Participation and Appropriation of School Practices With Regard to Children in Indigenous Community Education in Oaxaca, Mexico

Abstract

Community school education in Oaxaca is the result of a teachers’ movement and the struggle for indigenous rights in the region. In 2004, the Indigenous Community Secondary Schools (7th-9th grade of basic education) began to operate as an alternative indigenous pedagogical model. School practices are based on community participation in school life, the use of the local indigenous language, and educational work through learning projects. In the schooling process, boys and girls resume community practices based on autonomy, reciprocity and collaborative work. Based on an ethnographic study in a community and the accompaniment of more than eleven years of this indigenous educational model, the article discusses the relationship between participation in socio-cultural practices and school appropriation of indigenous children and the construction of their own voice as members of an indigenous community.