Abstract
In Latin America, intercultural education aims to acknowledge the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of its citizens, and to advance the efforts to dismantle the oppression of such diversity, particularly that of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. While discussions of intercultural education often reference such peoples as their target beneficiaries, too few studies addressing the professional development of teachers recognize the importance of Indigenous scholarship, pedagogies and methodologies themselves as resources for the advancement of the theory and practice of intercultural education. This article engages in theoretical reflection in order to highlight well-documented Indigenous methodologies for teaching and learning, and their implications for professional development for enriched intercultural education. The authors emphasize the need for greater attention to the work and scholarship of intercultural and Indigenous university graduates to lead the way in the development of intercultural education professionals.
Highlights
Despite the stubborn persistence of deficit perspectives in educational theory and practice, experience and research extending back many years has shown that curricula and pedagogies that sustain students’ home languages, and that recognize and are relevant to their communities’ ways of life are essential elements of quality education, for marginalized students [1,2,3]
Thanks in large part to the Indigenous rights movement and advocacy by Indigenous leaders, in Latin America intercultural bilingual education is increasingly an arena in which the struggle to recognize the pluricultural nature of our societies, and to protect the rights of children and youth to culturally and linguistically relevant and sustaining education is being played out [4]
As the discourse of interculturalism and government and institutional policies supporting EIB expand in scope and reach across the region, and more hope is placed in intercultural programs to promote and foster human rights and Indigenous self-determination, the opportunity increases to evaluate and learn from the ways in which EIB is being translated from policy into practice
Summary
Despite the stubborn persistence of deficit perspectives in educational theory and practice, experience and research extending back many years has shown that curricula and pedagogies that sustain students’ home languages, and that recognize and are relevant to their communities’ ways of life are essential elements of quality education, for marginalized students [1,2,3]. This article discusses the need to improve the implementation of EIB policy through teachers’ professional development and higher education programs that center the knowledge of Indigenous teachers and their communities. The graduates of such programs themselves are producing research and scholarship that incorporate social sciences, educational theory, and essential knowledge of local contexts, methodologies and proposals As yet, their contributions have mostly been overlooked and under-cited in the broader scholarly conversation around the improvement of intercultural pedagogy, in English-language publications. The examples we highlight demonstrate the need for greater attention to the work and scholarship of intercultural and Indigenous university graduates in order to foster dialogic community engagement as teachers, and to lead the way in professional development and pedagogy.
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