Teachers, textbooks, and orthographic choices in Quechua: comparing bilingual intercultural education in Peru and Ecuador across decades

ABSTRACT

One of the central paradoxes of textbook authorship in Indigenous languages is that some of those for whom the textbooks are intended find it challenging to read them. Here, through examining cases of Quechua across the Andes in Peru and in Ecuador, we consider the role of orthography in this paradox. Textbook authors must decide on an alphabet for writing textbooks. Yet, the selection of a particular alphabet or changing the alphabet can cause unforeseen difficulties in reading and teaching with the books. Teachers often have experiences with the letters and with reading and writing that are linked to larger-scale questions about what ‘the Quechua language’ is and how one writes in Quechua. These experiences affect their own and others’ interactions with linguistic varieties and with textbooks, playing a significant role in what and how they teach.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous education
• minoritised languages
• pedagogy
• literacy
• Andes

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the support of research participants in Peru and Ecuador, who made this article possible, and for the helpful comments of the anonymous reviewers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This article is a heavily revised version of a previously published book chapter (Hornberger and Limerick 2019).

2. We have written elsewhere about the Bolivian case (e.g. Hornberger 2000, 2013, 2014).

3. The alphabet was approved in 1946 by Peruvian Minister of Education Luis Valcárcel. The Summer Institute of Linguistics present in Peru beginning in 1946 played a role in the development of this alphabet (which also bore the influence of the International Phonetic Alphabet) (Jung and López 1987, 488–489).

4. The exceptions were the exchange of j (1954) for h (1975).

5. The same alphabet was officialised in Bolivia by Supreme Decree 20,227 on 9 May 1984 (Albó 1987, 236).

6. Chango Juarez (2007) lists the agreed-upon alphabet as a, c, ch, h, i, j, l, ll, m, n, ñ, p, q, r, s, sh, t, ts, u, y, z.

7. This name is a pseudonym.

8. Parts of this data are also analysed for a different argument in Limerick (2018b).

9. Ruth wrote a k into the first sentence by accident (tandanacuichik instead of tandanacuichij).We changed the k to j above to make the data easier to follow, but the ‘mistake’ is another instance of the difficulties of separating the alphabets.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund [Grant, 2017 (Author 1)];Inter-American Foundation [Fellowship (1982-1983) (Author 2)]; National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation [Dissertation Fellowship (2013-2014) (Author 1)]; National Science Foundation [Graduate Research Fellowship (2008-2012) (Author 1]; U.S. Department of Education [Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship (Author 2)]; Wenner-Gren Foundation [Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (2011-2012) (Author 1)].