I

Chapter 1: Research background

1.1 Introducing the motivations of the researcher and other research in the field

During the last three decades indigenous people from different parts of the world have questioned the assimilationist agenda of school education and negotiated new forms of schooling aimed to respond to a long history of colonisation and subjugation. Their educational agendas have been framed on the affirmation of their collective rights. Moreover, they have seen formal education as a key arena for the assertion of their identity, and the revitalisation of their culture and language, as May (1999a) and Aikman (1999) explain. During the past two decades intercultural bilingual education (IBE) has been increasingly accepted and is now part of the educational legislation of several countries, which have also formally acknowledged the adoption of intercultural education for all. However, IBE has become an umbrella term for different projects with diverse social, political and educational aims as highlighted by Walsh (2002), Tubino and Zariquiey (2005) and Aikman (1999). Thus, IBE does not necessarily respond to indigenous peoples social and political needs and demands.

There is a growing awareness that even IBE programmmes framed on the principle of indigenous self-determination, that have made important efforts to introduce indigenous knowledge and values in school curricula, share some limitations regarding their approach to the production and transmission of knowledge, which weaken their possibilities of becoming sites of empowerment for subalternised and marginalised people. This research explores this issue through the analysis of the practice of two graduates from the Teacher Training Programme of the Peruvian Amazon (FORMABIAP) that the Loreto State Teacher Training College of Iquitos (ISPL) and the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (AIDESEP), have developed since 1988.

The question of whose knowledge is taught in school, and its relation with homogenisation and assimilation policies, has interested me since the early 1970s, as I have explained in a unit assignment (Trapnell 2002). I was confronted with this issue, while working on my thesis as an Anthropology student in an Ashaninka community in the Peruvian Amazon basin. Community authorities asked me to help them out with everyday work in their primary school, in exchange for their hospitality and kind assistance in my research project. My involvement in school life made me aware that the Ashaninka teacher with whom I worked ignored or outwardly rejected his peoples knowledge. He justified this practice by appealing to civilisatory goals. During prolonged conversations with him, I learned that he paid no heed to the fact that his students could not understand what he was teaching them. I also noticed that he was not concerned by the negative effect that schooling had on his students self-esteem and identity. He constantly justified his work by appealing to modernity and development. I would find this same attitude and practice in other Ashaninka teachers, whose schools I visited throughout that decade and the early 1980s.

This experience led me to study education. In 1984, I was invited to participate in the design of the FORMABIAP teacher training programme for indigenous Amazonian teachers. FORMABIAP aimed to develop teacher training from an intercultural approach that would incorporate indigenous knowledge and values in formal education. At that time, indigenous education was bilingual and aimed to translate academic content into indigenous languages and to develop linguistic skills in Spanish as Pozzi Escot (1990a) observes.

Brief one or two-day assessment visits to Ashaninka schools made me aware that teachers trained by FORMABIAP gave little attention to indigenous knowledge in the development of their classes. In many cases, they only used it as a referent for the introduction of western scientific knowledge. Conversations with my colleagues indicated that this did not only happen with Ashaninka teachers. This confirmation made me ask myself what was happening and what could be done to change this situation, which marginalised indigenous peoples knowledge. With this motivation in mind, I decided to develop a critical action research process with two FORMABIAP graduates. It would focus on the way in which they include their peoples knowledge in their curriculum planning processes and in the development of their classes.

Few studies in Peru and other countries of the Andean Region have dealt with the way in which teachers approach intercultural education in their everyday school practice. The research on indigenous primary schools such as that developed by Hornberger (1989) and Lpez (1998) has focused on the use of language. Moreover, available literature describes ongoing programmes. The only systematisations of IBE programmes that have reached their completion stage are those produced by Lopez et al (1987) and Ziga (1989). In recent years, various thesis of the Masters Programme in IBE developed by the Andean Intercultural Bilingual Programme (PROEIB Andes) have focused on themes related to intercultural education. However, most of them have aimed to identify local learning styles and contents related to specific realms of culture (such as medical practices), which can be included in formal schooling. Examples of this can be found in Castillo Collado (2005), Cartes (2001), Uscamayta Guzman (2004) and Taish (2001). Castillo Espinozas (2004) thesis is the only one that focuses on teachers approach to the local culture in their curriculum decision-making procedures.

Various studies exist about teachers perceptions regarding interculturalism and intercultural education. Guzman (2002) describes the approach of six Andean teachers to intercultural education and the influence that their life stories had on it. Heise (2001) and Bulnes (2000) present teachers conceptions about interculturalism and intercultural education, without further examination of their content. Tubino and Zariquiey (2005) include teachers approaches to both concepts, as part of a more general study that interrogates how different social actors understand them. Finally, Hornberger (2000) offers a thoughtful study of the way in which the tensions between assimilationism and pluralism are approached in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia. By focusing on the analysis of current policy in each country and examining short narratives written by intercultural education practitioners asked to depict an intercultural experience in an educational setting, this author presents important insights on how the conceptions of intercultural education and interculturalism have evolved. However, most of the collected narratives focus on language and communication practices (writing, poetry, stories, drama and song). Therefore, the study offers little evidence about the way in which teachers approach the construction of knowledge from an intercultural perspective in other school areas or disciplines.

My explicit goal when developing this research was to uncover intercultural power relations and the way in which they express themselves in school curricula and practice. My twenty years of experience working as an educator with Amazonian indigenous people has led me to believe it is essential to confront the obstacles that IBE faces in its everyday implementation. I am convinced that as long as studies about intercultural education only approach the conceptual discoursive level, and do not discuss what is happening in schools, we shall not be able to propose changes that will lead to more equal power relations. In other words, it is not enough to affirm that indigenous knowledge should be included in schools; the important questions are how can it be included and why.

1.2 Structure of the dissertation

This dissertation contains five chapters:

1. Research background - describes the purpose of the study and the reasons why I developed it. It offers an overview of previous research in this field, as well as information regarding the general educational background and the particular context in which the research was developed.

2. Research design - presents the questions that guided the research, the theoretical background on which it was based and the reasons why action research was chosen as a research methodology. It reflects on ethical dilemmas and rigour issues and describes the data collection and data analysis processes.

3. The action research cycles - offers an overall account of the cycles that structured the action research process. It also anticipates some issues that are discussed in detail in chapter four.

4. Findings and discussion contains the principal findings that emerge from this study in relation to my two research questions and confronts them with current discussion about some of the issues that they bring to light.

5. Conclusions and reflections - offers a synthetic account of the overall research process and evaluates its design and impact. Drawing from its findings, it identifies some issues that require more research and offers some recommendations, which can help intercultural bilingual education programmes in their quest to become sites of empowerment for subalternised and marginalised people.

1.3 Initial approaches and development of intercultural education in Per

The concept of intercultural education was first used in Peru during the 1980s in the context of small experimental indigenous education programmes. It was then conceived as an alternative to bilingual education aimed to translate school academic contents to indigenous languages. Nowadays, the discourse about interculturalism transcends the indigenous and educational domains and different interpretations exist about its meaning and scope as Walsh (2002), and Tubino and Zariquiey (2005) explain. Its most widespread approach has focused on cultural diversity and on the idea that more information about the others and better communication practices can help overcome conflicts. However, there is a growing awareness of the need for a critical perspective that takes into account the social, economic and political conditions in which intercultural relations are developed. Its adherents believe that:

The dialogue between cultures must be from the beginning a dialogue about the economic, politic, military and other factors that condition the honest interchange between human cultures () in order to avoid the risk of falling into the ideology of a decontextualised dialogue that would only favour the interest of a dominant civilization, in so far as it does not consider the asymmetry of power that rules in the world (Fornet Betancourt 2000 p12, my translation ).

The Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), an American religious-based organization, introduced bilingual education in Perus indigenous communities during the mid-1950s. SIL trained Perus first generation of primary school bilingual teachers and produced the material that they would use in their schools as Stoll (1985) explains in detail. SILs monopoly over indigenous education in Peru ended during the mid-1970s, when a few national institutions and some technical cooperation international agencies introduced IBE programmes in some specific areas in the Amazon and Andean regions.

