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…

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…

Human Rights Education exists as an implementing entity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Scholars such as Andre Keet and others have criticized the dissemination of universal rights through education because it covets Western ideology over local ethical and epistemological constructs. Using Tibbitts' revised typologies of Human Rights…

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…

Given the importance of Public Policies for social transformation, the document explains why and under what circumstances they constitute a decisive factor to promote or inhibit social transformation. A policy is a purposeful, intentional, planned behavior, not just reactive, casual. It is set in motion with the decision to achieve certain…

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…

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…

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…

This article combines the perspective of transnational transfer with contributions from social theory and historical sociology -- specifically the Luhmannian concept of social 'inclusion'. In doing so, this article reconstructs a historical case regarding the conflicting implementation of universal conscription and compulsory schooling in Chile in…

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…

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…

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…