La planificación lingüística del Maya yucateco y la educación bilingüe en Yucatán

The rapid decline of indigenous languages represents one of the most troubling topics within applied linguistics. Teachers’ implementation of indigenous language planning through their pedagogical practices is a significant but under-researched issue. This ethnographic study examines a Maya language program (i.e., professional development) for 1,600 teachers in the Yucatan’s Intercultural Bilingual Education (EIB) system, and K-12 schools in Maya-speaking communities where they worked. Using longitudinal data (2010-2016), analysis centered on the creation and promulgation of the Norms of Writing for the Maya Language (2014) and related language policy. Findings illustrate: 1) the importance of increasing the quantity of Maya-speaking teachers, and 2) a clash between widespread orthographic variation in Maya and teachers’ standard language-culture. The new standard has not been implemented in EIB, which still does not in practice require Maya proficiency of teachers. This research discusses possible benefits and risks of a standard Maya for EIB.

BIOGRAFÍAS DE LA EDUCACIÓN INTERCULTURAL BILINGÜE

En el presente artículo nos proponemos analizar las políticas de Educación Intercultural Bilingüe de las provincias de Chaco y Misiones (Argentina) a partir de las biografías de algunos/as referentes indígenas. Estas biografías nos aportan interesantes aspectos de los recorridos formativos individuales, atravesados por las transformaciones de la política educativa intercultural. Asimismo, permiten abordar la singularidad de dos casos de legislación provincial muy diferentes en cuanto a la visibilización de la cuestión indígena. La provincia de Chaco es reconocida por su temprana incorporación de normativa que pondera los derechos específicos para los pueblos indígenas que allí residen (toba/qom, mocoví/moqoit y wichí) y, específicamente, por contar con legislación muy progresista sobre los asuntos que regulan la escolarización y lenguas de los pueblos originarios. Por su parte, la provincia de Misiones presenta un escenario contrario, ya que el reconocimiento en las políticas públicas de derechos para los pueblos indígenas ha sido muy escaso y restrictivo; incluso si en particular tomamos en cuenta las políticas educativas, la regulación ha sido remisa, de poco alcance y focalizada. En el análisis efectuado en este artículo pondremos en diálogo las biografías educativas con las legislaciones provinciales más significativas y materiales de registros de trabajo de campo obtenidos de nuestras investigaciones etnográficas en las comunidades mbyá-guaraní de Misiones y toba/qom de Chaco.BIOGRAPHIES OF BILINGUAL INTERCULTURAL EDUCATION ABSTRACTIn this paper we analyze the policies of Bilingual Intercultural Education of the provinces of Chaco and Misiones (Argentina) from the biographies of some indigenous referents. These biographies give us interesting aspects of the individual formative paths, undergoing the transformations of intercultural educational policy. Likewise, they allow addressing the uniqueness of two very different cases of provincial legislation, regarding the visibility of the indigenous issue. The province of Chaco is recognized for its early incorporation of regulations that weigh the specific rights for the indigenous peoples that reside there (toba / qom, mocoví / moqoit and wichí) and, specifically, for having very progressive legislation on the matters they regulate the schooling and languages of the native peoples. On the other hand, the province of Misiones presents a contrary scene, since recognition in public rights policies for indigenous peoples has been very scarce and restrictive, even if we take into account educational policies in particular, the regulation has been scale, of little scope and focused. In the analysis carried out in this article, we will dialogue educational biographies with the most significant provincial laws and materials of field work records obtained from our ethnographic research in the Mbyá-Guaraní communities of Misiones and toba / qom de Chaco.Keywords: Biography. Intercultural Bilingual Education. Mbyá-Guaraní. Toba/Qom.

Guatemalan Ixil Community Teacher Perspectives of Language Revitalization and Mother Tongue-Based Intercultural Bilingual Education

Recent scholarship indicates several benefits of mother tongue education (MTE) in supporting student learning.

Beliefs of Two Culturally Diverse Groups of Teachers About Intercultural Bilingual Education

This article provides an overview of the ideas that two groups of bilingual teachers from different contexts, one indigenous and the other Western, have about the concepts of education, bilingualism, and interculturality. Their opinions were gathered through focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and videos, and reviewed under light of what the theoreticians have pointed out regarding the three mentioned concepts. One important outcome was the enrichment of perspectives of both groups of participants, and a remarkable conclusion that refers to the similar perceptions both groups have regarding the concept of education. Further research should address how each community perceives its own educational model and how it can be complemented with the views of the other.

Youth and the repoliticization of Quechua

In this article, I argue that Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) in Peru has turned into a depoliticized endeavor, fed by a modernist national frame and a positivist/ modernist linguistics (García et al., 2017). Situating my discussion amid the context of discourses of IBE, I will focus on Quechua-speaking urban youth activists and the way they challenge three key issues that have been historically entrenched in the discourse of IBE and language diversity in general: the restriction of Quechua speakers to “mother tongue” speakers, the dichotomy between local and global identities, and the defensive stance towards neoliberalism and the market economy. In a context of tensions and challenges for multilingualism and of new circumstances for minoritized languages and their speakers (Pietikainen et al., 2016), these young people are questioning the depoliticized, limiting, and fictitious views of Quechua and Quechuaness from the IBE discourse. Put it differently: they are disinventing Quechua as IBE conceives it and reinventing it within a much more inclusive and politicized project, in a way that should interest educators.

LANGUAGE AS SOCIAL PRACTICE: DECONSTRUCTING BOUNDARIES IN INTERCULTURAL BILINGUAL EDUCATION

ABSTRACT Although Peru’s Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) program has been attempting to pursue new directions, it still carries many ideologies and practices that have defined it since it started half a century ago. In this article, I discuss the way some of these ideologies and practices related to language are reproduced in a preservice teacher training program in one of the capital city’s private universities, which implements a national policy of social inclusion for Quechua-speaking youth from vulnerable contexts. On the basis of diverse dichotomies (L1/L2, Spanish use/Quechua use, Spanish literacy practices/Quechua literacy practices, Quechua speaker/Spanish speaker), the program produces two types of hierarchized subjectivities: one related to the subject educated in Quechua and another related to the subject educated in Spanish, both coming from a conception of languages as discrete codes that go together with fixed ethnolinguistic groups and bounded cultural practices (GARCÍA et al., 2017). In the context of new sociocultural dynamics and bilingualisms, young students in the program subvert these divisions and begin to trace new paths for IBE and Quechua in Perú.