The first IBE teacher training programmes for primary school education in Peru were started during the early 1980s by a national university based in Iquitos and four state teacher training colleges, at a time when Peruvian teachers were all trained with a subject-based curriculum, which overlooked Perus cultural and linguistic diversity and only considered teaching in and about Spanish. Two of these state colleges were based in the Amazon (Iquitos and Yarinacocha) and the others in the Southern Andes (Urubamba and Puno), as Trapnell (2003a) explains. At present 15 state teacher training colleges are engaged in IBE. Most of them work with adaptations of the national teacher training curriculum.

1.4 FORMABIAPs approach to intercultural education

FORMABIAP acknowledged indigenous leaders claims for a new type of education that would include indigenous and western scientific knowledge. FORMABIAP believed that indigenous peoples right to self-determination could be empowered by the design of new forms of school education based on the continuation of their socialisation processes. It has therefore concentrated its efforts on training a new generation of teachers who would change an institution devoted to civilisation and assimilation, to one that should promote respect for cultural diversity and help indigenous people overcome the shame and insecurity produced by a long history of colonisation and discrimination.FORMABIAP took advantage of its experimental condition and introduced substantial changes in the official teacher training curriculum structure, profile, objectives and contents as Trapnell (2003a) explains in more detail.

FORMABIAP based its approach to the production and transmission of knowledge on the articulation of indigenous and western scientific knowledge. In practical terms, this meant that teachers and students would approach different issues from indigenous and western scientific perspectives. In the same line as other IBE programmes in Peru and the Andean region, FORMABIAP considered indigenous knowledge as a starting point of a process that should be enriched with the contribution of western scientific knowledge. Even so, this was an innovative strategy at the time, as far as it made indigenous knowledge visible in formal educational sites.

FORMABIAP believed that one of the most sensible issues for indigenous peoples was their awareness of a significant technical difference between the instruments produced in their societies and those manufactured by modern technology. FORMABIAP assumed that if students became aware of the similarities between both types of knowledge, they would value the technological contributions developed by their people. It believed that this discovery would boost their security and confidence. Based on this supposition, its curriculum gave particular importance to the analysis of the way in which technical instruments (bows and arrows, blowguns, traps and snares, among others) are used and to explicit the scientific knowledge implicit in their design and functioning.

The analysis of instruments paved the way for the study of other more complex technical processes, which formed part of different indigenous practices. For example, a class devoted to the analysis of the man made ecosystem burnt plot, produced during the development of slash and burn agriculture, would consider the study of its general topography; the identification of the elements of its inner and outer areas, and the analysis of the relations among them. Students would give particular attention to the burning process and to the sun and the rains impact over the recicling of nutrients. They would finally analyse the microenvironments where indigenous people sow each seed, as part of the sowing strategy developed by their society. FORMABIAP teachers identified these elements as part of the ones that indigenous peoples take into account during the sowing process. They identified their implicit features with the help of their students and related them with the scientific interpretations developed by ecologists.

FORMABIAP designed a Diversified Curriculum for Primary School Education in Amazonian Indigenous Communities (ISPL-AIDESEP 1998), which introduced some important changes in the profile, objectives and contents of the official curriculum.

In order to link school education to indigenous peoples physical and cultural environment, FORMABIAP enriched the primary school official curriculum with programmes based on the social and productive activities that indigenous peoples develop. It thus organised in tables, indigenous knowledge related to the implementation of activities such as farming, hunting, fishing, recollecting, knitting, and preparing different types of artefacts.Specific contents associated to indigenous and academic school knowledge linked with the implementation of each productive activity were included under each one of the concepts or variables included in tables, such as those presented in table 1.1. FORMABIAP selected them in accordance with the educational needs of each school grade, as defined in the official curriculum (see Appendix 1).

Table 1.1. Activity Programmes conceptual matrix. FORMABIAP diversified curriculum

Natural Resources/ObjectsEnvironmentTechniqueSocial End / Social Organization

Species

Classification

Systems

Ecosystem

Habitat

Food chains

Weather and biological cyclesDevelopment of the activity

Cooperation

Territorial management

Type of activity and transformation processes which it involves.Well being

Social events

Market

Indigenous peoples and territory

FORMABIAP also prepared some reading material in Ashaninka and some printed cards for the development of the Person and Society (PS) and Science and Environment (SE) areas, which included indigenous peoples and school-based academic knowledge.

1.5 Context of the research

Ashaninka people with an overall population of approximately 60,000 are the largest Amazonian indigenous people in Peru. Ashaninka territory extends along eight different valleys in Perus central Amazon, with significant differences regarding their degree of contact with encroaching society and their relation with market economy. This study was developed in communities of the Perene and Pichis valley.

During the last 60 years, the Perene valley has been under the intense colonisation of Andean settlers. This has led to the fragmentation and isolation of Ashaninka communities and has contributed to massive deforestation practices. In contrast, Ashaninkas from the Pichis valley still have control over the majority of its land and resources, due to the opportune development of a land-titling programme implemented during the 1970s, when lack of transport facilities towards this area limited the entry of colonisers. However, this situation has changed during the last twenty years. The number of migrants has increased and so has indigenous peoples dependency to market economy with its consequent effects on the environment. Lumber extraction activities have also incremented dramatically.

In overall terms, the social and political context of the Pichis valley is more favourable for the development of IBE than that of the Perene due to the negative impact that Andean colonisation has had on Ashaninka peoples identity and language. It is worth noting that during the late 1980s Ashaninka communities rejected IBE programmes, since they considered that they were for their traditional fellowmen who lived far apart from the highways. This attitude has changed during the past twenty years and 35% of schools in Ashaninka communities of the Perene valley are officially considered bilingual. These schools usually have one, or, exceptionally, two teachers working in them. In contrast, 70% of the schools in the Pichis are bilingual and most of their teaching staff is Ashaninka.

The research was developed in two communities. They will be called Puerto Elvira and Santa Elena in order to protect teachers anonymity. Puerto Elvira, with its 3970 hectares and 350 persons, is one of the largest communities in the Perene region. It is located in the left margin of the lower Perene valley, an area where Ashaninka communities enjoy an exceptional situation, since they are less encroached by Andean colonists than in the upper Perene. Puerto Elvira is located at an hour by car distance from the nearest mestizo towns of Satipo and Pichanaki. Santa Elena is a small annex of a larger community situated in one of the upper tributaries of the Pichis river, at 5 hours by a small 6HP motor from the mestizo town of Puerto Bermudez, and one hour on foot from a small recently opened inroad that runs parallel to the river. Santa Elena has approximately 1000 hectares and a total population of 100.

Both communities have a semi-dispersed residential pattern, whereby a few families live around the central square where the school and the community stadium is situated, as well as the health post and a small shop in the case of Puerto Elvira. The majority of families live near their farms. Some children from Puerto Elvira walk almost an hour to school; in Santa Elena, the furthest houses are located at a 20 minutes walk.

Farming is the basic activity of both communities. The sale of plantains (Puerto Elvira) and achiote (Bixa Orellana) (Santa Elena) provide each household most of its monetary income. They usually supplement it with agricultural work for nearby colonists. The bulk of the diet consists of agricultural products, complemented with some fish, birds or small animals, or rice, tinned tuna fish or spaghetti, when money is available. Most households keep a few chickens and ducks to sell or to eat on special occasions. In Puerto Elvira there is an incipient social and economic stratification evidenced by the existence of community members with access to rented work.

Schools were created in Puerto Elvira in the early 1970s and in Santa Elena in the late 1980s. Puerto Elvira has two Ashaninka teachers that support 84 Ashaninka students, while Santa Elena only has one for 39. The presence of an Ashaninka teacher is a relatively new experience for this community. Andean teachers worked there since its creation 20 years ago. This was the second year that Santa Elena had a bilingual teacher and this was due to the intervention of the Ministry of Education local bilingual specialist. In both schools, all the students have Ashaninka as their mother tongue. Their skills in Spanish are quite heterogeneous and largely depend on their possibilities of relating with Spanish speaking persons outside the community. However, in general terms, Puerto Elvira students have a better knowledge of oral and written Spanish than those of Santa Elena.

