PRELAC Journal

P R E LAC Journal / No0

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 responsibilitiesof
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 O R E A L C W N E S C O Santiago

Layout:
Wacquez&O’Ryan

Translation:William Gallagher

ISSN:Still pending

Printed in Chile by Andros Ltda

Santiago,Chile,August,2004
 i n t 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 recognitionof
the challengesahead.

The magazine is both a result and a continuationof 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 differentcontext,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/UNESCOSantiago aimed at
fulfillmentof the goals of quality and of equity of Education forAll.-
In orderto emphasize PRELACas a strategic framework,we open the new magazine
with a summary ofthe major contents of the project and considerationsto its meaning
and activities.The first number also includes five lectures presented at the First
IntergovernmentalMeeting of PRELAC held in Havana,Cuba in November,2002
which provided food for thought and discussionon the education themes of the new
Regional Project.The presentations considerthe challenges facing the region from
various perspectives:the social situationand education;equity and exclusion;learning
and knowledge;education reforms and quality;the current situation and participation
of teachers;and schoolmanagement 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 importantcontributions to discussion,

to policy decision-makingand 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
OREALClUNESCO 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 T H E

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/ACHIEVINGGREATER access, equity, and quality OF

EDUCATION IN LATIN AMERICA.
Martin Carnoy.

65/TEACHEREDUCATIONAND TRAINING in the

POLICIES
Commonwealth Caribbean.
Errol Miller.

85/Some dimensions of the PROFESSIONAL

ENHANCEMENT O F TEACHERS.
Emilio Tenti.

4
 PRELAC Journal

'Educationmust act to eliminate or compensatefor inequalitiesbut not erase differences". 1

,
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 PRELAC is a continuation of the efforts

Latin America and the Caribbean
-PRELAC- was approved at the First
Intergovernmental Meeting,held in
Havana,Cuba from November 14-16,
2002.The Ministersof Education present
and representativesof 34 countries
approved the project as well as its Follow-
up Model. They also signed the
Declaration of Havana,which expresses
the will of countriesto supportthe project
which has a 15-yeartime 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..."
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 (211 million people)and extreme
poverty (80million) 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.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 7

PRELAC Journal

Unemploymentand 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-utilizationof 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 conditionsthat 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 thereforeto education,new interpretationsand 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-changingand 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 insufficientand
that a number of important issues remain
to be dealt with in the region.
Within the considerations that
PRELAC offers regarding pending tasks
are crucialthemes 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
educationalopportunities and its impact
on excluded groups with special
educational needs,native peoples,those
living in isolated rural areas and marginal
urban populations.In termsof the quality
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.
In considering the current context,
education problems,and the
commitmentsassumed by countries to
achieve Education for All by the year
2015,PRELAC offers importantadvances
marked new views and commitments.
These are expressed in the programs
goals,principles,and strategicfocuses.

8
 PRELAC. A Regional Path toward Educatlon forAll

Purpose
PRELAC seeks "...to foster education
policies and practices,through the
transformation of current education
paradigms in order to assure quality
learning and life-longhuman
development for all.Education policies
must have as a priority making effective
for the entire population the right to
education and to equality ofopportunities,
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 ofDakar (2000-2015).
PRELAC seeks to provide a technical
and policy forum that fostersdialogue
and the construction of alternatives
among social actors.Is seeks to foster
innovative educational policies that
decrease inequalitiesin the region and
make quality education for all a reality.
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 representsan
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 subjectswith rights who
require an education that fully regards
their development as human beings in
multiple dimensionsand 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
influenceon learning and on the
construction ofpersonal and social
collectiveidentity
From school-basededucation 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-longdevelopment
of personal skills.

Strategic focuses The incorporation of strategic focusesinto PRELACoffers a means to better

set more integrative and transcendentpriorities for reflection.These are central themes
that each country is invited to consider in order to fulfill the goals of Education for All.

';I
H Focus on the contents and practices of education in order to constnrctmeanings
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
"d of learning of the Delors Report are an excellent guide when consideringthe meanings
of education:learning to be,learning to know,learning to do,and learning to live
together.PRELAC also emphasizes the importanceof a complementary skill:learning
to endeavor.
I .
...

EDUCATION FOR ALL 9

PRELAC Journal

2. Focus on teachers and Strengthening their participation in education change

.
- , in order to satisfy student learning needs.
.
.
I , .
_

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-makingprocesses at ; '
different levels of the education system.
J I I.. , I

'< * . . .:
4. Focus on management and increased flexibility of education systems in order
. .
1 to offer effective,life-long learning opportunities. I j.:
+ 1 .

1'

Requires change of the rigid organization and regulationsof currenteducation 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.

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
. , * , * i . ,

accountability at all levels.

Continuity and n e w conditions As we have conceived and developed in supportof

stated,PRELAC is a continuation of
previous efforts at the regional and world
levels:the Major Project for Education
which established common focusesand
priorities in education areas in Latin
America and the Caribbean,and the
world movement of Education for All
-EFA-a cornerstoneof UNESCO'sefforts,
the six objectives of which,established
in Dakar,are mandatory for countries.
PRELAC is not a new entity;it was
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
constructionof 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-relatedfocus in the face of
achievement levels attained in education.
A second is the incorporationof 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.
The text ofPRELAC as well as cmplementary information
marbe found atwww.unesco.ct
PRELAC. A Reglonal Path toward Education forAll
Finally,it is importantto call attention
to the importance of these principles and
strategicfocuses.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 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 ofthe Economic Councilfor LahnAmerica
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 influencethat 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 ofthe Regional Education Project
for Latin America and the Caribbean.Havana
Cuba,Novembec 14-16,2002.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 13

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
i UNEMPLOYMENT IS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH families.In the 1990sthere seems to have
i ECONOMIC GROWTH. THIS PROBLEM IS been a disassociation between growth
j PARTICULARLY SERIOUS IN SOUTH AMERICA
and increase in jobs (seeGraph
Nearly 32 million people entered the group
i of the economically active urban
GRAPH1
population.Only 9.1million of them
51 Annual Growth Rate Unemployment Rate
obtained formal employment,while almost
14 1 20 million were occuped in the informal
sector (Graph2).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
M& and CentralA m e m ll South Amerlca :INSUFFICIENT GENERATION OF of employment is particularly negative.
i JOBS HAS INCREASED
FOR SOCIETIES,THIS HAS ’ UNEMPLOYMENT AND INFORMAL
PRODUCED N M I CHALLENGES FOR j SECTOR EMPLOYMENT IN URBAN
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.

UNEMPLOYMENT CONTINUED TO AFFECT i

RELATIVELY MORE WOMEN, YOUNG j
PEOPLE, AND PEOPLE FROM LOW AND i
MIDDLE INCOME LEVELS i
al Sector
and of the 29 mlllio
generated between 7
1999,almost 20 mill G M 3
In the infwmal secto
informal &tor characteristics of urban unemployment for the

S o u w ECLAC special tabulationsof household sulveys

in the respecbve countnes.

AIstatistical information canes from

various editions of Social Panorama
ofLatin America,an annual
publication of ECLAC. Born Men Women Young 1st 2nd 3rd 4” 5th
saxes 1524 Quintile Quintile Quinhle Quinble Quinble
mofw
Source. ECLAC speclal tabulabonsof household
surveys in the respective countries.
14
 THE SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin America and the Caribbean and its influenceon the development of education

To this are added some aspects linked

to education,which is the subjectthat
concerns us today,which were also
j RAPID INCREASE IN THE negative.During the 199Os,there was a
j SUPPLY OF SKILLED HUMAN
I RESOURCES significant improvement in the training of
qualified resources in the region (Graph4),
i particularly improvementsfor women,
GRAPH 4
whose training levels particularly increased
(Graph 5).This has doubtlessly required a
notable effort on the part ofLatin American
9,o and Caribbean societies.Nevertheless,
8,O
J progress achieved in secondary and higher
2 7,O
c education lag behind those of developed
6,O
!
? countries that are members of the OECD
-
9 58
and the industrialized countries of Asia
4,O
c
3,O (Graph 6).Progress achieved in Latin
0
5 2,o America does not even accompany the
4 l,o growth in these areas in these two large
0.0
Population Unskilled Technically University
groups of countries.
between 25 population trained trained
and 59 years professionals
ofage

*
..................... GRAPH5 Changing trends in the urban population, 25 to 59 years of age possessing
WOMEN ARE INCREASINGLY technical or Drofessionaltraining, by gender. 1990-1999
BEING TRAINED (averageannual rate of variation)
Nicaragua
El Salvador
Mexico
Honduras
Ecuador
i THE COVERAGE OF EDUCATION HAS Venezuela
j INCREASED,BUT LAGS BEHIND THAT
i OF ASIA AND OF THE OECD Guatemala
1.'
Paraguay
Colombia
Chile
Panama
i Costa Rica
GRAPH 6 Argentina
Brazil
Secondary Education
Uruguay

All countries
a
E 100
=E
0,o 5,O 10,o 15,O 20,o 25,O 30,O
50
:
w
c o o
3
(3
Latin America Asia OECD

Higher Education

8 801

5 Latin America Asia OECD

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 15

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 (4.3million
technical and 3.6million professional training). W e may distinguish three major sources
in terms of the under-utilizationof qualified labor.First,there is open unemployment, BETWEEN 1997AND 2001, LEVELS j
the high rates of which for prolonged periods reflect the inability of economies in the OF WELL-BEING IN LATIN AMERICA j
DID NOT IMPROVE .I j
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
i
American societies continue to demonstrate a great inability
tllAcH7
to adequately take advantage of their population possessing
knowledge and skills.
Second,many of the professionally and technicallytrained Percentage of poor and extremely poor persons
I
people entering the labor market for the first time obtained
50
jobs that did allow them to put into practice the knowledge
that they acquired during their formative years. They therefore 40

hold jobs that do not correspond to their levels of training and

that do not pay back the investment made by them,their families,
10
1:
and society.Finally,this group,as well as other job candidates,
become discouraged and abandon their job search.They make U
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 a/ ilguraa for 2OOO and 2001 am based on pmjedions.

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
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 Size of the poor and extremely poor populations
poverty. In periods during which there is economic growth,jobs are generated .fI I
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 indicatethat 43% of the Latin American population
is poor,and 18.6% extremely poor (Graph 7).That is,more than
214,000,000people are below the povery line (Graph 8).In 2002,
an additional 10 million people joined the ranks of the poor.

16
 THE SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin America and the Caribbean and Its influenceon the develooment of education
W e 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 householdsthat reportthat 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
Latin America (14countries) annual average variation of GDP per
P
a"
Countries
al Urban areas
It is importantto note in addition,that
in regard to the poverty rate,there are
quite dissimilar situations in Latin America
(Graph9).W e 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-existingsituation.Finally,
a third group of countrieshas,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....... .
SIMILARGROWTH
RATES PRODUCED
DIFFERENTVARIATIONS
IN POVERTY LEVELS
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 17
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 conditionswhat
happens in Latin America,but does not
determine what happens.There are
degrees of freedom that allow public
policies carried out by governmentsto
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
GRAPH 1 1
Percentage fullfillrnent of the goal between 1990and 2000
Venezu
-100% -80% -60% 40% -20% 0%
18
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-halfthe 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 countriesin 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).
BY THE YEAR 2000,NO COUNTRY i
HAD ATTAINED ME MORE j
DEMANDING GOAL OF REDUCING i
TOTAL POVERTY BY ONE-HALF :
Porcenbjede curnplimiento de la rneta entre 1990y 2000
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
-60% -40% -20% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
 THE SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin America and the Caribbeanand 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 j THE CHALLENGE OF ECONOMIC
i DEVELOPMENT, IN ORDER TO
achieve given current conditions.On the j ATrAIN BOTH GOALS, IS NOT
i EXCESSIVE FOR THE REGION,
other hand,countries in the region with j ALTHOUGH IT IS PMCTICALLY
i IMPOSSIBLEFOR COUNTRIES WITH
less poverty may meet this new goal j HIGH LEVELS OF POVERTY
without difficulty by maintaining the rates t
at which they have been growing during GRAPH 13

the past decade (Graph 13).

