PRELAC: a path toward education for all; Revista …unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001372/137293eo.pdf · Wacquez&O’Ryan Translation: William Gallagher ISSN: Still pending Printed

PRELAC Journal

P R E LAC Journal / No 0

As long as the source is duly cited, this text may be reproduced wholly or in Dart.

The selection and presentation of the contents of this publication, as well as the opinions expressed therein are the sole responsibilities of the authors, not necessarily those of UNESCO, and should not be implied to represent those of the organization.

The place names used in this publication and the presentation of data herein do not imply on the part of UNESCO any position in regard to the legal status of countries, cities, territories or areas, nor of their authorities or in regard to the position of their borders or territorial limits.

Published by the Regional Office of Education of UNESCO for Latin America and the Caribbean OREALCWNESCO Santiago

Layout: Wacquez&O’Ryan

Translation: William Gallagher

ISSN: Still pending

Printed in Chile by Andros Ltda Santiago, Chile, August, 2004

i nt roduct i on b

w e here present the new magazine of PRELAC (the Regional Education Project for Latin America and the Caribbean) published by OREALCAJNESCO Santiago. As with any new venture, this one marks a celebration along with a recognition of the challenges ahead.

The magazine is both a result and a continuation of past efforts. It seeks to maintain current and to enrich the lines of discussion opened by the Bulletin of the Major Project of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean which concluded with its NO50 in the year 2000.

The publication will also include new realities and perspectives, beginning as it does within a different context, treating education and its role in human development in the context of new and different questions and issues. It also presents the fresh approach of the Regional Education Project for Latin America and the Caribbean, PRELAC 2002-2017, a banner activity of OREALC/UNESCO Santiago aimed at fulfillment of the goals of quality and of equity of Education for All. - In order to emphasize PRELAC as a strategic framework, we open the new magazine with a summary of the major contents of the project and considerations to its meaning and activities. The first number also includes five lectures presented at the First Intergovernmental Meeting of PRELAC held in Havana, Cuba in November, 2002 which provided food for thought and discussion on the education themes of the new Regional Project. The presentations consider the challenges facing the region from various perspectives: the social situation and education; equity and exclusion; learning and knowledge; education reforms and quality; the current situation and participation of teachers; and school management and social participation.

Beginning in the next issue, we will have the benefit of the guidance and support of an Editorial Council composed of Fernando Reimers, Martin Carnoy, JosC Joaquin Brunner, Aignald Panneflek, Alvaro Marchesi, Guiomar Namo de Melo, and Ana Luiza Machado.

It is our hope that the magazine will provide important contributions to discussion, to policy decision-making and to new educational practices that the region requires in order to achieve freedom, well-being, and dignity for all people everywhere.

Ana Luiza Machado Director

U N E S C O Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean OREALCl UNESCO Santiago

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 3

contents 3/ INTRODUCTION

7/ PREMC. A REGIONAL PATH T O W A R D Education for ALI

13/ THE SOCIAL SlTUATlON IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAE! AND ITS INFLUENCE O N THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATION. Rolando Franco.

251 EDUCATION 2000. ON KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING FOR THE N E W MILLENNIUM. Roberto Carneiro.

43/ ACHIEVING GREATER access, equity, and quality OF EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA. Martin Carnoy.

65/ TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES in the Commonwealth Caribbean. Errol Miller.

85/ Some dimensions of the PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT O F TEACHERS. Emilio Tenti.

4

PRELAC Journal

1 , 'Education must act to eliminate or compensate for inequalities but not erase differences". Regional Educ

PRELAC A Regional Path toward Education for All

Education is the only guarantee for providing sustainable human development

The Regional Education Project for Latin America and the Caribbean -PRELAC- was approved at the First Intergovernmental Meeting, held in Havana, Cuba from November 14-16, 2002. The Ministers of Education present and representatives of 34 countries approved the project as well as its Follow- up Model. They also signed the Declaration of Havana, which expresses the will of countries to support the project which has a 15-year time line.

The Declaration calls the PRELAC proposals "... basic priorities and commitments for countries of the region, (we) request the adoption by governments of legislative

measures and national agreements that guarantee its

sustainability. .."

PRELAC is a continuation of the efforts made through the Major Project of Education (1 980-2000). It also supports the frameworks of action of Education for All adopted at the Dakar World Forum (2000) and the Regional Preparatory Meeting in Santo Domingo. its most recent referent is the Meeting of Ministers of Education held in Cochabamba (2001) which charged UNESCO with preparation of a new Regional Project in order to for the region to make a quantitative leap in education.

A disturbing Scenario At the beginning of the new century, Latin - America and the Caribbean face two serious problems: the

highest levels of inequality in the world, and a high degree of vulnerability of their most important institutions.

Optimistic projections of the economic situation have not been fulfilled. Levels of poverty (21 1 million people) and extreme poverty (80 million) at the end of the 1990s showed signs of worsening. Disparities between and within countries increased.

Poverty and inequality show their most inhumane side in the distribution of wealth. In many countries, the income of the 10% wealthiest sector of the population exceeds by 20 times that of the 40% poorest. Some 70% of the inhabitants of the region dwell in households with incomes that are below the average. Social policies have not fulfilled the redistributive role expected of them.


PRELAC Journal

Unemployment and underemployment are among the most visible expressions of poverty and exclusion. Undoubtedly, the balance is negative: mass lay-offs, decreases in the quality of employment, under-utilization of qualified labor, increases in informal employment, precarious salaries, and labor instability. Those most suffering the greatest impact continue to be indigenous populations, women, young people, and those with low income.

Together with the problems of unemployment and its incidence at all stages of life, the region also witnesses the changes produced by technology and the communication media, degradation of the natural environment, violence and increasing conflict, problems of governability, racial and cultural discrimination, and the weakening of regional integration.

Furthermore, the scenario in which PRELAC appears presents conditions that go beyond the region itself. These have to do with extremely rapid changes in knowledge, the breaking of barriers of time and of space by new communications technologies, changes in patterns of behavior and of values, and migratory movements, among others, that present to society, and therefore to education, new interpretations and new challenges.

A world is full of accomplishments, but also of overriding concerns requires seeking new meanings of education itself. An world that is increasingly-changing and aware of the wealth of its diversity demands unceasing efforts in order to find creative and comprehensive education solutions.

'

New views Of old problems PRELAC, besides

describing the context of contemporary education, recognizes the efforts developed in the region within the framework of the education reform and quality improvement projects. It also recognizes, however, that the results achieved to date are still insufficient and that a number of important issues remain to be dealt with in the region.

PRELAC offers regarding pending tasks are crucial themes such as the continuing high rates of illiteracy in the world, and universal coverage of primary and secondary education with the worrisome current high rates of grade repetition, drop-out, and behind grade students.

The project also calls attention to the lack of equity in the distribution of educational opportunities and its impact on excluded groups with special educational needs, native peoples, those living in isolated rural areas and marginal urban populations. In terms of the quality

Within the considerations that

of education, it calls attention to the long and difficult road ahead.

The absence of comprehensive teacher training policies are also emphasized in the diagnosis, as well as needs in regard to the amount of time dedicated to learning, training in science, and the role of new technologies. The project also emphasizes limitations in education management, financing, resource allocation, and the increasing quality gap between private and public education.

education problems, and the commitments assumed by countries to achieve Education for All by the year 2015, PRELAC offers important advances marked new views and commitments. These are expressed in the programs goals, principles, and strategic focuses.

In considering the current context,

8

PRELAC. A Regional Path toward Educatlon for All

Purpose

policies and practices, through the transformation of current education paradigms in order to assure quality learning and life-long human development for all. Education policies must have as a priority making effective for the entire population the right to education and to equality of opportunities, eliminating barriers that limit full participation and learning of all people

The project finds its meaning in the mobilization and articulation of cooperation within and between countries in order to assure the achievement of the objectives of Dakar (2000-2015). PRELAC seeks to provide a technical and policy forum that fosters dialogue and the construction of alternatives among social actors. Is seeks to foster innovative educational policies that decrease inequalities in the region and make quality education for all a reality.

PRELAC seeks "...to foster education

...

Principles The four principals upon which the project is based offer a new basis for viewing the question of education. They offer new means for analyzing and assessing initiatives. Each of them represents an important advance for understanding education policies and practices.

From inputs and structures to people Involves motivating people and developing their capacities so they may adequately utilize inputs and make commitments toward education change and results. This involves moving from being actors to being authors within education processes; from individual decisions to cooperation among actors.

From mere transmission of content to comprehensive development of people Seeks to fully recognize the status of students as subjects with rights who require an education that fully regards their development as human beings in multiple dimensions and that permits them to fully participate in society. This

requires going beyond the kind of education that is centered only on knowledge in order to consider as well affective and relational, social, ethical, and aesthetic asoects as well.

From homogeneity to diversify Requires the difficult achievement of balance in educational services that provide a common culture that assures equality of opportunity while at the same time considering cultural, social, and individual differences, given their strong influence on learning and on the construction of personal and social collective identity

From school-based education to the education society Recognizes that learning environments are increasingly numerous and that not all of them are school-based. Fosters a quantitative leap toward an "education society" with multiple opportunities for learning and for life-long development of personal skills.

Strategic focuses The incorporation of strategic focuses into PRELAC offers a means to better set more integrative and transcendent priorities for reflection. These are central themes that each country is invited to consider in order to fulfill the goals of Education for All.

Focus on the contents and practices of education in order to constnrct meanings regarding ourselves, others, and the world in which w e live.

involves contributing to the understanding of the meaning of education in a world of uncertainties and change. The skills training offered currently by education must be supplemented with citizen training and building a culture of peace. The four pillars of learning of the Delors Report are an excellent guide when considering the meanings of education: learning to be, learning to know, learning to do, and learning to live together. PRELAC also emphasizes the importance of a complementary skill: learning to endeavor.

';I H

"d

I .. .. .

EDUCATION FOR ALL 9

PRELAC Journal

2. Focus on teachers and Strengthening their participation in education change . . . I , - , in order to satisfy student learning needs. . _

This demands public policies that recognize the social role of teachers and that value their contributions in fostering education change. It requires training in new skills in order to face the challenges of the XXI century and their commitment to student :'" learning.

3. Focus on the Culture of Schools to convert them into participatory learning * 2 communities.

Improving quality and equity demands changing the culture and functioning of ' .;

' schools. It involves constructing new relationships marked by respect for mutual $ understanding, ethical, and democratic values in order to produce fully participatory citizens. It requires as well adopting participatory decision-making processes at ; ' different levels of the education system.

. . :. J I I.. , I

<' * 4. Focus on management and increased flexibility of education systems in order

Requires change of the rigid organization and regulations of current education systems in order to offer diversified programs that recognize the heterogeneity of education needs and that lend a greater degree of autonomy to schools. Also emphasizes the need to place management at the service of student learning.

. . j.:

1' 1 to offer effective, life-long learning opportunities. I + 1 .

5. Focus on Social Responsibility for Education in order to generate commitment to its development and results.

Emphasizes the adoption of public policies that encourage education systems, school communities, and society in general to assume responsibility for education. Political will is required in order to generate conditions and mechanisms for public participation accountability at all levels. . , * , * i . ,

Continuity and n e w conditions As we have stated, PRELAC is a continuation of previous efforts at the regional and world levels: the Major Project for Education which established common focuses and priorities in education areas in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the world movement of Education for All -EFA- a cornerstone of UNESCO's efforts, the six objectives of which, established in Dakar, are mandatory for countries.

PRELAC is not a new entity; it was

conceived and developed in support of and closely working with this greater movement to assure quality life-long education for all. This project is a forum making it possible to reflect on how to attain EFA goals and to creatively analyze the most appropriate education policy options for the different contexts of the region. PRELAC is thus a set of regional strategies in order to support effective construction of quality education for all in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Three special qualities of PRELAC are of note. The first is its critical and program-related focus in the face of achievement levels attained in education. A second is the incorporation of particular elements of the reality of Latin America and the Caribbean (in literacy training, cultural diversity, inequality, etc.). The third, of a strategic nature, is the guidance it provides in how to move toward EFA goals.

PRELAC. A Reglonal Path toward Education for All

Finally, it is important to call attention to the importance of these principles and strategic focuses. They are aids in arriving at an understanding of both old and new problems, in order to fashion integrated and systemic perspectives.

Therefore, assuring that PRELAC be discussed with the key actors in the region is an urgent task.e

"It is essential that the development of education policies be part of a broad process of social and polltical transformation" (PRELAC)

The text of PRELAC as well as cmplementary information marbe found at www.unesco.ct

THE SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin America and the Caribbean

and its influence o n the development of education

Roland0 Franco' - LL.D., Doctor of Social Sciences, and Social

Researcher, Director of the Social Development Division of the Economic Council for Lahn America

and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

I wish to thank UNESCO for the invitation extended to me to speak at this session. But I have qualms in regard to my participation here, particularly because I recall the the destiny, in ancient times, of messengers bearing bad tidings. And this, I believe, is my function on this occasion when I am asked to speak about the social situation in Latin America and the influence that it can have on the development of education.

In short, the economic, social, and political situation in Latin America is worrisome. The trend during the first seven years of the 199Os, during which relatively significant growth took place, which generated much hope regarding the future of Latin America and the Caribbean, has been interrupted. The Asian crisis changed that trend, exchanging it first to deaccelleration and, later, for various important countries in the region, negative rates at the beginning of the new century. This has led to to talking about a new "lost half decade", the period from 1997-2002, joining the ten negative years of the 1980s.

' Presented at the First Intergovernmental Meeting of the Regional Education Project for Latin America and the Caribbean. Havana Cuba, Novembec 14-16,2002.


PRELAC Journal

To illustrate the downturn, one can point to what happened in terms of “employment”, which is the lynch pin between economic and social factors. Normally, economic growth involves the generation of jobs, which permit people to earn a salary and to thus independently satisfy their needs and those of their families. In the 1990s there seems to have been a disassociation between growth and increase in jobs (see Graph

i UNEMPLOYMENT IS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH i ECONOMIC GROWTH. THIS PROBLEM IS j PARTICULARLY SERIOUS IN SOUTH AMERICA

i GRAPH1

5 1 Annual Growth Rate Unemployment Rate 14 1

Nearly 32 million people entered the group of the economically active urban population. Only 9.1 million of them obtained formal employment, while almost 20 million were occuped in the informal sector (Graph 2). The groups most affected by the jobless rate contined to be women, young people, and people from the lower and middle income strata (Graph 3). That is, the situation in terms of employment is particularly negative. M& and Central A m e m ll South Amerlca : INSUFFICIENT GENERATION OF

i JOBS HAS INCREASED ’ UNEMPLOYMENT AND INFORMAL j SECTOR EMPLOYMENT IN URBAN

FOR SOCIETIES, THIS HAS PRODUCED NMI CHALLENGES FOR PROTECTING THEIR MEMBERS j AREAS

i GRAPH 2

of the nearty 40 million people who entered the labor market between 1990acd 1999,lO.B milllon did notfind, orlostapb.

al Sector and of the 29 mlllio generated between 1999, almost 20 mill In the infwmal secto

AI statistical information canes from various editions of Social Panorama of Latin America, an annual publication of ECLAC.

14

UNEMPLOYMENT CONTINUED TO AFFECT i RELATIVELY MORE WOMEN, YOUNG j

PEOPLE, AND PEOPLE FROM LOW AND i MIDDLE INCOME LEVELS i

7

G M 3

informal &tor characteristics of urban unemployment for the

S o u w ECLAC special tabulations of household sulveys in the respecbve countnes.

-

Born Men Women Young 1st 2nd 3rd 4” 5th saxes 1524 Quintile Quintile Quinhle Quinble Quinble

mofw Source. ECLAC speclal tabulabons of household surveys in the respective countries.

THE SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin America and the Caribbean and its influence on the development of education

j RAPID INCREASE IN THE j SUPPLY OF SKILLED HUMAN I RESOURCES

i GRAPH 4

9,o

8,O J 2 7,O

6,O !? 9 58

4,O

3,O

c

- c

0 5 2,o 4 l,o

0.0 Population Unskilled Technically University between 25 population trained trained and 59 years professionals

of age

* GRAPH5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WOMEN ARE INCREASINGLY

BEING TRAINED

i THE COVERAGE OF EDUCATION HAS j INCREASED, BUT LAGS BEHIND THAT i OF ASIA AND OF THE OECD

i GRAPH 6

Secondary Education

a E 100 E : c o o

= 50

w

3 Latin America Asia OECD (3

Higher Education

8 801

To this are added some aspects linked to education, which is the subject that concerns us today, which were also negative. During the 199Os, there was a significant improvement in the training of qualified resources in the region (Graph 4), particularly improvements for women, whose training levels particularly increased (Graph 5). This has doubtlessly required a notable effort on the part of Latin American and Caribbean societies. Nevertheless, progress achieved in secondary and higher education lag behind those of developed countries that are members of the OECD and the industrialized countries of Asia (Graph 6). Progress achieved in Latin America does not even accompany the growth in these areas in these two large groups of countries.

Changing trends in the urban population, 25 to 59 years of age possessing technical or Drofessional training, by gender. 1990-1 999

(average annual rate of variation) Nicaragua El Salvador

Mexico Honduras Ecuador

Venezuela Guatemala Paraguay Colombia

Chile Panama

Costa Rica Argentina

Brazil Uruguay

All countries

1.'

0,o 5,O 10,o 15,O 20,o 25,O 30,O

5 Latin America Asia OECD


PRELAC Journal

Moreover, the region has not been able to achieve satisfactory job placement for those who have achieved these levels of training in Latin America. In the 199Os, one- fourth of those entering the labor market with varying levels of training (4.3 million technical and 3.6 million professional training). W e may distinguish three major sources in terms of the under-utilization of qualified labor. First, there is open unemployment, the high rates of which for prolonged periods reflect the inability of economies in the region to make due use of the knowledge and skills of the population. Thus, there were many qualified people who were unable even to enter the labor market. Latin

'

BETWEEN 1997 AND 2001, LEVELS j OF WELL-BEING IN LATIN AMERICA j

DID NOT IMPROVE .I j

i tllAcH7

Percentage of poor and extremely poor persons I

American societies continue to demonstrate a great inability to adequately take advantage of their population possessing knowledge and skills.

Second, many of the professionally and technically trained people entering the labor market for the first time obtained jobs that did allow them to put into practice the knowledge that they acquired during their formative years. They therefore hold jobs that do not correspond to their levels of training and that do not pay back the investment made by them, their families, and society. Finally, this group, as well as other job candidates, become discouraged and abandon their job search. They make up, most certainly, the discouraged unemployed" who leave the economically active population. Moreover, there is the involuntary inactivity that affects principally women, who lack support networks able to allow them to combine salaried activity with the domestic chores that continue to be their responsibility, due to cultural changes that have taken place in these societies.

In conclusion, the lack of generation of quality employment is perhaps the major obstacle to the achievement of greater equity in the distribution

50

40

1: 10

U

of the fruits of growth. This impedes absorbing the increase in the supply of qualified technical and professional human resources.

What are the consequences of this stagnation in the generation of employment for the social environment? Unemployment is the principal factor in determining poverty. In periods during which there is economic growth, jobs are generated and, consequently, the proportion of the Latin American population below the poverty line is reduced. This trend halted in 1977 and, toward the end of the century, the proportion of the poor as a percentage of the total .

population stabilized. There was a slight improvement in 2000, and in 2001 and 2002 the number of the poor once again increased. The projections of ECLAC indicate that 43% of the Latin American population is poor, and 18.6% extremely poor (Graph 7). That is, more than 214,000,000 people are below the povery line (Graph 8). In 2002, an additional 10 million people joined the ranks of the poor.

a/ ilguraa for 2OOO and 2001 am based on pmjedions.

Size of the poor and extremely poor populations

..fI I

16

THE SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin America and the Caribbean and Its influence on the develooment of education

We should note that the measurement methodology used by ECLAC is based upon the establishment of a poverty line that is equivalent to the cost of two basic food baskets (in urban areas). This is based on households that report that half of their incomes are spent on food and the other half on covering other basic needs. The extreme poor are considered to be those people whose incomes are inferior to the cost of a basic food basket.

POVERTY TRENDS AFFECTED i COUNTRIES UNEQUALLY i

t GRAPH 9

Latin America (15 countries): Povertv rates for 1997 and 2001

al Urban areas

Countries

It is important to note in addition, that in regard to the poverty rate, there are quite dissimilar situations in Latin America (Graph 9). We may distinguish three types of current situations within countries. Some countries, at the beginning of the new century have witnessed increases in poverty. Others have managed to maintain the pre-existing situation. Finally, a third group of countries has, in spite of the adverse international context, diminished poverty.

W e should also note that that the impact produced by economic growth in reducing poverty varies between countries. For the same rate of growth, some have been more effective in reducing poverty (Graph 10).

GRAPH 10 4. ...... . SIMILAR GROWTH RATES PRODUCED DIFFERENT VARIATIONS IN POVERTY LEVELS

Latin America (14 countries) annual average variation of GDP per P a"


PR E LAC Journal

The silver lining of the dark clouds covering the region comes from two positive notes: it is possible to reduce poverty more when there is economic growth if good public policies are followed; and poverty can also be reduced, or not increased during periods of crisis. This allows us to maintain that globalization undoubtedly conditions what happens in Latin America, but does not determine what happens. There are degrees of freedom that allow public policies carried out by governments to produce different results in key indicators such as growth, employment generation, and reductions in poverty. That is, not everything is a result of the external framework. Much is a consequence of what is done within each country.

j THERE HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT i DEGREES OF PROGRESS TOWARD i THE GOAL OF REDUCING j MTRM POVERTY BY ONE-HALF

t

GRAPH 1 1

What is the situation in Latin American countries in regard to the degree to which they have made progress in achieving the major goal that they accepted at the Millenium Summit, i.e., to, by 2015, reduce by one-half the extreme poverty existing in each of them in 1990? ECLAC has argued that this is an unduly modest goal for Latin American countries, and that given the level of intermediate development in the region, the goal should be to reduce povery per se by one-half, and not just extreme poverty.

If we consider the goal set at the Summit (reducing extreme poverty by one-half), there are countries in the region, such as Chile and Panama, that have already achieved it. Moreover, the Dominican Republic is close to achieving the goal, with Brazil and Uruguay slightly further away (Graph 11). On the other hand, if we accept the more demanding goal proposed by ECLAC, no Latin American country has yet achieved it, and many of them are far away from doing so (Graph 12).

Percentage fullfillrnent of the goal between 1990 and 2000

Venezu -100% -80% -60% 40% -20% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

BY THE YEAR 2000, NO COUNTRY i HAD ATTAINED ME MORE j

DEMANDING GOAL OF REDUCING i TOTAL POVERTY BY ONE-HALF :

Porcenbje de curnplimiento de la rneta entre 1990 y 2000

-60% -40% -20% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

18

THE SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin America and the Caribbean and its influence on the develovment of education

The economic growth rates that need to be achieved from now until 2015, in order to meet the Millenium Summit goals vary by country. Those that have more poverty need to grow by approximately 7% annually, which seems difficult to achieve given current conditions. On the other hand, countries in the region with less poverty may meet this new goal without difficulty by maintaining the rates at which they have been growing during the past decade (Graph 13).

