Cultura, educación y desarrollo psicológico: Construcción de identidad en la sierra andina de Ayabaca a partir del uso de la tradición oral en contextos escolares

Abstract

Recovery and valuing of cultural heritage are principal resources to support a social development in which positive identity construction is considered as a significant driving force. The main goal of this investigation is to contribute to the construction of a positive cultural identity in children from the Andean range of Ayabaca by valuing its own oral tradition in scholar context. A participatory action research based mainly on ethnographical qualitative methodology has been conducted taking into account a wide theoretical framework in which Jerome Bruner´s concept of narrative thinking, Bartlett´s theory of reconstructive memory and Clifford Geertz´s conception of symbolic anthropology are main references. This work is structured in three stages: first a series of investigations bears out the influence of culture on children´s narrative thinking and explores its effects in the Andean range of Ayabaca. Remembrance of folk narratives and both interviews and questionnaires about its contents are analyzed from a sample of 305 children of different ages and cultures. Findings reveal how cultural contexts are involved in children´s narrative thinking. We conclude that cultural identity is partly the result of a narrative process between individual and group. Secondly, oral tradition from Ayabaca is explored in order to recover and analyze its folk narratives and classify them under several criteria. 298 subjects, children and adults, have participated in an ecological approach reporting themselves, both orally and by writing, about 300 different folk narratives. Results show a wide oral tradition that covers several genres and a variety of topics that reflect pre-Hispanic and Hispanic influences. Finally, these folk narratives are employed in school contexts by setting up activities related with dramatization, drawing and writing. Institutions, researchers, teachers and students have actively participated together in an action research process whose results demonstrate the importance of valuing oral traditions for contributing to the construction of a positive cultural identity