Over the last decade in the context of collapsing trust in major public and private institutions, Chilean society has engaged in massive social mobilizations culminating in 2019 with widespread rioting in rebellion against the neoliberal model. This socio-political crisis raises the general question which this article addresses: How does such a…

This study chronicles a research project on writing development that was affected by the current contexts of uncertainty. We were set to follow 24 students from diverse admissions channels for three years, during which we held meetings and collected writing materials. In October 2019, an unprecedented wave of civil unrest led to the closure of the…

The last decade was marked by cycles of social movements around the world, where resisting and fighting against neoliberal capitalism and a patriarchal system have been at the centre of political action. In Chile, the "Feminist May" student movement in 2018 was a turning point and showed the strong and entangled relationship between…

This paper explores the complex relationship between higher education and the concept of public goods in Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, with a particular focus on Chile. Through an extensive literature review, the study examines the evolving meanings of public, public/common/global goods in Spanish culture in the context of higher…

This paper engages with the Freirean concept of politicity for critical policy studies in education. The first part lays the ground to expand the conceptualisation of teachers' politicity. I argue this entails an examination of the limits and possibilities within a juncture. To develop the argument, the second part focuses on a teacher strike that…

In 2011, Chile experienced massive student protests against the marketization of education. During 2013, center-left President Michelle Bachelet proposed tuition-free higher education for Chile's families in the bottom 70th percentile of the income distribution, fueling controversy due to the uncertainty and unexpected consequences of the policy.…

In the previous decades there has been an unprecedented proliferation of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working in different policy fields. In hand with this process of 'NGOisation', there has been a growing academic debate regarding the role of NGOs in terms of their influence promoting or resisting the expansion of neoliberalism. For…

The images of the future among young people have been conditioned by the stories present in the media, films, books, and also in school. Educational curriculums are made up of a selection of knowledge that privileges some ways of understanding the future over others. Young people often imagine a future that is in economic, social, and/or climate…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the construction of social imaginaries of fear by the Chilean press regarding student violence during the 1968 university reforming process. Using an approach inspired by the history of emotions, the primary purpose is to analyze the discourse of two relevant conservative newspapers with national circulation…

The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of international scholarship programs for social justice -- a case study of the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP), the first model of scholarships for social justice. The human capability approach advanced by Amartya Sen is selected to conceptualize the measurement of the…

During the first years of the new century, Latin America went through significant political changes in a period of economic growth. In education, we identify a 'regulatory governance turn' characterised by the emergence of four policy instruments: 1-New performance-based teaching career regulations with teachers' evaluations, 2-Curricular…

This study reviews the performance of the Improvement of Quality and Equity in Higher Education programme (MECESUP). MECESUP was executed in three stages between 1999 and 2016 by Chile's Ministry of Education and its directly state-subsidised university sector, with World Bank financing and advisory. The account explores achievements and failures…

Using critical discourse analysis (CDA), we explored how educational leaders and policymakers in Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Argentina address complex issues while responding to -- and in fact, developing -- broader understandings (discourses) on the role of higher education in Latin America. Fairclough's (1993) theory of discourse underscores that…

The Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP), implemented from 2001-2013, was an international fellowship program based on a uniquely inclusive higher education model. Founded on the principle that higher education is an essential long-term investment for addressing major social issues, IFP had two essential goals: ensuring…

In Chile, some elite private schools have developed a particular approach towards citizenship education, acknowledging the privileged social position their students occupy, while inviting them to disrupt the same social structure that has produced this privilege. However, the enduring salience of Chilean society's inequalities begs the question of…