Search results

Working in schools as learning communities (ECA) is an effective way to make visible the articulating axes of critical interculturality and inclusion proposed in the latest Mexican Education Reform of 2022. This chapter presents an experience in a teacher training college in the south of Mexico that has begun to work as ECAs and which, despite its incipient efforts, shows how it is possible to problematise the relations of inclusion/exclusion through the collaborative learning of the students and the active listening of the teacher.

This chapter presents a compilation of the historical approach towards inclusive education in the Plurinational State of Bolivia. It describes the regulatory framework, the evolution and status of inclusive education in Bolivia. Consideration is given to legal implications and research that highlights inclusion in practice. A brief case study is provided of how a high school manages inclusion. While the substantial focus in Bolivia has been on the inclusion of indigenous peoples to address prior discrimination and exclusion, limited attention has been given to the inclusion of learners with disability and other special educational needs. The discussion focuses on future directions that need to address more equitable approaches for all learners.

This chapter presents an overview of the main structural challenges facing the Latin American region, as well as the characteristics of its education systems, to provide a contextual framework for the theme of this book, intercultural and inclusive education.

From a critical and decolonial perspective, a comparative analysis is made of the intercultural and inclusive education policies implemented in Mexico and Brazil during the 20th century and the first two decades of the 21st century. We observe the tendency to generate integrationist, ethnocidal, linguistic and epistemicidal educational policies, programmes and actions, generated from modern-colonial Eurocentric approaches aimed at the political, sociocultural and linguistic homogenisation of the national population. These contrast with the initiatives generated by indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, organisations and movements which, from counter-hegemonic conceptions, are aimed at promoting autonomy and the valuation of their own ontologies, epistemologies and educations.

Currently, schools are not born inclusive, and teachers report feeling that this approach is alien to their practical possibilities, so they constantly ask for training on the subject. However, this training is hardly transferred to the school. This chapter has therefore set out to analyse how training bodies in Costa Rica are doing, and how much of this effort is permeating the educational culture. The methodologies applied were studied, as well as the background of good practices, with the final intention of guiding more effective training to make inclusion a sine qua non condition of being a school.

The creation of intercultural education in the Quechua and Mapuche contexts, in Peru and Chile respectively, marks a milestone in the institutionalisation of equity-oriented state policies that deserves attention given the serious inequalities that still persist in these societies. In this chapter, we analyse ethnographic studies of intercultural knowledge and practices inside and outside the classroom and interpret them as catalysts for equity in education. The findings of the analysis point to the centrality of Indigenous actors as transformative agents inside and outside the classroom and the urgency of restructuring not only education but also society towards equity.

Teachers’ explanations of scientific concepts to students are essential to science teaching. While there is potential for such explanations to perpetuate societal advantage, we argue that explanation in science education can be an emancipatory practice when considering the needs, aspirations, life experiences and background knowledge of teachers’ diverse groups of students. Considering that explaining science is usually implemented as a hierarchical discourse, the purpose is to inform science education in Latin America towards teaching practices that can promote a dialogical approach to distribute the power of knowledge in the classroom. This chapter discusses research on teacher education conducted in science classrooms, focusing on how explanations in science education can offer opportunities for enhancing educational equity and access to the languages of the sciences.

Developed collaboratively by the Caldas Coffee Growers’ Committee, the Government of Caldas, university institutions, government agencies and public and private companies, the Rural Education with New School Model is a pedagogical proposal that has brought formal education from pre-school to higher education to rural inhabitants of the department of Caldas, Colombia. The model aims to be flexible and adaptable to the circumstances of children, adolescents and young people in this region of the Eje Cafetero, stimulating the construction of life projects that facilitate and promote their permanence in rural territories. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the scope and limitations of the Escuela Nueva (EN) Rural Education Model in Caldas by describing the general characteristics of the EN, identifying particularities of its implementation and examining the testimonies of graduates of the University in the field. The primary information that feeds the study comes from interviews with young people in various rural localities in the Department of Caldas. The results of the study analyse the possibilities for educational inclusion that the Universidad en el Campo has opened up for young people, as well as the achievements and challenges faced by this model, which has sought to be replicated in other Colombian departments and even in other countries. This chapter’s findings highlight the importance of examining educational experiences developed at the departmental level and the fact that the Rural Education with New School Model offers continuity from pre-school to university level to rural children, adolescents and young people, following certain pedagogical principles. This is uncommon in urban and rural regions of Latin America.