Given that in 2002 and 2002 regional growth was negative, these projections should be corrected so that growth in the coming years can compensate for the losses so produced. This will requre that the region as a whole grow at an annual rate of 3.2% in order to reduce poverty by one-half (the goal suggested by ECLAC) and at an annual rate of 2.7% in order to accomplish the reduction in extreme poverty established by the Millenium Goal (Graph 14).

NEVERTHELESS, SMALL i IMPROVEMENTS IN THE

DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME MAKE j THE REQUIREMENTS FOR i

GROWTH IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE i POVERTY REDUCTION GOALS i

LESS DEMANDING j i

GRAPH 14

Latin America: growth rates of GDP per capita necessary in order to reduce the level of poverty by one-half by 2015, with and without redistributive changes

Extreme Poverty I

H 5 f

5 f

j THE CHALLENGE OF ECONOMIC i DEVELOPMENT, IN ORDER TO j ATrAIN BOTH GOALS, IS NOT i EXCESSIVE FOR THE REGION, j ALTHOUGH IT IS PMCTICALLY i IMPOSSIBLE FOR COUNTRIES WITH j HIGH LEVELS OF POVERTY t

GRAPH 13

Latin America: GDP growth rates necessary for reducing the

(annual average) poverty level of 1990 by one-half, 2000,

TOTAL G D P 8 7 - a 1 6

r 4 2 5

0 2 $ 3

1 0

Latm America Countnes wrth Countries with Countnes with less greatest poverty moderate poverty poverty

G D P PER CAPITA I

0 4

r 3

( 3 1

B $ 2

n Latin America Meswth less

DOVertV


PRELAC Journal

Accomplishing these goals will be much easier if, besides achieving growth, progress is made in terms of distribution as well. In this sense it should be noted that Latin America is the world region with the worse income distribution, and one of the most salient points is the elevated participation of the 10% wealthiest group the income of which, in many countries, is more than 20 times that of the 40% poorest group (Graph 15). At the same time, nearly 70% of inhabitants of the region reside in households with lower than average incomes. All of this makes is more justifiable that the objective be not only to grow, but also to be able to quickly and positively change the current poor distribution of income.

No one can be opposed to such a proposal. The problem lies in how to do it. It is not easy to change income distribution because there are certain determining factors that are difficult to deal with through public policies.

on the distribution of income is the distribution of property itself, the distribution of which is even worse than that of income. One of the possibilities, then, for improving the distribution of income is through changes in the way the property is distributed. Each society should assess whether political conditions exist for moving forward in this sense.

The first factor that wields influence

GRAPH 15 ......,-.... _... ..... * Argentina bl LatinAmerica (17 countries):

partidpation in total income of the 40% poorest households and of the 10% weatthiest households, 1999 a/ (h percentages)

Dominican Republic

Honduras Gu a t e ma I a

- - 10% weatmiest 1 I - 40% poorest Second, the concentration of income

is very much influenced by the demography of households. Increasingly in Latin America, population growth has been concentrated in poorer households, into which many more children are born than is the case for middle and upper class households. An alternative, then, would be to change these trends, which would involve, one the one hand, middle and upper class families to change their current reproductive behavior and increase the number of children. This would not seem to be easy to accomplish. On the other hand, it would be necessary - as a complement of the abov e or as an alternative -to carry forward policies aimed at responsible parenthood, family planning, etc., among poor families. Besides the fact that the results of such policies requre much time to show results, there are also undoubtedly difficulties of implementation. Not all social and political actors of Latin American societies believe that this would be acceptable in terms of values.

Source. ECLAC. based on special tabulations ofhcusehddswveysoftherespectlvemn~

a/ Househdds of the country as a whole, arranged according to their per caplta income

b/ Greater Buenos Aires

d Total urban

Thirdly, education also determines income distribution. W e will return to this theme shortly.

Fourthly, there is the factor of occupation. Poor households have fewer income providers and they have more members; that is, their occupational densify is especially low. These households have around five members, and in the best of cases there is one person within them who receives employment income. Incontrast, non- poor households are smaller - made up of three members - and in many of them there are two people who receive income from working. These differences in occupational density have a great impact on income distribution. An additional factor, which some link to globalization, is that the income gap between skilled and unskilled labor is growing.

i

20

THE SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin America and the Caribbean and its influence on the development of education

Latin America (17 countries): public spending on education as a percentage of GDP; 1990-91 and 1998-99

LATIN AMERICA b/ 0,O 1 0 2 0 3.0 4,O

Argentina Uruguay

Chile Panama Brazil

Mexico Costa Rica Venezuela Colombia Paraguay

3 Bolivia a/ Peru

expenditures Dominican Republic a/ The initial figure corresponds to the 1994-95 average El Salvador a/

Guatemala bl Arithmetic average for countries, excluding Bolivia and Ei Salvador Honduras Nicaragua

LATIN AMERICA b/

I Source: ECLAC. Division of Social Deveioment. database on social

GRAPH16 4.. .

I

Latin America (I ycountries): public spending on education per inhabitant 1990-91 and 1998-99 (in 1997 dollars)

Finally, one always hears of social spending as an instrument through which one can improve distribution. It should be noted that during the 199Os, social spending increased notably in the region, although there is an enormous dispersion between countries. This may be seen both in the indicator spending on education as a percentage of GDP (Graph 16), and in spending per inhabitant (Graph 17). Some countries spend US$1,600 per person, while others spend only US$lOO. Leaving aside these differences, all countries analyzed - except one - increased their social spending during the 1990s. This was also the case for education. But when one analyzes who benefited from what social spending, it is apparent that the wealthiest quintile of the distribution received, through social policies, a percentage similar to that of the poorest quintile (Graph 18). This indicates that social spending, social policies, do not in fact fulfill the redistributive role expected of them. Such spending is redistributive if one does not consider social security, and if one takes onloy spending on education, health, and public housing.

1 i

GRAPH 17

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 Source: ECLAC, Division of Social Development, database on social expenditures. a/ The initial figure corresponds to the 1994-95 average. b/ Arithmetic average for countries, excluding Bolivia and El Salvador.

Latin America (8 countriesa): distribution of social expenditures, less social security and on social security, within household quintiles (total volume of spending = 100)

* GRAPH 18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IN SPITE OF THE HIGH IMPACT OF SOCIAL SPENDING ON THE 20%

POOREST SEGMENT, THE 20% RICHEST OBTAINS A SIMILAR VOLUME OF E .. ...

a 25,O 1 3 c

RESOURCES V f 20,o

2 * ' U

P 5 15,O 0

: 10.0 C 0

6 5,O 4 -

n n Quintile 1 Quintile 2 Quintile 3 Quintile 4 Quintile 5 "."

Therefore, in order to improve income distribution, difficulties exist that stern from difficulties in changing underlying factors in the distribution, and also because public resources for social programs do not have the redistributive impact that are intended to have.

Returning to the subject of education. Within the region, there is a consensus regardomg the crucial role of education, both for economic growth as well as for improving well-being and for moving toward the construction of democratic citizenship as well. One may temper optimism a bit by stating that education is a necessary, but not sufficient condition. On the one hand, it contributes to create

Source. ECLAC, Social Development Division database on social expenditures a/ Arithmetical average for Argentina. Bolivia, B Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Uruguay

conditions for improving economic performance by improving human capital and permitting its incorporation into the productive process utilizing new technologies which make the economy more competitive. But that is not sufficient. Other conditions must be present -outside of education- so that development can take place and for society to take best advantage of the input from education.


PRELAC Journal

! GREAT PROGRESS IN i UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO ! EDUCATION

i 6M?m 10

School attendance des. 6 to 13 years of age by gender, DI 1990-99, national total

I W

nC rn

00 85 80 75 70 85 Bo 55

Thus, it is said that education is a redistributive channel. But education is a good related to position. The advantages obtained from the years of education achieved are related to advances achieved in parallel by other people who, in the employment marketplace, are competitors. This requires education systems to change their traditional goals. The level of education that a person has to possess in order have a high probability of not slipping into poverty at some time in life is 12 years of formal educaton. Therefore, it is no longer sufficient for education systems to provide a primary education -as urged by the millenium goals established by the United Nations- but rather that the challenge lies in assuring access to and completion of secondary education for all, as stated by UNESCO in the invitation to this meeting.

i THE COVERAGE OF EDUCATION I INCREASES, BUT LAGS BEHIND i THAT OF ASIA AND THE OECD

i G W W 20 Secondary Education

[ai985 mis197]

Ada OECD

sb Higher Education BE0

520

P $40

THERE WERE SIGNIFICANT i REDUCTIONS IN SCHOOL DROP-OUT i

DURING THE 19905 i t o " LalinAmecica Asia OECD

E" 520 $40

THERE WERE SIGNIFICANT i ._ . I SCHOOL DROP-OUT : t o

DURING THE 19905 i

Urban school drop out among young people 1 5 1 9 years i of age, 1990-99 G W 21

(percentage rata calculated in regard to the total of ywng people who entered the education system)

Honduras G u a t e m a I a Mexm

Venezuela Nicaragua

El Salvador costa Rca Ecuador Panama cdombia

Bradl ArsentM

Domhican Republic PerU wlile BdMa

Uruguay P ~ g u a Y

Arithmebcal average I 1999

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

* M n . .. ... . . . . . . . . . .. ... . THAT W A S M O R E

MARKED IN RURAL AREAS Rural school drop out among young people from 15 to 19 years ofage, 1990-99 (perantage

rate calculated using the total number of young people who entered the education system) H o n d u ra 8

Guatemala Nicaragua Mexlm

El Salvador Paraguay

costa Rlca Cdmbia

penr PM9ma

Bredl Chile

Domimican Republic

rn 1990

0 1 D 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0 6 0 7 0 8 0 0 0

22

SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin Amerlca and the Caribbean and Its Influence on the development of education

-- It should be recognized that notable

progress has been made in providing universal coverage of education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Coverage for primary schooling rose from 88% to 93% (Graph 19) and access to secondary schooling reached 70%. Urban-rural differences have decreased, and it is in the rural area that the greatest progress has been made (Graph 20), which favor males and females alike. There has also been a significant reduction in school drop-out (Graph 21), which was more marked in rural areas (Graph 22). Nevertheless, education systems continue to be deficient in their ability to retain children in primary school (Graph 23), a fact that affects the lower income sectors (Graph 24), reinforcing the chain of inequality that begins in infancy (Graph 25). This involves high costs in terms of future income (Graph 26). It is necessary, therefore to guarantee the achievement of the new objectives in education.

. NEVERTHELESS, DROP OUTS CONTINUE TO BE CONCENTRATED IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL YEARS

v GRAPH 23 Distribution of the tot4 number of school drop outs at different stages of schooling

(percentages) rural areas

60,B urban areas .. $ 60.0

a e U 50.0 I 50,o c

During AtUmend Dunng Dunng pnmary ofprimary lower hgher a

Uruguay Mexico

Nicaragua Costa Rica Paraguay Venezuela El Salvador

Ecuador Panama I

Brazil Argentina Colombia

Chile

Dominican Republic PeN

school school secondary secondary school school

During Attheend During During primaly ofprimary lower higher shwl school sewndaly secondary

shod schod

Total school drop out rde for urban youth, by income strata, 1999

Guatemala Honduras

Anthmetical average -

i

GRAPH24 4 AN0 AFFECTS PRIMARILY

THE LOWEST INCOME SECTORS ...

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

n-Quarlile 1 (poorest) I Quartile IV ( w e a l t m Within a context of uncertainty on the

economic plane, which has extremely

: ... ENHANCING THE / INEQUALITY CHAIN FROM j INFANCY ONWARD

SCHOOL DROP OUT

GRAPH 25

Earty school drop out (dunng pnmary school) among urban young people, by income strata. 1999

Chile Ecuador Panama

Arithmetical average 50 40 30 20 10 0 10 20 30 40 50

INVOLVES HIGH COSTS IN TERMS OF FUTURE

EMPLOYMENT INCOME

serioius social repercussions, the challenges facing the education sector continue to be great, especially because the goals represent a move into uncharted territory. But the atmosphere of this Intergovernmental Meeting of the Education Project permits one to be optimistic in regard to the commitment and political will to move forward on

v pending themes GRApHm

Losses of income associated with school drop out by gender and by groups of countnes

70,096 ~ ! Percentage that salary wwld be increased mth 600% OfSW UptO study up to study up to

5o o% 1 secondary &I sewndaly school s h o d .U U%

I - 2 more years 3 more years of 4 more years of

com3etin competing lower unnpletmg pnmary

_.

40.0% 1 !

males ","I"

Cwntries with Countries wlth Countries with low drop out moderate drop out high drop out


EDUCATION 2000 On knowledge and learning for the

new millennium Roberto Carneiro

1

Consultant for the World Bank, OECD, UNESCO, and the Council of Europe. Professor of the

Universidade Cat6lica Portuguesa.

“There is no question that there are deep analogies between mindlike artefacts and human minds. There are also deep disanalogies. The deepest of these, we think, is the functional one: how thought is shaped to serve our intentions and the settings in which w e are compelled to operate as culture-reliant human beings”.

J. Bruner and J. J. Goodnow, A Study of Thinking ’

Abstract This paper begins with the recognition that learning occupies a central role in modern societies. Moreover, learning is heralded as the key driver of comprehensive development. Our knowledge-driven economies depend increasingly on learning accomplishments to arrive at sustainability.

In this context, traditional human capital is now reborn under the guise of knowledge management theories. In other words, economic priorities still dominate the education landscape. The value of knowledge is closely tied-up with that of competencies. Thus, we propose a list of eight domains of inquiry concerning value creation through knowledge production and management.

Could it be different under the emerging learning paradigm? Could learning stand atone and by itself, beyond the needs of economic growth?

Vocational identities emerge as the central tenet of autonomy and self- determination. Identity-enhancing organisations and community learning combine with a personal search of meaning through work and activity. W e further propose a breakdown of eight stages to arrive at conscious evolution. Flexibility calls for adaptive learning capabilities. However, generative learning, vision and managing creative tensions are the levers of seminality. Only seminal learning skills can offer cultural advancement and feed into the formation of semantic memory.

The paper then turns to three new knowledge archetypes: Chaos, Complexity,

Consilience. These concepts can help trace breakthrough developments amidst order and disorder arrangements. The goal of a more equitable distribution of knowledge in the world leads us to recommend five mutations on the way to build inclusiveness.

’ Bruner J., Goodnow, J. J., and Austin. G. A. (1990), A Study of Thinking. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.


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Next, the paper deals with the design of a Big Picture addressing the future of learning. Possible scenarios are tracked down through the systemic interplay of three key variables: paradigm shifts, delivery modes, and driving forces. By the same token, time undergoes a three-dimensional approach: past, present, future. A transitional perception of new learning trajectories begins with a Clockwork Orange state that is slowly evolving

to Learn to Live Together and in harmony. Learning throughout Life - a

proposition widely endorsed - requires a new momentum in nurturing true learning cultures and pro-active metacognitive competencies. The paper ailudes to four policy directions and specifically to the challenge of putting educators at the forefront of the learning society. Learning schools are organisationally committed to a new teacher professionalism fostering faculty learning

to a Knowledge Age. The ultimate realisation of the unity and equity of learning generates the Learning Society.

The fundamental pitfall is constituted by hubris, the old Greek name for fateful human arrogance, a sin that attracted harsh punishment. Thus, knowledge growth must be accompanied with better learning capabilities and a sense of global ethics. Greater knowledge interdependency, or the dream of a global learning village, is contingent on our ability

and robust learning habits. Education as a Right seeks coupling with Learning as a

Duty to sustain a new Social Contract for the New Millennium. Learning and our foundation institutions of sociality are summoned to take full advantage of the human propensity to engage in long-term contracts that evolve, both by culture and democratic consent, into moral precepts and implicit social laws.

:ti on Seldom has humanity shared such a deep sense of urgency.

Against a legacy of notable progress we shoulder a growing burden made up of issues that vex humanity daily - ethnic conflict, warfare, endemic poverty, environmental depletion, plague-stricken continents, organised crime, anomic conduct at the heart of modern cities.

Indeed, there is a well-documented catalogue of human achievements. W e take common pride in it: the advancement of science and technology; progress in human rights, freedom and democracy; new wealth creation paradigms; extended life span. Hence, the windows of opportunity appear to be wide open. -~ Paradoxically. though, people feel increasingly wedged into a maze of global anxiety. The plight of suffering fellow citizens of the world occupies ever- increasing proportions of our daily news.

~

Perils facing global governance reinforce the overall disbelief in politics. Volatility in the economy and in capital markets generates widespread uncertainty. The wholesale risk society is marked by powerful jolts. It exercises intractable pressures on our daily lives.

While profoundly split on the appropriate policy remedies or the best societal directions, one potent idea appears to bridge disparate views. To a large extent, learning is recognised as the key attribute of developed communities and individuals; likewise, education is the unique provider for sustainable human prosperity.

Everything operates as if the perfectibilist principle has regained confidence: however uncertain and perilous the context, the quality of human life and the limits of human comprehension can undergo indefinite improvement.

~

26

EDUCATION 2000. On knowledge and learnlng

In a knowledge-driven world, where the economy itself has turned into an ecognomx human intelligence inequities and differential opportunities to learn establish the fundamental divide between peoples and countries. Our beleaguered world is a showcase of fierce knowledge competitions. Proprietary knowledge soars in value, whether speaking about frontier research or in state of the art defence technology.

Is it possible to single out one domain of human endeavour that escapes this paradigm? Is economic growth separable from human development and from the accumulation of intangible assets? Will technology not subside into incremental upgrades -from generation X to generation X +1- unless it becomes more learner-friendly? Is it not that the fate of

cultures remains ultimately associated with their learning and evolving capabilities? Can social institutions -as corporate organisations- succeed in assimilating advanced adaptive and generative learning functions?

learning conditionalities.

learning communities, learning cities, learning governments, learning organisations, lifelong learning individuals and ever-learning schools, constitutes the overriding challenge to be undertaken in the wake of a new millennium.

just begun to operate together. It is expected that they will partner even further to determine our common predicament.

Our new agenda is fraught with

The generation and sustainability of

Knowledge and learning have only

Human capital and knowledge management The dominion of economic thinking

The sheer fact that the human capital discourse -which has been dominant over the last five decades has acquired a second momentum is in itself significant. The rise of a knowledge-driven economy, and the concomitant premium allotted to intangible assets, have stretched the debate on education and training; these institutions remain the single major source of human capital formation and of knowledge production and dissemination in our global age.

in such high-levels of educational attendance. Ironically, it is also fair to notice that seldom in history have we witnessed such paramount signs of dissatisfaction with the outcomes of our educational systems. What’s going wrong?

Never before have our developed societies been grounded


PRELAC Journal

Parents, students, teachers, employers, unions, politicians, media, often complain over declining standards or express concerns about the uneven quality of our schools. Our so- called developed societies express in various ways a mounting concern with the inertia of educational systems to arrive at higher standards of achievement, relevance and outcomes. Comparative assessment exercises have thrown light on the existence of wide disparities across systems and countries. W e shall not enter into a discussion on how fair or unfair these

The UNESCO Commission on Education for the 21st Century2 associates this trend with the vibrant demand for higher skills at all levels:

1 “Instead of requiring a skill, which they see as still too narrowly linked to the idea of practical know-how, employers are seeking competence, a mix, specific to each individual, of skill in the strict sense of the term, acquired through technical and

critiques may be. In any case, disagreements are compounded when attempting to discuss remedies or when designing a rationale for structural reform.

One inescapable fact is that economic priorities have tended to subsume both the education and learning enterprises and their internal fabric during most of our terminal century.

Human capital - or its post-modern surrogate concept: knowledge management - is the mighty expression of that utilitarian approach. The economics of education has supplied most of the key rationale for ambitious reforms that swept our educational systems throughout most of the 20th century. Some prominent international organisations have championed in leading the new debate on human capital.

vocational training, of social behaviour, of an aptitude for teamwork, and of initiative and a readiness to take risks,’.

In the utilitarian legacy of the 20th century problem-solving and innovation-driven society, the overriding criterion for knowledge assessment is value creation. From this perspective, knowledge production and management addresses a host of complex concerns, otherwise alien to the time-honoured traditions of the education mill. It is worth mentioning, inter alia, the following domains currently under exploration:

1. Accessing existing knowledge and appropriating critical

“The knowledge, skills, competencies and other attributes embodied in individuals that are relevant 1 to economic activity,’ OECD, Human Capital Investment - An International Comparison, 1998

Hence, the upsurge of knowledge as a key production factor in the new economic lexicon has contributed to “harden” what was always regarded as a most relevant asset both to society and to the corporate world. As a consequence, knowledge theory underpins a feverish period of creative search: Where and how is it produced? How best can it be disseminated? How can we characterise the most favourable nurturing environments? Which are the key factors warranting timely application and market exploitation of new knowledge? What are the enablers to convert knowledge into problem-solving competencies and skills?

The latter question is not just an abstract exercise for the delectation of intellectuals. To the contrary, the value of knowledge is, not surprisingly, closely tied-up with that of competencies. Knowing is a necessary condition but only knowing-how provides for the sufficient complement required by’ an industrious and promethean society.

flows of new knowledge (stock and flow management). 2. Developing objective indicators to measure the impacts of

knowledge on wealth creation. 3. Discerning how ICT influence the formation and spread of

new knowledge. 4. Managing the working triangle of knowledge processing

and circulation: Education, R&D, Innovation. 5. Measuring and accrediting non-formally acquired

competencies (work-related skills). 6. Fine-tuning learning and un-learning strategies - customised

to the purpose of balancing active vs inert knowledge. 7. Relating personal and vocational identities to alternative

knowledge paths. 8. Balancing adaptive and generative learning.

This list adds far more to the research agenda on knowledge, and its social and individual functions, than just paying tribute to a new economy hype. Let us take the last two points, for instance.

* Delors et ai. (1996), Learning: The Treasure Within (Report to UNESCO ofthe lnternational Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century) Paris: UNESCO.

28

EDUCATION 2000. On knowledge and learning

Nurturing vocational identities Who am I? What are my core competencies? Do I ‘own’ proprietary knowledge? Regardless of where and how I work is there continuity in my professional career? Where do I seek new learning experiments? Am I able to formulate a knowledge ambition? Do I understand the social networks that add value to my knowledge pool? Have I a strategy to bolster my working self? What traits do I value as a lifelong learner?

Vaulting volatility marks our working context. The market puts a premium on multicompetencies and mobility. The spread of tele and e-work calls on novel self-management competencies. Likewise, the central tenet of autonomy and self-determination resorts to the critical issue of personal and vocational identity.

understand the extent to which charting a fully-fledged vocational identity is a formidable enterprise. Unless organisations are identity enhancers they will struggle to find the effective path toward collective knowledge and community learning.

Giving credence to this pursuit, it is now possible to devise a theory on the emergence of vocational identities, a sort of hybrid - homo sapiens et faber: Each human repertory at stake would necessarily include some, or all, of the following features, with allowance for different combination patterns. Each particular combination reveals a specific stage in a developing vocational self.

These questions do help us

W e make use of Jerome Bruner’s illuminating distinction between two critical IandscaDes in his analysis of the human condition: consciousness and action. Bruner, J. (1986), Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

1. A knowledge base (the cognitive genome).

2. A portfolio of competencies. 3. A preference for learning strategies. 4. A discernible path towards the

strengthening of identity (construction of self).

