Ecuador: Between Educational Bottom-up Approaches and Global Curricular Trends

Abstract

This chapter studies almost four decades of Ecuadorian educational events. It starts with the official recognition of Intercultural Bilingual Education, a proposal developed by grassroots communities and Indigenous peoples and the National Literacy Campaign. It revisits the curricular reforms of the 1990s as well as the 2010 educational reforms and their later modification (2020s). The chapter ends, presenting the ups and downs in the implementation of the competency-based curriculum for basic education. Educational proposals have arisen from Afro-Ecuadorian peoples and Indigenous nationalities to include vast segments of population. Other proposals started from international organizations’ mandates or from fashionable global trends. The first does not always maintain sustainability due to government political will, while the latter often reoriented education for the country’s integration into the liberal system.