Socio-Educational Ambivalence in Intercultural Contexts: A Comparative Analysis of Teachers and Students in Schools in Mapuche Contexts

Intercultural education in Mapuche contexts is shaped by persistent tensions between dominant school knowledge and Indigenous educational practices. However, there is limited comparative empirical evidence on how these tensions are distributed across educational actors. This study aimed to compare socio-educational and cultural ambivalence between students and teachers across multiple dimensions. A cross-sectional quantitative design was conducted with 546 participants (284 students and 262 teachers) from primary and secondary schools in southern Chile. Ambivalence was assessed using the Socio-Educational and Cultural Ambivalence Scale (EASC). A two-step cluster analysis identified ambivalence profiles, followed by a 2 × 2 factorial MANOVA (role × ethnicity). Results revealed three distinct ambivalence profiles (low, medium, high), with significant differences across all dimensions (p < 0.001). Multivariate analyses showed significant effects of role (Pillai’s trace = 0.230, F (6, 537) = 26.67, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.230) and ethnicity (Pillai’s trace = 0.108, F (6, 537) = 10.86, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.108), with no significant multivariate interaction (p = 0.104). Teachers reported higher levels of ambivalence than students in five of six dimensions, while Mapuche participants scored higher than non-Mapuche participants across most dimensions. These findings indicate that ambivalence is a structural condition of the educational system, unevenly distributed according to actors’ positions and intensified in roles involving pedagogical mediation. Implications point to the need for structural transformations in intercultural education, particularly in teacher education.