Given that in 2002 and 2002 regional
growth was negative,these projections Latin America: GDP growth rates necessary for reducing the
poverty level of 1990 by one-half,2000,
should be corrected so that growth in the (annualaverage)
coming years can compensate for the 8
TOTAL G D P
losses so produced.This will requre that
the region as a whole grow at an annual - 7
a16
2 5
rate of 3.2% in order to reduce poverty r 4
$ 3
by one-half(thegoal suggested by 0 2
1
ECLAC)and at an annual rate of 2.7% 0
in order to accomplish the reduction in Latm America Countnes wrth Countries with Countneswith less
greatest poverty moderate poverty poverty
extreme poverty established by the
Millenium Goal (Graph 14). G D P PER CAPITA
I

NEVERTHELESS, SMALL i Br0 4

3
IMPROVEMENTS IN THE
DISTRIBUTION OF INCOME MAKE j $ 2
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR i ( 3 1
GROWTH IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE i n
POVERTY REDUCTION GOALS i Latin America Meswth less
LESS DEMANDING j DOVertV
i
GRAPH 14

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

Extreme Poverty
I

H
5
f

5
f

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 19

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.
The first factor that wields influence
on the distribution of income is the
distribution of property itself,the
distribution of which is even worse than
that ofincome.One of the possibilities,
then,for improving the distribution of
income is through changes in the way
the property is distributed.Each society
should assesswhether political conditions
exist for moving forward in this sense.
20
GRAPH 15
........*
......,-.._
.
LatinAmerica (17countries):
partidpation in total income of the
40% poorest households and of
the 10% weatthiest households,
1999 a/(hpercentages)
Dominican Republic
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 socialand political
actors of Latin American societies believe
that this would be acceptable in terms
of values.
Argentina bl
Honduras Gu atema Ia
I - 40% poorest -- 10% weatmiest 1
Source.ECLAC.based on special tabulations
ofhcusehddswveysoftherespectlvemn~
a/Househdds ofthe 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.
i
Fourthly,there is the factor of
occupation.Poor households have fewer
income providers and they have more
members;that is,their occupational
densifyis 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
occupationaldensity 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.
 THE SOCIAL SITUATION in Latin America and the Caribbean and its influenceon the development ofeducation

Latin America (17 countries):public spending on education as a

percentage of GDP;1990-91and 1998-99
GRAPH16 4...

Latin America (Iycountries):public spending on i

education per inhabitant 1990-91and 1998-99 GRAPH 17
(in 1997 dollars)
Argentina
Uruguay
Chile
Panama
Brazil
Mexico
Costa Rica

1
Venezuela
Colombia
LATIN AMERICA b/ Paraguay
0,O 10 20 3.0 4,O I 3 Bolivia a/
Source:ECLAC. Division of Social Deveioment. database on social Peru
expenditures Dominican Republic
a/The initial figurecorresponds to the 1994-95average El Salvador a/
bl Arithmetic average forcountries,excluding Bolivia and Ei Salvador Guatemala
Honduras
Nicaragua
LATIN AMERICA b/
0 50 100 150 200
250 300 350 400 450
Source:ECLAC, Division of Social Development,database on social expenditures.
a/The initial figurecorresponds to the 1994-95average.
Finally,one always hears of social b/Arithmetic average for countries,excluding Bolivia and El Salvador.
spending as an instrument through which
one can improve distribution.It should .
....
....
...
...
... *
... GRAPH 18 Latin America (8 countriesa):distribution of social
be noted that during the 199Os,social IN SPITE OF THE HIGH IMPACT OF expenditures,less social security and on social security,
SOCIAL SPENDING ON THE 20% within household quintiles (totalvolume of spending = 100)
spending increased notably in the region, POOREST SEGMENT,THE 20% RICHEST a 25,O 1
although there is an enormousdispersion OBTAINS A SIMILAR VOLUME OF E
c
3
.
. .
..

RESOURCES f
V 20,o
between countries.This may be seen 2
both in the indicator spending on * '5U 15,O
0
education as a percentage of GDP P
(Graph 16),and in spending per
:
C
10.0
0
inhabitant(Graph 17).Some countries -46 5,O
spend US$1,600per person,while others
spend only US$lOO.Leaving aside these
"."
n n
Quintile 1 Quintile 2 Quintile 3 Quintile 4 Quintile 5

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.
Therefore,in order to improve income Source.ECLAC,Social Development Division database on
distribution,difficulties exist that stern social expenditures
a/Arithmetical average for Argentina. Bolivia, B
from difficulties in changing underlying Colombia,Costa Rica,Ecuador,and Uruguay
factors in the distribution,and also
because public resources for social
programs do not have the redistributive
impact that are intended to have. conditionsfor improving economic
Returning to the subject of education. performance by improving human capital
Within the region,there is a consensus and permitting its incorporation into the
regardomg the crucial role of education, productive process utilizing new
both for economic growth as well as for technologieswhich make the economy
improving well-beingand for moving more competitive.But that is not sufficient.
toward the construction of democratic Other conditionsmust be present
citizenship as well.One may temper -outside of education- so that
optimism a bit by stating that education development can take place and for
is a necessary,but not sufficientcondition. society to take best advantage of the
On the one hand,it contributes to create input from education.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 21

 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 THE COVERAGE OF EDUCATION
I INCREASES,BUT LAGS BEHIND
I W

nC
i THAT OF ASIA AND THE OECD
rn
00
85 i
80 Secondary Education G W W 20
75 [ai985 mis197]
70
85
Bo
55
Ada OECD

sb Higher Education
BE0

P
E"
$40
520
t o THERE WERE SIGNIFICANT i
i
" LalinAmecica Asia OECD
REDUCTIONS INI SCHOOL DROP-OUT :
._.
DURING THE 19905 i

Thus,it is said that education is a Urban school drop out a m o n g young people 1 5 1 9 years i
of age, 1990-99 G W 21
redistributive channel.But education is (percentagerata calculated in regard to the total of ywng people
who entered the education system)
a good related to position.The Honduras
G u atem aI a
advantagesobtained from the years of Mexm
Venezuela
education achieved are related to Nicaragua
Uruguay
advances achieved in parallel by other P~guaY
El Salvador
people who,in the employment costa Rca
Ecuador
marketplace,are competitors.This Panama
cdombia
requires education systems to change Bradl
their traditional goals.The level of ArsentM
Domhican Republic
PerU
education that a person has to possess wlile
in order have a high probability of not BdMa rn 1990
slipping into poverty at some time in life Arithmebcal average I 1999
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
is 12years of formal educaton.Therefore,
it is no longer sufficientfor education ..
...
...........
...
.. * M n
THAT W A S M O R E
systems to provide a primary education M A R K E D IN
RURAL AREAS Rural school drop out a m o n g young people from 15 to 19 years ofage,1990-99 (perantage
-as urged by the millenium goals rate calculated using the total number ofyoung people who entered the education system)
established by the United Nations- but H on d ura8
Guatemala
rather that the challenge lies in assuring Nicaragua
access to and completion of secondary Mexlm
education for all,as stated by UNESCO El Salvador
Paraguay
in the invitation to this meeting. costa Rlca
Cdmbia
penr
PM9ma
Bredl
Chile
Domimican Republic

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 Influenceon the development of education

. NEVERTHELESS, DROP OUTS

CONTINUE T O BE CONCENTRATED
IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL YEARS

v
-- It should be recognized that notable
GRAPH 23 Distribution of the tot4 number of school drop outs at different stages of schooling
(percentages)

progress has been made in providing

universal coverage of education in Latin
America and the Caribbean.Coverage
$a 60.0
e
U
c
50.0
..
urban areas

I 60,B

50,o
rural areas

for primary schooling rose from 88% to

93% (Graph 19)and accessto secondary
schooling reached 70%. Urban-rural
differences have decreased,and it is in
the rural area that the greatest progress
During AtUmend Dunng Dunng During Attheend During During
has been made (Graph20),which favor a
pnmary ofprimary lower hgher primaly ofprimary lower higher
school school secondary secondary shwl school sewndaly secondary
males and femalesalike.There has also school school shod schod
been a significant reduction in school Total school drop out rde for urban youth,
by income strata, 1999 GRAPH24 4
drop-out(Graph21),which was more AN0 AFFECTS PRIMARILY
Guatemala THE LOWEST INCOME
marked in rural areas (Graph22). Honduras SECTORS ...
Uruguay
Nevertheless,education systems Mexico
Nicaragua
continue to be deficient in their ability to Costa Rica
Paraguay
retain children in primary school (Graph Venezuela
El Salvador
23),a fact that affects the lower income Ecuador
sectors (Graph 24),reinforcing the chain Panama
Brazil
I
Argentina
of inequalitythat begins in infancy (Graph Colombia
25).This involves high costs in terms of Chile
PeN
future income (Graph26).It is necessary, Dominican Republic

therefore to guarantee the achievement Anthmetical average -

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
of the new objectives in education. 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
serioius social repercussions,the
challenges facing the education sector
continue to be great,especially because
the goals represent a move into
: ...ENHANCING THE uncharted territory.But the atmosphere
/ INEQUALITYCHAIN FROM of this Intergovernmental Meeting of the
j INFANCY ONWARD
SCHOOL DROP OUT Education Project permits one to be
INVOLVES HIGH COSTS IN
TERMS OF FUTURE optimistic in regard to the commitment
i EMPLOYMENT INCOME
and political will to move forward on
GRAPH 25
v pending themes
GRApHm
Earty school drop out (dunng pnmary school)a m o n g
urban young people, by income strata. 1999 Losses of income associated with school drop out by
gender and by groups of countnes
70,096 ~ ! Percentage that salary wwld be increased mth
_. I -
2 more years 3 more years of 4 more years of
600% UptO study u p to study u p to
5o o% 1 OfSW
com3etin
secondaryI &
competing lower
sewndaly school
unnpletmg pnmary
shod
U%

1
.U

40.0%

Chile
Ecuador
Panama

","I"
males
!
Arithmetical average Cwntries with Countries wlth Countries with
50 40 30 20 10 0 10 20 30 40 50 low drop out moderate drop out high drop out

EDUCATIONFORALL. 23
 EDUCATION 2000
On knowledge and learning for the
new millennium
“There is no question that there are deep analogies between mindlike artefacts and human minds. There are also deep disanalogies.
The deepest of these,w e think,is thefunctional one: how thought is shaped to serve our intentions and the settings in which w e
are compelled to operate as culture-relianthuman 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 comprehensivedevelopment.
Our knowledge-driveneconomies
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 closelytied-upwith
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?
’ Bruner J., Goodnow,J. J., and Austin.G.A.(1990),A Study of Thinking.New Brunswick and London:TransactionPublishers.
Roberto Carneiro
1
Consultantfor the World Bank,OECD,UNESCO,
and the Council of Europe. Professor of the
Universidade Cat6lica Portuguesa.
Vocational identities emerge as the
central tenet of autonomy and self-
determination.Identity-enhancing
organisationsand 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
tensionsare the leversof 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.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 25
PRELAC Journal

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-dimensionalapproach:
past,present,future.A transitional perception
of new learning trajectories begins with a
Clockwork Orange state that is slowly evolving
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 capabilitiesand a sense of
global ethics.Greater knowledge interdependency,or the
dream of a global learning village,is contingent on our ability
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-activemetacognitive competencies.
The paper ailudes to four policy directionsand
specifically to the challengeof putting educators
at the forefront of the learning society.Learning
schoolsare organisationally committed to a new
teacher professionalism fostering faculty learning
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-termcontractsthat evolve,both by culture and
democratic consent,into moral precepts and implicit social
laws.

:ti on Seldom has humanity shared Perilsfacing global governance reinforce

such a deep sense of urgency.
Against a legacy of notable progress
we shoulder a growing burden made up
of issuesthat vex humanity daily -ethnic
conflict,warfare,endemic poverty,
environmentaldepletion,plague-stricken
continents,organised crime,anomic
conduct at the heart of modern cities.
Indeed,there is a well-documented
catalogueof 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
~ ~
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
communitiesand individuals;likewise,
education is the unique provider for
sustainable human prosperity.
Everything operates as if the
perfectibilist principle has regained

increasingly wedged into a maze of confidence:however uncertain and

global anxiety.The plight of suffering perilous the context,the quality of human
fellow citizensof the world occupies ever- life and the limitsof human comprehension
increasing proportions of our daily news. can undergo indefinite improvement.

26
 EDUCATION 2000.On knowledge and learnlng

In a knowledge-drivenworld,where cultures remains ultimately associated

the economy itself has turned into an
ecognomx human intelligence inequities
and differential opportunitiesto 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 singleout one domain
of human endeavour that escapes this
paradigm? Iseconomic growth separable
from human development and from the
accumulation of intangible assets? W ill
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
with their learning and evolving
capabilities? Can social institutions -as
corporate organisations- succeed in
assimilating advanced adaptive and
generative learning functions?
Our new agenda is fraught with
learning conditionalities.
The generation and sustainability of
learning communities,learning cities,
learning governments,learning
organisations,lifelong learning individuals
and ever-learningschools,constitutes
the overriding challengeto be undertaken
in the wake of a new millennium.
Knowledge and learning have only
just begun to operate together.It is
expected that they will partner even
furtherto determine our common
predicament.

