Researching Interculturality in Post-Colonial Contexts: Indigenous Perspectives and Beyond(New Perspectives on Teaching Interculturality)

This volume critically explores intercultural "encounters" between Indigenous and Eurocentric education in the post-colonial contexts of Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. In this book, interculturality in education is considered in a variety of educational and social settings, including teacher, community, secondary, and higher education, as well as language revitalization efforts, from a wide range of analytical and methodological perspectives. The contributors examine historical and emerging challenges in initiatives to expand or redesign education through interculturality/ies, highlighting the work that remains on the educational agenda while also identifying obstacles perpetuated by ideologies of monoculturalism, neoliberalism, and capitalism. Several case studies are presented to showcase pedagogical creativity, curricular innovation, and epistemological plurality in intercultural education and research. The volume also includes two expert transcultural commentaries that approach the challenges and opportunities in a comparative way, drawing on Indigenous perspectives beyond the three countries studied. This book argues for a critical and decolonial engagement with interculturality (in) education and research, emphasizing ethical collaboration, diverse worldviews, and resistance to epistemic singularity. This book will be essential for scholars and students of intercultural studies, education, and decolonization. It also provides valuable insights for educators navigating intercultural and Indigenous education.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Intercultural encounters in education in post-colonial contexts Part 1: Mapping out developments of interculturality in teacher education 2. The place of interculturality in Indigenous teacher education in Brazil 3. Science teacher training for cultural diversity: Creation and analysis of didactic strategies that foster intercultural dialogue Part 2: Epistemologies and experiences of Indigenous students in higher education 4. Intercultural experiences of Indigenous students at a private university in Mexico 5. Intercultural connections and utopian worlding: The quest for university education among the Sateré-Mawé, Lower Amazon River, Brazil Part 3: Interculturality in the school context through the work of teachers 6. Socio-educational ambivalence of Indigenous knowledge: The case of teachers working in a Mapuche context 7. Interculturality and Indigenous schools: The Xakriabá case Part 4: Rethinking science, language and community through interculturality 8. Spirit languages, sacred sciences: Indigenous language commitment as a cosmopolitical interculturality 9.“Other” education, knowledge and sciences: Contributions from Indigenous communities of Oaxaca, in Mexico, and their vision of communality Part 5: Transcultural commentaries 10. Thinking about interculturality in Latin America and Sápmi 11. Interculturality, epistemological braiding and the (im)possibility of the decolonial otherwise

About the Author :
Vander Tavares is Associate Professor at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway. His research interests include critical second language education, teacher education, and the internationalization of higher and language education. In 2021, he was the recipient of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Award by the Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE) for his years-long work in support of multilingual international students in Canada. He is the editor of Social Justice, Decoloniality, and Southern Epistemologies within Language Education (Routledge, 2023) and Social Justice through Pedagogies of Multiliteracies (Routledge, 2025).

Review :
“A critical read to understand the potentialities, tensions and, political disruptions that take place when there are aspirations of intercultural projects that challenge the colonial legacies (re)produced in the own field of intercultural studies and in other educational institutions.” Roxana Chiappa, Co-coordinator of the Nucleus of Intercultural Education, Migration and Borders: An inter-institutional effort from the South Andes Region, Universidad de Tarapacá / Rhodes University “Researching interculturality in post-colonial contexts: Indigenous perspectives and beyond is an intellectually stimulating and much needed contribution to the field of intercultural studies. Vander Tavares understands better than anyone that conversations on interculturality cannot be separated from geopolitical and body political questions of knowledge. This timely book fills the gap in this area of research by shifting the conversation to include and engage with other ways of seeing and interpreting the world.” Robert Aman, the author of Decolonising Intercultural Education: Colonial Difference, the Geopolitics of Knowledge, and Inter-Epistemic Dialogue (Routledge)