The Santa Elena and Puerto Elvira schools form part of a larger network, which comprises the district, regional and national educational system. Teachers report to the district educational authorities, whose specialists assess and supervise their work. The Ministry of Education has promoted the creation of teacher learning communities. However, their concrete operation depends on teachers interest and will. Puerto Elvira formed part of the Kamarampi Ashaninka teacher learning community that had regular meetings every month. During these, teachers planned their monthly project and evaluated their work. They also designed exams to evaluate literacy and numeracy skills and organised their implementation. The Santa Elena School was part of a teacher learning community that was inoperative throughout the whole year.

Chapter 2: Research design

Between August and December 2006, I engaged in an action research process with two graduates from the FORMABIAP intercultural bilingual education (IBE) teacher training programme. Two fundamental questions structured the research:

a. How do teachers conceptualise interculturalism and intercultural education?

b. How did teachers incorporate indigenous knowledge in their everyday schoolwork and what obstacles did they find?

Fieldwork consisted of five monthly visits of 4 to 5 days to each teacher. My role was that of a critical facilitator, who provoked teachers to reflect about their teaching practice in the Person and Society (PS) and Science and Environment (SE) academic areas and to think about other ways of developing their work.

In this chapter, I discuss the theoretical and methodological issues involved in this research. I begin by explaining the nature of the enquiry, its theoretical approach and the reasons that led me to choose a critical action research method. Following this, I include a reflection about the way in which I have approached issues related with rigour and ethics. The chapter ends with an account of the tools I used for producing and analysing data.

2.1 The nature of the enquiry

This enquiry follows a naturalistic, qualitative and critical social approach, which considers knowledge as a social historically determined construct, in which the researchers personal history, interests, and understanding of education and educational research have important implications in the definition of the research problem and in the way research is done (Guba and Lincoln 1994). I have exposed these and some other ideas that I present in this section in a unit assignment (Trapnell 2002).

One of the most important attributes of qualitative research methods is the use of interactive and interpretative procedures aimed to understand the meaning of events and actions. These procedures respond to an epistemological paradigm, which questions some basic tenets of positivism, such as the existence of an objective reality independent of the ways in which people experience it as well as researchers objectivity and scientific neutrality. In contrast, as Ibaez (1994) explains, qualitative research approaches are founded on the idea that reality is conceived in terms of the meanings constructed and reconstructed by people on the bases of experiences developed in particular contexts. According to this line of thinking, knowledge is constructed on the basis of dialogical and multivocal processes, which consider the perspectives and points of view of the different actors involved in the research process. In this sense, knowledge is based on shared experienced and the results of this type of research are expected to constitute negotiated products or co-constructions between researchers and informants (Manning 1997).

The use of interactive and interpretative procedures has been particularly important in this research, since it was aimed to make teachers tacit knowledge explicit and to uncover the assumptions that guided their practice. In order to do this and assure that data was gathered through a variety of means, I developed the exploratory perspective that qualitative methods provide. Given the need for an open approach that can bring forward the multiplicity of factors involved in the way in which teachers assume their practice, this research was guided by questions such as qualitative methods suggest, rather than by hypothesis.

Qualitative methods are context-based and allow researchers to probe deeply into the research setting in order to obtain understanding about the way things are, why they are that way and how the participants in the context perceive them (Gay and Airasian 2000 p 11). This context-based approach was absolutely vital in the light of this enquiry, since significant differences exist between Ashaninka people due to various levels of contact and assimilation, geographical diversity and change of social and economic structures. The individuality of their teachers, whose personal experiences and expectations are fundamental for the understanding of their approach to intercultural education, was another important reason for a context-based method.

Furthermore, this enquiry was guided by the holistic approach that characterises qualitative methods, since it tried to understand how different factors interconnect, rather than to discover cause-effect relations, as quantitative methods tend to do. Research questions in this study had no need of numerical data or of the mathematical analytic procedures associated with quantitative approaches.

2.2 Theoretical background and research methods

This research was rooted in theories and approaches that address the relation between power and knowledge and view education from a critical stance, such as the way Critical Pedagogy and Postcolonial Studies do.

Critical Pedagogy (Giroux 1997a, 1997b, Apple and King 1983 and Mc Laren 1997) offers important insights regarding how to approach school and schooling processes from an historical and sociological perspective. Its followers question the generalised approach to schools as universal and neutral sites for instruction and try to reveal their political nature. They thus assume the need to visualise school education as a cultural and historic process crossed by power relations and basically oriented to the reproduction of status quo. However, critical pedagogists have different approaches regarding how this occurs. Some prioritise cultural dominance and underline the role that school institutions play as sites for the reproduction of the social, economic and political order, while others believe that schools are political sites of struggle and contestation, involved in the construction and control of meaning and subjectivities. Consequently, they emphasise the need to take advantage of schools as places that can be used to promote the formation of critical citizens capable of assuming leadership in the construction of democracy (Giroux 1986). Following this theory, I approach schools as social, cultural and political institutions involved in the construction and control of discourse, meaning and subjectivities. However, I also view them as sites of possibility for the construction of new discourses and practices and focus on the particular role that culture can play in this process.

Postcolonial studies offer Critical Pedagogy the possibility of exploring the multiple ways in which colonial heritage is reaffirmed within the new world order and the actual multinational division of labour, in everyday discourse and practice. Postcolonial theorists highlight how questions of hierarchy and power between world centres and the margins are present in different aspects of social experience and how they help to legitimate and reproduce social, economic and political asymmetry.

Intercultural education can also benefit from some of the analytic categories developed by some postcolonial theorists. Among them is the concept of colonial difference, which refers to ethnic and cultural difference as a social construction essential for the legitimisation of domination. According to Quijano (2000), colonial powers used race as a taxonomic indicator that distributed human population in a hierarchical position, which allowed them to make the distinction between superior and inferior people. This hierarchy was naturalised and became part of peoples beliefs. Consequently, the notion of the existence of superior and inferior peoples is in the basis of peoples self-perceptions and their perceptions of others. Knowledge production, language and other dimensions of social life have also been subjected to this hierarchy. Thus, approaches to knowledge, nature, society, time, space, the person, learning and language, which differ from hegemonic traditions, have been ignored, invisibilised or catalogued as beliefs.

On the basis of this analysis, postcolonial authors such as Mignolo (2000) contest intercultural education approaches which focus on cultural diversity and the idea that conflict can be overcome by means of more information about the other and better communication strategies. Mignolo affirms that intercultural education should help people to identify and revise the beliefs that reproduce the asymmetry of power and to strengthen the development of personal processes of re-elaboration of the image of self-contempt and self-negation generated through colonial domination. Furthermore, postcolonial critiques highlight the need to revise epistemological issues regarding the supremacy which western science has acquired as a universal and unique valid source of knowledge production and the ways in which its hegemony is related to colonial domination. From this perspective, it is not sufficient to introduce contents related to indigenous peoples cultural heritage in the framework of official school curricula; intercultural education should promote a process of decolonisation of knowledge (Quijano 2000), by considering the existence of different ways of producing it. This approach highlights the need to incorporate analytic and interpretative categories different from those developed by western scientific disciplines. The use of local languages, cognitive categories and cultural logic as means for the creation of social understanding is a vital strategy in this process.

