This article analyzes the interaction between indigenous knowledge and western science in teacher training of intercultural education. This is developed in terms of culture encounters of different societies between trainers and students who belong to Western and Mapuche cultures. Indigenous knowledge is provided in either working techniques and practices or in social activities in which its efficiency depends on the relationship among people who participate. On the other hand, Western science depends on experimental or formal criteria of scientificity where knowledge does not exist without any definite discursive practice shaping scientific hypothesis, theories and laws. Culture is analyzed as a communicational field which organizes a set of attitudes. The attitude significances exteriorized in behavior or expression codes are interiorized in the memory and symbolic interchanges. But, interculture implies the opening to the relationship settlement with the Other. Thus, this re-establishes a value pluralism and relationships of inter independence among those values or among the systems and its individuals. Interculture is an innovation proposing a different interpretation of the world.
indigenous knowledge; teacher training; interculturality