THE MAJOR PROJECT OF EDUCATION in Latin America and the Caribbean Summary Presentation

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The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean UNESCO-OREALC

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Moving towards the XXI century: Teachers and teaching processes in Latin America and Caribbean region Beatrice Avalos

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Teacher training in the geoinformation era: in search of educational identity in the year 2005 Eduardo Doryan, Eleonor Badilla, Soledad Chavarría

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The role of teachers in educational reform Claudia Harvey

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The growing importance of teachers in a changing world Osvaldo Verdugo

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Funding secondary education to what end? which areas? who will do the funding? Ana María Corvalán

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OREALC Activities

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OREALC Publications

BULLETIN 41 Santiago, Chile, December 1996

Nombre del Artículo / Autor del Artículo

Presentation In the past few years, concern for enhancing the quality and presence of the educational supply has received top billing in everybody’s agenda. Rediscovering education as a central element of social development is now a shared goal, having become a necessity demanded not only by education theoreticians, but also by political, economic, and social leaders of the region and, very specially, by parents and students themselves regardless of social stratum. Within this context, it is assumed that teachers and their performance standards will have the excellence required to provide the sort of education capable of meeting the tasks demanded by present levels of development, and endowing young men and women with the skills for working and producing satisfactorily while becoming creators of knowledge. The role played by teachers within this process – a role that has acquired a new significance – has been acknowledged as the cornerstone of any attempt at introducing change in the field of education. The Ministers of Education meeting at Kingston, Jamaica (May, 1996), aware of this situation and concerned with the performance levels exhibited by today’s teachers, organized a round table: “The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean: The growing importance of teachers in a changing world”, with the purpose of discussing such a vital issue. This issue of the Bulletin contains the Conference’s documents that provided the basis for deliberation. Beatrice Avalos’ paper “Moving towards the XXI century: Teachers and teaching processes in Latin America and Caribbean region”, following an analysis of educational systems and pedagogical practices in the region, offers us a systematized account of Latin American and Caribbean educators highlighting their working conditions, certification levels, and the preemployment and in-service training opportunities available to them. The article acknowledges the difficulty behind turning suggestions into practices, particularly the sort that can count on the support of political and administrative reforms. It also makes recommendations to teachers, administrators and educational politicians based on research findings and on practical experiences which have proven successful. Eduardo Doryan, Eleonora Badilla and Soledad Chavarría analyze in their work “Teacher training in the geoinformation era”, a fundamental aspect of the current debate concerned with changing the short term nature characteristic of the educational processes. Based on Costa Rica’s experiences, the authors embark on an imaginary journey to the year 2005 and visualize the teacher training of the future as if happening today. The article addresses the role of education in the geoinformation era, the initiatives intended to reinforce the teaching profession by the year 2005, and formulates a five-step search all teachers should pursue in their quest for selfidentity. All this is done from a perspective that attempts to tackle the issues and challenges of the teaching profession through substituting stale notions with brand new paradigms. Claudia Harvey – inspired on the Trinidad and Tobago experience – observes that the role of the teacher in educational reform must come from within the system itself. However, she acknowledges that judging by the way educational systems are conceived and organized, teachers are more likely to become the recipients of change rather than their architects. It is evident, she

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BOLETIN 40, agosto 1996 / Proyecto Principal de Educación

claims, that the Caribbean region is ill-prepared to confront the new realities that typify modern economic relations. Solutions to the educational problem will have to come from a new characterization of the teacher’s role. Osvaldo Verdugo, representing Education International’s Executive Committee, defined the position of teachers in terms of the roles that fall to them and their involvement in education development. The author reflects on essential aspects of this issue such as the type of teacher required, the ends pursued, and the conditions of local national and regional development that should prevail, implying that the current opening up of schools to the family, the world of production and the local communities, places new challenges before teacher training institutions. Kingston’s Encounter, seemed to ratify the emphasis given to secondary education as a key educational level for future development by the Delors Commission in its “Educational Report for the 21st Century”. Following the same lines, Ana María Corvalán’s article “Funding secondary education: to what end? which areas? who will do the funding?”, reflects on the fact that the importance of middle education is yet to be universally acknowledged. As a result, its implementation cost is for the most part unknown, making it extremely difficult to entice investors who are “sold” on the importance, convenience or attractiveness of such an investment. The researcher, in addition to offering remedial measures, closes with suggestions for a new agenda. As is customary, a summary of OREALC activities and latest publications are included in this issue.

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The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

THE TEACHING PROFESSION AND EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN UNESCO-OREALC

It could be argued that the nineties are revaluing – “putting value back into” – the role of teachers in education. Although in years gone by, this role was overrated – “magister dixit” – the awesome progress of knowledge, the new technologies, the development of learning as an axis of education and not merely teaching, in addition to a degree of frustration brought about by slower than desirable progress – not exempted from cases of regression – in terms of quality of education, have been responsible in recent decades for an attitude of distrust and misgiving towards teachers, with the subsequent depreciation of their professional worth. Naturally, we are referring to major trends, avoiding sweeping generalizations, since these always co-existed with other trends opposite in sign. Be that as it may, the aforementioned elements, plus others, have led to a profound reformulation of the role of teachers in education, particularly in the light of present and future transformations, and specially given the growing awareness that education is, in fact, a key survival and development element for mankind, and that there is a need, not only for a new style of education, but also for a new style of educator. In the Latin America of the eighties, the economic restrictions, the low priority given to education, and the expansion of school coverage, resulted in a severe deterioration of the teaching profession. The quality of education suffered and teachers fell prey to a most precarious socio-economic condition which adversely influenced their motivation and professional performance. This state of affairs, cast teachers under a markedly negative light, and some sectors were quick to make them responsible for the current foundering of education. The nineties, by contrast, are assigning a greater value to education, enhancing the sector’s economy, reformulating the new roles of teachers, and developing a more positive attitude towards the profession. Particularly noteworthy in this context, are the improved initial training efforts conducted at a bonafide university level, an initiative which is making headway in the educational policy arena, as well as the implementation of innovative programmes designed to achieve solid and continuous training.

Among the significant reforms undergone by education, the measures intended to increase decentralization, currently under way, deserve special mention. The greater autonomy granted to teaching centres requires the participation of teachers who are better prepared than before to make major curriculum development decisions, and capable of responding to higher demands upon their competency. In order to accomplish this, educators will have to learn to the meaning of teamwork since the formation of students is the duty of the school as a whole. Background In 1992, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in cooperation with UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC), published the book “Education and Knowledge: Basic pillars of changing production patterns with social equity”. The work outlines a long term strategy as well as policies for its implementation, among them, the support of professionalization

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efforts and teacher participation. Along these lines, the book notes: “The professionalization of teachers must be given paramount importance. An efficient human resources training system imposes two major requirements on educators: responsibility for a quality education, and the ability to administer autonomously and responsibly the schools under his care”. School principals are also given top priority status. In 1995, UNESCO’s General Conference adopted a Medium Term Strategy to plan the activities of the Organization (1996-2002). In terms of education, the major action line is lifelong education, dismissing the concept of education as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, restricted to a specific period in the life of the individual. Reference is made to the revamping of educational systems, and in connection with teachers the observation is: “Within this context, the role of the teaching staff should be reviewed, after due consideration to the medium – subject to sudden changes – where learning takes place, and which is soon to witness the destruction of the walls that confine it and the borders that circumvent it. The new information and communication technologies – the latest “multimedia” interactive systems such as CD-Rom’s, radio and television broadcasts via satellite, informatic networks – have torn to shreds the monopolistic tenancy of knowledge exerted for many decades by formal educational systems. Consequently, the role of the teacher will increasingly be that of an agent who makes self-learning feasible, who directs the flow of information, relinquishing his prerogative as sole and unquestionable source of all information. Furthermore, the fact that the utilization of conventional communication tools in addition to the new ones made available by technological progress can result in highly efficient didactic methods, is something we must never overlook. In this respect, improving working conditions and the status of the teaching staff, is of the utmost importance”.

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UNESCO created the International Commission on Education for the 21st Century, made up by fifteen world renowned figures from various regions of the globe, and presided by Jacques Delors, former European Commission Chairman. The Report, published in 1996, will constitute an important document bound to elicit reflection and debate on future educational policy. According to this report, the concept of lifelong education is the key to the 21st century, and should be underpinned by four basic pillars: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. The Delor’s Commission proposes long term reforms underscoring the convenience of implementing a rational decentralization process that augments the responsibility and the innovative capacity of each and every educational institution. It also stresses the active participation of the teaching staff, as an essential component of any successful reform. Hence, the Commission recommends that priority must be given to the educator’s social, cultural and material status. A singularly significant evidence of the growing importance currently ascribed to the role of teachers, is illustrated by the 45th Meeting of the International Conference on Education (Geneva, September 30 to October 5, 1996), revolving about the theme “Strengthening of the Teaching Staff Function in a Changing World”. This Conference, is held thirty years following the adoption by UNESCO and ILO of the recommendation relative to the situation of the teaching staff (1966) and twenty-one years after the 35th International Conference on Education, which also addressed the plight of the teacher. The time has come, to reexamine the role, the functions and, even, the place occupied by teachers in the school and in the social spectrum. There was a previous consultation on the subject, with the participation of every region in the world. Kingston, Jamaica (May 13 - 17, 1996) was host to the Seventh Meeting of Latin

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

American and Caribbean Ministers of Education, and the Sixth Meeting of the Regional Intergovernmental Commission of the Major Project of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean. On the occasion, our region was invited to participate at the International Conference. The Ministers issued ten Recommendations. Number Seven, addresses the professional evaluation of teachers based on performance. It makes several recommendations, among them the professionalization of teachers, the expansion of their horizons, fostering of positive social image for the teaching profession, designing long term training programmes, and developing more efficient teacher hiring practices. A round table “The teaching profession and education development in Latin America and the Caribbean”, was conducted at this meeting. The event enlisted the participation of subject

specialists and was intended to promote a debate that would contribute to the decisions of the Ministers, and establish the basis for the cooperation Latin American and the Caribbean would provide to the International Conference on Education. The presentations of the round table specialists constitute the main objective of this monographic issue of the Bulletin. In our region, the number of people devoted to education account for many millions, and that future generations are motivated to learn and to continue learning throughout their lives will, to a large extent, be contingent on their efforts. The pages of this Bulletin are intended to keep a space for reflection open, and to spur the formulation of positive measures designed to provide our countries with teachers of excellence. In this regard, UNESCO’s commitment is vast, thus reiterating its firm determination to continue serving the education of our peoples.

ENHANCING THE ROLE OF TEACHERS IN A CHANGING WORLD: THE LATIN AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN REGION Beatrice Avalos*

The image of a changing world brings to mind a future where children and young people sit for part of their time at schools working on computer programmes that enable them to understand complex concepts, move out into the surrounding environment to learn about social processes, read with understanding, write and make themselves understood, apply computational skills imaginatively to the resolution of problems in their daily lives and beyond; learn that knowledge is increased through the sharing of information, see links between science and producing artifacts that * Beatrice Avalos. Vice coordinator MECE-Media, Ministry of Education. Chile.

improve the quality of life, and are also humane, caring for other people, sensitive to feelings and music and art, and responsible for their environment and the quality of life of people in other parts of the planet. In this vision of the future, schools are organisations flexibly centred around learning where teachers are guides, facilitators, people who are instrumental in providing information and checking on the quality of processes that students engage in during their time at school. In one way or another this image of the future is expressed in texts that deal with how education ought to be changing. For the framers of the ECLAC/UNESCO report on Education and Knowledge (1992) education of the future

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in the Latin American Region must be conceived in ways that help to build, on the one hand, what is called ‘modern citizenship’ and on the other, ‘international competitiveness’. Modern citizenship is many things, but it includes social equity, participation, democracy, efficiency and effectiveness in the management of institutions and in the performance of individuals. International competitiveness requires access to new technologies, increasing the quality of knowledge production in order to sustain economic growth and national development ‘within a framework of increasing globalization and internationalization’ (ECLAC, 1992, p. 124). For the Committee of ‘wise-men’ (Misión Ciencia, Educación y Desarrollo, 1994) convened by the Colombian government to think about education, science and technology, and to draw up proposals for change, the future scenario involves a great strategic effort to reform educational inputs. Students will have to achieve ‘computer literacy and scientific education’ become creative and apply, in due course, technological and scientific knowledge to productive and research activities. But also, the Committee notes, the education of the future must be instrumental in allowing Colombia to follow the direction of sustainability in development, with equality, decentralised participation, democracy and quality as values not to be hidden in a corner. The fact, that a great writer was called to introduce the report and suggest an image to direct the course of educational change, points to the care with which goals of economic development and competitiveness are not seen as singularly directing such change: We think that there are conditions as never before for social change, and that education will be its masterly organ. An education that follows through from cradle to grave, nonconformist and reflective, that inspires a new mode of thinking and incites us to discover who we are in a society that has more love for itself. That will use to a maximum degree our

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ceaseless creativity and will conceive of an ethics—maybe perhaps an esthetics—for our boundless and legitimate desire of personal fulfillment. That will integrate science and arts in the family basket, following the design of a great poet of our time who requested that we not continue to love them separately as if they were two enemy sisters. Gabriel García Márquez, Por un País al Alcance de los Niños, 1994. Alongside this rather optimist vision of the future is a heightened awareness of the perils of the world such as we live in it. Modern circumstances point daily to the fact that we have not been able to resolve the problem of extreme poverty and that in the Latin American region the absolute numbers of people considered to be poor have increased from 113 million in 1970 to 196 million in 1990 (La Epoca, 10 March, 1996), that pandemic diseases threaten school children, that there still are many children in the Region who are not in school, and older people who are illiterate; that lack of care and understanding of natural phenomena threaten the environment, while ethnic wars threaten the lives of thousands of people in many regions of the world, and that peasants still are murdered for requesting land. Within the two scenarios – the view of the future and the awareness of unresolved problems – education is given today a very great importance and seen as a crucial factor. Economists, researchers and policy-makers are noting how severally underfinanced the system of education has been in the Latin American Region and indicating the need for decisive changes (Cf. Reimers, 1994; Misión Ciencia, Educación y Desarrollo, 1994; Comisión Nacional para la Modernización de la Educación, 1994). At the same time, reformers are looking into the quality of what educational systems have to offer and what they can achieve. Discussions and proposals destined to affect quality are in turn influenced by the two perspectives that colour the vision of future requirements: (a) a carefully structured type of education that is oriented to pupils leaving

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

schools with competencies to work, be efficiently productive and create knowledge in a modern and competitive society; and (b) a more open and flexible type of education that develops young people in a variety of directions – decision-making, social awareness and responsibility, ability to interact and learn from others, sensitivity to culture. These two directions are not easily married, as de Moura Castro (1994) puts it, and what must be searched for is the greatest possible equilibrium within the extremes of the two situations: “between preparing robots and preparing philosophers there is no choice but to educate people who are both”. Teachers, in the context of reform discussions, have taken on renewed importance. Despite the images of a computerised information society, the role of teachers in no way seems diminished. However, their current performance is under heavy scrutiny both in terms of the role they may have had in relation to the poor quality of schooling outcomes in the Region, as well as in view of the role they will have in the framing of the society of the future. This understanding that teachers may in fact hold in their hands the key to an education that integrates responses to diverse social requirements, has led to recommendations that both the constraining factors that stop teachers from performing as they are expected to (salaries and conditions of work) and factors that affect the quality of their teaching be attended to (quality of intake to teaching, training and having teaching resources at their disposal). The subject of teachers is thus an important one to address and is the purpose of this report. With the view of the future in mind and of the divergent requirements that result from this view, the paper begins by situating teachers within the context of the educational systems in the Region and of what we know about their teaching and learning processes. The second section, examines the characteristics of the teaching force: who teachers are, how they work, and how they are currently trained. The third section, suggests change orientations

keeping in mind the needs of education in the future, and the fourth section, deals more concretely with how these change orientations could be materialised. The paper ends with a short conclusion and recommendations for bodies such as UNESCO. Changes in the educational systems and issues related to the teaching and learning processes In examining the role of teachers and what is required of them and for them with a view to the future, there is need to consider, if only summarily, what is happening in the education systems of the region and what are the acknowledged problems related to teachers and teaching. Reform climate The most noticeable factor, associated without doubt with the effects of UNESCO’s Major Project for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO, 1996) but also with a growing political awareness of the importance of education for productivity and the economy, is that most countries are experiencing and valuing education in more decisive ways; recognising the need for change and actually engaging in it. Major and smaller overhauls of the educational systems are being carried out almost everywhere that are affecting principally the structure, curriculum, teaching resources’ allocation and the administration of the system. We look at these briefly below. Among “structural changes” are those geared to lengthening the period of compulsory education or general education, focusing on a longer primary level and shortening of the secondary one. In Argentina, the system is changing from a 7 year primary cycle to a 9 year Basic Education cycle followed by three years of diversified secondary education (Polimodal). A similar structure exists in Uruguay since 1986 with compulsory education extending in 9 year cycle (Ciclo

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Básico Unificado), an upper secondary level of three years and a technical vocational school of up to four years. Mexico has extended the period of compulsory education to nine years. Panama is also involved in the establishment of a new educational structure to be applied gradually, with a longer general education cycle of eleven years from pre-school to lower secondary; and an upper secondary level of three years. A number of countries in the Region are involved to a greater or lesser extent in “curriculum change”. Argentina has just completed the process of preparing the curriculum structure for the new Polimodal secondary education and is examining its technical vocational curriculum, that had not been formally part of secondary education before the reform. Chile has just approved a new curricular framework for the primary level (Basic Education) and is engaging in the same process for the secondary level. Paraguay is moving toward an appropriate curriculum for upper secondary level with less emphasis on streamwise specialisation than it currently has. Colombia has begun a review of the curriculum following guidelines established in its Law 115 of 1994. Mexico is currently involved in curricular changes at primary and secondary level, with an emphasis on spanish, math’s and science. Venezuela, with a long-standing experience in curricular innovations for all levels of the system, has recently been concerned with reforming the secondary level (general and technical vocational) but with success only in two of its purposes: the curricular reform and in-service teacher preparation (García-Guadilla and Bronfenmajer, 1995). There have also been secondary curriculum innovations in Uruguay. Specifically, this has involved piloting of curricula for the Basic Cycle of secondary education as well as for its upper diversified level (General and Technical Vocational). In Jamaica, there is curriculum reform for 7 to 9 grades, training of teachers in the curriculum, tools and technology to implement

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the curriculum and changes in assessment in core curriculum areas (Cf. The World Bank, 1995). An important new focus appearing in discussions on curricular frameworks is the inclusion of educational objectives and themes intended to be pursued throughout the whole set of educational activities provided in formal education (“transversally”). These objectives are concerned with respect for human rights, the importance of peace and democracy, care for the environment, gender issues and sex education, health and consumer education (UNESCO, 1996). Related to curriculum reform and improvement of quality are the efforts of a number of countries to provide support to teaching through provision of curriculum materials and other teaching resources. A major part of the MECE reform programme in Chile (Mejoramiento de la Calidad y Equidad de la Educación Básica y Media) and reform programmes in Mexico have included the writing and distribution of texts, books, equipment and an important amount of computers for primary and secondary schools. Building capacity in computer usage in Chile has also been a strong point of the programme together with an innovative computer network known as Enlaces.. Similar resource provision programmes are in place in Costa Rica, Venezuela and Mexico. Legislative reforms to provide for administrative and financial “decentralization” of those education systems where this was not the case is another characteristic of policies in the Region. The main objective of such reforms has been to transfer financial management responsibility to states and local authorities such as municipalities in order primarily to reduce government and public spending (Carnoy et al., 1995). Argentina started early in a process now completed of devolving power to the provinces, Colombia and Mexico are involved in a similar process. Chile carried out its decentralisation move in the eighties transferring control to municipalities through

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

school ownership, financial administration and appointment of staff. Though well inspired, however, decentralisation has not worked in all situations as expected: bureaucratic tangles continue to exist and local authorities are not necessarily well prepared for the role of pursuing the improvement of education (Schwartzman, Ribeiro Durham and Goldemberg, 1995; Braslavsky, 1995). One of the important long-term purposes of decentralisation is to increase the power of schools and teachers to plan their work programmes in ways they see fit for their pupils (within the limits of nationally established objectives and standards). Thus decentralisation is being increasingly understood as “pedagogical decentralisation” and one of the ways to materialise this concept is through “school projects”. Colombia and Chile are granting special importance to these, both in terms of stimulating and or funding school initiatives. Colombia describes its “pedagogical projects” as follows: a set of activities planned to attain objectives related to the integral development of those persons who are part of them. It (the Project) is characterised by not taking place during a set time and with a rigid thematic sequence. It may centre around a problem or specific theme, but much more directly it will be related to life and daily occurrences with a problem focus understood in a holistic manner that considers the complexity and diversity of life itself. Though its progress will be constantly monitored there must also be special moments to examine what has been achieved until then and to design the road ahead. Pedagogical projects are intended to provide a course for the curriculum as a whole to flow; and that is why they may programmed for formal, non formal and informal education activities. Projects connected with the syllabi of formal education may cover one or several subjects simultaneously. ... (They may also comprise) complementary activities such as literary clubs, excursions, shows, contests etc.

all of which would not have been foreseen as part of any one school subject. Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia, 1994, p.39. Acknowledged problem areas related to teaching and learning These reform waves in the Region force our attention towards the teachers who as their direct implementors will need to own them. The implicit expectation is that teachers will be able to construct teaching programmes where there are only frameworks (as in some curricular reforms), and will be able to adjust or recreate their styles of teaching in the light of diverse visions for the future, while at the same time improve their capacity to deal with existing problems However, before examining how well prepared teachers are for this task or what needs to be accomplished so that they be prepared, it is important to review issues felt to be most urgent within the perspective of improving the quality of educational experiences for all children and young people. Among these problems are the styles of teaching and the quality of learning opportunities offered to students, administrative bottlenecks within the educational systems that deter teachers from teaching as expected of them, and problems related to the provision of teachers, the quality of their training and their working conditions. Teaching practices Despite the number of innovations in countries of the Region that have improved the styles of teaching and pupils’ learning such as Escuela Nueva (Schiefelbein, 1992) or the 900 Escuelas (Mineduc, 1992) ) there is a generalised view in documents and studies relating to education in the Region that prevailing teaching strategies still fail to address the learning needs of students and to challenge them sufficiently. It would seem that despite so many achievements compared to the situation a dec-

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ade ago (Avalos, 1987), the quality of teaching and learning in Latin America has not improved. The following description summarises what happens in many Latin American classrooms: In most Latin American and Caribbean, real time during the day for learning may be very short, with most of it spent on administrative and routine matters. Almost invariably actual teaching takes place through presenting material to a whole class –often writing on the chalkboard the contents of the lesson or explanations to be copied by children. Teachers use the same strategies in all situations and for all audiences. Often, the structure and sequence of the lesson are inadequate, but the teacher does not stop to get feedback from pupils and therefore to adapt his or her teaching to the situation. Normally, teachers do not ask pupils to take part in the lesson. Alternative teaching/learning strategies such as small group instruction, cooperative learning, individual coaching, problem solutions and group decision making, free writing etc. are seldom used. At higher primary level and in secondary education there may be discipline problems that often are the result of the lack on the part of the teacher of a clear definition of purposes and poor classroom management. Wolf, Schiefelbein and Valenzuela (1993). p. 70. In whatever way one chooses to describe the prevailing styles –teacher-centred, frontal, authoritarian– they all relate to teachers who either feel they have responsibility as sole providers of stimuli for learning or teachers who, with limited background knowledge, few teaching resources and limited repertoire of teaching strategies, are forced to teach stereotyped contents and limit the range of intellectual development of their pupils (Cf. Broomes, 1994; Braslavsky, 1995). The fact that for the greater number of children now attending schools compared to a decade ago, learning achievement is unsatisfactory, especially as regards basic skills for com-

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munication and participation in society (reading, writing, computational abilities), draws atention once again to teachers and how they teach. Policies and administrative conditions A tendency, perhaps stronger in Hispanic countries than in the Anglophone ones, is to believe that efficiency in teacher and schools’ performance needs to be regulated by a multiplicity of norms. It was expected that with decentralisation the rigidity of norms and their application would diminish. However, this is not always the case depending on the manner in which central norms and local norms are balanced in practice. Accounts refer to conflicts between national and provincial or municipal norms in Brazil (Schwartzman, Ribeiro Durham and Goldemberg, 1995) and problems in Argentina as described below (Braslavsky, 1995, p. 22): The first one is establishment of provincial government systems that are as bureaucratic and removed from schools as the national government was in the past. The second one is the strengthening of clientele mechanisms at the base of the system. The third is the increase of costs without indication of qualitative improvement of the services offered; this particularly through the establishment of technical teams with little experience and training who operate with a low level of efficiency; and fourth, the enormous difficulty of building participation of educational communities in the transferred educational sectors. Teachers in Chile feel constrained in the use of teaching strategies that take children out of the classroom because the existing system of inspection to ensure payment of school subsidies requires that at the time of the visit (generally unannounced) the maximum number of pupils be sitting in the classroom with their teachers; and if out on a field-trip they will not be counted. Schiefelbein, Braslasvsky, Gatti and Farrés

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

(1994) reporting on a study in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico show that the scope for innovations in the classrooms that teachers have holds as long “as the classroom silence or school ‘discipline’ is not disrupted.” Tight regulations about time for teachers also limits what they are able to do; this is particularly so, when contracts leave very little time for lesson preparation. From the perspective of teachers, while there is recognition that teachers have an “educational mission” and that at least lip service is paid to their professionalism (Torres, 1995), in reality there are few incentives schemes that stimulate teachers to innovate or improve their teaching. Headteachers report on teachers’ performance without actually examining what goes on in the classroom, “but to satisfy the penchant for formality characteristic of supervisors” (Schiefelbein, Braslavsky, Gatti and Farrés, 1994). Almost no country rewards performance in a regulated way, except through the granting of annual prizes to “good” teachers (e.g. Panama). Teachers’ everyday practice is coloured by the perception that those who could examine the quality of their work and their needs and problems are far removed from them. In his study on teachers’ perception about curriculum reform in Argentina, Feldman (1994, p. 53) reports their feelings about the distance between what they are doing and the planning decisions taken a long way away: Our work is not just us and the kids. It’s us, the school community, parents and pressures from the top.... They (the policy-makers) are very far from the classroom and write about things without knowing. Equally, Chilean teachers reporting on the success of workshops done in the context of the MECE Programme, noted contextual difficulties (i.e. contract status, little time) affecting efforts to transfer their new insights to the classroom, and that these were not acknowledged by those above: “they don’t hear us” (personal communication during visits to secondary schools, 1995).

Quality of training and working conditions Though there has been a long standing concern about the quality of teachers (Cf. Avalos, 1987), there does not appear to be much improvement as judged by numerous analysis of both pre-service and in-service provisions. In the next section of this paper, the structure and contents of teacher training provisions is described showing that a great heterogeneity of programmes exists throughout the Region both in the type of training offered and the length of training. Here, reference is made to some of the training problem areas. On the role of initial versus in-service training, Torres (1995) complains about the excessive importance given over time by policy-makers and donor agencies to in-service training and the lack of concern about what happens in initial training institutions.. Fortunately, this neglect seems to be on the wane as noted, for example, in the Commonwealth Secretariat’s attention to initial training and the bearing of its policies on countries in the Anglophone Caribbean (Cf. Avalos, 1991) and in the current UNESCO/ OREALC’s Project on Initial Training for Basic Education Teachers (FIDEP) being carried out in the Region. On the quality of in-service training, Braslavsky and Birgin (1994) argue that teachers in Argentina have been over inserviced without there being any noticeable difference in their practices. Teachers in Chile, who also have been over in-serviced regard in-service training courses as being of poor quality on account both of their content base and the conventional styles of teaching used in these courses (Mena, Rittershausen and Sepúlveda, 1993). Clearly, both the concept of in-service training and the form it should take are in need of thorough revision. Very much related to the quality of initial training is also the poor quality of trainee intake. The socio-economic status and the level of entry qualifications of trainees has considerably lowered in the past decade. The most

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plausible explanation attributes this mainly to the lowering of salaries, status and prestige of the teaching profession. There is widespread agreement that the teaching profession today in the Region is held in very little regard as shown in the level of salaries and career structure and the relatively insignificant role that teachers are given in processes of reform and change that will affect their practice. The prevailing change models provide clear-cut agendas of what needs to be done to improve education (texts, teaching resources, longer hours of schooling, curriculum reform) but fail to involve teachers in the discussion and design of these changes and to consider whether and how these resources will be used by them (Torres, 1995; Messina, 1994). In a sense, there prevails a vicious circle or self-fulfilling prophecy: those in charge of change mistrust teachers (partly because poor learning achievement is attributed solely to teachers) and tend to believe they have little professional input to provide. Teachers, in turn, feel less and less satisfied with their job, doubt their capacities and, in some cases, resentfully resist changes. The study of teachers in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico (Schiefelbein, Braslavsky, Gatti and Farrés, 1994) is particularly strong in noting dissatisfaction among teachers. Nearly 40 per cent of the teachers in these studies said that if they “had to do it all over again” they would opt for a different profession. Close to seventy per cent of Brazilian teachers in three states (Maranhao, Minas Gerais and São Paulo) said their professional expectations had not been met. And those who considered their expectations had been met, did so for reasons of a non-professional nature such as getting a stable and secure job In the preceding paragraphs, in-service and initial training and the quality of teacher intake have been mentioned as factors affecting independently the quality of educational processes, with the suggestion that such quality is also linked to the social recognition given to their work (as expressed in salaries, working

14

conditions, and professional status). Who are teachers are in the Region, how they are trained and under what conditions they work is described succinctly in the next section of the paper.