5. A foundation of emotional stability and of self-esteem.

6. A set of strategies to enhance personal assets.

7. A commitment to both the vision and priorities of the relevant organisations, regarded as learning opportunities.

8. A conscious evolution - including the social dimensions of identity formation.

Consciousness -brain research findings conclude- revolves around intricate mechanisms of knowledge processing and selection upon value carried out in the two components of our forebrain: the limbic system and the cerebral cortex. Purposeful conduct recalls the assistance of semantic memory, motivation and awareness.

Conscious Evolution sets the stage for autonomy and meaning making in the process of vocational identity formation. Placed at the summit of a long personal evolutionary chain it stems from a robust landscape of consciousness3 grappling with the deepest, most intractable dilemmas of vocation and identity, and grows increasingly wary of shallow activism.

In the absence of consciousness and vocational identity learning lacks purpose, work is remotely associated with personal development and the drive to learn is erratic.

vocational identity. Professional fulfilment is its main outcome.

Intent is the direct consequence of


PRE LAC Journal

Adaptive and generative learning New economy and constant adaptability are increasingly synonyms. . -

Ever shorter creative destruction cycles are compressing the time-length of competitive advantages resulting from innovation. The Schumpeterian description of business cycles applied to the Internet age sets the background for a high pace of productivity gains, thriving in extreme and inhospitable competition. Instancy is at the cutting edge of new knowledge application and of unprecedented demands on the human ingenuity to adapt. The buzz word in the tech-sawy communities is "time to market": that is to say the speed at which ideas are transferred into business models, the readiness to apply research outcomes and new knowledge in corporate innovation.

In this unstable landscape, new learning theories often surrender to conjunctural flexibility. This discourse is emphatically praised by the prevailing views on learning organisations.

However, in our increasingly unpredictable, dynamic and blurred world it is no longer possible to rely on someone who can "figure it all out at the top". Empowering the individual learner and agent of change becomes the challenge. Flexibility and generativity both at the institutional and individual levels become evermore critical.

P. Senge4 spells it out in a neat formulation:

"The prevailing view of learning organisations emphasises inceased adaptability. ... But increasing adaptiveness is only the first stage in moving toward learning organisations. The impulse to learn in children goes deeper than desires to respond and adapt more effectively to environmental change. The impulse to learn, at its heart, is an impuke to be generative, to expand our capability. This is why leading corporations are focusing on generative learning, which is about creating, as well as adaptive learning, which is about coping ...

of looking at the world...". Generative learning, unlike adaptive learning, requires new ways

This is not ornately composed prose for internal consumption of a few chosen. Human beings have been designed for learning. Children come fully equipped

with an unassailable drive to-explore and experiment rather than conservatively to avoid mistakes. Conversely, our primary institutions of education have been designed to teach and to control. The same reasoning applies to our prevailing systems of management, which are quite-frequently eager to reward mediocre obedience and rote conformity to norms.

Survival instincts are often commensurate with adaptive learning capabilities: the reaction to external stimuli, dealing with threats and behaving in accordance with standards of flexibility.

The visionary person, but also one who remains committed to effective change, looks beyond adaptability. Creative tension - measured by the gap between vision and current reality - acts on expanding capabilities, devises ways to encapsulate strong inference, and addresses multiple .competing hypotheses.

From Peter M. Senge's "The Leader's New Work: Building Learning Organisations" in: Mintzberg. H. and Quinn, J.B. (1 996), The Strategy Process - Concepts, Contexts, Cases, New Jersey: Prentice Hall International.

30

EDUCATION 2000. On knowledge and learnlng

Adaptive learning Responding to environmental change Coping with threats Reacting to symptoms Capturing trends and incorporating early signs of change Eliciting flexibility as prime value

Generative learning Expanding capabilities Enhancing creativity New ways of looking at the environment Addressing underlying causes Thinking differently Anticipating futures

The best blend of adaptive and generative learning remains a matter of scholarly dispute. Adaptive skills are useful in a context of constant but continuous or incremental change; generative capacities define the leaders in the response to radical innovation and systems depart swiftly from notorious disequilibrium in search of a new state of equi I i bri um .

In any case, one outcome is evident. If our schools are to evolve into genuine learning organisations rote adaptability should not outstrip generative learning concerns. The comprehensibility of a multidimensional universe and the skills to unravel complex systems are contingent on a fresh mindset, that which remains open to discontinuous reasoning and prepared to welcome quantum leaps toward discovery.

Creative instead of merely adaptive learning demands a greater investment in seminality Valuing ideas that establish new paradigms is the lever to bypass the binary instinct of the human machine (Claude Levi-Strauss). Seminal patterns of thought will tend to by-pass linear reasoning; they will always prefer alternative thinking or non-standard approaches when addressing complexity or the unexpected.

Seminality creates Meme5 - units of meaning nurturing the “universals of culture” minutely listed by George Murdock in his monumental categorisation. These, in turn, are critical to the formation of semantic memory - the lasting patterns serving as anchors to interpretation and enhancers of meaning making.

an industrial paradigm. Learning, in turn, appeals to a service-minded strategy designed to maximise knowledge acquisition.

Switching from the industrial mode of teaching to learning-friendly schools and institutions will require a lot more than the customary resolve to produce simple or incremental change.

For centuries, education thrived on

Meme refers to the notion of a culture unit, the most elementary component of semantic memory, dubbed by different authors as mnemotype, idea, idene. sociogene, concept, culturgen and type.

EDUCATION FOR ALL: 31

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New knowledge paradigms

Van Doren, C. (1991), A HistoiyofKnowledge, New York Ballantine Books. For an abridged presentation of punctuated equilibrium theories see: Krugman, P. (1996), The Seif-Organizing Econwny; Malden. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers. Wilson, E. (1998), Consilience- The UnityofKnowledge, New York: Vintage Books. Whewell, W. (1 840). The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences.

While recognising the omnipresence of economic considerations surrounding knowledge management theories one could not ignore some potent signs of disquietude. it is now commonplace to remark a deep current in the quest for a paradigm change: drifting away from dispensed teaching in large educational machineries; giving way to distributed and demand-driven “action learning”; and resorting to decentralised networks of institutions.

Three archetypes of new knowledge will shape the next stages in knowledge theories. They form a web of 3 C’s: Chaos, Complexity, Consilience. Let us briefly allude to them as prime sources of new thinking.

“Newton’s mathematic organisation of the middle world -from molecules to stars- reveals serious defficiencies in a number of respects”.

This is how Van Doren6 introduces chaos analysis as a high sensitivity approach to slight variations in initial states. Chaos theory is fraught with a new lexicon: fractals, strange attractors, Mandelbrot sets, multibody systems. This new science is equipped to deal with a world of a subtle God -even a careless God - not a malicious One, in Einstein’s own words. Disorder is not necessarily contrary to the attainment of a new order state. Quite often the former acts as a pre-requisite to the latter.

Complex thinking reclaims a new canon in thinking and knowledge management. It springs from tentatives to explain how complexity can follow non-linear and discontinuous paths to arrive at higher orders. This would be the case with P. Krugman’s punctuated equilibrium theories of self-organising systems7 and with Kaufman’s NK models in molecular and evolutionary biology. Complexity places itself at the “edge of chaos”, the thin borderline between perfect internal order and total disorder to trace breakthrough developments.

Consilience is advocated by Edward Wilson8, a renowned scientist who retrieves William Whewell’sg “jumping together” of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across disciplines to create a commonground of explanation. In line with the Ionian Enchantment of Ancient Greece, consilience seeks the key to the unity of knowledge; taking on board the fundamental premise that the ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy are not reflections of the real world but artefacts of scholarship. Consilience resumes a positivistic faith in scientific knowledge to add meaning and explanatory power to human intervention in the surrounding world.

32

EDUCATION 2OOO. On knowledge and learning

A search into the realm of this evolving universe allows us to discern five paradigmatic mutations. Among other key features this structural change aims at crossing the Rubicon of exclusion, a dividing line that was never breached during the industrial age, notwithstanding the most vigorous denouncements fired at the educational perpetuation of an underclass of non-achievers and low-skilled in successive generations.

The way to inclusive knowledge

CLASSICAL APPROACH

What to teach How to teach

Initial education for a lifetime

111)

fragmented knowledge 111)

Status-ridden knowledge 4

"Have-nots"

Constructivism sheds new light on the role of intersubjectivity vis-&vis social learning: knowledge is elevated to the category of personal and social construct, indivisible from cultural conditionalities and their forceful interplay. The road to knowledge and cognition is thus contingent on memory, history, language, ethnicity and affection.

appropriation and transmission. Symbolic language pervades the entire universe of knowledge; speech - naming things - is intertwined with thought. Knowledge results from the internalisation of social interaction. Language is the material foundation of thoughtlo.

"Knowledge is love and light and vision" - those are the expressive words of Helen Keller, an admirable personality of our closing century. Each and every piece of new knowledge is a treasure disclosed.

Mastering the tools of comprehensive learning is a true cultural - perhaps multicultural - adventure, epitomised in democratic achievements such as freedom of thought and of opinion.

Culture, in itself, acts as a powerful marker of knowledge

II)

NEW APPROACH

Where to learn When to learn

Flexible learning throughout life

Holistic knowledge

8 Y

Inclusive knowledge

"Haves"

W e have reached, at this junction, nothing other than a largely expected consequence. The sources of knowledge are rapidly changing; the ways in which we understand knowledge appropriation are equally undergoing dramatic evolution.

Theoretically speaking, knowledge availability increases exponentially in the world of the Internet and global networks. Albeit this recognition, the world of learning is still a landscape of major differences, a source of unfair competition and unequal distribution.

Once education is regarded as the fundamental lever of societal progress or regress, inclusiveness turns out the major policy issue to be tackled in the near future. Both equity and efficiency approaches demand from learning systems an enhanced capacity to deal with the socially deprived and with the low-ability groups which the industrial mode of education systematically excludes from the organised benefits of human advancement.

lo Vygotsky. L.S (1986), Thought and Language. Cambridge. Massachusetts The MIT Press.


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In a cognitive fashioned society, knowledge carries the potential of becoming a more powerful discriminator of human fate than in the former industrial society. To put it in other words, the premium awarded on knowledge and competencies nowadays demands better attention to those groups of low- achievers that are falling through the loopholes of our basic education systems.

The quest for a new knowledge paradigm is not separable from the goal of a more equitable distribution of knowledge in societies.

T h e f UtUre of Learning These contrasting views lay down the ground for a broad vision on A big picture the future of learning.

Departing from Education and flowing through the Knowledge-driven age we arrive at scenarios of a learning society as an enthralling proposition designed to overcome the shortcomings both of a bureaucratic vision and that of the economic domination over the education sphere.

A fully comprehensive model will consider the intersections of three key variables: paradigm shifts; delivery modes; driving forces.

In turn, each of these key variables is allowed to declinate longitudinally throughout time. Thus, they are permitted to unfold into three dimensions: past; present; future.

A summation of the 3 by 3 resulting combinations could be briefly described in the following matrix.

a) Paradigm shifts: from industry (past), to globalisation (present thrust), and moving toward a New Rennaissance period (utopian vision). Delivery modes: from uniform, rote systems (past), to segmented distribution (present market-driven trend), and gradually accommodating increasing levels of personalisation/customisation (utopian vision). Driving forces: from bureaucracy-led (past preference for national or State- controlled systems), to market-led arrangements (present move), which, in turn, should give way to empowered communities (utopian vision of radical devolution to civil society).

My submission is that we are swiftly moving from a Clockwork Orange education to a Knowledge Age, championed by a combination of a global order with market segmentation in distribution channels. The latter doctrine stems from the belief in a promethean knowledge. A knowledge generation capable of releasing humankind from bondage and of realising a supreme order of wealth.

The Big Picture that we favour does not end here. Economic theory, on its own, is grossly unsatisfactory to address a grounded humanistic and societal dream. The end of history would be too clumsy without a further horizon to aspire at.

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EOUCATION 2OOO. On knowledge and learnlng

Segmented

Uniform

Hence, our concept of a Learning Society as the realisation of the unity of learning. It is a vision made up of robust learning communities fully empowered to conduct the business of education and training in accordance with their communal identities” . A civil society of this calibre exercises its prerogatives to the farthest limits of subsidiarity. That is to say, any State intervention is contained within the primordial rights of aware and self-determining communities.

Market

Clockwork Orange

Bureaucracy

b

Exorcising the demons of utilitarian colonialism that have curtailed proper educare - in the purest Greek understanding - is a central tenet to this dream. This is a decisive move only comparable, perhaps, to the chasm that separates prescientific from scientific knowledge.

The proposition of a Learning Society remains a “mysterium tremendum”. It is a powerful appeal to the realm of human will and consciousness to reach beyond simple knowledge as a panacea and a new consumption commodity to be managed in our daily portfolio of conveniences. Our Western-biased human story witnessed two major

knowledge explosions. The first began in Greece circa 600 BC. It encompassed all fields of enquiry from Mathematics to Philosophy, covering the Physical and the Human Sciences. The second also originated in Europe some five centuries ago - leading into a remarkable age of discovery and scientific achievement.

Both ancient Greek and modern knowledge systems have made serious errors and perpetrated awesome mistakes. The present state of our planet bears testimony to that.

In both cases the errors originated in human arrogance, overbearing pride or “a kind of overweening presumption implying an impious disregard for the limits that an orderly universe imposes on the actions of men and women”. Greeks had a name for this human deviance: hubris (or hybris).

” Here we refer lo M Caslells concepts of cmrnunal identities end cultures of reslslance that are shaping a new tnlernalional order See Castells M (1997) The Information Age Economy Sooety and Culfure Vol I The R~se of the Nerwork Safely Vol /I he Power of Idenfffy Vol 111 End of Millennium Massachusetts, Oxford Blackwell Publishers Inc


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Hubris was a sin and the Greeks worshipped a goddess, Nemesis, who punished those who committed it. This was the case with Icarus. Indeed, this is the weakness to which many of the great and gifted are most susceptible. The signs of Nemesis are all around us today. Just read the daily press for documented evidence.

Insofar as globalisation imposes new dependencies, nowadays knowledge hubris are not confined to those who practice it - they entail profound implications for the entire planet, they affect some of the primordial equilibria at work in our fragile planet.

and learning equates the way to overcome a tragic flaw of our modern age.

The more knowledge seems generalised, insofar as information appears to become accessible to all at the reach of our bare fingertips, the gulf separating a developed world and an underdeveloped su b-world widens every day when measured by effective learning opportunities.

Bridging the gulf between knowledge

The consolidation of a Global Learning Village unequivocally places the issues of differential learning opportunities and knowledge disparities in the front line of international action.

Major knowledge gaps and learning inequalities are fundamental breaches in the social brokerage systems of information.

past show that welfare gaps stand a strong chance of widening in the new economy. W e need to move beyond the technological fallacy of a connected world. The real challenge is to realise a bonded world. Connectivity -or the death of distance -ought to translate into greater personal proximity: the realisation of a global world where the affluent minorities are unequivocally committed to the fate of their fellow citizens in the deprived areas, those who are the bearers of intergenerational poverty and inherited exclusion.

The lessons delivered by our recent

Narrowing the gap between knowledge and

learning is the way to overcome the tragic imperfection of our

modern age

Debt swaps for education, better flows of scientists and researchers, re-orienting development aid to learning and human development, democratising access to a digital culture and to the use of ICT, investing in brain-gain favouring the poorest regions and countries - these constitute some of the priorities to be. followed by international and national organisations charged with the responsibilities of conducting cooperation and development policies. In particular, e-learning software, content and services should enhance learning opportunities in the educationally underserved communities and regions rather than targeting the already affluent markets.

Education in the 21st Centuryi2 proposed four pillars to inspire the new learning ventures in the coming century: Learning to Be, Learning to Know, Learning to Do, and Learning to Live Together.

Living together in harmony and nurturing social capital are equivalent to weaving interdependency - a natural construct in a planet made smaller and closer.

The UNESCO Commission for

'' Delors el aI , op CII

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Sharing a common sense of belonging to society is innate to the human condition - we continuously display “great intensity of mutual concern and tremendous dependency on each other”, as Michael Carrithers well notesi3 . The author further remarks: _ _ __.__ _____.______________ __.___ _____. _ _ _ _ _ .

-

* “The fact that w e are social animals is not just an adventitious, accidental feature of our nature, but lies at the very core of what it is to be human. W e simply could not live, could not continue our existence as humans, without our sociality. As Maurice Godelier wrote, ‘humans in society, they produce society in order to live’... W e cannot know ourselves except by knowing ourselves in relation to others”.

Otherwise, what is furthermore peculiar about human sociality is its surprising variability. The diversity of humans and of human social life is infinite; it surpasses any codifiable capacity known to humanity.

Diversity unfolds before our eyes and appeals to our systematic observation endeavours in every possible manner.

Thus, watching and reflecting upon diversity is our prime source of discovery - our raw material for learning throughout life.

Cultures that celebrate diversity are generators of natural learning environments. From this key angle, learning cultures

act on permanence to nurture plural citizenships: learning to live together addresses and recognises the inevitability of valuing a multicultural global village. Moreover, learning cultures understand the need to engage in permanent knowledge ventures.

By living together we acknowledge difference. Most importantly, by appreciating diversity we learn to learn and to grow together.

A global learning village contains the potential for a safer and a better place to live.

Learning throughout life and n e w citizenship It directlyfollows that learning throughout life -a proposition widely endorsed by governments and international organisations- is highly contingent on the formation of vibrant cultures, both at individual and societal levels.

societies. Seldom are individuals equipped with the skills necessary to self-organise and self-manage long-term knowledge paths. Therefore, underpinning metacognitive

Foundations of a new social contract

Continuous learning poses a formidable challenge to all knowledge-driven

competencies and skills from the very early stages of formal education is becoming all the more important.

Learning to organise multiple sources of information, learning to learn from experience (experiential knowledge), dealing with the social dimensions of knowledge formation, learning to self-regulate the effort to learn, learning to forget and to un- learn whenever necessary and making room for new knowledge, combining -in adequate dosage- codified and tacit knowledge, permanently converting inert into active knowledge -these are but a few of the pressing challenges that form part of a learning culture.

l3 Carrithers, M. (1992), Why Humans Have Cultures, Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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A comprehensive vision of personal learning as vitally important to all stages of one’s life span will address three different development goals:

1. Personal and cultural development - related to sense, meaning-making and spiritual wealth.

2. Social and community development - related to citizenship, participation and sociality.

sustainable employability - related to production, job satisfaction, material welfare and economic pursuit.

3. Professional development and

Learning in the new millennium is expected to make a major contribution to the realisation of the third aim - gross0 modo, the traditional goal set by the economics of education. The evolution of our world towards complexity and interdependency, however, brings out the necessity to provide a broader frame to lifelong learning: putting upfront personal and cultural advancement, as well as citizenship development - two further human development needs that are far from being concealed within a narrow economic approach.

Moving from rhetoric to actual implementation is still far from being achieved. Permanent and lifelong education has pertained to the educational lexicon for decades. Hence, it is necessary to open new avenues exploring life as a fundamental learning asset - not strictly in an expanded time horizon sense, but profiting from life’s unique experience as an invaluable subject of reflection. Learning is inevitably a consolidation of dense inner journeys, it appeals to “The Treasure Within”.

There is no quick fix inventory of magical solutions.

The UNESCO Commission on Education for the 21st Century alludes to a number of overriding priorities. A renewed new policy thrust would contemplate, inter alia, four cardinal areas:

1. Offering study-time entitlements for all after compulsory education.

2. Carefully examining the strong features of the dual system and extending its strengths to overcome the current “trust gap” between companies and schools.

3. Developing networked learning and strong partnerships to enhance lifelong learning opportunities.

4. Putting teachers and educators at the centre of the learning society and providing them with incentives to embark on lifelong learning strategies.

Schools, universities and teachers have throughout time been the “knowledge pillars” of human and social progress. Dreaming with a learning society without catering for their contribution sounds inadmissible. Schools still provide the best embryo of multipurpose learning centres; universities are central knowledge hubs, irreplaceable factories of new knowledge and homes of advanced learning. Teachers meet the core requirements to occupy the forefront of lifelong learning enterprises. The all-learning society relies on teachers as leaders, not laggards.

The traditional associanist theory -brilliantly designed under Thorndike’s genius influenced the entire pedagogical preferences of the 20th century. Under these assumptions, drill and practice coupled with bonds and rewards would suffice to address a core theory of aptitude distribution; the Bell curve provided with the undisputed statistical dogma. Teachers would qualify as semi- skilled workers with the prime duty of carrying out instructions designed by curriculum experts.

New learning theories emphasise a “new core” constituted by knowledge constructivism and learners who actively engage in self-management of cognitive processes.

Intelligence ceases being treated as a natural and inelastic endowment. Research shows that long-term immersion in demanding environments can favour the acquisition of robust “habits of mind”. Incremental expansion of intelligence is attainable through generative learning: a balanced combination of effort and ability, appealing to expert instruction and competent mentoring. Teachers’ abilities become critical and themselves expandable through effort and on-going professional development.

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The hallmark of a learning school, then, is its ethos to continually seek new knowledge and to provide the leadership enabling a new teacher professionalism. Teachers are fundamentally learners, eager to engage in the institutional negotiation of improvement goals and in the strengthening of solid vocational identities.

From this fresh perspective teachers are no longer required to display a standard set of abilities. Externally prescribed performance benchmarks can be met in a variety of ways. As lifelong learners teachers are expected to target moving learning goals and to commit themselves to constantly expanding a package of core skills.

The following diagram summarises some of the knowledge challenges for teachers in a learning society, which may translate into enhanced teaching competencies and in improved classroom delivery.

KNOWLEDGE CHALLENGES FOR TEACHERS

Knowledge on subject matter Knowledge on human development Knowledge about learning

Knowledge about curriculum resources Knowledge about educ. techno1 Knowledge about collaboration

REFLECTIVITY \ TEACHING STRATEGIES

L. ResnickI4 phrases the challenges of a new teacher professionalism in a particularly eloquent way:

“Although professionals in many fields are required to participate in a certain amount of continuing education in order to keep their licenses or certificates current, educators

often perceive that, to admit that one is still learning, is to announce a professional weakness. This understanding of professionalism suggests a performance goal orientation and the associated view of ability as immutable. In the effort-based environment of nested learning communities, where ability is seen as an expandable repertoire of skills and habits, professionals are defined as individuals who are continually learning, instead of people who must already know. Their roles include both teacher and learner, master and apprentice, and these roles are continually shifting according to the context”.

l4 Resnick has produced a cmsistenl body of thinking in extending Lhe concept of learning wganfiabons lo schods and edUCalm establishments


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In a global learning environment, Education as a Right finds a natural partnership in Learning as a Duty.

In other words, the New Millennium is a kind of void canvas that the theorists of the natural state so eloquently described. From Plato to Rousseau, Hobbes to Rawls, social philosophy sought supreme harmony through the formation of stable and lasting social contracts. Contracts that are freely negotiated and that establish codes of

conduct based on a balanced interplay between rights and duties in society.

It is worth mentioning, at this juncture, another remarkable human trait: that, unlike common animal sociality, human social existence stems from the genetic propensity to nurture long-term contracts that evolve by culture into moral precepts and laws.

W e engage naturally in lasting covenants; moreover, we accept the necessity of securing them for survival: long-term friendship, family bonding,

pertaining to a community, cultural links. Learning is also an enterprise of the communal mind; one of its fundamental principle is ethics and catering for our foundation institutions of sociality.