Human capital and

knowledge management The sheer fact that the human capital
The dominion of discourse -which has been dominant over the lastfive decades
economic thinking has acquired a second momentum is in itself significant.The
rise of a knowledge-driveneconomy,and the concomitant
premium allotted to intangibleassets,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.
Never before have our developed societies been grounded
in such high-levelsof 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’sgoing wrong?

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 27

 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 societiesexpress in various ways a mounting
concern with the inertia of educational systems to arrive at
higher standardsof achievement,relevance and outcomes.
Comparative assessment exercises have thrown light on the
existence of wide disparitiesacross systems and countries.
W e shall not enter into a discussion on how fair or unfair these
critiques may be.In any case,disagreementsare compounded
when attempting to discuss remedies or when designing a
rationale for structural reform.
One inescapablefact isthat economic priorities have tended
to subsume both the education and learning enterprisesand
their internal fabric during most of our terminal century.
Human capital - or its post-modernsurrogate 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 systemsthroughout most of the 20th century.Some
prominent international organisations have championed in
leading the new debate on human capital.
“The knowledge,skills,competenciesand 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 creativesearch:
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
competenciesand 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-upwith that of
competencies.Knowing is a necessary condition but only
knowing-howprovides for the sufficient complement required
by’an industrious and promethean society.
* Learning:The Treasure Within (Reportto UNESCO ofthe lnternational
Delors et ai.(1996),
Commission on Education for the Twenty-firstCentury)Paris: UNESCO.
28
The UNESCO Commission on Education forthe 21st Century2
associates this trend with the vibrant demand for higher skills
at all levels:
“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
vocational training,of social behaviour,of an
aptitude for teamwork, and of initiative and a
1
readiness to take risks,’.
In the utilitarian legacy of the 20th century problem-solving
and innovation-drivensociety,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
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-formallyacquired
competencies(work-relatedskills).
6. Fine-tuninglearning and un-learningstrategies- 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.

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 knowledgeambition?
Do I understand the social networks that
add value to my knowledge pool? Have
I a strategy to bolster my working self?
What traitsdo I value as a lifelong learner?
Vaulting volatility marks our working
context.The market puts a premium on
multicompetenciesand mobility.The
spread of tele and e-workcalls on novel
self-managementcompetencies.
Likewise,the central tenet of autonomy
and self-determinationresorts to the
critical issue of personal and vocational
identity.
These questions do help us
understand the extent to which charting
a fully-fledgedvocational identity is a
formidable enterprise.Unless
organisations are identity enhancersthey
will struggleto 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.
W e make use of Jerome Bruner’s
illuminating distinction between two critical
IandscaDesin his analysis of the human
condition:consciousness and action.
Bruner,J. (1986),Actual Minds,Possible
Worlds.Cambridge.Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press.
EDUCATION 2000.On knowledge and learning
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 relevantorganisations,
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 stemsfrom 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 consciousnessand
vocational identity learning lacks purpose,
work is remotely associated with personal
developmentand the drive to learn is
erratic.
Intent is the direct consequence of
vocational identity.Professional fulfilment
is its main outcome.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 29
PRE LAC Journal

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

Ever shorter creative destruction cycles are compressing the time-lengthof

competitive advantagesresulting from innovation.The Schumpeterian description
of business cycles applied to the Internetage 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-sawycommunities is
"timeto 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 "figureit all out at the top".Empowering
the individual learner and agent of change becomes the challenge.Flexibility and
generativity both at the institutionaland individual levels become evermore critical.
P.Senge4 spells it out in a neat formulation:

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

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-exploreand experiment rather than conservativelyto
avoid mistakes.Conversely,our primary institutionsof education have been designed
to teach and to control.The same reasoning applies to our prevailing systemsof
management,which are quite-frequentlyeager 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 .competinghypotheses.
From Peter M.Senge's "TheLeader'sNew Work:Building
Learning Organisations"in:Mintzberg.H.and Quinn,
-
J.B.(1 996),The StrategyProcess Concepts,Contexts,
Cases,New Jersey:Prentice Hall International.

30
 EDUCATION 2000.On knowledge and learnlng

Adaptive learning Creative instead of merely adaptive

Responding to environmentalchange learning demands a greater investment
Coping with threats in seminality Valuing ideas that establish
Reacting to symptoms new paradigms is the lever to bypass
Capturing trends and incorporating the binary instinct of the human machine
early signs of change (Claude Levi-Strauss).Seminal patterns
Eliciting flexibility as prime value of thought will tend to by-passlinear
reasoning;they will always prefer
Generative learning alternativethinking or non-standard
Expanding capabilities approaches when addressing complexity
Enhancing creativity or the unexpected.
New ways of looking at the environment Seminality creates Meme5 - units of
Addressing underlying causes meaning nurturing the “universalsof
Thinking differently culture”minutely listed by George
Anticipating futures Murdock in his monumental
categorisation.These,in turn,are critical
to the formation of semantic memory -
The best blend of adaptive and
the lasting patterns serving as anchors
generative learning remains a matter of
to interpretationand enhancers of
scholarly dispute.Adaptive skills are
meaning making.
useful in a context of constant but
For centuries,education thrived on
continuous or incremental change;
an industrial paradigm.Learning,in turn,
generative capacitiesdefine the leaders
appeals to a service-mindedstrategy
in the response to radical innovation and
designed to maximise knowledge
systems depart swiftly from notorious
acquisition.
disequilibrium in search of a new state
Switching from the industrial mode of
of equiI i brium .
teaching to learning-friendlyschools and
In any case,one outcome is evident.
institutionswill require a lot more than
If our schoolsare to evolve into genuine
the customary resolve to produce simple
learning organisations rote adaptability
or incremental change.
should not outstrip generative learning
concerns.The comprehensibility of a
multidimensional universe and the skills
to unravel complex systems are
contingenton a fresh mindset,that which
remains open to discontinuous reasoning
and prepared to welcome quantum leaps
toward discovery.

M e m e 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

PRELAC Journal
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 Philosophyof the Inductive
Sciences.
32
While recognising the omnipresenceof
economicconsiderationssurrounding knowledgemanagement
theoriesone could not ignore some potent signs of disquietude.
it is now commonplaceto 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“actionlearning”;and resorting to decentralised
networks of institutions.
Three archetypes of new knowledge will shape the next
stages in knowledgetheories.They form a web of 3 C’s:Chaos,
Complexity,Consilience.Let us briefly allude to them as prime
sources of new thinking.
“Newton’smathematic organisation of the middle world -from
molecules to stars- reveals serious defficiencies in a number
of respects”.
This is how Van Doren6 introduceschaos 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’sown words.Disorder
is not necessarily contrary to the attainment of a new order
state.Quite often the former acts as a pre-requisiteto the latter.
Complex thinking reclaims a new canon in thinking and
knowledge management. It springs from tentativesto explain
how complexity can follow non-linearand discontinuous paths
to arrive at higher orders.This would be the case with P.
Krugman’spunctuated equilibrium theories of self-organising
systems7and with Kaufman’sNK models in molecular and
evolutionary biology.Complexity places itself at the “edgeof
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“jumpingtogether”
of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-basedtheory
across disciplines to create a commonground of explanation.
In line with the Ionian Enchantment of Ancient Greece,
consilienceseeks the key to the unity of knowledge;taking on
board the fundamentalpremise 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.

A search into the realm of this evolving universe allows us
to discern five paradigmatic mutations.Among other key
features this structuralchange 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-achieversand low-skilledin successive
generations.
The way to inclusive knowledge
CLASSICAL APPROACH
What to teach
How to teach
Initial education for a lifetime
fragmented knowledge
Status-riddenknowledge
"Have-nots"
Constructivism sheds new light on the role ofintersubjectivity
vis-&vis social learning:knowledge is elevated to the category
of personal and social construct,indivisible from cultural
conditionalitiesand their forcefulinterplay.The road to knowledge
and cognition is thus contingent on memory,history,language,
ethnicity and affection.
Culture,in itself,acts as a powerful marker ofknowledge
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.
"Knowledgeis 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 comprehensivelearning is a true
cultural - perhaps multicultural - adventure,epitomised in
democratic achievements such as freedom of thought and of
opinion.
EDUCATION 2OOO. On knowledge and learning
NEW APPROACH
Where to learn
111)
When to learn
8 Y
Flexible learning throughout life
111) Holistic knowledge
4Inclusiveknowledge
II) "Haves"
W e have reached,at this junction,nothing other than a
largely expected consequence.The sourcesof 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 sourceof unfair competition and unequal
distribution.
Once education is regarded as the fundamental lever of
societal progress or regress,inclusivenessturns 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-abilitygroups 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.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 33
PRELAC Journal

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 fUtUre of Learning
A big picture
These contrasting views lay down the ground for a broad vision on
the future of learning.
Departing from Education and flowing through the Knowledge-drivenage 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 intersectionsof three key variables:
paradigm shifts;delivery modes;driving forces.
In turn,each of these key variables is allowed to declinate longitudinallythroughout
time.Thus,they are permitted to unfold into three dimensions:past;present;future.
A summation of the 3 by 3 resulting combinationscould be briefly described in
the following matrix.

a) Paradigm shifts:from industry (past),to globalisation (presentthrust), and moving

toward a New Rennaissance period (utopian vision).
Delivery modes:from uniform,rote systems (past),to segmented distribution
(presentmarket-driventrend),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-ledarrangements (presentmove), which,in turn,
should give way to empowered communities(utopianvision 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.

34
 EOUCATION 2OOO. On knowledge and learnlng

Hence,our concept of a Learning Society as the realisation

of the unity of learning.It is a vision made up of robust learning
communitiesfully empowered to conduct the business of
education and training in accordance with their communal
identities” . A civil society of this calibre exercises its
prerogativesto the farthest limits of subsidiarity.That is to say,
any State intervention is contained within the primordial rights
of aware and self-determiningcommunities.

Segmented Market

Clockwork
Orange
Uniform 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 knowledgeas a
panacea and a new consumption commodity to be managed
in our daily portfolio of conveniences.
Our Western-biasedhuman 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 “akind 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 Caslellsconceptsof cmrnunal
identities end cultures of reslslancethat are shaping a
new tnlernalional order See Castells M (1997)The
InformationAge Economy Sooety and Culfure
Vol I The R~seof the Nerwork Safely
Vol /I he Power ofIdenfffy
Vol 111 End of Millennium
Massachusetts,Oxford Blackwell Publishers Inc

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 35

PRELAC Journal
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 weaknessto which many of the great
and giftedare most susceptible.The
signsof Nemesis are all around us today.
Just read the daily press for documented
evidence.
Insofar as globalisationimposes 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.
Bridging the gulf between knowledge
and learning equates the way to
overcome a tragic flaw of our modern
age.
The more knowledgeseems
generalised,insofaras information
appears to become accessible to all at
the reach of our bare fingertips,the gulf
separating a developed world and an
underdeveloped sub-worldwidens every
day when measured by effective learning
opportunities.
' Delors el aI op CII
,
36
between knowledge and
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
inequalitiesare fundamental breaches
in the social brokerage systems of
information.
The lessons delivered by our recent
past show that welfare gaps stand a
strong chance of widening in the new
economy.W e need to move beyond the
technologicalfallacy 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.
Narrowing the gap
learning is the w a y to
overcome the tragic
imperfection of our
modern age
Debtswapsfor education,better flows
of scientistsand researchers,re-orienting
developmentaid to learning and human
development,democratising access to
a digital culture and to the use of ICT,
investing in brain-gainfavouring the
poorest regions and countries - these
constitute some of the priorities to be.
followed by international and national
organisationscharged with the
responsibilities of conducting co-
operation and development policies.In
particular,e-learningsoftware,content
and services should enhance learning
opportunities in the educationally
underserved communitiesand regions
ratherthan targeting the already affluent
markets.
The UNESCO Commission for
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
constructin a planet made smaller and
closer.
 EDUCATION 2000.On knowledge and learning

Sharing a common sense of belonging to society is innate to the human condition

- -we continuously display “greatintensity 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, ‘humansin society,they produce
society in order to live’... W e cannot know ourselves except by knowing
ourselves in relation to others”.