This research focuses on the above mentioned issues, since it looks into the different ways in which knowledge is produced and transmitted in primary school education and into the particular ways in which teachers contribute to their students representations and understanding about the world. Drawing from the findings of this research, I shall argue that IBE programmes must give greater attention to knowledge and power issues if they want to respond to IBEs initial social and political objective of transforming schools into sites of empowerment for subalternised and marginalised people. This research tries to respond to some of the challenges posed by critical pedagogy and postcolonial perspectives by exploring the ways in which knowledge and power issues influence teachers approaches to their work, and by looking into other possibilities for the creation of social understanding based on local language and indigenous peoples cognitive categories and cultural logic. Thus, one of the basic questions that this study has tried to answer is to what extent schools can develop a new role as sites of possibility for the construction of new discourses and practices. It has also tried to identify the obstacles that teachers find in this process. Drawing from the data collected throughout the research process, I shall claim that critical reflection can help teachers open schools to the development of new discourses and practices. However, having said this, I shall also sustain that educational change is influenced by the multiple contexts in which teachers work as McLaughlin (2001) and Scribner (2003) sustain, and by their personal views about schooling and their roles as teachers.

My approach to the issue of educational change has been inextricably related to my methodological option for action research, as I shall explain in the following section.

2.3 My methodological perspective

This research has been based on an action research methodology. In general terms this concept is used to refer to a research strategy which aims to relate knowledge production with the transformation of practice. As Elliot affirms: The fundamental aim of action research is to improve practice, rather than to produce knowledge. The production and utilization of knowledge is subordinate to and conditioned by this fundamental aim (Elliot 1991 p 49). For the purpose of this research, I shall consider action research as a collective, self-reflective enquiry undertaken by participants in social situations in order improve the rationality and justice of their own social practices" (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988 p 5).Action research methodology consists of a series of phases or cycles, which include the identification of a problem, analysis and reflection about it, commitment to change aspects identified as problematic, a new phase of action and reflection about the situation that has emerged in order to evaluate its potential, identification of new problems and new commitments for action. This goes on for as long as the persons who participate in the process wish to develop it.

The choice of this methodology was intrinsically related to the purpose of my research. I wanted to promote a joint reflection about the practice of two FORMABIAP graduates and to search for alternatives that would allow them to enrich it and help me to revise my approach to intercultural education. I thus needed a methodological perspective open to the development of a participative and reflexive process in which an adequate balance could be found between academic research and the transformation of practice. Rather than assuming a researcher-researched outlook in which I could examine teachers practice within a limited period of time, as done by Guzman (2002), I required a method which would allow the development of a joint examination and reflection on teachers practice throughout various months. Due to all these reasons, I considered action research as the most appropriate method for my enquiry.

I could have used alternative approaches such as ethnographies and grounded theory for this research. Ethnographies of schooling, describe and analyse social interaction in a specific context and to try to incorporate the social and cultural meaning that participants give to it, through multidimensional approximation to the setting as Spindler (1982) and Woods (1994) explain. The Grounded Theory approach developed by Glasser and Strauss (1967) aims to understand how participants understand their social reality. Its strategy is to describe concepts and hypothesis drawn from data rather than from other investigations and existing theoretical approaches. Theory is developed throughout the research process by means of a continuous interpellation between analysis and data collection (Strauss and Corbin 1994 p 273). Both research approaches would have allowed me to improve my knowledge about the two basic questions that guided my investigation: how teachers conceptualise interculturalism and intercultural education and the ways in which they incorporate indigenous knowledge in curriculum planning and development, as well as the obstacles they find in this process. However, if I had chosen the ethnographic or grounded theory method, I would have deprived the two FORMABIAP graduates from developing the reflective approach to teaching which part of the action research process is. On the other hand, I would have left out the aspect of change, which I consider one of the vital purposes and accomplishments of this research.

2.3.1 Critical action research

There is not only one way of doing action research, in fact different traditions have developed since the concept was first used by Lewin in the 1940s. Even though they all link research and change, action research traditions have different ways of approaching the purpose of their intervention and the way in which they understand the role of participants, as Surez Pazos (2002) accurately observes.

In this case, I chose critical action methodology (following Kemmis, McTaggart and their work at Deakin University). This methodology considers the existence of a researcher that facilitates the process and one of more teachers that participate as co-researchers. Its central idea is to promote a critical reflection about educational practice and transform it. In this process, the researcher who acts as facilitator observes the work of his/her co-researchers and registers it. Through informal conversation, the facilitator participates with them in the analysis and interpretation of the collected data. During this critical dialogue, teachers explicit the suppositions which underpin their work, develop a critical reflection about their options and propose others. The critical analysis of new practices and the proposal of alternative ones are deepened throughout the research process.

I considered that this methodology was better than other action research ones in so far as:

It aims to promote participants consciousness about the social conditionings that influence their educational practice and helps them emancipate themselves from them, by means of this critical distance (Kemmis and McTaggart 1988). Consequently, this methodology relates education with overall social change to a greater extent than other approaches that are more focused on how to develop more efficient teaching practices and/or to help practitioners live up to their personal values.

Its concern to promote participants awareness of social constraints and their emancipation from them responds to the type of research questions that I shall address, since they are concerned with power relations and with the ways in which school discourse is constructed and transmitted.

This methodology approaches the relation between co-researchers in a joint process of knowledge construction in which the external researcher contributes in the process of each teachers self-reflection. In this sense, it assumes a more explicit political approach than other methodologies that prioritise teachers self-comprehension and the development of self-judgment (see McNiff 2002).

2.3.2 Ethical dilemmas in critical action research

Lather (1993) and Lincoln and Guba (2000) have highlighted that researchers approach to ethical dilemmas is intrinsically related to epistemological issues. Palmer confirms this idea when he claims: every way of knowing contains its own moral trajectory (Palmer 1987 p 24). I designed this enquiry from a critical participatory action research approach, which considers educational research as a practice that involves specific institutions and persons and has an impact over their lives. Moreover, the critical action research approach to which I adhere assumes that values feed into the enquiry process. This has made me conscious of the need to be aware of the theoretical and methodological framework for data gathering and analysis, selection of methods, treatment of values and choice of format as advised by Lincoln and Guba (1985) and Harrison (2003). I have also become aware of the need to be clear about my political point of view, knowledge base and the purpose of the investigation.

Action research involves some particular participatory issues, since it considers work with co-researchers and the need to consider as much participation and collaboration as possible throughout the whole process, in coherence with the idea of placing teachers as producers rather than consumers of educational research (Lavell 2000 p 1). For this to occur, researchers involved in action research must be particularly conscious of the tendency to impose their own agenda and voices over that of their co- researchers as Bishop (1997) and Lavell (2000) recommend. In the case of action research, it is of utmost importance to maintain the voices of co-researchers present during the whole process.

Given the political knowledge and power issues that inform this research, during its process I became aware of the need to develop a balanced and unbiased approach to each teachers work. I was also conscious of the need to be careful about the way in which I would present their stories, as Clandinin (1993) suggests. I believe this is particularly necessary in the case of critical action research processes. 2.3.3 Methodological issues regarding rigour

Scientific research is intrinsically concerned with rigour, that is, with the ways by which it can demonstrate integrity and competence (Aroni et al 1999) However, there are a number of disputes among researchers, who follow the naturalistic paradigm, regarding the criteria used to evaluate it. Some scholars outwardly reject criteria such as validity, and reliability, arguing that they are related to positivist approaches, while Denzin and Lincoln (2000) and Altheide and Johnson (1994), among others, insist on the need of rigour in order to affirm the quality and robustness of qualitative research. Even so, these researchers are also conscious of the need to place this concept within the epistemology of the naturalistic paradigm. In this direction, some of them have proposed the use of alternative criteria such as goodness, credibility and completeness. According to Smith (1993), Denzin and Lincoln (2000) and Arminio and Hultgren (2002) the criterion of goodness includes situatedness, trustworthiness and authenticity. Lincoln and Guba (1985) offer the criterion of credibility as an alternative to that of internal validity. Credibility stresses the match that must be found between constructed realities of respondents and realities represented by the evaluator and attributed to various stakeholders. According to these authors, credibility can be verified by prolonged engagement, persistent observation, peer debriefing, negative case analysis and member checks.

