Social representations about Afro-Colombian Studies and teacher training: the pedagogical-racial crossroads, indigenism, and multiculturalism

Abstract

This article presents a reflection on teachers’ and students’ social representations of ethnoeducation and the Afro-Colombian Studies Lectures at the Universidad de Antioquia School of Education. Method and techniques: descriptive-explanatory qualitative research with a sociocritical approach, using data-based theory and critical discourse analysis. Techniques: discussion focal groups with students (3) and in-depth semi-structured interviews with professors (12) and education managers (5). Results: The social representations on ethnoeducation and the Afro-Colombian Studies Lectures are conceived as a pedagogical-racial crossroads showing possibilities from external processes, and especially great challenges in the transformation of formative processes and changes in school discourse in an ethnic Afro-descendant perspective. It has become evident that there is a lack of urgency in the implementation of school practices and discourses that ratify Afro-Colombian studies as a significant epistemological possibility and as a pedagogical option in academia. Similarly, the emergence of Afrodescendance as an epistemological and epistemic tendency is marked by the logics of racialization and the contradictory game of power, validated from the indigenist-multiculturalist perspective. These logics hinder the implementation and practice within institutions.