis of Mr. Raghuvanshi’s teaching practice, this paper presents his bricolage
as a feature of everyday sociocultural practices, and as an instance of glocalization of decontextualized school science discourse.
It also offers a case for creation and strengthening of material conditions that support enactment of teacher agency for construction
of meaningful and relevant learning experiences for students.
Keywords Science teaching - Ethnography - Bricoleur - India