Teachers’ Writing and Indigenous Language. Analysis in Primary Schools in the Chaco Salteño Region

Abstract

The work provides details about a research pro- cess on writing by elementary school teachers with a native population of Wichi language speakers, in the Chaco Salteño región, northern Argentina. We begin the inquiry with a survey of writing practices of these bilingual teachers and their assistants and a process of recovering the collective memory of teaching texts that were significant in the educa- tion of native people. Based on this collection, we currently seekto deepen the study of this issue out of the systematization of writing productions that enabled the use of one’s own language; to characte- rise bilingual didactic texts that understand teaching as a knowledge transmitting device; and to record didactic resources and material which are signifi­ cant for childhood literacy in indigenous peoples. Addressing the issue and the problem of teacher writing from the viewpoint of social practice and collective memory requires the incorporation of concepts, such as historical awareness and cons­ truction of knowledge, typical of a critical pedago- gy anchored in Latín American thought. From this perspective, the methodological approach malees it possible to address the writing and subjectivity of teachers as processes traversed by social history and collective memory. Consequently, the research strategy of the present project adopts a qualitative design supported by the revisión of the documen- tary sources on primary level teachers and schools, pedagogical narrative and life stories; we also in- clude planned interventions with the professionals who inhabit the territory of éducation in / with na­ tive peoples, meetings, seminars and narrative wri­ ting workshops.