Otherwise,what isfurthermore peculiar about human sociality
is its surprising variability.The diversity of humans and of human
social life is infinite;it surpassesany codifiablecapacity 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 recognisesthe 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
Foundations of a new internationalorganisations- is highly contingent on the formation of vibrant cultures,
social contract both at individual and societal levels.
Continuous learning poses a formidable challenge to all knowledge-driven
societies.Seldom are individuals equipped with the skills necessary to self-organise
and self-managelong-termknowledge paths.Therefore,underpinning metacognitive
competenciesand skills from the very early stagesof formal education is becoming
all the more important.
Learning to organise multiple sources of information,learning to learn from
experience (experientialknowledge),dealing with the social dimensions of knowledge
formation,learning to self-regulatethe 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.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 37

PRELAC Journal
A comprehensivevision of personal
learning as vitally importantto all stages
of one’slife span will address three
different developmentgoals:
1. Personal and cultural development -
related to sense,meaning-making
and spiritual wealth.
2. Social and community development
- related to citizenship,participation
and sociality.
3. Professional developmentand
sustainableemployability-related to
production,job satisfaction,material
welfare and economic pursuit.
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 developmentneeds 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”.
38
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-timeentitlements for
all after compulsory education.
2. Carefully examining the strong
featuresof the dual system and
extending its strengthsto overcome
the current “trustgap”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 learningstrategies.
Schools,universitiesand teachers
have throughout time been the
“knowledgepillars”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,
irreplaceablefactories of new knowledge
and homes of advanced learning.
Teachers meet the core requirements to
occupy the forefront of lifelong learning
enterprises.The all-learningsociety relies
on teachers as leaders,not laggards.
The traditional associanisttheory
-brilliantly designed under Thorndike’s
geniusinfluenced the entire pedagogical
preferences of the 20th century.Under
these assumptions,drill and practice
coupled with bonds and rewards would
sufficeto 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 instructionsdesigned by
curriculum experts.
New learning theories emphasise a
“newcore”constituted by knowledge
constructivism and learnerswho actively
engage in self-managementof cognitive
processes.
Intelligenceceases being treated as
a natural and inelastic endowment.
Research showsthat long-termimmersion
in demanding environments can favour
the acquisitionof robust “habitsof 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.
 EDUCATION 2000.On knowledge and learning

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 themselvesto constantly expanding a package of core skills.
The following diagram summarisessome 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 about curriculum resources

Knowledge on human development Knowledge about educ.techno1
Knowledge about learning Knowledge about collaboration

\ REFLECTIVITY

TEACHING
STRATEGIES

L.ResnickI4 phrases the challengesof a new teacher “Although professionals in many fields are required to
professionalism in a particularly eloquent way:
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-basedenvironment of nested learning
communities,where ability is seen as an expandable repertoire of
skills and habits, professionals are defined as individuals w h o 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

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 39

PRELAC Journal

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 canvasthat the theorists
ofthe 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 thisjuncture,
another remarkable human trait:that,
unlike common animal sociality,human
social existence stems from the genetic
propensity to nurture long-termcontracts
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-termfriendship,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 A N D DUTIES

EDUCATION AS A RIGHT LEARNING AS A DUlY" '

During an addressto high-rankingrepresentativesof the European social partners, "The social contract is mostly an
assembled in Thessaloniki,we proposed the following concept15: implicit agreement,accepted by all
parties concerned. The post-warsocial
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 constitutionalpowers.
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 contractualapproach, 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/edMI the
European labour market prospects and polrcy options,
Thessaloniki CEDEFOP

40

Conscious citizenship lies at the root
of participatory democracy.Participation
demands a threshold level of social
capital and trust capable of upholding
higher-ordercommon 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
allowancefor 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 institutionsto the marrow
and the seedbeds of societal
governance.Education establishments
and educators are at the forefrontof 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.
EDUCATION 2000.On knowledgeand learning
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 faceonce again a
formidable challenge:Delivering a new
Millennium of advanced knowledge,
lifelonglearning 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 w e share a c o m m o n 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’swords:
“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 1980sand 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 economiesto
the world and to privatize public services,Latin America’s
incomedistribution -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-AmericanDevelopment

Bank for sponsoring the CRESUR project that produced
many of the research results cited in this paper and an
earlier paper on educationalindicatorsthat also served as
the basis for this paper.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 43

PRELAC Journal
Within this context,educational
systems in Latin America also changed.
Many of these changes were intended
to produce greater equity in societies
becoming increasinglyinequitable.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
reformsthat 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
(decentralizationor greater parent
participation,for example),on changes
in financing (privatization,for example),
44
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, during the period when tests were made
for example),as the most ways to make
education "better,"there is little,if any, minimal increases in average test scores
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 for example,developing countries in Asia.
most important 'reform'of the educational But this is not the case either.Latin
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 recruitmentand 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 improvementsin overall
student academic performance in
primary and secondary schools.This has
apparently not been the case--atleast,
there is no evidence that student
achievement has improved.In countries
that have been doing student
assessmentsover time,such as Chile,
comparable(1 994-2000), resultssuggest
(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,
American countrieswhose students
participated in the Third International
Mathematics and Science Survey
(TIMSS)and OECD'sPlSA test performed
far below European and Asian countries.
For example,Carnoy and Loeb (mol) show that the most
imporlanl explanalionlor whetner a U S stale nas
mplemen!ed 'strong' accountabilitymeasures is the
percentage ofminomy studentsin the stale'sschools The
need Io implemenlaccounlabillty systems IStherelorepartly
the resu'l ofexpanded proportions 01 minorily S'Jdenls in
seCondary education Amher example ISChile AS a resun
ofas enormous expansion ofsecondary education sime
1980,Cn le was pushed to maxc oprtanl cu'ricula. relorms
In secondaryeducation in (he 1990s

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 suggestthat
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 1980sand 1990shave
not worked to improve students’
educational performancebut may have
increased the inequality of performance
among low-incomeand high-income
students.
ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS, EQUITY,AND QUALITY of Education in Latin America
Even if average educational
performance (testscores) is not
improving,the performance of some
groups -namely disadvantaged
students- may be improving.This is
important,especially if their
improvement correspondsto particular
reforms that can be identified as
responsible for the change.
Certain other “supplyside”strategies
also are likely to lead to eventual
improvementin 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
countriesare 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 individualsmore equitably among
schools,and creating a level of
commitment among teachersto
improving student performance.Based
on current research,I will that we can
be quite specific about the kinds of
strategiesto improve teaching that
work.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 45
P R E LAC Journal

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 governmentsin 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 statesare not increasing their educational
investmentas a resultof 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 (McEwanand 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 schoolsto 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.W e should remember

46
 ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS, EQUITY,AND QUALITY ofEducation in Latin America

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 governmentsubsidies.
Privatization in the 1980s may not have lowered or raised
overall studentperformance,but evidence suggeststhat it may
have had a negative effect on low-incomestudents.Indeed,
research shows that low-incomestudent 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 improvementin student performance,and probably
had relativeiy little impact on enrollmentexpansion 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
- Thus,smallerclass sizes often result
are not relevant that
“popular”educational reform strategies
may be important in developed
for Latin America countries but that have questionable
relevanceforthe 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 studentachievement and,more
important,on student attainment (Finn
and Achiiles,1999).But in the Latin
American context,reducing classsize 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
techniquesthat do not become more
effective as the number of students in
the class diminishes.
from a series of factors that make the
schoolsthat 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 residentialsegregation,
“better”public schools(thosewith higher
levels of student performance,
representing higher value added or
larger “peergroup”effects3 )and many
private schoolsattract more students,
filling classes to maximum capacity.
Lesswell-regardedschoolstend to have
classes with fewer students because
the schoolsoperate at less than
capacity.This is precisely what we would
expect in a system governed by choice.

McEwan, 2001

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 47

PRELAC Journal
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 “peergroup”
effects.However,most teachers in Latin
America still teach using the “chalkand
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
conditionsof 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
reflectthe 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 classroomsand perhaps
even a number of rural secondary schools
48
would have been built,creating places ,
Most teachers in
for more pupils in the higher grades of
primary school and in basic secondary Latin America still
school.These places would need to be teach using the
filled.Children would be passed into
higher grades when in the past they
“chalk and talkyy
would have been held back. method, or frontal
Similarly,in the more developed Latin teaching
American countries,the rapid expansion
of secondary education almost
automaticallyimplies lower repetition and
drop out rates in secondaryschools.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 foruniversity education.
Students who graduate have automatic
entrance to free public university,and
this is limited to less than one-fourthof
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 (asin 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.
This is why care should be used in
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-incomegroups,and
therefore work better as an objective for
increasing educational equity.
 ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS,EQUITY,AND QUALITY of Education in Latin America

Targeting educational quality reforms In contrasttostructuralreforms,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-incomerural
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 outcomesfor low income studentswere also effective
in both Argentina and Chile.The P-900program,begun in 1990
in Chile and extended to almost 2,500schools 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-incomestudents attending secondary schools,
also seemed to have positive effects on student outcomes.
Uruguay'sdirect financial assistance to low-scoringschools
(based on the 1996 6th grade evaluation)probably contributed
to a significantincrease in test scores among the countries
lowest-incomestudents (Filgueiraand Martinez,2001).A
targeted voucher plan in Colombia in the 1990s seemed to
have a positive effect on low-incomestudentattainment students
who received vouchers and used them to attend private
(religious)secondary schoolsstayed in school into the higher
grades and were less likely to drop out (Angrist et.al.,2000).4
Such equity-drivenreforms are more successful in raising
student performance than system-widereforms,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 resourcesalready used for
higher income students into a low-incomesituation 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
schoolsthrough a limited targeted voucher program as in
Colombia is much more likely to benefit low-incomestudents
through "peereffect"than a Chilean-typeplan that creates many
new for-profitprivate 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)."Vouchersfor Private
Schooling in Colombia:Evidenceh a Randomized Natural
Experiment."Washington,D.C.:World Bank (mirneo).

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 49

PRELAC Journal

Student attendance in school I want to put special schoolswill have smaller positive or even
emphasis on strategiesthat improve negative peer effect,less effective
student attendance in school.Almost all teachers,fewer students in their classes,
Latin American countriesare past the poorer attendance rates,and lower
stage in which simply increasing the average performance.
percentage of children enrolled in primary Another reason for focusing on
school is a major objective of educational improving student attendance is that it
reform.Having passed this stage, is relatively easy to measure and
however,does not eliminate the problem represents a concrete objective for
of how often students actually come to educators and reformers.For example,
school.Recent research suggests that bola escola,the Brazilian direct payment
parents are more likely to send their scheme for very low-incomeparents is
children to school and adolescents more specificallydesigned to subsidizefamilies
likely to attend school when schooling is to keep children attending school.Chile's
higher quality (Hanushekand Lavy,1994; teacher pay incentive system (SNED)
Bedi and Marshall,1999;Marshall and also includes attendance as one of its
White,2001).This higher quality could objectives.
representhigh 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-sectionstudies measuring the
effect of class size on student
achievement show no significant impact
is probably due to the greater demand
for places in schoolsthat are known to
be good.A school'sreputation 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

50
 ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS,EQUITY,AND QUALITY of Education in Latin America

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'sschools.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
overestimatethe 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'ssuccess 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 expectationsare 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'sschools These differences point to a number of factorsthat are likely
from schools in other Latin American countries.Teachers in to have major impact on educational quality,especially in
Cuba are unlikely to take frequent absences,excused or schools attended by lower-incomechildren and therefore on
unexcused.Cuban primary schools offer more hours of school which educational reformersshould focusas part of the Regional
and even more hours of math per week than schools in most Project.
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).

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 51

 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 absencesare 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 improveteacher
attendance are politically difficult since they confront either
corruptteacher employmentpolicies (forMexico,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).
Holland is an exception to this rule.The Dutch voucher plan
subsidieslow-incomechildren with a voucher 25 percent
largerthan the normal voucheramount.
52
The distributionof teacher “quality”(asmeasured by education,
experience,and test score on evaluations of teacher
knowledge in subject areas) among schools serving lower
and higher-incomestudents 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 suggestthat 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 shiftto 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-incomeschools,since
this represents a transparentshiftofpublic resources to the
poor,a move greatly resisted by middle classes everywhere.
For example,Chile’svoucher plan was designed to pay the
same amount per child regardless of social class.5The 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.
 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 suggeststhat 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-incomestudents would
probably do significantlybetter,but would
higher-incomestudents 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-effectivenesscomparing public
schools,subsidized private schools,and
paid (hightuition)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-incomeschools 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-performingschools.
There are advantages and problems with
incentive schemes based on increasing
value added in the school based on
studenttest 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-serviceeducation,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-secondaryeducation working in
other professions.This is even more often
the case for men,whose opportunities
outside teaching are much greater.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 53
PRELAC Journal
The lower comparativesalaries for
post-secondaryeducated 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 teacherscompared
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
individualsinto teaching,even individuals
with more education than required.This
happened in Mexico in the 1980s,when
many university graduatestrained 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--characteristicof the 1990s
throughout Latin America,recruiting
teachers with post-secondarydegrees
is more difficult,and might mean a decline
in the quality of individuals being drawn To summarize,key factorsconcerning
into teaching.This could be mitigated by teaching that reformers can focus on to
an increased supply of higher educated improve educational quality,mainly for
women entering the labor market low-incomestudents,in the context of
because of changes in values concerning the Regional Project are the following:
women'swork,for example.It also could ........................................ b
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
salariesof teacherswith post-secondary
education are relatively low compared to
those with higher education degrees in
other professions,could face a shortage
of well-qualifiedteachers,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-secondarytrained teachers (and
the supply of newly certified secondary
school teachers)are important indicators
of the potential successof other reforms
to raise student achievement and
attainment.
 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-incomestudents.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 (orshould 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 somecountries or regionswhere
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-incomeschool once asked me,"Howcan we be
expected to increase these students'achievement levels when we only have them
in class for three and one-halfhours 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-incomestudents'achievement.

