How is interculturality done?

Teaching strategies in ethnically diverse schools

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe and analyse the intercultural teaching strategies employed by teachers in indigenous primary schools to address the cultural diversity of these educational spaces. Methodologically, the article is based on the analysis of three case studies, based on a survey on cultural diversity in a sample of 14 schools and 21 focus groups with students and teachers from 70 schools in the indigenous education system in Baja California. The findings indicate that the teaching strategies employed in the three selected cases face different challenges in the relationship between diversity and interculturality. On the one hand, in the context of native indigenous schools, it takes on a pressing tone against cultural extinction, given the low demographic and linguistic vitality of these peoples; on the other hand, in the context of immigrant indigenous schools, it faces the encounter with different ethnic origins manifested in the various languages that are expressed alongside Spanish and English, as part of the transnational migratory experience. Some limitations of the article come from its focus on cases of schools that have intercultural programmes for the attention of the cultural diversity of children and not on the analysis of how they carry out the idea of interculturality in the universe of schools.