While much has been written about student movements against the neoliberal privatisation of education in Chile, less attention has been given to teacher activism around similar educational matters. In this article, we contribute to the field of teacher activism as a social movement to resist the global education reforms of neoliberal education…

This paper aims to recognise the transformations in the concept of quality as formulated by Chilean educational policies between 1985 and 1990, at the beginning of the educational privatisation process. Using a conceptual history approach allowed us to analyse the meanings attributed to the concept of quality in the design and implementation of…

An important dimension of international comparative analysis in education is studying the models of regulation that structure the way in which educational provision is organized. The specialized literature has defined three predominant regulatory models: the traditional bureaucratic professional model, the quasi-market model inspired by neoliberal…

Neoliberal discourse has undergone substantial changes over the last years, taking a status as if it were a natural given. In this article we analyse the naturalisation of neoliberal discourse in higher education in post-dictatorship Chile. Based on discourse analysis of two Chilean higher education policy reports, we examine the reconfiguration…

The scholarship on school privatization and market-oriented reforms has demonstrated the negative effects on segregation and inequity triggered by this model, not only in Chile but globally. Less is known about how to transition toward a democratic-oriented education approach after decades of embedding the values rooted in a competition-based…

Chile is recognized in the educational policy field as one of the first laboratories of neoliberal initiatives. These policies, initiated under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, did not change with the new democratic governments after 1990. This characteristic led international organizations to promote the Chilean policies in different…

In contemporary education policy debates in the United States, school voucher programs and school privatization--the entry of many private for-profit corporations and nonprofit and other organizations into the education arena--are under the spotlight. Following in the footsteps of several prior administrations, the current federal administration…

It is fairly established that Chilean higher education presents a high level of Habermasian "privatism," as long labeled by José Joaquin Brunner, being among the world's most privatized systems in terms of who pays, who is held to benefit directly from its action and who controls it. Less clear, however, is the contribution of public…

Education market advocates frequently argue that socioeconomically disadvantaged students could be the main beneficiaries of privatization and market policies. However, the international evidence has shown how privatization and pro-market policies have a negative impact in terms of equity, which particularly affect socioeconomically disadvantaged…

Education privatization is a global trend that has nonetheless followed multiple trajectories. This article addresses the question of what explains this variation by demonstrating the role that political coalitions play in the re-interpretation of global privatization ideas. A political-coalitional approach helps us analyze from a long-term…

Over the last 30 years, Chile and Mexico have been implementing neoliberal policies to reform their higher education systems. This report compares the development and impact of those policies within three main areas in both countries, namely: (1) trends and characteristics of the growing private higher education sector, (2) commercialisation and…

President Barack Obama recently announced a proposal to eliminate tuition charges at community colleges so that everyone can easily complete the first two years of a university education. At the same time, the administration is creating new regulations to curb the worst abuses of for-profit universities. This suggests that the country has reached…

Over the last two decades, education privatization has become a widespread phenomenon, affecting most education systems and giving place to a consistent increase in private school enrolment globally. However, far from being a monolithic phenomenon, privatization advances through a variety of context-sensitive policy processes that translate into…

With contributions from Linda Darling-Hammond, Michael Fullan, Pasi Sahlberg, and Martin Carnoy, "Global Education Reform" is an eye-opening analysis of national educational reforms and the types of high-achieving systems needed to serve all students equitably.The collection documents the ideologically and educationally distinctive…

Policymakers worldwide are trying to figure how best to organize, govern, and support their education systems. They must manage multiple goals, such as workforce development, nurturing knowledgeable citizens, and ensuring educational opportunity. Some countries approach these issues with a public investment in teacher professionalization and a…