ICIS Newsletter - January 2021 (Plain Text Version)
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SUSTAINING MBYA-GUARANI CULTURE FOR RURAL ARGENTINIAN STUDENTS THROUGH TECHNOLOGY Andres Villalba, Ministry of Education, Misiones Province, Argentina
Integrating Technology in Rural Schools for Indigenous Students The 1994 amendment of the Argentinian Constitution, “recognizes the cultural and ethnic pre-existence of the indigenous peoples in Argentina'' and “guarantees the respect towards their identity and their right to an intercultural and bilingual education” (Art. 75, subsection 17). Similarly, the National Law of Education (2006) introduced Intercultural Bilingual Education as the eighth of seven educational pillars. The other seven are: I am an English teacher from Misiones, a small province in the northeastern corner of Argentina. The province is long and narrow, with 80% of its land wedged between Paraguay to the northwest and Brazil to the southeast. Misiones is home to Mbya-Guarani communities as well as the Iguazu Falls where the borders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet. In 2008, I was invited to join the Department of Linguistic Policies in the Ministry of Education. As a newly hired coordinator, I organized meetings between Argentinian and Brazilian teachers, along with universities to design and implement professional development. Argentinian teachers also needed support when crossing to teach in Brazil. Initially, I worked for Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) with Argentinian-Brazilian frontier schools. Supporting IBE goals, I participated in projects which involved the inclusion of indigenous cultural aspects in the curriculum. Duro’s (2016) report from UNICEF Argentina documented a large gap in students from Misiones who completed primary school and those who completed secondary school between 2000 - 2010 (p. 35). Responding to this educational need, the Ministry of Education in Misiones and UNICEF Argentina agreed to provide indigenous students equitable access to compulsory secondary-level formal schooling, and I was called to coordinate the project with the IBE indigenous schools. Mbya-Guarani students struggle to attend urban secondary schools for different reasons. One factor was the students’ lack of access to school. Living in jungle terrain, most secondary students commuted hours to school without public transportation and lived far from home while school was in session. When transported to an unfamiliar urban environment, Mbya-Guarani students lacked emotional support and cultural understanding because educators were not prepared to address these issues for Mbya-Guarani children. For example, an Mbya-Guarani person will not leave home on rainy days or after having a nightmare. Importantly, Mbya-Guarani believe they might die if they are isolated or feel separated from their community. There was a combination of cultural, economic, and discriminatory issues which the ministry had to consider when designing specialized educational plans. With documentation of educational disparities (Duro, 2016), there was increasing social and legal pressure to adequately serve Argentina’s indigeneous communities. The TMRSS Design Technology-Mediated Rural Secondary School (TMRSS) functioned from 2016 until 2020, and was the only secondary school especially designed for the Mbya-Guarani peoples in Misiones. During this period, the school functioned under the Department of Linguistic Policies and the curriculum was specifically designed to integrate Guarani culture and language. TMRSS was created for Mbya-Guarani students who finished primary education but had not completed their secondary education. In Argentina, compulsory education begins at age 4 with two years of kinder. At age 6, children begin seven years of primary school with 5 or 6 years of secondary school, depending on the specialization. The academic purpose of TMRSS was to offer a complete 5-year formal secondary school inside the Mbya-Guarani community with a culturally and linguistically relevant orientation. The TMRSS consists of a school with two main spaces: One central location in Posadas, the capital of the Misiones province, and 10 branches in Rural Seats which are located inside Mbya-Guarani communities. Because the nearest to the Central Seat is 50 km, and the farthest is 300 km, all 10 Rural Seats are classified as remote areas with difficult access. Most are located in the middle of the jungle, and are impossible to reach during or after rainy seasons. The Rural Seats consist of 10 to 20 students from the different years of the secondary level (from 1st year to 5th year). They all sit in the same classroom to do mixed-level integrated activities or specific activities corresponding to their course. In the Central Seat, the content teachers make use of technology to design, create, and send their lessons to the different Rural Seats. These lessons, in digital, print, audio and video formats are collected, reorganized and passed by a tutor to their students: The main components being the use of technology, the tutor and an Indigenous Teacher who belongs to the Mbya-Guarani community. UNICEF provides the Rural Seats with chromebooks for all students, a desktop computer for the tutor, a data projector, a printer, data travellers, books for the literary corner and pays for the internet connection to reach the classrooms in the middle of the jungle considered hard to access. Teachers from the Central Seat, tutors, and the indigenous teacher participate in developing courses which are periodically organized by UNICEF or the Department of Linguistic Policies. Sustaining Mbya-Guarani Culture To fulfill its mission of integrating Mbya-Guarani culture and language into Argentinian secondary curriculum, the TMRSS faculty work hard to blend western subjects such as maths, history, physics, English, and biology with Mbya-Guarani belief