Gender, Education and Globalization: a preliminary study of cooperative learning and gender equity education in the Eastern Region of Guatemala

The following study explores the question of how and if skills learned in Ak’Tenamit, a rural school in the Eastern part of Guatemala, have any affect on the communities where students live. This research is about apprenticeship practices in the indigenous community of Punta Arenas and the changes in Ak’Tenamit’s teaching curriculum. This article is based on four weeks of participant observations, archival research, and nine recorded and transcribed interviews. Interviews were conducted with Ak’Tenamit’s teachers, students and students’ parents attending the school. The methodology draws on the work of Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (2002). Lave and Wenger’s Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (1991) provided the theoretical framework for data analysis and interpretation.

This study’s findings show that cooperative learning practices have provided avenues for students to build creative interactions with and contributions to their communities. Further, these practices have contributed to the ongoing process of self-determination and transformation of their communities.

Background

According to the United Nations, Guatemala’s population consists of more than twenty-one indigenous groups. In 1990, the indigenous population was an estimated 48% of the total population. Although efforts to guarantee mandatory education to children have taken place, 11.6% of children still do not have access to this education.[1]

The research site, Proyecto Ak’Tenamit, was founded in 1992 as a nonprofit organization. It currently has boarding facilities for girls and boys who attend the school and whose homes are as far away as a thirty minute motorboat ride. In order to promote girls’ education, Ak’Tenamit has developed activities to encourage student leadership, gender equity, and proficiency in the Spanish language. Furthermore, Ak’Tenamit encourages children’s sponsorship, and conducts outreach activities to students’ families that stress the importance of student recruitment, retention and completion of formal schooling.[2]

In 2002, Ak’Tenamit implemented a change in their curriculum shifting from teacher-centered to student-centered education, where a premium is placed on student participation. The Tutorial Learning System (Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial, SAT) that Ak’Tenamit is using is akin to what has been called cooperative learning. According to one of the teachers, these changes in the curriculum allowed the teachers to “facilitate” student learning instead of “depositing” knowledge into the students. One of the Directors at Ak’Tenamit described the educational system as “radical.” “Our whole educational system is very radical in that sense,” he said. He continued to explain that “our education system is, especially at the level of básico (junior high school) SAT [Tutorial Learning System], is based on the idea of getting an education so that you can help your whole community to rise up.”

[Our educational system] is very holistic. And wherein they don't have a teacher per se, who'll dictate and the kids copy. It's more, very similar to say a Montessori type of system where the kids work in groups [engaging in a] process of self discovery, they have program guides that they go through on their own. They discover, they analyze, they work as teams and then they have what we call "tutors,” who are highly experienced teachers, but they sit in the back of the classroom observing the educational process, for the most part, so it helps build leadership and build self-esteem for the kids, all these things that they need to be successful in rural communities [including] problem solving abilities, and teamwork skills ... [3]

According to Ak’Tenamit’s academic and technical director SAT was implemented in order to accommodate the learning needs of the rural population. New skills, reading and written exercises are contextualized in rural settings and the curriculum stresses collaborative learning practices.

The Tutorial Learning System has been implemented in another school in the northern area of Guatemala where some Ak’Tenamit students continue their studies if they want to become teachers. However, it would be premature to identify the adoption of this educational system as a trend or as isolated cases in Guatemala.

Literature Review

This research agenda and data analysis was based on the guidelines given by Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (2002). She encourages those who conduct research among indigenous peoples to conceptualize the research agenda as “constituting a programme and set of approaches that are situated within the decolonization politics of the indigenous peoples’ movement” (2002:115). Keeping this in mind, collection and analysis of ethnographic data took place with a decolonization approach. This approach is based on the premise that students and community members are active participants in a process of self-determination and transformation.

Lave and Wenger’s (1991) discussion of Legitimate Peripheral Participation provided pivotal insight into the learning processes and community participation witnessed in Ak’Tenamit and the community of Punta Arenas. Lave and Wenger define “Legitimate Peripheral Participation” (LPP) as “an analytical viewpoint on learning, a way of understanding learning” (1991:40), “[it] obtains its meaning, not in a concise definition of its boundaries but in its multiple, theoretically generative interconnections with persons, activities, knowing and world” (1991:121).

Lave and Wegner’s notion that learning requires social interaction and collaboration stands in sharp contrast to Scandura’s (1977) “Structural Learning Theory.” Scandura sees the process of learning as teacher-centered and as an internal process rather than a social and collaborative effort. Scandura’s decontextualization of learning could not provide a framework of fluidity and student based learning observed during my participant observation in Ak’Tenamit.

