The question this article attempts to answer is, how can teacher unions take advantage of the opportunities afforded by their organizational structures while minimizing the factors that have stood in the way of educational and societal change? Drawing from examples of teacher unions' strategies from studies of several organizations outside of the…

The purpose of this article is to show how the humanities offer a solid support to understand and face social and personal decisions as well, especially looking at Chile although, we know, these situations are not only local. Also, to provide suggestions of help, in education, through the humanities, so that future citizens escape the disastrous…

The decades from the 1960s to the 1980s were prolific in the emergence of a significant and diverse movement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Latin America. In the case of Chile, grassroots educational organisations navigated various political contexts. Initially, they played an active part in the process of social mobilisation and the…

An expansive movement comprised of UN Millennium Development Goals, international banks, and hundreds of programs worldwide promotes access to the arts as a creative means of social change. Often grounded in cognitive science and inspired by the model of youth orchestras in Venezuela known as El Sistema, this movement contends that arts…

Mainstream approaches in comparative education have paid more attention to trends in donors' priorities than to policy processes in recipient countries, overlooking the agency of national governments in the institutional configuration of vocational education and training (VET) in developing contexts. Drawing on constructivist political economy and…

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 idea of a "hyper-surveillance" state that devolves school management to the private sector and local governments, but, at the same time, evaluates, inspects, and sanctions schools in the name of "educational quality and equality," has been advocated by diverse sectors, right and center-left, conservative and liberal,…

This paper reveals and analyzes the cinematographic, political, and aesthetic transitions intersecting two Southern Cone films that premiered concurrently in 1991: the award-winning Chilean movie "La frontera" by Ricardo Larraín and the forgotten Argentine independent production "La redada" directed by Rolando Pardo. Despite…

This article analyzes the reasons behind the end of the ICT in education policy (Enlaces) driven by the Chilean Ministry of Education for 25 years. The argument is that the institution that sought to give sustainability to this policy over time, ended up losing its ability to lead relevant responses to the educational challenges posed by the…

Pablo Larraín's film "No" (2012) has been widely viewed and reviewed both at home in Chile and internationally. Some reviewers have focused on the film's representation of the triumph of hope and optimism over tyranny. Others have criticized the film's historical inaccuracy, citing a list of details that the film either got wrong or left…

This article examines the background in which enterprises called free schools, as well as complementary educational activities, have taken root in Chile. Two kinds of recently burgeoning free schools are identified; one supplementing regular schooling with a social justice focus, and another that is a fully fledged alternative to other schooling.…

This article considers the Chilean student movement and its ten-year struggle for public education as an example of public pedagogy. Secondary and university students, along with the parents, teachers, workers and community members who have supported them, have engaged in the most sustained political activism seen in Chile since the democratic…

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…

"Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces" examines government funded public schools from a range of perspectives and scholarship in order to examine the historical, political and economic conditions of public schooling within a globalized, post-welfare context. In this book, Rowe argues that post-welfare policy conditions are…

This paper surveys the delivery of school education in Chile over the last half-century. It focuses on evidence provided by recent academic studies on the impact of neoliberal education policies introduced by the military regime in the 1980s, and continued by successive democratic governments. It offers insights into recent popular critiques of…