The Making of Transformative Teacher Intellectuals: Implications for Indigenous People Education

Abstract

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED), through CMO #2 s.2019, encouraged Higher Education Institutions to establish a program on Indigenous Studies/Education. This paper maintained that long before CHED introduced the policy, the College of Education of the University of the Philippines has contributed to the study of Indigenous Education. The College, through its Educational Foundations courses and its doctorate program on Anthropology and Sociology of Education, has been involved in instruction, research, and extension work among indigenous communities. This paper describes how students become socialized into the program through participation in service-learning activities and ethnographic research. It maintains that IP education scholars must hold on to a dynamic and processual view of culture and identity. They should also be aware of the critical pedagogy to resist being reduced to specialized technicians instead of being transformative intellectuals attuned to unequal power relations in schools.