International Literacy Development in the Peruvian Amazon: Three Problematic Assumptions

Abstract

Recently, international initiatives have targeted the South American Amazon with the hope of improving education outcomes there. The effort may be well intended. However, implementing and evaluating literacy projects in this vast and resource-rich jungle, characterized by abundant linguistic and cultural variety since pre-colonial times, inevitably results in a clash of worldviews. This chapter presents the results of a critical interpretive review of research and policy documents related to literacy development efforts in South America, with special attention to the most excluded Amazonian regions in Peru. I used the theoretical construct of research paradigms (Sipe & Constable, 1996), to identify interconnected assumptions and worldviews (Jones, Torres, & Arminio, 2006) in research and policy agendas promoting international literacy. My analysis revealed the existence of three main assumptions behind international collaboration efforts in literacy and how they are problematic for the South American Amazon. Findings reveal how the research framework toward literacy, the visions regarding the contribution of national assessments to educational quality, and the conceptualizations of the relationship between education and development, emerging from international discourses, may encounter alternative ideas that are equally valid in the South American Amazon. The conclusions have important implications for global meaning making regarding literacy development, and specifically for the design, implementation, and evaluation of international literacy-based projects in countries where Spanish is the dominant language.

Citation

Pallais-Downing, D. (2022), "International Literacy Development in the Peruvian Amazon: Three Problematic Assumptions", Assaf, L.C., Sowa, P. and Zammit, K. (Ed.) Global Meaning Making (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 39), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 9-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720220000039002