Table 1 CHANGES IN NUMBER OF TEACHERS IN THE REGION (1985-1992)

Level Pre-primary First level Second level Third level All levels

1985

% 1992 Increase

320 000 480 000 2 600 000 3 190 000 1 340 000 1 560 000 510 000 670 000 4 770 000 5 900 000

33.3 18.5 14.1 23.9 19.2

Source: UNESCO, World Education Report, 1995.

What we know about the teaching force Size and composition The numbers of teachers at all levels in the Region increased from the mid-eighties onwards, though more so at pre- and tertiary levels, as indicated in the table below1. Feminisation of the teaching force continued to be its predominant trait up to the first level of education; though also strong at second level with the number of female teachers just below 60 per cent, as seen in the following figure (and table 2 in the appendix).

1

Despite structural adjustment policies resulting in a number of countries with a situation of no growth in public spending for education, the numbers of teachers did not decrease. In fact in the 1980-1990 decade there were no significant differences in the rate at which numbers of teachers grew, between countries that increased their levels of educational spending per pupil as percentage of GNP and those that did not. (See Table 1 in Appendix)

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Figure 1 PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE TEACHERS IN THE REGION BY LEVEL (1992)

100 80 60 40 20 0 Caribe A.

A. Central & Panamá

Pre-Primary

G. de México

First

S. América

Second

Source: UNESCO, World Education Report, 1995.

Pupil/teacher ratio The proportion of teachers per pupil is not as high as in other world regions such as Africa and South Asia (Bangladesh, India and Pakistan), but is higher than most industrialised countries. However, in the 1980-1992 period there was an overall decrease in the number of pupils teachers had in their classrooms, as seen in table 2.

Pupil/teacher ratios decreased in most countries for a number of possible reasons, not necessarily related only to the desire to provide better working conditions for teachers. They may indicate policies of hiring more teachers (especially for rural areas) or be due to decreasing school populations because greater poverty rates kept children out of school; the case, it seems, of Mexico and Haiti (Carnoy et al., 1995). Declining rates may also hide un-

Table 2 CHANGES IN PUPIL/TEACHER RATIO BY LEVEL OF EDUCATION (1980-1992)

Países Anglophone Caribbean Central A. & Panama Gulf of Mexico S. America

Pre-Primary 1980 1992

1980

1992

1980

Second 1992

10.5 (2)* 31.7 (3) 29 (2) 29.6 (8)

25.8 (10) 38 (5) 37.5 (4) 27.8 (10)

25.2 (10) 35.2 (5) 26.3 (4) 24.4 (10)

21.9 (8) 25 (3) 18.3 (3) 16.2 (5)

20.4 (8) 22 (3) 15.3 (3) 14.8 (5)

11.5 (2) 26 (3) 24 (2) 23.5 (8)

First

Source: UNESCO, World Education Report. 1995. Numbers in brackets refer to number of countries with data.

15

BULLETIN 41, December 1996 / The Major Project of Education

even distributions with very high pupil/teacher rates in urban contexts and low ones in rural areas.. Such is the case of Guatemala (UNESCO/UNICEF, 1993) where in 1987 the average ratio in urban schools was 38/1 versus 3/1 in rural (current reports show that it is as high as 45 in some urban centres).2

Working conditions Working conditions of teachers vary somewhat from country to country. There are reported noticeable differences among countries (OEI, 1994) in hours of teaching demands. For example, at second level teaching periods may

Figure 2 MAXIMUM TEACHING HOURS PER WEEK AS REPORTED FOR SECOND LEVEL EDUCATION

Venezuela Uruguay Perú Ecuador Colombia Chile Brasil Bolivia Argentina Rep. Domin. Cuba Panamá Nicaragua Honduras Guatemala El Salvador Costa Rica

0

10

20

30

40

Source: OEI, 1994.

last anywhere from 35 to 45 minutes, and teachers’ teaching load may range from a high of 40 periods per week to a low of 20. The figure 2 illustrates the distribution of these differences among countries in the region: At primary level, it is reported that the weekly schedule of lessons for a teacher ranges from 20 to 25 hours, but this may be lower in the rural areas (Schiefelbein, Braslasvsky, Gatti and Farrés, 1994).

2

16

Teachers themselves do not recognise their personal teaching loads in the figures given by official statistics (Gatti, Esposito and Neubauer da Silva, 1994). They point out that there are big differences within countries regarding loads (eg. small rural schools versus large urban and metropolitan ones).

Reported teaching loads obscure the fact that in most countries in the region, because of low salaries, teachers often work two shifts and may take on other type of part-time employment. This is clearly the case at secondary level, but it is also true at primary level as indicated in an Argentinian study covering three locations where an average of 37 per cent of teachers were holding second jobs (Braslasvsky and Birgin, 1994). Equally, not accounted for is the fact that in many countries there is little or no official paid time for preparation of lessons and correction of school work; teachers’ reports on average time spent outside of school preparing varies, but in general this time appears to stand at about 6 hours extra per week (Braslavsky and Birgin, 1994;

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Figure 3 TEACHER SALARY CHANGES IN THE EIGHTIES AND EARLY NINETIES (Base level 100 in 1980) 200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

1980

1982 1985 1988 1990s Bolivia Argentina

Chile México Guatemala Costa Rica El Salvador

Panamá

Uruguay

Venezuela

Source: Carnoy et al. (1995).

Gatti, Espósito and Neubauer da Silva, 1994; Farrés and Noriega, 1994). One of the most important indicators of teacher working conditions are their salaries as these affect how much extra work they have to do to make ends meet as well as the public’s and their own perception of their worth within society. Salaries experienced in the eighties and early nineties a decline illustrated in the figure 3. The case of Chile is symptomatic of the effect of structural adjustment policies (Carnoy et al., 1995) on the lowering of salaries. The rise of teacher salaries in 1982 was an unsatisfactory way of redressing what had been a drastic cut in the early seventies (before structural adjustment) that reduced these in about 20 per cent of what teachers were earning in 1973 (Cerda, Nuñez, and Silva, 1991). However, the economic crisis of the early eighties and the consequent effect of structural adjustment policies brought salaries down in 1985 at double the rate that manufacturing wages were lowered (Carnoy et al., 1995). Later salary rises from 1990 onwards have not succeeded in bringing teachers back to their former levels and continue to be a factor of dissatisfaction among them. Salaries in the Anglophone Caribbean differ

importantly between one country and another; for example, in Jamaica the minimum teachers’ salary is USD$ 150.- while in Bahamas it is USD$ 1 000. Career structures are rare in the region. Most countries report (OEI, 1994) that salary increments accrue on the basis of years of service, with only a few putting value on other factors such as in-service courses (Chile) evidence of teaching competence (Cuba), knowledge (Mexico). Uruguay was one of the few countries that had until 1973 a strong system of hiring on the basis of qualifications and performance; an effort to restore the system in 1986 failed because of teacher opposition. Today, teachers are promoted on the sole basis of length of service. The system is rigid and it undermines improvement and forces out of the system those teachers who are so qualified as to get better jobs outside of teaching (Filgueira and Marrero, 1995). Qualifications At pre-primary and primary level there still is an average of just over 20 per cent of uncertified teachers. Up-to-date figures are not available for all countries but of those which

17

BULLETIN 41, December 1996 / The Major Project of Education

Table 3 PERCENTAGE OF UNCERTIFIED TEACHERS IN PRE-PRIMARY AND FIRST LEVELS (1989 and 1991) IN THE REGION

Sub-Region

Pre-Primary 1989 1991

1989

1991

A. Caribbean (a) C. America & Panama (b) G. of Mexico (c) S. America Brazil Total Región

89.9 19.6 0.0 14.8 25.4 21.3

20.2 21.7 2.2 23.7 -25.8

20.5 20.9 2.6 21.5 19.4 20.6

89.9 18.9 0.0 31.9 24.5 21.0

Primary

Source: UNESCO, 1992 and UNESCO, 1996. (a) Includes for both years and both levels: Aruba, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and Trinidad & Tobago. (b) Includes for both years: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. (c) Includes for Pre-primary only Cuba, and for First, Cuba and Dominican Republic for both years.

are known the highest proportion of uncertified primary teachers is found in Anglophone Caribbean countries (ranging from 9.1 in Jamaica to 67.0 in Grenada) in the Central America and Panama sub-region (Nicaragua with 40.1 and Honduras with 32.3), and within South America, in Peru with 43.2 per cent uncertified teachers3 Brazil has 24.5 per cent uncertified teachers at pre- and 19.4 at primary levels. Figures for some countries in 1989 and 1991, indicate an overall increase in certification with decreases in pre-primary probably due to there being more children attended at that level in the Region: The case of Brazil, in terms of teacher certification, is particularly dramatic as with a school population of about 70 million and a teaching force of about 1.3 million it has some 300,000 teachers without any training at all (OEI, 1994).

3

18

Most of the information available refers to 1989 (UNESCO, 1992) and does not include the situation of countries where there is known to be a large number of uncertified teachers such as Haiti.

Specially Qualified Teachers The provision of teachers for areas that require some form of specialisation continues to be a problem in some contexts. At first level the areas of concern are insufficient teachers able to teach in multilingual areas such as exist in Peru and Bolivia ( UNESCO, 1996) and in Central America as well as generally speaking, of teachers for rural areas and for special education. Teachers specially qualified to teach in vocational technical streams of secondary schools are also scarce in the Region. The situation of teachers in rural areas is different according to countries and subregions. As seen in table 4 (and table 3 in the appendix) the provision of rural teachers in relation to the proportion of rural population and rural children enroled in schools showed some years ago that in sheer numbers the situation was less satisfactory in the Central America and Panama sub-region than in other sub-regions. There are countries with more shortages such as Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela (see table in appendix). Even though the numbers of teachers in rural areas may be sufficient with low pupil/teacher

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Table 4 RURAL POPULATION, RURAL SCHOOL POPULATION AND RURAL TEACHRS BY SUB-REGION IN THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN REGIONS (1989)

Sub-Region A. Caribbean* Central A. & Panama G. of Mexico S. America

% Rural school Population

% of Rural Population

Inequality Index**

% of Rural Teachers

46.4 50.6 36.9 25.9

36 57 32 27

1.3 0.9 1.1 1.0

51.2 48.6 39.5 27.1

Source: UNESCO/UNICEF, 1993. * Refers only to Surinam ** Column 1: Column 2

Table 5 PUPIL/TEACHER RATIOS IN SPECIAL EDUCATION BY SUB-REGION (1989)

Sub-Region Anglophone Caribbean C. America and Panama Gulf of Mexico S. America

Pupil/ teacher ratios 18 19 9 9

Source: UNESCO/UNICEF, 1993.

ratios, many of these teachers are uncertified and even when certified they lack specialised training for dealing with the linguistic and cultural needs of their school population. There is little specific information on teachers who work with children with special needs. The table 5 based on 1989 figures provides some indication of average pupil/teacher ratios in the area, and shows high ratios for Central America and Panama and for the Anglophone Caribbean (see also the table 4 in the appendix), indicating a shortage there of teachers who are trained to work in the field of special education. There are no readily available figures regarding certification of teachers in secondary education, though shortages of specially qualified teachers in key areas such as science

and mathematics are of concern, for example in Brazil (Menezes, 1995) and Chile (Rodríguez, 1993). There is equally concern about the quality of preparation of science and mathematics teachers in the Region as concluded from a survey done by the Organisation of Iberoamerican States (OEI, 1994). Initial teacher training Initial training for primary teachers in the region varies according to type of institution organising the preparation and its recognised level (secondary or tertiary) as well as in length of training. The following table shows the differences There also is a degree of variability in the way secondary teachers are trained. All coun-

19

BULLETIN 41, December 1996 / The Major Project of Education

Table 6 ORGANIZATION OF PRIMARY TEACHER TRAINING IN THE REGION

Training Organisation

Number of countries*

Tipe of Training Institution: • Normal School or College • University • Both types

14 3 4

Level of training: • Secondary • Tertiary

2 21

Length of Training (years) • Two • Three • Four • Five

2 11 5 2

Source: UNESCO/Santiago (1996) and OEI (1994). * Countries include: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Jamaica, Bahamas, Belize, Dominica and other Caribbean countries together. In Argentina the length of studies varied from 1.5 to 4 years depending on the institution doing the training.

Table 7 CHARACTERISTICS OF SECONDARY TEACHER TRAINING

A. Entry Requirements and Responsible Training Institution Secondary Training

Nº of Countries*

Entry Requirements: • Incomplete Secondary (11 years of sch.) • Secondary + Univ. entry exam. • Secondary Primary Teaching Certificate

2 14 3

Training Institution • Universities • Higher Education Institutions • Both

11 3 5

Source: OEI, 1994. * Countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru y Venezuela.

B. Type of Qualification by Length of Training (No. of Countries)* Years Qualification Professional Academic Both

6 4 9

3

4

5

2&4

3&5

4&5

2 – –

3 1 1

1 3 2

– – 1

– – 2

– – 3

Source: OEI, 1994. * Countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru y Venezuela.

20

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

tries with the exception of Mexico4 have an institutionalised form of teacher training be it in tertiary non-university or university institutions. But they vary in their entry requirements, the type of qualification received and the length of studies as shown in table 7 (A and B). The training curriculum There is little specific information on the contents and quality of the teacher training curriculum especially at the primary level. Countries, however, report on its inadequacy in a number of respects (UNESCO, 1996; Gysling, 1993): (a) Institutional heterogeneity and diversity in the type of qualifications offered for what is basically the same type of teaching tasks, suggest that the contents of training may also be diverse depending on the institution and the quality of teacher educators in those centres. Training as we know from the above tables ranges from secondary level institutions (in Bolivia) to universities; (b) Tendency to split the curriculum in a very big number of discrete subjects; for example, at primary level in 16 to 18 per year in Bolivia (UNESCO, 1996) and 25 to 40 in Chile (Cox and Gysling, 1990) taught in short periods of time, with little across-subject teaching; (c) Inadequate provisions in countries that require diversified curricula to train teachers for special groups such as indigenous and linguistically diverse populations (e.g. Bolivia, Panama, Perú and Chile); (d) Lack of practical relevance of the curriculum; either in the sense that contents are theoretical, that there is little action-research type of activity for teacher trainees, or that teaching practice is limited in relation to the time

devoted to classroom theoretical lecturing. In relation to the above, the main issues in need of examination are the teacher training curriculum and the training procedures used in the institutions5. This includes quality of knowledge content, of methods of teaching and of the nature and sequence of school experience and practicum. To expect primary teacher trainees to know enough about the contents of language, math’s, science, social science from their secondary school experience is at least equivocal because the quality of secondary schools is also being called into question (Cf. Puryear and Brunner, 1995); also because, the science, math’s, language that children need to know requires teachers to re-formulate for the purposes of teaching what they learned as subject knowledge in school or training institutions (Shulman, 1987; Osborne and Freyberg, 1991). An approach focused on general pedagogy rather than specific didactic, deprives trainees of what is needed to deal with the content and skills of reading with comprehension, understanding math’s and science for everyday purposes or understanding the societies in which they live, etc. (Cf. Farrés and Noriega, 1994; Gatti, Espósito and Neubauer da Silva, 1994). Most importantly, the way in which different children learn and what are appropriate styles of teaching is not competently examined in many training institutions for lack of acquaintance with recent research and experimentation in the field (Cf. Gardner, 1991). Practice qua practice is either given undue importance to the detriment of knowing about what to practice and being appropriately guided in this practice, or is left as an addendum to a largely theoretical programme of studies.

5 4

Secondary teachers are either university graduates in their discipline field, or primary teachers with upgrading to teach in secondary. However, some secondary training is beginning in a small number of universities such as Querétaro and San Luis Potosí (OEI, 1994).

One of the ethnographic studies on initial primary teacher training is A. de Tezanos (1987) study of a Colombian training institution where she found that theoretical subjects where taught almost exactly as in the frontal system in schools with student teachers acting the part well. However, trainees were critical of the advise offered by practice teaching supervisors.

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BULLETIN 41, December 1996 / The Major Project of Education

Figure 4 SECONDARY SCIENCE AND MATHS TEACHER TRAINING. DISTRIBUTION OF CURRICULUM CONTENT AREAS. Venezuela Uruguay Perú Paraguay Ecuador Colombia Chile Brasil Bolivia Argentina República Dominicana Cuba Guatemala Costa Rica 0%

20%

Asignatura

Didáctica Especial

40%

60%

Pedagogía

Complement.

80%

100%

Práctica

Source: OEI, 1994.

The secondary teacher education curriculum is also little known in terms of the quality of its contents and methodology, mostly because it is organised much more autonomously in universities or tertiary level institutions, often with little in-country coordination amongst these. A recent survey of the training of science and mathematics secondary teachers provides an indication of weight given to the various components of training in Latin American institutions where subject and pedagogical training are combined. Figure 4 illustrates the average situation in 14 countries6. What is noticeable in the above figure are the differences between countries in the proportion of time devoted to the different training areas. While there is clearly a strong emphasis on subject knowledge in science and maths and on what we call pedagogy (comprising educational foundations subjects such as psychology and sociology of education, general methods, assessment and evaluation, etc.), there is little time given to subject teaching methodology or didactic and to teach6

22

Costa Rica, Guatemala, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

ing practice, with the exception of Cuba where the relationship is practically reversed. Contents of the subject methods courses offered in secondary training often centre on preparing the future professional for the practice of his profession, placing emphasis on the development of abilities and skills for planning, organisation, assessment and teaching of curricular contents. However, there does not seem to be a guiding thread to enable the observer to see what form of conceptualisation of classroom practice is being held nor is there any evidence of use of educational research results in relation to these activities ... Teaching practice usually occurs at the end of the training period. Generally, this practicum period bears no relationship to evidence from research on teaching; and those in charge of the practicum at the institutional level have very little contact and much less work together with schoolbased practicum supervisors. Training in psychology and sociology is carried out generally by professors attached to faculties of education who, from the perspective of their fields, provide students with what they think will be essential to their training. Yet, in most cases, there is a big gap between their knowledge and what is required to train a teacher of science and maths; in other words,

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

it is expected that the student trainees, on their own, will be able to close the gap once they are in their classrooms. In relation to styles of teaching in training institutions, though there is not much by way of studies of institutions themselves, reports indicate that lecturing formats prevail with little provision for active construction of knowledge on the part of trainees and with little opportunity for personal reading and research (Cf. de Tezanos, 1987). The quality of libraries in some institutions, even universities, is deplorable so that all knowledge is acquired through personal communication of lecturers (who also have little access to knowledge bases). Referring to the training of secondary science teachers, the OEI (1994, p. 219) survey of the Region notes the following: The teaching methodology used in a number of the Centres considered, involves lectures, demonstrations, practical work, problems, report writing etc. However, in some of them there is little variety in the teaching strategies used. Teaching is usually lecturing through verbal communication by the teacher, with students acting as mere recipients of knowledge that has already been constructed with only the subjects related to methodology and pedagogy being more active and participatory. In-service training and staff development Although all countries in the region provide some type of opportunities for teachers to improve their knowledge of teaching both in content and methods, these opportunities vary in terms of (a) who sponsors them, (b) who pays for them, (c) for what purpose; and (d) their focus of attention. (a) A number of countries have nationally organised systems of in-service training, as for example Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Uruguay. These systems take various forms: the actual organising of courses, seminars, workshops on a national, regional or provincial basis, or the accreditation of courses organised by

others such as universities or other academic institutions, such as is the case in Chile. (b) Though teachers are encouraged to take courses and they do so in great numbers in some countries such as Argentina and Chile, situations differ regarding who pays for them. In a number of countries there are few or no provisions to finance in-service for teachers such as Brazil and so teachers must pay the courses themselves; other countries provide scholarships such as Paraguay or a yearly sum to teachers to pay for courses such as Chile. (c) Purposes of in-service are varied. Generally, they are geared to what is called actualización or up-dating of knowledge and in these cases tend to be systematic courses lasting anywhere from 3 days to a month, and are offered during vacations. There are also courses intended to certify untrained teachers, or to enable them to teach at higher levels than those for which they were trained as in the case of Mexico. Thus, most courses have a utilitarian slant and they are perceived and valued or not valued (depending on the case) by teachers. Some courses are termed of capacitación intended to enable teachers to learn about specific skills or tasks that could be of use either in teaching or managing classrooms and schools; or for learning about specific changes within the system. (d) The focus of attention of courses not geared to certification, as can be noted from the above, tends to be on providing teachers with some knowledge that it is considered they do not have or could not find out on their own. Most courses or in-service activities are organised away from the schools, although there are exceptions to this that will be dealt with later on in the paper. A different perspective seems to be emerging with national programmes emphasising changes in the quality of education that start with ground work with teachers. Two examples are the Sistema para el Mejoramiento de la Educación in Costa Rica and the Programa de Mejoramiento de la Calidad y Equidad de la Educación in Chile.

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BULLETIN 41, December 1996 / The Major Project of Education

Teachers and the improvement of teaching processes

Shifts of attention The shifts of attention discussed below are grouped in two sections. The first responds to the assumption illustrated in figure 5 below, that changes in teacher quality need to be examined from the joint perspective of the educational system (represented by policy-makers and administrators) and the schools in which teachers work. The second section looks at change from the standpoint of the individual teacher. Shifts of the educational system and of schools

The main underlying assumption of the discussion illustrated in the following figure, is that a major change of focus has occurred in conceptualisations about the role of teachers as a result of recognising that for individuals and societies the quality of educational experi-

24

TIO

SC

T

NAL S IS

HOOL

EA

CHE

T

E

R

QUALITY OF LEARNING

ences is a foremost issue; and that quality besides the formative aspects it involves, means learning. It is not just teachers who are having to reexamine their role as stimulators of learning but also schools and educational systems are having to see themselves much more as “institutions for learning”. There are many ways in which the focus on learning is discussed. There is first a substantial amount of accumulated knowledge on how learning takes place, partly the result of brain research, of cognitive psychology, of information-processing theories, of longitudinal research on children’s intelligences and learning that has been expressed in a language format and in practices that are meaningful to teachers7. The main thrust of current learning 7

From a focus on teaching to a focus on learning.

U

CA

E

D

LEARNING AS THE FOCUS OF THEACHING AND SCHOOLING

M

It is not difficult to provide diagnosis of what are the ills of the education system and its school and teaching processes, what is more complex is to discuss ideas that could be translated into practices, supported by policies and administrative rearrangements; complex because contexts and supporting conditions are different and not easily changed. Nevertheless, this section attempts to do just that, by suggesting for teachers, administrators and policymakers in the Region, certain directions and actions which are based on research results and effective experiences. In its first part, the section addresses what are considered to be needed shifts in attention that concern policymakers, administrators and schools and teachers, in particular. The second part, looks at conditions for the foreseen effects of those shifts of attention to occur.

Figure 5

It is commonly thought that the implications of psychological or learning theories are not translatable into classroom practice and much less so in contexts of extreme poverty or cultural isolation. Yet, the author was able to observe teachers in a very poor school in Bangladesh who not only could understand the main thrust of brain research and of Howard Gardner’s seven intelligences’ theory but also were able to transform this theory into a mode of teaching that challenged students to active learning. A similar experience is taking place in rural schools linked to the MECE Programme in Chile.

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

approaches is that they are associated with the concept of meaningful understanding on the part of young learners. Teachers have always known that learning implies understanding but how understanding is achieved has been less clear to them and to many others in the recent past: Even individuals who desire ardently to teach for understanding find that it is a difficult and demanding undertaking for all concerned. The difficulty comes not only from potent and enduring misunderstandings in the various disciplines but also from the habits of teaching and learning that have been ingrained in most of us in the educational system. When educators –be they primary school teachers or university professors– say that these ideas are familiar and that they are already teaching for understanding, it is usually the case that they have something quite different in mind, or that they are confusing desire with achievement. Gardner and Boix-Mansilla (1994). That learning is the focus of teaching implies that all involved teachers, the educational system and the schools need to be aware of what is required for better learning. There is strong agreement that what is needed to teach for understanding is not more training of teachers in general skills of teaching but training in the teaching of the subject or content they have to teach (Osborne and Freyberg, 1991; Driver, 1985; Grossman, Wilson and Shulman, 1989); there is also agreement that people learn in different ways or styles, that they have prior conceptions about the world, people, things that concern learning that facilitate or confuse them when faced with learning experiences, but that also help them interpret these experiences (Carretero, 1993). There is a growing understanding that the quality of learning is associated with the quality of learning experiences and that these need to come in different forms supported by learning materials of different sorts; though there is less agreement about which these may be. For example, there is discussion on the role of text-

books partly because in poor contexts textbooks often are not used but carefully stored away, but mainly because the kind of textbooks available and the type of activity they elicit from learners are factors that can either work for learning or be against it (Torres, 1995). Equally, learning is seen as being more the result of a cooperative enterprise than a solitary intuitive spark on the part of an individual learner (Murphy, 1991). If not full awareness, there is certainly a more precise conceptualisation being used to refer to schools as organisations for learning. Schools that view themselves in this way create organisational structures, or flexibilise existing ones to promote learning. Examples from OECD countries both at school and classroom level point to forms that have resulted in improved learning (OECD, 1994): None of the observed classrooms in primary schools had the teacher’s desk placed in the classical front position before the pupils’ benches. It was usually placed in the corner not far from the blackboard and often occupied by working-materials. The placement of the teacher’s own table underlines symbolically that her management functions does not need a “royal” status in the focus of everybody’s attention and from where she herself with an eagle’s eye can supervise everybody at the same time. In fact, all teachers observed were constantly walking around or sitting close to pupils except for the rather few moments when they did blackboard work. From a focus on coverage of curricular contents to a focus on the development of cognitive and practical abilities Among the stumbling blocks in teaching and educational management that affect understanding and learning, a most important one has to do with the content of teaching. On the one hand, the issue is the kind of curriculum frame that will guide work in schools; and on the other, from the perspective of school management and the classroom, is the dilemma of content coverage versus fewer contents but

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greater depth of treatment. Paradoxically, in this age of so much easily accessible accumulated knowledge, the perception of psychologists and educators and those that work creatively in the classroom is that to be exposed to more information does not mean that one understands more and that one will be able to use the knowledge. With a variety of approaches to fewer content areas pupils have a greater chance of developing those intellectual capacities and practical abilities that will help them to function in a society with ever-changing specific requirements. The fact voiced so often that it sounds almost a cliché, that schools in the Latin American and Caribbean Region are producing children who cannot read and who cannot count8, may be related to the fact that teachers have been unable to free themselves from the concept of coverage at the expense of understanding; even when such coverage as we know is not much in terms of the amount of concepts and facts actually taught. A strong contributing factor, especially at secondary level, towards this approach of covering contents (“pasar la materia”) are administrative pressures to produce marks at given periods of time and to ensure students will succeed in examinations. With regard to the curriculum, as seen in the first part of this paper, a number of countries are involved in curricular reforms tending mostly to fortify general education versus early vocational specialisation. It is not clear, however, from the what is known whether these reforms will result in more than reshuffling of contents with some additions and some subtractions. Recent primary level curricular reforms in Argentina, according to Braslavsky (1995) have suffered from the problem of be-

8

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Curiously, after years of reform to correct precisely this kind of situation, in the United States it was said at the recent National Education Summit (Time Magazine, April 8, 1996) that students were “graduating from high school with diplomas that they can’t even read, who can’t make a coherent sentence or do basic math”.

ing longer or shorter lists of contents without sufficient focus on what basic learning abilities are to be achieved . It is crucial therefore that if learning is to be the focus of attention of teaching, the focus of the school curriculum and of the teacher’s main concern in the classroom has to be to help pupils understand key concepts and develop basic skills through representations that are meaningful to them (Shulman, 1987); this also requires that teachers have access to recent information on how learning takes place. In practice, as currently discussed (Cf. Murphy, 1991, p. 54-55) this means, from the perspective of national reforms as well as at the classroom level, that what is needed is a curriculum with fewer things to cover and a disposition to cover these more thoroughly; “depth of knowledge in core subjects rather than acquisition of superficial knowledge in many broad areas”; emphasis on what is called “generative knowledge” or ideas and theories that help students to “organise and learn other knowledge”; and awareness that “the greatest enemy of understanding is coverage” (Gardner and Boix-Mansilla, 1994). To acknowledge the above principles means that a further change in orientation is required. From a focus on time as an administrative concept to time as an academic condition for learning Time is a concept increasingly referred to in many different ways when analysing the problems of education. Time is seen as lacking by teachers who being poorly paid hold more than one teaching job or several unrelated jobs; school time is considered to be short in most schools in the Region with fewer hours per week and weeks per year than in most industrialised countries. Resolving the issue however is difficult in that intuitively teachers and administrators know that more time does not necessarily mean more learning unless it is time of a special kind and used with educational and not administrative purposes.

