Theorizing Settler Colonialism in Teacher Education in Intercultural Education

• In Event: 29.023 - (De)Colonial Research: Space, Place, Memory, and Bodies in Un"settling" Narratives of Educational Opportunity

Abstract

Initial teacher education programs are considered important spaces for preparing teachers to engage in multicultural and social justice education (Sleeter, 2005). In Chile the Ministry of Education created an intercultural program to ensure culturally relevant education for indigenous students in 1996. Despite the creation of this program and previous research (Alvarado, 2016; De la Maza, 2008) that shows the need to prepare teachers to work in intercultural schools, there are few initial teacher education programs that offer preparation in intercultural education and only two university-based programs recognized by the state. More than half of these programs are located in the south of Chile where a large Mapuche population resides and where an ongoing struggle exists for land and rights between the Mapuche, the state, and forestry companies This conflict has lead to many Mapuche currently incarcerated as terrorists. Previous research on teacher education in intercultural education does not examine how this conflict relates specifically to initial teacher education programs (Becerra, Lira, and Mayo, forthcoming). In this paper I consider the role of the Mapuche conflict in these programs and ask how intercultural teacher education programs address curricular questions around whose knowledge and memory counts in these programs considering the legal constructions of who is considered a terrorist, and state formation discourses on land/place.

I use Miller's (2010) poststructuralist approach to curriculum to understand the conditions that make possible the construction of knowledge in teacher education programs. To understand these conditions I build on Tuck and Yang's (2012) conceptualization of settler colonialism to complicate questions around land/place, and Gordon’s (2008) concept of haunting as an analytical tool to make sense of the violence around indigeneity in the south of Chile.

I conducted a textual ethnography (Ahmed, 2012) around concepts of land/place and intercultural education in initial teacher education institutions. I interviewed administrative staff, students, and academics in intercultural teacher education programs and analyzed legal and policy documents that frame Mapuche conflicts over land.

The initial findings of this textual ethnography show varied understandings of the word intercultural in the different participants in intercultural teacher educations programs and sharp contrasts and discussion across institutions. Participants in all institutions recognize tensions inherent in addressing the Mapuche conflict within university settings that in many cases has resulted in erasing spaces for conflict. Though these are very initial results these findings complicate previous research that does not recognize the significance of the Mapuche conflict in teacher education programs. I argue that the Mapuche conflict is an unspoken frame that permeates the curriculum of teacher education while remaining mostly unrecognized and untheorized. These findings complicate larger discourses on initial teacher education that do not consider current manifestations of colonial roots that remain invisible but present as hauntings in the way we think about unequal education opportunities.

Author

• Andrea Lira, Teachers College, Columbia University