Curriculum and content
are decolonized and gender transformative. They ensure progressive and relevant technical, cognitive knowledge and creative skills, and deal with rights, social norms and beliefs.
Curricula and educational content must foster tolerance and inter-cultural and inter-gender understanding, in order to support and develop self-confident learners, who see more value in collaboration than exclusivity.
Influencing the curriculum and content involves decolonizing education and promoting (instead of ignoring) the value and representation of the rich variety of experiences, cultures, identities and languages of learners. Also, education should engage learners in cooperation, real-life issues and relationships with groups outside the classroom. Cultural, ethnic and gender diversities and inclusion should be strengthened and celebrated throughout the education system.
Learners, especially girls, are empowered through gender transformative education. They break out of stereotyped gender roles and become active citizens and achieve meaningful improvements in their lives. They gain control over their own lives and families and influence coming generations as active citizens (see more in ECPI Change Pathways on Education and Gender Justice). Therefore, transformative education has the potential to fight inequality by empowering people to organize, improve their lives and claim space in decision-making processes.
Case Story
Empowering Indigenous Children Through Intercultural Gender Transformative Education
Rabinal, Guatemala
In the municipality of Rabinal, Guatemala, the majority of people belong to the Maya Achi Indigenous people. The area is characterized by consequence from internal armed conflicts, and faces steep social inequality, high levels of poverty, poor education services and migration. Although, most of the children speaks Maya Achi when they start in school, bilingual education is not provided. Some teachers do speak the language but cannot read or write it or lack bilingual pedagogic resources and materials. Consequently, the students are taught in Spanish. This means that indigenous children are falling further behind in reading and writing, they do not learn the basics, drop out of school and are unable to transition to higher education. The project, “Empowering Indigenous Children through Intercultural, Gender transformative Education” aims at developing an innovative, intercultural and gender transformative model for primary and secondary schools in the municipality that improves learning results, empowerment, and life projects of 4,000 students. This includes the development of bilingual (Spanish and Maya Achi) learning material and is a great example of how to create curriculum and content that fosters transformation rather than oppression by being decolonized, relevant and inclusive.
The project is implemented by PRODESSA (The Santiago Development Project), Fundación Nueva Esperanza (The Foundation of New Hope) and Oxfam. The aim of the project is to two-fold but interrelated; to improve the poor learning outcomes in math and reading amongst 4,000 primary and secondary (1st grade) school children in 29 schools in Rabinal, and to address the discrimination and inequality related to gender norms and traditions in the targeted school communities.
Books developed by the project. Photo: Oxfam in Guatemala.
Under the Achi name, ”Kemab´al Ch´a´atem” (in English, “Weaving the Word”) PRODESSA has developed bilingual education materials, including an app, that targets reading and writing skills as well as mathematical skills for students in grade 1-3 and 4-7. It is all contextualized in the Achi culture and language to strengthen students’ ability to understand and learn, and to be more aware of their Achi culture and strengthen their self-esteem. Furthermore, gender justice is a cross-cutting element. The aim here is to ensure that students have materials for learning that promote reflection on gender inequality and encourage children and adolescents to break stereotypes and preconceived notions in their daily lives. One important pedagogic element is that the program encourages readers to question whether the current relationships between men and women are fair and begin the process of changing paradigms and practices in their own lives.
The development of content and curriculum is supported by teacher training that focuses on strengthening teachers’ ability to teach in Achi as well as to comply with gender transformative and intercultural pedagogies. Thus, teachers are better able to address gender inequalities in the classroom, in the school and bring up these gender inequalities with the parents and parent committee members so that gender stenotypes rooted in a patriarchal society may slowly change.
In its 2022 annual operative plan, the Ministry of Education has included the printout of the bilingual (Spanish and Achi) books produced in the project on comprehensive reading and Kemab’al Ch’a’teem values and their distribution in three new administrative departments. The material will hence reach 12 municipalities and around 23,000 students who speak Achi as their mother tongue, to strengthen their reading, writing and learning process. This is a big win in terms of making the material available to more Maya Achi learners, and to institutionalizing the approach thus ensuring sustainability.
This case story from Guatemala also relate to Pedagogical Methodology and Practice and because it was adopted by the Ministry of Education, also contribute to Gender Justice.