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

When reforms are planned without considering what time is available for teachers who have to implement the changes, these reforms fail. Such is one of the conclusions of the National Education Commission on Time and Learning in the USA (1994)when it noted that inadequate consideration given to teachers’ time was undermining the success of educational reforms in that country. Equally, when increases of time are decreed in terms of length of school day and school year without examining what pupils and teachers do for learning during that time, there is reason to doubt the effectiveness of the measure. There is need therefore for a shift of attention from time understood in the ways indicated above to time as needed for learning to take place, “academic learning time” as referred to by the USA report above. Teachers’ time cannot continue to be understood simply as time ‘in front of the class’. Time to prepare lessons, to read, to collaborate with other colleagues, to assist individual children when needed, to be in contact with parents is not a “waste of time” (National Education Commission, 1994). As seen in the preceding sections of this paper, teachers in the Region have little time outside of the classroom for all these activities especially when their actual teaching load is close to 40 periods per week. There is need to learn in this respect about how successful systems of education with a strong focus on learning such as Japan require their teachers to teach just over four hours a day, but to remain in the school eight to nine hours and work five and half days a week, using the non-teaching time ‘for interacting with other teachers, preparing lessons, working with individual students, and correcting papers’ (Lee, Graham and Stevenson, in press). Shifts in the individual teachers From seeing themselves as bearers of knowledge to be communicated to seeing

themselves both as learners and as stimulators of knowledge to be constructed and developed by pupils through learning experiences The shift of attention suggested here is not a simple theoretical shift from holding one theory of learning to holding another, but rather the result of understanding what is involved in learning through being exposed themselves to the experience of constructing meaningful knowledge. Staff development experiences and carefully constructed teaching materials may offer teachers the opportunity to remind themselves of what is involved in the process of learning something new, to examine the process by which their learning occurs and beyond that, of actually learning something new. The conditions for this to occur are not simple, but should be a part of staff development activities and be acknowledged in teaching materials made available to teachers. From believers that pupils although different should be homogeneous to believers that pupils are and will remain different Despite all publicly articulated convictions about individual differences and how children should be motivated accordingly, many classroom observations point to teachers regarding children and young students as nondifferent, both in the way they address the content of teaching and in their teaching strategies. There are many external factors that contribute to this (size of class, time constraints, lack of know-how), but there is also the natural trend to homogenize groups that when unreflected can become a firmly entrenched conviction, despite overt assertions to the contrary. Teachers, therefore need to learn more about learning styles, learning difficulties and different intelligences.

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From executors of teaching procedures recommended by others, to designers and/or adapters of such procedures Teachers have experienced a long standing love-hate relationship with skills and methods that are provided to them by others; they look for them, they are glad for them and yet they know that the passive acceptance of technical know-how undermines them as professionals and often “doesn’t work”. What is needed, and it is the subject of much discussion in the literature on teacher quality, is a recovery of their professional capacity to decide what is useful or not, the capabilities to design teaching programmes from a curricular framework or to adapt existing programmes to the variety of school populations with whom they work. These capabilities extend to knowing that there is no need to reinvent the wheel in every circumstance but rather be able to decide on the use of existing resources for teaching, based on judgements about their quality. Such capabilities also extend to designing and using assessment procedures appropriate for judging the understanding and skills of their students. From being isolated individuals in their classrooms to co-workers collaborating in the improvement of teaching and learning Teachers do talk to others about their teaching experiences, but not always with the purpose of building together new strategies, finding ways of dealing with problems, examining the meaning of difficult content areas or developing curricular alternatives. Yet, when they do, they feel personally and socially gratified, and professionally enhanced (Cf. Bell and Gilbert, 1994). There is in fact, increasing evidence of the value of teacher collaboration in the improvement of quality (Cf. OECD, 1994; Avalos, 1995). Conditions needed for shifts to occur It is obvious that the above suggested changes of direction have to be supported by policy 28

changes and by actions within schools and classrooms; as well as directly affect teachers through their training provisions. Suggestions in this respect are considered below. Contextual changes These, in general, are related to teachers’ salaries, conditions of work, administrative arrangements related to the system as a whole, as well as resource allocation for the operation of educational activities. Three aspects are highlighted here: time, resources and incentives for teachers. Time for teachers: from “taxi” to full-time teachers As suggested earlier on there is real need for the establishment of policies that regulate the time teachers spend in schools. Proper administrative arrangements coupled with a salary that allows teachers to feel basically secure regarding living necessities, should ensure that teachers spend more hours in school than they currently do in some countries, and that this time is properly balanced between time for classroom teaching, and time for professional activities involving collaboration with other teachers, attention to individual students, correction of work and interaction with parents. This is of even greater urgency given that almost all reforms being planned in the Region inevitably will call on teachers to spend extra time trying to implement them: learning about new curriculum frames, examining and selecting teaching materials, interacting with other teachers to work on school projects, etc. A broader range of teaching resources In the wake of the 21st. century the kind of resources that can be used for teaching is changing notoriously. Though it may be thought that new technology, such as software, computers, and other audio-visual material, has no place in poor countries, or in schools that serve the poor populations or more isolated

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

regions, this is a fallacy. Precisely, because it has the power of producing a qualitative jump in the processes by which children, with limited prior experience to assist them, come to understand difficult concepts; and because such technology can provide children with a vision of the wider world while at the same time help teachers improve their content and practical knowledge, such technology must have a high priority in the allocation of resources to education: New technologies stand to improve the efficiency of education through software tools that improve student performance and through new means of providing instruction and educational resources to undeserved populations. Computers improve student achievement and attitudes at all levels (Thompson, Simonson, and Hargrave, 1992), and small-scale experiments with computer-based instruction have been carried out in several low- and middleincome countries, including Chile, Mexico and the Philippines. In industrial countries technologies are being innovatively combined at the primary and secondary levels to increase instructional effectiveness. Intelligent tutoring systems, CD-ROM, multimedia, and other applications have improved student achievement in all disciplines (Sivin-Kachala and Bialo, 1994), from early childhood programs through college preparatory classes. Broadcast and network technologies allow teachers with specialized skills (such as Japanese or Russian language teachers) and educational resources (such as on-line libraries) to reach beyond the traditional limits of classrooms and schools. The World Bank (1995, p. 85). Incentives The value of incentives as a form of improving the quality of teaching and indirectly pupil performance is a subject of heated discussion in many circles including donor agencies and policy-makers (Cf. Murname, 1993; Kemmerer and Thiagarajan, 1993; Hallak, 1990; The

World Bank, 1990; Chapman, Snyder and Burchfield, 1993). The concept of incentives is understood in several ways. Economic incentives may be targeted either to reward performance (‘payment by merit’ schemes) or compensate for shortfalls due to the nature of the task (i.e. difficult teaching conditions, few teachers in the field such as maths or science). Incentives can also be non-economical such as instructional support in the form of texts, pedagogical supervision, school environment or status in the community (Kemmerer and Thiagarajan, 1993). The most plausible argument to justify the use of some form of incentives, more than believe that they will directly affect pupil achievement, is that they will have an effect on teacher job satisfaction (Chapman, Snyder and Burchfield, 1993) and that this in turn will induce teachers to improve teaching. The Regional situation discussed earlier in this paper is that there is little by way of incentives for teachers: most countries have a rudimentary career structure based solely on length of experience; some have prizes for teachers; and practically no country rewards performance in whatever way this may be assessed. It seems therefore that attention needs to be paid to incentives. In relation to economic incentives, the most difficult kind to implement are ‘payment by merit’ schemes because of the obvious difficulties of measuring performance, but mostly because of the negative effects they may have on teachers; for example, “lobbying for the most able students, hoarding teaching materials so that other teachers do not appear effective, and spreading rumours about other teacher deficiencies” (Murname, 1993). Modified ‘payment by merit’ schemes such as teacher salary increases for schools that improve their student results as measured by standardised examinations or tests, only transfer to the wider area of the school the same danger of non-pedagogic schemes being used to win the reward, such as making sure that pupils who are performing less well are absent from school on the day of the exam.

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Murname (1993) suggests that economic individual incentives can be appropriate in the case of teachers in rural isolated schools or who work with difficult school populations; this because all teachers in the school are equally rewarded. But, on the whole, he considers that economic incentives geared to rewarding teacher initiative and collaboration as exemplified for example in the design of classroom projects to improve pupil learning, are of greater value. This kind of initiative is at the heart of the Pedagogical Projects in Colombia and the Educational Improvement Projects in primary and secondary education in Chile. Innovative forms of staff development that are school and classroom centred and directly geared to improving teaching, constitute another form of incentive that may or may not carry an economic reward for the teacher, but that is rewarding on account of its potential effects on students or on greater professional self-assurance for teachers... From the perspective of schemes that do not have to be controlled by the educational system, Kemmerer and Thiagarajan (1993) provide a long list of possible incentives that local communities can use to stimulate teachers to improve teaching, assist children having learning difficulties or improve pupil classroom discipline. Changes in styles of work in schools and classrooms A very important component of quality improvement is the context afforded to teaching and learning by schools and classrooms. This means that both at system level and at school level changes in the organisational structure and climate of schools are needed, that teachers require space and time to work together in the monitoring and improvement of their teaching and that in the classrooms, teachers focus on the learning time for students.

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Organisational structure and climate There are several factors that affect the quality of the school as an organisation for learning. Two are most important: the quality of its leadership and the scope for decision-making that headteachers/principals and teachers have. On the quality of leadership there are numerous studies and experiences that point to this as a key factor and it means that opportunity has to be given to school principals to reexamine their leadership and to learn about processes that improve the administration and climate of schools. Given that processes of decentralisation are taking place throughout the Region, it is important that they be subjected to careful scrutiny to ensure that bureaucratic apparatuses are effectively reduced and that schools have scope to grow in their decision-making power and to achieve what is known as ‘school-based management’ or the system whereby ‘the authority of actors at the school site is increased’ (Cf. Murphy, 1991, p. 37). It is clearly recommended in a number of studies that address the issue that there be as much as possible decentralisation of management and budget to schools (Cf. OECD, 1994); that school authorities have the power to decide on school staff and that teachers have more decision-making power in curriculum matters and specifically in the purchase of teaching materials (including books and software) for their pupils (considered already in country reforms in Chile and Costa Rica); and that there be power and will on the part of headteachers and school principals to reorganise flexibly the times of teaching and to provide time for remedial work. Learners need different amounts of time to understand and develop expected abilities and skills. This requires that the organisation of teaching time be supported by flexible timetables with large teaching blocks that allow for a sufficient variety of activities that are responsive to the different learning needs of pupils:

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Perhaps the most significant changes noted (in case studies of quality schools) were those designed to promote greater student participation in and responsibility for learning. In several schools it was easy to see the links between organisational change and changes to pedagogy and student approaches to learning, both intended and unintended. One more common example observed was the consolidation of the curriculum in the early secondary years to reduce curriculum fragmentation and to enable timetabling of more flexible, often longer, teaching/learning sessions. (OECD, 1994). Summarising the research and experience on schools that are effectively engaged in reorganising their delivery systems, Murphy (1991, p. 67) lists the following arrangements as desirable: – flexible use of space – less regimented scheduling patterns – nontraditional grouping patterns within classes – more flexible instructional arrangements – less emphasis on self-contained classrooms – less use of age grouping patterns. Collaborative structures In the current situation of many schools, teachers do not have the time nor the opportunity to work together; yet, when given that time and opportunity there is ample evidence to show that it is appreciated, that it energises them pedagogically and leads them to trying out changes in the classroom that have an effect on students (Cf. OECD, 1994; Baird and Northfield, 1992; Baird and Mitchell, 1993; Murphy, 1991; Lee, Graham and Stevenson, in press). For example, in relation to their experience of generating workshop structures with primary teachers in Chile, Cerda, Aránguiz, Cid, and Miranda (1994, p. 106 ) concluded: when collective workspaces are developed with clear significance for their members, individualist approaches to practice progressively disappear. The task of producing something jointly helps teachers to value cooperation, it enriches their work, allowing them to

recover its pleasantness and its meaning. On the other hand, by focusing on a common task, which is experienced by all involved as a challenge, possible bureaucratic and hierarchical relations in the school change to cooperative ones. Finally, these opportunities for joint reflexion where teaching is examined and decisions are taken on how to change it, assist in examining the reality of the school in a much deeper and complex manner, even generating questions about personal professional responsibility and the responsibility of others in relation to the quality and equity of education. Institutional reorganisations that need to take place in teaching institutions should therefore include opportunities for teachers to work together in the planning of their activities, monitoring progress, examining curriculum and teaching materials, and generally, having the opportunity to reflect on their teaching and on the quality of learning experiences of their students. These opportunities constitute a central condition for what is considered a target for the renewal of teachers and teaching, the development of a ‘professional organizational culture’ (Murphy, 1991, p. 29). Academic use of time Time has been referred to in several ways in this paper as time for teachers. Seen from the perspective of learning, time is strongly needed for students to learn. This means, that in many cases there will be need for longer school days and more teaching weeks in the year; but more importantly it means “academic” use of time within the classroom and provision of time for study in the situations where students do not have home conditions appropriate for school homework. Academic use of time within the classroom requires ingenuity and flexibility; it is not time spent drilling or memorizing; but time provided through variation of teaching activities for pupils to engage in personal construction of knowledge and it means “reinventing schools not around time but around learning” (National

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Education Commission, 1994). Teaching within larger blocks of time may involve group work with activity sheets, or developing concept maps, or researching in the library, or writing an essay to be discussed by all. This sort of usage of time should allow teachers to work with different kinds of pupils: with children who experience learning difficulties, while others are busy on their own with tasks that challenge their higher abilities. Changes in training The need to improve the quality of the classroom environment and pupil learning opportunities suggests that both initial and in-service training need to engage in fairly drastic renewal strategies. The central assumption in what will be discussed in the next sub-sections is that training is a unitary process: it needs a starting-point involving the trainees’ removal from their own immediate school experiences and the learning of the subject knowledge and relevant skills needed to teach, and it needs to continue throughout a person’s teaching career, though with more intensity in the first years of practice. Initial training Besides considering structural changes related to what is the optimum length of and the appropriate type of institution for training, the key issues really have to do with the quality of the curriculum and training experiences that take place in these institutions. In this respect, it is important to consider the kind of knowledge that teachers need to have, the relationship between subject content and specific teaching methods including practical experience, and the kind of teaching practice experiences that are needed to teach. Content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and practicum There is widespread agreement today that teachers have to know what they teach; be it at

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primary or secondary general or vocational education. The training curriculum needs to offer opportunities for student teachers to construct a correct, appropriate and meaningful knowledge base with understanding of key concepts and relationships. The kind of subject knowledge of a generalist primary teacher who teaches in the lower grades of the level is different from the kind of knowledge needed for the upper levels or for specialisations in secondary education, not so much because of its content and the understanding required (although its coverage may be different), but because of the way in which that knowledge is re-worked and transformed into teachable knowledge (suited to a child, an adolescent or a young adult in particular contexts). To address properly the teaching of language in lower primary level a student teacher needs to come to understand the complexities of learning a language, of how a person moves from an oral stage to reading with understanding and writing in a way such as to communicate meaning to others. This requires learning about linguistics, semiotics, sociocultural theory, not by way of discrete subjects but as an integrated field examined from the perspective of the young child in a particular society who needs to become fully literate (Cf. Alisedo, Melgar, Chiocci, 1994). Learning to function mathematically requires not only the understanding of mathematics’ concepts but more fundamentally, being able to apply problem resolution skills to situations with mathematical implications, within contexts that are familiar and eventually to abstract to unfamiliar ones. Learning to apply problem resolution skills means examining and modifying personal representations (how one understands and pictures a piece of knowledge symbolically) and being able to develop representative forms for the age range of the students who are to be taught. In learning how to teach science, the trainee teacher needs not only to learn about main scientific concepts and science discipline ar-

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

eas, but at some point must be able to transform that knowledge into representations that could help students build their own representations. As Osborne and Freyberg (1991) point out teachers and trainee teachers need to be confronted with their own ideas about science, with children’s scientific ideas and with ideas held by others.9 All this helps to transform knowledge acquired through university specialist training or knowledge brought from school experience, into knowledge that has a pedagogical intention, that is, knowledge that is meaningful for those who hold it. When teachers are able to represent meaningfully to themselves the knowledge they have, they can think on how to represent it to children and help children build their own knowledge from their prior understandings (Cf. Meza ,1995). At this point, teaching resources be they books, teaching guides, audiovisual aids can be selected meaningfully. Also, only in the light of an appropriate understanding of how learning takes place assessment procedures can be developed or selected from existing ones. The knowledge we have about learning and its implications for assessment10 are clearly presented in the following set of principles, that could profitably form the guiding threads of a teacher training curriculum, both from the point of those who teach (the teacher educators) and those who learn to teach:

9

There are many attractive techniques being used on how to elicit teacher trainees’ and pupils’ understanding about a subject, a host of them are included in Osborne and Freyberg’s (1991) text on science teaching. A popular one developed from science and now increasingly used in all subjects are concept maps (Novak and Gowin, 1984). 10 The importance of non-conventional assessments that not only focus on the product of learning but on the process by which something is learned, and the procedures a person uses to reach solutions to a problem, is highlighted in an excellent book summarised in Testing to Learn... Learning to Test (Capper, 1994). Among these assessment forms are examples of performance tasks for example in reading and writing and science, and ways in which the validity and reliability of essay tests can be increased.

1. Ensure that instruction is coherent. A critical factor in helping students to understand and make meaning is coherence. Coherence is connectedness. It is the glue that hold the bits and pieces of information or ideas together and prevents them from being fragmented and random. Coherence helps students remember and understand what they learn. .... 2. Connect new knowledge to what students already know. Revolutionary new findings in brain research support what scientists and learning theorists have suspected for some time; the more connections one can make in relation to a topic, the more likely one is to remember and use that knowledge. .... 3. Cover topics at a deep level rather than a superficial level. Simply exposing students to information will not cause them to understand or use that information. Instead, students must be provided with experiences which allow them to learn at a much deeper level than is typically provided for in most curricula and textbooks. Learning at a deep level requires that more time be devoted to important topics and that students be given opportunities to learn these topics in a variety of ways. This also means that fewer topics are covered. 4. Provide students with opportunities for active learning. To expand the number of connections students make, they should be given a variety of ways to learn (e.g. talking, debating, acting, building models, discussing connections to other topics and subjects, writing stories and reports). . 5.Use real-world tasks. An important characteristic of having an ability is its transferability, that is, students must be able to use their abilities in a variety of appropriate situations. For example, if students can only subtract when they encounter a number problems (e.g. 49-36=13) but not when they purchase something at the market, then the skill is of little use. 6. Make students aware. Students are more likely to access and use what they have learned if they are aware of what they know and do not know. Writing or talking about something

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brings thoughts to a conscious level and allows them to become objects of reflections. Because most misconceptions and oversimplifications are tacit, speaking and writing provide a way to bring them to light and control or correct them. From the above perspective then, the training curriculum has to include by way of content knowledge enough that will make a future teacher feel comfortable to restructure knowledge contents and represent them in forms that make sense to the students he or she has to teach. This means that learning how to teach a subject cannot be separated from the process of learning how one learns in that subject; and this in the light of what we now know about learning11. Relevant psychological concepts and knowledge about the culture can be brought to bear in the context of this understanding of how to teach; as well as other information such as on the history of teaching and research on teaching.12 Understanding the role of the practicum experience in the training curriculum is very important. The current training programmes that we know of in the Region, seem to see this stage of training as a terminal stage of the programme where a trainee is expected to apply a theoretical framework to the hazards of a classroom. Yet, right from the beginning, though in very limited doses, student teachers need to be faced with examining what they are learning through contact with children and classrooms. Observation, reflection, discussion,

11

The following are three useful texts which present a transformation of subject knowledge into didactics (or pedagogical content knowledge): Alisedo, Melgar and Chiocci (1994) on the teaching of language; Maza (1995) on the nature of representations, problem solving and the teaching of arithmetic; and Osborne and Freyberg (1991) on how children learn science and how to teach it starting from the science of children. 12 An innovative curriculum along these lines was designed by de Tezanos in a teacher training institute for the training of mathematics teachers (see description in Avalos, 1995).

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learning more about teaching, teaching, discussing with supervisor, reflecting, changing, and teaching again are all part of a continuous process within the training stage (whether this be in pedagogical year after disciplinary learning or in a concurrent programme of content and pedagogy). What matters is not the length of the practicum period, but the opportunities afforded for discussing with those who observe the trainee (classroom teachers and institutional supervisor) the strengths, problems, new insights brought by the experience of student teaching (Cf. Avalos, 1991, 1995; Imbernon, 1994). In-service training and staff development As said above, the process of teacher development is a continuous one, and therefore, the principles outlined as important for pre-service are also valid whatever the format in which in-service experiences are provided. Differences between pre-service and in-service training are related to the degree of experience of the teacher and to the greater or lesser need teachers may have of restructuring their knowledge base and coming to terms with new information. Young teachers emerging from a training centre are very different from those with years of experience, and the specific nature of these differences is becoming clearer through the research on experts and novices (Cf. Tochon and Munby, 1993; Barba and Russell, 1992; Borko, Bellamy and Sanders, 1992; Avalos, 1995). Beginning teachers need mentoring in their first and maybe second year of teaching; more experienced teachers need opportunities to meet each other in staff development experiences and learn and inform themselves about new possibilities. Searching for an appropriate conceptualisation of the focus of in-service training experiences that could have the potential of producing change, Gil Pérez (1995) suggests that they should at least comply with the following conditions:

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

– produce dissatisfaction in teachers with their existing views about teaching; – offer a minimally intelligible alternative that – could be plausible, even when initially it might contradict previous beliefs of teachers, and – be potentially fruitful, offering a response to the anomalies and malfunctions encountered while opening new perspectives for the solution of teaching and learning problems. Within this framework, it is obvious that courses merely centred on information and that do not appeal to active processes of reflection, review of practices, and change experiences will not work. Without, undermining the role of formal in-service courses, it seems important to highlight two innovative forms of staff development with a school and classroom focus which are either being implemented or planned widely for the Region. These are school-based teacher workshops and a distance training course for science primary teachers. The experience of school-based teacher workshops is not new in Latin America (Cf. Assaél and Soto, 1992; Cerda, Aránguiz, Cid and Miranda, 1994) but generally they have reached a small population of teachers very much on a voluntary basis. School-based teacher workshops that provide materials and the opportunity for teachers to re-think and rework their conceptions and practice of teaching, have benefits to the teacher by way of greater professionalism, social enhancement and personal self-assurance (Bell and Gilbert, 1994). The reform of secondary schooling in Chile is experimenting with a massive attempt to institutionalise teacher workshops in all secondary schools and to provide them with materials (general and subject-specific) as input for discussions on pedagogy and for changes in the classroom with a focus on improving the quality of learning experiences (Cf. Avalos, 1996). The project on Improvement of the Teaching of Science and Mathematics of the Or-

ganisation of Iberoamerican States (OEI) is developing a distance course written by around ten country teams on the basis of an agreed format that will be using multimedia (television broadcasts, school-based workshops and texts organised in a dialogical structure). The success of this programme will depend on the willingness of teachers in a school or several neighbourhood schools to gather together to work with the materials and try out experiences in their classrooms. But also, it will depend on the quality of the materials provided; and thus, a major effort is underway to write materials that are not merely informative but that stimulate teachers to enter into cognitive conflict between their existing views and new ones while at the same time, through the nature of the proposed activities, to allow teachers to engage in research on the problems of teaching and learning science; and in that measure join the community of those who do research on the teaching of science (Gil Pérez, 1995). Conclusions and recommendations The improvement of the quality of teaching and preparing for times with educational requirements of quite a different order, puts considerable pressure on educational systems and on teachers. There is need, therefore, to begin these adjustments as soon as possible. The fact that there is awareness of the need for change, that many countries are engaging in reforms of one type or another, that some countries have commitments to increase investments in education, that it has become clear that teacher salaries and working conditions need to be improved -all this generates a supportive environment for change. However, while the contextual factors are crucial to the success of reforms, improving the quality of teaching and learning processes requires extra efforts from many quarters. There is need, therefore, to consider in parallel to reform efforts how teachers can be helped to organise better learning expe-

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riences for their students. Below are a few suggestions that touch on the areas of discussion in this paper. From the point of view of improving the school and teaching environment 1. There is need for staff development experiences both for teachers and headteachers or school principals, that focus on the management of learning organisations, and the kind of classroom organisational support that is needed to provide appropriate learning experiences. 2. There is need for staff development experiences that include information and practical activities related to curriculum development, and varied and practical approaches to the teaching of difficult or key subject areas. 3. There is need for more resource allocation to schools: books, texts, equipment, computers together with handbooks that facilitate pedagogical uses of these materials. 4. There is need for teachers to have working arrangements that allow them the time to prepare for lessons, correct student work, work on innovative teaching tasks and meet parents and students who need special attention. This means that policies of hiring full-time teachers, with adequate salary conditions should be sought for as a condition of primary importance, if classroom teaching and pupil learning are to improve. From the point of view of improving the quality of teachers 5. There is need for improvement of the conditions that make it possible to have a better quality of intake into training institutions; these are not only related to improving salaries, but also to the quality of working conditions at school, and incentive policies that reward good teaching. Incentives need not just be those determined by systems of performance assessment, but may be those that communities

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choose to use to reward their teachers. This means that especially in small and rural communities, it will be necesary to support campaigns of awareness of the importance of education and how they can sustain it. The same is true for municipalities and local authorities in decentralised systems of education. 6. Teachers are needed for both extremes: the rural isolated areas and the difficult or more competitive areas where better salaries lure teachers away from schools; for example, science and mathematics teachers. Scholarships for deserving but poor students might be of help; salary top- up’s while effective for teachers in rural schools may be irritating in other situations such as would be the case if given to science and math’s teachers in a school where other teachers had lower salaries. From the point of view of teacher training 7. There is need almost in every country to review the quality of training provisions. This may require external bodies with recognised competence in the field to do it, focusing both on the curriculum, the role of the practicum and the quality of those who teach in training institutions. 8. There is need to establish close links between training institutions and schools, looking there for the best teachers to act as mentors for student trainees. This means also that staff in training institutions could work together with school teachers in joint classroom and curriculum action research projects, benefiting both institutions and the trainee teacher. 9. Teacher training should not be considered as ended after the new teacher leaves the training institution. Countries should establish systems of certification that take place only after one or two years of teaching, with close supervision during the time. 10. In-service training in the Region needs to be less the product of open-market offerings of dubious quality and more organised with

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

the assistance of experienced teacher trainers as school-based or school-focused activities that bring teachers together in reflective exercises, supported with training materials and involving classroom innovation. 11. Finally, it is important that there be in every country a cadre of people involved in education, that keep abreast of new developments, that engage in classroom research, that focus on the teaching of

specific and difficult to teach curriculum areas. There is need to search for the right people and stimulate them to work in these directions, by creating a stimulating academic environment for them to work and by rewarding their capacity to research what is needed at classroom level, prepare useful teaching materials for teachers and work with them in school-based staff development activities.

References

development. Teaching and teacher education, 10 (5) 483-497. Borko, Hilda; Bellamy, Mary Louise and Sanders, Lind (1992). A cognitive znalysis of patterns of xcience instruction by expert and novice teachers. In Tom Russel and Hugh Munby (Eds.). Teachers and teaching. From classroom to reflection. London: The Falmer Press, Braslavsky, C. (1995). El sistema educativo argentino. In Jeffrey M. Puryear and José Joaquín Brunner (Eds.), Educación, Equidad y Competitividad Económica en las Américas. Braslavsky, Cecilia and Birgin, Alejandra (194). Who is responsible for teaching in Argentina today. The Major Project of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, Bulletin 34, pp. 1833. Broomes, Desmond (1994). Mathematics in Caribbean classrooms. The Caribbean Education Annual 3, 17-29. Spanish trans. in UNESCO (1996) Boletín Proyecto Principal de Educación en América Latina y el Caribe, No. 38. Capper, Joanne (1994). Testing to Learn ... Learning to Test. A Policymaker’s Guide to Better Educational Testing. Washington, D.C.: Academy for Educational Development. Carnoy, Martin, Lyn Fendler, Thomas Popkewitz, Robert Tabachnick and Kenneth Zeichner (1995). Draft. The impact of structural adjustment policies on the employment and training of teachers. ILO and UNESCO Document. Carretero, Mario (1993). Constructivismo y Educación. Buenos Aires: Aique Didáctica. Cerda, A.M., Nuñez, I. and Silva, M.L. (1991). El sistema escolar y la profesión docente. Santiago: PIIE.

Alisedo, Graciela; Melgar, Sara and Chiocci, Cristina (1994). Didáctica de las ciencias del lenguaje. Aportes y reflexiones. Buenos Aires: Paidos. Assaél, Jenny and Soto, Salvador (Eds.) (1992). Cómo aprende y cómo enseña el docente. Santiago: PIIE. Avalos, Beatrice (1987). Moving Where? Educational issues in Latin American contexts. International Journal of Educational Development, 7 (3), 151-172. Avalos, Beatrice (1991). Approaches to teacher education: Initial teacher training. Background/ Policy Paper. London: Commonwealth Secretariat. Avalos, Beatrice (1995). Issues in science teacher education. Paris: IIEP. Avalos, Beatrice (1996). School-Based staff development. The experience of teacher professional groups in secondary schools in Chile (draft). Santiago: MECE-Media, MINEDUC. Baird, John R. and Mitchell, Ian J. (1993). Improving the quality of teaching and learning. An australian case study – The Peel Project (2nd. ed.) Melbourne: Monash University Printery. Baird, John R. and Northfield, Jeff R. (Eds.) (1992). Learning from the Peel Experience. Melbourne: Monash University Printery. Barba, Robertta H. and Rubba, Peter A. (1992). A Comparison of pre-service and in-service earth and space science teachers’ general mental abilities, content knowledge, and problem-solving skills. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 29 (10), 1021-1035. Bell, Beverley and Gilbert, John (1994). Teacher development as professional, personal and social

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Cerda, Ana María; Aránguiz, Gabriel; Cid, Soledad y Miranda, Hugo (1994). Los docentes y los procesos de descentralización pedagógica. Santiago: Instituto de Perfeccionamiento Colegio de Profesores A.G. and PIIE. Chapman, D.W., Snyder Jr., C.W. and Burchfield, S.A. (1993). Teacher Incentives in the third world, comparative education review, 36 ( 2), 150-175. Comisión Nacional para la Modernización de la Educación (1994). Los desafíos de la educación chilena frente al siglo XXI. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria. Cox, Cristián and Gysling, J. (1990). La formación del profesorado en Chile 1842-1987. Santiago: CIDE. de Menezes, Luis Carlos (1995). Situaçao Atual da formaçao continuada dos professores de Ciências no ambito Iberoamericano. Paper presented to the Iberoamerican Seminar on: Formación continuada de profesores de Ciencias, sponsored by the OEI and the University of Sâo Paulo. S. Paulo, November. de Moura Castro, Claudio (1994). Cidadåo do Ano 2000: Robô ou Filósofo? Dois Pontos 2 (18), 19-23. de Tezanos, Araceli (1987). Maestros: ArtesanosIntelectuales. Estudio Crítico sobre su Formación. Bogotá: CIUP. ECLAC-UNESCO (1992). Education and Knowledge. Basic Pillars of Changing Production Patterns With Social Equity. Santiago: ECLACUNESCO. Farrés, Pilar and Noriega, Carmen (1994). Being a teacher: Decision or destiny. Permanence conditions in the teaching profession. The Major Project of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, Bulletin 34, pp. 41-50. Feldman, Daniel (1994). Curriculum, Maestros y Especialistas. Buenos Aires: Libros del Quirquincho. Filgueira, Carlos H. and Marrero, Adriana (1995). Políticas de Reforma Educativa en América Latina: El Caso Uruguayo. In Jeffrey M. Puryear and José Joaquín Brunner (Eds.) Educación, Equidad y Competitividad Económica en las Américas. García-Guadilla, C. and Bronfenmajer, G. (1995). La Educación Venezolana. In Jeffrey M. Puryear and José Joaquín Brunner (Eds.), Educación, Equidad y Competitividad Económica en las Américas. Vol. II: Estudios de Caso. Washington: OAS. Gardner, Howard and Boix-Mansilla (1994).