Action research is one of the most questioned methods of qualitative research due to its emphasis on action and the participation of the researcher. According to some researchers, this interferes or negates objectivity. The explicit political stance of critical action research is particularly questioned by those who believe in the possibility of developing objective research. Finally, the criterion of generalisability is often used to discount the value of research conducted with small samples of teachers and classrooms. Scholars aligned with a qualitative research approach have contested the first two issues. Kemmis and McTaggart (2000) and Lincoln and Guba (2000), among other authors, argue against the positivistic paradigm of objectivity and neutrality. They claim that the researchers subjectivity is an integral part of the whole research process. As they explain in detail, the researchers personal options influences the identification of the research problem, the election of the theoretical framework and the methodology, as well as the way in which data is analysed and interpreted. Regarding generalisability, Zumwalt (1982) argues that generalisations about teaching and learning are by definition contextfree. He stresses the need to have insights into how things work within the contexts of particular classrooms, rather than laws about what works generically in all classrooms.

Drawing from the above mentioned criteria, a measure of trust for my research can be found in the following evidence: first and foremost, I knew both co-researchers and have worked 30 years in Ashaninka communities; this has allowed to have a deep knowledge of the social and cultural context and to learn the language. Furthermore, I have made use of methodological triangulation by employing different methods for data recollection (observation, analysis of written material, informal conversation, diaries and interviews). Moreover, I cross-chequed interviews with the two teachers who participated as co-researchers, in different moments of the research process.

Apart from triangulating methods, I have also tried to triangulate perspectives by contrasting those of different persons involved in the research. In this case, I did it with both co-researchers and with FORMABIAP teachers. I also interviewed influential community members and had some informal conversations with students in order to have a general idea of their attitude towards the teachers and towards the introduction of indigenous knowledge in schools.

The cycles of interpretation afforded by action research allowed me to refine my initial interpretations and discard or keep some hypothesis until subsequent visits. In this case, the identification of teachers advances in their aim to find solutions to the problematic situation they had found was vital, since it allowed us to recognise the different elements that were constraining or favouring their work. The possibility of reviewing situations throughout different phases was quite helpful in the production of the final analysis. Drawing from my practice, I could say that it could be considered as one of the sources of rigour provided by action research in the line defended by Dick (1999). However, I shall evaluate the research design in the concluding chapter, in the light of my findings and my experience in using it.

2.4 Scope and samplingI asked a female and a male Ashaninka teacher from two schools in the lower Perene and Pichis valleys to participate as co-researchers. The female teacher, whom I shall call Maria, was 40 years old and had graduated from FORMABIAP in 1994. Alejandro was 30 and had graduated in 2003.

I limited the scope of this research to only two persons due to the requirements that its subject matter and method entail. I considered that the development of an action research approach aimed at the understanding of the way, in which teachers handle what Hornberger (2000) has called the ideological paradox of transforming a standarising education into a diversifying one, required sequential visits throughout at least five months during the school year, as well as in-depth interviews and exhaustive conversations with teachers.

The choice of both co-researchers considered academic qualifications, responsibility and appreciation by the community, as well as their desire to participate. Ten years of experience in school supervision had led me to believe that the initiation of an exploratory action research on intercultural education can best be focused with teachers who excel in those aspects.

Ashaninka territory extends along eight different valleys with significant differences regarding degree of contact with encroaching society and relation with market economy. This study was developed in communities of the lower Perene and upper Pichis regions, where Ashaninka people have regular contact with colonisers, without being absolutely encroached by them, as occurs in other areas. The selection of the communities was conditioned by the presence of teachers with the above mentioned characteristics.

This study was exploratory and sought to highlight problems for further research. It did not attempt to explain what is happening with teachers in the eight different regions that form part of Ashaninka territory or to generalise its findings. The study did not evaluate primary school students or teachers competences in teaching. Moreover, the study only dealt with one aspect of intercultural education: the inclusion of local knowledge in curriculum planning and development.

2.5 The data collection process

The research design was discussed with both co-researchers a month before the research process began, on the basis of a proposal which I had outlined for them to revise. We then agreed on the aims of the research and on the way in which we would develop the data collection and data analysis process.

At that moment, we decided that I would make five monthly visits and would devote five days to each one. We also agreed to complement this strategy with the analysis of the work that teachers had done during the time between my visits, as I shall later explain.

The action research method intended to help teachers explain the tacit knowledge that orientates their selection and organisation of what they want students to learn and how they put it in practice. The process of data collection consisted of five cycles in Marias case and six in Alejandros. The first cycle aimed to diagnose the initial situation regarding two basic issues: how teachers conceptualised interculturalism and intercultural education and how they approached indigenous knowledge in the Person and Society (PS) and Science and Environment (SE) subject areas. During this cycle, both co-researchers identified the problems they had found in their practice and defined the plan that they would follow in order to improve it. During the second cycle, teachers evaluated the new situation created as a result of the changes they had introduced in their practice; reflected on its potential, identified obstacles, and made new commitments for action. The following cycles followed the same sequence. However, towards the end of the third one, both co-researchers also devoted a whole afternoon to develop a critical analysis about the first three cycles. This helped them to take distance from the research process and to identify their advances as well as the obstacles they had found until then. Dialogue journals were extremely helpful in this process. The last cycle was devoted to recognise the situation that had emerged as a result of teachers commitments. At the end of this cycle each teacher contrasted the situation identified during phase one with their current reflections and practice. After doing this, both teachers shared their views about the whole process. Their comments focused on the impact that the action research had had on them and on their practice.

My role in the research process was that of a critical facilitator, who used different strategies to help teachers question their practice and develop a reflexive critique that would allow them to recall what knowledge and approaches they had ignored and to think about alternatives. One strategy was to observe teachers at work, record what I had seen, and analyse, and interpret my notes with them through informal conversations. During these moments, I helped teachers to explain the assumptions that had guided their work and to think about their social and political implications. Another strategy was to offer them information that would allow them to develop a critical reflection about their training for the development of IBE. A third strategy was aimed to help teachers recall and remember the different ways in which Ashaninka people understand society and nature and to think about how they could introduce these approaches in their classes.

2.5.1 Data collection techniques

The observation of teachers classes was one of my basic data collection techniques (see Appendix 2). I complemented this with informal conversation and the revision of written documents, such as students copybooks and teachers daily class journals, in which teachers stated the capacities they wanted their students to develop and explained the strategy that they would follow in order to achieve this.

The revision of teachers journals and students copybooks, before my first visit and between subsequent ones, allowed me to cover a longer range of time than that afforded by direct observation and to access more data. Overall, I observed 23 classes and reconstructed 30 through informal conversations with both teachers.

Informal conversations offered both teachers the opportunity to explain why they had chosen certain contents for their PS and SE classes and why they had developed particular strategies. During these conversations teachers also talked about their views regarding schools, their roles as indigenous teachers and their approach to their peoples cultural heritage. They also shared their knowledge about Ashaninka world visions and talked about other ways in which they could approach the PS and SE areas. Furthermore, they identified the obstacles that they found in their efforts to change their practice.

I proposed both teachers the use of a dialogue journal as suggested by Freese (2006) in which we could maintain a systematic control of class observations, positive feedback, questions and suggestions. I also developed a personal diary in which I included transcriptions of informal conversations with teachers and other field notes. I also developed semi-structured in depth interviews, which I piloted with my colleagues and other indigenous teachers to test their validity. Their comments allowed me to revise the way in which I had phrased some questions. I prioritised this type of interview since it offers access to peoples ideas, thoughts and memories in their own words (Reinharz 1992 p 9). In this process, I tried to be particularly sensitive to the questions that were important to the interviewees in order to try to gain a better understanding of their points of view. Questions focused on teachers backgrounds; their views about interculturalism, intercultural education and schooling; the ways in which they approached curriculum planning and teaching and their views about the political underpinnings of intercultural education (see Appendix 3). Topics were revisited in subsequent interviews to assure a joint deeper probing into research issues and to find out how teachers modified their opinions during the process.