Paying close attention to the salaries of teachers by level of education compared

to non-teacherswith 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.

Increasingthe content knowledgeof young people entering the teaching profession.

The quality of teacher pre-servicetraining 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?

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 55

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 (Castroand 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 incomeforgone
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.
56
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,suggestshow large
the changes in achievement from
generation to generation have been.
There is no doubt,the OECD shows,that
25 year-oldsin 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-higherlevels
of education may be the most important
thing that governmentscan 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 internationalmath test,but that
average education (numberof years of
schooling in Chile among 15-24year-
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
accommodatethe notion that a much
higher fraction of students will finish a
particular level of schooling,whether this
is primary schooling OFuniversity.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,15-24years 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 shortageof 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
featureof 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 rateswould
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 (Carnoyand
McEwan,1997).But beyond school
construction and supplying teachers,
raising primary completion rates would
require reforms thatwould 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 ofthe spectrum,consider Chile and Mexico’sexpansion of
higher secondary education compared with Uruguay’smuch 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-incomeyouth who would end up as skilled workers,mainly in
Mexican manufacturing industry.Despite dropout rates of 50 percent (aboutthe 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-incomeyouth 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-secondarysystem.And even the post-secondarysystem 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-yeartechnical 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 ofthe Mexican “preparatoria”

level,see Bernard0Naranjo.
PRE LAC Journal

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 significantfraction of Chile’spublic
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-technicalsecondary education,an attempt to improve
secondary education through a concerted program of new
materials,teacher training,improved curriculum,and a major
investment in computersand Internet(ENLACES).As a result,
Chile’scompletion 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 graduateswho could
successfullycomplete 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-incomeyouth,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 institutionsthat must
decide who is “fit” to continueon to higher
education at public expense.Drop out
rates in Uruguay’spreparatorias,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
suggeststhat reform is a necessary part
of any educational expansion and that
the successof 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 (Carnoyand 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.

8

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
considerableevidence 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 scoreson 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’stesting 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 completesa given level of schooling
is that the educational system is probably
organized to reach particular goals
(standardsor 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 (compareChile with
Uruguay), but once given its new
marching orders,it is likely to maintain
average academic achievement even as
the average socio-economicbackground
of the students declines.
ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS,EQUITY,AND QUALITY of Education in Latin America
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 Stateshas 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, 1
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 conceptsimportant
to developing proficiency in these two
subjects.Lower standards allows
teachers to avoid teaching these
concepts to students from lower socio-
economic backgrounds.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 59
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 importantway 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 15-24year-oldswith 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 countriesof 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 attainmentgenerally 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’seducational 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’seducational
system is probably less equitable than
Chile’s,but its income distribution is far
more equal.One “reason”(notcausal,
just explanatory)for Chile’sgreater
income inequality than Uruguay’seven
with greater educational equity in Chile,
is that the payoff to completing university
is much higher in Chile than in Uruguay
(Carnoyet.al.,2001).Accessto 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 incomesof
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
incomesto gain ground on the poor and
middle class.In any case,even as
secondary schooleducation 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
significantimpact 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.
W e have collected a considerableamount
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.

60
 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’sknowledge,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-incomechildren- 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’smath 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
schoolsare increasing their effectiveness.That level would have,in effect,absorbed
students with less cultural capital and brought the new student body to similar
levels ofachievement as past groups.

Increasing growth of enrollmentand 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 studentswith 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-incomestudent attainment,which
will have the singlegreatest educational impact on economic and social opportunities.e

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 61

PREIAC J o d
References
Angrist,Joshua D.,Eric Bettinger,Erik Bloom, Elizabeth King,
and Michael Kremer. (2000)."Vouchersfor Private Schooling
in Colombia:Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment."
Washington, D.C.:World Bank (rnimeo).
Bayardo, Barbara (1 992).Contradictions in the pursuit of
professionalism and unionism:A study of public school teachers
in Mexico.Unpublished Ph.D.dissertation,Stanford University
School of Education.
Bedi,AS. and J.H. Marshall (1999)."SchoolAttendance and
Student Achievement: Evidence from Rural Honduras,"
Economic Development and Cultural Change 47:657-682.
Bellei,Cristian (2001).LHa tenido impact0 la Reforma
Educacional Chilena? Santiago: Ministerio de Educaci6n.
Proyecto Alcance y Resultados de las Reformas Educativas
en Argentina,Chile y Uruguay.
Carnoy,Martin (1 989).Educational Reform and Social
Transformation in Cuba, 1959-1989.in Carnoy,Martin and Joel
Samoff,Education and Social Transition in the Third World.
Princeton:Princeton University Press.
Carnoy,Martin (1998). National Voucher Plans in Chile and
Sweden: Did Privatization Make for Better Education?
Comparative Education Review. 42,3 (August):309-337.
Carnoy,Martin and Patrick McEwan (1997).La educaci6n y el
mercado laboral en Honduras.Tegucigalpa:Secretaria de
Educaci6n, Proyecto ASED.
Carnoy,Martin and Jeffery Marshall (2001).Explaining
Differences in Primary School Student Achievement in Latin
America: A Simulation Approach. Stanford University,School
of Education (mimeo).
Carnoy,Martin, Susanna Loeb,and Tdfancy Smith (2001).Do
Higher State Test Scores in Texas Make for Better High School
Outcomes? Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Analysis in
Education (Universityof Pennsylvania School of Education).
62
Carnoy,Martin and Susanna Loeb (2001).Does External
Accountability Affect Student Outcomes? A Cross-StateAnalysis.
Stanford School of Education (mirneo).
Carnoy,Martin, Gustavo Cosse. Cristian Cox,and Enrique
Martinez (2001).Reformas educativasy financiamiento educativo
en el Con0 Sur,1980-20001.Buenos Aires: Ministerio de
Educaci6n y Cultura,Unidad de lnvestigaciones Educativas
(mirneo).
Castro,Claudio de Moura and Martin Camoy (1998).La reforma
educativa en Ambrica Latina.Washington,DC:Inter-American
Development Bank.
Cosse,Gustavo (2001).Gasto Educativo,Eficiencia,y Equidad
en Argentina,1990-1999.Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educaci6n
y Cultura,Unidad de lnvestigaciones Educativas (mirneo).
Cox, C. (1997).La reforma de la educaci6n chilena:Contexto,
contenidos,implementaci6n.Programa de Promoci6n de la
Reforma Educativa en America Latina (PREAL).
Cox, Cristian (2001).Las pollticas educacionales de Chile en
las ultimas dos decadas del Siglo XX:Compromiso publico e
instrumentos de estado y mercado. Santiago: Ministry of
Education.Proyecto Alcance y Resultados de las Reforrnas
Educativas en Argentina,Chile y Uruguay.
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.
Finn,Jeremy and Charles Achilles (1999).Tennessee's Class
Size Study:findings,Implications,Misconceptions.Educational
Evaluation and Policy Analysis,21,2 (Summer):97-110.
Gonzalez,Pablo (2001).Estructura Institucional,Recursos,y
Gesti6n en el Sistema Escolar Chileno.Santiago: Ministerio de
Educaci6n. Proyecto Alcance y Resultados de las Reformas
Educativas en Argentina,Chile y Uruguay.
P V
Hanushek,E.Aand V. Lavy (1994).“SchoolQuality, Achievement
Bias,and Dropout Behavior in Egypt.”Working Paper no. 107.
Washington D.C.:World Bank Living Standards Measurement
Study.
Hsieh, Chang-Taiand Miguel Urquiola (2001).When schools
compete,how do they compete? An assessment of Chile’s
nationwide school voucher program.
Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluacion de la Calidad de
la Educaci6n (LLECE).1998.Primer €studio lnternacional
Comparativo sobre Lenguaje,MatemAtica y Factores Asociados
en Tercer0 y Cuarto Grado.Santiago: UNESCO.
Lankford,Hamilton,Susanna Loeb,and James Wydtoff (2001).
Teacher Sorting and the Plight of Urban Schools:A Descriptive
Analysis.Stanford University School of Education (mimeo).
Lastra, Eduardo (2001).School Effectiveness:A Study of
Elementary Primary Schools in a Mexican City.Unpublished
Ph.D.dissertation,Stanford University School of Education.
Lockheed,Marlaine and Adrian Verspoor (1989).Improving
Primary Education in Developing Countries:A Review of Policy
Options.Washington, DC: World Bank.
McEwan, Patrick (2000).Escuela Nueva.Journal of Education
and Development.
McEwan, P.J. (2001).Peer effects on student achievement:
Evidence from Chile.unpublished manuscript,University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
McEwan, P. J.,&Carnoy,An. (1998).Choice between private
and public schools in a voucher system:Evidence from Chile,
unpublished manuscript,Stanford University.
McEwan, P.J., &Carnoy,M. (1999).The impact of competition
on public school quality:Longitudinal evidence from Chile’s
voucher system,unpublished manuscript,Stanford University.
ACHIEVING GREATER ACCESS,EQUITY,AND QUALITY Of L d m t l o n In Latln Amerks
HMcEwan, P. J.,&Carnoy,M. (2000).The effectiveness and
efficiency of private schools in Chile’svoucher system.
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis,22(3),213-239.
Marshall,J.H.,and White,K.A.,2001. “Academicachievement,
school attendance and teacher quality in Honduras:An empirical
analysis.”Unpublished manuscript.
Nuiiez Prieto,Ivan (2001).La condici6n docente en Argentina,
Chile,y Uruguay en 10s ’90.Santiago:Ministerio de Educaci6n.
Proyecto Alcance y Resultados de las Reformas Educativas
en Argentina,Chile y Uruguay.
OR EALC, (2001 ).Regional Report,Santiago,Chile.
Paulin,Augustin (2001).The Effects of Educational
Decentralization in Mexico. School of Education,Stanford
University (mimeo).
Rothstein,Richard (1998). The Way W e Were? New York: The
Century Foundation Press.
Rothstein, Richard,Martin Camoy,and Luis Benveniste (2000).
What Can Public Schools Learn from Private?Washington,DC:
Economic Policy Institute.
Santibaiiez, Lucrecia (2001).Teacher Competence,Sorting
and Student Performance in Mexico. School of Education,
Stanford University (mimeo).
Savedoff,William (1 998). Organization Matters.Washington,
DC: Johns Hopkins Press and IADB.
Vega, Emiliana,William Experton,and Lance Pritchett.(1998).
Teachers in Argentina: Under-(Over-)Worked? Under-(Over)
Paid? Harvard University and the World Bank.
Willms,Douglas and Marie-Andree Somers. (1999).School
Outcomes in Latin America. Santiago:OREALC.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 63
 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-dividethe 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-speakingterritories,or Commonwealth Caribbean
as this sub-regionis often labelled.This includes both the independent English-
speaking countries and the British dependencies.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 65

PRELAC Journal

Purpose and clarification The purpose of the distinctions.Many persons are employed
of terms paper is to identify and discuss policies
and practices that have been adopted
as teachers before they are formally
trained (formaci6n especifica)as
in teacher education and training in this teachers.In these cases the professional
sub-region.The primary focuswill be on training of teachers followemployment.
new policies,projects and programmes The term initialprofessional training more
in teacher education and training since accurately describesthe Caribbean
the beginning of the 1990s. situation than pre-serviceteachertraining.
Focusing attention on the topic of Formacidn docente pre o antes del
teacher education and training represents servicio.Likewise,in-servicetraining is
renewed interest and emphasis on an one modality through which initial teacher
old subject.Not only is teaching an old training has been delivered.In the
profession,but mass schooling in the Commonwealth Caribbean,in-service
Commonwealth Caribbean has a history training therefore,could refer to both
that parallels that of the developed world. initial and non-formalon-the-jobtraining.
Hence,teacher education and training For the purpose of this paper where the
in the sub-regionhave long and strong terms pre-serviceand in-serviceare
traditions. employed,they are used with their
Given the close relationship that exists Commonwealth Caribbean meaning.
between schooling,teachers and the
structure of society,it would be unwise
to proceed to a full-blowndiscussion on
new policies,projects and programmes
in teacher education and training without
taking note of a fewsalientsocial features
of schooling and teaching as they have
evolved in the CommonwealthCaribbean.
The first teacher colleges in the
Caribbean were established in 1830just
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
differencesin practice,but could be
source of much confusion,is the use of
the terms pre-serviceand in-service
teacher training.The term pre-service
training is generally used for formal
training before teachers enter the
profession,while in-servicetraining
generally refersto non-formaltraining on
the job.Commonwealth Caribbean
practice does not conform to these neat

66
 TEACHER EDUCATION A N D TRAINING POLICIES in the Commonwealth Caribbean

Background From its inception in the

1830s until the 1950spre-serviceteacher
education basically followed the same
pattern:

Pre-servicetraining 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 7to 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 Cambridgeexaminationsthat 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-1950sand up to the end of the 1980s,there were vast

improvements and changes in the provision for the pre-servicetraining of teachers.
The most significantadvances can be listed as follows:

Substantial expansion in enrolment of colleges training
primary school teachers with the resultthat 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-serviceprogrammes.
The academic level of the programmes for primary teachers
has been raised substantially,as the pre-serviceprogrammes
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.
Initiativeswere launched to prepare teachers for early
childhood education within the formal system of teacher
training and separatefrom the training of primary school
teachers.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 67

PRELAC Journal

A wide variety of models of delivery of pre-serviceeducation have been created.

