A proposal for critical intercultural education based on Social Design Research

Abstract

This article aims to advance a proposal for intercultural education based, on the one hand, on a critical analysis of the evolution of the concept and, on the other, on more than two decades of social design research carried out in two different educational and community contexts: the Shere Rom Project in Barcelona and La Clase Mágica in Seville. Both experiences are part of the traditions of Historical-Cultural Psychology and conceive of research as a co-design process aimed at educational and social transformation. Using participatory methodologies, the projects have generated hybrid contexts of activity in which universities, schools, and communities collaborate in the construction of new practices of learning and inclusion. The results show transformations at three levels: institutional (school-community-university relations), subjective (participants' identities and agency), and epistemological (ways of producing educational knowledge). From this perspective, it is concluded that interculturality is redefined as a new relationship between the school and its environment, in which the community enters the school and the school goes out into the community, shaping an educational model oriented toward social justice and the collective construction of knowledge.