Opportunities and Challenges for Information Science: Indigenous and Higher Education in Latin America

Abstract

In recent years, it has been created several institutions and academic programs of higher education with an intercultural approach in Latin America, which have enabled that thousands of indigenous students access to formal education. In this context, it is considered that the scientific activity developed by indigenous students acquire different characteristics and dynamics that should be analysed from an interdisciplinary approach, since  these individuals come from diverse socio-cultural contexts and keep skills, perceptions and behaviours distant from the western conception of scientific knowledge. Therefore, this reflection, based on the theoretical and methodological contributions of social studies of science and technology and socio-cultural approach of the concept of information literacy, seeks to provide some elements to think and reflect on these new information contexts. Also, this work analyses the role of information professionals, which, from an ethnographic approach, can identify those other protocols, perceptions and skills of indigenous students regarding the production of scientific knowledge, noticing how they are influenced by their previous academic paths and by their life experiences.