ELI Eklavya Publications

The Early Literacy Initiative (ELI) a three-year (2016-19) project anchored by the Azim Premji School of Education at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad was envisioned with a view to address the need for building awareness and knowledge related to early language and literacy in India. The initiative was funded by the Tata Trusts.

ELI undertook two kinds of print-based initiatives to address the need for disseminating knowledge in a usable form for practitioners – the creation and distribution of resource books and practitioner briefs.

Resource Books. The ELI resource books are a compilation of 45 original blog pieces and approximately 150 annotations spread across five themes on early literacy. These five themes were identified as centrally relevant to the domain of early language and literacy in India. We invited blog pieces related to each theme from a variety of stakeholders working in the domain—from practitioners to academics. Care was taken to address various aspects of each theme through the invited pieces. While putting together the themes, the ELI team created brief annotated bibliographies for each. Talks, presentations, essays and opinion pieces by ELI team members related to each theme were also collected. 
Practitioner Briefs. ELI’s practitioner briefs are a collection of “how-tos” for people working in the field. The briefs draw upon theoretical perspectives to help practitioners to imagine relevant practices in classrooms. A total of 21 briefs are compiled into seven thematic booklets. Each thematic booklet consists of a set of three to four briefs.