Teacher negotiation of intercultural education policy in rural Mexico :
General Material Designation
[Thesis]
First Statement of Responsibility
Duncan, Sharon
Title Proper by Another Author
the implications for educational equity
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Institute of Education, University of London
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2012
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
Ph.D.
Body granting the degree
Institute of Education, University of London
Text preceding or following the note
2012
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
This thesis explores the challenges and tensions facing an intercultural education programme, Modalidad Educativa Intercultural para la Poblacion Infantil Migrante, MEIPIM (Intercultural Educational Programme for Child Migrants), designed to meet the learning requirements of agricultural migrant child workers in Mexico. Working voluntarily on the programme, ethnographic research was carried out on both the teacher training component and the classroom-based implementation of MEIPIM. The teachers at the centre of the study are mainly from rural areas in Veracruz, Mexico, and the students are the child labourers of seasonal migrant agricultural workers. The thesis is shaped by a central consideration to explore how teacher negotiation of 'top down' generic intercultural education development policy might function as a local practice to promote or inhibit educational equity. Teacher subjectivity and identity formation processes are fundamental to this exploration. Analysis of the empirical evidence suggests that the cultural politics of global intercultural education policy appear to generate pedagogic practices to address cultural rather than socioeconomic injustice. The data also suggest that teacher negotiation of MEIPIM's cultural affirmation strategies is mediated by wider discriminatory nationalist and ethnic ideologies. As a result, teacher negotiation of MEIPIM's intercultural aims appears to reinforce, rather than democratise prevailing discriminatory and racist social relations Applying Bernstein's analytical distinctions for competence and performance pedagogic modes, the empirical findings also suggest that MEIPIM's intercultural policy is shaped by a contradictory pedagogic device which determines an unproductive form of 'strategy teaching' that undermines the programme's cognitive aims. As a result, this study not only demonstrates how the mediation of the global by the local rearticulates policy aims to generate unintended policy outcomes, but also suggest that global/local mediation is shaped by a global, rather than a local, deficit position.