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Teaching for understanding in the disciplines -and beyond. Teachers’ College Record, 96 (2), 198-218. Gardner, Howard (1993). La mente no escolarizada. ¿Cómo piensan los niños y cómo deberían enseñar las escuelas? Buenos Aires: Paidos. (1991). The unschooled mind. How children think and how schools should teach. New York: Basic Books. Gatti, Bernadete A., Esposito, Yara L. and Neubauer da Silva, Rose (1994) Characteristics of first grade teachers in Brazil: Profile and Expectations. The Major Project of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, Bulletin 34, pp. 34-41. Gil Pérez, Daniel (1995). Orientaciones didácticas para la formación continuada del profesorado de ciencias. Paper presented to the Iberoamerican Seminar on: Formación Continuada de Profesores de Ciencias, sponsored by the OEI and the University of Sâo Paulo. S. Paulo, November. Grossman, Pamela L., Wilson, Suzanne M., and Shulman, Lee S. (1989). Teachers of Substance: Subject Matter Knowledge for Teaching. In Maynard D. Reynolds (Ed.). Knowledge base for the beginning teacher. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Gysling, J., Salinas, A., and Argandoña, C.L. (1993). Modelos de formación de profesores aplicados en las instituciones de la educación media de Chile. Santiago: MECE Media, MINEDUC. Hallak, Jacques (1990). Investing in the future. Setting educational priorities in the developing world. Oxford: IIEP/Pergamon Press. Imbernón, Francisco (1994). La formación del profesorado. Buenos Aires: Paidos. Kemmerer, Frances N. and Thiagarajan, Sivasailam (1993). The role of local communities in teacher incentive systems. In Joseph P. Farrell and Joåo B. Oliveira (Eds.) Teachers in developing countries: Improving effectiveness and managing costs. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Lee, Shin-ying, Graham, Theresa and Stevenson, Harold W. (in press). Teachers and Teaching: Elementary schools in Japan and the United States. In T. Rohlen and &G. Le Tendre (Eds.) Teaching and Learning in Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mena, M. Isidora; Rittershausen, Sylvia and Sepúlveda, J. (1993). Educación media y perfeccionamiento docente. La visión de los profesores. Santiago: CPU.

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Messina, Graciela (1994). Formación docente inicial de los educadores básicos: Un enfoque desde el profesor. Documento Base para el Proyecto Regional: Formación Inicial de Educadores Básicos, UNESCO/REAL. Meza, Carlos (1995). Aritmética y representación. De la comprensión del texto al uso de materiales. Barcelona: Paidos. Ministerio de Educación Nacional de Colombia (1994). Lineamientos generales de procesos curriculares. Hacia la construcción de comunidades educativas autónomas. Doc. 1. Bogotá: Dirección General de Educación. Misión Ciencia, Educación y Desarrollo (1994). Colombia al filo de la oportunidad. Informe Conjunto. Bogotá: Ministerio de Educación Nacional. Murnane, Richard J. (1993). Economic incentives to improve teaching. In Joseph P. Farrell and Joåo B. Oliveira (Eds.) Teachers in developing countries. Improving effectiveness and managing costs. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Murphy, Joseph (1991). Restructuring schools. New York: Teachers College Press. Namo de Mello, and Guiomar Neubauer da Silva (1995). Selección competitiva de directores de escuela. Estudio de caso de innovación educativa en Brazil. Revista Latinoamericana de Innovaciones Educativas, 7 (19), 229-267. National Education Commission on Time and Learning (1994). Prisoners of time. Report of the Committee. Washington. Novak, Joseph D. and Gowin, D. Bob (1984). Learning How to Learn. New York: Cambridge University Press. Spanish Trans., Aprendiendo a Aprender. Barcelona: Martínez Roca. OECD (1994). Teacher quality: Synthesis of country studies. Paris: OECD, Centre for Educational Research and Development. CERI/CD (94)7. OEI (1994). Diagnóstico sobre la formación del profesorado de ciencias y matematica en los países iberoamericanos. Madrid: Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos. Osborne, Roger and Freyberg, Peter (1991). El aprendizaje de las ciencias. Implicaciones de la ciencia de los alumnos. Madrid: Narcea, S.A. de Ediciones. Transl. from Learning in Science: The implications of childrens science. Auckland: Heineman, 1985. Pascual, Enrique and Navarro, Raúl (1993). Incidencia de la formación inicial en el desempeño

de profesores de la educación media de Chile. Santiago: MECE-Media, MINEDUC. Puryear, Jeffrey M. and Brunner, José Joaquín (Eds.) (1995). Educación, Equidad y Competitividad Económica en las Américas. Vol. II: Case Studies. Washington: OEA. Reimers, Fernando (1994). Educational finance in Latin America: Peril and opportunities. In Jeffrey Puryear and José Joaquín Brunner (Eds.) Education, Equity and Economic Competitiveness in the Americas. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: OAS. Rodríguez, Eugenio and others (1993). Oferta y demanda de profesores. Santiago: MECE-Media, MINEDUC. Schiefelbein, Ernesto, Braslavsky, Cecilia, Gatti, Bernardete A. and Farrés, Pilar (1994). Characteristics of the teaching profession and the quality of education in Latin America, The Major Project of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, Bulletin 34, pp. 3-17. Schulman, Lee (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the New Reform. Harvard Educational Review 57 (1), 1-22. Schwartzman, Simon, Ribeiro Durham Eunice and Goldemberg, José (1995). A Educaçåo no Brasil em uma perspectiva de transformaçåo. In Jeffrey M. Puryear and José Joaquín Brunner (Eds.), Educación, Equidad y Competitividad Económica en las Américas. The World Bank (1990). Primary Education. A World Bank Policy Paper. Washington, D.C. The World Bank (1995). Priorities and strategies for education. A World Bank Review. Washington, DC.: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank. Tochon, Francois and Munby, Hugh (1993). Novice and expert teachers’ time epistemology: A wave function from Didactics to Pedagogy. Teaching and Teacher Education, 9 (2), 205-218. Torres, Rosa María (1995). La formación de los maestros. ¿Qué se Dice, Qué se Hace? Paper presentede at the CIDE/UNESCO-OREALC/ UNICEF Seminar on “Nuevos Modos de Aprender y Enseñar”. Santiago. UNESCO (1992). Situación educativa de América Latina y el Caribe, 1980-1989. Santiago: UNESCO/OREALC. UNESCO (1995). World Education Report. Oxford: UNESCO Publishing. UNESCO (1996). Situación educativa de América

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Latina y el Caribe, 1980-1994. Santiago: OREALC (in press). UNESCO/UNICEF (1993). La educación preescolar y básica en América Latina y el Caribe. Santiago: UNESCO/UNICEF.

Wolf, Lawrence, Schiefelbein, Ernesto and Valenzuela, Jorge (1993). Mejoramiento de la calidad de la educación primaria en América Latina y el Caribe: Hacia el Siglo XXI. Informe No. 28. Washington: The World Bank.

Appendix

Table 1 RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CURRENT EXPENDITURE PER PUPIL AS PERCENTAGE OF GNP INCREASES AND INCREASED TEACHER NUMBER AS EXPRESSED IN PUPIL/TEACHER RATIO CHANGES AT PRIMARY LEVEL (1980-1992)

Expenditure per pupil Countries Increasing Expediture Argentina Brazil Colombia Cuba Haiti Surinam Trinidad & Tobago Not increasing or decreasing expenditure: Bolivia Chile Costa Rica Ecuador Guatemala Honduras Jamaica St. Lucia Uruguay Source: Carnoy et al. (1995).

40

Pupil/Teacher Ratio

Percentage of change

1980 20 26 31 17 44 27 24

1992 16 23 28 12 29 23 26

-2 -1 -2 -3 - 3.4 -1 - 0.8

20 33 33 36 37 37 37 31‘ 22

25 25 32 31 32 37 33 27 21

-2 -2 0.3 0.1 0.1 0 -1 -1 0.5

-

-

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Table 2 CHANGES IN PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE TEACHERS BY LEVEL

A. Caribbean Antigua & Barbuda Bahamas Barbados Belize Br.Virgin Islands Dominica Grenada Jamaica St. Kitts & Nevis St. Lucia St. Vincent & the Grenadines Surinam Trinidad & Tobago

Pre-primary 1980 1992

First Level 1980 1992

Second Level 1980 1992

– – – 80 – 99 – – – – – 96

100 – 99 – 99 – – 100 – 99 – 96

85 – – 84 – 68 88 – 80 62 – 66

91 72 71 – 80 70 89 79 82 67 85 72

– – 47 58 – 52 46 – 52 52 – 52

69 55 47 – – 52 68 56 61 51 – 54

C. America & Panama Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua Panama

98 100 93 100 99 100

97 95 – 100 99 –

79 65 62 74 78 80

80 69 – 73 84 –

57 24 33 55 – 55

– – – – – –

Gulf of Mexico Cuba Haiti Mexico Republica Dominicana

99 – 100 –

100 – 100 –

75 49 – –

73 43 – 71

50 – – –

59 – – –

S. America Argentina Bolivia Brazil Colombia Chile Ecuador Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela

100 – 98 – – 95 – 97 – 98

– 96 – 96 98 94 90 – – 99

92 48 85 79 – 65 – 60 – 75

– 57 – 80 73 65 55 – – 74

75 – 54 41 – 38 – 48 – –

– 48 – – 57 48 67 – – 54

Source: UNESCO, World Education Report, 1995.

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Table 3 RURAL SCHOOL POPULATION AND PROPORTION OF RURAL TEACHERS IN THE LATIN AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN REGION (1989)

Sub-Regions

Rural Sch. Populat %

%. Rural Populat %

Rural Teachers %

A. Caribbean Surinam

46.4

36

51.3

C. America & Panama Costa Rica (1986) El Salvador Guatemala (1987) Honduras (1988) Nicaragua Panama

49.4 42.3 56.9 59.6 41.1 55.2

55 56 67 58 41 46

50.8 36.6 50.9 60.2 40.7 54.8

Gulf of Mexico Cuba (1986) Haiti (1987) Mexico (1988) Republica Domin.

28.4 45.9 36.0 46.0

29 71 29 41

32.6 38.7 40.6 40.6

South America Bolivia (1988) Brazil Colombia Chile (1987) Ecuador (1988) Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela (1988)

. 32.8 22.7 34.7 17.5 46.5 55.9 39 9.6 20.1

50 25 31‘ 15 45 54 31 15 17

68.3 22.1‘ 38.0 21.8 49.5 54.1 38.6 14.7 19.6

Source: UNESCO/UNICEF, 1993.

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Table 4 SPECIAL EDUCATION: PUPIL/TEACHER RATIOS IN THE LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN REGION (1989)

A. Caribbean

Pupil/Teacher Ratio

Aruba Dominica Jamaica St. Kitts and Nevis Surinam

6 8 36 41 15

C. America & Panama Costa Rica El Salvador Honduras Nicaragua Panama

14 33 20 8 11

G. of Mexico Cuba Mexico

4 14

South America Argentina Bolivia Brazil Colombia Chile Ecuador Paraguay Peru Uruguay Venezuela

4 17 7 13 10 18 5 9 9 13

Source: UNESCO/UNICEF, 1993.

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TEACHER TRAINING IN THE GEOINFORMATION ERA: SEARCHING FOR EDUCATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE YEAR 2005 Eduardo Doryan* Eleonora Badilla* Soledad Chavarría*

This paper addresses an important portion of the teacher training debate currently unfolding in Latin America and the Caribbean, with particular emphasis on the discussion taking place in Costa Rica as part of the search for consensus-building processes, that go beyond the short term tendency that has traditionally characterized education. A first stage intended to define “National educational policy for the 21st century”, was carried out between May and November 1994, being approved by the Higher Council of Education on November 4, of the same year. A second stage initiated in October 1995 and, which is still under way, seeks to define the ten-year educational project: a “National Education Proposal for the year 2005”. This work adopts the perspective that will prevail in the year 2005, and views future teaching training as if happening today. It consists of three parts and a brief conclusion. Part I deals with the role of education in the geoinformation era. Part II, addresses the professionalization of teachers towards the year 2005, including enhanced teacher training. Part III, analyzes what has been dubbed the five-step search for self-identity in teacher training. Additionally, this paper dares to approach the problems, challenges and perspectives

* Eduardo Doryan G. Minister of Public Education. Costa Rica. Eleonora Badilla S. Director, National Centre of Didactis. Soledad Chavarría N. Consultant to the Minister of Public Education. Costa Rica.

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confronting teacher training in Latin America and the Caribbean, leaving by the wayside stale notions and adopting brand-new models. Education in the geoinformation society Education and the new paradigms At the threshold of a new century, we are witnessing the swift transformation of virtually every discipline and endeavor: scientifictechnological, political, economic, environmental, geographical, moral ... . These transformations, typical of the Informatics Era, unfold within a society characterized, in the words of Wirth, by “... a global competitive market amidst ecological unbalance”. (1992). Alvin and Heidi Toffler (1994), go a step further when claiming that the geoeconomic perspective alone is not sufficient to define the present world context, due to two reasons: it is too simplistic and obsolete: “... simplistic because it attempts to explain away global power on the strength of barely two aspects; military and economic factors. Obsolete, for it scorns the growing role played by knowledge – including science, technology, culture, religion and moral values – which represent the fundamental resources possessed by every progressive economy ... Humanity is not entering the geoeconomic era, but, rather, the geoinformatic era”. Stated more simply, humanity is leaving behind an economy based on brute force and replacing it with mental force. These transformations demand that individuals, as well as societies, adopt new paradigms and new conceptions of the world that allow

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

them to know, understand, sustain, and permanently adapt themselves to global development in the 21st century. In other words, individuals and societies must be capable of successfully inserting themselves into the global, changing, challenging and competitive world of today and tomorrow; they must achieve acceptable levels of competitivity, not merely to survive the crisis, but, to be able to take it and turn it into the driving force that will propel them to the next stage of development. Competitivity levels refer, partly, to the capacity of nations to sell the world information and innovation, management, culture, peak technology, information, education and training software, health assistance, financial and other type of services. That is to say, intangible goods, such as information, become essential, and workers who lack education and training will soon join the unemployment lines (Toffler, 1994). However, this must be analyzed from the broader perspective that defines human beings. In this regard, UNESCO has insisted on valuing the humanist and cultural dimension, particularly that of the changing society about to enter the new century, since the scientific and technical revolution also impinges on the nature of personal and social relations. (1995). Value building, rescuing culture through their most sublime expressions, and the rebirth of humanistic concern, are some of the challenges confronting humanity in the geoinformation era. We are talking about a humanism that transcends anthropocentricsm, which cut across generations and encompasses all human beings, women, children, ethnias, etc. In ten years time, towards the end of the year 2005, the american continent should be one large free-trade area. Education and knowledge in the global, digitalized economy of this near-future bursting with challenges, may well have the characteristics subsumed in table 1. In turn, these challenges require that the educators of the year 2005 become

knowledgeable and understanding agents of change, admirals who may confidently guide us across the rough seas of the geoinformation era. Education before humanism and competitivity The attitude individuals and societies will have when confronting the change of paradigms, is closely linked to our educational gains, and the impact they may have on people’s attitudes. According to UNESCO (1995), an attitude oriented towards a new humanistic and responsible vision, adequate for coping with the geoinformation era, must promote cooperation, mutual understanding, tolerance, international and intercultural affinity, the pacific solution to conflict, and a democratic organization. The adoption of this ethical commitment, is the only way of guaranteeing the sustainability of the planet’s human, economic and environmental resources. All of this, under a climate characterized by the permanent search for equitable and equal development opportunities. “The new humanistic philosophy also brings about a new concept of learning, teaching and education. In simple terms, this new concept holds that the function of education, its objective – the humanistic and human objective, the objective that concerns human being – is, in the final analysis, the individual’s “self-realization”, the achievement of human plenitude, the highest possible development for the human species, and for individual men. In less technical jargon, the idea is to help people become better”. (Maslow, 1991). In this context, it becomes evident that educational systems must rapidly and permanently evolve so that through the formation of a better human being, societies may find answers to the challenges encountered. Education is a key element, if a country is to insert itself intelligently and sustainedly into this competitive market.

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Table 1 EDUCATION FOR THE YEAR 2005 IN A GLOBAL DIGITALIZED ECONOMY • As we advance towards the 21st century work and learning become synonymous. Since work, knowledge and innovation are the bases on which the global digitalized economy rests, a convergence between work and learning is generated. • Learning has become a lifelong challenge. In the traditional economic view, the life of a human being was divided in two periods: a time for learning and a time for working. However, since knowledge doubles every 18 months, learning has become a process that is built throughout the individual’s lifetime. • Learning only occurs in schools and universities. The new economy is an economy based on knowledge where learning and understanding transcend the traditional schooling concept. Learning does take place in schools and universities, of course. But, learning continues on throughout life. Thus, within a different economic paradigm, education and production become not only strategic allies, but they also reinforce and complement one another. • Educational institutions must “pick-up the pace” in order to relevantly respond to tehir students’ development needs and sucess opportunities, within an economic paradigm where knowledge represents the raw material. Teaching institutions, in addition to picking-up the pace, must review their concept of the student and promote in him the intellectual, social and moral autonomy that will allow him to take over his own development for the rest of his life. • A transparent definition of the organization’s purposes, objectives and goals, is an indispensable requirement for the creation of institutions geared towards permanent learning, renewal and innovation. In an educational institution thus defined, individuals are permanently expanding their capacity to generate the results they really desire, where new thinking patterns are nourished, where collective aspiration finds expression, and where the individual is constantly learning how to learn cooperatively. • Technology can transform education by creating a learning “infrastructure” designed for a global digitalized economy. Technology redefines the role of the educator, in the sense of providing him with support to become a better presenter and mediator, while gradually undermining the image that casts him as a “parrot-like repeater of facts”. Educators become navigators who furnish their students with learning-goals through essential guidance and support, so that the student may discover for himself how to learn. No school can afford a dolphin specialist to teach its students about dolphins. Technology, however, can bring Jacques Cousteau to every classroom. The educator would not be vying against Cousteau, quite the opposite in fact, he and his class would be benefitting from the knowledge of this great scientist.

Education will provide the technological tools that will allow the individual to grow and successfully insert himself into the geoinformation society, while performing adequately and in harmony with natural resources. Education will help build-up the capacity for producing the “intangible goods” required for social and individual development in the 21st century. 46

Education is the road that will lead the populations of the world to the generation of knowledge, and facilitate access and the adequate utilization of available information. Scarcely a few decades ago, educational systems taught the working skills an individual would use throughout his lifetime. Presently, many of those living in industrialized countries are engaged in labour activities that did not even exist at the time of their birth.

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Seymour Papert(1992), interprets this to mean that the most important skill in the life of an individual is the ability to learn new skills, tap into new knowledge, tackle novel situations, harness new concepts, in short, cope with the unexpected. Papert concludes by saying (1992): “... the most competitive ability, is the ability to learn”. And this is true, both for individuals and for nations. In the modern world, the competitive power of a nation is clearly proportional to its learning capacity, that is: “... a prolongation of the learning capacity of individuals and societal institutions”. The transformation or restructuring of an educational system that seeks excellence, much like the reconversion strategies implemented by successful businesses, begins with a definition of goals and objectives. In the case of education, the demands of the third millennium must be taken into account and

these should, therefore, become the traits of the 21st century educator, as depicted in table 2. Development ethics These series of abilities must be linked to an ethical perspective where commitment to the sustainability of the environment represents the common denominator of the tasks undertaken. Thus, the sustainability of human resources, as well as the social, economic and environmental sustainabilities, comprise mayor guidelines which orient the role of education, and its function as the outcome of a national commitment? (Figure 1). Education must re-discover the new development context, and educators must take active part in the search for self-identity in a globalized world, but, upholding a sustainable development ethics framed in a new humanism.

Table 2 DEFINING THE PROFILE OF THE 21st CENTURY EDUCATOR

Geoinformation era requirements

Characteristics required by the 21st century educator

• learning how to learn; • stressing mental force over brute force: build power of the mind rather than manpower; • knowing, understanding and making world development in the 21st century, a sustainable proposition; • producing intangible goods; • developing an anticipative, critical and creative thinking process; • linking production to the intellect and to information; • incorporating science, technology, culture, religion and values into the formation of human resources; • stressing reciprocity values: cooperation, mutual understanding, tolerance, international and intercultural affinity, the pacific solution to conflict, and a democratic organization; in short, a new humanism; • basing information on converging academic and vocational skills; • tackling the unexpected; • combining the learning capacity of individuals with those of societal institutions.

• capacity for continuous learning; • systematic and abstract thinking; • comprehensive view of society and the world; a profound sense of humanism and development ethics; • commitment to permanent self-improvement; • ability to act within their social group; • ability to improve and innovate working and living conditions; • show an inclination towards experimentation, self and mutual reflection; • posses collaboration, civic responsibility, productivity and quality standards; • ability to understand the importance of personal actions; • competent performance, as a professional, a citizen and a person; • ability to become a genuine agent of change; • awareness of the role that falls to each individual as part of a productive structure, a family and a community.

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BULLETIN 41, December 1996 / The Major Project of Education

Figure 1 INTERACTION AMONG SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AXES Rapid increase in productivity and technological innovation SUSTAINABILITY OF HUMAN RESOURCES

ECONOMIC AND PRODUCTIVE SUSTAINABILITY

Coherence between growth adn environment

DEVELOPMENT ETHICS

ECOLOGICAL SUSTAINABILITY

Reinforcing the teaching profession for the year 2005 Five objectives for a world class teacher Being a professional educator is perhaps one of the toughest tasks possible. Being a teacher implies trying to understand the learning style of each of the students and satisfying each of those needs; it also means becoming an expert in human relations, a veritable bridge between school and the community, while displaying a professional profile characterized by a constant quest for knowledge. This is why, by the year 2005, a strengthened and highly competent teaching profession will have to meet five objectives (Figure 2) – Creation of incoming and outgoing profiles for teacher candidates – Certification for teaching credentials – Performance-based incentive programmes for educators and education

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Better educated citizens make a more solid contribution to democratic coexistence

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SUSTAINABILITY

Provides and environmental component to the quality of life

– Accreditation by universities and, particularly, of training programmes pursuant to national and international quality standards. – Changes in the organizational culture of each educational centre. Creation of incoming and outgoing profiles In terms of incoming profile The elaboration of an incoming profile should take into account traits classified under three major categories: mastery of knowledge, skills and attitudes. Mastery of knowledge Every teacher candidate must: – Know and master the morphosyntactic aspects of the language. – Know and master basic mathematics – Know and master the historical events that

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Figure 2

Design of incoming and outgoing profiles

Changes in the organizational culture of each educational centre

Performance-based wage incentive programmes

Certification of teaching credentials

Strengthening of the teaching profession

Worls class standards

Accreditation by universities

led to the emergence of the Costa Rican people – Know and master basic aspects of natural and scientific phenomena – Know and master national and universal aspects of literature and the fine arts. – Have the ability to communicate in writing with clarity, accurateness, coherence and flawless spelling Skills Every teacher candidate must give evidence of at least: – Vocation and talent – Quality ethical and moral values – High self-esteem – Moral, intellectual and socio-affective autonomy – Capacity to work cooperatively – Decision-making ability

Attitudes Every teacher candidate must give evidence of having at least the following attitudes: – Be willing to turn learning into a lifelong proposition – Have the ability to enjoy the challenge – Have the desire to embark on a permanent quest for quality – Have the capacity to reflect about events and about himself – Be highly tolerant, and enjoy cultural diversity In terms of outgoing profile The outgoing profile of every bachelor degree holder in education is built, like in the case of incoming profiles, starting from the knowledge, skills and attitudes that must be part and parcel of future teachers.

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Knowledge Every bachelor degree holder in education must meet, as minimum requirement, the following conditions: – Know and master the theoretical principles of pedagogical science – Know and master the theoretical and practical principles of his professional area of expertise – Know and master the use of the different technological instruments of educational informatics as well as telematics. Skills Every bachelor degree holder in education must give evidence of at least: – Higher order cognitive skills manifested at least in four aspects: critical thinking, creative thinking, ability to solve complex problems, decision-making skills. – Leadership qualities – Ability to cope with complexity and constant change – Ability to design strategies that favour the construction and reconstruction of knowledge based on the students’ learning characteristics and styles Attitudes – – – –

Autonomous search for permanent education Flexibility and reflection before criticism Independent thinking Valuing own viewpoint and that of others emphatically – Global perspective – Effective citizenship – Aesthetic response Certification of teaching credentials In accordance with national guidelines set forth in codes of ethics or philosophical statements issued by the various teacher organizations; and, pursuant to the standards of international teacher certification and accreditation organizations, there are at least five general principles that define excellence in terms of the quality a professional teacher should 50

evidence. From this perspective every professional educator should: – Show commitment to his students and their learning process – Master his areas of knowledge, keep current in them, and know how to teach them. – Be responsible for supervising and monitoring student progress – Reflect systematically on his/her professional practice and learn from experience – Be part of a professional community which never stops learning Perhaps, one of the major strategies designed to strengthen the teaching profession in the third millennium, is guaranteeing a practice of excellence through a National System of Professional Certification. The idea, originally proposed for Costa Rica, could well become a regional initiative. By the year 2005, such a system should be fully operational in each of our countries, so that every practicing teacher would consider Certification, every year or every other year, no just as a wage boosting scheme but, mainly, as personal strategy for professional development. Incentive programmes for education and educators Education implies a national obligation each country assumes, wherein every sector must make their plans become a reality. Costa Rica is no exception. Thus, the incentive programme proposed for professional educators would improve their working and living conditions and thus positively – albeit indirectly – influence the quality of the national education process and product. All these inducements should be supplemental not substitutive of regular cost of living increments. The following actions have been proposed: – Recognition of performance and labour excellence, equivalent to fifty per cent of the salary earned, for teachers who voluntarily submit to a bi-annual Certification and ReCertification processes. – Recognition of educational centres that demonstrate outstanding team work as reflected by National Testing Scores, low

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

dropout, repetition and absenteeism rates, number of teachers (including administrative staff) with proof of having submitted to Certification and Re-Certification procedures, and on-going Education Improvement Projects. – Annual incentives to bachelor degree holders (or possessors of more advanced degrees), for permanence in poorly developed socioeconomic areas. – Modification of payment system once every country has implemented a school calendar consisting of 200 effective and compulsory annual class days. Accreditation by universities Accreditation is a process by which a postsecondary educational institution partially or fully evaluates its instructional activities, seeks out an independent arbiter to confirm the attainment of its stated objectives, and that its quality is, broadly speaking, similar to that of specialized units or comparable institutions. It, therefore, constitutes a process of institutional self-regulation, voluntary or compulsory, which entails the following stages: – Institutional self-evaluation as the starting point. Its objective, to detect flaws and shortcomings in order to take corrective action. It is part of a permanent strategic planning process known as “self-regulation” – External field evaluation carried out by groups of colleagues selected by the accrediting agency, in an expert capacity. Their function is to compare the results of self-evaluation procedures against their analysis of the institution’s reality. – The results of the evaluation are reported to the petitioning entity. The report will contain the accreditation status, whether full or conditioned to emendations; a rejection will also be included. – Re-accreditation every five to ten years Although the institutional accreditation process has been carried out for over 80 years in some countries, it is a relative newcomer to the field of education. This historical internationalization period, compels higher

education institutions to submit themselves to a procedure, whereby their educational quality and institutional integrity may be ensured. This being the case, by the year 2005, every higher education institution devoted to teacher training is expected to be nationally and internationally accredited; and, to regard this activity as an essential part of its permanent search for excellence. Teachers as leaders in the creation of a new organizational climate Every Educational Centre should state its commitment to a Culture of International Quality. Such a Commitment Statement should contain, in addition to points established by each particular centre, the following six criteria categories: – A philosophy of excellence to govern the activities of the Educational Centre, both in academic matters and value and attitude issues. – The institution’s administrative efficiency policy – The supervisory strategies adopted which regulate Management relations and work in the classroom. – The curricular development, innovation and enrichment strategies, based on the Core National Curriculum. – The strategies designed for the efficient and effective utilization of didactic material, resource centres (libraries) and general facilities. These criteria should help create an institutional climate consistent with the geoinformation era. A cultural or organizational climate, is usually defined as the set of important factors such as, norms, values, attitudes and beliefs, shared by members of an organization. An organizational culture, therefore, may be the product of the things, words, actions and feelings its members have in common. Thus, in any organization –in this instance the educational centre and the classroom–, the quality of the pervading climate is easily revealed by the expressed commitment and interdependence of its actors, demonstrated

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through their willingness to attain specific and common objectives. Thus, the leadership role assumed by the Administration is crucial, not only in the creation of a “shared spirit of accomplishment”, but also, as a buffer zone between getting the job done and keeping the team’s morale high. Seen from this perspective, organizational climate may be defined as the framework, or space, where youths construct knowledge, develop their critical thinking and common sense, while strengthening and cultivating values and attitudes of unquestionable worth. Therefore, by the year 2005, the quality of organizational climate in the Educational Centre, inspired in the Commitment Statement to a Culture of International Quality, is expected to be reflected in three basic parameters: Tangible Parameter - Indicators: – Dropout, repetition, and absenteeism rates comparable to those of countries which have attained educational excellence. – Excellence in terms of academic performance defined by the students’ proficiency in cognitive and knowledge matters, in addition to the presence of quality attitudes and values. – Reduction of disability rates due to illness – Number of teachers with proof of having completed certification and re-certification procedures – Quality and design of infrastructure – Quality, diversity and amount of educational support material – Efficient and effective use of teaching time through the control of distracting elements. Intangible Parameter - but measurable through scales and opinion surveys, - Indicators: – School-community interaction quality – School-family interaction quality – Teacher-administration interaction quality – Teacher-student interaction quality – Teacher-family interaction quality – Student-student interaction quality Administration’s Curricular Leadership Parameter - Indicators: – Situational and harmonizing leadership style

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– Degree of working satisfaction exhibited by teachers – Degree of satisfaction exhibited by parents – Leadership commanded by the institution within the local community The five-stage search for self-identity in teacher training The competitive skills and traits the young generations require in order to become better individuals and perform successfully in the geoinformation era – which also happen to determine the profile of the educator needed for this job – share a common denominator; their objective is the development of autonomy. This would not be possible in the absence of a leading factor in the teacher training process, namely, the attainment and development of autonomy, along its three dimensions: intellectual, moral, and socio-affective. Constance Kamii, (sf) claims that autonomy must, actually, be the goal of education: What education needs today, is a reconceptualization of objectives. When concentrating on autonomy, we can indirectly produce the traditional values we have failed to transmit in other ways. Students build values and knowledge when their individuality is respected. Autonomy as an educational goal is, to some extent, a new idea that is revolutionizing education. Nevertheless, it can also be visualized as a throwback to conventional human values. For the author, autonomy means selfgovernance which is the opposite of heteronomy, the condition of being under the rule or domination of somebody else. The individual can construct its own autonomy, provided he has what it takes. Autonomy refers to many different planes of human development and has a bearing on many of its activities and actions. Hence, educators must embark on a three point journey: moral autonomy, intellectual autonomy and socio-affective autonomy. A fourth and fifth stopover should be included; technological fluidity and the creation of an aesthetic criterion.

