Ára Ayvu Regua

Indigenous teachers’ education

Abstract

Teachers’ education in Brazil is confronted by diverse contingencies, which promotes a significant research and education field. Especially, indigenous schools, which have specific legislations after the implementation of the Federal Constitution in 1988 (BRAZIL, 1988), entail peculiar contexts to the development of initial and continuous teachers' education. This article presents part of a research-action oriented towards an ecology of knowledge (SANTOS, 2010; 2011) developed in co-authorship with teachers from the indigenous school Escola Estadual Indígena Mbya Arandu, from the Indigenous Territory Araça’í, in the Atlantic Forest, in Brazil. Our objective was to problematize, within the spectrum of the developed research-action, practices and epistemologies related to literacy and linguistic education in a context of continuous teachers’ education. Making use of participatory methodologies (FRANCO, 2005; SMITH, 2008), five events have taken place, involving five Guarani teachers, one non indigenous teacher, students, and an elder from the indigenous territory. Results show the relevance of interactions between universities and indigenous peoples that are based upon participatory methodologies for establishing indigenous teachers’ education experiences. The problematization, materialized in multimodal texts (MENEZES DE SOUZA, 2002), later took fundamental part in the elaboration of legal documents and teachers’ lesson planning. Therefore, this article offers fertile perspectives, which may incite similar experiences even if in different contexts.