Data was triangulated with semi structured in depth interviews with influential community members, and with the other teacher who worked in one of the schools. These interviews were oriented to gain a deeper understanding of the social and cultural context in which teachers work and of the political and cultural factors that influenced their approach to intercultural education. I also had some informal conversations with students in order to learn about their expectations and appreciations regarding school their views about their teachers and their ideas regarding their teachers approach to Ashaninka language and culture.

Table 2.1 Summary of the data-collection process

ActivityTime scale

Presentation and discussions of research design with co-researchers.July 2006

First action research cycleInitial diagnosis through observation, first in depth interviews with co-researchers, informal conversations, analysis of written documents.Alejandro: Aug. 13-18

Maria: Aug. 20-25

Second cycle

Observation, informal conversations, analysis of written documents. Alejandro: Aug. 19-Sept. 20

Maria: Aug. 26-Sept. 29

Third cycle

Observation, informal conversations, analysis of written documents, joint reflection about the first three cycles.Alejandro: Sept. 21-24

Maria: Sept. 30-Oct. 26

Interview with FORMABIAP teachers. September-October

Fourth cycle

Observation, informal conversations, analysis of written documents.

Informal conversations with students. Interviews with parents.Alejandro: Sept. 25-Oct. 20

Maria: Oct. 27-Nov. 27

Fifth cycle

Observation, informal conversations, analysis of written documents. Informal conversations with students, interviews with parents. Second in depth interview with Maria. Analysis of whole process with Maria and diagnosis of final situation. Alejandro: Oct. 21-Nov.19

Maria: Nov. 28-Dec. 10

Sixth cycle

Observation, informal conversations, analysis of written documents. Second in depth interview with Alejandro Analysis of the whole process, diagnosis of final situation. Alejandro: Nov. 20-Dec. 18

2.6 Methods of data analysis

My methods of data analysis were grounded on Emersons et als (1995) proposal regarding

fieldnotes processing. I thus considered data analysis as a process of creating theory through a reflexive and dialectic interplay between theory and data whereby theory enters in at every point, shaping not only analysis but how social events come to be perceived and written up as data in the first place (Emerson et al 1995 p 167). Based on this approach I developed the following strategy:

After each one the five field trip visits I developed throughout the research, I prepared a provisional interpretation about the information collected through observation, informal conversations, structured interviews, analysis of written material (teachers study plans and students copybooks) and field notes. After my last field trip, I organised this information into a written report that I shared with both co-researchers. In it, I also included the commitments that they had assumed during each visit. They revised this document and enriched it with their views and perspectives. I also shared this report with some FORMABIAP teachers. This allowed me to access their views about various aspects regarding FORMABIAPs influence in both teachers approximation to IBE. It also helped me to revise some affirmations and to review some issues with both co-researchers.

Once I had finished revising my first report, I read all the collected data once again with more detail. When I finished this, I asked both co-researchers to participate in the process of open analytic coding suggested by Emerson et al (1995) in order to identify all the aspects that could be relevant. Both co-researchers participated in the identification of recurring elements, which we organised in large themes. They also participated in their depuration into core themes. Once this was done, I subjected these to focused coding in order to find connections between data. In this process I delineated specific themes and sub themes and identified new topics of which I had not been initially aware. I wrote these out in a final report that I submitted to both co-researchers for their comments and suggestions.

Table 2.2 Summary of the data analysis process

ActivityTime scale

Joint revision of first report with co-researchers. March 2007

Revision of first report with FORMABIAP colleagues.April 2007

New revision of first written report with co-researchers based on FORMABIAP colleagues comments. May 2007

New revision of all collected data.May-June 2007

Development of open analytic coding with co-researchers and identification of core themes. July 2007

Development of focused coding.August 2007

Joint revision of final report with co-researchers.October 2007

In the following chapter, I present the action reflection cycles on which the research was structured. Their presentation helps to understand how the production of knowledge was related to the transformation of teachers practice. However, in chapter 4, I offer a more detailed account of the findings produced as a result of the action research process and discuss them.

Chapter 3: The action research cycles

In this chapter, I present a synthetic account of the action-reflection cycles that formed part of the action research process. However, before continuing, I must explain that throughout this and the following chapter, I shall continuously differentiate indigenous and western scientific knowledge. I am aware that this may be considered as an evidence of a dichotomic vision, which ignores the existence of other types of knowledge, as well as the fusions produced by the appropriation of new practices and by the influence of school. However, by marking this contrast, which builds on Mays considerations regarding critical multiculturalism (May 1999b p 32), I want to evidence the existence of ways of understanding reality different from those which official teacher training curricula consider as universal and only sources of truth.3.1 Cycle 1

This cycle aimed to identify how teachers planned their classes and how they incorporated indigenous knowledge in the Person and Society (PS) and Science and Environment (SE) areas. Observation, informal conversations and structured interviews evidenced that they used the FORMABIAP diversified curriculum and designed daily and monthly plans. Both based the latter on the development of projects related to Ashaninka peoples social and economic activities, as suggested by FORMABIAP. Nevertheless, they had different visions regarding the execution of these activities during schools hours. Alejandro affirmed that students participated in their implementation with their parents and other relatives and that they should use school hours to learn about things they ignored, i.e. western scientific knowledge and Spanish. Therefore, he only used projects as frameworks for the introduction of school contents. In contrast, Maria engaged her students and willing parents in the practical development of each project. She believed that this could help children deepen their understanding about their implementation or find out about techniques that they no longer learnt at home; value work, and reflect about the knowledge involved in the execution of each project.

Differences also existed in the priority that teachers gave to projects in their planning process. Alejandro developed them once every other month, since he formed part of a teacher learning community that designed their monthly plans jointly and prioritised literacy and numeracy skills, in accordance with the Ministry of Educations Educational Emergency policy. Maria worked with projects throughout the whole school year; however, since the appearance of the Educational Emergency policy in 2003, she had restricted the development of the PS and SE areas to once or twice a week, instead of the three times proposed by FORMABIAP (see chapter 1).

Both teachers used the same basic strategy in the development of the SE and PS areas. They usually began their classes with some reference to Ashaninka peoples knowledge through a brief dialogue, in Alejandros case, or by narrating a myth, in Marias. Contents in the SE area aimed to promote childrens understanding of the environment, while most of the PS ones were about economic activities and social obligations and rights. Every class finished with a summary, always written in Spanish, which teachers extracted or adapted from school texts. Teachers and students only used Ashaninka for oral communication.

I engaged with both teachers in a critical reflection about their incorporation of indigenous knowledge in the SE and PS areas. My questions and comments dealt with their planning strategies and the reasons for selecting certain themes. My remarks also intended to promote their awareness regarding the limited amount of time they had given to their peoples knowledge and language and the power issues involved in this. I wanted to encourage their reflection about the existence of worldviews different from those provided by school texts.

Maria and Alejandro evaluated that their approach to their peoples knowledge was a result of the training they had received and the diversified curriculums approach. They explained that their teachers in FORMABIAP and in the Ministry of Education IBE workshops had advised them to articulate indigenous and scientific knowledge. This had led them to believe that classes should aim to help children reach scientific knowledge. Therefore, they had only considered the inclusion of Ashaninka knowledge at the beginning of each class. They commented that the diversified curriculum strengthened this approach, since the majority of its capacities were drawn towards the apprenticeship of western knowledge. During their critical reflections they identified other approaches to the themes they had developed in class (see Appendix 4).

Drawing from their critical reflections about their practice, both teachers planned to give more time to indigenous knowledge in the PS and SE areas and to include the development of written summaries in Ashaninka.

3.2 Cycle 2

Class observation, analysis of teachers daily class journals and informal conversation demonstrated that both teachers had increased the amount of time they gave to indigenous knowledge in their PS and CA classes, as they had planned. The analysis of reconstructed and observed classes evidenced that Maria had avoided the articulation of knowledge strategy and introduced two new strategies: she either dedicated whole class sessions to her peoples knowledge or presented selected themes from Ashaninka and western scientific perspectives throughout them. In either case, she included Ashaninka knowledge and language in her class summaries (see Appendix 5). In contrast, Alejandro continued relying on textbooks from which he extracted ideas for his summaries, which he always wrote in Spanish.