Thus, a learning society posits a sovereign opportunity: to establish a new equilibrium between social rights and individual duties. Also, a time to reconcile individual and collective - or cultural - rights.

N E W CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS AND DUTIES

EDUCATION AS A RIGHT LEARNING AS A DUlY" '

During an address to high-ranking representatives of the European social partners, assembled in Thessaloniki, we proposed the following concept15 :

"The social contract is mostly an implicit agreement, accepted by all parties concerned. The post-war social

contract, which lasted successfully for some 50 years, is at present grossly outdated. This terminal stage is becoming apparent in a number of assumptions that no longer hold today: stable and full employment; the benefits of the welfare state; a limitless economic growth machinery; absolute faith in democratic governance; a strict separation between constitutional powers.

There remains little doubt that unless a new concerted effort is put into practice to produce a different social contract, tailored to serve the complex information society and to make the most of the learning challenges, our societies will run Into growing difficulties. In this new contractual approach, the economy will go on playing an important role; however, it is neither the sole nor the primordial factor. Full citizenship standards, striking a right balance between duties and rights, will increasingly call upon values such as justice, fairness, equity and solidarity in both our national and International orders."

l5 Carneiro. R (1999). 'Achienng a minimum learning plaffcfrn for all', in Agora I\! The low-skil/ed MI the European labour market prospects and polrcy options, Thessaloniki CEDEFOP

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Conscious citizenship lies at the root of participatory democracy. Participation demands a threshold level of social capital and trust capable of upholding higher-order common purposes. This sphere of public interest surpasses the simple rights of individuals to difference.

This is why that democratic rule is at the heart of citizenship education. Making allowance for a Learning Society is closely tied in with deepening democratic beliefs and committing future generations to perfecting democracy.

Schools and universities are - and have always been -bastions of sociality. They are social institutions to the marrow and the seedbeds of societal governance. Education establishments and educators are at the forefront of a new society They are the engines of a brave new world.

They carry the prime responsibility of making possible a better society: building the foundations of a new social contract that elicits education, knowledge and learning, as the key ingredients of a new deal.

It is time to retrench around dreams of greatness - survival is no longer sufficient.

Addressing the theme Priorities for the New Millennium is a call for rebellion. Likewise it is a cogent call to duty in each and every educational establishment, in the conscience of each and every educator.

Likewise, educational, social and political leaders face once again a formidable challenge: Delivering a new Millennium of advanced knowledge, lifelong learning and supreme wisdom.

A widely acclaimed artist and film- magician of our times - George Lucas - sees in education the cornerstone of our society, the foundation of our freedom and a vital building block of our democracy. In the Preface to Learn & Live, a publication of The George Lucas Educational Foundation, he writes:

“Our leaders have to make difficult choices every day, dealing with issues as complex as health care, transportation, and the infrastructure. W e cannot afford to let education be left out of the national debate. If we share a common love of learning throughout our lives, then the nation’s enormous resources can be brought to bear in this important endeavour.”

Human dream is the prime lever of change and progress. Utopia always preceded the feasibility design of alternative futures. Or, to put it in Shelley’s words:

“Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world’J. e

ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS, EQUITY, AND QUALITY

of Education in Latin America: What Lessons for Latin America

and Caribbean Regional Education Project?

Martin Carnoy‘

Professor of the School of EducatiodStanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA.

In the 1980s and 199Os, as part of a global transformation, Latin American countries suffered economic crisis and then underwent economic transformation and political democratization. Under pressure to open their economies to the world and to privatize public services, Latin America’s income distribution -already highly unequal by world standards- became even more unequal. In many countries, despite economic growth in the 199Os, poverty rates declined little if at all. The gap between rich and poor increased substantially.

’ The author wants to thank the Inter-American Development Bank for sponsoring the CRESUR project that produced many of the research results cited in this paper and an earlier paper on educational indicators that also served as the basis for this paper.


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Within this context, educational systems in Latin America also changed. Many of these changes were intended to produce greater equity in societies becoming increasingly inequitable. In the larger countries, basic education (up to nine years of schooling) began to approach universality. Secondary and tertiary education also expanded rapidly. In the less developed Latin American countries, primary school enrollment expanded as well. A new emphasis on qualify of education emerged, stimulating efforts to make schools and entire systems more accountable for student performance. Many countries also implemented alternative means of financing education They decentralized control over finances away from central ministries to provinces, districts, and schools. Governments encouraged private education as a means to reducing public educational spending.

W e can consider all these changes as educational reforms, but we now realize that despite good intentions, not all of them work to achieve the goals spelled out in Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Education Project. I am going to argue in this paper that there are relatively few educational reforms that actually help the vast majority of Latin American and Caribbean young people to get more access to education and to learn more. Although many analysts focus on changes in the management (organization) of the system (decentralization or greater parent participation, for example), on changes in financing (privatization, for example),

Relatively few education reforms truly aid the great majority of young people in Latin America and the

Caribbean to improve their access to

education and to learn more

or on changes in technology (curriculum, for example), as the most ways to make education "better," there is little, if any, evidence that these reforms work. I believe that expanding enrollment successfully (the percentage of an age cohort attending a particular level of schooling) can be considered the single most important 'reform' of the educational system. Such expansions of enrollment usually have major implications for what occurs in schools, forcing the system to address changing needs as new kinds of clientele enter schools in large numbers2. They also have implications for teacher recruitment and teacher improvement-the sine qua non of providing a decent education to the growing mass of children from low- income families taking higher levels of schooling.

Put another way, with all the effort put into raising the quality of education during the 1980s and 199Os, it would seem that Latin American countries should have witnessed major improvements in overall student academic performance in primary and secondary schools. This has apparently not been the case--at least, there is no evidence that student achievement has improved. In countries that have been doing student assessments over time, such as Chile, during the period when tests were made comparable (1 994-2000), results suggest minimal increases in average test scores (Bellei, 2001). This would not be much of an issue if student performance in Latin America were relatively high on a world standard, or in comparison with, for example, developing countries in Asia. But this is not the case either. Latin American countries whose students participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS) and OECD's PlSA test performed far below European and Asian countries.

For example, Carnoy and Loeb (mol) show that the most imporlanl explanalion lor whetner a U S stale nas mplemen!ed 'strong' accountability measures is the percentage of minomy students in the stale's schools The need Io implemenl accounlabillty systems IS therelore partly the resu'l of expanded proportions 01 minorily S'Jdenls in seCondary education Amher example IS Chile AS a resun of as enormous expansion of secondary education sime 1980, Cn le was pushed to maxc oprtanl cu'ricula. relorms In secondary education in (he 1990s

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ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS, EQUITY, AND QUALITY of Education in Latin America

What do the past twenty years of educational reform in Latin America tell us about the reforms we should emphasize in pursuing the goals laid out by Regional Project? If we are to make education “better” and more equitable, what are the main reforms Latin American countries should invest in? Does the failure to raise test scores in the region mean that nothing has changed? Or rather, should reformers have a better conception of where the reforms are taking them? In this essay, I suggest that some reforms have worked and that they teach us a great deal about how we should allocate effort in the future. I make several key arguments:

The decentralization and privatization reforms of the 1980s and 1990s have not worked to improve students’ educational performance but may have increased the inequality of performance among low-income and high-income students.

Even if average educational performance (test scores) is not improving, the performance of some groups -namely disadvantaged students- may be improving. This is important, especially if their improvement corresponds to particular reforms that can be identified as responsible for the change.

Certain other “supply side” strategies also are likely to lead to eventual improvement in student performance in school, especially for low-income students. High among these is student attendance in school. Student attendance may be a function of parent participation in school and the perceived quality (by parents) of schooling, including teacher attendance and school organization (Marshall, 2001 ).

Many of the most important reforms concern expanding the educational system from, say, universal primary to universal secondary schooling. Some countries are doing much better in expanding more “successfully” than others, and we can learn from those experiences.

Most analysts agree that educational systems cannot make large improvements in average student performance without improved teaching. Improved teaching requires a combination of measures, including improving teacher attendance in school, recruiting better trained, more able individuals into the teaching occupation, distributing these more able individuals more equitably among schools, and creating a level of commitment among teachers to improving student performance. Based on current research, I will that we can be quite specific about the kinds of strategies to improve teaching that work.


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The false promise of structural reforms The evidence suggests that structural reforms have had relatively little impact on overall educational "effort" in terms of investment in education or on student performance. Argentina transferred control of primary schools entirely to provincial governments in the late 1970s and of secondary schools in 1993. Increased control of educational resources in the Argentine provinces put educational decision making into the individual political contexts of each province, with very varied results. If we rank provinces by educational "necessity," as defined by their retention, drop out, educational attainment, and gross product per capita, we find that more educationally wanting provinces increased spending per student about the same percentage as more advantaged provinces after the 1993 transfer. Neither did more educationally wanting provinces increase secondary enrollment significantly more or less than the better off provinces (Cosse, 2001). Secondary enrollment gains in the 1980s, before the 1993 transfer, were about the same as in the 1990s (Carnoy, Cosse, Cox, and Martinez, 2001 ). So educational effort, enrollment growth, and enrollment growth equity among provinces in Argentina did not seem to be affected by decentralization. Average student performance in secondary education between 1993 and 1999 is more difficult to assess because the tests are not comparable, but there is no sense in Argentina that student performance is rising Carnoy, Carnoy, Cosse, Cox, and Martinez, 2001). Much the same can be said about educational effort and enrollment growth in Mexico after the decentralization of the early 1990s. The states are not increasing their educational investment as a result of gaining control of their schools (Paulin, 2001).

In Chile, available evidence suggests that the hoped for increases in efficiency from increased competition among schools and from an increased role for privately managed schools did not make schooling more effective than before the voucher reform (McEwan and Carnoy, 2000; Hsieh and Urquiola, 2001; Bellei, 2001). The one major effect that the reform may have had is to bring more private resources into education, but that came mainly from making families pay a high fraction (70 percent) of the costs of sending their children to university (Gonzalez, 2001). With new legislation in 1993, it became legal for subsidized private schools to charge tuition. Private contributions for primary and secondary schooling increased over the next eight years, but that contribution is small compared to family investments in higher education. We should remember

46


that even before the 1981 reform, 20 percent of students attended private primary schools, and 6 percent of those were in private paid schools that received no government subsidies.

Privatization in the 1980s may not have lowered or raised overall student performance, but evidence suggests that it may have had a negative effect on low-income students. Indeed, research shows that low-income student performance in non- religious subsidized private schools in Chile, which enroll 21 percent of ail basic education students in the country, is significantly lower than in public municipal schools (McEwan and Carnoy, 2000). So structural reforms seem to have made little overall improvement in student performance, and probably had relativeiy little impact on enrollment expansion in primary and secondary education, even though privatization may have made it possible to expand university at lower public expense.

Why some “popular” educational strategies There are a number of -

are not relevant “popular” educational reform strategies that may be important in developed for Latin America countries but that have questionable relevance for the Latin American context. For example, there is considerable evidence now in the United States (based on the Tennessee class size experiment) that class size may have a significant effect on student achievement and, more important, on student attainment (Finn and Achiiles, 1999). But in the Latin American context, reducing class size is probably not a relevant reform for increasing quality. It is too entangled with peer effects resulting from widespread school choice in urban areas, teacher and student absenteeism in rural and urban areas, and pedagogical techniques that do not become more effective as the number of students in the class diminishes.

Thus, smaller class sizes often result from a series of factors that make the schools that have these smaller class sizes less desirable places to learn. In rural areas, for example, small classes may be due to student absence due to consistent teacher absence. In urban areas, where families can, to some degree, choose among public schools outside their neighborhoods, so at least partially sidestep residential segregation, “better” public schools (those with higher levels of student performance, representing higher value added or larger “peer group” effects3 ) and many private schools attract more students, filling classes to maximum capacity. Less well-regarded schools tend to have classes with fewer students because the schools operate at less than capacity. This is precisely what we would expect in a system governed by choice.

McEwan, 2001


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If teaching were generally organized around individual attention and small group work in Latin America, fewer students in a class could mean higher value added in schools with smaller classes, hence an offset to higher performance in schools with already better students and greater “peer group” effects. However, most teachers in Latin America still teach using the “chalk and talk” method, or frontal teaching, in which a larger or smaller class size seems to have little effect on how much children learn.

Another popular focus of reformers is reducing repetition and drop out rates. Whereas this goal is laudable as an object of reform, it is often confounded with the conditions of entry at the next level of education. For example, in some poorer Latin American countries, repetition and drop out rates in the first years of primary school are much higher than in other countries. Does this mean that improving the “quality” of primary school will reduce repetition and drop out rates? Almost certainly, the answer is yes -if reformers could in fact improve primary school quality. But let us assume that primary enrollment in the next ten years is universalized and secondary enrollment sharply expanded in, say, Honduras, and repetition and drop out rates in primary school fall substantially. Does that mean that the quality of Honduran primary education has risen? Perhaps it has. But, more likely, lower repetition and drop out reflect the changed function of primary education. Instead of acting in part as a sorting institution for access to relatively limited places in secondary schools, the expansion at that next level would allow many more entering first graders to continue into seventh grade. More rural primary school classrooms and perhaps even a number of rural secondary schools

would have been built, creating places for more pupils in the higher grades of primary school and in basic secondary school. These places would need to be filled. Children would be passed into higher grades when in the past they would have been held back.

Similarly, in the more developed Latin American countries, the rapid expansion of secondary education almost automatically implies lower repetition and drop out rates in secondary schools. How access to university is determined also affects secondary drop out rates. For example, in Uruguay the drop out rates in the second cycle of secondary education (preparatoria) are higher than in neighboring Argentina and Chile (Carnoy, Cosse, Cox, and Martinez., 2001). Does this mean that the quality of Uruguayan secondary education is lower? Almost certainly it is as high or higher. Uruguayan preparatoria is a very traditional Latin American upper secondary school, organized to select students for university education. Students who graduate have automatic entrance to free public university, and this is limited to less than one-fourth of the age cohort. Unless the function of preparatoria changes in Uruguay, either because access becomes limited to university education by other means, such as high fees (as in Chile), or less limited because of an expansion of public university places (as in Argentina), drop out rates will have to remain high, even if quality were to rise.

making average repetition and drop out rates across all schools an objective for educational reform. They are much better measures of educational access, particularly for low-income groups, and therefore work better as an objective for increasing educational equity.

,

This is why care should be used in

Most teachers in Latin America still teach using the “chalk and talkyy method, or frontal

teaching

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Targeting educational quality reforms In contrasttostructural reforms, targeted reforms -specific programs aimed at disadvantaged groups- appear to have been much likely to succeed in improving academic performance for the targeted groups. A famous example in Latin America is the Escuela Nueva, in Colombia, now found in other countries under other names. The Escuela Nueva targets low-income rural students and seems to have had a positive impact on student performance, largely through providing a support network for rural teachers and increasing their commitment to teaching in isolated rural schools (McEwan, 2000).

Direct financial interventions by central ministries into improving outcomes for low income students were also effective in both Argentina and Chile. The P-900 program, begun in 1990 in Chile and extended to almost 2,500 schools by the end of the decade raised test scores of pupils significantly in low- scoring schools (Cox, 2001; McEwan and Carnoy, 1999). Elements of the Plan Social in Argentina, directed at rural schools and low-income students attending secondary schools, also seemed to have positive effects on student outcomes. Uruguay's direct financial assistance to low-scoring schools (based on the 1996 6th grade evaluation) probably contributed to a significant increase in test scores among the countries lowest-income students (Filgueira and Martinez, 2001). A targeted voucher plan in Colombia in the 1990s seemed to have a positive effect on low-income student attainment students who received vouchers and used them to attend private (religious) secondary schools stayed in school into the higher grades and were less likely to drop out (Angrist et.al., 2000).4

Such equity-driven reforms are more successful in raising student performance than system-wide reforms, primarily because targeted reforms are usually aimed at groups that receive fewer or lower quality educational resources until they receive special attention. That special attention seems to pay

off. It would also seem easier to raise school productivity by bringing existing technology and resources already used for higher income students into a low-income situation than developing new methods to raise productivity throughout the educational system. Similarly, bringing a relatively few low- income students into each of many already existing private schools through a limited targeted voucher program as in Colombia is much more likely to benefit low-income students through "peer effect" than a Chilean-type plan that creates many new for-profit private schools of questionable quality.

Targeting high repetition and dropout rates among low- income basic education students, especially in urban areas where secondary education opportunities are readily available, may also work to improve educational quality. Providing low- performing schools in Lima or Rio de Janeiro -schools marked by high repetition and drop outs- with some new methods and materials for teaching, or focusing on improving student attendance through incentive. Thus, although it would be difficult to use such methods to lower the average drop out rate in all schools, we can change the repetition and dropout rates in certain schools among certain groups, making the quality of schooling at least more equitable.

Angrist. Joshua D.. Eric Bettinger, Erik Bloom, Elizabeth King, and Michael Krerner (2000). "Vouchers for Private Schooling in Colombia: Evidenceh a Randomized Natural Experiment." Washington, D.C.: World Bank (mirneo).


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Student attendance in school I want to put special emphasis on strategies that improve student attendance in school. Almost all Latin American countries are past the stage in which simply increasing the percentage of children enrolled in primary school is a major objective of educational reform. Having passed this stage, however, does not eliminate the problem of how often students actually come to school. Recent research suggests that parents are more likely to send their children to school and adolescents more likely to attend school when schooling is higher quality (Hanushek and Lavy, 1994; Bedi and Marshall, 1999; Marshall and White, 2001). This higher quality could represent high teacher attendance, good teaching, and more interesting, challenging curriculum.

Student attendance rates may be a good proxy measure for school quality, and the interaction of higher attendance rates and higher school quality, a good predictor of higher student achievement. One of the interesting side effects of this interaction is that 'better' schools in Latin American cities tend to have more students in classes than do 'worse" schools. Motivated parents try to send their children to these better schools even if they do not live in the school's immediate neighborhood. One reason that cross-section studies measuring the effect of class size on student achievement show no significant impact is probably due to the greater demand for places in schools that are known to be good. A school's reputation may be the result mainly of peer effect, but as I have argued, such schools also tend to attract better teachers. This 'clustering' effect of good teachers and good students fills classrooms. Less attractive

schools will have smaller positive or even negative peer effect, less effective teachers, fewer students in their classes, poorer attendance rates, and lower average performance.

Another reason for focusing on improving student attendance is that it is relatively easy to measure and represents a concrete objective for educators and reformers. For example, bola escola, the Brazilian direct payment scheme for very low-income parents is specifically designed to subsidize families to keep children attending school. Chile's teacher pay incentive system (SNED) also includes attendance as one of its objectives.

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Improved teaching and improvement in student performance Educational analysts have long stressed that

Rather than focus on the pedagogical literature, I will discuss issues of incentives and counter incentives that may affect the level of teacher productivity in Latin America's schools. W e know it is possible to achieve high levels of learning in Latin America, because one country in the region, Cuba, appears to be much closer than others to international levels of achievement in mathematics. Even if the test scores in the 1999 OREALC thirteen country survey of Latin American third and fourth graders overestimate the level of Cuban achievement, there is little doubt that Cuban children are scoring much higher than children in other countries (LLECE, 1999; Carnoy and Marshall, 2001). One of the elements in Cuba's success is the higher average education of parents in Cuba, and the lower level of abject poverty, as reflected in the low proportion of children who work outside the home. But school factors also play a role. For one, educational expectations are high in Cuba, as reflected in the curriculum and textbooks used in mathematics. Secondly, and this is what I want to focus on here, Cuban teachers with university level education are paid salaries much more like the salaries of other professionals, so entering teaching as a profession has, until recently with the influence of the tourist industry, required little financial sacrifice. Teachers also have similar social status as most other university graduates. Thus, it appears that Cuban schools can implement more demanding curricula in part because even primary teachers have the capacity to teach those curricula.

There are other key factors that distinguish Cuba's schools These differences point to a number of factors that are likely from schools in other Latin American countries. Teachers in Cuba are unlikely to take frequent absences, excused or unexcused. Cuban primary schools offer more hours of school and even more hours of math per week than schools in most Latin American countries, although this varies among countries (OREALC, 2001, p. 45). And the distribution of "good" teachers in Cuba among rural and urban schools and among schools serving more disadvantaged and more advantaged populations is likely to be more equal than in other Latin American countries. Although we have no hard data on absences or teacher distribution in Cuba, anecdotal evidence suggests that such assertions are correct (Carnoy, 1989).

to have major impact on educational quality, especially in schools attended by lower-income children and therefore on which educational reformers should focus as part of the Regional Project.


The time per day and per year that teachers actually teach in a classroom is obviously a crucial variable when the total number of hours per year is low. In Argentina, a highly developed country in many respects, primary school students attend school an average of four hours per day, or less than 750 hours per year. However, teacher absences are relatively frequent in many provinces, and many days per year are lost in teacher strikes. At the other end of the economic spectrum, Honduras loses approximately half its already low number of “official” hours of primary schooling per year through teacher absences, mainly but not only in rural areas (Carnoy and McEwan, 1997). Teacher absence is a pervasive problem throughout Latin America, yet is rarely discussed or used as an indicator of educational quality. Reforms to improve teacher attendance are politically difficult since they confront either corrupt teacher employment policies (for Mexico, see Bayardo, 1992) or the opposition of the teachers’ unions or both. Teacher strikes, which also account for many lost days in some countries, might be reduced by better coordination of reforms and educational policies with teacher organizations, but often reflect wider conflictual politics in the country concerned. Chile has had the luxury of very few lost days from teacher strikes over the past ten years, but this has been mainly the result of a consensual period in Chilean politics, following on the heels of 17 years of military rule (Cox, 2001, Nunez, 2001).

The distribution of teacher “quality” (as measured by education, experience, and test score on evaluations of teacher knowledge in subject areas) among schools serving lower and higher-income students appears to be highly unequal even in developed states of developed countries, such as New York state in the United States (Langford, Loeb and Wykoff , 2001). Recent findings for Mexico suggest that there is even greater polarization of teacher quality among schools in developing countries (Lastra, 2001 ; Santibanez, 2001). This makes logical sense for two reasons: more educated and higher social class teachers are likely to reside in higher income neighborhoods and regions so are more likely to teach in a school with higher income students; and more able teachers are in greater demand, so may have greater choices in where they work, hence, everything else equal, will tend to shift to schools with better conditions and “easier” students. Since salaries are generally set by salary schedules negotiated at the national or regional level, teachers get paid essentially the same salary no matter where they work. Rural teachers or those working in “hardship” areas (Tierra del Fuego, for example), get higher salaries, but these usually are not high enough to compensate individuals who have normal lifestyle preferences. It has been politically difficult almost everywhere in the world to pay teachers systematically and significantly more to teach in low-income schools, since this represents a transparent shift of public resources to the poor, a move greatly resisted by middle classes everywhere. For example, Chile’s voucher plan was designed to pay the same amount per child regardless of social class.5 The effect of these equal payment regimens is that higher-income children not only benefit from their own higher cultural capital, but from a substantial peer effect of attending schools where the other students are also from higher income families, and from being taught by more capable, more experienced teachers.

Holland is an exception to this rule. The Dutch voucher plan subsidies low-income children with a voucher 25 percent larger than the normal voucher amount.

