Perceived discrimination among teachers and traditional culture educators in intercultural education in La Araucanía, Chile

Abstract The article presents research results on the educational relationship between mentor teachers and traditional culture educators in the implementation of Programa de Educación Intercultural Bilingüe (Bilingual Intercultural Education Program, BIEP) in La Araucanía, Chile. Research methodology is mixed, in which a Likert-style scale questionnaire is applied to a total of 155 participants, of which 105 are traditional culture educators and 50 are mentor teachers. Results show practices of explicit and implicit discrimination perceived by Mapuche students in the educational relationship they establish with the teacher. Both mentor teachers and traditional culture educators recognize that an educational relationship of involvement, recognition and collaboration could reverse such discriminatory practices. We conclude that the educational relationship in school education is based on implicit and explicit forms of racism towards the teaching of indigenous language and culture at school. Thus, the discrimination perceived by tradition educators challenges the school and its historical role in the processes of subalternization of the Mapuche people. In this context, there is a need for an intercultural educational intervention that provide a relevant response to the social, cultural, and linguistic diversity present in school education. This constitutes a challenge for directors, teachers, parents, and community members to advance in an inter-epistemic dialogue, based on respect, ethics, political commitment, co-responsibility, negotiation, mediation and abandonment of biased frames of reference.