A school challenge in Colombia indigenous communities.

Please join the Imaginative Education Research Group in welcoming Alexandra Henao-Castrillón who is an Associate researcher of DIVERSER Research Group (in Pedagogy and Cultural Diversity) and a graduate student in the Faculty of Education, Universidad de Antioquia, Colombia. Alexandra is here during a four month international scholarship under the Government of Canada International Scholarship Programs - Graduate Students' Exchange Program.

Abstract:

After a five-century long process of colonization, the school remains in many indigenous communities as the most significant agent of colonization, erasing and replacing the “savage” indigenous culture with the European “cultivated” one. The school has successfully acquired the appearance of a natural part of indigenous life, substituting even their own ancient traditions of community education with a process involving rooms, teachers, students, evaluation, and so on. The Indigenous Organization of Antioquia (IOA) and the indigenous movement of this region of the country have realized the school’s impact on separating educational processes from the life of the community, and have therefore planned the strategy to use the school to strengthen culturally their indigenous peoples, reconnecting learning with life. But, in that case, how could we decolonize the school to create collaboratively a community-based intercultural learning environment? How could this learning environment empower communities to challenge and transform their realities? This is an IOA and University of Antioquia challenge with two current indigenous teacher training programs in Antioquia, Colombia.