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If we believe that this distribution of resources is efficient, then a more unequal distribution of peer and school resources should produce better average results than a more equal distribution. The Chilean experience suggests that greater inequality in the distribution of students does not produce higher average student performance (Carnoy, 1998). Would equalizing teacher resources among schools with lower and higher-income students increase or decrease average outcomes? This is a difficult question to answer. Low-income students would probably do significantly better, but would higher-income students do significantly worse? One argument is that higher- income parents can offset most of the bad effects of a poor teacher, but lower- income parents cannot. But we have no evidence to support this notion. Another argument is that it takes only small increments of high quality resources to produce positive effects at the low student performance end of the spectrum, but much greater increases in resources to produce increases in student performance among already high- performing students. Chilean estimates of cost-effectiveness comparing public schools, subsidized private schools, and paid (high tuition) private schools suggest that students in paid private schools achieve the highest test scores, but that the schools are by far less cost-effective than schools serving much lower-income, lower achieving children (McEwan and Carnoy, 2000). From an efficiency standpoint, some case can therefore be made for resource shifts, but the case is not strong.

But from an equity standpoint, it is more likely that shifting better teachers to lower-income schools should work to equalize outcomes. The question is: how to accomplish such a shift. Incentive pay schemes, such as the SNED in Chile, that reward teachers in schools that beat average test score gains in similar social class schools, have not been evaluated for their effectiveness in systematically improving teaching or in shifting good teachers to lower-performing schools. There are advantages and problems with incentive schemes based on increasing value added in the school based on student test scores. The main advantage is that the goal is clear and the school can organize around that goal. This can create a positive organizational effect of “aligning” the school around academic achievement (Rothstein, Carnoy, and Benveniste, 1999). The downside is that such incentives can push schools and teachers to spend a disproportionate amount of time teaching the test. It is also likely that small schools will have a greater variance in performance from year to year because of the greater statistical variability of their student body, hence will have a greater likelihood of being rewarded at least once in a while (Kane, 2000).

A more profound problem for most Latin American is the average level of capacity in their teaching force. This is

not just the result of the quality of teacher pre-service education, which is notably poor (Lockheed and Verspoor, 1988). Nor is it necessarily an issue of the current level of teacher salaries, which are low relative to the pay in other professions in some countries, but relatively high for women teachers in many countries compared to women workers with similar levels of education (Vega, Experton,and Pritchard, 1999; Carnoy and McEwan, 1997; Santibanez, 2001). However, as a recent study has shown, the higher relative salaries paid to teachers may be misleading. If teachers are divided by levels of education, the higher relative salaries may obtain mainly for those with secondary education, who either teach at the primary level or entered the labor market in the past when lower levels of education were acceptable (Razquin, 2001). Women teachers with post- secondary education are more likely to earn relatively less than women earn with post-secondary education working in other professions. This is even more often the case for men, whose opportunities outside teaching are much greater.


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The lower comparative salaries for post-secondary educated teachers may create a dilemma for educational reform strategies. Almost all Latin American countries have gradually raised the educational requirements for teachers over the past twenty years. In periods of recession, such as the 1980s, teacher salaries generally fall in real terms. Yet, the relative salaries of teachers compared to workers with similar levels of education probably rise (because public sector salaries are sticky downward compared to private sector salaries). In periods of economic crisis, it is easier to attract individuals into teaching, even individuals with more education than required. This happened in Mexico in the 1980s, when many university graduates trained for other professions chose to go into teaching because of the crisis in the private sector. But in periods of economic growth and rapid expansion of secondary education--characteristic of the 1990s throughout Latin America, recruiting teachers with post-secondary degrees is more difficult, and might mean a decline

in the quality of individuals being drawn into teaching. This could be mitigated by an increased supply of higher educated women entering the labor market because of changes in values concerning women's work, for example. It also could be mitigated by the much lower cost of obtaining a teaching degree compared to other university degrees. But unless teachers' work is highly regarded on other grounds, countries in which the salaries of teachers with post-secondary education are relatively low compared to those with higher education degrees in other professions, could face a shortage of well-qualified teachers, particularly in secondary education. Many of the most important educational reforms in Latin America in the past ten years and in the next decade concern secondary education. Thus, the relative salaries of post-secondary trained teachers (and the supply of newly certified secondary school teachers) are important indicators of the potential success of other reforms to raise student achievement and attainment.

To summarize, key factors concerning teaching that reformers can focus on to improve educational quality, mainly for low-income students, in the context of the Regional Project are the following:

b ........................................

ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS, EQUITY, AND QUALITY of Education In Lath America

Increasing the number of classroom hours per day and year encountered by an average student and especially low-income students. Classroom hours have to be estimated using required hours adjusted for three factors -teacher absenteeism, student absenteeism, and loss of days to teacher strikes. The first two are difficult to measure, but are (or should be) important objectives of educational reform. So should the reduction of strike days. If real hours in the classroom are increasing, it is likely that student performance will improve. In some countries or regions where absenteeism or low numbers of required hours is an important issue, increasing contact hours may be the most important objective of educational reform. As a primary school teacher in a low-income school once asked me, "How can we be expected to increase these students' achievement levels when we only have them in class for three and one-half hours per d a q

Equalizing the distribution of teachers by education and experience across schools with students of different socioeconomic background. The more polarized this variable, the more unequal school capacity and the less likely that government programs can raise low-income students' achievement.

Paying close attention to the salaries of teachers by level of education compared to non-teachers with the same education. Comparisons should be made within gender group, men and women separately. The higher the relative salaries of teachers with a given level of education, the more likely reforms aimed at the level of education where those teachers are teaching will succeed.

Increasing the content knowledge of young people entering the teaching profession. The quality of teacher pre-service training is one of the biggest problems facing educational reformers. If teachers to not have a high level of understanding of math, language, and science, how are they to teach more difficult, challenging curricula in those subjects?


PRELAC Journal

The logic of improving educational quality through educational expansion Educational expansion has taken place in all Latin American countries over the past twenty years (Castro and Carnoy, 1998). More students attend primary school as a percentage of the age cohort than in 1980 and many more students attend secondary school and university. Part of this increase is due simply to economic growth in the region and resulting increases in educational spending. But an important part of the expansion took place in the 1980s despite economic crisis. W e know that pressure for educational expansion may increase in economic crises because income forgone declines, often raising the private rate of return to taking more schooling. Although there are exceptions to the rule (for example, Costa Rica, where net enrollment in primary and secondary school declined from high initial levels in 1980-1990), many Latin American countries saw gross and net enrollment increases in primary and secondary schools in the 1980s. This expansion generally continued into the 1990s with economic recovery, this largely as a result of more funding available for expansion but also because countries have long been committed to a politics of educational expansion.

Should we consider a higher percentage of an age cohort finishing higher levels of schooling, as was the case in many Latin American countries in 1980-2000, a success of educational reform that aims to improve educational quality and educational equity? I believe that we should, for several reasons.

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Historically, almost all countries in the world have raised academic achievement in their populations by increasing the average numbers of years of schooling taken by successive generations of students. The OECD literacy survey, which included Chile, suggests how large the changes in achievement from generation to generation have been. There is no doubt, the OECD shows, that 25 year-olds in every country surveyed are more literate than their parents. This is largely true because they have higher levels of education, not because they have gone to “better” schools. Thus, incorporating an increasing proportion of an age cohort into ever-higher levels of education may be the most important thing that governments can do to increase student achievement. Reforms that accomplish that goal should be considered successful even if the average level of performance of students in, say, the eighth grade, does not increase at all over the next ten years. Put another way, assume that eighth graders in Colombia score somewhat higher than eighth graders in Chile on an international math test, but that average education (number of years of schooling in Chile among 15-24 year- olds is much higher than in Colombia.

Which fact is more important in determining the potential productivity of the labor force or the level of other social indicators, or even of the quality of the educational system?

To achieve major increases in completion rates at a given level of schooling, governments usually redefine the nature of a given level of schooling. They do more that just build more buildings and supply more teachers, although that, too, is an important accomplishment. They necessarily need to reform their education systems to accommodate the notion that a much higher fraction of students will finish a particular level of schooling, whether this is primary schooling OF university. These reforms should not be taken lightly. At the same time, their success can be measured by increases in the proporti‘on of young people reaching higher levels of schooling.

ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS, EQUIN, AND QUALIN of Education in Latin America

The case of Honduras Consider a low performer among

Latin American countries, such as Honduras. In 1998, 31 percent of the Honduran population, 15-24 years old had 5 years of education or less (OREALC, Regional Report, Santiago, Chile, 2001, p. 91). Honduras is a poor country, but that explains only part of the problem. Honduran primary schools, particularly those in rural areas, are marked by severe teacher and student absenteeism and a shortage of classroom space to accommodate first and second grade pupils who might move into the third and fourth grades and onto sixth. This is partly due to low levels of resources, but not entirely. Many children begin school two years older than the

normal starting age of seven, clearly a feature of family poverty. But primary teacher salaries are relatively good, so teacher absenteeism is more a result of mismanagement than low incentives. Repetition rates in the early grades are extreme , leading to high dropout rates. Improving primary completion rates would require construction of large numbers of classrooms in rural and some urban areas. It would also require building many more secondary schools, since most families consider that the main reason for completing primary school is to go on to secondary. Supplying teachers for new classrooms should be no problem, since teaching training schools in Honduras graduate 20 for every one that

gets a job teaching (Carnoy and McEwan, 1997). But beyond school construction and supplying teachers, raising primary completion rates would require reforms that would reduce teacher absenteeism substantially, change teaching methods, and supply materials to improve learning conditions in classrooms -in other words, reforms that would reconstruct Honduran primary education.

Chile and Mexico At the other end of the spectrum, consider Chile and Mexico’s expansion of higher secondary education compared with Uruguay’s much slower progress at the preparatoria level. Was this just a product of differential economic growth? The evidence suggests an alternative explanation. Much of the very rapid growth of upper secondary education in Mexico was produced by creating new forms of technical and bachillerafo schools, outside of the elite preparatorias associated with the National University or the Politecnico Nacional. One of the fastest growing, for example, was CONALEP, an autonomous system of more than 250 technical schools originally intended to provide technical training for low-income youth who would end up as skilled workers, mainly in Mexican manufacturing industry. Despite dropout rates of 50 percent (about the same as the rest of the upper secondary level), CONALEP was able to combine basic math and language education with technical training and internships in industry to produce large numbers of graduates in the past 15 years. Other new institutions, based on various models of upper secondary education, have also incorporated a relatively high percentage of low-income youth into the upper secondary system. As the level expanded, all these institutions changed their “charters” so that graduates could use their degrees to enter the post-secondary system. And even the post-secondary system began to change to accommodate a new “range” of graduates. For example, state and federal governments have created a set of new, well-funded two-year technical schools -the Universidades Tecnicas- designed to produce highly skilled technicians for manufacturing and services. Now, the charter of these institutions has also changed to allow graduates to continue on to full universities.6

For a review of the Mexican “preparatoria” level, see Bernard0 Naranjo.

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Chile also achieved a major expansion of secondary education between 1980 and 2000. The Chilean expansion, like Mexico’s, came mainly through the expansion of technical education, some of it associated with industrial partnerships. Chile’s expansion also occurred initially in the context of a radical decentralization and privatization reform under the military government (1981). A significant fraction of Chile’s public secondary school students shifted to private education under a per student subsidization, or voucher plan, that gave private schools approximately the same funding per student as public schools (see Cox, 1997). In the 1990% however, expansion was effected mainly through increased funding for technical and non-technical secondary education, an attempt to improve secondary education through a concerted program of new materials, teacher training, improved curriculum, and a major investment in computers and Internet (ENLACES). As a result, Chile’s completion rate in secondary education is one of the highest in the region. A higher percentage of Chilean young people have 10 years of schooling, or more than in any Latin American country but Cuba. Although the increased funding

per student is a product of sustained economic growth, it also results from a high degree of commitment to education by a series of Chilean democratically elected governments. The focus on making secondary education universal for Chilean youth and supporting that effort with new materials, new technology (including new curriculum) and more training was key to achieving high rates of completion. Although enrollment in universities was expanding rapidly in the period 1990-2000, the highly privatized nature of the Chilean higher education system, especially universities, allowed Chile to expand secondary school completion without placing a high public finance burden on the government from massive growth of the university system, But it has also placed barriers to entry for many capable secondary school graduates who could successfully complete higher education were more public funds available. Nevertheless, it is apparent that Chile, like Mexico, has increased the average education of massive numbers of low-income youth, mainly by reforming secondary education, and hence has raised average achievement levels.

Uruguay and Costa Rica In contrast, Uruguay did not change

the nature of its preparatoria education. Uruguay does have a fraction of its higher secondary students in technical education, but this too has remained traditional. Preparatory school in Uruguay has the task of preparing students for university. Successful completion of higher secondary education means automatic entrance to a free public university. Since the university has expanded enrollment slowly, preparatory schools remain institutions that must decide who is “fit” to continue on to higher education at public expense. Drop out rates in Uruguay’s preparatorias, at about 37 percent, are much higher than drop outs from secondary schools in Argentina and Chile. Although there is reason to believe that Uruguayan secondary school

students achieve as highly as students in Chile or Argentina, the fact that they are less likely to complete secondary school means that their ultimate achievement levels are probably lower. The difference can be attributed directly to the lack of secondary education reform in Uruguay-as presently constructed, preparatoria education is not organized for mass producing secondary school graduates; it retains its traditional charter of selecting students for universities. This suggests that reform is a necessary part of any educational expansion and that the success of reforms can be measured by their ability to increase enrollment and completion rates in a particular level of education. The Uruguayan government has recognized this axiom is moving toward preparatoria reform.

Another type of contrast is the experience of Costa Rica in the 1980s. Because of the economic crisis and the requirements of World Bank structural adjustment loans (SALS), Costa Rica lowered the public expenditure per pupil in secondary schools, began charging fees to students io cover costs of pedagogical materials, and began replacing experienced, higher-paid teachers with younger, uncertified teachers (Carnoy and Torres, 1994). Repetition and drop out rates increased and success rates on the secondary school final examinations declined, all an indication that the quality of secondary education went down in the 1980s.

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One of the most common critiques of enrollment and completion rates as a measure of educational improvement is the claim that quality of education in, say, secondary school automatically declines as these rates increase. Yet, there is considerable evidence that this is not the case. For example, in the United States, the massification of high school completion and an enormous increase in the proportion of high school seniors who take the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) has not led to a significant decline in the average scores on this test (Rothstein, 1998). Similarly, in Chile, average scores on the high school version of the SIMCE test have not declined in the 1990s despite increases in the proportion of the age cohort taking the test (Bellei, 2001). The same seems to be true for Argentina’s testing results at the secondary level (Cosse, 2001).

One reason that achievement scores may not decline significantly even as a higher fraction of the age cohort enters and completes a given level of schooling is that the educational system is probably organized to reach particular goals (standards or quotas) rather than to increase productivity spontaneously. In that sense of being quota driven, schools are not “entrepreneurial” organizations. This is frustrating to many reformers, but if understood, the goal (standard) orientation of the system can be effective in producing a similar quality of output even as the quality of inputs changes. The system may have to be forced to do this by reforming it (compare Chile with Uruguay), but once given its new marching orders, it is likely to maintain average academic achievement even as the average socio-economic background of the students declines.

A major problem with most educational systems is that educators prefer to track students into different levels so that educational goals can be adjusted to the human capital the student brings to the school. It seems to make sense that some young people are not that interested or good at academic work so should be shunted into less demanding and more “practical” courses of study. Yet, recent experience in the United States has shown that it is possible to teach algebra to lower socio-economic background students if teachers are determined to do so. Eighth grade math results for Hispanic students in Texas, where academic standards have been raised for lower income students, are a reflection of this possibility (Carnoy, Loeb, and Smith, 2001). Analysis of the TIMSS results across countries also suggests that tracking probably reduces average test scores because so many students (those in lower tracks) are not exposed to math and science concepts important to developing proficiency in these two subjects. Lower standards allows teachers to avoid teaching these concepts to students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

1


PRELAC Journal

r Educational expansion as improving equity I have just made astrong argument that the most successfui educational reforms in terms of increasing the average level of achievement in the populations are those that increase educational attainment. Increasing educational attainment can also be the most important way that nations and regions improve educational equity. The way that education is expanded has an important influence on this equity effect. For example, Colombia and Bolivia have relatively high percentages of 15-24 year-olds with ten or more years of schooling, but also relatively high percentages of the same age group with less than 5 years of schooling. Mexico has a lower percentage with ten or more years, but a very low percentage with less than five years of schooling. It appears that Mexico may have achieved greater equity by essentially universalizing primary education, even in rural areas (OREALC, 2001, p.90).

Since many countries of Latin America are at the stage of trying to universalize secondary education, the expansion of this level necessarily is accomplished by incorporating students whose parents have much lower levels of education. It is evident in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay that the “new” enrollment in secondary education over the past twenty years is urban working class and rural, and that the main challenge of educational reform is to bring these lower socioeconomic class students to successful completion of secondary schooling. Besides raising the average level of educational achievement in the society, as I have argued above, reforms that significantly increase average levels of educational attainment generally have to increase educational equity because they incorporate an increasing fraction of lower socioeconomic class youth first into primary schooling, then secondary, and eventually university.

Nevertheless, greater educational equity does not mean economic equity. Chile’s educational system can be regarded as highly equitable compared to Brazil’s, for example, but the income distributions in the two countries are similarly unequal. Uruguay’s educational

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system is probably less equitable than Chile’s, but its income distribution is far more equal. One “reason” (not causal, just explanatory) for Chile’s greater income inequality than Uruguay’s even with greater educational equity in Chile, is that the payoff to completing university is much higher in Chile than in Uruguay (Carnoy et. al., 2001). Access to university in Chile is lower than it might be because of high tuition charges. But access to university is also restricted in Uruguay by an upper secondary system that induces students to drop out before completing. In both countries, less than 25 percent of the age cohort is enrolled in university. The much higher payoff in Chile, however, means that those that do complete university are distant, income- wise, from the mass of students who compete secondary education but do not continue. In Uruguay, the incomes of those who complete university are not much higher than the incomes of secondary school graduates. The difference may be due to higher growth rates in Chile and a more “dynamic” economy, but it may also be due to past policies that allowed those with higher incomes to gain ground on the poor and middle class. In any case, even as

secondary school education incorporated the working class in Chile, income distribution became more unequal.

Besides the effect of educational reforms on educational expansion and hence on educational equity, it is possible that some education policies have significant impact on the academic performance of lower income students within a given level of schooling even if larger, structural reforms have little effect on the average productivity of education. We have collected a considerable amount of information on the relative impact of structural reforms such as decentralization and privatization on overall student performance in countries such as Chile, Mexico, and Argentina. A number of studies that assess the impact of policies targeted at low-income students are also available.

ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS, EQUITY, AND QUALITY of Education In Latin America

Some brief conclusions Based on what we know about how educational systems increase a society’s knowledge, I have recommended a number of ways that Latin American countries can work within the general goals of the Regional Education Project to improve how much children -particularly lower-income children- learn and to make education more equitable.

Expanding access to more years of education is still the most common way that societies increase young people’s math and language skills. Countries in Latin America with higher average schooling are better at complex production and have children who are easier to teach even higher levels of academic skills in the next generation. Increasing the number of years of education taken by students does not have to wait until achievement rises in lower grades, and historically, it has not. So a rising average level of schooling is an objective in and of itself and a measure of the success of education reforms.

Policy makers should aim at raising the average number of years of schooling attended and keeping average test scores at the same level in a level of schooling that is raising its enrollment and completion rates rapidly. This would mean that schools are increasing their effectiveness. That level would have, in effect, absorbed students with less cultural capital and brought the new student body to similar levels of achievement as past groups.

Increasing growth of enrollment and completion of lower levels of schooling--first primary, then secondary, provides benefits for lower socioeconomic class children, since these are the groups that are absorbed into these levels of schooling when they are universalized. Furthermore, educational improvement programs that target these groups generally seem to work.

Increasing contact time for students with teachers through increasing student and teacher attendance and longer school days may be the most important strategies for Latin American countries of improving educational quality for lower-income students. By focusing on these “simple,” easy to measure objectives, educational strategies have the best chance to improve low-income student attainment, which will have the single greatest educational impact on economic and social opportunities.e


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Filgueira, Carlos y Enrique Martinez Larrechea (2001). La Reforma Educativa en Uruguay: Desaflos y tendencias. Capitulo de slntesis: Uruguay. Montevideo: Ministerio de Educaci6n. Proyecto Alcance y Resultados de las Reformas Educativas en Argentina, Chile y Uruguay.

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TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES

in the Commonwealth Caribbean Errol Miller

Director of the Institute of Education/ University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston-Jamaica.

fining the Caribbean The Caribbean as a region has always been variouslydefined. The most inclusive definition describes the region in geographical and cultural terms as that area bounded to the north by Bermuda and the Bahamas, to the west by Belize located on the Central American mainland, to the east by that arch of island extending to Barbados and to the south by Guyana, Suriname, Cayenne and Venezuela on the South American mainland and the islands of Aruba, Curacao and Bonaire. This definition of the Caribbean would include Dutch, English, French and Spanish speaking territories. Less inclusive definitions have grouped some Caribbean territories with other groups and left the rest as the Caribbean. For example, Cuba and the Dominican Republic are often classified with Central America or Latin America as a whole. Martinique, St Martin, Guadeloupe and Cayenne are officially a part of France. Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are often not included in Caribbean conclaves based on their relationships with the United States. Then again there are the Dutch and British dependences that sometimes get excluded on the basis that they are not independent countries. The point is that while using geographical criteria, the Caribbean can be defined in inclusive terms, political, cultural and language factors often act as exclusive criteria to sub-divide the region.

While this paper would like to take the most inclusive definition of the Caribbean, the time available for its preparation precluded such an approach. This paper is therefore restricted to the English-speaking territories, or Commonwealth Caribbean as this sub-region is often labelled. This includes both the independent English- speaking countries and the British dependencies.


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Purpose and clarification The purpose of the paper is to identify and discuss policies and practices that have been adopted in teacher education and training in this sub-region. The primary focus will be on new policies, projects and programmes in teacher education and training since the beginning of the 1990s.

Focusing attention on the topic of teacher education and training represents renewed interest and emphasis on an old subject. Not only is teaching an old profession, but mass schooling in the Commonwealth Caribbean has a history that parallels that of the developed world. Hence, teacher education and training in the sub-region have long and strong traditions.

Given the close relationship that exists between schooling, teachers and the structure of society, it would be unwise to proceed to a full-blown discussion on new policies, projects and programmes in teacher education and training without taking note of a few salient social features of schooling and teaching as they have evolved in the Commonwealth Caribbean.

The first teacher colleges in the Caribbean were established in 1830 just around the time that similar institutions were established in England. While there are many similarities in both history and organisation, there are several differences in practice.

One that has relatively unimportant differences in practice, but could be source of much confusion, is the use of the terms pre-service and in-service teacher training. The term pre-service training is generally used for formal training before teachers enter the profession, while in-service training generally refers to non-formal training on the job. Commonwealth Caribbean practice does not conform to these neat

of terms distinctions. Many persons are employed as teachers before they are formally trained (formaci6n especifica) as teachers. In these cases the professional training of teachers follow employment. The term initial professional training more accurately describes the Caribbean situation than pre-service teacher training. Formacidn docente pre o antes del servicio. Likewise, in-service training is one modality through which initial teacher training has been delivered. In the Commonwealth Caribbean, in-service training therefore, could refer to both initial and non-formal on-the-job training. For the purpose of this paper where the terms pre-service and in-service are employed, they are used with their Commonwealth Caribbean meaning.