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Building a moral autonomy Value building, rescuing culture through their most sublime expressions, and the rebirth of humanistic concern, are some of the challenges confronting humanity in the geoinformation era. One of the strategies for promoting the building of suitable values for the geoinformation era, is to encourage the development of the individuals’ moral autonomy. In Kamii’s concept of moral autonomy, inspired in Jean Piaget’s Genetic Psychology, good and evil are determined by each individual through reciprocity, that is, the coordination of points of view. Quoting Piaget, the author concludes by saying: “When there is enough mutual respect, the person feels like treating others the way he would like to be treated ... Autonomy emerges when the mind conceives an ideal which is independent of any external pressure”. Therefore, one of the main objectives of education, must be that each individual becomes responsible for creating his own autonomous morality. (Educators should carry their own autonomous morality). When the individual learns to take into consideration other people’s points of view, appreciation for his own, national and universal culture reemerges; he becomes aware of the need to intensify knowledge building using the technological tools the geoinformation era makes available; it is also the time to seed the spiritual values of cooperation, mutual understanding, tolerance, international and intercultural affinity, the pacific solution to conflict, and the democratic organization in harmony with nature, that are essential for the sustainable development of the planet. Building an intellectual autonomy Intellectual autonomy refers to the development of information-seeking and knowledgebuilding attitudes and abilities, in order to satisfy a personal need. However, beyond that,

an intellectually autonomous person, is a critical thinker with a well-founded opinion. The teacher must permanently experience this search for knowledge so he may serve as source of inspiration to his charges. An intellectually autonomous person is the opposite of a passive receiver of information, for the former takes the initiative in the search for the desired information. Intellectual autonomy also means having an active participation in knowledge building, and a reactive position – based on solid criteria and facts – before what is built. This concept gains importance in the geoinformation era. In a world made one by telecommunications and multimedia, where information is superabundant, intellectual autonomy refers to the ability to pick out – amidst the chaos of information made available by superhighways – that which is relevant, turn it into pertinent information and put it to effective use. In the opinion of Constance Kamii, intellectual autonomy develops if the processes involved facilitate building a product, extracting a conclusion or formulating a new theory, much like scientists do. For Constance Kamii this means that: Reading can not be taught for the sake of reading, nor science for the sake of teaching science. In each case, the development of intellectual autonomy must be fostered. Let each element make sense, from the cognitive and affective standpoint of the student, without destroying the confidence he may have placed on his own ideas o reasoning capability. Howard Gardner (1992), agrees about the need to build your own product. And, in terms of the multiple intelligences theory, the product of the intellectual autonomy process, becomes so in the widest sense of the term. In Gardner’s words: “Intelligence implies the ability to solve problems or design products which are the result of a cultural or communal environment. Problem solving skills, help us approach the objective and visualize the road we should

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take in order to achieve it. The creation of a cultural product is essential, if we are to capture and transmit knowledge or express individual feelings or points of view. The scope of unresolved problems goes from creating an end to a story, to anticipating your opponent’s next move in a game of chess. The products fall into categories that go from scientific theories to musical compositions and successful political campaigns”. The development of intellectual autonomy has built-in connotations for both education and educators. In connection with the latter, they themselves must develop their intellectual autonomy, that is, they should be willing to take responsibility for their own learning ... and, to encourage it among their students. In terms of general education, the development of intellectual autonomy demands that every learning content makes sense from the student’s cognitive and affective standpoint. It is important to emphasize that for students, content will be meaningful if the context surrounding the discipline – its structure, method, philosophy – is meaningful as well; if building relations with other disciplines is feasible; if there are cognitive and affective bridges with the students’ reality. In this regard, it could be said that each individual constructs knowledge differently, that is, establishes his own autonomous learning strategies.

stated differently, it refers to the ability of acquiring a sense of identity. It should come as no surprise, that educators who work with children and adolescents face a tremendous responsibility. Erick Erickson (quoted in Maier, 1989), has observed that adolescence “... requires the acquisition of a sense of identity in order to adopt adult decisions like choosing a career or a lifetime companion”. In the geoinformation era, people are confronted with problems arising from national identity, cultural, ethnic, personal and professional crises. Nowadays, it has become essential to make commitments with specific roles, not an easy task, since it implies identification with an “ideal self”. An identity must be built and roles must be selected starting from myriad alternatives: own and borrowed, national and international, local and distant. Identity building is closely related to the construction of self-esteem, that is to say, the perception and appreciation one has of the self. And, while they are both decisive for learning, vocational guidance, and assertive decisionmaking, the implications for education are evident. Educators ought to be encouraged to build a socio-affective autonomy: or, to acquire a selfidentity and develop a sound self-esteem as professionals and human beings who are part of the geoinformation era.

Building a socio-affective autonomy Building a technological fluidity The development of an affective and social autonomy is every bit as important as building an intellectual and moral autonomy. In this case, we define socio-affective autonomy as the capacity to decode the social and affective processes as we encounter them, while acquiring the criteria to make the required decisions. As with moral autonomy, socioaffective autonomy does not mean total freedom. Rather, it refers to the ability of balancing one’s own well-being with the wellbeing of others, with knowledge and behaviour:

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In his last book, Nicholas Negroponte (1993), Director of M.I.T’s Media Laboratory, observes “... computer science no longer deals with computers. It deals with life”. The intent behind this statement is that the technological revolution undergone by information, is making qualitative changes in the way we learn, work, amuse ourselves, and shortly ... in the way we will live. Negroponte’s suggests that information is no longer being provided to the users through the

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

mass media, but it is the user himself – or their digital agents – who will pick and choose according to his interests, and will even help to manufacture the required information. Regardless of how far removed from our reality these concepts may appear, the point is that the geoinformation concept that has been used throughout this paper points specifically to the fact that the information revolution has torn asunder spatial frontiers, breaking through the time barrier. This being the case, the educators of the year 2005, will have to acquire as much technological fluidity as possible. Building an aesthetic criterion However, the information revolution is a necessary but not sufficient condition to produce the “best possible” human being. Maslow (1991) comments that at the opening ceremony of a Festival held at the Lincoln Centre, Archibald MacLeish stated: Information without human understanding is like an answer without a question: it makes no sense. And, human understanding is only possible through the arts. The human perspective, which turns information into truth, is the product of a work of art ... This statement is interesting, to the extent that it emphasizes the need to discover whatever values may be concealed in the desired data, and to include humanistic concepts in the information revolution. Maslow continues: Education means learning to grow and in which direction to do so. Learning that which is good from that which is evil, what is desirable from what is not. Learning what to choose and what to avoid. In learning, the arts are so closely associated to our psychological and biological essence, that rather than conceive of these disciplines as mere window dressing, they should become fundamental educational experiences. Such experiences could constitute the means through which we may be able to rescue the remainder of the school programme

from the state of ethical apathy and purposelessness it is immersed in. In general, becoming the “best possible” person implies living through what Maslow has termed “summit experiences”. These are experiences involving excellence, perfection, and true justice. Because pleasure and happiness must be found in them, the author proposes the concept of a “technology of pleasure and happiness”. So that we may experience pleasure and happiness; so that we may identify values in learning experiences; so that we may give meaning and pertinence to education; so that learning experiences may become Maslow’s summit experiences, educators must build and develop an aesthetic criterion. The aesthetic criterion is linked to the ethical criterion since it deals with what is “good” and “evil”, “beautiful” and “ugly”. It is also linked to knowledge through which the former gradually perfects itself. Exposure to artistic expressions can also become a catalyzer in this road to perfection. This criterion is associated with a specific culture at a particular point in time. According to Gutiérrez (1995), this means that the aesthetic criterion permits us to value, understand and reconstruct man-produced knowledge through history, whether scientific or artistic. She goes on to observe that the development of an aesthetic criterion also facilitates the individual and collective expression of knowledge, values and feelings. National and universal values may be discovered through contemplation, enjoyment and appreciation of cultural expressions. Because art is not elitist in nature, the evolution of an aesthetic criterion combines popular and sophisticated elements, which in terms of education would be tantamount to building cognitive and affective avenues, in order that students may understand and appreciate one and the other. Furthermore, art and the aesthetic criterion, represent a creative medium through which

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knowledge, thoughts and feelings can be expressed. It allows expression to be individual or collective while yielding pleasure and happiness. To guarantee that education and educators will fully accomplish their mission, we must encourage the development of an aesthetic criterion through exposure to the endeavors of mankind, appreciation of national and universal cultures, and fostering aesthetic creation and expression. Teacher training: a conclusion As stated by Jean Piaget, and corroborated by many others: “... these ideas will not reach the classroom until such time that teachers have successfully internalized them transforming them to original creations”. Hence, by the year 2005, any educational reform will have to be accompanied by the training and continuous upgrading of the teachers who will be in charge of the educational system. The formation of teachers who will deliver an education relevant to a geoinformation era,

References Doryan, Eduardo (1994) Informática, Educación y Competitividad de las Naciones, Report - National WorkShop Seminar on Educational Informatics, MEP/EUNED. Gardner, Howard (1993) Multiple Intelligences: The theory in Practice, Basic Books, Harper Collins Publishers. Gutiérrez, Marcela (1995) Sobre el criterio estético, personal communication. Kamii, Constance La autonomía como finalidad de la educación: implicaciones de la teoría de Piaget. Maier, Henry (1982) Teorías sobre el desarrollo del niño: Erickson, Piaget and Sears, Amorrortu Editors. Marshall & Tucker (1993) Thinking for a Living: Education and the Wealth of the Nations, Basic Books, Harper Collins Publishers.

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should favour the development of competitive skills, as well as the traits we have already singled out as being essential to the shaping of 21st century citizens. Knowledge of the disciplines, their structure and methodology; knowledge of the user, the student; knowledge of the pedagogical principles and elements, constitute essential aspects of the formation of 21st century educators. The development of moral and intellectual autonomies; the strengthening of socioaffective autonomy; the construction of an aesthetic criterion and technological fluidity, represent skills and values that must be present in teacher training programmes. The existence of a professional ethics that renders him accountable for his performance and responsible for his acts, is an essential condition of the teacher training process. The creation of a system that valorizes the contributions teachers make to society and acknowledges the profession as such, is the sine qua non of any long term, pertinenceenhancement re-organization, in the field of education.

Maslow, Abraham (1993) El hombre autorealizado: Hacia una psicología del ser, Kairós/Troquel, Argentina, 1991. Ministry of Public Education (1994) Educación Secundaria: Retos para el siglo XXI, PROMECE MEP -BIRF/IDB: SUMMARY, San José, December. MEP/SIMED/UNESCO Sistema de indicadores para medir calidad en educación: Working Document. San José, s.f. Ministry of Science and Technology (1995) Apuntes Eticos para la Calidad. Programa Nacional para la Calidad. Proyecto: Elaboración Intelectual del Sustento Axiológico de la Calidad” INTELEC, MICIT. N.B.E.A. (1994) Expanding Horizons in Business Education. Arthur McEntee Editors, University of Maine, Maine. Negroponte, Nicholas (1995) Being Digital, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York.

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Organization of Iberoamerican States, the World Bank (1995) La educación secundaria en Europa y América Latina: Reformas y Perspectivas de Futuro. Seminario Internacional, Cuenca, Spain. Papert, Seymour (1987) Desafío a la mente: Computadoras y educación, Ediciones Galápago, Argentina. Resnick, Mitchel (1994) La meta para el Siglo XXI: Un país con fluidez tecnológica, Report - National WorkShop Seminar on Educational Informatics, MEP/EUNED. Rodríguez, Ana (1995) Revisión del primer borrador, Comunicación escrita. Ruiz, Marco Antonio (1994) Informática Educativa para la Producción: Las expectativas del Sector Productivo. Memoria del Seminario-Taller Nacional de Informática Educativa, MEP/EUNED. Sanguinetti, Jorge (1988) La educación general en Costa Rica: La crisis y sus posibles soluciones, San José, Costa Rica.

Shaw, Allan (1995) Social Construction and Computer Networking as Community Building, Address delivered at Symposium “Bridging the Gap: Teachers, Computers and Young Children”, Washington D.C., June. Stoner, James; Wankel Charles (1989) Administración. Editorial Prentice-Hall Hispanoamericana S.A., Mexico. Toffler, Alvin and Heidi (1994) Las guerras del futuro: La supervivencia en el alba del siglo XXI, Plaza & Janés Editores, Spain. UNESCO (1995) Un sentido de pertenencia: Directrices sobre los valores humanistas e internacionales en la educación. Wirth, Arthur (1992) Education and Work for the Year 2 000: Choices We Face, Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco.

THE ROLE OF TEACHERS IN EDUCATIONAL REFORM Claudia Harvey*

Fortune magazine, April 1994, in discussing the need for change and the need for teacher involvement in change the career development of managers and preparing for a changing world, noted that: The concept of regular duty regular pay, and a fixed place in the organization structure is fast becoming obsolete, fast becoming an artifact of industrial society. Work is becoming more project based, more team oriented. When the project ends the team is disbanded.” In identifying “certainties” shaping the work world of today, Gwendoline Williams (1995) lists the following: – the world of work will be service based and electronically driven; – technology will be ever changing giving rise to the need for constant retooling;

* Dra. Claudia Harvey. Educator and Social Planner. Trinidad and Tobago.

– current modes of task management and information technology favour fewer managers; – the focus on outcomes rather than process will lead to the need for more cross-functional teams; – there will be more contract work and a change in the pension culture; – organizations would need to be learning organizations and schools of adaptation. While these two analyses focus on the specific world of organizations and the dramatic changes that they are undergoing, wider societal changes both shape these developments and are shaped by them. Speaking about the Caribbean, the Prime Minister of Barbados Mr. Owen Arthur (1996) notes: What would be, in any event a difficult process of transition, will be aggravated by the fact that the period within which the region has to make the transition to a new set of international relations, is not only finite but it is also short.

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The process of change is also likely to involve irreversible developments which will, for the foreseeable future, drastically and adversely affect the region’s relationships not only with its principal trading partners, but the new and more competitive global economy as a whole. Indeed, the Caribbean region can be said to be not properly prepared to cope with the new realities of its contemporary international economic relations. These requirements of change to meet the demands of organizational life, international economic relations and indeed social relations, necessarily demand change in educational systems. Change that would prepare individuals to manage themselves, their productivity and the economic development of the countries in which they reside. The UNESCO Delors Commission in its Preliminary Synthesis, 1995, noted: It is within the education system –defined on traditional lines– that the central message is forged concerning the type of citizens a society wishes to educate, and that the continuity and progress of knowledge should be ensured. And by extension, it is teachers who play the crucial, central role in maintaining the vigour of the system. It is in this context that one must see the role of the teacher in educational change. Change is inevitable and urgent and, it is the teacher who makes the critical impact on learners. Yet the way educational systems are designed and structured, it is more likely that teachers would be recipients of change rather than designers of change. Traditionally, education systems are hierarchically structured. Within schools, principals may be seen as the most powerful change agents or change inhibitors and they in turn respond to supervisors, curriculum experts and other officials from Departments and Ministries of Education. These officials may in turn not see themselves as initiators of change, but as respondents to the political directorate, who in turn may need to respond to a variety of pressures from different constituent groups.

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These trends may make it difficult to initiate and sustain change in educational systems. If one assumes that inevitably existing systems favour one group or another, then not only will it be difficult to initiate change but once initiated, there will be again inevitably forces of active or passive resistance and the well documented factor, of organizational inertia (see Anyon, 1981 and Jules, 1994) Changing the complex bureaucracies that are educational systems presents a formidable challenge. Yet, so urgent are the international trends and market demands that the more discerning and able in any population seek opportunities outside the educational system. No matter how poor the society, therefore, and how basic its core technologies, it is likely that the elites will have access to the means of international progress. This drains more resources from the rest of the society. The likely result is a widening of the gap between the haves and the have-not’s with the latter being those without access to technology. Changing education systems is therefore critical both to attaining and maintaining economic development and ensuring greater social cohesion. If change coming from the top is likely to be resisted and teachers who are the key to educational change are seen to be at the bottom of the educational hierarchy, how can teachers be involved in changing educational systems?

Involvement of teachers in educational change: a case example from Trinidad and Tobago Reference will be made to the Trinidad and Tobago Education sector reform process, 19921995 to illustrate the involvement of teachers in an educational change effort initiated from the top, but having extensive involvement from teachers and other groups in the society. There were widespread atticulations of the need to change aspects of the educational system in

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Trinidad and Tobago. Many of the calls for change were related to questions of quality and differential access. In some districts children found it difficult to obtain places in primary schools because there was an absolute shortage of places (for example in fast growing districts); others found it difficult to obtain places in a primary school of their choice, because of the high demand for places in selected schools, although there were places in nearby schools perceived to not be of high quality. Some 20% wrote the selection examination but gained no secondary school place. Although some 80% of the age cohort completing primary school had access to secondary level schooling, the selection system allowed top performers to select better performing grammar type schools, while all others, some 90% of those accessing secondary education gained places to the less valued two tiered, usually two shift junior and senior secondary school sector. Reform was needed therefore to devise mechanisms to increase absolute access and access to quality places. (Trinidad and Tobago, Ministry of Education, 1975, 84;89;94; Jules, 1994). More than this, however, there were also complaints that even in the “better” schools discipline, instruction, access to materials and appropriate equipment and overall student performance were not up to standard. It was perceived therefore that change was needed to upgrade the quality of teaching and learning and of the total school environment. (Trinidad & Tobago, Ministry of Education 1989; 94). Also related to the call for change was an overall perception that relevance was not being served. Employers frequently claimed that graduates of the school system were not only not immediately employable, but were not easily amenable to further training. So there was the perception that there was not immediate relevance of the curriculum to the requirements of the workplace. Further, the question of relevance to the world order in which graduates of the school system would have to live assumed great importance. Such issues related to

technology awareness and training; facility with a second language; environmental awareness; an orientation to entrepreneurship and the sensitivity and skills needed to live harmoniously in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. Problems in the environment, health problems, social disharmony and a rising crime rate were all attributed to problems in the school system. (Trinidad & Tobago, Ministry of Education, 1994). However accurate the analyses, the implication was that there was a widespread consensus that educational reform was necessary if the curricular aims of the educational system were to be achieved. Accompanying the many demands for change for curricular reasons, were demands for change for organizational and human resource management reasons. Teachers were unhappy with the reward structure and opportunities for career mobility. There were several complaints about issues of participation and control in the education system. There was the perception that those most impacting on the system and those most impacted by it, had little influence in determining its long term strategic direction or its routine, day to day operations. (Trinidad & Tobago, Ministry of Education, 1989 and 1994). Change of the education system was called for therefore on issues related to access, curriculum quality and relevance, organizational effectiveness and human resource management. The strategy for planning the change was initiated by the political directorate. In its conception, it included the notion of participation. A Task Force was appointed chaired by a representative of the university, it included educators from every sector of the system. It also included representatives of the teachers’ and principals’ associations, employers’ organizations, information specialists and the non-governmental sector. The Task Force began its work by inviting memoranda from a wide segment of the population. Some one hundred were received and individuals and groups who made submissions were met individually for consultation on their

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memoranda. These were considered. A draft report the Green Paper on Education (Trinidad & Tobago, Ministry of Education, 1993) was prepared and circulated for public comment. A second round of small group discussions followed based on the draft report. During this round of discussions, various political parties, the inter religious organization, employers associations and other interest groups were consulted. More memoranda were received. There followed a round of district meetings, where members of the Task Force engaged the discussion on proposals for the reform of the system. These meetings were geographically dispersed to allow widest possible participation. The findings from the group consultations, public meetings and memoranda were considered and the Report, The White Paper on Education (Trinidad & Tobago, Ministry of Education, 1994) was prepared. This was followed by a national consultation on education where the White Paper received much public support for its policy orientation. An Appendix arising from issues tabled at the consultation was incorporated as part of the White Paper. Teachers of all levels and sectors of the school system were engaged in these discussions. What role then did teachers play in shaping the agenda for educational change and with what impacts? Impact of extensive participation There were two fairly predictable, but very important outcomes of the widespread consultation and involvement of teachers in planning the strategic directions of the education system. Teachers were able to use the opportunity to have issues “in the trenches” impact on the plan. Thus, issues of school plant, the reward system for teachers, the structure of the system so that management was closer to the core business of teaching and learning were all tabled during the consultative process. Indeed, an important outcome of the planning process was a decision to administratively decentralize the system, so that more decision

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and on-line management would take place at the school district level. Further, it was decided to strengthen school based management so that principals and teachers would have greater control of decisions at the school level. In terrns of implementation, this led to more training for principals, vice principals and senior teachers in school management and a policy orientation towards more participatory management at the level of the school. It meant, too. a greater focus on participatory goal setting for schools and a decision that schools and all personnel in the education system would be assessed on the basis of progress towards previously set goals with due regard for constraints or benefits due to availability of resources. The other seemingly obvious but important outcome of the participatory approach was the opportunity for teachers to get their message directly across to the decision-makers. There were three impactful indicators of the success of the process in achieving technical soundness as well as stakeholder ownership of the strategic plan for education. Firstly, despite the disparate and various interests represented at the National Consultation, the proposals of the White Paper were widely endorsed. The consultation accepted the policy directions of the White Paper and the debate centered on implementation issues. These issues included timing, costs, the political will to implement and the possible loss of influence of some groups. Nonetheless, there was widespread consensus that, as constituted and if faithfully implemented, the policies proposed would succeed in removing the many problems that had led to the perception that educational change was an absolute necessity. The second indicator that the process had resulted in a technically sound and justifiable product is that international funding agencies which usually initiate such systemic reviews and frequently require extensive (and expensive) external reviews, accepted the locally initiated and locally executed review of the system and the proposals outlined, as the blue

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

print for an educational reform programme to be funded by one of these agencies. The third indicator that the process resulted in politically viable proposals accepted by various constituencies of interest is that after national elections and the passing of state control from one political regime to another, several stakeholders articulated that the proposals in the Task Force Report had national consensus and urged that implementation should continue. Interestingly, the representatives of the fairly militant teachers’ organization were among the first to articulate such a view. This last underscores that teachers perceived themselves to be sufficiently engaged in the process to claim ownership and endorse the policy orientations. Implementacion issues Endorsement of the policy directions did not, however, mean an uneventful period of implementation. Indeed, as indicated at the beginning of the paper, the change of any system, not the least so, the education system, can lead to conflict as groups try to retain power in new systems or seize power not previously had, as the opportunity of a more fluid situation presents itself in the unfreezing period that occurs during the implementation of change. In the Trinidad and Tobago case being outlined, one of the major areas of contention emerged over the attempt to introduce a performance management system forecast in the Task Force Report and seen by the administrators as a necessary concomitant of the drive to improve quality. The representative association, strongly advocated the principle of performance management linked to the reward system. (Trinidad & Tobago, Ministry of Education, 1995) However, this argued that it was being too hastily implemented and that all the necessary supports had not been put in place. The issue became one of the many that an incoming political directorate had to resolve with the teachers’ association. The performance management system was put on hold pending

clarification of issues and an elaboration of the new administration’s educational policy. It is significant that the reform, piloted in part by teachers, floundered, again only in part, on the grounds of teacher dissatisfaction related to the management of performance and the reward system. Indeed it is equally significant that the new system of performance management had the support of the principals’ association. This conflict impinged on two issues, one related to teacher control of their professional activity since teacher autonomy in the classrooms is greatly treasured. The other related to the reward system. At several of the consultations the issue of teacher overload and teacher “under pay” came into question. Teachers are a precious resource because they almost literally hold the future in their hands, but as State employees, their pay packages are part of the public sector wage bill, almost the first item to be affected in times of structural adjustment and economic stringency. Indeed, three successive governments in Trinidad and Tobago have had to wrestle with addressing the public sector wage bill as they attempted to balance the national budget and establish credit worthiness with the international funding agencies. The first cut all public sector salaries by 10% and removed cost of living allowances, acknowledging, however, that it was not a permanent cut and that a debt was owed to public sector employees, among whom were teachers. This government suffered severe unpopularity and was eventually voted out of office in 1991. Its successor government also acknowledged the debt, but throughout its term of office also faced major, sometimes disruptive, negotiations on how the debt to teachers was to be addressed and ended its relatively short term of office, without the debt question being settled. The most recently elected government also had to deal with the public sector debt question as one of its first challenges, again with the threat of major disruptions. While government struggled with the public sector debt question as a major issue in bal-

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ancing the national budget, there is no doubt that the standard of living of teachers had deteriorated in both absolute and relative terms. In absolute terms, while the teachers’ salaries were fixed from 1984 the relative worth of the dollar has dropped by several times since then. The teachers association recently provided evidence to show that in relative terms the remuneration package of a trained teacher was less than that of less trained clerical workers or in some cases chauffeurs and cleaners in state enterprises. In part accountable for this is the sheer size of the teaching service vis-à-vis other services. In Trinidad and Tobago, with a school age population of approximately 300000 and a total population of 1.25 million, the teaching service at the primary and secondary levels consists of some 13000 teachers. With administrative, technical and ancillary staff, the Ministry of education is the largest state organization accounting for the largest portion of the “public sector wage bill”. With the overall decline in the economy, several teachers found themselves supplementing school supplies or assisting students out of their own pockets. As much as teachers are willing to support change, it is difficult to expect them to do so, when their own basic needs are unmet. There is in fact the risk that involving them in a participatory process under such circumstances may raise expectations that cannot be fulfilled and so further exacerbate conditions. It is hard therefore to make the education system more quality oriented and more relevant to the economic needs of the country, when the main implementers are dissatisfied because of their conditions of work or remuneration package. Implications The implication is then that involvement of teachers in the educational change process assumes that thre is a certain level of basic need satisfaction that would allow teachers space to be engaged in such issues. The evidence emanating from Trinidad and Tobago suggests that

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this is problematic. It may be appropriate for a forum such as this one to consider ways in which the reward structure for teachers can be improved while at the same time treating with the necessary demands of balancing national budgets. There is a challenge to both governments and international funding agencies to define carefully the requirements of economic adjustment. The large public sector wage bill may be a necessary item for downward adjustment, but the cost for so doing is the reduction in the quality and quantity of necessary services. When these services are in the education sector, the main avenue of human resource development, then the costs are both present and future costs. Current adjustments may disempower a population from ever rising out of its difficulties, because the gaps between rich and poor in the country widen with the increased risk of social dislocation and the threats to internal peace, the population is not properly trained in the very areas that are necessary for economic competitiveness, and consequently the factors needed for economic “take off’ are less likely to occur. (Theodore, 1995; Report of the West Indian Commission, 1992) In the circumstances of economic scarcity, it may be appropriate therefore to build into teachers reward system both the financial and other kinds of rewards that may be less costly to the state but enhancing to teachers. Public recognition of efforts; opportunities for training; opportunities to work in spheres that may be outside their normal course of duty but may be seen as a “perk” may all classify as rewards that enhance the teaching profession. In addition to this there must be a pay packet adequate to meet basic needs and bestow the respect necessary to function adequately in such a sensitive and critical role in the development of the society. Related to the remuneration of teachers and their role in change is the area of teacher recruitment. Because the rewards are perceived to be few and the economy tight, many enter the profession in the absence of other opportunities and with the intention to move on to

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

other avenues as soon as they are able. To that extent; without a firm commitment to the field, it is not in their interest to pilot change which is frequently psychologically painful and incurs some cost in energy and time. It may be possible to ameliorate such a situation by exposure to training. Training would be of benefit too to all teachers and should for the purpose of orienting teachers to change have at least two components. It is necessary always to have teachers au courant with the international socio-economic environment so that they know of the demands that would be facing their charges. Unless this is so teachers may themselves not be conscious of the urgency of educational reform Secondly, teachers need to be exposed to the process of change, so that they would know of the transition process, the experience of loss and change and the several competing sometimes conflicting demands of the change environment. Without such preparation, teachers could either be overcome by the external changes which can be cataclysmic or even if recognizing the imperative to change and being able to input into the design of the change, they could become victims of the change itself. It is important therefore to build in mechanisms for teachers to be kept abreast constantly with contemporary affairs. Various approaches, including occasional seminars during school time could be used to this. Such an approach could also have the additional advantage of providing a break from the routine, such routine frequently sounding the death knell of creative teaching. While induction and continuous training is one form of support that could be provided to teachers, they also need other kinds of on-going support to be able to play their roles well in the change management process. Teachers need to feel that the organizational and indeed the national environment is conducive to change. In some dispensations the posing of questions or the suggestion of alternatives could be seen in themselves to be a threat to the status quo, bringing negative sanctions from

those in authority. There would need to be very close focus on culture change to a less authoritarian and hierarchical one for teachers to feel encouraged to be change agents. Lastly and again in the Caribbean context, there would need to be more flexible avenues in and out of teaching, if teachers are to see themselves as change agents. Frequently, the change needed in a particular educational context is for a change in the composition of the staff. However, conditions of a teacher’s tenure in Trinidad and Tobago make it mandatory that certain milestones be reached before separation from the service can occur without loss of benefits. These mllestones are ages 50, 55 or 60 or 331/3 years service. Under such circumstances, a teacher may well feel the need to leave but hang on reluctantly in order to preserve terminal benefits. A more flexible arrangement which allows change of job with preservation of benefits or the ability to temporarily leave teaching and return would benefit involvement in the change process. On the one hand teachers wishing to permanently or temporarily leave the service would be able to do so and relieve it of the pressure of reluctant workers. Others wishing to engage in advocating change would feel less at risk, knowing that, should their ideas expose them to negative responses, they would be able to pursue alternative career paths with reduced threat of loss of benefit or victimization. This paper has described a context in which there was extensive teacher involvement in the design of a change strategy for the education sector. The policy directions devised by and large won teachers support. However, there were several difficulties encountered in the implementation process. One such major difficulty was related to managing teacher performance in a situation of tension over the management of a “debt” to teachers and other problems related to remuneration. The paper argues that teacher involvement in change would be enhanced if issues of economic and social rewards would be handled.

