This paper is related to a research project that focuses on teacher education among the indigenous populations of Ecuadorian Amazonia. In Ecuador the Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) was institutionalized and recognized by law as the national policy for indigenous education in 1992. At present there are five IBE teacher education institutes in the country. The purpose of the ongoing research is to examine how Amazonian indigenous teacher education students' assumptions about knowledge and learning are reflected in the everyday teaching and learning practices. Targeted are teacher education students and teacher educators at one intercultural bilingual teacher education institute in the Ecuadorian Amazonia. The students represent Amazonian indigenous populations, and teacher educators are of indigenous or non-indigenous origin. In this paper we will discuss what do knowledge and learning mean to indigenous students? We will reflect on the data attained through auto driven photo elicitation, and also on the photographs themselves as data. We will also deliberate on the suitability of photography as a field method in a research carried out with indigenous young adults. Paulo Freire's (2005) writings about critical thinking, dialogical teaching and liberation pedagogy have strongly influenced the development of the research plan. The theoretical framework of the research is based on Geertzian interpretive anthropology (Geertz 1983; Geertz 1973) and different disciplines that have studied teaching, learning, cognition, and indigenous knowledge. Vygotsky (1986) discovered the difference in the epistemic basis and development of spontaneous concepts, that are based on everyday experience, and scientific concepts, that are introduced mainly through classroom instruction. Research on learning and cognition highlights the importance of meaningful links between abstract knowledge and learners’ life-world experiences for a successful learning process (Bransford & al. 2004). On the other hand cognitive psychology and cognitive anthropology offer valuable viewpoints on relations between culture, cognition and knowledge. Cross-cultural studies on classification, logic, reasoning and other aspects of cognition reveal some significant effects that literacy, schooling and urbanization have on the development of cognitive skills (Crick 1982; Musgrove 1982; Scribner 1997). These findings are noteworthy especially as we are viewing indigenous Amazonian cultures that can be described as oral, and populations that for the most part live in rural areas. Evidently earlier studies on indigenous knowledge, art of knowing and coming to know make interesting points of reference for further reflection on the Amazonian indigenous population’s assumptions about knowledge and learning (Crick 1982; Marker 2003; McGregor 2004; Musgrove 1982; Simpson 2004).

A combination of ethnographic, oral and visual methods were employed during the field research at the targeted teacher education institute at the end of 2007. Auto driven photo elicitation was one of the methods employed. Students were asked to take photographs about learning and knowledge, and these photographs were introduced into another interview with each photographer. In all, 11 students took 92 photographs, that were analysed together with the interviews about the photographs with regard to how they referred to knowledge and learning. (See Holm 2008; Holm forthcoming 2008; Samuels 2004.) We looked specifically at whether the visual and the verbal messages about knowledge and learning were the same or different. We examined in particular how the two methods, interviews and photographs, complemented each other and whether we would have received the same data with only one of the methods.

Learning refers to practical living skills passed on from parents and elders. Learning is seen as meaning learning through observing, by example, or by doing something with hands-on materials. The teacher is often described as having the knowledge. Knowledge is not referred to in either photos or in interviews as something created or discovered by the students. Learning by reading is not portrayed as important maybe because it is an oral culture. Methodologically this project showed that even young adults with no prior experience of photography were able at times to express themselves better visually and had difficulties explaining verbally what was in the photos. However, it is also evident that it is not possible to use only the photographs as data without the verbal elaborations. Some students did not take photographs since for them the activities and the people in their remote home community symbolized the learning and knowledge. According to the photos most learning involves other people; learning is interactive. Artefacts were used in the photographs as symbols of traditional knowledge and learning. The photographs as data as well as in eliciting information in interviews clearly added an additional dimension to the students’ portrayal of knowledge and learning. Photography was particularly pertinent for these students since many were not completely fluent in Spanish. Furthermore, since in this case written documents and literature is not part of the culture, students’ writings about their thoughts on knowledge and learning were not collected.