Teachers reflections about their practice highlighted the influence that the diversified curriculum had in their approach to their peoples knowledge. During informal conversations, Alejandro explained that he had continued using the articulation of knowledge strategy and extracting his summaries from school texts, since the capacities he selected from the diversified curriculum were related with western scientific knowledge. He also explained that even though he had incremented the time that he gave to Ashaninka knowledge in his classes, he only included it when he could connect it with the contents he selected from the curriculum. When he could not, he limited himself to develop the diversified curriculums capacities according to the information he found in books. Drawing on their critical comments, I tried to help both teachers further their reflection and design of alternatives with information about FORMABIAPs critical evaluation of its approach to knowledge. I told them that it questioned the priority it had given to western scientific categories and to the fact that it had organised indigenous knowledge according to the conceptual framework of western scientific disciplines. I also informed them that FORMABIAP teachers had become aware of the need to try to understand the different ways in which indigenous peoples approach reality. Finally, I explained that the articulation of knowledge strategy had been strongly criticised, since it had led to the idea that indigenous knowledge was a means to reach western scientific one.

Based on their critical reflection, both teachers planned to develop more classes of the PS and SE areas in which children could learn more about Ashaninka world visions. They also agreed to leave the diversified curriculum aside when necessary.

3.3 Cycle 3

The critical reflections developed during the previous cycle had led Alejandro to plan a new strategy in which he would develop whole classes related to Ashaninka world visions and would distance himself from the diversified curriculum, as exemplified in a class about kinship relations between animals and plants. It ended with a written summary in Ashaninka in which he approached his peoples knowledge from a different and more holistic perspective than that offered by the diversified curriculum (see Appendix 6).

During his evaluation of his new practice, Alejandro commented that it was the first time in which he had broken away from the articulation of knowledge strategy and from the nature/society dichotomy:

I thought that the class was very interesting. When I developed it, I recognised for the first time that the Person and Society and Science and Environment areas should be integrated. In FORMABIAP we were told that they should go together but I did not understand what that meant Only when you approach them from an Ashaninka perspective you can see that they are not separate (conversation Alejandro, September 2006).

Maria continued in her effort to find a balance in the time she gave to indigenous and western scientific knowledge in her PS and CA classes. However, class observation, revision of her daily class journals and informal conversations revealed that she only referred to Ashaninka peoples worldview when she narrated myths during the introductory part of her classes. The main part of them, as well as their summaries focused on botanical, zoological and geographical aspects that could be neatly related with scientific approaches. She explained that this was a result of her dependency on the diversified curriculum. However, towards the end of the research process, other factors were also uncovered.

Class observation, analysis of daily class journals and students copybooks also evidenced that Maras approach to western scientific knowledge was aimed to transmit information and concepts. Critical reflections during this cycle dealt with the reasons for this and the possibility of relating the themes she developed in class with the analysis of social, economic and ecological problems. They also dealt about the way in which she related intercultural education with the promotion of indigenous rights. Maria acknowledged that she had not talked with children about indigenous collective rights and that it was necessary to introduce this theme as well as others related to indigenous organizations. However, she explained that she did not know that she was supposed to link subject matter with students needs, as she expressed in the following comment:

I did not have any idea that in intercultural education we must approach problems. I did not involve myself in that.() I only tried to transmit my theme. During IBE workshops they never told us we should do that. They told us that we must tell a story. For me that was all there was to it (conversation Maria, October 2006).

Nonetheless, during further reflections about this matter, Maria mentioned the need to relate classes with social, economic and ecological problems because maybe some of the children will develop some conscience about these problems and maybe he or she would do something when he or she is older.

Drawing from their critical reflection, Alejandro planned to develop more classes aimed to present an integrated approach to nature and society. Maria planned to incorporate Ashaninka world visions and to introduce themes related with indigenous organizations, in coherence with her view of intercultural education as a means for the promotion and defence of indigenous peoples collective rights.

3.4 Cycle 4

Class observation, revision of daily class journals and informal conversations demonstrated that Alejandro continued introducing Ashaninka peoples world visions in his classes and that he also tried to balance the time he gave to Ashaninka and western scientific knowledge during their development. However, they also evidenced that he had decided to prioritise the production of summaries extracted from textbooks and written in Spanish.

His confession towards the end of my visit, in the sense that he had decided that he would not do things to make me happy, made me aware that he did not want to move away from the articulation of knowledge strategy and design other alternatives, as he had done during the last cycle. However, I insisted that he had to take his own decisions regarding how far he wanted to go; my role was that of a facilitator, who tried to help him develop a critical reflection about his work, look at the obstacles he encountered and search for the alternatives that he considered the most appropriate.

During this cycle, Alejandro evaluated the reasons why he had decided to go back to the articulation of knowledge strategy. He no longer talked about the limitations of the diversified curriculum, since we had developed a joint revision of its capacities and found that there were a few related with indigenous knowledge, which he had avoided. His reflections highlighted his lack of the expertise and knowledge he needed to develop whole classes about Ashaninka knowledge or to write summaries that included it, as well as his approach to schooling. Alejandro affirmed that the most important role of schools was teaching Ashaninka children Spanish and western knowledge and that the use of the articulation of knowledge strategy allowed him to do this.

During this cycle, I encouraged Alejandro to revise his approach to western knowledge, which was basically aimed to transmit conceptual knowledge. However, he was quite negative about the value of doing this.

If I do so [relate classes to problems], what answer can I give the children, what solutions can I give to these problems? For example, we can see the problem related to cutting trees to sell them as lumber, they [parents] do it to satisfy their needs, but they also do it because they have no conscience about the impact which this will have on the forest. Therefore, what we tell them goes in through one ear and goes out through the other (.). We are not the only guilty ones; there are the industries that contaminate () (conversation Alejandro, October 2006).

Alejandro reinforced his argument about the uselessness of discussing problems with children when nothing could be done about them with the following Apocalyptic comment:

The world will be destroyed. Everything that is happening with nature has already been announced in the prophecies (conversation Alejandro, October 2006).

During this cycle Maria used the printed cards and some texts that the AIDESEP indigenous confederation had edited for the development of themes related to indigenous organizations However, when she developed classes related to western scientific knowledge, she continued prioritising the transmission of information and the apprenticeship of western scientific concepts. She made no effort to relate the themes she taught in class with daily life, even though, unlike Alejandro, she had affirmed that she believed in the possibility of generating critical reflection with her elder students. During her reflections about this issue, she initially explained that she had forgotten to talk about social and ecological problems because she was accustomed to transmit conceptual knowledge. However, during further reflections she admitted that even though her training in FORMABIAP had allowed her to develop a critical analysis about social, economic and ecological problems, she had not received any training regarding how to develop her classes from this approach. She also referred to the lack of school texts and materials that could help her to promote her students critical reflection.

At the end of this cycle, Alejandro recognised that he could diminish his limitations regarding Ashaninka knowledge and the development of written skills in his language if he used the printed cards that FORMABIAP had produced for the PS and SE areas. Maria planned to include projects related to the development of skills such as spinning, pottery making and knitting which many children no longer learnt at home. She also planned to continue looking for new ways of approaching Ashaninka peoples views about society and nature and to continue developing contents related to indigenous rights.3.5 Cycle 5

During this cycle, Alejandro used the FORMABIAP printed cards as he had planned. During his reflections, he mentioned that they had helped him to overcome some of the limitations he had found regarding Ashaninka knowledge and the production of a written discourse in this language. He said that this made him feel more willing to develop whole classes in Ashaninka and to write summaries and questionnaires in this language.

