Rural indigenous students in Peruvian Urban higher education: interweaving ecological systems of coloniality, community, barriers, and opportunities

ABSTRACT

In Peru, Indigenous students from rural communities must often migrate to urban areas to access higher education. Navigating to and through urban higher education is a complex task where Peru’s oppressive colonial legacies intertwine with students’ community values, resources, and strengths. How can we more deeply understand the interconnecting systems that oppress and support rural Indigenous students, and how can we mobilize these understandings to reimagine higher education? In this paper, we use photo-cued interviewing and ecological systems theory to 1) make sense of rural Indigenous students’ experiences as they navigate to and through higher education in urban areas and 2) uncover levers for systemic change to improve higher education policy and practice. In doing so, we expand beyond a two worlds perspective of Indigenous educational experiences to offer a more holistic view on coloniality and Indigenous resilience in higher education.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ ESCALE collects data on Indigenous and Rural inhabitants, but not Rural Indigenous.

² Centros Rurales de Formación de Alternancia (Rural Alternative Learning Center), an agricultural boarding school.

³ We invited each student to be a collaborator and sought their input at all stages of the research process (with compensation for time and effort). One student – who became our key collaborator – took on the collaborator role in the traditional sense. Other students offered ideas, which we incorporated into the study, but due to work and study obligations could not devote much time to collaboration.

⁴ Roughly USD $60.

⁵ Based on OECD PISA rankings.

Additional information

Funding

This article draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [169676].

Notes on contributors

Kayla M. Johnson

Kayla M. Johnsonis an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation at the University of Kentucky. In her research, she uses she uses visual participatory, student voice, and community-engaged methods to explore issues related to learning, development, and social justice in higher and international education. Her recent work has appeared in the American Journal of Education, Teachers College Record, and the International Journal of Student Voice.

Joseph Levitan

Joseph Levitan is an assistant professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University. His research advances social justice in educational leadership and policy—focusing on identity, well-being, and collaborative action research processes to redesign educational organizations. His scholarship has appeared in Teachers College Record, the American Journal of Education, Leadership and Policy in Schools, and Action Research.