Participative Citizenship in Mashpi, 厄瓜多尔: Meaningful 和 Sustainable Models for Education 和 Conservation

"This ethnography was motivated by its subject, the Río Mashpi Public School in the rural community of Mashpi, 厄瓜多尔, 和 the transformational reform it has undergone in the last four years through efforts from students, 老师, 父母, 和 community governance that supports collective action. The 2008 Constitution of 厄瓜多尔 declared the rights of all peoples under the principle of Buen Vivir, an Indigenous philosophy of well-being, 和 the government since then has not fulfilled its promises to support integrated education for all. The the goal of this paper is to exemplify how quality education can be achieved with limited resources 和 minimal governmental support by promoting the integration of environmental education 和 participative citizenship. I saw these processes firsth和 when I volunteered as a temporary teaching assistant at the Río Mashpi school. This position gave me the opportunity to interview a wide range of community members, analyze the pedagogical transformation, 和 employ a participatory approach to this research.

I found that environmental conservation efforts made the community more willing to adopt educational reforms 和 that the school 和 the community’s primary natural resources (the forest 和 the river) mirrored one another’s systems of governance. Empirical results also show that collective action around these issues had a positive influence on the students’ learning capacities, 行为模式, 和 shifted general cultures of abuse in the community. I conclude that self-directed environmental conservation creates meaningful 和 sustainable community-led institutions that further uplift historically disenfranchised rural populations. The findings are also contextualized within 厄瓜多尔’s political history regarding public infrastructure 和 educational funding. The results of this paper have ample potential to be diffused into other regions to improve education 和 exemplify how schools 和 communities with limited financial resources can make profound change. "