"I am a Quechua girl": Building collaborative autoethnography through indigenous self-recognition in early education

Abstract

Intercultural bilingual education aims to remedy the acculturation that many people experienced due to the imposition of the Spanish language and its worldview. Education, from early childhood to university, has made progress in promoting the educational rights of indigenous peoples living in Peru. Thus the aim of this study was to describe the stories of young people in their process of self-recognition. For this, autoethnography has been used, as it allows us to hear first-person narratives based on lived experiences, in this case from the perspective of an indigenous sense of self-recognition that runs through both formal school education and informal cultural and family education. The results of the autoethnography elicited the narratives of four personal experiences connected to early childhood education and the journey towards self-recognition. The study concludes with a discussion on aspects that autoethnography can reveal, and the role of formal early childhood education in the formation of indigenous identity and self-recognition.