Intercultural Bilingual Education and Indigenous Knowledge: Ethnography in Indigenous Contexts in Chile, Ecuador, and Guatemala

• In Event: Culturally Relevant Instruction in Indigenous Contexts: New Sites of Meaning

Abstract

Since the "Indigenous Emergence" of 1990s, Latin America has seen important revitalizations of its indigenous movements proposing political agendas with transformational demands to face current socio-political, intercultural, linguistic and educational practices.
Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE), proposed as a transformative pedagogy for cultural and linguistic recovery and identity construction for indigenous youth, is adding Indigenous Knowledge (IK) as a key curricular component for its sustainability.
Nevertheless, IBE discourses also remain complex, as their advancement at the theoretical level, seem not always to translate into practical and sustainable programs in schools.
This paper, a comparative ethnography, intends to look into the complexities and particularities of current developments and challenges of IBE programs in indigenous contexts in Chile, Ecuador and Guatemala.

Author

• Patricio R. Ortiz, Utah State University