Indigenous knowledge in the process of teachers training in intercultural education

Abstract

This article analyzes the interaction between indigenous knowledge and
western science in teacher training of intercultural education. This is developed
in terms of culture encounters of different societies between trainers and
students who belong to Western and Mapuche cultures. Indigenous knowledge
is provided in either working techniques and practices or in social activities
in which its efficiency depends on the relationship among people who
participate. On the other hand, Western science depends on experimental or
formal criteria of scientificity where knowledge does not exist without any
definite discursive practice shaping scientific hypothesis, theories and laws.
Culture is analyzed as a communicational field which organizes a set of
attitudes. The attitude significances exteriorized in behavior or expression
codes are interiorized in the memory and symbolic interchanges. But,
interculture implies the opening to the relationship settlement with the
Other. Thus, this re-establishes a value pluralism and relationships of inter
independence among those values or among the systems and its individuals.
Interculture is an innovation proposing a different interpretation of the world.