Abstract
In Chile, there are currently intercultural educational policies; national curricula that assume updated research development including investigational advances in reading and opportunities for improvement of teacher training. However, in La Araucania Region predominates for lagging behind in reading and it is necessary to explain this tendency beyond poverty and rural conditions of the region. In this context, the aim of this article is to understand the practices for the teaching of reading carried out by primary school teachers in rural schools in a Mapuche intercultural context, and their relationship with and between the pedagogical conceptions that underlie these teaching practices. This is a qualitative study, framed in educational investigation. Sixteen teachers were selected intentionally, 6 men and 10 women, 75% of them from Mapuche ancestry. In order to collect information, reading classes were observed using ethnographic records and the application of two Likert scale questionnaires on conceptions of teaching, learning and reading. The results show that most educators teach reading in a decontextualized manner, from the textbook of the student, with the teacher’s role and focus on decoding texts. The study also shows consistency between the teachers’ conceptions of learning and reading. A high percentage of these conceptions are traditional ones that lie beneath the teaching of reading. However, the study highlights that there are very little findings of reading practices that relate to the Mapuche context in which the students are situated.
Highlights
Nowadays, Chilean society is involved in an extensive debate about the need of a high quality inclusive education that can narrow the wide social gap in this country
The results indicate that most teachers of the study assume the learning process as a memorising, repetitive process which is teacher centred, and where the student plays a passive role in the construction of meaning of the read text, concentrating the reading process in a mechanic exercise that is part of a restricted vision of the reading process (Pearson & Stephens, 1994)
The teacher practices account for resisting reference frameworks that need to be modified as they affect the quality of the teaching reading process and the possibility of an intercultural pedagogy that could allow a dialogue between the school knowledge and the Mapuche culture knowledge and overcome the restrictive vision of the intercultural education
Summary
Chilean society is involved in an extensive debate about the need of a high quality inclusive education that can narrow the wide social gap in this country. Attention to diversity is essential from an intercultural approach that ensures all students learn out of respect for people, their differences, their knowledge and their cultural customs. According to the 2002 census of the National Statistics Institute (INE, 2005) approximately 5% of the Chilean population belongs to ethnic groups, most of whom belong to the Mapuche culture (87.34%), and 33% of these reside in La Araucania Region. The region has the highest rates of poverty and unemployment in the country. According to INE poverty reaches 22.9%, above the 14.4% average registered in the country. Between 80% and 100% of children attending rural schools located in the Mapuche communities of the Araucania Region are living invulnerable economic conditions (Williamson, 2004)
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