About Us

What we do

Aaina builds easily accessible, research-based resources that communicate critical perspectives on education to students, educators as well as audiences not currently involved with educational institutions. These resources are shared on a weekly basis on our primary social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook. Our posts cover a variety of topics like curriculum, pedagogy, funding, modes of assessment, structural hierarchies, social relationships, and emotions in educational spaces. In thinking about these issues, we centre the pervasive issue of inequality and the need for the privileged to be self-critical about their histories and practices.

More recently, we have begun conducting workshops/interactive sessions with students and teachers in colleges and universities, to think through different questions of educational inequality and how we can both practically and politically respond to them.

What we do

Our process

Our method is highly collaborative: once a theme is introduced, we suggest research material, sharpen our message through conversations and disagreements within the team, and then visualise and edit the post. We aim for as much lucidity as possible, editing out unnecessary disciplinary or theoretical jargon and paying attention to how issues are emotionally experienced. It has been important to us to not only depict social and political reality, but also to model honest, vulnerable conversations that may not be happening around us, through our comics. We're invested in building the imagination for, and initiating, such conversations between teachers, students, researchers, administrators, parents, and everyone concerned with the question of education. If a post feels lacking, it is shelved until the team can return to it with fresh insight.

In our posts, the first slide usually sets the premise, and subsequent slides develop or complicate the issue. On the last slide, we offer a simple, concise explanation of the theme, along with some recommendations. We cite readings and additional resources under each post, for people interested. We often create posts in conversation with individuals and organisations who reach out to us to suggest topics.

If you'd like to work on a post with us or suggest topics, please DM us on Instagram or write to us on aaina.edu@gmail.com.