When we are constantly told that there is no alternative, it can be hard to imagine that an alternative might ever exist. This point is illustrated quite starkly in an animated adaptation of Platos’ Allegory of the Cave . The short film was first shown to me by a Mexican critical pedagogue and fellow Masters…
‘Refugees are stateless … They are outcasts and outlaws of a novel kind, the products of globalisation … Refugees are human waste, with no useful function to play in the land of their arrival … from their present place, the dumping site, there is no return and no road forward …’ (Bauman, 2004). The above…
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.…
When I started working as a teacher, I was keen to develop my pupils’ knowledge. But I often asked myself: what is ‘knowledge’ in a school context? I realized quickly that this wasn’t an easy question to answer. Even so, thinking about knowledge was important. It made me assess what needed to be prioritized in terms of my teaching…
It has been nearly twenty years to the day since I graduated from the University of Nottingham (for the first time) with a BA Hons in Modern Language Studies. I was in one of the first cohorts to study three languages to degree level – two from A-level and a third ab initio. We were a…
I would like to raise the voices of mothers in Early Childhood Education. Many countries have started or continued educational policies for expansion of enrolment to infants, toddlers and pre-schools. Mothers are the key in this enrolment. They search for and choose the education or care for their children and then decide the best age for…
In the construction of a curriculum in Sweden, there are different stakeholders involved. It’s also a democratic process that needs to be maintained. The Swedish National Agency for Education has responsibility for the process. But this process is a negotiation between different voices of different stakeholders. There are many voices that should be listened to.…
Raising Voices in Education 