systems. As a way to respect and build trust with the communities, the Ministry of Education hires teachers and tutors, but the indigenous teacher who lives in the community is chosen through a tribal ritual where all community members agree upon the selection. Another way in which the Mbya-Guarani community acknowledges its acceptance of western scientific thought is to start each school day with the blessings of an "Aguyjevete", which means gratitude and blessings in Mbya-Guarani language, and performing a circular dance. This is a way to show that the Mbya-Guarani community is accepting western scientific education. Once students have studied the lessons and completed the activities, their work is sent back to the teachers for correction. Feedback is delivered in two ways: it is presented through the school platform or face-to-face when teachers visit. As an EFL teacher, I shared the importance of second language development because Mbya-Guarani students learn Spanish as 4-year olds when they start school. I worked with my colleagues and the communities to refocus all content learning objectives to become culturally and linguistically inclusive by redesigning syllabi, lesson plans, methods, and communication formats. Through coordinated efforts, teachers, indigenous teachers, and Mbya-Guarani leaders collaborated on instructional methods such as Content Language and Integrated Learning (CLIL), Flipped Learning, Competency-Based Learning, Project-Based Learning, and TPack. Regarding CLIL as a main method in the project, I raised awareness of the importance to integrate interculturality and technology into activity designs and teaching practices. As Coyle, Hood, and Marsh (2010) state, cultural awareness may be addressed by interaction with people from different contexts in the classroom or in other settings, employing different instruments including technology. As an innovative method, Flipped Learning has contributed to the facilitation and scaffolding of learning through the use of technological devices. The TMRSS promotes the formation of autonomous students who discover strategies that best fit their learning styles for their academic development. In this aspect, Bergmann and Sams (2015) believe that it “… enables students to take ownership of their own learning and allows for more interaction time between teacher-student and student-student. It also means the class becomes student-centered, rather than teacher-centered, and makes the class easier to differentiate” (p. 9). Cultural Impact of TMRSS The TMRSS provoked an important change of mind in Misiones society. The project’s implementation had such a positive impact that it made the school community, rural and urban citizens as well as state authorities aware of the importance of interculturality. TMRSS students and teachers were invited to show their class projects. They recorded and broadcasted documentaries about cultural aspects such as preparation of their traditional medicine. They designed and printed leaflets advocating for human rights. Students and their wise elders, for the first time in history, recorded sacred lessons to share with the next generations. In 2018, a television report (UNICEF Argentina, 2018) showed how the TMRSS works with interviews of teachers and Mya-Guarani students. Taking these outcomes as examples, interculturality, differences and respect can be explicitly and successfully addressed not only in IBE but also in all diverse educational contexts. TMRSS Contribution In 2014, the school started with 30 students. In 2018, the first 42 indigenous students graduated. In 2019, the school population had grown to 320. The most valuable indicators of achievement have been the number of students, the acceptance of the families, and the respect for the culture in the curricula. Through TMRSS, indigenous communities are learning to use technology as a tool to access knowledge that may or may not complement their ancestral knowledge. In this respect, topics that contradict their beliefs expand their horizons but are not acquired into the community. TMRSS students are learning to use technology to understand another world and to document cultural practices through audio and video recordings that could otherwise be lost forever. The Technology-Mediated Rural Secondary School has proven helpful in providing education to students in remote territories. Teachers and students just need a device and data for internet connection making this method portable and efficient. During the COVID-19 pandemic the TMRSS model has led the way in transforming technology-mediated remote schools. With appropriate pedagogical and socio-emotional methods, policies, and teacher development opportunities, educational technology can promote the importance of a teacher’s physical presence while fostering future global citizens. References Bergmann, J. & Sams, A. (2015). Flipped learning: Gateway to student engagement. International Society for Technology in Education. Coyle, D., Hood, P. & Marsh, D. (2010). Content and language integrated learning. Cambridge University Press. Duro, E. (2016). Making the right to secondary education possible: Technology-based rural schools in Argentina. (2nd ed.) UNICEF Argentina. https://www.unicef.org/argentina/sites/unicef.org.argentina/files/2018-03/edu_TIC-acceso-2daEdicionENG_0.pdf UNICEF Argentina (2014). Annual report 2014. https://www.unicef.org/about/annualreport/files/Argentina_Annual_Report_2014.pdf UNICEF Argentina (2018). Secundarias rurales mediadas por tecnologías. Television report https://youtu.be/9GtE-iLXX0o
Andrés Villalba is an EFL teacher with a BA in Applied Linguistics from Universidad Nacional del Litoral in Argentina and a specialization from Ohio University in USA. Andrés delivers conferences about education for universities, ministries of education and teachers’ associations in Argentina and abroad. |
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