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TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES in the Commonwealth Caribbean

Background From its inception in the 1830s until the 1950s pre-service teacher education basically followed the same pattern:

Pre-service training was restricted to primary teachers. There was no indigenous capacity to train secondary school teachers.

The proportion of teachers trained was very low compared to the teaching force in the schools. For example, in the Commonwealth Caribbean in 1955, the proportion of trained teachers in the primary school systems in the various countries ranged from 7 to 45 per cent.

The vast majority of teachers in primary schools were recruited from the most able students of the primary school. They were recruited into the pupil teacher system and from that pool, into teachers colleges through an examination process.

The teachers college programme was for two or three years and paralleled the high schools in terms of subject matter content but added pedagogic training.

Secondary school teachers were recruited from among the most able student passing the Cambridgeexaminations that came at the end of high schooling and qualified expatriates, mainly from Britain. Where locals desired teacher training they went abroad to obtain it.

Beginning in the mid-1950s and up to the end of the 1980s, there were vast improvements and changes in the provision for the pre-service training of teachers. The most significant advances can be listed as follows:

Substantial expansion in enrolment of colleges training primary school teachers with the result that the vast majority of primary school teachers in the region currently is.college trained. Indeed, all primary school teachers in the Bahamas and Barbados are trained through pre-service programmes.

The academic level of the programmes for primary teachers has been raised substantially, as the pre-service programmes require successful completion of secondary education as their starting point. Primary teacher training no longer overlaps with secondary education.

Indigenous capacity was established to train secondary school teachers and teachers for special schools. As a result, the majority of secondary teachers and teachers in special schools are professionally trained.

Initiatives were launched to prepare teachers for early childhood education within the formal system of teacher training and separate from the training of primary school teachers.


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A wide variety of models of delivery of pre-service education have been created. These include the two-year intramural plus one-year internship model that was developed in the Western Commonwealth Caribbean from the 1960s to the 1980s; the three-year intramural programme now employed in Jamaica; the two-year intramural model common in the Eastern Commonwealth Caribbean; the three-year school experience model now being used in Belize and the Advanced Placement Model where trainees with Bachelor and Associate Degrees and GCE Advanced level can be credited with subject content and follow a one-year programme of professional training.

Despite these fundamental quantitative and qualitative changes in teacher preparation in the Commonwealth Caribbean between the 1950s and the end of the 1980% by the latter half of the 1980s it was clear that new imperatives had overtaken pre-service teacher education. Indeed, these new imperatives shifted the ground from celebration to dissatisfaction and demanded further change. These new imperatives could be briefly summarised as follows:

While teacher education had advanced over the period, teacher status had declined. One of the roots of this decline was the advance in the general level of education of the population. Teachers who in the past had commanded respect on the basis of their superior education compared to the vast majority of parents and the general community, no longer held such an overwhelming advantage. While the content of the teacher credential had improved, teachers were still being certified through certificates and diplomas in circumstances in which persons with degrees were becoming more numerous in the general population.

The rapid rise of global economy combined with the spread of democratic process throughout the society demanded workers who could be self-directed and citizens that participated in the apparatus of the states and the enterprises within civil society. These imperatives dictated changes in teachers’ roles and relationships among themselves and with students and parents. Traditional authoritarian, teacher-centred sage on the stage teaching methodologies which gave priority to teaching, had to give way to teamwork and collaboration, greater networking with communities and parents, student- centred approaches and guide by the side teaching strategies which gave pride of place to learning.

Shrinking resources demanded that new modalities of delivery of training had to be employed in addition to conventional full-time face-to-face instruction.

Advances in information technology that had transformed factory and home production, entertainment, transportation, and communication, had made many approaches and processes used in colleges and schools obsolete. College and school processes had to be re-engineered to incorporate information technology in both management and instruction.

Increasingly greater economic and cultural linkages between Caribbean countries and across language groups have stimulated greater demand for foreign language acquisition.

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TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES In the Commonwealth Caribbean

Policy responses in pre-service training beginning in the 1990s The innovations

and developments in pre-service teacher training beginning in the 199Os, a few of which started in the latter part of the 1980% have to be seen and interpreted as policy responses to the imperatives cited above. The scope of this paper only permits a brief description of the major policy responses.

Upgrading the academic and professional standing of pre-service programmes

Several Governments have decided to move to a fully trained graduate teaching force by the end of the first decade of this century. Associated with this policy decision is the upgrading of colleges training teachers to offer pre-service training through degree programmes, as is the case with the Bahamas. Indeed, all new teachers graduating from the teacher preparation programmes in the Bahamas since 1999 hold Bachelor degrees in Education. Bahamas therefore is well on its way to achieving the end of decade target. Consistent with this policy direction, several other tertiary institutions have joined the University of the West lndies (UWI) in offering first-degree programmes in teacher education. These include the College of the Bahamas, the University of Belize, Northern Caribbean University, The University of Technology, Church, Mico and Shortwood Teachers Colleges in Jamaica and the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St Lucia. These degree programmes are invariably follow-on programmes from certificate and diploma training previously received. The transition to the degree programmes, as the new modality for teacher preparation programmes, is associated with new status and standings for the teacher training institutions and new alliances with regional and foreign universities. The College of the Bahamas has been upgraded from a two-year to a four-year college. Belize Teachers College is now the Faculty of Education within the University of Belize. West lndies College has been upgraded to Northern Caribbean University and the College of Arts Science and Education has been upgraded to the University of Technology. Mico, Shortwood and Sir Arthur Lewis Community College have formed alliances with the University of the West Indies. Church Teachers College has formed an alliance with Temple University of the United States.


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Changing pedagogical practices in the training of teachers

If teachers are to use less didactic approaches in the schools then it is imperative that trainees in colleges be taught using pedagogic practices that are student and learner centred. Several reform initiatives within the region have included components addressing this objective. These include the DFID/UWI project in the training of primary school teachers in colleges in the Eastern Caribbean, the EDUTECH Project in Barbados, the World BanWGOJ ROSE, U.SAID/IIEQ the IDB/GOJ PESP projects involving the training of primary and secondary school teachers in Jamaica and the IDB/GOG Basic Education Project in training primary school teachers in Guyana.

Introducing new content in teacher preparation

The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) long term education strategy document Pillars for Partnership and Progress, which sets education targets for the nine member countries to achieve by 2010, is probably the most comprehensive policy paper in the Commonwealth Caribbean. In addition to the usual areas that educational policies routinely address, Pillars for Partnership and Progress identifies a category labelled 'urgent societal imperatives' facing the Commonwealth Caribbean. The category includes natural disasters, health promoting schools, gender inequities, improving the participation and performance of boys in schools, promoting partnerships between governments, civil society associations and non-governmental organisations and improving parenting. In all of these areas teachers and teacher preparation are seen as vital to the achievement of the targets set and the strategies to achieve them. In addressing the targets and strategies in the area of information and communication technology in addition to mastering the various skills involved, Pillars for Partnership and Progress sees it as essential for teachers to become producers of software and courseware that are derived from knowledge generated from Caribbean experience and that are rooted and embedded in Caribbean culture.

These are to subject areas of themes that are specifically addressed in teacher preparation programmes. The implication of these urgent societal imperatives for teacher education is the need to develop new content that in most instances cut across disciplinary boundaries. Currently, the urgent societal imperatives are addressed in an impulsive and ad hoc manner. On the other hand, Pillars for Partnership and Progress is requiring a planned and systematic approach that is fully integrated into the programmes preparing teachers. The exact way in which this is to be accomplished has not yet been determined.


Expanding the modalities used in the delivery of teacher training

Several countries have launched policy initiatives that add distance education and school based modalities delivering teacher education and training. For example, in expanding access to prospective teachers from rural areas in 1994, the Belize Teachers College introduced its distance-teaching route to formal teacher training. This modality of delivery included four elements: self study using distance teaching materials developed by the college and school- based group interaction, monthly supervisory visits of the trainers by college tutors, monthly workshops at regional resource centres and annual summer workshops held at the college [Thompson, 19991. Another successful example is that of the use of the distance- teaching mode to upgrade teachers from a certificate to a diploma level in Jamaica.

The Jamaican application used much the same elements as was used in Belize except for the monthly visits to the schools. A less successful but equally important innovation was that of the use of a school-based approach to training secondary school teachers in Grenada through the LOME I l l Project in Tertiary Education in the OECS countries. While the project did produce graduates, it was severely hampered by the limited number of master teachers that were available. In addition, the multiple involvements of the few that were available severely limited the quantity and the quality of the guidance given to the trainees in the schools. Another OECS initiative is the Secondary Teachers' Training Programme mounted by the OECS Tertiary Education Project. The project is designed to train secondary school teachers on the job

using a combination of face-to-face instruction in summer and vacation classes, distance teaching modules during school time and clinical supervision of teaching in the classroom. The trainees are teachers in secondary schools in the OECS holding degrees, associated degrees or their equivalent or having passed two GCE Advanced level subjects.

Pre service teacher training and the use of information technology

Another major policy initiative starting in the 1990s is that of using information technology to modernise instruction and management in tertiary institutions training teachers. The assumption and assertion has been that teachers in training need to be instructed using modern information and communication technology if they are to use the same in teaching students in schools.

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This has not been without controversy. There has been a heated debate concerning feasibility and appropriateness of introducing information technology in school systems in the region especially in circumstances where basic provisions are lacking or inadequate. At the beginning of the 199Os, most governments did not make the introduction of information technology in schools a priority. However, by adopting policies that invited communities and the private sector to become partners in the delivery of education, the way was opened for information technology to be introduced in schools. The position generally taken by communities and the private sector is that the Commonwealth Caribbean will not be competitive in the world of the future if school leavers cannot competently use information technology. By the end of the decade, all governments formulated information technology policies for schools and colleges and included corresponding components in reform projects. Further, international donor agencies that had taken a stance similar to governments at the beginning of the 199Os, had changed their stance in the same manner as governments.

The first efforts involved the donations of computer labs to colleges by various interest groups and foundations and also through grants from Ministries of Education. Examples are donations of computer labs from the Ashcroft Foundation to the Belize Teachers College, IBM Bahamas to the College of Bahamas, the Jamaica Computer Society Education Foundation to several teachers colleges in Jamaica and government assistance to establish labs at Erdiston College in Barbados. The most comprehensive and spectacular initiative, however, is that of the EDUTECT 2000

policy initiative by the Barbados Government which proposes to spend US$175 million to modernise all schools and colleges in information technology over the ten years. The training of teachers and education officers in the use of information technology in education is one of the four main areas of focus of this programme launched in 1998.

An interesting innovation in this regard is the linking of teachers colleges with a cluster of primary and secondary as is being done in the case of Bethlehem and Mico Colleges in Jamaica. The colleges provide leadership, technical support and training to teachers and members of the school communities in the cluster and in return gain access to the schools with respect to the teaching practicum and action research by staff and students. Another aspect is that of upgrading teacher trainers in the use of educational technology in their teaching in the colleges as is being done through the JCSEF/Multicare Foundation project in Jamaica.

Over the course of the 199Os, almost all colleges have acquired computer labs by means of donation from some elements of the college community. They have engaged in the training of students and staff in computer literacy, particularly with respect to productivity applications and the Internet, particularly e-mail. One college, Bethlehem in Jamaica, requires all its teacher trainees to enter the college computer literate. Such students that are not computer literate are required to take a pre-college course, organised by the college, to acquire the requisite skills. The MULTICARE Project plans to provide all colleges training teachers in Jamaica with computer labs for their staffs to be trained in information technology and to allow them access to the Internet.

More recently, several colleges have established web-sites setting out their programmes and activities thus making it easier for students and the general community to access information. However, over the last three years, attempts are being made to use information technology in relation to the core business of teacher training and the operations of the colleges. Probably the most systematic approach has been that of the Joint Board of Teacher Education of the University of the West lndies in conjunction with the 14 colleges training teachers in the Western Caribbean.

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The Joint Board has been using information technology in the operations of its Secretariat since 1982 However, the 1990s brought new challenges. These can be listed briefly as follows:

The demand to modernise instruction to bring schools and colleges in line with technology now common in homes, offices, factories, commerce and entertainment. In this regard it is imperative that teachers learn through these new technologies.

The need to improve the quality of teacher education in the light of the higher education standards required by the information age.

The need to provide continuing professional development to teachers in-service. The rapidity and profound nature of the changes taking place dictate career-long professional development by teachers in order to keep abreast of the transformations in progress.

Shrinking resources as structural adjustments and the financial woes of the country continue to threaten, and actually impede, the flow of resources to the education sector.

Globalisation, especially with the rapid growth of the Internet.

In response to the demand to meet these educational objectives as well as to find solutions to these very real problems as they affect teacher education, the Joint Board has embarked upon the following initiatives:

1. Developed a management information system, College Manager, which will allow colleges to manage their operations more effectively. The range of operations stretch from student admission, registration, examinations, financial management, plant management to all personnel matters related to staff. College Manager also allows colleges to carry out on-line transactions with the Joint Board and the Ministry of Education. While the technology has been put in place to achieve these objectives, the transformation from manual and paper based systems to the electronic system, with the attendance change in culture, has proved extremely challenging and has slowed implementation.

The necessity to of knowledge.

not only a COnSUmer but a Producer 2. Established a web site that will be at the hub of many of the JBTE operations in the future. The site has been designed to:

a) Provide information about the JBTE programmes, courses, regulations, personnel, publications, curriculum, examinations and events.

b) Provide training and technical support far School and College Manager.

c) Host the JBTE on-line conference capability. d) Host the JBTE distance teaching operations. e) Host the tutorial system planned to assist students.

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3. Introduced on-line asynchronous web conferencing among the staffs of colleges in the 24-subject disciplines that comprise the teacher-training curriculum. Using Virtual U, developed by Simon Fraser University, the intention is to give Boards of Studies additional means of collaboration, knowledge building, sharing best practices, sharing Internet and other resources, and conducting routine Board of Studies business on-line.

4. Pilot tested the delivery of UWI Masters in Education courses on-line, starting with courses in teacher education.

5. Pilot tested a wireless system of connecting colleges to each other and to the UWI and primary schools to colleges. This wireless network permits the transfer of voice, video and data between the nodes in the system. At its core, this network allows a group of trainee teachers in a college to observe and interact with a teacher or colleague teaching a class in a school. This pilot test has formed the basis for the information and communication technology component of the USAlD sponsored Caribbean Centre of Excellence in Teacher Education and has as its principal focus the improvement of the teaching of reading in the early grades of primary schools. The intention is that over the next five years each of the eighteen tertiary institutions training primary school teachers will be linked to approximately six primary schools in ways that will promote a learning community devoted to achieve excellence in the teaching of reading in Grades One to Three. Information and communication technology will be used to support diagnostic and performance testing, the development and exchange of materials, teacher training and action research.

Policy initiatives in in-service teacher training

In-service teacher training in the Commonwealth Caribbean in the 199Os, and to the present, has largely served and has been supportive of the educational reform agenda being implemented in the various countries. Accordingly, in-service teacher training policies have been intricately bound up with policies to improve the quality of education and policies to reform the curriculum. Invariably, in-service teacher training has been included as a component of reform projects supported by bilateral and multilateral donor assistance.

Educational reform projects that have been implemented in the sub-region include the Government of Belize/World Bank Primary Education Project in Belize, The EDUTECT Project in Barbados, the Government of GuyanaiWorld Bank Secondary School Reform Project, the ClDA In-service Teacher Training Project in Guyana, the IDWGovernment of Guyana Basic Education Project in Guyana, the Government of JamaicaNorld Bank Reform of Secondary Education Project, the IDB Primary Education Improvement and Primary Education Support Projects in

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Jamaica, the World Bank and IDB Projects in Trinidad and Tobago and the World Bank Projects in Dominica and St Lucia. The Government of JamaicWorld Bank ROSE Project was the earliest. The first phase of the reform was implemented in 1993 and completed in 1998. This project was one of two that received the World Bank's Quality Award in 1999. Within the limited scope of the paper, it is not possible even to give a brief synopsis of each of these projects. The ROSE project will therefore be used as an example of Government curriculum reform policies implemented through donor assistance that include an in- service teacher training component in support of the curriculum reform.

The defining features Of the

aspects Of the reform can be summarised briefly as follows:

and teacher training

A common curriculum in Grades 7 to 9 in all types of secondary schools and all students

Mixed ability grouping and multi-level teaching among these groups.

Students taking responsibility for their own learning.

Co-operative learning among students.

9 The teacher as a facilitator and guide in promoting student learning.

Team planning and collaboration among teachers.

Integration across subject areas.

The infusion of career guidance in all subjects in the curriculum.

The Joint Board of Teacher Education (JBTE) implemented the In-Service Teacher Training Component of the ROSE Project. The philosophy adopted by the JBTE in the execution of the In-service Training was that of continuing professional development and not of teacher supervision. The latter implies universal compliance of all teaching in meeting minimum standards set out in regulations or guidelines laid down by the Ministry of Education. The essence of the former is voluntary commitment to strive to realise the ideals prescribed by the ethics of the teaching profession and to achieve the goals set for quality education.


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The basic elements of the in-sewice teaching training strategy were as follows:

a) The employment of 25 subject specialists, in both content and methodology, whose sole full-time responsibility was the in-service training of teachers to support the implementation of the ROSE Reform in their schools. These subject specialists were deployed in five regional teams located in five strategically placed teacher colleges across the country.

b) The development and delivery of 45-hour methodology courses taught over ten days by the subject specialists in the summers during the five years of the project. These methodology courses were designed to orient and prepare teachers to implement the defining features of the ROSE Reform in each of the five subject areas included in the Project - Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and Resource and Technology.

c) Regular school visits over the course of each school year by the subject specialists to support the teachers in the implementation of the methodology courses in their classes.

d) The mounting of one and two-day workshops among clusters of schools as dictated by the subject specialists’ observations and teachers’ requests resulting from the school visits.

e) The development and use of self study distance-teaching modules for teachers in both content and methodology as prescribed by the ROSE curriculum in Grades 7 to 9 in the various subject areas.

1) Continuing professional development for the subject specialists through regular workshops and other collaborative exercises.

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Some of the lessons learned from the implementation of the In-service Teacher Training Component of the ROSE Project can be listed as follows:

-

leachers and students alike overwhelmingly support the pedagogical shifts prescribed by the ROSE reform, [Brown, 19981.

While teacher and student behaviour do undergo some change in the directions intended by the Reform, the extent of the change is much more modest than the level of expressed acceptance and support.

The changes required in teacher and student behaviour are by no means cosmetic. The fundamental nature of the shifts demand concerted, co- ordinated and sustained effort in order to bring about the changes to the desired behaviours among the vast majority of teachers.

The desired changes in teaching and learning strategies are most evident where supporting elements of the reform have been implemented. Hence the prescribed shifts are more evident where curriculum materials have been supplied and are used, buildings have been refurbished, more teaching materials have been provided, and the prescribed textbooks have been supplied.

leachers tend to revert to the traditional teacher centred approaches in circumstances where the in-service teacher training was the only element of the reform that was implemented in the school and where that support was scaled down or withdrawn.

The support of principals for the reform, and heads of departments in large schools and their instructional leadership within the school, is critical to the desired transformation.

Success in effecting the shift in the teachers’ roles and relationships as prescribed by the Reform not only varies considerably between schools but also within schools.

The development of quality self- instructional distance teaching materials is a slow process.


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Integration of pre-service and - An important in-service training feature of the ROSE Project was the links

established in pre-service and in-service training. One link was that the methods courses developed and delivered in the in-service training summer workshops became the prescribed methods courses for teaching Grades 7 to 9 in the five subjects in the pre-service programme. Hence, all graduates frm the pre-service training programme since 1995 had been trained in the teaching of the five subjects in Grade 7-9 using the strategies that defined the ROSE reform. Another link was the subject specialists of the Project were employed to, and operated from, five teachers colleges strategically located across the country. In effect, during the course of the Project, these regional teams were de facto In-service Departments of the Colleges.

An understanding between the Ministry of Education and Culture and the JBTE was that if this model of integration of pre-service and in-service training proved successful, then steps would be taken to institutionalise the links. On reviewing this element of the Project, the Ministry of Education and Culture was sufficiently satisfied with the achievements to establish in-service departments in the five colleges and to retain the teams of specialists in permanent posts. In this new arrangement these colleges will work in close collaboration with the Regional Office of the Ministry in their area to continue to carry out in-service training in support of the reform. Further, colleges will organise to rotate tutors between teaching the pre-service programmes in colleges and in-service training in schools. Such rotation, it is envisaged, should strengthen the pre-service training of teachers through the closer links with schools.

Another example of the integration of pre-service and in-service training J

through colleges training teachers and collaboration with the Ministry of Education, is the case of Belize. In the World Bank and DFlD project, the in- service training of teachers to support the reforms to primary education was carried out by the Belize Teachers College, which established regional centres across the country. College tutors responsible for the delivery of the pre- service programme played a critical part in the delivery of the in-service training related to the reform of the National Curriculum. Likewise, supervisors employed in the regions to deliver in- service training, undertook some of the supervision of student-teachers, normally done by College staff.

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...................................................................................

The essential elements of the approach to integrating pre-service and in-service training in both Belize and Jamaica can

The synchronisation of the reform of the National Curriculum being delivered in the school system with consequential reform of the curriculum in the pre- service teacher training programmes.

be identified and listed as follows: Organising the teacher-training curriculum in the various subjects in units and writing distance-teaching modules that corresponds to the curriculum units.

Using the distance teaching modules to deliver systematic and sequential instruction to those teachers who are being formally trained in-service.

Using the distance teaching modules on a cafeteria basis to deliver in-service training in support of the reform process.

The use of regional teams to provide school based assistance in the implementation of the new teaching strategies.

Close collaboration between the territorial education officers of the Ministry of Education and the colleges.

............................................................................. + The teacher preparation programmes of colleges will keep abreast of educational

reforms in the school system. Consequently, teachers emerging from colleges will be adequately prepared for the challenges being addressed in the schools.

The anticipated outcomes of this integration of pre-service and in-service teacher training are as follows:

Colleges will become intimately involved in the continuing professional development of teachers. Pre-service teacher training will therefore not be conceived in terms of being a one-shot event but rather as the commencement of life-long continuing professional development.

Involvement in continuing professional development of teachers in the schools by college tutors will enrich pre-service training by virtue of keeping the tutors abreast of the current realities in the school system.

......................................................................... c Full-time pre-service training of primary school teachers. Probably the most comprehensive approach to the integration of pre-service and in-service teacher education and training is that of Barbados through the Erdiston Teachers College. For the past

Initial training of secondary school teachers through the in-service Diploma in Education Programme. Entry to this programme is limited to persons who have first completed at least a bachelor's degree in their subject area of specialisation.

six to seven years Erdiston has been offering a full range of pre-service and in-service teacher education and training

In-service training of school principals through the in-service Certificate in Education programme.

programmes. There are about eleven different teacher training programmes and courses being offered by the college, which can be classified as follows:

Non-formal in-service courses for school principals and guidance counsellors.

Non-formal in-service teacher training courses designed to promote the continuing professional development of teachers at all levels of the education system.

In-service teacher training courses in support of the educational reforms being implemented through EDUTECT.


