Mentorship's Potential to Consider Sociocultural Realities: Perspectives from Guatemalan Rural Teachers in Indigenous Schools

Abstract

Rural and Indigenous populations have the lowest educational achievement indicators and teachers with the least years of training. Global education movements have led to an increase in access to schooling by rural and Indigenous populations but high drop-out rates persist and education policies, curricular contents, and teacher trainings have progressively become urban-biased and insensitive to context. Using a case from Guatemala, this study offers policy knowledge on rural and Indigenous teacher professionalization by analyzing the potential of pedagogical mentorship as an in-service teacher training resource that can consider contextual and sociocultural realities. It also offers to improve our understandings of the challenges faced by teachers to provide quality education in rural and Indigenous settings. The data is drawn from a qualitative and multisite research study. Results demonstrate that main challenges faced by rural teachers include economic hardships, malnutrition, inadequate and superficial teacher training in intercultural bilingual education, and the persistent absence of basic government social programs. The data also reveal a positive demand for pedagogical mentorship on behalf of all the interviewed teachers; particularly to enhance their knowledge and skills on bilingual intercultural education. Pedagogical mentorship offers a powerful opportunity for governments to enhance quality and context-sensitive education; but it is not enough. Multi sectorial efforts are necessary to tackle poverty, hunger and education and move towards the implementation of the long overdue right for rural and Indigenous peoples to access quality education that includes healthy students and relevant curricula.