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Such social rewards could include public recognition of teacher efforts, opportunities for training, easier exit routes from teaching with no loss to terminal benefits. Of greater importance to this forum would be perhaps: 1. The need for governments and international agencies to balance more finely and perhaps in the direction of the social, the economic and social costs of balancing national budgets 2. The need for decisions makers in education to

foster organisational climates that support change and risk taking behaviours 3. The on going preparation of teachers to understand the world in which they live, to cope with change themselves and to prepare their students so to do. If the economic social, the organizational are supportive of flexibility and change oriented then it may conducive to the positive involvement of teachers and enhance their contribution to development.

References

_______ (1989). National Consultation on Violence and Indiscipline in Schools. Chaguaramas Convention Centre. June 23,1989. _______ (1993) The Green Paper on Education, Draft Report of the National Task Force on Education. _______, White Paper on Education (1994) Education Policy paper, 1993-2003, based on the Report of the National Task Force on Education, Ministry of Education, Port of Spain. _______ (1995), Video Tape of Performance Management, Port of Spain. Trinidad and Tobago, Ministry of Finance (1995). The 1995 Budget Presentation. The West Indian Commission (1992). Time for Action, Report of the Commission, Blade Rock, Barbados. Theodore, Karl (1995). Poverty Reduction Strategies: The Role of Health and Education, A Trinidad & Tobago Perspective. A Study Done for PAHO, Seminar on Poverty Reduction and Social Policy in the Caribbean, the Role of Health Education, Port of Spain, March 1995. Williams, Gwendoline (1995). Meeting the Challenge of the Twenty-First Century: The role of Management Education and Training in Developing Present and Future Caribbean Leaders in the Public and Private Sectors.

Arthur, Owen, Prime Minister of Barbados (1996). Address on The new realities of Caribbean International Economic Relations in the Distinguished Lecture Series sponsored by the Institute of International Relations UW1, St. Augustine. Address presented on April– 1996 at the Trinidad Hilton Hotel. Anyon, Jean (1981). Social Class and School knowledge. Curriculum Inquiry 11(i); 3– 40. Jules, Vena (1994). A Study of the Secondary School Population in Trinidad and Tobago: Placement Patterns and Practices. A Research Report for the Centre for Ethnic Studies, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Moses Report (1975). Report of the Cabinet Appointed Committee to Consider measures to Alleviate Problems of the Shift System at School. Edward A. Moses, Chairman– Port of Spain. The Delors Commission. International Commission on Education for the Twenty First Century (1995). Report of the Commission, Preliminary Synthesis , UNESCO, Paris. Trinidad and Tobago, Ministry of Education (1984) Assessment of the Plan for Educational Development in Trinidad and Tobago: 1968– 1983. Port of Spain: Publication Division, Ministry of Education.

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The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF TEACHERS IN A CHANGING WORLD Osvaldo Verdugo*

Latin America, with more than 21 million square kilometers –twice the size of Europe or China– and over 400 million inhabitants, emerges as the richest continent in terms of natural resources, and the most thinly populated in the planet. Our language is homogeneous with the exception of Portuguese which, in any event, is comprehensible to the spanishspeaking majority. We share religious beliefs and institutional traditions. The Latin American States are among the oldest in the world, with Brazil and Mexico perched among the fifteen most developt economies worldwide. Our ecological reserve is one of the largest in the planet. And, the visitor is still awed by the beauty of America’s geography. As was Columbus taken, five-hundred years ago, by the profound generosity of its people, fertile foundation of a solidary culture. “They invite us to share everything they have –confided the navigator– and give so much love it almost feels as they are giving you their hearts. They are extremely naive, and nothing is evil in their eyes ..”. America was the most beautiful land Columbus had ever set eyes on; it was the paradise Europe dreamt about. We embody the Latin American dream, the New World of a mid-millennium Europe which at the apogee of its creative and innovative spirit, crossed the Atlantic and laid the foundations of modernity. We are accountable for that dream. Our generation, which witnesses the gloaming of the 20th century, is responsible for materializing that promise. A broken promise, crushed and torn asunder by the clash between european modernity and a preColumbian sense of the world. Once again, we are confronted with the historical question:

* Osvaldo Verdugo P. Educator. Member of Education International’s Executive Committee.

How to adopt modernity and, at the same time, avoid the suffering and the sense of loss the lives of our men, women and children are bound to experience? A new paradigm During the second half of the 20th century, we have been both observers and protagonists of important changes in terms of how we coexist, relate to one another, produce, and even think. We have a different historical perspective. For, if it is true than an era came to an end when the first man walked on the moon, it is equally true that another got under way when, thousands of kilometers away, that very same man cast a glance at our planet. At that precise instant, our vision of the world changed. Thenceforward, we began to think globally while the pragmatic imperatives demanded that we acted locally and focused back on the community. A whole new vision pervaded our senses. Not only did we discover that we were interdependent or that our knowledge allowed us to develop the necessary technology that would facilitate taking that kind of a look at our planet, but we also realized that the human species is mortal. That life on earth depended on us, on our responsibility and on our will. We began to understand that the fate of any individual is not independent from our own, that human rights constitute a stronghold, the foundation on which to erect a freer, more equitable and solidary order. That democracy guarantees unity amidst diversity, and that goods have a common fate. True, we did nothing but corroborate the grand intuitions and hopes of contemporary humanists. The concept of a pluralist democracy predicated on respect for human rights. The notion of a human being endowed with an essential dignity.

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The vision of a universal conscience under which we are all tributaries, regardless of how distant and small. A world ecumenicism at the service of cooperation and encounter among regions, religions, ideologies and science. The nature of contemporary change processes, the pace of innovation, the expansion of communication borders, call for the reconcilement of the various parallel worlds, enriching the life of our people in so doing. What is needed then, is a more receptive and unbiased concept to regulate interrelations between the different social spheres. The very interrelation that exists between what is private and what is public overrides the rather simplistic –albeit commonplace– notion, that leads us to regard private interests as opposed to public interests, and the individual as opposed to the State. The progress achieved by an enterprising private sector, is often interpreted as a signal that lures us into banning from social life, anything that reminds us of that which is public. We are part of an increasingly complex society in need of new definitions regarding the private and the public domains, the marketplace and the State, and the interrelations between one and the other. Particularly, in the wake of recent changes and when the demand for greater capital accumulation, technological innovation, and productive efficiency loom as economic pre-requisites for international insertion. At a time when the expansion and strengthening of the democratic processes entail not just an ethical imperative, but an essential condition of modernization. During the current development stage, the protection of our environment and natural resources becomes inextricably linked to justice, equity and provision for the future. Thus, at the dawn of the 21st century, a new paradigm is ushered in. For some, this paradigm is embodied in the cold post-war or postindustrial, post-modern or plain and simple modern times. However, the answer to which name most accurately defines its true meaning, will result from the reflection imposed upon us by this period of transition.

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Interdependence Clearly, neither autarchy nor isolation emerge as real alternatives before the new trends exhibited by world economy such as accelerated globalization, flexibilization of productive processes, the growing autonomy of currency and credit sources, and the incorporation of technological innovations. The communication revolution is extremely eloquent when portraying the futility of shutting these transformation out. It has been postulated that the future industrial horizon will take the form of a grand information project, with fiber optic cables connecting the three main communication tools of our era: telephones, televisions and computers. In the next ten years, the amount the United States will receive as a result of this innovation, has been estimated at some 100 thousand million dollars which, in turn, will make possible the creation of 1.5 million jobs by the year 2003. However, once trade is opened up, upgrading the technological aspect of the goods and services exported will become an ineluctable decision. This is what adapting to the world markets mean: vying in terms of technologies, knowledge, qualified manpower, but, mostly, in organizational capacity. For, our low index of productivity can not be blamed exclusively on lack of capital, technology or qualified manpower. The problem may be traced to organizational and administrative inadequacies: precarious working conditions, lack of incentives, rigid hierarchical structures, poor communications and superfluous tasks. Social inequality Neither are we in a position to knuckle under a totally unrestricted free trade regime. At least not at the expense of exacerbating the severe social inequalities that plague today’s Latin America, where one-third of the population has been excluded from development and abandoned to a life of poverty.

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

Average per capita income in Latin America barely exceeds US$ 2 000. In the asian countries –such as Korea, Taiwan and Singapore– it approaches US$ 4 000, while in the industrialized countries –France, England and the United States– it makes a quantum leap to US$ 17 000. In Latin America the richer 20% earns 20 times more than the poorer 20%. According to a World Bank report, in Chile the income of the well-to-do is fourteen times higher than the income of the poorest classes; twentysix times higher in Brazil; and, thirty-two in Peru. The role of the State Trendy ideological currents, would have us believe that modernization consists in shrinking the role of the State, privatizing public administration, and freeing the market from all social regulations. These ideological stances which challenge every State intervention, but invoke it in times of crisis, overlook the fact that this very same State has been the driving force behind social modernization, through the advancement of socio-economic growth. They tend to forget that, in the course of the 20th century, the Latin American State fostered the substitutive manufacture of imports, invested in infrastructure projects, expanded public services and promoted structural change aimed at successfully integrating middle and lower strata. These ideological stances fail to consider that educational development received its first boost at the same time the National States came into being. So much so, that education came to be perceived as a common right. Lest we forget, not too long ago modernization claimed that greater education was contingent on greater development. In several instances this became a self-fulfilling prophecy, when education became the major channel for social mobility. One of the most salient precedents of this enormous public effort is illustrated by the sustained expansion undergone by the educational system, particularly in the area of basic education.

In 1960, the number of Latin American children in the 6 to 11 age group enroled in basic education barely reached the 27 million mark; thirty years later, some 73 million children had been incorporated into the system. The same has been true of pre-school education. In other educational areas the State, by consistently missing the signals sent by the market and by failing to keep pace with a rapidly evolving occupational structure, has gradually lost effectiveness. Both, the training given to teachers and the teaching they have in turn delivered, have been deficient. The rate of repetition is among the highest in the world. Although public expenditure in education has largely benefitted the underprivileged, very little of it has trickled onto higher education. In Korea, by contrast, the number of university students increased five-fold in a little over a decade. That the State has been unable to guarantee the quality and equity of the educational service provided to the lower socio-economic sectors, has been the result of a chronic paucity of funds. The gaps are still abysmal. For example, the academic performance of chilean students attending schools in poverty-stricken areas is one-third of that of their counterparts in the higher income groups. Rural education has been hit the hardest. When the time comes to implement a genuine productive transformation, it will be wise to remember that practically half of Latin America’s labour force has not completed basic schooling. These shortfalls have been exacerbated by the centralized and bureaucratic management style that has traditionally characterized educational administration in the region. But, wanting to redress these wrongs is one thing; to cut your nose off to spite your face, is quite another. For, let us face it, no true modernization can be accomplished in the absence of the State. Or, more precisely, an integrative modernization would not be feasible without the strong participation of the State. Integration is a must; however, it necessitates a State that is willing to invest in initiatives

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that are not profitable for the private sector, such as: health, education and infrastructure. Social cohesion is also needed, but, here again it will have to be contingent on an assertive State and Government that establish norms, regulations and provide safeguards for the weak and the vulnerable. Such a demand for equity is no longer a moral duty, an imperative for social justice, or a pre-requisite for political stability in democratic regimes; but, it is progressively becoming an indispensable condition for development. New economic science findings reveal that income gaps, through the efficiency reduction that accompanies them, can damage a country’s GNP. They also point to the fact that, where profound wage disparities are prevalent, employment and income growth are markedly depressed, being substantially stronger in areas characterized by greater equity. A democratic market This is why we feel that public participation in education can not be privatized without jeopardizing the collective interest, the guarantee of fair and equal opportunities, the protection afforded by market regulations, and public behaviour rules, all duties that fall to the government as the main representative of the State. The government can not be asked to operate like a business concern, unless we wish to compromise its sense of equity and altruism. Not that we are putting down the value of the private enterprise. Clearly, the private sector has traditionally shown a notable capacity to implement economic projects, promote innovation, reproduce successful experiments, and adapt to sudden changes. However, neither the private industry not the market are invisible forces, abstract entities, entelechies. Their operation is determined by political institutions, social structures and cultural processes. Social order is not generated nor sustained by the market. Quite the opposite, in fact. It relies on the sort of order that guarantees both integration into the world system as well as the social integra-

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tion of our people. This is where the public sector is unique: in matters of political management, regulatory practices, stability and continuity of services, and in terms of guaranteeing social cohesion, it has no substitute. Strategic convergence We must move towards a harmonic style of education which comprises a genuine practice of democratic principles in freedom. This meeting of the minds, requires the concerted efforts of social actors who posses the sufficient level of cohesion, autonomy and representativity, to elaborate and execute agreements. A cooperation bond is needed between the government and these groups, since the former is the entity responsible for public administration initiatives. The government is the mechanism through which decisions affecting the community are made. Such a link is imperative, not just to ensure the efficiency of public policies, but also to guarantee the participation of the people in the solution of their own problems. This is the only way social groups are incorporated into the design and definition of public policies; none other. This is where the driving force of modernity lies. Within communities, more deeply committed to their residents, where problems are addressed and solved more effectively, where care is provided, where initiatives are more flexible and creative, where behaviour patterns are more efficiently implemented, and where strong points are emphasized over foibles. It is within these communities where intelligent education proposals will flourish, where strategic convergence efforts –the process that allows trends to be analyzed, alternative future scenarios to be developed, community goals to be set and recommendations to be made– will find expression. Regulated competition Recently, flexibility and competitivity have been associated with the firing of teachers,

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

something we oppose most vehemently. The fact that we have spurred modernization initiatives, should constitute proof of our conviction that they will bring about a better quality of education. In order to provide a quality service teachers will be required to start vying in excellence, putting their training, capacity and performance to the test, and producing results. In an atmosphere characterized by competition, costs are reduced, the response to a shift in demand is immediate, greater efforts are made and more interest is evidenced, in terms of satisfying the beneficiaries. Nonetheless, it must be monitored, to avoid a total deregulation that is likely to translate into destructive competition. Educational communities, fully aware of their rights, must prevent destructive competition from happening in their midst. And, the main piece of information the community demands, is the objective evaluation of the results achieved. Naturally, if performance evaluation is to be credible and useful, it must be rigorous. This is such an essential requirement that, without it, success and failure could not be measured. Obviously, if success can not be identified, it can hardly be rewarded; if skills can not be praised, we may be rewarding mediocrity; when success is not acknowledged, one can not learn from it, nor make the necessary adjustments to avert failure. And, most importantly: when results are disseminated, the community provides the needed adhesion. Competitivity should be one of the goals of modernization. It must be attained gradually, never imposed, since the fundamental elements that guarantee its normal operation are not fully mature. Teachers lack inducements, proper working conditions, clear goals and rules that guarantee equal opportunity to all players. In other words, there are huge resource inequalities among competitors for which they are not to blame, since they are the result of structural imbalances inherent to the system. They can hardly be asked to race enthusiastically when the reward waiting at the finish line is unem-

ployment. We will oppose with all the strength of our convictions and principles, this new injustice concocted by the system. We will always oppose total deregulation, where the only winners are the well-to-do. Educational management Certain political stances, given their murky and contradictory nature, arouse the suspicion and uncertainty of teachers, families and, particularly, that of the most vulnerable sectors of society. One of these notions, attempts to equate educational modernization with educational management. We hold that, the key to modernization is the government sharing its service functions with the citizens, the community, the private sector and public interest institutions; its main function, which is making collective decisions, being reserved to resolve collective problems. Herein lies the truly innovating aspect of modernization: progress towards a managementoriented government, that trains its citizens and delegates authority to them, rather than merely serving them. This is the novel contribution of education: decentralizing decision-making processes and transferring them to the citizenry and the communities. This is why we have reaffirmed the value of the classroom as a creative space, designed to facilitate encounters among teachers, parents, and students. For, if its true that people not only work harder but are also more creative when they have a hand in their own work, then sharing in the public decision-making process may be the answer to a versatile, nimble, efficient, innovative and productive administration. This is equivalent to encouraging team work and orienting organization towards tasks –not towards hierarchical or regulatory schemes. Coordination and permanent communication among the various units is a must, as is fluid information dissemination through networking. The classroom, provides this space for cooperation and shared decision-making. This is also why we have promoted commu-

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nity designed and executed educational projects. This is where rational initiatives in education will be evidenced, or what we regard as strategic convergence, the process that allows trends to be analyzed, alternative future scenarios to be developed, community goals to be set and recommendations to be made. And, there is a broad enough social base to undertake this challenge. The communities are generally more deeply committed to their residents, problems are addressed and solved more effectively, care is provided, initiatives are more flexible and creative, behaviour patterns are more efficiently implemented, and strong points are emphasized over foibles. What should be changed in the field of education What role has been assigned to education in the coming century? Are we really preparing our children and youths to cope with this world? Do schools truly educate? Since schools and public education were designed with universal education in mind, and since they have failed to accomplish this objective, the only logical conclusion that may be reached is that schools and education are undergoing a crisis. Are we overstating the case? Let us look at Chile in 1995. Adriana, a 14 year old girl, was not permitted to start secondary education, due to her handicap. She is missing her left arm. Sixteen year old Margarita, was admitted to school on probation, given her adolescentmother status. She was not permitted to graduate with her classmates; could not mention her motherhood; could not take her son to school with her; neither could she participate in civic acts nor extracurricular activities. Other youngsters are excluded because of untidiness, undiscipline or, simply because their parents are divorced. Also, for failure to distinguish colours in kindergarten, being a repeater or having a grade point average lower than 4.5. Curiously, none of those responsible for these

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measures thought he/she was engaging in discriminatory practices. Are we not talking about different forms of discrimination? Do we not make the distinction between a good and a bad quality of education? Good and bad schools, fancy and humble schools, private and public? Do we not discriminate between ritzy and modest neighbourhoods, solid and dysfunctional families, children with better and worse opportunities? Where high marks –another measure of inequality– constitute merit, and, where true merit, is the result of struggling against and overcoming impossible odds, just to get where others –helped along by generous resources– have matter-of-factedly gotten. The current school regime, contributes to the perpetuation of structural factors, such as poverty. Were not schools designed so that the accumulation of educational achievements would, in the end, undo the shackles of poverty? Were they not intended to remove the obstacles that threatened the social promotion and integration of our people? But, beyond schools’ difficulty to guarantee social cohesion, do they actually transmit knowledge, skills and attitudes? Are today’s teaching modalities at all adequate? A teacher confronting forty or forty-five students unravels, with the aid of a chalkboard and chalk, strings of conventional erudition. Students try their hardest to concentrate on their teacher’s disquisition, but his referents escape any association to their concrete and daily experiences. The frequent and prolonged exposure to the radio, television or the computer has proven much more efficient, since in a matter of minutes the children are tuned in to the domains wherein their interest lies. Can any teacher vie against the allure such methods posses? It has become customary for today’s students to ask of their history teachers, what earthly good will such knowledge bring them. Often, parents are requested to reinforce the pedagogical work of school teachers.

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

However, everybody knows that, more often than not, those responsible for child care in the home are the household assistants, both parents being away at their respective jobs. So, what ever happened to the family? Did the good life not revolve around the family unit? Is it not high time we returned to it? What do schools know about the underlying causes of drug-addiction among its students? How do schools counsel children who are facing their parents’ divorce? What do they teach about sexuality the students have not already learned through the media or their peers? What values do they provide students that they may carry into their occupational lives? It would seem that schools provide a lot of schooling, but barely educate. Sad but true, this is where we stand. Our schools hobbled by perverse funding mechanisms will not be able to confront the challenges posed by modernization. On the other hand, if technical and pedagogical aspects are favoured and an effort is made to incorporate the subjects required by our children, youths and family, clearly, classroom time will have to be extended and, consequently, the system will need more educators. Profound transformations in the way we produce, transmit and apply knowledge are urgently needed. Our educational systems must respond to the circumstances of the new international economic context. And, along these lines, the trend points to a more creative and personalized education through which the student may assume greater protagonism in his own formation and the teacher may turn into a guiding light; where specialization is integrated, becoming fully relevant when blended with aspects of history, science, art and technology. And, where the classroom is no longer the sanctuary of the teaching-learning process, having yielded that responsibility to information communities that transcend the school and family. Schools are not fated to vanish, but, experiences in several countries demonstrate that education is returning to the home, where specially trained tutors are successfully tackling

the formation of home-educated children. In the United States, these children seem to be five –and as much as ten– years ahead of their formally educated peers, in terms of reasoning ability. Hence, and based on the aforementioned, it is my strong belief that school reform and education transcends the debate on what is private and what is public. Rather, it has to do with the kind of society we wish for ourselves, with constructing the culture we desire, with the type of pacific coexistence we long for. Is reform feasible? Let there be no mistake. We understand that educational reform is, first and foremost, a public policy decision, an action devised, from an administrative point of view, to bring about the planning and management of social sectors, provide service to specific groups, while its three-fold objective is to narrow inequalities, reduce poverty and raise the population’s well-being. We understand this to be a public management decision, a government decision, which is the mechanism we use to solve social problems affecting the community. This does not mean that we should leave everything in the hands of the State, thus neutralizing communal and individual participation in the launching and execution of this process. On the contrary, it means that the government should not surrender its main function, namely, the management, orientation and coordination of collective initiatives. For, although certain services may be hired outside the realm of official administration, and occasional management functions may be privatized, it would be quite impossible to extend this strategy to encompass the whole government management process. If we did, we would forfeit the “par excellence” mechanism that facilitates coherent decision-making, the implementation of market regulation schemes, and the means to impose behavioural norms. This is why we insist that a local agreement is not enough. The agreement must also be

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national and regional, enlisting the cooperation of all active development agents, specially, that of educational actors. The reasons are twofold: first, no development will be possible in the absence of a strong social creativity component, that is, without the intervention of social actors and movements, and, second, a strong collective adhesion must be aroused in order to give support and legitimacy to a process not exempt from intricacies. The idea is to inscribe the participation of society and the educational community thus facilitating a genuine identification with the sought after goals and the paths leading to their attainment. It is something we have called “concerted education”, that is, an effort of collaboration, cooperation and co-management on the part of individuals and communities, geared towards the creation of habits, skills and aptitudes. An effort that transforms schools into the locus of convergence and transformation of those energies and values which arising from the heart of the family, the enterprise, the moral and cultural entities, and local associations, flow towards the State where they blend in harmonically with the country’s general development strategies. The outcome, represents the common effort between private and public sectors, central, regional and communal governments, municipalities and citizens, teachers and students, parents and children. In short, everybody’s contribution to a commonly held good. However, the greatest challenge this educational reform poses, is perhaps the materialization of a framework political agreement among different and antagonistic views. The conservative view challenges essential aspects of modernization. It rejects the changes undergone by the working world and, consequently, the idea of building a new consonance between work and education. It chooses to ignore the internationalization of the economy and, therefore, overlooks requirements for increased competitivity. It questions measures designed to stimulate teacher performance and, in so doing, propounds the rigidity of the labour

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market. It also opposes the transferring of rights to the community. Other ideologies, which bother not to conceal their technocratic tendencies, emphasize modernization goals, without special regard for the political equilibrium and social costs they entail. In contrast to the school of thought that is willing to sacrifice present comfort for the sake of a Messianic futurity, these seem to want to anticipate the future at the expense of people’s current insecurity. Their proposals barely touch on the new social structures and movements designed as modernization checks. This is visualized as an autonomous process, directed an executed by a core of “experts”: a central elite of social engineers. We adhere to a progressive view, that is, we regard social convergence as an instrument that guarantees a gradual evolution and the success of all attempted change. We demand pluralism and the right to participate as a defense of our common identities. We vindicate modernization controls as an insurance against suffering and the loss of essential values to which the technocratic vision may eventually lead us. In a nut shell: “There can be no successful modernization without the active participation of the actors concerned”. New teaching attitude The viability of educational reform is contingent on a number of cultural conditions, on a willingness to become modernized, if you will, or more precisely, on a new formative attitude on the part of educators. Public policy confronts the irrefutable duty of guiding teacher training and upgrading efforts. In this respect, consensus is broad. The main issue is defining how is this training to be accomplished and what direction will it be given. What sort of teacher are we striving for? What do we expect from him/her? Under what conditions of local, national and regional development? We want an educator endowed with a for-

The teaching profession and educational development in Latin America and the Caribbean / UNESCO-OREALC

mative attitude, that is, sensible to the modernizing conscience prevailing today. We wish to see a formative attitude that facilitates the attainment of technical advancement and democracy-building objectives, at a time when our own development processes are generating severe inequalities between economic growth and social equity, and teachers and educational institutions are expected to rise to the challenge. In any event, the idea is to envision a new formative attitude which emphasizes –among other aspects– as major development axes, the relationship between man and nature, the individual and his environment, and the country and its resources. Educating for responsible participation, must be predicated on tolerance, pacific coexistence and creativity against a backdrop of democracy. Furthermore, education should be linked to the objective knowledge of society’s practices and institutions. In a world characterized by growing diversity and swift transformations, education must foster theoretical integration and coherence, as much as, the strengthening of schools, and the consolidation of traditions that infuse meaning into the lives of communities and nations. This means that, along with an inclination towards change and critical reflection, we must also promote respect for norms, habits and customs that help bring together and provide shelter to contemporary men and women. Facing a changing future does not mean attempting to change that which is permanent and will still be part of the future. Perhaps, this would be better explained in the light of what is expected in terms of teacher performance: an educator that plays a specific and stable role within the system but, who is also ready to flexibly adapt to new and alternative roles and functions. The opening up of schools to the family, to production activities, and to local communities, poses new challenges to teacher training institutions. Obviously, the design of methods and pro-

cedures that facilitate the technical control of pedagogical processes is one of them. As is the capacity to integrate knowledge and curricular content that prove relevant to the current reality; to formulate and establish relations between concepts; and, to judge, evaluate and qualify productive human resources. The integration mystique We shall be capable of reconciling our people’s well-being and values, and meeting head on the challenge modernity imposes on us, to the extent that we summon all our solidary strength and stay united. There are clear indications that we are moving towards a new integration horizon. Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay form part of the MERCOSUR, a group encompassing 200 million consumers, which Chile and Bolivia are soon to join. The andean pact is showing signs of reviving as free trade zone. The new Association of Caribbean States that links the Islands with the Continent between Mexico and Venezuela, is also negotiating a regional treaty. Chile is joining APEC and possibly NAFTA, with Canada, Mexico and the United States as partners. It is the newfound strength arising from regional cooperation and solidarity. An inner force propels us to a higher stage of global interdependence and integration; a heart-beat that pulsates throughout America, stronger than technology and knowledge, deeper than the communications revolution and economic exchange. A qualitative leap of the moral conscience that soars through the pristine prose of Roa Bastos, Garcia Marquez, Vargas LLosa, Cortazar and Paz, and the everlasting poetry of Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. The mystique of an integration that arises from the surprisingly current words of Bolivar, whose words irradiate so much beauty, that had to be uttered by a man profoundly in love with this land and concerned about its future: “For us, America is our Homeland”.