PRELAC Journal

Upgrading the teacher trainers In addressing the issue of teacher education and training, especially as it relates to policies to reform the primary and secondary school systems in the Commonwealth Caribbean and also of reforming teacher preparation, a recurring concern has been that of transforming and upgrading the teacher educators. For example, if teachers are to be prepared through programmes at the bachelor’s degree level, then it is imperative that the teacher educator should have higher degrees. Also, if new curricula require new pedagogical teaching strategies and approaches then teacher preparation programmes should include these strategies. However, if teacher educators have not mastered and used these strategies, then it is hardly likely that these strategies will be successfully incorporated in the teacher preparation programmes.

The traditional route for such upgrading has been scholarships, bursaries and fellowships to overseas universities. This is an expensive proposition that many individuals and governments cannot afford. In addition, the overseas offerings sometimes are not appropriate or relevant to Caribbean needs.

Over the last 30 years, Commonwealth Caribbean universities have begun to address this need through higher degree programmes, especially at the Master’s level, offered in the region. In this regard, the University of the West lndies has been the leader but not the sole provider. The University of Guyana has developed its own programmes at the higher degrees level.

The first efforts of Commonwealth Caribbean universities in providing higher degree programmes that have addressed the need to produce teacher education have been largely confined to full-time or part-time face-to-face programmes. The limitations of this approach is that colleges training teachers cannot afford to release most of their staff to enter full-time programmes, and part-time programmes are restricted to those who can come to university campuses to attend evening classes.

An interesting innovation approach was that the collaboration between the University of the West lndies and the University of Alberta through the JBTENniversity of AlbertdCIDA Project for the staff of colleges training teachers in the Western Caribbean.

* UWI Masters courses taught by Twelve scholarships to the University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

University of Alberta staff during the summer. By taking these summer courses, college staff enrolled in the UWI Masters in Education programme could accelerate their completion of the programme. University of Alberta.

of Alberta to pursue higher degree courses.

Several Bursaries to undertake one- semester programmes at the

The elements of this Project were as follows:

80


Programmes Over the five years of the Project, over

250 staff members (about half) from the 14 adapted to the teacher training

An interesting facet of the summer and on- line modality of delivering the master's

colleges and Ministries of Education in the Bahamas, Belize, and Jamaica, participated in the courses either for credit or on a non-credit

development needs

programme is that it is self-financing. Moreover,

respect to overseas universities currently offering the fees charged are very competitive with

basis. While not originally included in the Project, six tutors went on to enrol in the doctoral programme at the University of Alberta. By 1998 when the Project ended, one had already graduated and since then four others have successfully completed the doctoral programme and returned to their posts. The JBTE/University of Alberta/CIDA Project provides a model that is both feasible and applicable for staff development within and outside of teacher education.

More recently, the School of Education, UWI, Mona, has begun to offer Master's programmes through summer and on- line courses. This innovation started in September 2001 with 33 students enrolled in two programmes: Educational Administration and Teacher Education. This modality of delivering masters programmes allows students to do two courses, face- to-face in the summer and one or two on-line during the semester. A student could therefore complete the Master's programme over two academic years while still remaining in full-time employment. This is a very important feature both to the students, who could not be released from their employment and the institutions that could not afford to release them.

An important feature of this modality of training teacher educators is that not only the students but also the tutorial staff can be drawn from all countries of the Caribbean. Indeed, both students and the staff teaching the courses have been resident in different countries including Cayman Islands, Barbados, Jamaica, Japan and Turks and Caicos Islands.

are but another modality of delivering the Master's programme in Teacher Education at the School of Education, Mona. Students follow the same curriculum, do the same assignments and sit the same examinations as students being taught through the face-to-face modality. As such, the summer and on-line modality is subject to the same quality assurance mechanisms and standards as the face-to-face modality. The results to date have shown no difference in standards.

The point to note is that the summer and on-line courses

programmes in the region. In other words, programmes customised and tailored to meet the

developmental needs of teacher education are being offered on a competitive basis in the market place of international competition in the region.

Based on the success of this initiative, the three Schools of Education located on the three campuses of the University of the West Indies, have begun to explore the possibilities and to make plans to jointly and cooperatively offer all UWI Master's Programmes in Education through the summer and on-line modality. The first steps in this direction are the plans to mount the Master's programme preparing Caribbean leaders in the Early Childhood Education, starting in the summer of 2003. Development financing for this effort has come from a grant from the Inter-American Development Bank through the Caribbean Child Development Centre.

In the Primary Education Support Project (PESP) being implemented by the Government of Jamaica through a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank there is a component that addresses the reform of the curriculum of colleges training primary school teachers to make the pre-service teacher education programme consistent with the new National Curriculum being implemented in primary schools. This component not only includes the reform of the primary teacher education programme but also the upgrading and in-service training of the college lecturers in the new methodologies prescribed by the curriculum. The training programme for college lecturers include workshops in the new methodologies, visits to primary schools to observe the implementation of the new curriculum, workshops in utilising techniques being developed from brain research and the application to advance learning, and clinical supervision of the college lecturers as they implement the new teacher training curriculum in their college classrooms.


PRE LAC Journal

Concluding discussion When teacher education and training policies, programmes and projects in the Commonwealth Caribbean are taken as a whole over the last fifteen to twenty years the following trends can be clearly identified

1. All countries have moved to the policy position that admission to teacher education programmes is based on successful completion of secondary schooling. Because the Commonwealth Caribbean has a common standard for successful completion of secondary schooling, admission criteria are written in terms of numbers and types of passes in the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) exams or their equivalents. The policy shift has been made possible by the significant expansion in secondary schooling that took place in the decades of the 1970s and 1980s.

2. Most countries have moved to the position where the vast majority of primary school teachers are college trained in two or three-year programmes and substantial initiatives have been mounted to achieve similar goals with respect to the professional training of secondary school teachers. It is no longer accepted that mastery of subject content is sufficient for secondary school teaching.

3. Several countries have been raising the academic and professional standard for teachers to the bachelor's degree level and setting timeframes for achieving this. In this regard the Bahamas leads the sub- region.

4. In-service teacher training has invariably become a part of educational reform programmes. Almost all loan and grant programmes from multilateral and bilateral agencies have supported in-service teacher education programmes.

5. Governments have largely carried out pre-service teacher education programmes with little direct support from multilateral and bilateral agencies. Where such agencies has supported pre-service teacher training it has been most indirectly through in-service training initiatives. Put another way, pre-service teacher training in the Commonwealth Caribbean has for the most part gone out without many major capital investments over the last twenty years.

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TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES In the Commonwealth Csrlbbean

6. Several countries have implemented measures to expand the modalities through which teacher education is delivered. Modalities implemented include part-time face-to-face programmes, vacation courses, distance education programmes and combinations of these. 7. Over the last ten years almost all

countries have moved to include the use of information and communication technology in teacher education. The degree of funding such efforts has varied considerably in the sub-region. 8. Over the last two decades several

initiatives have focused on upgrading teacher trainers in the tertiary institutions preparing teachers. Over the last five years several of these initiatives have begun to include measures to transform the pedagogy being employed in colleges.

While these policy directions have all advanced teacher education and training in the sub-region, invariably they have had at their core the assumption of the teacher as an agent of change and transformation. However, in the current socio- cultural context of the Commonwealth Caribbean concentration on the professional development of teachers, especially as this relates to mastery of subject content and pedagogy, is not sufficient. Teachers need to understand themselves in relation to their societies and the changes taking place locally and globally in order to effectively relate to themselves and their students. The increasing complexity of the social and cultural issues facing teachers in schools is bewildering to many of them who do not perceive themselves to be equipped to address the challenges presented. Teacher education and training policies now address the personal development of teachers especially as this relates to the rapid social and cultural changes occurring in the sub-region and globally. e


Some dimensions of the

i

Considerations and policy agenda themes'

Emilio Tenti F a n M -- Coordinator of the Area of Education Diagnosis and Policy/ International Institute of Educational

Planning (IIPE), Buenos Aires-Argentina.

Content This document begins by postulating the strategic character of the human factor in the provision of educational services. W e then present the results of research on the attitudes and expectations of teachers in regard to their professional role, to new educational technologies, and to certain dimensions that comprise the career of teaching (teacher assessment systems and work aspirations).*

Finally, we propose certain themes and goals in order to develop an education policy agenda related to the medium- term professional enhancement of teachers and suggest some policy criteria specifically aimed at transforming the subjectivity of teachers and the set of rules and resources that structure the profession.

' Revised text of the work presented at the First Intergovernmental Meeting of the Regional Education Project for Latin America and the Caribbean (PRELAC), Havana, Cuba. November, 200.2.

* W e here utilize some of the outcomes of a program of the study of teacher professionalization developed by IIPE- UNESCO in Buenos Aires. The study is based on information produced for application of a questionnaire to national representative samples of (public) primaty and secondary teachers in Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay.


PRELAC Journal

Teachers are the determining factor in the quality of education The qualityof human resources is of key strategic importance in the

delivery of personal services. The case of education is paradigmatic. This would seem to be a platitude or even demagogic (politicians like to flatter school teachers, especially during elections). Nevertheless, many policies do not follow this postulate.

a) Some argue in favor of simply replacing teachers with technology. This is the case of those strategies that believe that new educationai technologies can make possible the development of learning through a direct relation between people and socially accumulated knowledge. Replacing teachers with some sort of teaching machine is a utopia that is as often repeated as it is demonstrably a failure. First learning, basic learning, will always require a mediating, specialized adult, and the new information technologies are necessary and valuable always and whenever they are used in an intelligent and creative manner by highly qualified teachers. They can never be a substitute for teachers. On the other hand, we should not forget that self-learning is never a starting point; rather, it is a goal of all successful pedagogy.

I

b) Other policies, moreover, especially reform policies, seek to transform education more through institutional and legal devices than through addressing educators themselves. From this point of view, teachers are seen as parts of structures who are acted upon by these same structures. It is assumed that what teachers do - their classroom practice, is determined by rules and resources (laws, decrees, resolutions, circulars, etc.) and financial resources, physical infrastructure of the school, etc. It is therefore argued that if one wishes to change education, it is necessary modify legal frameworks, regulations, and budgets. According to this view, it is in these areas that reform must be undertaken.

It should be noted that most reforms are based on this quite deterministic and structuralist perspective that sees teachers as mere automatons who behave according to the effects of certain objective factors. This partial and limited view of what teachers do leads to the proposal of reforms that are partial, and therefore limited in their practical effects. Countless changes in laws, regulations, and curricular designs have been unable to change teaching practices, which continue to obey traditional models that are incorporated into the culture and subjectivity of teachers. All social agents are able to simulate compliance with particular normative rules while at the same time maintaining most of their routines and modus operandi.

During the 1990% most Latin American countries carried out reforms in the legislation, structure, content, financing models, management, and administration of their education systems. But these reforms did not take the human factor sufficiently into account. In effect, little has been done in terms of initial and on-going training, work conditions, and salaries of Latin American teachers. If what one really desires is to change the way of doing things in the classroom in order to improve the quality of learning that actually takes place within children in the coming years, education policies should place at the center of their agendas the question of the professional enhancement of teachers from a comprehensive perspective.

86

Some dimensions of the PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS

Some have rightly defined teaching as a “moral profession” in the sense that it has as its objective producing particular changes in the subjectivity of students. Teachers seek to “influence the lives of their students”. Most teachers know what they are doing. At least this is what many of them say when they explain why they chose the profession. In other words, the task of teachers has to do with change; or rather, with the production of certain changes in the lives of children and young people. The experience soon frustrates them. The dissatisfaction of teachers is in part the result of unfulfilled expectations.

What does one require in order to be a change agents in the lives of students? According to Fullan in “Why Teachers Must Become Change Agents” in Educational Leadership, vol. 50, No. 6, March, 1993), being a change agent requires at least three characteristics: the ability to build a personal point of view (“personal vision-building”), a predisposition to seek, and the mastery of knowledge, skills, and collaboration.

But the task of teachers is characterized as well by a series of contradictions and tensions. Among these suffice it to mention here those which stem from their condition of being during one and the same time salaried employees and education professionals. In effect, on the one hand, in most cases teachers are salaried employees who work within a dependent relationship and receive a salary (and not an honorarium). As such, they are workers who are often unionized and who struggle collectively for the defense and improvement of their working conditions. But on the other hand, teacher employees are also teacher professionals, in the sense that carrying out their profession requires mastery of rational skills and techniques that are exclusive to their office and which they learn at specific times and places. On the other hand, teachers, in spite of traditionally working within institutionalized contexts, within the classroom enjoy a variable margin of autonomy. Technical competence and autonomy are classic components of the ideal definition of a profession.

A successful teacher enhancement policy should not be based only on an analysis of these objective factors which, one way or the other, introduce new challenges to the activities of teaches. Rather, we must also consider the state of representations (opinions, attitudes, value judgments, expectations, etc.) of teachers themselves regarding substantive aspects of their activities and regarding the context in which they are carried

The data produced within the context of the research program on professionalization of teachers in Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay that has been carried out since the year 2000 by IIPE/UNESCO in Buenos Aires show that substantial proportions of teachers themselves live within households that are below the poverty line. On the other hand, much evidence indicates a greater probability that poorer teachers work in schools attended by children of the same social condition.


PRELAC Journal

Opinions Of teachers in regard to the W e here present some findings that deal with the opinions of teachers regarding certain questions related to their work and their own social and professional identities. These opinions have to do with some substantive dimensions of a policy of the professional enhancement of teachers in the region. W e here examine some of the findings produced within the framework of the IlPE research program on the working conditions of primary and secondary school teachers in Argentina, Peru, and Uruguay. The themes to be examined have to do with the opinions of teachers themselves regarding the function of education and their own professional roles, their future professional aspirations, attitudes regarding new and information and communication technologies (NICT), and their views regarding the possibility of introducing differentiations into the teaching career according to merit and the quality of student learning.

functions of education and the meaning of their own professional roles

a) Teachers and the functions of education

The questionnaire applied to national representative samples of primary and secondary school teachers in the aforementioned countries asked teachers to choose among a list of proposed purposes those that they considered as the most important (Table 1).

Table 1: ARGENTINA PERU URUGUAY

% % % Develop creativity and a critical mentality 61,3 57.6 69.6

Prepare for life within society 44,6 35,3 42,7 Transmit up-to-date and relevant knowledge 27,8 25,l 24,9

Create behavior patterns 6,4 56 6,4 Transmit moral values 25,6 47,l 31,l

Purposes that education should pursue (two most important)

Select the most able individuals 0,9 2,9 1,1

Provide minimal levels of knowledge 2,8 1,4 3,5 Train for employment 13,5 14 7,3

Integrate the most relegated social groups 15,5 10,9 12,9

DWNA

88


Beyond the meanings that teachers lend to each of the listed purposes (something that a survey is not able to delve into) a number of readings can be made of these results. First, we note the overwhelming consensus in regard to a non-traditional formulation of the purposes of education, such as the development of Creativity and a critical mentality. But this consensus acquires particular significance when compared to a minority (less than one-third) who say that knowledge is the major purpose of school-based education. I clearly appears that we are looking at a paradigm, or way of seeing things regarding education that is quite dominant among teachers in the Southern Cone of Latin America. The predominance of this preference, beyond its content, may be associated with the influence of certain currents of pedagogical thought that have developed as the result of criticism of traditional and schematic ways of understanding the purposes of schooling which have been caricatured and criticized. Many specialists in the teaching field have argued in favor of the development of certain intellectual and ethical-moral abilities in students in face of the emphasis given to the transmission of knowledge understood as information that students should absorb. In its most schematic form, education consists of “memorizing” a set of facts which society has accumulated through its history and which are seen as valuable for the solution of both individual and social problems.

Nevertheless, one may say that this emphasis on the development of complex skills, when it is combined with a devaluation of the idea of education as the appropriation of knowledge and of cultural capital in general, may have negative consequences. In effect, the exclusive preference given to creativity and critical thinking skills may remain only a statement of good intentions when separated from and opposed to the idea of education as the appropriation of the fruits of human culture and civilization. Unless one conceives creativity as an almost-magical quality; that is, as the ability to do something with nothing (just like a divine ability), this is nothing more than a mere expression of wishes if not accompanied by a strong emphasis on the appropriation of those tools for thinking and for acting that human beings have developed, codified, and accumulated during their history. In any field of complex activity, whether scientifichechnical or aesthetic/athletic, those who have the highest probability of inventing and creating are individuals who have best appropriated cultural elements previously developed that stem from the concrete ability to think new thoughts and do new things. Those who are most like to write valuable literature are those who have best appropriated the literary capital available. The same can be said for any discipline or scientific

field. Accumulated knowledge has this virtue: it is not only the knowledge per se that is involved, but method, strategy, instrument, and resources to criticize and to go beyond the given. This is a distinctive characteristic of contemporary culture. In other words, when we speak of complex knowledge and skills, reproduction is intimately linked to its own renewed production. Complex culture conserves itself and transforms itself at one and the same time.

The relative undervaluing of knowledge as a cultural heritage that must be transmitted to new generations comes into conflict with certain social expectations. For example, it is likely that many families send their children to school in order that they learn a number of things of obvious value (such as reading, writing, oral expression skills, numeracy, foreign languages, natural and social sciences, aesthetic and ethical values and criteria, mastery of tools that are useful for life and for production, etc.).

PRE LAC Journal

b) Opinions regarding the role of teachers

The questionnaire offers respondents two typical definitions of the role of teachers. One says that 'teachers are, above all, transmitters of culture and knowledge'. The other says that "teachers are above all facilitators for student learning'. The first corresponds to a more *classical' and 'hard" concept of the teaching task, while the second expresses a more contemporary, and probably more 'soft' formulation of the teacher's role. Teacher preferences leaned decidedly toward the second option (see Table 2).

ARQENTINA URUQUAY

Table 2 Role of Teachers

Total 100,o 100,O 100,o - . .- ,,--*, e

$ 7

Only a minority identified with none of the options offered. This popular identification of teachers as "facilitators" of learning in some ways coincides with the responses given to the question of the principal functions assigned to education. Latin American teachers do not appear to place the theme of knowledge and its inter-generational transmission at the center of their concerns as education professionals. This relative under-

These data indicate that the definitions cited embrace quite well the range of possible alternatives regarding the role of teachers. Among Argentine teachers, the predominance of the idea of the teacher as "facilitator" is quite generalized in all sub-groups that can be identified within the universe studied. However, its intensity varies according to particular characteristics of the subjects. The data indicate that primary teachers are more likely to view themselves as "facilitators" than are secondary teachers. The difference is particularly strong when we consider male teachers. Moreover, perceived social class is associated with role definition, with the image of the teacher as a transmitter of knowledge and of culture being more frequent among those who identify themselves as being part of the upper middle class than for those who say

valuing of knowledge probably has two sources. One is the difficult "educability" conditions of many children whose basic nutrition, affective, and health needs are unsatisfied, thus obliging schools to limit their objectives in the field of cultural transmission. The other fact that conspires against giving due attention to the value of knowledge is the weight of certain pedagogical currents (non-directive pedagogy, pedagogical spontaneity, etc.) in the training and self-image of Latin American teachers. In effect, criticisms against the narrowness and

they belong to the lower middle or lower classes. The data suggest that the image of the teacher as "facilitator" is weakest among male teachers and among teachers who see themselves as being within the higher levels of the social structure. In these groups, the old image of the teacher as a transmitter of culture and knowledge is the most present, although it is always a minority view.

excesses of traditional pedagogy (rationalism, formalism, memorization, encyclopedic, etc.) may have glided in the direction of a different narrowness just as infertile and harmful as the former.


However, the instrument applied in this case does not justify us in interpreting the meaning that respondents assign to the adjective “facilitator”, and other conjectures may be made in this regard. The most positive of these would be to understand that the role of a facilitator of learning converts the teacher into a kind of manager of the process of student learning. From this perspective, the teacher’s direct function would be not so much to transmit knowledge he or she possesses, but rather to act as a mediator between the learning needs of students and socially available knowledge. Good teachers would be those able to interpret what students need to learn and to guide them toward the sources where this knowledge is available (other people, specialists, bibliographic references, on-line sites, etc.). In this interpretation, teachers are not the ones who know; that is, those who possess knowledge and transmit it; they are people who know where the knowledge is and know the procedures that guarantee the most effective learning. But this is only one among the possible interpretations of the “facilitator”

-

Teachers and new education technologies

On the other hand, it is symptomatic that the great majority of teachers in the countries studied indicated that they ‘never use the Internet’ (70% in Argentina, 59.3% in Peru, and 58.2% in Uruguay). The same proportion of teachers “never use e-mail” in their communications.

function. Another, less optimistic and positive may be associated with the weakening of the role of teachers in regard to the development of peoples’ knowledge.

Whatever the case, what is certain is that the emphasis on creativity, when not accompanied by a concurrent valuing of the appropriation of accumulated knowledge, runs the risk of being an empty phrase in an objective statement of dubious achievement in practice. This hypothesis is plausible when one notes the under-valuing of the idea of cultural transmission, which may be associated with a certain barrenness in terms of the learning of basic cultural content such as the mastery of language, numeracy, the basic elements of the social and natural sciences, skills related to the search for and analysis of information, foreign languages, aesthetic appreciation, etc. One would not go too far in recalling that the mastery of these contents constitutes and essential condition of any creative and critical activity.

The pedagogical potential of the new information and communication technologies (NICT) represents a challenge for the construction of a new professional role for teachers. On the one hand, not all teachers have access to this information, nor are they “intensive” consumers of the NICT. They are not so in their daily lives nor as education professionals. On the other hand, a positive view tends to predominate regarding the impacts of the NICT on teaching and learning processes. There is, however, some uneasiness in regard to specific undesirable effects that should be kept in mind in formulating any teaching innovation policy. In any case, the view that appears from the information analyzed is quite positive. However, it is probable that the problems are based more on the deficits and defects of education policies (both in terms of human resources training and of technological equipment of schools) than on the culture and attitudes of teachers.

In regard to the availability of equipment for teachers, it is notable that more than one-half of Argentine and Uruguayan teachers have a computer available in their homes (53.4% and 54.8%, respectively), while among Peruvian teachers, this proportion falls to 19.9%. The percentage of teachers who have internet access in their households is lower (Uruguay, 45.2%, Argentina, 18.3%, and Peru, 3.3%), although together they make up a significant minority. In both cases, access to the new technologies is more frequent among secondary than among primary school teachers. As should be expected, place of residence strongly determines access to these new technologies. The availability of computers varies from 60% in Buenos Aires to 38% in the poorer regions of the country (Northeast and Northwest). The same is the case for internet access in the home, in which case the differences are even ~tronger.~


PRELAC Journal

Paml De-humanues Encourages Rewrces Wiilnnpfove Willboach repiacemru leeching less effm on that taciiltate the quallly opportunities of of teachers HI UWpartd Iasks ofeducahon ecc888 IO tte daswm atudents knowledge

Table 3: urugucly

Teachers and education technologies (in %) yes 19,9 23,3 43,l 84,7 72,7 87,3

No 73,O 65,8 42,3 73 12,9 6,4 Don't know 7,O 10,9 14,6 7,5 14,4 62

Attitudes in regard to the pedagogical impacts of the new technologies vary (Table 3). The data indicate, first of all, that most teachers do not believe that the new technologies replace classroom teachers. However, slightly less than one- fifth share this suspicion in Argentina and in Uruguay. The percentage is even larger in Peru. Nor do Argentine teachers have a generally negative attitude in regard to these technologies; the majority (58%) do not believe that they 'de-humanize teaching and pedagogical institutions',

Total 100,o 100,o 100,o 100,o 100,o 100,o PerU

Yes 28,l 27,8 42,4 79,7 82,8 89,O No 59,9 56,7 41,2 11,7 9,3 3,7 DW NR 12,o 155 16,4 88 7,9 7,3 Total 100,o 100,o 100,o 100,o 100,o 100,o Aramth

Yes 18,5 24,O 30,3 79,2 68,4 85,6 No 69,2 58,8 51,4 9,6 13,7 53 DW NR 12,3 17,2 18,3 11,2 17,9 8,9 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 ' 100.0

although one-fourth them do share this view (24%).