These include the two-yearintramural plus one-yearinternship model that was
developed in the Western Commonwealth Caribbean from the 1960s to the 1980s;
the three-yearintramural programme now employed in Jamaica;the two-yearintramural
model common in the Eastern Commonwealth Caribbean;the three-yearschool
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-yearprogramme 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-serviceteacher 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, Shrinking resources demanded that new modalities of delivery
teacher status had declined.One of the roots of this decline of training had to be employed in addition to conventional
was the advance in the general level of education of the full-timeface-to-faceinstruction.
population.Teachers who in the past had commanded respect
on the basis of their superior education compared to the vast Advances in information technology that had transformed
majority of parents and the general community,no longer factory and home production,entertainment,transportation,
held such an overwhelming advantage.While the content of and communication,had made many approaches and
the teacher credential had improved,teachers were still being processes used in colleges and schools obsolete.College
certified through certificates and diplomas in circumstances and school processes had to be re-engineeredto incorporate
in which persons with degreeswere becoming more numerous information technology in both management and instruction.
in the general population.
Increasingly greater economic and cultural linkages between
The rapid rise of global economy combined with the spread Caribbean countries and across language groups have
of democratic process throughout the society demanded stimulated greater demand for foreign language acquisition.
workers who could be self-directedand citizensthat
participated in the apparatusof the statesand the enterprises
within civil society.These imperatives dictated changes in
teachers’roles and relationshipsamong themselvesand with
studentsand parents.Traditionalauthoritarian,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 approachesand guide by the side teaching strategies
which gave pride of place to learning.

68
 TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIESIn the Commonwealth Caribbean

Policy responses in pre-service

training beginning in the 1990s The innovations
and developments in pre-serviceteacher
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 Several Governments have decided to move to a fully trained graduate teaching
academic and force by the end of the first decade of this century.Associated with this policy decision
professional standing is the upgrading of colleges training teachers to offer pre-servicetraining through
of pre-service degree programmes,as is the case with the Bahamas.Indeed,all new teachers
programmes 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-yearto a four-yearcollege.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.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 69

PRELAC Journal

Changing If teachers are to use less didactic approachesin the schools then it is imperative
pedagogical that trainees in colleges be taught using pedagogic practices that are student and
practices in the learner centred.Several reform initiatives within the region have included components
training of teachers 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/GOJPESP projects
involving the training of primary and secondary school teachers in Jamaica and the
IDB/GOGBasic Education Project in training primary school teachers in Guyana.

Introducing new The Organisation of Eastern These are to subject areas of themes
content in teacher Caribbean States (OECS)long term that are specifically addressed in teacher
preparation education strategy document Pillars for preparation programmes.The implication
Partnership and Progress,which sets of these urgent societal imperativesfor
education targets for the nine member teacher education is the need to develop
countries to achieve by 2010,is probably new content that in most instances cut
the most comprehensive policy paper in across disciplinary boundaries.Currently,
the Commonwealth Caribbean.In the urgent societal imperativesare
addition to the usual areas that addressed in an impulsive and ad hoc
educational policies routinely address, manner.On the other hand,Pillars for
Pillars for Partnership and Progress Partnership and Progress is requiring a
identifies a category labelled 'urgent planned and systematic approach that
societal imperatives'facing the is fully integrated into the programmes
Commonwealth Caribbean.The category preparing teachers.The exact way in
includes natural disasters,health which this is to be accomplished has not
promoting schools,gender inequities, yet been determined.
improving the participation and
performance of boys in schools,
promoting partnerships between
governments,civil society associations
and non-governmentalorganisations 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 Progresssees
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.

70
 TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES in the Commonwealth Caribbean

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-teachingroute 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
supervisoryvisits of the trainersby 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 teachersfrom
a certificateto a diploma level in Jamaica.
The Jamaican application used much using a combination of face-to-face
the same elements as was used in Belize instruction in summer and vacation
except for the monthly visits to the classes,distance teaching modules
schools.A less successful but equally during school time and clinical
important innovation was that of the use supervision of teaching in the classroom.
of a school-basedapproach to training The trainees are teachers in secondary
secondary school teachers in Grenada schools in the OECS holding degrees,
through the LOME Ill Project in Tertiary associated degrees or their equivalent
Education in the OECS countries.While or having passed two G C E Advanced
the project did produce graduates,it was level subjects.
severely hampered by the limited number
of master teachers that were available.
In addition,the multiple involvementsof
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
SecondaryTeachers'Training Programme
mounted by the OECS Tertiary Education
Project.The project is designed to train
secondary school teachers on the job

Pre service teacher
training and the use
of information
technology
Another major policy initiative starting in the 1990sis 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.

EDJCATION FOR ALL. 71

PRELAC Journal
This has not been without controversy.
There has been a heated debate
concerning feasibility and
appropriatenessof 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 schoolsa 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 leaverscannot
competently use informationtechnology.
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 similarto governmentsat
the beginning of the 199Os,had changed
their stance in the same manner as
governments.
The firstefforts 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 JamaicaComputer Society
Education Foundationto severalteachers
colleges in Jamaica and government
assistance to establish labs at Erdiston
College in Barbados.The most
comprehensiveand spectacularinitiative,
however,is that of the EDUTECT 2000
72
policy initiativeby the Barbados More recently,several colleges have
Government which proposes to spend established web-sitessetting out their
US$175 million to modernise all schools programmes and activities thus making
and colleges in information technology it easier for students and the general
over the ten years.The training of community to access information.
teachers and education officers in the However,over the last three years,
use of information technology in attempts are being made to use
education is one of the four main areas information technology in relation to the
of focus of this programme launched in core business of teacher training and the
1998. operations of the colleges.Probably the
An interesting innovation in this regard most systematic approach has been that
is the linking of teachers colleges with a of the Joint Board of Teacher Education
cluster of primary and secondary as is of the University of the West lndies in
being done in the case of Bethlehem and conjunction with the 14 colleges training
Mico Colleges in Jamaica.The colleges teachers in the Western Caribbean.
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 staffand students.
Another aspect is that of upgrading
teacher trainers in the use of educational
technology in their teaching in the
collegesas is being done through the
JCSEF/MulticareFoundation 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 traineesto enter the college
computer literate.Such students that are
not computer literate are required to take
a pre-collegecourse,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.

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-longprofessional
development by teachers in order to keep abreast of the
transformations in progress.
Shrinking resourcesas structuraladjustmentsand the financial
woes of the country continueto threaten,and actually impede,
the flow of resources to the education sector.
Globalisation,especially with the rapid growth of the Internet.
The necessity to not only a COnSUmer but a Producer
of knowledge.
TEACHER EDUCATION ANDTRAINING POLICES in the Commonwealth Caribbean
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 operationsstretch from student
admission,registration,examinations,financialmanagement,
plant management to all personnel matters related to staff.
College Manager also allows colleges to carry out on-line
transactionswith the Joint Board and the Ministry of
Education.While the technology has been put in place to
achieve these objectives,the transformationfrom manual
and paper based systems to the electronic system,with the
attendance change in culture,has proved extremely
challenging and has slowed implementation.
2. Established a web site that will be at the hub of many ofthe
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) Providetraining and technical supportfarSchool and College
Manager.
c) Host the JBTE on-lineconference capability.
d) Host the JBTE distance teaching operations.
e) Host the tutorial system planned to assist students.
UCATION FOR ALL. 73
PR E LAC Journal

3. Introduced on-lineasynchronous web conferencing among
the staffs of colleges in the 24-subjectdisciplines 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,
knowledgebuilding,sharing best practices,sharing Internet
and other resources,and conducting routine Board of
Studies business on-line.
4. Pilottested 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 schoolsto 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
improvementof 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 institutionstraining
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
communicationtechnologywill be used to supportdiagnostic
and performance testing,the development and exchange
of materials,teacher training and action research.

Policy initiatives in In-serviceteacher training in the
in-service teacher Commonwealth Caribbean in the 199Os,
training and to the present,has largely served
and has been supportive of the
educational reform agenda being
implemented in the various countries.
Accordingly,in-serviceteacher training
policies have been intricately bound up
with policies to improve the quality of
education and policies to reform the
curriculum.Invariably,in-serviceteacher
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-serviceTeacher Training Project
in Guyana,the IDWGovernmentof
Guyana Basic Education Project in
Guyana,the Government of
JamaicaNorld Bank Reform of
Secondary Education Project,the IDB
Primary Education Improvementand
Primary Education Support Projects in

74
 TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES In the Commonwealth Carlbbean

Jamaica,the World Bank and IDB

Projects in Trinidad and Tobago and the
World Bank Projects in Dominica and St
Lucia.The Governmentof JamaicWorld
Bank ROSE Project was the earliest.The
first phase of the reform was implemented
in 1993and completed in 1998.This
project was one of two that received the
World Bank'sQuality 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 The definingfeaturesOfthe
an example of Government curriculum and teachertraining
reform policies implemented through aspectsOf thereformcan be
donor assistance that include an in- summarised briefly as follows:
serviceteacher training component in
support of the curriculum reform. A common curriculum in Grades 7to 9 in all types of secondary schools and all
students

Mixed ability grouping and multi-levelteaching among these groups.

Studentstaking responsibilityfor their own learning.

Co-operativelearning 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-ServiceTeacherTraining Componentof the ROSE Project.
The philosophy adopted by the JBTE in the execution of the
In-serviceTraining was that of continuing professional
development and not ofteacher 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
commitmentto strive to realise the ideals prescribed by the
ethics of the teaching profession and to achieve the goals set
for quality education.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 75

PRELAC Journal

The basic elements of the a) The employment of 25 subject specialists,in both content
in-sewiceteaching training and methodology,whose sole full-timeresponsibilitywas
strategy were as follows: the in-servicetraining of teachers to supportthe
implementation of the ROSE Reform in their schools.These
subject specialistswere deployed in five regional teams
located in five strategically placed teacher colleges across
the country.

b) The development and delivery of 45-hourmethodology

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 featuresof 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 specialiststo support the teachers in the
implementationof the methodology courses in their classes.

d) The mounting of one and two-dayworkshops among clusters

of schoolsas 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 7to 9 in the
various subject areas.

1) Continuing professional development for the subject

specialiststhrough regularworkshopsand other collaborative
exercises.

