School and community relationships in Mexico. Researching inclusion in education from critical and decolonial perspectives

Abstract

This paper takes the notion of inclusion as an imperfect and contested project toward educational and social justice, which seeks to address social and historically constructed exclusion. It aims to problematise ‘inclusion research’ of school and community relationships in Mexico by examining the orientations and implications for inclusion of doing educational research aligned with a more ‘Western’ critical approach to social justice as opposed to research explicitly situated in a decolonial and intercultural perspective. It firstly characterises how inclusion is dealt with by critical and decolonial perspectives. Secondly, through a comparative exploration of two ethnographic research projects about school-community relationships, it analyses the implications of both approaches and explores the articulation between ‘substantive power’ and ‘formal power’ in the research, arguing for the need to include an epistemic and ontological dimension in inclusion as social-justice-oriented research.

ABSTRACT (Spanish)

Este artículo propone una noción de inclusión como proyecto—imperfecto y en tensión— hacia la justicia educativa y social, el cual busca afrontar la exclusión social e históricamente construida. El texto tiene como objetivo problematizar la “investigación sobre inclusión” al examinar las orientaciones e implicaciones para la inclusión de la investigación educativa que se alinea con un enfoque crítico hacia la justicia social desde perspectivas más “occidentales”, en contraste con la investigación explícitamente situada en perspectivas decoloniales e interculturales. Primero, se caracteriza cómo la inclusión se trabaja desde perspectivas críticas y decoloniales. Posteriormente, a través de una exploración comparativa de dos proyectos etnográficos sobre relaciones entre escuelas y sus comunidades en México, se analiza las implicaciones de las dos perspectivas y se explora las articulaciones entre el ̈poder substantivo” y el “poder formal” en la investigación. Finalmente, se argumenta sobre la necesidad de incluir las dimensiones epistémica y ontológica en la inclusión como investigación orientada hacia la justicia social y educativa.

Keywords:

• Inclusion
• exclusion
• decolonial
• México
• ethnography

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 TS: Translated from Spanish by the authors.

2 We use campesino instead of peasant to move away for the possible negative connotation of the word in English and to recognize a rural way of living that it is a culture in itself in Latin American communities.

3 In Mexico, milpa is the name given to the traditional poly crop agricultural system around corn that also includes various species such as beans, pumpkins, chilli peppers, tomatoes, and other different local species, along with animals and fungi that inhabit the plots. Such diversity turns the milpa into an ecosystem with beneficial ecological interactions. The milpas vary widely, depending on the natural setting, the traditions and local knowledge and the campesino families’ preferences.

4 REDIIN, created in 2009, is an independent multi-ethnic organisation made up of Indigenous teachers from approximately 12 original Mexican populations. They have been trained at the political and pedagogical level by community educators from UNEM.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the CONACYT-México and by INIDE-Universidad Iberoamericana in the case of convivencia project and by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and INIDE-Universidad Iberoamericana for the Educational Milpas project.