Another fear which is held by many teachers is that related to the fact that the new technologies may 'encourage less effort among students". As for the others, the attitude of teachers is very receptive. The majority believe that the technologies will 'increase opportunities for access to knowledge by students', that they are 'resources that will facilitate the tasks of teachers in the classroom', and that 'they will make it possible to

improve the quality of education and of learning'. However, this majority is relative since significant numbers still share certain fears regarding undesirable impacts both in terms of encouraging "less effort" among students and in terms of 'de-humanization' of teaching. On the other hand, it should be noted that many teachers have not formed an opinion on the subject, which indicates the importance of developing a communication and information strategy in this regard.

92

Some dlmenslons ofthe PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMEM OF TEACHERS

The social and economic level of teachers seems to be associated with attitudes regarding the new technologies. The data indicate that a positive attitude is much more frequent among higher social and economic levels. A reason that perhaps could help explain this association is the greater probability that those on higher levels are in fact in contact with the new technologies, at least regarding the more common

manifestations such as having a PC in the household, the use of e-mail, internet connections, etc.

regarding the new technologies is common among teachers, independent of the level at which they work (professor or instructor), gender, region, age, and other relevant characteristics considered in this report.

In general, a positive attitude

Of the task Of teachers For most teachers in the three countries studied, teaching is their only remunerative activity (Table 4). In effect, only a minority carry out other professional activities from which they receive income. These data indicate that those who practice this activity do so exclusively. This is positive from the professional point of view.

URUGUAY ARQENTINA PERU

Table4: Have 13,2 14,4 17,3

another remunerated activity Don't have 86,5 85,6 82,5 Percentage of teachers who have

Total 100,o 100,o 100,o

According to Max Weber, one of the founders of modern social science, professions have at least three basic characteristics: a) they employ rational technical knowledge; b) there is autonomy in the exercise of the activity, and c) they involve estate recognition, i.e., prestige and social recognition. In this sense, Weber stated that a professional lives from and for his or her profession. This means that professionals possess a vocation, or a characteristic and strong affective orientation that is subsumed in the classic concept of "vocation". But at the same time, professionals live from their professions. It is from them that they obtain the necessary resources for individual and social existence. The results of an IlPE research program on professionalization indicate that vocational content is very much present in the self-descriptive statements of teachers.


PRELAC Journal

On the other hand, objective data in regard to the weight that salary has in the total perceived household incomes of teachers show the existence of various typical situations (Table 5). In effect, the data indicate that for a relative minority of teachers (significantly stronger in the case of Uruguay), teacher income has a very small relative weight in the total perceived income of their households (30% or less). In this extreme case, it is probable that teaching has for them a very special meaning in a certain measure different compared to those colleagues for whom their teaching salary is the major determinant of total available household income. This latter situation, although that

of the majority, in no case represents more than 50% of income. This fragmented situation points toward the probable existence of distinct relations with teaching activity. Even when for the absolute majority, teaching is an exclusive activity (few carry out other remunerative activities outside of teaching), this exclusivity has different meanings for different statistical sub- groups that can be identified in the data analysis. It is likely that these objective differences are associated with different assessments, attitudes, and evaluations, especially those referring to working conditions, salary, careers, etc.5

ARQENTINA PERU URUGUAY

’: Up to 30 % 19,8 12,9 26,6 Percentage of household income provided by teacher’s salary 31 % to 70% 359 443 43,2

More than 71 Yo 354 42,8 27,l

No response 8,9 3,O Total 100,o 100,o 100,o

This differentiation should be considered when defining changes in the regulations that structure the work of teachers in that it indicates the presence of a heterogeneity of conditions that may be associated with differences in ways of living, perceiving, and valuing the work of teachers. These results do no more than identify once more the existence of differentiation factors within a professional category so homogenized as that of teaching. The different relative weights of teacher salaries can have specific effects to be added to the differentiating impacts related to other more well-known factors such as social class, living and working conditions, gender, and age, institutional context in task performance, initial training, and opportunities for in-service training, among others.

’ For the lime being the state of the data analysis does not allow us to speculate regarding the specific impacts of these different oblectives e situalions on important dimensions of the Situation 01 teachers

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Some dlmenslons of the PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS

Future professional plans

Table 6: Employment and professional aspirations in the coming years

Finally, any policy reform related to the working conditions of teachers should be carried out taking into account the future professional plans of teachers. It is obvious that a given structure of incentives will produce a particular system of professional aspirations.

three countries studied presents results that are complex, and reason for concern (Table 6). First, we note that, except for Uruguay, only a minority intend to remain in their current posts 'in the coming years'. The remainder of preferences are distributed largely around professional activities within the education system, but in nonclassrm work; that is, in non- teaching activities strictly speaking.

Empirical evidence available in the

ARQENTINA PERU URUQUAY

% % %

Continue in present post 43,6 20,4 52,6

Occupy managerial and administrative positions 19,9 24,6 10,l

The same activities as now, but in another school 2,3 10,6 7,8

Carrv out another Drofess. activitv in the area of education 21.5 32.5 16.1

Follow another occupation 5,8 7,7 32

School supervisor 2.6

Two activities account for most of the desires for change of activities expressed by teachers: administration and management and carrying out other professional activities within education such as producing texts, planning pedagogical activities, carrying out projects with colleagues, etc. The overall impression is that, given the current structure of job promotion opportunities for teachers, a professional who wishes to improve his or her situation is obliged to abandon classroom work. Obviously, no system provides opportunities for supervision, management, planning, etc. in a sufficient number to respond to the demands expressed by classroom teachers. In order to resolve this contradiction it is necessary to design teacher career paths that offer opportunities for promotion and professional enhancement without obliging the individual to abandon the classroom. This is a subject that needs to be incorporated into the agenda of teacher career reforms in most Latin American countries.

Finally, the responses of teachers indicate that those who hope in the future to work outside of education are a minority (in all cases less than 10%). This means that the overwhelming majority of current teachers have a strong interest in remaining in the profession.

Don't know 7,O 2,4 3,7 Total 100.0 100.0 100.0


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In summary, we can state that a large majority of teachers in the countries studied work full-time and hope to continue working within education systems in the mid-term. Nevertheless, except in Uruguay, only a minority state they with to continue in their present position, that is, to continue working as classroom teachers. Moreover, it is probable that the relationship that teachers maintain with their activity is partially determined by the weight that the teacher salary has on the total available income in the households in which they live.

Earning a living from teaching and carrying out the activity merely as a vocation and for personal self-realization are not the same. Additionally, teachers exhibit a positive attitude in regard to the

challenges presented by new information and communication technologies, although a significant minority express concern about some negative impacts that may arise from the systematic use of such technologies in education. Finally, when asked about the possibility of establishing salary differentials based upon the quality of their performance, the opinions of teachers are divided, as they are when asked about the possibility of taking student achievement into account as one of the factors for determining teacher salaries. Finally, most Argentine and Peruvian teachers are in disagreement with the mechanisms used to assess their professional performance. Even in Uruguay, opinions regarding these mechanisms are extremely divided.

The data show that the questions

regarding teacher working conditions, career paths, and salaries provoke different reactions. Therefore, any policy innovation in these areas should take these divided opinions into account. It is likely that the necessary innovations, if they are to be successful in attaining hoped-for results, should be preceded by discussion and debate. Otherwise, resistance, conflict, and failure are highly probable. It is therefore useful to be aware of the distribution of opinions and attitudes of teachers as related to characteristics such as their time in service, educational level, and kind of school (public or private), gender, origin, social position, etc., in order to have the best idea possible of the obstacles and facilitating elements of particular professional enhancement policies.

Assessment of teacher Performance Assessment is an integral part of the teacher's task. But teachers are not only "systematic and professional assessors'; they are also, as it were, objects of assessment, but by their superiors (school principals, supervisors, etc.) as well as by the education system itself (national levels of assessment of teacher quality). The assessment of teachers is a growing trend within the agendas of most Latin American countries. Given the labor implications of this practice, it is a subject that interests and concerns both leaders and militants of most teacher unions.

Common sense tells us that it is not easy to "assess the assessor". All countries have regulations and mechanisms that comprise a teacher assessment system. This assessment determines the place that teachers occupy within the occupational structure of the education system, and therefore contribute to determining salaries, career paths, etc.

A clear majority of teachers in Argentina and in Peru express discontent with current mechanisms used to assess their work (Table 7). This critical posture is also the case of the majority of teachers in Uruguay, although there, positions appear to be more balanced. In Argentina, this disagreement is greater outside of Buenos Aires and among public school teachers, those from the middle class, male secondary teachers, and those who are heads of households. -

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Some dlmenslom of the PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS

Table 7: Opinion regarding current teacher assessment mechanisms

% ARQENTINA PERU URUOUAY

Adequate 14,7 16,8 42,2

Not adequate 60,8 75,6 47,6

Don't know 243 7,6 10,2

Total 100,o 100,o 100,o

Periodic assessment is given the highest value by teachers in Peru and is in second place in Uruguay and third in Argentina. However, we may say that in general, all include in some way periodic assessment as an important criterion. The consensus evaporates when it comes to opinions regarding concrete systems of measurement and assessment of criteria used in each one of the countries studied.

agents for carrying out assessment of their work, responses showed that not all such agents enjoy the same degree of legitimacy. Some of them are more "traditional" than others. Among the former one may cite school authorities (supervisors, school principals, etc.). More recent are proposals to include as assessment agents groups that make up the demand side of the education system (students, parents, community representatives, etc.) Table 9 presents data regarding the distribution of the opinions of the teachers surveyed.

When teachers were asked to identify the most appropriate

The questionnaire asked teachers to rate the degree of pertinence of given criteria to determine salary categories. Among these criteria was 'periodic assessment of professional performance' as well as other classical factors such as degrees held, time in service, and the geographic area in which the teacher works. For Argentina, the results indicate that 'assessment" is third in importance after time in service and degrees held (Table 8). This ordering indicates the predominance of a traditional view in regard to the factors that determine teacher salary. There are, however, some factors that are associated with the probability of granting more importance to assessment. These are: being a male secondary teacher, working as a teacher in private schools, and being a member of the middle and upper social classes.

Table 8 : Criteria that should be used to determine teacher salary categories (rating from 1 to 10, according to importance)

CRITERION AROENTINA PERU URUQUAY

Time in service 8,3 7,O 9,o

Degree(s) held 8,2 7,8 9,7

Periodic assessment a,o 7,s 9,s

Other academic factors 7,7 6,3 8,7 Geographic area of service 7,8 6,8 8,8*

* In Uruguay the term used was 'social context of the s c h d

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Table 9: AGENTS ARaENTlNA PERU URUQUAY Who should participate in

teacher assessment School authorities (principal, supervisor) 73,7 453 (a) 76,O (c) Supervisor or Inspector not applicable not applicable 76,8 Other education specialists 48,3 36.1 41.1

More-qualified teacher colleagues 41,4 383 54,2 Representatives of the national ministry of education 30,6 52,3 not applicable

Representatives of provincial departments of education 30,4 27,4 (b) not applicable Students 23,5 17,8 256 Parents and the school community 20,o 34,4 12,6

Teaching staff of each school not applicable 31,5 not applicable

(a) school administrative team (b) specialists from Intermediary organizations (USES, Region) (c) the principal

It is evident that the category that is most accepted by teachers are school authorities (principals and supervisors). The other categories, with exceptions, are recognized as legitimate by less than half of teachers. These figures show that teachers see themselves as members of an organization who have a well- determined position within an organizational hierarchy. Thus, those who

have formal authority over teachers are those who have the responsibility to assess the quality of teachers' performance. Other types of authorities, non-formal or institutional, such as specialists, are more outstanding colleagues are acceptable as assessment agents by a minority of teachers. One should note that 54% of Uruguayan teachers recognize

'outstanding colleagues' as legitimate in such as role.

Finally, only a minority of teachers grant legitimacy to those to whom education is directed, their families, and the community to participate in the assessment of their work. Therefore, any proposal in this sense is likely to provoke critical reactions from most teachers.

Attitudes Concerning differentiation Any assessment results in a classification and differentiation. Assessing consists in establishing an order or hierarchy. In this sense, assessment is more complex than a simple measurement. For example, a school that obtains a high level of performance in an area of knowledge is 'better' than another that obtains lower averages. As such, it involves establishing value judgments. But in all cases, assessments (of students or of teachers) have as a result a formalization and objectives establishment of differences (in the quality and quantity of learning, in the quality of teacher performance, etc.) In this sense, one should seek to learn about the legitimacy that this general idea has among teachers. In order to do so, we may analyze the responses given to questions formulated in this regard.

and classification

98


The first has to do with the very idea of establishing salary differentiations in order to award "the best teachers'. The question may appear naive or even obvious at first glance if directed at a sample of traditional professions such as physicians or lawyers. It is probable that the majority of those questioned would respond positively to the question, "Do you believe that appropriate mechanisms should be found so that the best engineers earn more than the others?" Nevertheless, this question did not find a consensual response among teachers of the countries examined. On the contrary, in the three cases we find a polarization of opinions regarding this question which, might seem to provoke a uniform response (Table IO).

Table 1 I: Factors associated with opposition to the idea of establishing appropriate mechanisms for better teachers to earn more than the others

Table IO: I agree with the statement, "Appropriate

mechanisms should be found for the best teachers to earn more than the others'.

Resmonse ARQENTINA PERU URUQUAY

Yes 42.9 64,l 39,l

No 40,l 31,8 459

Don't know 16,9 4 1 15,O

Total 100,o 100,o 100,o

Once again, the case of Peru differs from that of Argentina and Uruguay. While in Peru there is a clear majority in favor of this proposition, the contrary is the case in Uruguay, while in Argentina there is a balance between possible answers. Moreover, in Peru there is a low percentage of teachers who do not respond, while a non-response is more common in Argentina and in Uruguay.

Table 1 1 shows some of the factors associated with the probability of expressing a critical position in regard

ARGENTINA PERU URUOUAY

Primary level X X X Public schools X X X Women X X Lower middle class and lower class X Living in poor households X With downward social mobility x + x X With upward social mobility 'Learning facilitators" X "Transmitters of learning and culture" Job insecurity X

X

to the idea of establishing differentiations and awards as a function of the quality of teacher performance. Disagreement is more probable among primary teachers, those who work in public schools, women, and those whose social positions and paths are more unfavorable.

Another variable the behavior of which may aid in understanding resistance to the establishment of salary differentials among teachers is that which deals with the value that teachers themselves assign to equality (vs. freedom). In effect, the questionnaire asks teachers to choose between the following statements:

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PRELAC Journal

A. "For me, freedom and equality are equally important. But if I had to opt for one or the other, I would consider personal freedom to be t e most important; that is, everyone should live in freedom and develop without barriers".

B. "Freedom and equality are both important, but if I had to decide in favor of one of the two, I would pick equality as being the most important; that is, so no one would be disadvantaged and social class d rences wouldn't be so strong".

Table 12: Opinions regarding

freedom and equality (%)

The results shown in Table 12 indicate that teachers tend to favor the value of equality over freedom. This predisposition to value equality has a special meaning with an historical context noted for an increase in inequality in the distribution of such strategic goods and resources such as wealth, income, and power. From this point of view, teachers represent a social category that opposes and resists public policies that produce inequalities.

ARGENTINA PERU URUGUAY

Freedom 34,4 40,8 33s Equality 39,3 47,6 42,2

Neither of the two/depends 19,6 8,4 20,7

DKINA 67 3,2 3,6

Total 100,o 100'0 100,o

But this attitude also may be associated with resistances demonstrated by a large proportion of teachers to the establishment of salary differentials related to the quality of teacher performance. One should remember that the legal status of the profession, carried out within very structured institutional contexts, and a

T el3: Factors associated with the preference for equality

FACTORS ARQENTINA PERU URUOUAY

Young (under 30 years of age) X X Downward mobility X X Low perceived social class X X X Public sector X X Private sector X Male teachers X Teachers heads of households X Job insecurity X Poor regions X

legal bureaucratic historical framework, does not favor the establishment of criteria resulting in differences in material compensations related to quality of performance. In this regard, it should be noted that in these contexts, the classic principle of 'equal pay for equal work' in regard to salaried professions still applies.

Moreover, in this case, the preference for these values which in a sense structure the cultural and ideological field of the majority of modern capitalist societies is associated with certain characteristics of citizens. Table 13 offers information regarding the factors positively associated with the preference for equality.

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Some dimensions of the PRO ESS ONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS

At first glance, the position and path of teachers within the social structure would seem to be associated with the probability of adhering to certain social and political values. The most underprivileged (in both objective and subjective terms) would seem to be more predisposed to valuing equality over freedom. In the case of Argentina, teachers who live in the poorest regions of the country and who feel insecure in their jobs show the same preference.

On the other hand, in the case of Argentina and Peru, public school teachers show a preference for the value

of equality, while in Uruguay the opposite is true; that is, this preference is more frequent among private school teachers.

Another indicator of the value that teachers assign to equality may be deduced from the reply given to a question regarding the salary that different occupational categories should receive (among them primary and secondary school teachers). Responses allow us to have an idea of the salary differences that teachers are disposed to recognize among different social groups. In general, we see that teachers in Argentina and in Uruguay share an ideal image of the

social structure that is very egalitarian. The gap between the highest and lowest salaries varies from 2.7 in Uruguay to 3.3 in Argentina, and 4.5 in Peru. In all cases, these ideal gaps are "egalitarian" compared to actual salary and income distributions in the societies considered.

In summary, there is every indication that the dominant culture among teachers strongly favors the value of equality. This preference for equality should be taken into account when establishing mechanisms that in some way may be perceived as a threat to attaining this ideal objectively valued by teachers.

Themes on the agenda and policy criteria Almost all education ministries and secretariats in the region have incorporated into their policy agendas the major dimensions that contribute to the professional enhancement of teachers. These range from selection and recruitment criteria for teacher training candidates, through initial and in-service education, mechanisms for entry into the educational system, the structure and dynamics of the teaching career itself, incentive systems, and appropriate mechanisms for the assessment of teacher performance.

There is more agreement on the diagnosis and criticism of the measures and institutions present at each phase of the teaching profession than there is in regard to the answers and proposals that are necessary in each case. Thus, everyone agrees that it is necessary to improve recruitment mechanisms in order to guarantee the selection of better candidates for entry into teacher training institutions. Likewise, there is consensus that in most cases, initial training is not up to the professional challenges that future teachers will encounter in their classrooms; that the in-service training currently available is neither continuous nor pertinent: that incentive systems do not function adequately to attract and maintain the best human resources; that in many cases the only way that a teacher has to improve his or her professional status is to carry out another activity - that is -to stop being a teacher in order to be a principle or supervisor (a highly likely scenario for the majority, given the small number of managerial posts within the structure).


PRELAC Journal

This consensus of diagnosis is not reflected in policy proposals. Beyond specific policies, what one can propose are strategies, or policy-making modes that guarantee a greater probability of success for reforms in order to assure better opportunities for professional enhancement of Latin American teachers.

As an example, we offer below a list of objectives and goals that may be useful for discussion and consensus. Most of them have been projected for the mid-term (until the year 2015, for example).

Using the themes presented above, these goals include the following:

100% of primary and secondary school teachers with basic pedagogical training.

50% of such teachers with basic training in NICT.

Institutionalization of annual performance assessment mechanisms, according to criteria and indicators developed in association with teachers and the definition of teacher career paths including levels of professional excellence and criteria for promotion without abandoning classroom teaching.

I

Promotion of lines of credit to facilitate Definition of a significant percentage of salaries linked to the level of training attained and of the results achieved in annual performance assessment.

access of teachers to basic technological tools (PCs, e-mail, internet access, etc.).

Annual training and up-date opportunities for all teachers.

Guarantee of appropriate pedagogical follow-up during the first phase of job experience for teachers.

Establishment of a financial incentive program (study grants) for initial teacher training.

All primary and secondary teachers who serve the 30% poorest sector of the school population to work full-time and during full school days.

Concentrate the work of teachers in one school only (50% of secondary school teachers to work full-time and the entire school day in a single institution).

Up-date and strengthening of teacher training programs, establishing basic

Fherve 15% ofthe school day of teachers for PrOfeSSiOnal tasks outside

criteria at the national level for accreditation of teacher training institutions.

the classroom (participation in working groups with colleagues, tutoring students, production of materials, etc.).

Design and implementation of a Assign more experienced teachers to the first three years of basic education. national exam for entry into he teaching

qualified representatives of teacher organizations.

profession, with the participation of - -

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S o m e dimensions of the PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS

It is obvious that the character and dimension of the goals will depend upon the possibilities and conditions within the societies in question. It is necessary here, however, to emphasize the utility of the idea of goals; that is, of objectives that have not only justifications and bases, but that also are expressed quantitatively within a defined time frame. Goals, once they have undergone discussion and have been collectively agreed upon, are able to lend meaning to the efforts that each actor makes in order to fulfill them.

In addition, there is an interdependent relation between goals and the resources that are necessary to fulfill them. Resources determine the number of goals to be addressed. But the goals themselves, when they are meaningful and socially desirable, have the ability to justify the generation and mobilization of resources. Otherwise, they will remain on paper, or will be directed toward other ends. It is in this dialectic, between the possible and the desirable, that goals have meaning and can fulfill a politically- determined function.

Finally, goals and the strategies adopted to achieve them should take into account both the objective situation (for example, budgetary limitations, institutional frameworks, interests and power relations of the principal actors in the field of education, etc.), as well as subjective conditions such as attitudes, opinions, values, predispositions, etc., of the social actors that we have considered above. This second dimension of reality, which has to do with the culture of the actors (their opinions, expectations, attitudes, aspirations, etc.), is among the least considered factors of education reforms, which are always more disposed to change structured than to transform the culture of those involved. Changes in these subjective factors cannot be produced by decree, as can reforms in structure. Restructuring is not the same as changing cultures. In order to change the subjectivity of actors (and hence their practices) within a pluralistic and democratic political context requires two fundamental resources: a long time frame, and a set of predispositions and skills specifically guided by negotiation, discussion, and agreement.

Any effective policy for

improving the conditions of teachers needs to envision a

long time frame

Any effective policy for improving the conditions of teachers needs to envision a long time frame. This is a resource that must be produced collectively through agreement and the participation of all the actors involved. Experience shows that agreement is always the result of a combination of three necessary ingredients: (a) a political will for agreement; (b) a set of technical skills that make possible argument, discussion, and realistic and rational negotiation; and (c) basic ethical qualities (sincerity, responsibility, respect for assumed commitments, etc.) that are required for creative dialogue. It is hoped that the major actors within the field of education policy in Latin America (politicians, specialists, union officials, leaders of education organizations, etc.) possess what is required and do what needs to be done in order to improve the professional enhancement of teachers, and in this way guarantee the best learning opportunities for all Latin Americans.


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