76

Some of the lessons learned from
- the implementation of the
In-serviceTeacher Training
Component of the ROSE Project
can be listed as follows:
leachers and students alike
overwhelminglysupport 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
acceptanceand 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.
TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES in the Commonwealth Caribbean
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.
leacherstend to revertto the traditional
teacher centred approaches in The supportof principals forthe reform,
circumstanceswhere the in-service and heads of departments in large
teacher training was the only element schools and their instructional
of the reform that was implemented in leadership within the school,is critical
the school and where that supportwas to the desired transformation.
scaled down or withdrawn.
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 developmentof quality self-
instructionaldistance teaching
materials is a slow process.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 77
PRELAC J o d

Integration
- of pre-serviceand An important Another example of the integrationof
in-servicetraining feature of the ROSE Project was the links
established in pre-serviceand in-service
pre-serviceand in-servicetraining
through colleges training teachers and
J

training.One link was that the methods collaboration with the Ministry of
courses developed and delivered in the Education,is the case of Belize. In the
in-servicetraining summer workshops World Bank and DFlD project,the in-
became the prescribed methods courses service training of teachers to support
for teaching Grades 7 to 9 in the five the reforms to primary education was
subjects in the pre-serviceprogramme. carried out by the Belize Teachers
Hence,all graduates f r mthe pre-service College,which established regional
training programme since 1995 had been centresacross the country.Collegetutors
trained in the teaching of the five subjects responsible for the delivery of the pre-
in Grade 7-9using the strategies that service programme played a critical part
defined the ROSE reform.Another link in the delivery of the in-servicetraining
was the subject specialistsof the Project related to the reform of the National
were employed to,and operated from, Curriculum.Likewise,supervisors
five teachers colleges strategically employed in the regions to deliver in-
located across the country.In effect, service training,undertook some of the
during the course of the Project,these supervision of student-teachers,normally
regional teams were de facto In-service done by College staff.
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-serviceand 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-servicetraining
in supportof the reform.Further,colleges
will organise to rotate tutors between
teaching the pre-service programmes in
colleges and in-servicetraining in
schools.Such rotation,it is envisaged,
should strengthen the pre-servicetraining
of teachers through the closer links with
schools.

78
 TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES In the Commonwealth Caribbean

................................................................................... The synchronisation of the reform of the National Curriculum being delivered
The essential elements of the approach
in the school system with consequential reform of the curriculum in the pre-
to integrating pre-serviceand in-service
service teacher training programmes.
training in both Belize and Jamaica can
be identified and listed as follows: Organising the teacher-trainingcurriculum in the various subjects in units and
writing distance-teachingmodules 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 abreastof educational
The anticipated outcomes of this
reforms in the school system.Consequently,teachers emerging from colleges
integration of pre-serviceand in-service
will be adequately prepared for the challenges being addressed in the schools.
teacher training are as follows:
Colleges will become intimately involved in the continuing professional
developmentof teachers.Pre-serviceteacher training will therefore not be
conceived in terms of being a one-shotevent but rather as the commencement
of life-longcontinuing professional development.
Involvementin continuing professional development of teachers in the schools
by college tutors will enrich pre-servicetraining by virtue of keeping the tutors
abreast of the current realitiesin the school system.

.........................................................................
c Full-timepre-servicetraining of primary school teachers.
Probably the most comprehensive
approach to the integration of pre-service Initial training of secondary school teachers through the in-serviceDiploma
and in-serviceteacher education and in Education Programme.Entry to this programme is limited to persons who
training is that of Barbados through the have first completed at least a bachelor'sdegree in their subject area of
Erdiston Teachers College.For the past specialisation.
six to seven years Erdiston has been
In-servicetraining of school principals through the in-serviceCertificate in
offering a full range of pre-serviceand
Education programme.
in-serviceteacher education and training
programmes.There are about eleven Non-formalin-servicecourses for school principals and guidance counsellors.
different teacher training programmes
Non-formalin-serviceteacher training courses designed to promote the
and courses being offered by the college,
which can be classified as follows: continuing professional development of teachers at all levels of the education
system.
In-serviceteacher training courses in support of the educational reforms being
implemented through EDUTECT.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 79

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’sdegree
level,then it is imperative that the teacher educator should have higher degrees.
Also,if new curricula require new pedagogical teaching strategiesand 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 strategieswill be successfully incorporated in the teacher preparation
programmes.
The traditional route for such upgrading has been scholarships,bursaries and
fellowshipsto overseas universities.This is an expensive proposition that many
individuals and governments cannot afford.In addition,the overseas offerings
sometimesare 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 universitiesin providing higher
degree programmes that have addressed the need to produce teacher education
have been largely confined to full-timeor part-timeface-to-faceprogrammes.The
limitations of this approach is that colleges training teachers cannot afford to release
most of their staff to enter full-timeprogrammes,and part-timeprogrammes 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 Projectfor the staffof collegestraining teachers in the Western Caribbean.

.
...
...
...
...
...
...
.....
. ..
...
.
. ..........
...
...........
...
...............
...
.....
* UWI Masters courses taught by Twelve scholarshipsto the University
The elements of this Project were as University of Alberta staff during the of Alberta to pursue higher degree
follows: summer.By taking these summer courses.
courses,college staff enrolled in the
UWI Masters in Education programme Several Bursaries to undertake one-
could accelerate their completion of semester programmes at the
the programme. University of Alberta.

80
 TEACHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING POLICIES in the Commonwealth Caribbean

Programmes
Over the five years of the Project,over adapted tothe An interesting facet of the summer and on-
250 staff members (about half)from the 14 teacher training line modality of delivering the master's
colleges and Ministries of Education in the development programme is that it is self-financing.Moreover,
Bahamas,Belize,and Jamaica,participated the fees charged are very competitive with
in the courses either for credit or on a non-credit needs respect to overseas universities currently offering
basis.While not originally included in the Project, programmes in the region.In other words,
six tutors went on to enrol in the doctoral programme at programmes customised and tailored to meet the
the University of Alberta.By 1998 when the Project ended,one developmental needs of teacher education are being offered
had already graduated and since then four others have on a competitive basis in the market place of international
successfully completed the doctoral programme and returned competition in the region.
to their posts.The JBTE/Universityof Alberta/CIDA Project Based on the success of this initiative,the three Schools of
provides a model that is both feasible and applicable for staff Education located on the three campuses of the University of
development within and outside of teacher education. the West Indies,have begun to explore the possibilities and to
More recently,the School of Education,UWI,Mona,has make plans to jointly and cooperatively offer all UWI Master's
begun to offer Master'sprogrammes through summer and on- Programmes in Education through the summer and on-line
line courses.This innovation started in September 2001 with modality.The first steps in this direction are the plans to mount
33 students enrolled in two programmes:Educational the Master'sprogramme preparing Caribbean leaders in the
Administration and Teacher Education.This modality of delivering Early Childhood Education,starting in the summer of 2003.
masters programmes allows students to do two courses,face- Development financing for this effort has come from a grant
to-facein the summerand one or two on-lineduring the semester. from the Inter-AmericanDevelopment Bank through the
A student could therefore complete the Master'sprogramme Caribbean Child Development Centre.
over two academic years while still remaining in full-time In the Primary Education Support Project (PESP)being
employment.This is a very importantfeature both to the students, implemented by the Government of Jamaica through a loan
who could not be released from their employment and the from the Inter-AmericanDevelopmentBank there is a component
institutionsthat could not afford to release them. that addressesthe reform of the curriculum of colleges training
An importantfeature of this modality of training teacher primary school teachers to make the pre-serviceteacher
educators is that not only the students but also the tutorial staff education programme consistent with the new National
can be drawn from all countries of the Caribbean.Indeed,both Curriculum being implemented in primary schools.This
studentsand the staff teaching the courses have been resident component not only includesthe reform of the primary teacher
in different countries including Cayman Islands,Barbados, education programme but also the upgrading and in-service
Jamaica,Japan and Turks and Caicos Islands. training of the college lecturers in the new methodologies
The point to note is that the summer and on-linecourses prescribed by the curriculum.The training programme for
are but another modality of delivering the Master'sprogramme college lecturers include workshops in the new methodologies,
in Teacher Education at the School of Education,Mona.Students visits to primary schools to observe the implementation of the
follow the same curriculum,do the same assignments and sit new curriculum,workshops in utilising techniques being
the same examinations as students being taught through the developed from brain research and the application to advance
face-to-facemodality.As such,the summer and on-linemodality learning,and clinical supervision of the college lecturers as
is subject to the same quality assurance mechanisms and they implement the new teacher training curriculum in their
standards as the face-to-facemodality.The results to date have college classrooms.
shown no difference in standards.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 81

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
ofnumbers 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'sdegree level and setting
timeframesfor achieving this.In this
regard the Bahamas leads the sub-
region.
4. In-serviceteacher 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-serviceteacher education
programmes with little direct support
from multilateral and bilateral
agencies.Where such agencies has
supported pre-serviceteacher
training it has been most indirectly
through in-servicetraining initiatives.
Put another way,pre-serviceteacher
training in the Commonwealth
Caribbean has for the most part gone
out without many major capital
investments over the last twenty years.

82

6.Several countries have implemented
measures to expand the modalities
through which teacher education is
delivered.Modalities implemented
include part-timeface-to-face
programmes,vacation courses,
distance education programmes and
combinations of these.
TEACHER EDUCATION A N D TRAINING POLICIES In the CommonwealthCsrlbbean
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
relatesto 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 themselvesto be equipped to address
the challenges presented.Teacher education and training
policies now address the personal developmentof teachers
especially as this relates to the rapid social and cultural changes
occurring in the sub-regionand globally. e
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 83
 Some dimensions of the
Content
'Revised text ofthe 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 outcomesof a program of the
study ofteacher professionalizationdeveloped by IIPE-
UNESCO in Buenos Aires.The study is based on
information produced for applicationof a questionnaire
to national representativesamplesof (public)primaty and
secondary teachers in Argentina,Peru,and Uruguay.
i
Considerations and
policy agenda themes'
--
Emilio Tenti F a n M
Coordinator of the Area of Education Diagnosis
and Policy/InternationalInstitute of Educational
Planning (IIPE),Buenos Aires-Argentina.
This document begins by postulating the strategic
character of the human factor in the provision of educational
services.W e then present the resultsof research on the attitudes
and expectations of teachers in regard to their professional
role,to new educationaltechnologies,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 transformingthe subjectivity
of teachers and the set of rules and resourcesthat structure
the profession.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 85
 PRELAC Journal

I Teachers are the determining factor

in the quality of education The qualityof human resourcesis of key strategic importancein 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 strategiesthat believe that new educationai technologiescan make
possible the developmentof 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-learningis never a starting point;rather,it is
a goal of all successful pedagogy.

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 structureswho
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 infrastructureof 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-goingtraining,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
 S o m e dimensions ofthe 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 subjectivityof students.
Teachers seek to “influencethe 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 livesof 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 “WhyTeachers
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 (“personalvision-building”), a variable margin of autonomy.Technical
predisposition to seek,and the mastery
of knowledge,skills,and collaboration.
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/UNESCOin Buenos Aires show that
substantial proportions of teachersthemselves live within
households that are below the poverty line.On the other
hand,much evidence indicatesa greater probability that
poorer teachers work in schools attended by children of
the same social condition.
But the task of teachers is
characterized as well by a series of
contradictionsand tensions.Among
these suffice it to mention here those
which stem from their condition of being
during one and the same time salaried
employeesand 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 improvementof 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 techniquesthat 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
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 factorswhich,
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 aspectsof their activities and
regarding the context in which they are
carried
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 87
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
functions of education to their work and their own social and professional identities.
and the meaning of their These opinions have to do with some substantive dimensions
of a policy of the professional enhancement of teachers in the
own professional roles 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.

a) Teachers and the functions of education

The questionnaire applied to national representativesamples

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

Purposes that education should
pursue (twomost important) % % %
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-dateand 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
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
(somethingthat 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-traditionalformulationof the purposes
of education,such as the development
of Creativity and a critical mentality.But
this consensus acquires particular
significancewhen compared to a minority
(lessthan one-third)who say that
knowledge is the major purpose of
school-basededucation.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 thoughtthat 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 factswhich society
has accumulated through its history and
which are seen as valuable for the solution
of both individual and social problems.
Some dimensions of the PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS
Nevertheless,one may say that this
emphasis on the developmentof complex
skills,when it is combined with a
devaluation of the idea of education as
the appropriationof 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 fromand opposed to the idea
of education as the appropriation of the
fruits of human culture and civilization.
Unless one conceives creativity as an
almost-magicalquality;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
sethat is involved,but method,strategy,
instrument,and resourcesto criticize and
to go beyond the given.This is a
distinctive characteristicof 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 questionnaireoffers respondentstwo typical definitions
of the role of teachers.One says that 'teachers are,above all,
transmittersof culture and knowledge'. The other says that
"teachersare above all facilitatorsfor student learning'. The
first correspondsto a more *classical'and 'hard"conceptof
the teaching task,while the second expresses a more
contemporary,and probably more 'soft' formulationof the
teacher'srole.Teacher preferences leaned decidedly toward
the second option (seeTable 2).
Table 2
Role of Teachers
Total
Only a minority identified with none of the options offered.
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-groupsthat can be identified within the universe studied.
However,its intensity varies according to particular
characteristicsof the subjects.The data indicate that primary
teachersare more likely to view themselves as "facilitators"
than are secondaryteachers.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
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 teacherswho 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.
ARQENTINA URUQUAY
- 100,o
..- ,*--,,
$
100,O
7
100,o
e
This popular identification of teachers as "facilitators"of
learning in some ways coincides with the responses given to
the question of the principal functionsassigned to education.
Latin American teachers do not appear to place the theme of
knowledge and its inter-generationaltransmission at the center
of their concernsas education professionals.This relative under-
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-directivepedagogy,pedagogical
spontaneity,etc.)in the training and self-imageof Latin American
teachers.In effect,criticismsagainst the narrowness and
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.
 Some dimensions of the PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS

However,the instrumentapplied 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 convertsthe teacher into
a kind of manager of the process of student learning.From this
perspective,the teacher’sdirect 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-linesites,
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”
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-valuingof 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.

