Claiming the right of differential education: the role of the community teacher

Abstract

This paper reports some of the findings of an ethnographic study about the educational practices of the Secondary Community Schools as an alternative school project in the indigenous context of Oaxaca, Mexico. It focuses on the relevance of the role adopted by teachers as they mediate differential learning processes and promote the local appropriation of the project. The school project claims the Indigenous Peoples’ right to create their own educational systems, and questions traditional school forms as well as the processes of historic acculturation, assimilation and exclusion of the indigenous peoples through governmental education policy. Through the implementation of research projects as learning strategies, the project pretends to foster the recognition of indigenous epistemologies and to create relevant and situated learning processes, promoting the participation of local actors and the dialogue with their knowledges, as well as the exploration of science and different cultural spaces. The project’s teachers become intermediaries and agents of a differential education proposal, being confronted with the need of redefining their own ethnic and professional identities. Furthermore, they get to take position as ethnopolitical actors in defense of Indigenous Peoples’ educational rights.