CHALLENGES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE OF INTERCULTURALITY IN CONTEMPORARY ECUADORIAN UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

Abstract

This article discusses various evidences about the challenges of contemporary intercultural higher education in Ecuador, with epistemological supports of ontoaxiological importance to the conceptual and interpretative differences present in this particular context of the HEI system in relation to interculturality. The general purpose is to make visible the spectrum of social justice and challenges achieved and to be achieved in a trajectory that is part of the construction of the intercultural constitutional citizen. The mixed methodology offered relevant information from the students, teachers and experts consulted. Reality shows the alarms for the prevalence of epistemes and teleologies typical of the university dynamics that remain distanced from otherness for a cultural construction that supports the realization of a renewed Ecuadorian nation, as long as the exploration of the past is not denied as a useful resource for a definition that surpasses the present. One of the challenges, full of tensions, is to empower oneself from the culture of the indigenous people for an education consistent with ancestral knowledge and to build bridges with science and academic knowledge. In addition, the legal fabric involves the recognition of the indigenous from their identity, cultures, ancestry, languages and ways of life, for their inclusion, with profound implications in a society that intends to take firm steps of linkage from the values of respect for diversity, co-responsibility, complementarity and social coexistence, to pave the way for social justice and the recognition of others from their ancestral origin.

Keywords: Challenges, Social justice, Interculturality, Ecuadorian University Education, Contemporaneity.