Teachers and new

education technologies
On the other hand,it is symptomatic that the great majority
of teachers in the countriesstudied indicated that they
‘neveruse the Internet’(70% in Argentina,59.3% in Peru,
and 58.2% in Uruguay). The same proportion ofteachers
“neveruse e-mail”in their communications.
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”consumersof 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-halfof 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 computersvaries from 60%
in Buenos Aires to 38% in the poorer
regions of the country (Northeastand
Northwest). The same is the case for
internet access in the home,in which
case the differences are even ~tronger.~

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 91

PRELAC Journal

Paml De-humanues Encourages Rewrces Wiilnnpfove Willboach

repiacemru leeching less effm
on that taciiltate the quallly opportunitiesof
of teachers HI UWpartd Iasks ofeducahon ecc888 IO
tte daswm atudents knowledge
Table 3: urugucly
Teachersand 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'tknow 7,O 10,9 14,6 7,5 14,4 62
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

Attitudes in regard to the pedagogical
impacts of the new technologies vary
(Table3).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 sharethis 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',
although one-fourththem 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 'resourcesthat 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 significantnumbers still share
certain fears regarding undesirable
impacts both in terms of encouraging
"lesseffort"among studentsand 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 informationstrategy
in this regard.

92
 Some dlmenslons ofthe PROFESSIONAL E N H A N C E M E M OF TEACHERS

The social and economic level of manifestations such as having a PC in

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
the household,the use of e-mail,internet
connections,etc.
In general,a positive attitude
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 characteristicsconsidered
in this report.

Of the task Of teachers For most teachers in the three

countries studied,teaching is their only remunerativeactivity (Table4).In effect,only
a minority carry out other professional activitiesfrom 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.

ARQENTINA PERU URUGUAY

Table4: Have 13,2 14,4 17,3
Percentage of teachers who have
another remunerated activity Don'thave 86,5 85,6 82,5
Total 100,o 100,o 100,o

According to Max Weber,one of the foundersof 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-descriptivestatements
ofteachers.

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 93

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 existenceof various typical situations (Table
5).In effect,the data indicate that for a relative minority of
teachers (significantlystronger 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
ARQENTINA
’
: Up to 30 %
Percentage of household income
provided by teacher’ssalary 31 %to 70%
More than 71 Yo
No response
Total
’For the lime being the state ofthe data analysis does not
allow us to speculate regarding the specificimpacts of
these differentoblectivese situalions on important
dimensions ofthe Situation 01 teachers
94
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 activitiesoutside of teaching), this
exclusivity has different meanings for different statisticalsub-
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
PERU URUGUAY
19,8 12,9 26,6
359 443 43,2
354 42,8 27,l
8,9 3,O
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 indicatesthe 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
factorswithin 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-knownfactorssuch as social
class,living and working conditions,gender,and age,institutional
context in task performance,initial training,and opportunities
for in-servicetraining,among others.
 Some dlmenslonsofthe PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS

Future professional plans 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.
Empirical evidence available in the
three countries studied presents results
that are complex,and reason for concern
(Table6).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.
Table 6:
Employment and professional
aspirations in the coming years ARQENTINA PERU URUQUAY
% % % Finally,the responses of teachers
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 activitiesaccount for most of the
desires for changeof activitiesexpressed
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 opportunitiesfor
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.
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'tknow 7,O 2,4 3,7

Total 100.0 100.0 100.0

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 95

PRELAC Journal

In summary,we can state that a large
majority of teachers in the countries
studied work full-timeand 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 significantminority 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
determiningteacher salaries.Finally,most
Argentine and Peruvian teachers are in
disagreementwith the mechanisms used
to assesstheir 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-forresults,should be preceded
by discussion and debate.Otherwise,
resistance,conflict,and failure are highly
probable.It is thereforeuseful to be aware
of the distributionof 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'stask.

But teachers are not only "systematicand 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 (nationallevels of assessment of teacher
quality).The assessment of teachers is a growing trend within the agendas of most
Latin American countries.Given the labor implicationsof 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 "assessthe 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 discontentwith
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.

96
 Some dlmenslom of the PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS

Table 7: The questionnaire asked teachers to rate the degree of

Opinion regarding currentteacher pertinence of given criteria to determine salary categories.
assessment mechanisms
Among these criteria was 'periodic assessmentof professional
performance' as well as other classical factorssuch as degrees
% ARQENTINA PERU URUOUAY 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
Adequate 14,7 16,8 42,2 degreesheld (Table8).This ordering indicatesthe predominance
Not adequate 60,8 75,6 47,6 of a traditional view in regard to the factors that determine
Don't know 243 7,6 10,2 teacher salary.There are,however,some factors that are
associated with the probability of granting more importance to
Total 100,o 100,o 100,o
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.

Periodic assessment is given the highest value by teachers Table 8 :Criteria that should be used to
in Peru and is in second place in Uruguay and third in Argentina. determine teacher salary categories (rating
However,we may say that in general,all include in some way from 1 to 10,according to importance)
periodic assessmentas an important criterion.The consensus
evaporates when it comes to opinions regarding concrete CRITERION AROENTINA PERU URUQUAY
systems of measurement and assessmentof criteria used in Time in service 8,3 7,O 9,o
each one of the countries studied. Degree(s)held 8,2 7,8 9,7
When teachers were asked to identify the most appropriate
Periodic assessment a,o 7,s 9,s
agents for carrying out assessment of their work,responses
showed that not all such agents enjoy the same degree of Other academic factors 7,7 6,3 8,7
legitimacy.Some of them are more "traditional"than others. Geographic area of service 7,8 6,8 8,8*
Among the former one may cite school authorities (supervisors,
* In Uruguay the term used was 'social
school principals,etc.).More recent are proposals to include
context of the s c h d
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.

EDUCATION FOR A U . 97
PR ELAC Journal

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-qualifiedteacher colleagues 41,4 383 54,2
Representativesof 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 administrativeteam
(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(principalsand supervisors).
The other categories,with exceptions,
are recognized as legitimateby 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 responsibilityto
assess the quality of teachers'
performance.Other types of authorities,
non-formalor 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

and classification Assessing consists in establishing an order or hierarchy.In this sense,
differentiation.
assessment is more complex than a simple measurement.For example,a school that
obtains a high level of performance in an area ofknowledge is 'better' than another
that obtains lower averages.As such,it involves establishing value judgments.But
in all cases,assessments (ofstudents 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.

98
 Some dimensions of the PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS

The first has to do with the very idea

of establishing salary differentiationsin
order to award "thebest teachers'. The Table IO:
I agree with the statement,"Appropriate
question may appear naive or even mechanisms should be found for the best
obvious at first glance if directed at a teachers to earn more than the others'.
sample of traditional professions such
as physicians or lawyers.It is probable
that the majority of those questioned Resmonse ARQENTINA PERU URUQUAY
would respond positively to the question, Yes 42.9 64,l 39,l
"Doyou believe that appropriate No 40,l 31,8 459
mechanisms should be found so that the
best engineers earn more than the Don'tknow 16,9 41 15,O
others?"Nevertheless,this question did Total 100,o 100,o 100,o
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).
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-responseis more
common in Argentina and in Uruguay.
Table 1 1 shows some of the factors
Table 1 I: associated with the probability of
Factorsassociated with oppositionto the idea
of establishing appropriate mechanisms for expressing a critical position in regard
better teachersto earn more than the others to the idea of establishing differentiations
ARGENTINA PERU URUOUAY
and awards as a function of the quality
Primary level X X X of teacher performance.Disagreement
Public schools X X X is more probable among primary
teachers,those who work in public
Women X X
schools,women,and those whose social
Lower middle class and lower class X positions and paths are more unfavorable.
Living in poor households X Another variablethe behavior of which
With downward social mobility x + x X may aid in understanding resistanceto
the establishment of salary differentials
With upward social mobility among teachers is that which deals with
'Learning facilitators" X the value that teachersthemselvesassign
"Transmittersof learning and culture" X to equality (vs.freedom). In effect,the
questionnaireasks teachers to choose
Job insecurity X between the following statements:

EDUCATION FOR ALL 99

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".
ARGENTINA PERU URUGUAY
Table 12:
Opinions regarding Freedom 34,4 40,8 33s
freedom and equality (%)
Equality 39,3 47,6 42,2
Neither of the two/depends 19,6 8,4 20,7
The resultsshown in Table 12 indicate DKINA 67 3,2 3,6
that teachers tend to favor the value of Total 100,o 100'0 100,o
equality over freedom.This predisposition
to value equality has a special meaning
with an historical context noted for an But this attitude also may be
increase in inequality in the distribution associated with resistances
of such strategic goods and resources demonstrated by a large proportion of
such as wealth,income,and power.From teachers to the establishment of salary legal bureaucratic historical framework,
this point of view,teachers represent a differentials related to the quality of does not favor the establishment of
social category that opposes and resists teacher performance.One should criteria resulting in differences in material
public policies that produce inequalities. remember that the legal status of the compensations related to quality of
profession,carried out within very performance.In this regard,it should be
structured institutional contexts,and a noted that in these contexts,the classic
principle of 'equal pay for equal work' in
regard to salaried professions still applies.

T el3:
Factors associated with the
preference for equality

FACTORS ARQENTINA PERU URUOUAY

Young (under30 years of age) X X
Downward mobility X X Moreover,in this case,the preference
Low perceived social class X X X for these values which in a sense
Public sector X X structure the cultural and ideological field
Private sector X of the majority ofmodern capitalist
Male teachers X societies is associated with certain
Teachers heads of households X characteristics of citizens.Table 13 offers
information regarding the factors
Job insecurity X positively associated with the preference
Poor regions X for equality.

100
 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
frequentamong 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
salariesvaries from 2.7in Uruguay to 3.3
in Argentina,and 4.5in 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 favorsthe 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
dimensionsthat contribute to the professional enhancement of teachers.These range
from selection and recruitmentcriteria for teacher training candidates,through initial
and in-serviceeducation,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 recruitmentmechanisms 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).

EDUCATION FOR ALL. 101

PRELAC Journal
This consensus of diagnosis is not reflected in policy proposals.Beyond specific
policies,what one can propose are strategies,or policy-makingmodes 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.
Promotion oflines ofcredit to facilitate
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-upduring the first phase of job
experience for teachers.
Establishment of a financialincentive
program (study grants)for initial
teacher training.
Up-dateand strengthening of teacher
training programs,establishing basic
criteria at the national level for
accreditation of teacher training
institutions.
Design and implementation of a
national exam forentry into h e teaching
profession,with the participation of
qualified representativesof teacher
organizations.
102
Institutionalization of annual
performanceassessmentmechanisms,
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
I
without abandoning classroom
teaching.
Definition of a significantpercentage
of salarieslinked to the level of training
attained and of the results achieved in
annual performance assessment.
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 ofteachers in
one school only (50% of secondary
school teachers to work full-timeand
the entire school day in a single
institution).
Fherve 15% oftheschool day of
teachersforPrOfeSSiOnaltasks outside
the classroom (participation in working
groupswith colleagues,tutoring
students,production of materials,etc.).
Assign more experienced teachers to
the firstthree years of basic education.
- -

It is obviousthat the character and
dimension of the goals will depend upon
the possibilities and conditions within the
societiesin question.It is necessary here,
however,to emphasize the utility of the
idea of goals;that is,of objectivesthat
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.
Resourcesdetermine 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.
S o m e dimensionsofthe PROFESSIONAL ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHERS
Finally,goals and the strategies
adopted to achieve them should take
into account both the objective situation
(for example,budgetary limitations,
institutional frameworks,interestsand
power relations of the principal actors in
the field of education,etc.),as well as
subjectiveconditions 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 (theiropinions,
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 subjectivefactors
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
conditionsof 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 opportunitiesfor all Latin
Americans.
EDUCATION FOR ALL. 103
www.unesco.cl

Regional BLireau for CduCatloflin Latiti America and the Caribbean