On the other hand, Pask’s (1975) “Conversation Theory” proved to be an important starting point for understanding the learning process that took place through discussions of different topics inside and outside the classroom. Conversation theory is based on the idea that learning occurs through conversation about any topic, these conversations help to make knowledge clear.

However, after visiting a community that was transformed by the apprenticeship experience of one of its members, this theory fell short in providing an encompassing framework to the ethnography. Lave and Wegner’s (1991) theory of Situated Learning provided an explanatory and analytical framework for the ethnographic work in Guatemala among Ak’Tenamit students.

In the summer of 2001, Proyecto Ak’Tenamit’s educational consultant, Renwick Irvine, described Ak’Tenamit’s recent efforts in the educational field. Two main themes figured prominently: the implementation of a new curriculum called SAT and the recent efforts to recruit girls to attend Ak’Tenamit. This research was inspired by Mr. Irvine’s description of the goals and achievements of the current educational program at Ak’Tenamit.

I conducted an average of eight hours of participant observation during the week and five hours during the weekend. The timeframe for conducting participant observation was regulated by sunlight. The area lacked electricity and it depended on electric generators that were usually on for a couple of hours after sunset. Also, my transportation was a canoe that was only safe to row during daytime.

I stayed four weeks in a lodge close to the school. It took a couple of days to find the people whom I had contacted via e-mail from the U.S. After interviews with Ak’Tenamit’s director and other staff, observations in-class started. Participation in agricultural practices and extra curricular activities took place a week later. I spent one night in the girls’ dormitory and two days in Punta Arenas, one of the communities close by where students’ families live. Also, nine in-depth interviews with teachers, staff, students and students’ parents were taped and transcribed upon returning from Guatemala. Moreover, six informal interviews with parents and staff were conducted. These interviews were not taped or transcribed but noted in a research diary. Archival research was done in Ak’Tenamit where access to all meeting minutes and implementation of different activities in the school were readily available.

Participant observation took place among a group of approximately twenty-five students ranging in age from thirteen to fifteen years old. They were the first ones in their respective families to go to school and to learn to write and read in Spanish. Ak’Tenamit provides room and board for all the students who do not live close to the school. Students stay twenty days of the month in the school and ten days in their communities when they have vacation from school activities.

Data Collection: Punta Arenas’ participatory community

Upon arrival at the village of Punta Arenas after a twenty minute early morning boat ride through lush vegetation in the pristine Rio Tatin, the first sight of the town was a cinder block school adorned by a colorful mural painted by the students. Close to it, a thatch-roofed house held a colorful array of three half-woven hammocks, stretched and held from sticks. This space was available to all the inhabitants of Punta Arenas. Children’s paintings were taped to the brick walls and plastic needles were left where the last person stopped weaving.

After arriving, I met Carlos. He was weaving a hammock in the house next to the school. At sixteen years of age, Carlos was finishing his last year at Ak’Tenamit where he learned to make hammocks. Carlos patiently answered questions regarding his interest in hammock making while he showed how to intertwine the vertical double thread through horizontal threads held in place by wooden sticks.

I learned to make hammocks with a hammock maker who came to Ak’Tenamit to teach us how to make them... once I learned I came here and asked the [town’s] school teacher if I could make hammocks here and he said yes... that is how everybody helps to make them... when the weaving is finished, I sew the last stitches and make the loops for the strings so the hammock can be hung... the first one went to my parents and I am not sure what we will do with these... [4]

The local schoolteacher joined Carlos in the hammock making process. He could not hide his pride about Carlos having been his student and that now he was learning from Carlos how to make hammocks. The teacher confessed that he had been a little slow in learning how to put the final touches on the hammock in order to make it useful, but he was confident that he was going to. He added that hammock making was an activity that some of his younger students engaged in because “[the place where the hammocks are housed] is right next to the school and whenever they feel like it they add a few stitches.” [5]

Later that day a couple of women took some thread out of a room in the school. These two local women do what is called “doubling the thread.” This activity consists of stretching one thread as far as it goes, then folding it in half. One woman holds the thread at one end while the other uses a wooden spool where she puts two ends of the thread. The woman with the wooden spool proceeds to spin the wheel and the thread twists tightly forming a double thread that is used for hammock making.

