DISCOURSES AND PRACTICES ON INTERCULTURALITY: VOICES FROM BELOW

Abstract

This article is part of the research project “Discourses and Practices Regarding Interculturality: The Experience of Educational Actors,” developed at the National University of Education (Ecuador) in collaboration with the Autonomous University of Bucaramanga (Colombia). Its purpose is to analyze the perceptions and representations of Indigenous teachers regarding interculturality, considering their conceptual understanding, knowledge of current regulations, and the scope, limitations, and challenges of institutional policies aimed at promoting an intercultural society in bilingual education setting. Using a qualitative approach and through documentary analysis and in-depth interviews, this study examines the tensions between the interculturality conceived by the State as an inclusion policy and the critical interculturality advocated by Indigenous peoples as a political and epistemic project of decolonization. The results show that bilingual intercultural education constitutes a space of resistance against the coloniality of knowledge and that the voices of Indigenous teachers reconfigure the meaning of interculturality through everyday practice. The study concludes that interculturality should be understood as an ethical-political process oriented toward cognitive justice and Sumak Kawsay, or Good Living, beyond normative frameworks and the theoretical approaches of multiculturalism.