2011 was a special year for education in Chile. Between April and September, high school and university students carried out important mobilizations and protests, demanding that the authorities – amongst other actions – put an end to the profit of state-subsidized private school providers and make education free. At that time, while looking for press…
El 2011 fue un año especial para la educación chilena. Entre abril y septiembre, los estudiantes secundarios y universitarios llevaron a cabo importantes movilizaciones y protestas, buscando que las autoridades – entre otras medidas – terminaran con el fin de lucro de sostenedores de establecimientos educacionales y que la educación fuera gratuita. En aquel tiempo,…
Al terminar mis estudios de pregrado en Sociología, ingresé a trabajar en la Junta Nacional de Jardines Infantiles (JUNJI), una institución estatal que administra y financia programas de educación inicial. Esta institución forma parte de la “red pública”[1] de la educación inicial y busca focalizar el acceso a familias y niños de sectores desaventajados. Desde…
When I finished my undergraduate studies in Sociology, I started working for the National Board for Early Childhood Education Centres (Junta Nacional de Jardines Infantiles or JUNJI), a state institution which administers and finances programmes of early childhood education. This institution forms a part of the ‘public network’ [1] of early childhood education and seeks…
If you analyze school systems from a comparative perspective, the Chilean case stands out for its accelerated and high level of privatization. To understand this distinctiveness, you need to put the changes to the regulation of state-financed private education from the beginning of the 1980s into historical perspective. Although private education [1] was recognized as educational…
Si se analizan los sistemas escolares desde una perspectiva comparada, el caso chileno destaca por su acelerado y alto grado de privatización. Para comprender esta particularidad, es necesario poner en perspectiva histórica los cambios en la regulación de la educación particular [1] que es financiada por el Estado, desde inicios de la década de 1980.…
A voice that I would like to raise in education is that of teachers. Often the loudest voices in education discussions are those of law makers, policy makers and celebrities. Perhaps we hear from school leaders, maybe from parents or governing boards. But the people who have the most experience to draw on are teachers.…
If school systems are analysed from a comparative perspective, the Chilean, Swedish and English cases stand out because of their accelerated and high degree of privatisation. However, even though research on the expansion of subsidised private education is well developed, the owners or managers of these schools have been poorly studied. For this reason, I…
The privatised context of teachers’ work encourages a culture of individualism and individualisation in which the collective identity is often imposed by a corporate elite. I believe that professional self-definition through community and a unified message are essential if the teaching profession is to challenge these discourses of division and own brand forms of professionalism. By…
Raising Voices in Education 