Carlos brought to the town of Punta Arenas the skill of hammock making that he learned through a master in the space provided by Ak’Tenamit. He shared his knowledge with the community and in return the community provided a physical space for hammock making. The children of the school, some adults in the community and the schoolteacher carry out one step of the production by adding stitches to the hammocks. Two other members of the community execute the preliminary steps of hammock making by doubling the thread that later will be used to make the hammocks. It must be clarified that nobody scheduled these activities. People engaged in hammock making at their leisure. The two women doubling thread were talking and laughing while they engaged in their work. They decided the thread color and quantity to be doubled. Hammock making is an activity in which many different members of the community participate and Carlos is able to pass on the skills that he learned.

This example shows how Carlos embarked on the journey of apprenticeship. His identity within the community of Punta Arenas has been transformed, through practice, from a student in the local school to a “full participant” in the community. This identity shift begat new dynamics of power and relations. These sets of relations and activities are what Lave and Wenger call a community of practice. They argue that a community of practice “implies participation in an activity system about which participants share understanding concerning what they are doing and what that means in their lives and their communities” (1991: 98).

Agricultural Outing at Ak’Tenamit

A week after arriving in Ak’Tenamit, students’ agricultural practice took place. Since students come mainly from farming families, Ak’Tenamit has allocated a considerable amount of resources to establishing a stable agricultural practice for all students. Agricultural practices take place under the instructions of a Maya instructor in Q´eqchi'. The Maya instructor explained to the students the importance of farming corn and its connections to the Maya Cosmovision.[6] Later he explained how to plant corn and how to clear the fields after which we headed to the field.

After a fifteen minute walk, the girls started looking for “chuzos” in order to use it in the field. The "chuzo" is a long stick with a pointed end which is used to open a shallow hole in the soil where the seeds will be placed. Meanwhile, under the direction of the instructor, a group of students cleared the field with machetes and other students measured the field using a black cable with yellow strips. Once the field was measured and cleared a group of students engaged in a lively discussion. The instructor said that students came from different villages and they needed to agree on what pattern of planting they wanted to follow (since each village has a different pattern). Soon the students reached a consensus and shared it with the rest of students who quickly began to plant corn.

After planting the corn students went to check another field nearby where they had planted cucumbers. Students closely scrutinized the crop in order to select the good vegetables and to eradicate any pests or bad growths on the plants. Students volunteered enthusiastically that they controlled the worms (pests) through plants planted in the fields for that purpose. The instructor added that pest control is done ecologically by a mix made from different vegetables including chili peppers, onions, etc., which are sprayed on the cucumbers every other day.

That day students picked and ate some cucumbers sharing them amongst each other. Also, students noted that the beets were going to be ready soon. A student named Oscar said that he controlled the pests in his parents’ plot the same way they did it in this field. The instructor encouraged Oscar to share with the group how he had implemented agricultural practices in his household. Oscar said, “Yeah, my father has a little plot of land where we only grew corn but then I learned how to grow cucumbers and beets and we have grown them since last year... My father is content about that.”

Oscar’s agricultural practice at home has shaped his relationships in the household. By implementing his recently acquired knowledge through agricultural activities Oscar’s apprenticeship experience has allowed him to contribute to the household in a new way.

Data Analysis: Toward a learning curriculum

The concept of Legitimate Peripheral Learning makes a distinction between a learning and a teaching curriculum. Lave and Wenger argue that a teaching curriculum “is constructed for the instruction of newcomers...[and] when it supplies structuring resources for learning the meaning of what is learned is mediated through an instructor’s participation, by an external view of what knowing is all about” (1991:97). By contrast, a learning curriculum “is a field of learning resources in everyday practice viewed from the perspective of learners... [it] is essentially situated” (emphasis by the authors 1991:97).

One could argue that students’ involvement in agricultural practices—from sowing to harvesting— constitutes a community of practice. Furthermore, this “situated” [7] way of learning potentially allows the students to become full participants in other activities where she/he identifies the opportunity to build a community of practice like Carlos does in Punta Arenas.

Participant observation among 8^th graders at Ak’Tenamit revealed that the education program is still finding its balance between a teaching and a learning curriculum. For example, when students are given reading assignments the teacher is the one who moderates reading discussions. In part, this happens because student proficiency in the Spanish language varies among the students and the instructor needs to clarify words and concepts. Still, the instructor does most of the interpretation of the material. As a result, instructors mediate the students’ learning and give little chance for student engagement with the reading material. On the other hand, a learning curriculum is well established with participation in arts, crafts and agriculture. Students are free to choose any activity they want to practice or learn during the weekends when Ak’Tenamit offers workshops on hammock making, crafts, physical education, weaving and jewelry making. Ak’Tenamit’s education board chose these activities after considering students’ opinions and desires regarding what they would like to learn. Also, the learning of these skills depends on the availability of people in the area who have mastered them.