Maria introduced a project related to knitting fibres, as she had planned and introduced new themes in the diversified curriculum. However, she continued prioritising botanical and zoological Ashaninka knowledge that could be neatly related with scientific concepts and circumscribing Ashaninka worldviews to the narration of myths. Analysis of a critical incident that occurred during this cycle in a class about the primary forest ecosystem, allowed her to gain a better understanding of why this happened. Her initial explanation was that she began her class asking her students to identify biotic and abiotic elements, instead of referring to Ashaninka peoples perspectives because of the power of custom. However, further reflections and a prolonged conversation about her approach to Ashaninka knowledge throughout the research process revealed that she had systematically avoided the selection of themes that would confront her with Ashaninka world visions. As a result of this process, she eventually expressed her concern regarding her elder students reactions to her presentation of themes related to world visions, since many Ashaninkas nowadays consider them superstitious beliefs, even though they guide their daily practice. Reflections with Maria during this last phase were very much about the need to talk with children about the existence of different ways of seeing the world. We also reflected about the power issues involved in the process, by which Ashaninka world visions have been catalogued as superstitious beliefs. Even though Maria was conscious of this, it also became clear that she found it very difficult to introduce this subjugated discourse in her approach to the PS and CE areas, due to the influence of her Adventist training and her fear of students and parents reactions.

Towards the end of this phase, Alejandros reflections about the themes he developed in the PS area made him aware that his practice was not coherent with his views regarding the relation between intercultural education and the promotion and exercise of indigenous rights. Thus, he planned to start working on themes related to Ashaninka history and territory. 3.6 Cycle 6

During this cycle, Alejandro demonstrated a new attitude towards the inclusion of his peoples knowledge in the PS and CE classes and new skills that allowed him to recover the strategy of developing classes totally devoted to Ashaninka peoples knowledge, as he had done during the third cycle. Moreover, these skills motivated him to introduce a new strategy aimed to compare Ashaninka and western scientific knowledge about different themes, throughout the whole class. He also took distance from the diversified curriculum and designed capacities that allowed him to incorporate Ashaninka knowledge and perspectives about different themes. However, he still clung to the articulation of knowledge strategy in some of his classes and did not follow his plan of including themes related to Ashaninka peoples history and territory.

Alejandros reflections about his practice evidenced that the innovations he had introduced during previous cycles had allowed him to overcome some of his limitations regarding his lack of knowledge about Ashaninka culture. They had also helped him to feel more secure in the design of new strategies that distanced him from his training and the diversified curriculum. However, his reflections also dealt about his decision to continue using the articulation of knowledge strategy. This option and his approach to Ashaninka knowledge as something of the past, in the classes in which he compared it with western scientific knowledge, evidenced that he continued prioritising the latter. He also evaluated the fact that he had not responded to his commitment of including themes related to Ashaninka peoples territory and history. Analysis of the reasons why he had not followed his plan evidenced that he felt quite insecure about how to develop classes about these matters, since he had not received sufficient training regarding these aspects and lacked materials that could orient him. His reflections made it quite clear that critical reasoning was not enough to change practice and that he needed alternative structures to frame his work. Throughout this chapter, I have explained how both teachers took distance from their former practice in the PS and SE areas and designed alternatives that allowed them to give more importance to the knowledge developed by their people. In this process, they learnt that even though the knowledge that the child brings to school is an important referent for the apprenticeship of western scientific knowledge, the introduction of their peoples knowledge in the PS and SE areas does not have to be limited to this function. However, the alternatives they chose and their reflections about the process highlighted various social, political and epistemological issues related to my research questions, which I shall identify and discuss in the next chapter.

Chapter 4: Some Findings

In this chapter, I discuss the findings of my research, as I draw together various elements that emerged during the different cycles of the action research process reported in chapter 3. I shall start by looking at the way in which the two Ashaninka teachers who participated as co-researchers conceptualised interculturalism and intercultural education and discuss some social and political issues related to their approach, in response to my first research question. Having done this, I shall examine how they incorporated indigenous knowledge in the Person and Society (PS) and Science and Environment (SE) areas, as well as the obstacles they found in this process in order to respond to my second research question. In relation to this issue, I shall discuss the concept of indigenous knowledge and how it can be approached in school education. I shall also look into the impact that the action research process had on both teachers work and the extent in which it allowed them to open their schools to the development of new discourses and practices. In relation to this issue, I shall highlight the fact that each teacher approached this issue in a particular way, highly influenced by their multiple contexts (McLaughlin 2001) and by their views about schooling and their roles as teachers.

My findings are reported and discussed under the following three themes: Teachers conceptualisation of interculturalism and intercultural education; curriculum decision-making and the production of meaning, some obstacles for the development of intercultural education in indigenous settings.

4.1 How did teachers conceptualise interculturalism and intercultural education?

During initial interviews, Maria and Alejandro admitted that they were not very sure about the meaning of intercultural education.

During our training, they talked to us about intercultural education but I did not understand what it meant. I though it was a comparison, for example, I thought it meant that we had to translate to Ashaninka the contents we presented in Spanish (interview Alejandro, August 2006).

Truthfully, I do not know how I am in that [intercultural education]. I do not know if what I am doing is intercultural education. What I know is that bilingual education is teaching in two languages (interview Maria, August 2006).

During Ministry of Education intercultural bilingual education (IBE) workshops, both teachers had repeatedly heard definitions of these concepts. They eventually related interculturalism with the recognition and awareness of the existence of different cultures and intercultural education with the process whereby teachers promote childrens apprenticeship about them. While Marias definition of intercultural education included learning about two or more cultures, (as well as regions, countries and continents), which could be known and compared, Alejandro restricted it to the apprenticeship of Ashaninka and western scientific knowledge.

As Zavala and Cordova (2003) and Heise (2001) have reported about many other bilingual teachers, Maria and Alejandro believe that intercultural education aims to value indigenous peoples cultural heritage and assert their identity and self-esteem. Both teachers make a strong connection between language, culture and identity. Alejandro links childrens self-esteem with their capacity of expressing themselves without shame and fear in Ashaninka and Spanish. He gives more importance to the valoration of the indigenous language and the development of oral skills, than to the knowledge of specific cultural contents, since he believes that language is a primary aspect of identity. He affirms that it can be maintained no matter where one lives. Maria highlights the need for children to identify with their language and culture and believes that both are essential. However, her option is not aimed to retrieve what her people have lost from ancestral culture, as Zavala and Cordova (2003) fear, neither does it fall into a cultural retreat which rejects what globalisation and western culture can bring (Hevia and Hirmas 2003). On the contrary, as she explains in the following quote, it is based on a practical idea of what children should learn for their future well-being.

Ashaninka knowledge is important; someday it will be useful [for the students]. On what will they base themselves if they do not have it? Of course, western knowledge is important but Ashaninka knowledge is also. For example, the most important thing is for them to know how to hunt and how they can be cured to be hunters, also our myths, also about agriculture and fishing. Women should know how to spin, about herbs that heal, about dyes and knitting (interview Maria, August 2006).

Both teachers mentioned that intercultural education could also promote the knowledge of indigenous peoples collective rights, in particular, their right to territory. Moreover, they believe that every student in Peru should benefit from intercultural education, in order to become aware of the countrys multicultural nature. Alejandro stressed that this could help to diminish the discrimination, which Andeans and people from the Coast inflict on Amazonian indigenous peoples.

Alejandro and Marias approach to intercultural education as a means for the affirmation of indigenous peoples identity and the promotion of their collective rights is characteristic of indigenous organisations throughout the Andean region (Lpez 1999). As Lpez affirms this position is undoubtedly political, since it questions the subjugation and marginalisation, which indigenous people have suffered. However, I fear that the lack of reflection about how this can be done, can diminish the transformative potential of this kind of discourse. My experience leads me to affirm that many teachers who relate intercultural education with the affirmation of cultural and linguistic identity restrict their school practice to the inclusion of some elements of their peoples knowledge. Moreover, as Vigil (2004) explains, they only use their language to translate what they had previously explained in Spanish. This can be considered as an advance in schools were indigenous knowledge was invisible and languages hardly spoken. How