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FUNDING SECONDARY EDUCATION TO WHAT END? WHICH AREAS? WHO WILL DO THE FUNDING? Ana María Corvalán*

Broadly speaking, the mobilization of various types of financial resources for a specific project will be feasible, provided the proposal has been clearly presented and the interest elicited is consensual. In terms of secondary education, the proposal has yet to meet either of these conditions and, therefore, its implementation costs remain fairly unknown. As a result, it has proven extremely difficult to impress upon “would be” contributors the importance and convenience of investing in it. In fact, even the nomenclature presently used needs further refinement; are we talking about secondary or middle education? If questions such as: why invest in secondary education?; what type of secondary education would benefit from these resources?; and, who will do the funding?, were given convincing answers, the necessary financial resources for enhancing and expanding it, would become readily available. Hence, the challenge we presently confront has to do with defining the middle (or secondary) education strategy that should be implemented in the countries of the region.

What are the benefits of investing timely in secondary education? Since the value society assigns to secondary education may well be the result of the convergence of various points of view –economic, social, cultural and environmental–, arriving to a comprehensive quantification of it, is no easy task, particularly when one attempts to evaluate such an investment from an economic perspective. Recently, isolated attempts to further the secondary education issue were evident in the region, spurred –among other things– by the swelling numbers of basic education graduates expected to make their appearance in the near future, and ECLAC’s proposal contained in the book “Education and Knowledge: Basic pil-

* Ana María Corvalán. UNESCO/OREALC. Consultant. November 1996.

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lars of changing production patterns with social equity”. Among the reviewed documentation, we came across –in ECLAC’s Social Panorama of Latin America– the statement that “the increases in wages paid to urban adults with three or more years of additional primary or secondary education, exceed 6 to 8 times the monthly cost that would have to be charged –for ten years– to recover the expense incurred in providing that extra amount of education”.1 This would partly reflect the increased productivity levels resulting from this higher educational level. The three supplementary years of secondary education translate into an additional income between 42 and 132 US dollars per month for the urban adult wage-earner. Therefore, the acquisition of a full secondary

1

ECLAC. Social Panorama of Latin America. 1995.

Funding secondary education to what end? which areas? who will do the funding? / Ana María Corvalán

education (twelve years) makes even greater increases possible, as evidenced when comparing the salaries of urban adults in this category with those who only completed up to grade nine. Most increments are 9 to 10 times the monthly amount needed to repay in ten years the corresponding investment in education. The fact that actual income increments as a by-product of higher educational levels are so many times larger than the amounts required to repay in ten years the additional expense incurred, allows us to draw the following conclusions: – investing in expanded and enhanced education will prove profitable in most countries given the likelihood of a short term return on the investment; and – if education enhancement entailed expenditures that, say, doubled the estimated amounts used in the analytical study, such expenditures would continue to be economically viable. Furthermore, if reinforcing adult education programmes is the alternative chosen, its cost is seen to range from 1.5 to 5 times the expense incurred to provide four years of secondary education. This difference shows the advantages that may be materialized by investing opportunely in education.2 International debate also seems greatly concerned with achieving an equitable distribution of education. The quality and efficiency of the strategies intended to solve the problem posed by those excluded from education and training opportunities, get top billing in the international agenda. Currently, it has been acknowledged that “a quality secondary education that meets the productive and social requirements of the country, and can be opportunely disseminated

through most of it, becomes essential in achieving greater productivity levels, enhanced social efficiency, increased opportunities, a more equitable access to a higher standard of living, and in fully exercising the rights of the individual as a citizen”.3 Secondary education in Latin America, however, is riddled with serious shortcomings in terms of lack of equity,4 efficiency5 and quality, not unlike basic education. It is also blighted by a severe orientation crisis regarding the external medium, as represented by higher education, the productive sector, the workplace, and the contemporary world of knowledge and information. A clearly defined pedagogical and didactic guiding principle is conspicuously absent at this educational level. Having acknowledged the vital and urgent necessity of increasing the span of basic education, we must turn to the quandary –yet to be resolved– of whether an increase in terms of minimal schooling must be achieved through the expansion of pre-school or primary education, the general formation process, and/or through the incorporation of occupational training activities. Whatever the technical/political decision may turn out to be, the sense and objectives of secondary education will be changed, and so will it cost structure. Be that as it may, a short term expansion of secondary education is envisioned, on the one

2

5

Guillermo Labarca. “Inversión en la Infancia: Evidencias y Argumentos para Políticas Efectivas”. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. Santiago, Chile, 1996.

3

4

ECLAC. “Rol Estratégico de la Educación Media para el Bienestar y la Equidad”. LC/G. 1919, April 23, 1996. Prepared by ECLAC’s Social Development Division for submission at the Seventh Regional Conference of LAC Ministers of Education (Jamaica, May 13-17, 1996). In the region, gross secondary schooling rate for 1990 climbed over 70 per cent in only three countries; fluctuated between 46 and 67 per cent in six countries; and, in eight countries hovered between 23 and 42 per cent, that is to say, accounted for less than half of the school-aged population. Source: UNESCO. Statistical Yearbook, 1994, Paris. In rural areas, the situation is even more critical. Chile, is a case in point. In 1992, it boasted high schooling rates, however, that year less than half of the young adult population had completed middle education.

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hand, partly as the result of the growing number of basic school graduates –the product of improved retention rates– and, on the other, the expressed desire on the part of students to continue their studies given the steeper qualification requirements set by the labour market. Expanding pre-school education, as an alternative, would only cause a mid-term impact on secondary education, while its effects on the economy would not be felt for some years to come. If –in an effort to enhance the human resource formation today’s economic productive processes demand, and to increase equity in the region– compulsory education did expand two or three years beyond current primary education levels, the accompanying cost increment it would entail, should be accounted for by the State through an invocation of the public nature of educational funding. There are those who hold that the necessary coverage, equity and flexibility needed to deliver secondary education to Latin America’s youth, can only be attained through public-sector programmes and funding initiatives, claiming that “private efforts tend to generate broader differences rather than to address the issues at hand”.6

Three types of inextricably linked funding initiatives are anticipated for the coming years; the first one is a pre-requisite to obtaining the other two with relative ease: – funding middle education pre-investment efforts aimed at up-dating the state of this educational level, elaborating adequate statistical information, research findings and studies regarding the major problems –both qualitative and quantitative– faced by the countries in the region, which could provide the foundation on which to build the clear reform, renewal or innovation proposals so badly needed. – funding intended to expand coverage, enhance equity, and innovate the structures and curricula characteristic of secondary education. – funding geared towards improving an institutional management capacity that will facilitate the implementation of a renewed, open and pertinent middle education. Each of these resource requirements entails some form of analysis; these, are presented below:

Upon expanding secondary education, what modalities should be targeted?

In today’s Latin America, within a context typified by an insufficient output of scientific and technological knowledge, where funding is concentrated in areas of limited competitivity and where academic science still prevails,7 educational research has not been given top priority in terms of allotment of public resources.8

Increasing the number of middle (or secondary) education graduates most certainly involves additional expenditures. However, these would be even greater if we wait for an effective improvement in the quality of education currently being offered. Everybody is aware that it is not a question of offering more of the same, particularly when “the same” has proven ineffective or insufficient.

6

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Maria de Ibarrola. “Siete Políticas Fundamentales para la Educación Secundaria en América Latina. Situación Actual y Propuestas”. Background paper submitted at the Round Table on Secondary Education, Seventh Regional Conference of LAC Ministers of Education (Jamaica, May 13-17, 1996).

Funding for improved information: statistics, research findings and studies on middle education

7

8

ECLAC/UNESCO. “Education and Knowledge: Basic pillars of changing production patterns with social equity”. Santiago, Chile, 1992. In Chile’s case, out of all the research initiatives funded by FONDECYT between 1988 and 1995, the social science area occupied fourth place priority-wise, with natural science, mathematics, medical and technological science and engineering projects, way ahead in terms of numbers. Within the social science, one of the topics has to do with “Pedagogy and Education”. See “Evolución del Fondo Nacional de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico (FONDECYT) 1982-1995”. Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica. Santiago, Chile, December, 1995.

Funding secondary education to what end? which areas? who will do the funding? / Ana María Corvalán

Rather, the Ministries of Education have focused on providing increased coverage and better quality didactic materials and other educational components, relying on foreign paradigms and research findings as key elements to their decision making. In the words of Guillermo Labarca,9 “the educational models used for reference draw inspiration from french public schools, german gyms, and north american, swedish, or english comprehensive schools which, to varying degrees, have been exerting their influence on the region’s educational systems ever since the dawn of the century.” ...”The educational reforms being proposed and –partially– carried out in Latin America today, represent adaptations to these models”. Research on middle education has been scant, specific and dispersed; in the region, it has concentrated on the qualitative and quantitative problems of basic education, given its political impact. Knowledge enhancement efforts have largely been assumed by banks through loans on educational projects that qualify for funding following base studies on programme design.10 On the other hand, the availability of statistical data to be used in the construction of fundamental middle education indicators is rather limited, particularly in the area of educational expenditure. The effort needed to generate the reliable and timely information –statistics and research findings– that will facilitate the construction of an accurate portray of the reality of middle education in the region, empower decisionmaking actions, and help to answer the series of questions raised, is simply bewildering. The State and international cooperation agencies in particular, should assume whatever research costs are necessary to find solutions to the many essential problems that haunt middle

9

“¿Cuánto se puede gastar en educación?. Guillermo Labarca in: ECLAC Review Nº 56, August, 1995. 10 Examples: the World Bank in Chile’s MECE Media Programme, and IDB’s Secondary Education Enhancement Programme in Parana, Brazil.

education. The idea is to engage in the sort of research –in cooperation with the Ministries of Education, universities and international organizations– that will help shed light on an otherwise obscure domain. Past experiences and comprehensive comparative studies must be evaluated, and cost/benefit studies oriented towards well-defined goals implemented, in order to isolate the most effective curricular elements and models that will enter into the building of the most appropriate strategies. Funding for expanded coverage and innovating to guarantee the equity and quality of middle education According to an ECLAC’s study, each new learner retained by the educational system represents twice the current cost of implementing wage, transportation, or infrastructure improvement measures, or introducing changes in educational techniques, or upgrading didactic materials. The need to raise annual expenditure in education between one-half and a full percentage point of the GDP, is strongly advanced.11 Secondary education has not been a priority issue in the region’s educational policy agenda. In fact, compared to basic and higher education, it has been allotted the lowest portion of public resources.12 This may well be one of the limiting factors to the introduction of innovative experiences and alternatives. A possible explanation for this state of affairs, may lie in the lack of interesting and relevant educational proposals along with the disproportionate priority enjoyed by the basic and higher levels. At the secondary level of education, com-

11

See table 3 contained in: “Rol Estratégico de la educación media para el bienestar y la equidad”. Paper submitted by ECLAC’s Social Development Division for submission at the Seventh Regional Conference of LAC Ministers of Education (Jamaica, may 13-17, 1996). 12 See Table Annex 1: Latin America and the Caribbean. Percentage distribution of current expenditure by level. 1980 and 1992.

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parative studies of “cost per pupil” indicators are hard to come by given the incomplete and heterogeneous nature of the data issued by the various countries. An estimation based on available data reveals that within Latin America, Cuba is the country that earmarks the greatest amount of resources per pupil, both at the primary and secondary levels (US$ 355 and US$ 904 per pupil, respectively).13 On the opposite end, Haiti assigns US$ 43 and US$ 44 per pupil, at the primary and secondary levels. The average cost of secondary education students in the Caribbean countries is much higher; a case in point, in the British Virgin Islands it exceeds US$ 2 500. In overall terms, the average cost per pupil fluctuates more widely in secondary education than it does in basic education. This could point to the diversity of the educational policies and strategies being adopted in the region at this educational level, or to the unavailability of reliable information that would make comparison studies among the various countries –and the subsequent elaboration of indicators– feasible. Furthermore, in Latin America, examination of the average cost per student in higher education as compared to the average cost per pupil at the secondary level, reveals the former to be quite larger.14 In terms of higher education, average costs per pupil peak at US$ 3 344 in Brazil, being the lowest in Colombia at US$ 456, while in practically half of the countries they exceed US$ 1 000, that is to say, better than twice the amount allotted to secondary education. It behooves us to conduct a profound analysis of public and private resource distribution mechanisms at the various education levels, and assign the place or priority that should be 13

See Table Annex 2 a-: Latin America. Secondary (Middle) Education. Current expenditure estimates per pupil. Last available year. See Table Annex 2b-: English speaking Caribbean. Secondary (Middle) Education: Current expediture estimates per pupil. Last available year. 14 See Table Annex 3: Latin America and the Caribbean. Higher Education. Current expenditure estimates per pupil. Last available year.

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given to secondary education in future resource allocation policy. Funding to enhance institutional management capabilities that may produce a renewed, open and relevant middle education Consideration will also have to be given to the costs entailed by the institutional transformations that will be necessary to provide new ways of furnishing instruction and meeting the swelling demands of secondary education. One of the recommendations made by the Minister of Education meeting at Jamaica, had to do with “improving management capabilities: greater participation by the local educational community and a more strategic role in the central administration system”. The greater autonomy of educational institutions emerges as a trend in the region. In addition, however, middle education must improve its institutional capacity to establish close links to higher education; strengthen its ties to the occupational training system, the productive and the business sectors; and, generate smooth relations with scientific and technological research institutions. In other words, it must create a network of relationships that extends to every actor concerned with the education of young people. Lastly, modern management technologies, such as strategic planning and the use of informatics, among others, should be harnessed without delay. All of this, implies building up the professional capacity of the system. The capacity to evaluate and design new financial mechanisms that go beyond traditional schemes –particularly for middle education– is a must, specially if we bear in mind that the attainment of equity and quality in education, is everybody’s responsibility. Initiatives already under way in countries like Chile, which rely on the active participation of the productive sector in technical professional management or on especial tax systems,15 as well as on re15

Law 19,247 gives chilean enterprises which donate part of their profits to educational institutions special tax considerations.

Funding secondary education to what end? which areas? who will do the funding? / Ana María Corvalán

source allocation mechanisms that operate through competition initiatives among educational units, warrant serious analysis and discussion. Whichever road is chosen, the improved capacity of the authorities and of educational professionals and technicians responsible for public and private funding at the local, national and regional spheres of action, to effectively communicate, emerge as an indispensable requirement. Who must fund secondary education? Despite broad consensus about the need for expanded educational coverage and improved quality at every level, through a smoother relationship with higher education and the labour market; and, about the need to create conditions which facilitate the transformation of the region’s productive structures and help disseminate social equity, consensus is yet to be reached in terms of what type of education would be the most suitable, and how is this expansion and qualitative enhancement to be financed; is this burden to fall on governments, entrepreneurs, families or is it to be shared; if so, in what proportions? UNESCO has suggested that “It is high time that every country implements efficient educational reforms and reaches social consensus on what part of education should be funded by the public and the private sectors”.16 Additionally, the Ministers of Education meeting at Jamaica17 recommended that: “Broadly speaking, and despite increased educational budgets

by governments, these are still insufficient when measured against the ranking education should have in the development of a nation. Thus, the resources needed to bring about educational reform will not only have to be increased even further, but the efficiency with which they are used will have to improve, both at the school level as well as within the system as a whole”. In the light of recommendations by international organizations, many of the region’s governments have expressed their intention to raise the percentage of the GDP assigned to education, to 8 per cent from 6 per cent. In 1991, however, the regional average for Latin America hovered around 4.2 per cent18 and the necessary resources to achieve an efficient universal coverage system, largely exceed this amount.19 Nevertheless, account must be taken of the budgetary restrictions generated within macroeconomic and fiscal balance policies as well as the modest infrastructure that has characterized Latin America’s educational systems for the past decades, which have survived only after radical cutbacks in operational expenditures, albeit, not without a marked deterioration in the quality of the educational services delivered.20 The paucity of qualified human resources, particularly in middle and technical professional education, along with the low wage structure that typifies the teaching profession as compared to other professions, in addition to the tepid interest shown by the busi-

18 16

“Educación para el desarrollo y la paz: valorar la diversidad y aumentar las oportunidades de aprendizaje personalizado y grupal”. UNESCO. ED.96/ MINEDLAC VII/3. Seventh Regional Conference of LAC Ministers of Education (Kingston, Jamaica, May 13-17, 1996). 17 Final Report. Seventh Regional Conference of LAC Ministers of Education. Sixth Meeting of the Intergovernmental Regional Committee of the Major Project in the Field of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean. UNESCO. ED/MD/201. Kingston, Jamaica, mMay 13-17, 1996.

Table 42 Statistical Annex in “The State of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1980-1994”. UNESCO. Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Major Project of Education. Santiago, April 1996. See Table Annex 4: Latin America and the Caribbean. Public expenditure on education as percentage of the GNP. 1980 and last available year. 19 “¿Cuánto se puede gastar en educación?. Guillermo Labarca in: ECLAC Review Nº 56, August, 1995. 20 A case in point. In the state of Parana, Brazil, most secondary public schools are night schools which use the operating capacity of existing basic schools.

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ness sector in the educational system as such, represent further adverse elements that ought not be overlooked. The fact that free education is only possible at the compulsory level is an unescapable conclusion. In secondary education, the rate of enrolment in private schools is higher than in basic education. The role of the State has been weaker at the former level of education.21 Proposals for funding a secondary education expansion and enhancement agenda The following basic six strategies design to create favourable short and mid term conditions in the region for the mobilization of resources destined for middle education, are presented tentatively and as points of debate. – Formulate, coordinate and implement a regional agenda for the enhancement of knowledge and information on secondary education, wherein statistics and research systematization, as well as the recording of on-stream school innovation efforts poorly –or not at all– disseminated, are essential. This would provide an opportunity to learn from past experience and to build the bases for possible answers to the set of current queries that hobble the decision-making process. The participation of research as well as policy formulating organizations in the elaboration of such an agenda, with the backing of international funding organizations such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, is highly recommended. – Increase public awareness on the importance of secondary (middle) education and generate national and regional consensuses, with special emphasis on the political sphere, in connection with: • the strategic value of strengthening secondary education as a lever to improve international market competitivity, and the 21

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See Table Annex 5: Latin America. Private Pre-school, Primary and Secondary enrolment rates. (1980-1992).

need to attain greater equity in terms of access to education and academic performance; • the elaboration of reform proposals founded on reliable information and on research findings on innovative educational experiences, and the opening of the system to a relationship with other productive and cultural institutions, as well as to the other levels of instruction, namely, basic and higher education. • topics that make up the agenda, such as: the objectives of secondary education –individual, social and cultural– and its structure; the opening up of secondary education to society; how to create and link the curriculum to value systems and how to integrate into it the cultural demands of the young; how to bring in those who have been excluded from the system while improving its coverage, quality and equity; its relationship with citizen formation and governance; its link to science and technology and the productive sector; the evaluation and supervision of secondary education; teacher training; its funding. – Establish a specific international network among sister- institutions in order to generate synergy around secondary education, and facilitate consensus-building and the development of an agenda pursuant to points 4.1 and 4.2. The use of inexpensive communication technology, such as that represented by E-mail features and INTERNET, may prove tremendously helpful at a marginal cost. – The substantial reduction of basic education repetition rates, combined with improvements in its quality owing to development programmes implemented in a large number of countries, should release financial resources that may, in turn, be funneled towards reinforcing secondary education or, seen from a different perspective, be used to expand compulsory education. – Higher education institutions will be in a position to gradually intensify their

Funding secondary education to what end? which areas? who will do the funding? / Ana María Corvalán

participation by partially assuming their own financing through services rendered to the community, a fact that is bound to appreciate its worth. The public resources thus freed, could be channeled towards secondary education.22 – Create links to the productive sector, the main beneficiary of a strengthened secondary education which can produce individuals better able to tap into the new technologies and attain increased output rates. Cofinancing could be the product of a mixed system that combines

resources earmarked for occupational training with those destined to professional training, a fact that would compel us to take a long and hard look at both systems which, as a rule, do not intermingle that smoothly. – Build up from a condition of deficit to one of appropriate spending through the use of national resources. Secondary education development projects which include possible funding options for continued operation based on actual conditions, could be used to negotiate foreign loans.

PEDAGOGY ‘97 Since 1986, Cuba’s Ministry of Education has sponsored Pedagogy Congresses as a medium for educators from Latin American, the Caribbean and other regions, to exchange experiences, discuss the major problems affecting their respective countries, find common solutions, and disseminate possible remedies. To this end, Cuba - as host-country, and given its close links to international organizations (UNESCO and UNICEF), and educational institutions, such as the Latin America and Caribbean Educators’ Association (ADLAC) - has convoked the teachers of the world to participate at the Pedagogy ’97 Congress to be held in Havana, in early February 1997. The purpose of the event is to encourage expression of the rich educational traditions of the different realities, through debates, commissions, round tables, conferences and publications on a variety of subjects, among them: the quality of education; value building; environmental education; education for peace and democracy; the school-family-community relationship; early child care; rural schools; creativity and the teaching staff; the work-study relationship; disabled children education; technical and professional education; adult education; higher education; administration and school supervision; sexual education, etc. For further information, please contact: Comité Organizador, Congreso Pedagogía 97. Ministerio de Educación. Obispo Nº 160. La Havana, Cuba. Fax (537) 622 547 and 331 697.

22

See table annex: Latin America and the Caribbean: percentage distribution of current expenditure by levels. 1980 and 1992. Source: UNESCO. World Education Report 1995.

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Annex Table 1 LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN. PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF CURRENT EXPENDITURE BY LEVELS. 1980 AND 1992

Country

Argentina Barbados Bolivia Brazil Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Chile Dominica Ecuador Guatemala Guyana Haiti Honduras British Virgin Islands Jamaica Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Dominican Republic Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Suriname Trinidad and Tobago Uruguay Venezuela

1980 Middle

Higher

Primary

40.1 32.0 58.9 44.8 44.5 28.0 29.4 44.7 – 20.6 37.4 40.1 59.3 61.9 45.1 34.7 45.1 46.3 – 47.9 36.8 50.0 45.6 64.0 46.9 48.4 –

25.6 32.0 11.4 7.1 27.0 21.5 40.8 18.0 – 18.5 12.4 28.5 20.4 17.9 42.7 36.9 25.1 22.0 – 19.9 22.9 40.6 23.7 8.4 34.9 33.2 –

22.7 18.1 17.1 18.9 24.1 26.1 6.9 33.2 – 15.6 18.4 12.6 9.6 19.3 4.3 19.2 10.5 13.4 – – 23.9 2.9 14.7 7.4 10.2 16.1 –

50.5 37.5 – 48.8 43.6 38.2 25.7 56.0 59.5 32.1 32.7 – 53.1 49.1 27.8 32.2 – 31.5 42.2 – – 34.7 48.5 60.5 42.5 35.7 –

Source: UNESCO. WORLD EDUCATION REPORT 1995.

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1992

Primary

Middle 26.1 37.6 – 6.9 37.3 21.6 39.0 14.9 27.1 33.7 12.0 – 19.0 17.2 31.3 20.8 – 20.4 25.0 – – 45.4 23.0 14.5 36.8 29.9 –

Higher 17.6 19.2 – 25.6 19.1 36.1 14.4 20.6 2.5 22.7 16.6 – 9.1 18.2 24.7 21.4 – 26.1 19.3 – – 12.2 13.2 8.8 11.9 24.6 –

Funding secondary education to what end? which areas? who will do the funding? / Ana María Corvalán

Table 2a LATIN AMERICA:. SECONDARY (MIDDLE) EDUCATION. CURRENT EXPENDITURE ESTIMATE PER PUPIL., LAST AVAILABLE YEAR

Country

Year

Cuba Mexico Costa Rica Brazil Uruguay Panama Chile Venezuela Colombia Paraguay Ecuador El Salvador Honduras Guatemala Dominican Republic Bolivia Peru Nicaragua Haiti

1990 1993 1991 1989 1992 1992 1993 1990 1992 1993 1992 1980 1991 1993 1993 1989 1985 1992 1990

Current Middle expenditure Education in Middle Education Enrolments (in thousands of US$)(thousands) 906471 3583058 67405 1 365903 66264 62628 155244 55023 489567 37991 91483 7936 19604 28584 16165 13440 90694 9845 8208

1002 6977 139 3441 273 204 653 281 2687 214 814 73 194 334 233 208 1427 195 185

Cost Per Pupil Middle Education (in US$)

Cost Per Pupil Primary Education (in US$)

904 514 484 397 316 307 238 196 182 177 112 109 101 85 69 65 64 51 44

355 200 213 229 280 160 123 79 45 64 110 100 58 26 109 87 117 43

Source: UNESCO. Statistical Yearbook 1995. Paris, 1995. a) Circa 1991, (UNESCO. The State of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean 1980-94). Notes: For some countries, middle education enrolment figures were estimated based on statistics for the closest years. Bolivia: Figures do not include expenditure at the university level Brazil: Capital expenditure included Colombia: Capital expenditure included Costa Rica: Ministry of Education expenditure only. Guatemala: Ministry of Education expenditure only (part of the programmed budget). Mexicco: Ministry of Education expenditure only. Nicaragua: Ministry of Education expenditure only. Capital expenditure included - Primary and Middle Education Dominican Republic: Ministry of Education expenditure only. Venezuela: Ministry of Education expenditure only. Capital expenditure included.

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Table 2b ENGLISH SPEAKING CARIBBEAN: SECONDARY (MIDDLE) EDUCATION. CURRENT EXPENDITURE ESTIMATES PER PUPIL., LAST AVAILABLE YEAR

Country

Year

British Virgin Islands Barbados Montserrat Suriname Trinidad and Tobago Saint Lucia Sant Kitts and Nevis Belize S. Vincent and the Grenadines Dominica Granada Jamaica

1992 1990 1993 1993 1990 1992 1991 1986 1990 1989 1986 1992

Current Middle expenditure Education in Middle Education Enrolments (in thousands of US$)(thousands) 3 40 1 31 62 6 2 2 3 2 1 32

130 760 006 507 950 090 498 790 053 007 363 346

1.2 24.0 0.9 30.0 97.5 10.4 4.4 7.0 10.7 7.4 9.6 235.1

Cost Per Pupil Middle Education (in US$) 2 1 1 1

Cost Per Pupil Primary Education (in US$)

562 698 118 050 646 588 566 396 285 272 142 138

– 450 – – 374 208 200 149 214 347 131 750

Source: UNESCO. Statistical Yearbook 1995. PARIS, 1995 a) Circa 1991. (UNESCO. The State of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean 1980-94). Note: For some countries, middle education enrolment figures were estimated based on statistics for the closest years. Jamaica: Ministry of Education expenditure only. Saint Kitts: Higher education expenditure not included. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines: Higher education expenditure not included.

Table 3 LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARRIBBEAN: HIGHER EDUCATION. CURRENT EXPENDITURE ESTIMATES PER PUPIL, LAST AVAILABLE YEAR

Country

Year

Brazil Mexico Cuba Costa Rica Panama Uruguay Venezuela Paraguay Chile Guatemala Honduras Haiti Colombia

1989 1993 1990 1991 1992 1992 1990 1993 1993 1993 1991 1990 1992

A B C D E Total current % RepresenCurrent Foreign Current expenditure ted by higher expenditure exchange expenditure in in education education in higher rate NC H. Education (Millions, NC) (Millions, NC) times 1 US$ (Millions, NC) 56 43.107 1 28

101 371 627 578 307 873 317 57.347 338 107 468 452 1 081 606 216 996 567

25,6 13,7 14,4 33,8 26,1 24,6 40,7 19,8 21,0 19,5 18,2 9,1 19,1

14 361,9 2 834 5 905 709,8 3 116 234,3 0,7 9 659,4 91 579 80,1 1 214 836,0 3 027 23 340,2 36 901 66 945,2 1 744,35 98 374,9 404 349 210,8 5 635 110,3 5 317 19,7 5 190 344,3 759 282

5 067 697 1 895 285 334 697 105 475 80 127 70 973 497 648 38 378 243 292 37 408 20 743 3 931 250 689

Source: UNESCO. Statical Yearbook 1995. París, 1995. Costa Rica; includes intitutions approved by the national council of higher education only.