Ak’Tenamit is on its way to developing a curriculum that deals with the economics of running a granary and poultry farm. This curriculum, according to Carlos Pop, the head of the education department, satisfies students’ wishes to enhance their knowledge beyond the more hands-on agricultural practices.

Final thoughts and further studies

What Ak’Tenamit’s director called a “radical” student-centered curriculum (SAT) combined with a clearly spiritual and political education is what helps indigenous communities to acknowledge their culture, their history and to achieve self-determination in the aftermath of a devastating civil war. In Smith’s words, “telling our stories from the past, reclaiming the past” are “strategies which are commonly employed by indigenous people struggling for justice...And yet, the need to tell our stories remains the powerful imperative of a powerful form of resistance” (Smith 2002: 34-35).

Ak’Tenamit students are beginning to claim and revitalize their cultural practices, as apprentices become masters in their new and dynamic communities of practice. They are beginning to “connect, inform and clarify the tensions between the local, the regional and the global” (Smith 2002:116); they are making the transition to being the actors rather than the acted upon.

Arguably, the long civil war in Guatemala has had significant effects on the students’ education. However, their learning experience has shaped their identity and has helped to make explicit each student’s place as “a person-in-the-world.” In Lave’s and Wegner’s words, “viewing learning as legitimate peripheral participation means that learning is not merely a condition for membership, but is itself an evolving form of membership” (Lave and Wenger 1991:52, 53).

Ak’Tenamit’s technical director explained that some of the families along Rio Tatin migrated from the highlands but “the armed conflict was not felt here.”[8] Still, educational practices with their emphasis on self-determination and liberation are informed by the wartime and migratory experience of thousands of indigenous peoples. This preliminary ethnographic work at Ak’Tenamit demonstrates that students and education personnel are working together to meet the needs of rural students in this part of Guatemala despite, or perhaps because of, national conflagration. Students have taken advantage of apprenticeship situations in order to reinforce processes of self-determination and transformation in their communities and their school.

Ak’Tenamit’s bilingual education and emphasis on the preservation of indigenous ways of life like the Maya Cosmovision show its commitment to honoring and enhancing students’ culture and beliefs. One could argue that when students in this rural region are exposed to this kind of education they have a potential to continue to develop processes of “decolonization, healing, transformation and mobilization” at a local and national level (Smith 2002:116). At Ak’Tenamit, healing and transformative political education is evident, for example, in some of the school posters which define discrimination as an “uncivilized thing” or as an “unintelligent behavior.”

Healing and transformative political education is crucial in Barra de Lámpara. In this region communities are still fighting to prevent invasions of their farm land. For example, during my stay in Punta Arenas, the town was holding a community meeting to address land invasions from newcomers who were displaced during the war and who had been promised land by the government and had not yet received it. Moreover, the region is contending with globalization as communities are increasingly being encouraged to engage in monoculture for distant markets. Likewise, Ak’Tenamit is encouraging student production of cultural items for sale to tourists (hand made handbags and paper, for example) thus creating potential tensions between the preservation of indigenous ways and the potential of market forces to commodify culture.

It is important to keep in mind that Ak’Tenamit’s education program has encountered financial obstacles and personnel challenges since its inception. At times it has been difficult to find qualified teachers who can teach subjects in Q’eqchi and Spanish and who are willing to stay in a rural environment for long periods of time.

Finally, it is also important to point out that efforts to encourage girls to attend school were partially funded by the federal initiative known as “Eduquemos a la niña” (Let’s Educate the Girl).[9] This program has endured some local and national financial cuts and local administrative changes. However, in 2000-2001, Ak’Tenamit staff conducted a campaign to recruit girls from distant villages. These efforts included offering full room, board and transportation to and from the village. Also, during their school break, female students conduct outreach activities to recruit other girls in their village. Nevertheless, this program has encountered some administrative problems. One of the program’s main obstacles is that Ak’Tenamit has not been able to find a person who could run the program after it was established. Therefore, its accomplishments cannot be readily or easily assessed. However, the number of girls enrolled has increased since the implementation of that program.[10] Perhaps further studies could look into the potential changes and influences of educating girls in the communities of Barra de Lámpara, Livingston, where Ak’Tenamit is located.

[6] “Community ceremonies with candles and incense take place on religious days of the Mayan calendar (which also work as the guiding calendar within the project). Based on the lunar cycle, it dictates planting and harvesting times, and special activities.” (http://www.aktenamit.org)