One of the central paradoxes of textbook authorship in Indigenous languages is that some of those for whom the textbooks are intended find it challenging to read them. Here, through examining cases of Quechua across the Andes in Peru and in Ecuador, we consider the role of orthography in this paradox. Textbook authors must decide on an alphabet…

Based on an ethnography of a language policy in the region of Apurímac in the Peruvian Andes, I analyze the boundaries that are constructed by a community of practice of Quechua "experts" in a context where resources in the indigenous language become more valuable. Although the declared wish is to build a regional "us," Quechua…

Quechua language education and research has long been relegated to rural areas and elementary schools of the Andes. Nonetheless, current language policy in the southern Peruvian region of Cusco has opened new opportunities for Quechua, a minoritized Indigenous language, to be taught in cities and towns and in high schools. In this sociolinguistic…

This research analyzes data collected by the Young Lives project on childhood poverty. It addresses the effect of socio-demographic, individual, and linguistic variables -- focusing on the latter -- on reading comprehension in Spanish by 502 Peruvian Quechua-Spanish bilingual children aged 8 years. The regression model tested explained 46% of the…

Based on need for intercultural approach to cultural and linguistic diversity in primary school students, this article shows racist attitudes and discrimination against rural, Andean and Quechua context in culturally different social groups. This situation raises the following question: how do the intercultural competences of primary school…

Child speech is highly variable. The speech apparatus--the vocal tract, tongue, teeth, and vocal folds--develop at different rates for different children, which helps explain some of the variability in children's speech. For example, the ratio of the oral to pharyngeal cavities changes as children age, making it difficult to establish reliable…

Direct object clitics in Latin American Spanish are subject to great variability in features across dialects. Variability also characterizes bilingual acquisition and especially clitic doubling structures in language contact contexts. We focus on the distribution of clitics and Differential Object Marking (DOM) in clitic doubling structures among…

Yupana Inca Tawa Pukllay (YITP) is a ludic didactic resource based on semiotic alternation that, using the reading of numbers in the Inca numeral system, improves its equivalent Indo-Arabic reading. Twelve children from first to fourth grade of a bilingual (Spanish-Quechua), multi-grade elementary school in a small rural Peruvian community were…

The revitalization of Latin American Indigenous languages started many years ago, but only some university libraries in the United States have taken steps to advocate for preservation, access, inclusion, and diversity through collection building covering these languages and cultures. This study examines holdings of Quechua, Nahuatl, Guaraní,…

Practitioners in ECE consider picture books an effective instructional tool in early childhood programming in the developed regions of the world. However, many young children from marginalized populations in the developing world have little to no access to them and thus, the effect that picture books could have upon their emergent literacy…

Previous studies have shown that language contributes to humans' ability to orient using landmarks and shapes their use of frames of reference (FoRs) for memory. However, the role of environmental experience in shaping spatial cognition has not been investigated. This study addresses such a possibility by examining the use of FoRs in a nonverbal…

Teleological reasoning involves the assumption that entities exist for a purpose (giraffes have long necks for reaching leaves). This study examines how teleological reasoning relates to cultural context, by studying teleological reasoning in 61 Quechua-speaking Peruvian preschoolers (M[subscript age] = 5.3 years) and adults in an indigenous…

Using a multilayered, ethnographic and critical approach to language policy and planning, this article examines a language policy favoring Quechua in Apurímac in the Southern Peruvian Andes, which is being imagined as an integrated community unified by the local language. This study presents a case in which top-down policies open up ideological…

In this article, I discuss a pervasive ethical issue when undertaking action research (AR) projects with communities that have been historically marginalized: how outsiders' learned, normative Western thinking makes building equitable relationships difficult. I then offer strategies for researchers coming from privileged, outsider positionalities…

In this article we discuss a collaborative research project meant to ground community members' voices in curriculum design. We argue that performing collaborative research with students and parents can better inform curriculum design decisions, particularly for communities whose identities, knowledge(s), and ways of being have been historically…