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F Higher education enrolment

953 1 515 503 567 1 358 271 143 242 434 753 80 442 000 64 561 235 68 227 856 550 030 299 42 654 107 327 435 163 52 848 276 44 233 200 8 465 858 549 220

G Cost per pupil (US$) 3 1 1 1 1 1

344 395 381 331 241 040 905 900 743 708 469 464 456

Funding secondary education to what end? which areas? who will do the funding? / Ana María Corvalán

Table 4 LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARRIBEAN: PUBLIC EXPENDITURE ON EDUCATION AS PERCENTAGE OF GNP, 1980 AND LAST AVAILABLE YEAR

Subregion and country Antigua and Barbuda Netherlands Antilles Argentina Barbados Belize Bolivia Brazil Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Chile Dominica Ecuador El Salvador Granada Guatemala Guyana Haiti Honduras Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Dominican Republic Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Saint Lucia Suriname Trinidad and Tobago Uruguay Venezuela

1980

Figure

Year

2.9 6.3 3.6 6.5 – 4.4 3.6 1.9 7.8 7.2 4.6 – 5.6 3.9 – 1.9 9.7 1.5 3.2 7.0 4.7 3.4 4.9 1.5 3.1 2.2 5.2 4.0 – 6.7 4.0 2.3 4.4

2.5 5.7 3.1 7.3 4.5 3.0 4.6 3.0 4.4 6.6 3.7 5.2 2.7 1.6 5.3 1.7 6.3 1.4 4.0 5.7 4.2 6.2 5.2 2.6 3.4 1.1 3.1 5.0 5.2 7.2 3.5 2.5 5.2

1984 1988 1992 1991 1991 1991 1991 1993 1993 1991 1991 1989 1993 1992 1993 1993 1990 1990 1991 1993 1993 1987 1992 1993 1993 1993 1992 1990 1992 1992 1993 1992 1992

Source: The World Bank. World Development Report 1993. Washington, 1991; -1990; ECLAC. UNESCO’s Statistical Yearbook of America. Statistical Yearbook 1994. Paris, 1994. -1995

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Table 5 LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: PRIVATE ENROLMENT PERCENTAGE AT PRE-SCHOOL, PRIMARY AND MIDDLE EDUCATION

Country

Argentina Aruba Barbados Bolivia Brazil Chile Colombia Costa Rica Cuba Ecuador El Salvador Guatemala Guyana Haiti Honduras Jamaica Mexico Nicaragua Panama Paraguay Peru Dominican Republic Uruguay Venezuela

Pre-school education 1980 1991 1992 32 92 20 14 46 20 64 13 0 42 20 38 0 100 16 85 11 43 34 63 27 87 25 17

29 – 19 11 31 45 58 21 0 37 37 48 0 72 18 88 9 26 26 50 12 – 29 16

– – – 10 26 49 58 10 0 40 33 32 0 86 21 86 9 28 27 50 20 55 29 17

Primary education 1980 1991 1992 – 89 9 – 13 20 14 3 0 16 7 14 0 57 5 4 5 12 6 15 13 18 16 11

19 – 8 11 12 39 21 5 0 17 11 16 0 43 6 4 6 13 8 14 12 23 16 14

20 – 10 10 12 40 17 5 0 16 14 17 0 61 5 8 6 14 8 14 12 22 16 15

Secondary education 1980 1991 1992 39 – 16 17 – 24 45 9 0 34 50 38 0 82 46 4 19 18 11 27 15 24 17 26

29 – 15 26 28 42 39 10 0 – 61 – 0 82 – – 12 19 14 22 – 30 17 29

Source: UNESCO. World Education Report 1993 - 1995 The World Bank. World Development Report 1993. Investing in Health. World development Indicators.

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– – 26 – 43 40 10 0 – 62 – 0 82 – – 12 19 13 22 16 32 16 35

OREALC Activities

OREALC Activities Sixth Iberoamerican Summit of Heads of Governments and States The event was held in the cities of Santiago and Viña del Mar (Chile) from November 7 to 11, 1996. It gathered twenty-two mandataries and Heads of States from twentyone iberoamerican countries.1 UNESCO was invited to participate in the event as an observer. The summit’s leitmotif was “Governance for an Efficient and Participative Democracy”. UNESCO, through its Regional Office for Education and in permanent coordination with the Director General’s Cabinet, participated in the activities of the Sixth Summit through various initiatives: Social Analysis Laboratory. Within the framework of the Project “Latin America: a new political culture for the new century”, UNESCO organized its Fifth Social Social Analysis Laboratory “Democratic governance in Latin America and the Caribbean”, Santiago, Chile September 21-22, 1996. The event

assembled twenty top level and highly representative participants.2 The themes addressed were the consolidation of democratic forms of government, the control of inflationary pressures, and the impact the end of the cold war had on the two superpowers. The need was reiterated for building a civilian, autonomous society, capable of assuming responsibility, and endowed with the political culture required to guarantee a climate of democratic stability from which the principles of justice, liberty, equality and solidarity, would arise. Special issue of PERIOLIBROS. Mexico’s UNESCO office planned and produced a special issue of Periolibro which included the (recently deceased) chilean author José Donoso’s “Naturaleza muerta con Cachimba”, with illustrations by the bolivian painter Raul Lara. Presentation of UNESCO’s 1996

YEARBOOK to Heads of Governments and States. UNESCO Chair on “Ethics and Politics”. At the closing of the Sixth Summit, the Heads of Governments and States signed the “Viña del Mar Declaration”. The various political issues contained in the declaration opened up new cooperation alternatives for UNESCO at the regional level. Thus, the recent creation of a UNESCO Chair on “Ethics and Politics”, was thought to represent a valuable input to the coming Seventh Summit, to be held in Isla Margarita, Venezuela, and whose leitmotif will be “Ethical values of a democracy”. To this end, former President of Chile Mr. Patricio Aylwin and a number of collaborators agreed to launch the aforementioned Chair, for which UNESCO contributed some US$ 25 000 to be earmarked for preparatory arrangements.

Eighth Workshop-Seminar on Educational Management Policies Santiago, Chile, November 9 to 29, 1996 The scope of the Work-Shop Seminar

Seminars on policies, planning and educational management, geared towards high level officials of Min-

Since 1989, UNESCO-Santiago has sponsored annual Work-Shop 2 1

The event was attended by Heads of Government and State from: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, España, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Among others, Bolivia’s VicePresident, Chile’s Minister SecretaryGeneral of the Presidency, social researchers, political scientists, Ministers and former Ministers, economists, educators, university students, mass media directors, ECLAC’s Executive Secretary and UNDP’s representative in Chile.

istries of Education and universities of Latin America, the Caribbean and Spain, which offer postgraduate programmes in educational administration. The Work-Shop Seminars are intended to strengthen the professional performance capacities of strategically located target groups, both in the area of policy formulation as well as in matters concerning the interrelations between the academic and political world.

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Taking into account the experiences accumulated during the seven earlier Workshop-Seminars this eighth version focused on the following objectives: • analyzing the role of education within the Latin American context; and • developing decision-making capabilities in policy formulation and analysis, in educational management and planning. Eighth Workshop-Seminar; Content and methodology The content and methodology of work-shop seminars are continually being adapted to the state of education in general, and to educational planning and management initiatives, in particular, as well as to the changes that take place between them. This year’s Work-Shop Seminar unfolded along the study of educational innovations currently operational in every country, individually selected by the participants. Another central element of discussion were management capacities such as the analysis of educational policies; communication and management; negotiations with the different interest groups; and, the integration of vision, planning and management. Secondary education was also touched on, given the priority it occupies in the educational agenda of the countries in the region, par-

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ticularly at a time when most educational systems are offering broad primary education coverage. This Work-Shop Seminar primarily stressed the active learning of participants as well as work accomplished on an individual basis. In previous years, the work submitted by participants consisted of an educational innovation proposal undertaken by a group, almost always from the same country. This year, however (in order to increase participation, focus on reality-inspired projects, and in an attempt to put into practice the various analytical tools exhibited at the WorkShop), the project took on a distinctly individual flavour while focusing on the analysis and evaluation of one of the many on-stream educational projects in each of the different countries. In terms of presentation, the methodological manual of participants was greatly enhanced by the use of colour printouts and a more effective organization, from the didactic standpoint. The Work-Shop Seminar consisted of the eight modules which are listed below: Module I - Secondary Education: Opening an Agenda Module II - Educational Planning and Management Module III - Communication Skills for Management Module IV - Field Visits Module V - GESEDUCA: Educational Management Model Module VI - EDUPLAN:

Informatics Application to Planning and Management Module VII - A New Opportunity: A Simulation Game Module VIII - Teachers in Education “Converzasioni”(*) Evaluation(*) The series of converzasioni included in the Work-Shop Seminar were evaluated by participants from the aspects of: pertinence, relevance, and participation. (*) N.B. Conversazione: a meeting, reception, or assembly for conversation and social recreation or for discussion of art, literature or science. Source: Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 1993. P. 498.

Global Evaluation Global evaluation was divided in four parts: General Aspects, Themes, Final Report and Organization. The three-week period allotted to the Seminar was considered somewhat insufficient. Evaluation of Part II, yielded the following results: the themes Communication Skills for Management, and Educational Planning and Management were the most relevant. The themes Communication Skills for Management, A new Opportunity, a Simulation Game and Educational Planning and Management, were rated as highly pertinent.

OREALC Activities

UNESCO and Chile’s Educational Reform At a meeting with OREALC’s Director a.i., José Pablo Arellano, Chile’s Minister of Education officially requested the advisory services of the Regional Office in the implementation of the substantial changes in terms of school infrastructure and equipment, announced by this country’s President, Mr. Eduardo Frei. The issue

is critical for Chile’s educational Reform, since in its quest for enhancing the quality and equity of the educational supply, the chilean government has extended the school calendar from an annual average of 800 to 1 200 hours. The measure will affect all state financed schools, and will require expanding and improving current school infras-

tructure and equipment, in record time. UNESCO’s cooperation will take the form of a US$ 650 000 Project. To this end, Almeida Durán, Head of the Organization’s Architecture Department participated during November, in a working mission with officials of Chile’s Ministry of Education (Investment Department).

Relations with the Latin American Parliament (PARLATINO) OREALC in cooperation with the Latin American Parliament (PARLATINO), elaborated an Educational Plan for the Development and Integration of Latin America, subsequently adopted by this organization’s Education Commission at a meeting held in Havana

(October 18-20, 1996). Said Plan, contemplated under UNESCO/ PARLATINO’s Cooperation Agreement, has a projected budget of some US$ 506 000, while funding arrangements are currently being negotiated with the European Commission. The Plan’s Execu-

tive Office will reside in PARLATINO’s headquarters (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), and the Technical Office in OREALC (Santiago, Chile). The Plan includes educational, promotional, administrative, legal and financial activities.

Relations with the European Union Virgina Muller, European Union Consultant, visited OREALC with the twofold purpose of becoming acquainted with UNESCO’s educational cooperation policies in the countries of the region, and evaluating the possibility of European Union/UNESCO joint cooperation ventures, in Latin America and the

Caribbean. In turn, Gonzalo Febrer, Chile’s European Commission Director, visited OREALC in order to discuss possible joint cooperation initiatives between the two organizations. In this regard, a decision was made to submit to Chile’s European Union Delegation a Project on educational statistics en-

hancement, and a second Project on Integration, to Brazil’s Representation. The Project on Educational Statistics will be elaborated by OREALC while the project dealing with PARLATINO will be drafted by Alfredo Jiménez in Brazil.

Relations with the “Simón Wiesenthal” Foundation Two representatives of the Simón Wiesenthal Foundation, Mssers. Schimon Samuels and Sergio D. Widder, visited OREALC on October 10, 1196. On the occasion, the similarity of the objectives pur-

sued by the Foundation and the ethical principles that guide UNESCO’s initiatives, was reaffirmed, a fact that should translate into joint UNESCO/Wiesenthal Foundation cooperation initiatives.

The Foundation representatives expressed their concern about INTERNET broadcasts that nurture racist and xenophobic tendencies.

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Relations with teacher unions OREALC has continued to work with teacher organizations. Last semester, it cooperated with Chiles’s Colegio de Profesores in the organization of a National Con-

gress on Education, slated for early 1997; with Argentina’s CTERA in Research Instruction Projects and Workshops for Teacher Training Institutes; and, with Peru’s Higher

Education Teachers’ Union (SIDESP), in educational exchange activities.

Regional Conference on Higher education OREALC worked closely with CRESALC and UNESCO’s Higher Education Division, on occasion of the Regional Conference on Policies and Strategies for the Transformation of Higher Education in Latin America (Havana, Cuba, November 18-22, 1996),

attended by 110 Latin American Universities’ Presidents. To this end, OREALC produced the document Higher Education and the Education System as a Whole (english and spanish versions), used as Working Document for Commission 1 and at the meeting’s Plenary Sessions. The paper corrobo-

rates that efforts to analyze the association that exists between higher education and the educational systemas a whole, have been insufficient, and proposes specific recommendations intended to intensify participation by universities in the current educational reform.

Associated Schools - International Work-Shop Seminar UNESCO’s Associated Schools Programme, held its Second International Work-Shop Seminar, organized jointly by ED/HCI, at OREALC headquarters (December 2-6, 1996). Programme policy definitions and future global action plans, in addition to the evaluation of results achieved at the national, subregional, regional and global levels, were among the Seminar’s objectives. The seminar was attended by the two best national coordinators selected from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, the Arab States and Europe, and by UNESCO specialists from the Organization’s Headquarters, and the Regional and Sub-Regional

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offices of various locations such as Bangkok, Beirut, Dakar, Harare, Amman, Apia, Doha, Port of Spain, San Jose, and Santiago (Chile). There was consensus that Flagship Projects should be implemented, particularly in the case of countries engaged in warfare, emerging from state of war, or entering a state of peace following harsh and varied conflicts; that the role of Associated Schools should be analyzed in the light of the “Pillars” provided by UNESCO’s International Commission for Education in the 21st Century, and that inputs derived from the associated schools’ experience should be submitted, on occasion

of the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10, 1998), the International Ocean Year (1998), and the International Infancy Year (1999). An agreement was also reached, in terms of seeking new extra-budgetary formulas to widen the action scope and evaluation of associated schools, in keeping with regional strategies that allow the presence of associated schools in each subregion, closely connected to UNESCO’s corresponding Regional Office. A stroke of luck, in the form of a brief stop-over in Santiago by UNESCO’s Director General, Federico Mayor, facilitated a short exchange between the high-ranking officer and participants.

OREALC Activities

OREALC and the Kingston Recommendation Both the activities and actions undertaken by the Regional Office, have had as objectives the fulfillment of agreements and recommendations adopted at the Seventh Meeting of Ministries of Education. In this regard, efforts have been made, in coordination with the various Governments, aimed at increasing Latin America’s political, economic, cultural and educational insertion into the world concert.

The Recommendation’s dissemination actions, are centred on the massive publication/distribution of an offprint containing the text of the Recommendation, and the Conference’s keynote document. Some 3 500 issues of this offprint, will be distributed as a special contribution to “Pedagogy 97”, event that will be held in Havana, Cuba, in February, 1997. A Teleconference on the contents and the projection of the Recom-

mendations a year after their adoption, has been slated for May 1997. The Teleseminar will have as special features the use of the HISPASAT satellite and the participation of ministers of education and higher education institutions. Also along these lines, as of February 1997, OREALC will make available to institutions and educators in the region a “home page”, an INTERNET feature.

intended to elevate the professional standards of teachers. For its part, Peru attempts to rationalize the number of teaching institutions (300 have been estimated), while in Chile the teaching career is still being spurned by secondary school graduates, despite legislation enacted by the government which ostensible increases the number of annual hours of instruction in chilean schools. Uruguay is building a state of the art Training Centre and, concurrently, elaborating a pilot plan intended to improve secondary education. Currently ten public schools are participating actively, while this figure is expected to dou-

ble in 1997. This initiative is being backed by the IDB. Within the context of Bolivia’s educational reform, to which UNESCO has made a US$ 100 000 commitment for funding this and other actions, OREALC has cooperated in the materialization of these undertakings providing special support to this country’s “Alternative Education Project”. Likewise, a case study on educational research covering ten countries has been developed, and in a joint effort with “Santillana” Publishing House, the book “Transformar la formación docente inicial” has been recently published.

to reinforce horizontal communication between children and their peer groups, relatives and community - has had an impressive response in Chile, Colombia, Paraguay and Mexico. The programme consists of low cost printed materials, designed from a constructive

perspective, that highlight the individual protagonism of the child facilitating his oral and written communication skills, while placing special emphasis on values such as solidarity and respect for others. The “Organización Panamericana de la Salud”, the Ministry of Health,

Teacher training support Within the context of education conceived as a State policy –and in keeping with the Ministers’ recommendation at Kingston– OREALC has always placed a high priority on teachers, particularly when it comes to pre-service training. In this regard, government decisions in these matters are far from unanimous. While in Argentina government decisions have resulted in the gradual shut down of teacher training institutions, in Bolivia top priority has been given to teacher accreditation and to the status enhancement of the teaching profession, specially in projects cofinanced by AGFUND which are

New Modalities With a view to providing support to countries that have recently embarked on educational reforms, OREALC has undertaken to reinforce new distance education modalities for children and adults. The programme “Learning Guides for Children” - essentially designed

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and Santiago’s Universidad de Chile and Universidad Católica (all chilean institutions), and the

“Fundación Mexicana de Educación para la Salud”, expressed –interest– based on OREALC’s ex-

perience - in the design of educational guides to be used with handicapped children.

Planning and management Planning and management are still important components of any educational reform programme, the reason why OREALC has consistently upheld its support in this area. In Latin America, the outcomes of decentralizing educational systems have varied importantly. The issue was discussed extensively at the PREAL-sponsored seminar “Risks and advantages of educational decentralization” (Managua, Nicaragua, July 25-26, 1996). Apparently, current decentralization measures are strengthening the centralization of methods

and procedures. With the possible exception of Peru, this could be the result of a dearth of scientific knowhow; a lack of consensus in terms of associating the decentralization of educational systems with quality of education; evidence that equity is not a by-product of decentralization, but, quite the opposite, gaps at the regional levels are growing; absence of theories that relate decentralization with education, even when economic and management decentralization theories are abundant. In the final analysis, it boils down to finding

the key that will unlock the mystery of how to administer systems which grow progressively more complex internally, and how to acquire an administrative and regulatory perspective, within a context of decentralization. These observations are made at a time when the role of the Latin American State in matters of decentralization, has weakened considerably, leaving the underprivileged groups at a marked disadvantage.

Towards a regional proposal in youth and adult educational matters UNESCO, in association with other international organizations, has convoked to a Fifth Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA V), to take place July 14 to 18, 1997, in Hamburg, Germany. The main objective of CONFINTEA V, is to heighten the importance normally ascribed to adult education, and forge global commitments from a perspective of lifelong learning directed at: – facilitating everyone’s participation towards sustained and equitable development; – promoting a peace culture based on freedom, justice and mutual respect; – training men and women; and – building a synergy between formal and non formal education. With this objective in mind, UNESCO in collaboration with its

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partners, will strive to guarantee equivalent contributions and representation, from every corner of the planet as well as from every actor involved in adult education. In this context, UNESCO/ OREALC, CEAAL, other United Nation organizations and GTZ, with the technical and financial support of the government of Brazil, are summoning CONFINTEA V to a Preparatory Regional Meeting on the subject: “Youth and Adult Education for the 21st Century”. The event will be held in Brasilia, on January 22 to 24, 1997. Those responsible for Youth and Adult Education in the Ministries of Education of all the Latin American and Caribbean countries are expected to attend, as are those who represent the major NGO’s devoted to this area of education in

the region. The presence of distinguished specialists is an added bonus. Following discussion of the national contributions submitted to the Regional Conference, attention will focus on 11 thematic areas addressing, among others, the enhancement of conditions and the quality of learning of youths and adults; the advancement of women’s education; the evolution of the working world; prevention as it relates to the environment, population and health; mass media and culture; intercultural bilingual education and that of other special groups; etc. One of the expected outcomes of this Conference is a Regional Proposal for implementing a type of Youth and Adult Education that may respond to the challenges posed by the 21st Century.

OREALC Activities

Regional progress in matters of educational statistics The need to improve educational statistics has been widely acknowledged. In 1995, there were two important recommendations made in the region which have oriented the mission of UNESCO’s Regional Office of Education in this area of education. – one of the recommendations emerging from a meeting of donor organizations, held in Washington3 in January 1996, had to do with “undertaking actions aimed at strengthening information exchange between cooperation agencies engaged in educational work in Latin America and the Caribbean; between these organizations and the countries in the region; and, between the countries themselves, through enhancement of horizontal communication”

(paragraph 149, section c, Report on coordination of educational cooperation), and – the Recommendation of Latin American and Caribbean Ministers of Education4 regarding “the establishment of an information exchange system between international organizations, and between the various countries in the region and their educational sectors...” giving priority to the enhancement of educational statistics. Pursuant to these Recommendations, in June 1996, the Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean submitted to the consideration of the Ford Foundation a project proposal designed to improve educational statistics and information exchange in the region. The

nine-month long project was approved, and funding was made available to implement the first stages. The project officially launched in July 1996, is intended to provide state of the art techniques on production and use of educational statistics/indicators for the countries in the region. A more comprehensive and longer term programme proposal is currently under study. It includes the enhancement of educational statistics and indicators, the creation of an information exchange system of successful educational experiences and innovative programmes, the status of the school principal, and educational assessment and evaluation. The proposal has been submitted to international funding organizations, to be implemented as of the second semester of 1997.

Special education programme activities - Second Semester 1996 UNESCO/DANIDA Project “Integration of Handicapped Children into Regular Schools in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador” - Technical support and follow-up. The following training activities have been carried out within the framework of the UNESCO/ DANIDA Project: – Workshop on UNESCO’s Teacher Training Project “Special Classroom Needs” geared to3

Held on January 16 and 17, 1996. Sponsored by UNESCO and co-financed by UNICEF, the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank, and with technical support provided by OAS. Representatives of the following organizations attende: IDB, USAID, OAS, World Bank, European Union, UNICEF and UNESCO’s Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean.

wards pedagogic consultants and Special Education provincial directors. La Paz, Bolivia, July 29 to August 2. – Sub-regional workshop on school integration, Lima, Peru, September 30 to October 3. The event was attended by seven representatives of Bolivia, the same number from Ecuador and twenty-two from Peru. The objective of the workshop was to present and discuss the integration process employed in Peru, and to establish cooperation lines

among the three countries in order to optimize this process in the various national contexts. – National Workshop on Educational Project and Curricular Adaptations, Lima, Peru, October 7 to 11, part of the UNESCO/ DANIDA Project training initiatives. The two parallel workshops were directed at Special Education and integration school teachers and directors, and at the multidisciplinary team responsible for the coordination of the UNESCO/DANIDA Project.

4

Support activities to educational policy in the area of special learning needs

Seventh Conference of Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Sixth Meeting of the Regional Intergovernmental Committee of the Major Project, Kingston Jamaica, May 13-17 1996.

– Subscription of the UNESCOJUNJI (Junta Nacional de

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BULLETIN 41, December 1996 / The Major Project of Education

Jardines Infantiles - Chile) Agreement, December 19, 1996. The objective of the agreement is to carry out joint activities intended to reinforce and optimize the integration of children with special educational needs, into JUNJI nurseries. – Regional Meeting on Special Education Perspectives in Latin America and the Caribbean, Viña del Mar, Chile, August 26 to 28, 1996. Participants to the meeting included 17 Special Education Directors from the Ministries of Education of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela; a consultant to Guatemala’s Minister of Education; and, the coordinator of Peru’s UNESCO/DANIDA Project “Integration of Handicapped Children into Regular Schools in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador”. Also in attendance

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were representatives of various institutions such as: Instituto Interamericano del Niño, Fondo Nacional de Discapacidad de Chile (FONADIS), Centro de Perfeccionamiento e Investigación Pedagógica de Chile (CPEIP), and Chile’s project for the improvement of the quality of education (MECE). The meeting was essentially intended to analyze the region’s status in terms of principles, recommendations and action framework set forth at Salamanca’s World Conference, identify the highly relevant problems, and create collaboration avenues among the countries, in an effort to find solutions to such problems. Training activities – National Presenter Training WorkShop, within the framework of UNESCO’s Teacher Training Project “Special Classroom Needs”, Brasilia, Brazil, November 4-8. This national

work-shop represents a continuation of the Presenter Training workshop for MERCOSUR countries, held in Buenos Aires in 1994. The workshop was convened, organized and financed by the Ministry of Education’s Special Education Office. Participants numbered 120: 3 persons (Special Education, Basic Education and Teacher Training) responsible for the 27 states and 20 representatives of the parents of handicapped children movement. The work-shop closed with programme design and standardization activities to facilitate the replication of the project in each of the 27 states. – First stage of the training Plan for JUNJI Presenter Training, Santiago, December 2-6. The event was attended by supervisors and classroom teachers from every province in the country and by three members of JUNJI’s technical team.

OREALC Activities

LATIN AMERICAN LABORATORY FOR EVALUATION OF THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION In excess of 14 000 language and mathematic tests from the 14 countries in the region are undergoing evaluation at the Latin American Laboratory for Evaluation of the Quality of Education (hereinafter, the “laboratory”). This first experimental stage, sponsored and carried out by OREALC, is intended to evaluate both the measuring instruments as well as the sample used, before validating the final application scheduled for some time in 1997. This activity responds to the concerns expressed at the various international forums by the region’s Ministries of Education, in connection with the need to create and/or improve the systems used to evaluate the quality of education, so that they are capable of establishing accurately and objectively the real impact the substantial government investments have in their educational systems. A previous experience, carried out by OREALC in the region, between 1989 and 1993, involved seven countries, and its findings –presented at the Sixth Technical Meeting of the Regional Network for Research and Training in the Fields of Educational Policy, Planning and Management (REPLAD)– fostered the initiation of a process of mutual understanding and cooperation between the countries in the region, with the purpose of evaluating the quality level of the education being imparted at the time. As a result, at a meeting held in Mexico, on November 10, 1994, the Latin American Laboratory for Evaluation of the Quality of Education, came officially into being. Today, the Laboratory counts with the participation of 15 countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. It functions on line with national measuring and evaluating systems and in a decentralized fashion in the above-mentioned countries. Coordination is provided by UNESCO/OREALC. The Laboratory is envisaged as a technical resource to be used in experimentation, reflection and re-design of new modalities for evaluating the quality of education, which promotes and facilitates decision-making in the field of educational policy. In this regard, the following action lines have been proposed: – Conducting comparative studies on quality of education in language and mathematics; international studies on special subjects, such as interdisciplinary objectives, multi–culture modalities, social skills; and experimenting with new evaluation modalities. – Elaborating regional standards and creating an information and diffusion system to disseminate any progress made. – Develop a research programme which focuses on factors associated with the quality of basic education. – Reinforce the technical capability of Ministries of Education in the area of quality evaluation. The Laboratory has undertaken the following actions during 1995 and 1996: – The first Latin American language and mathematics study on academic performance in the first cycle of basic education. – Formulation of theoretical and methodological elements as a basis for generating regional standards. – Creation of a UNESCO/OREALC information computer base to operate on line with national evaluation systems. – Four seminars and technical coordination meetings. Training and advisory units have been created at the request of the participating countries.

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SUBSCRIPTION The Bulletin of the Major Project of Education in Latin American and the Caribbean Region is a fourmonthly publication edited in Spanish and English by the UNESCO/OREALC Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Institutions or individuals wishing to continue receiving this bulletin are asked to kindly fill in the form

below and send it to our address Enrique Delpiano 2058, Casilla 3187, Santiago, Chile with a postal US dollar check payable to UNESCO. The subscription cost for Latin America and the Caribbean (Spanish or English version) is US$ 20. For the rest of the world is US$ 30.

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OREALC Publications “Books” Series 49. Necesidades básicas de aprendizaje. Estrategias de acción. UNESCO/IDRC. 1993. 343 pp. 50 La educación de adultos en América Latina ante el próximo siglo. UNESCO/UNICEF 1994, 270 pp. 51. Mujer y educación de niños en sectores populares. P. Ruiz. UNESCO/Convenio Andrés Bello. 1995. 91 pp. 52. Educación en población. UNESCO/OREALC-IEU. 1994. 142 pp. 53. Innovaciones en la gestión educativa. UNESCO, 1995. 166 pp. 54. Hacia una nueva institucionalidad en educación de jóvenes y adultos. Luis Oscar Londoño. UNESCOConvenio Andrés Bello. 1995. 180 pp. 55. Vamos creciendo juntas. Alfabetización de la mujer campesina indígena en Perú. Gonzalo Portocarrero. UNESCO. 1995. 65 pp. 56. Analfabetismo femenino en Chile de los ‘90. María E. Letelier. UNESCO/UNICEF. 1996. 172 pp. 57. Construyendo desde lo cotidiano. Pedagogía de la lectoescritura. María Domínguez, Mabel Farfán. UNESCO-Convenio Andrés Bello. 1996. 146 pp. 58. Perspectiva educativa del desarrollo humano en América Latina. UNESCO-PNUD. 1996. 176 pp. 59. Situación educativa de América Latina y el Caribe. 1980-1994. UNESCO. 1996. 702 pp. 60. The state of education in Latin America and the Caribbean. 1980-1994. UNESCO. 1996. 700 pp. 61. Nuevas formas de aprender y enseñar. UNESCO. 1996, 232 pp. “Estudios” Series 26. Género, educación y desarrollo. G. Messina. 1994. 96 pp. 27. Medición de la calidad de la educación: ¿Por qué, cómo y para qué? Vol. I. 1994. 90 pp. 28. Medición de la calidad de la educación: instrumentos. Vol. II. 1994. 196 pp. 29 Medición de la calidad de la educación: resultados. Vol. III. 1994. 92 pp. 30. Modelo de gestión GESEDUCA. 1994. 162 pp. 31. VI Reunión Técnica de REPLAD. Los desafíos de la descentralización, la calidad y el financiamiento de la educación. 24 UNESCO. 1994. 100 pp. 32. Innovaciones en educación básica de adultos. Sistematización de 6 experiencias. UNESCO. 1995. 106 pp. 33. Los materiales de autoaprendizaje. Mario Kaplún. UNESCO. 1995. 166 pp. UNESCO/UNICEF Series 4. La educación preescolar y básica en América Latina y el Caribe. 1993. 80 pp. 5. Pre-school and basic education in Latin America and the Caribbean. 1993. 80 pp. 6. Guías de aprendizaje para una escuela deseable. E. Schiefelbein, G. Castillo, V. Colbert. 1993. 120 pp. 7. Nuevas guías de aprendizaje para una escuela deseable. E. Schiefelbein, G. Castillo. 1993. 115 pp. 8. Guías de aprendizaje para iniciación a la lectoescritura. 1º y 2º grados. UNESCO/UNICEF. 162 pp. “Resúmenes analíticos monotemáticos” Series 4. Factores determinantes del rendimiento y de la repetición. 1993. 116 pp. 5. Formación, perfeccionamiento y desempeño de los docentes de educación primaria y secundaria. 1994. 244 pp. 6. Valores en educación. 1994 168 pp.

These publications are for sale to all those interested. For inquiries and prices kindly contact to: Centro de Documentación, UNESCO/OREALC, Enrique Delpiano 2058, Casilla 3187, Fax (562) 209 1875, Santiago, Chile.