Teacher Education and Development Policies: Critical Discourse Analysis from a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Issue Title: Living Together: Education and Intercultural Dialogue

The purpose of this study is to explore teacher education policies in different countries of Latin America and North America through the comparison of policy documents. The training of teachers, a key component of education, faces educational challenges as a result of various reform policies in different countries. Critical discourse analysis offers the possibility of illuminating certain aspects of educational policies in specific historic moments. A comparative perspective allows researchers to explore similarities and differences between political statements from a number of governments and agencies, in order to characterize general elements and particularities of teacher education policies in the context of late capitalism. The corpus of this study consists of a selection of recent educational policy documents at national and international levels. This study continues a line of previous studies which apply critical discourse analysis to the research of educational policies.[PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

International Review of Education (2008) 54:427443 Springer 2008 DOI 10.1007/s11159-008-9094-z

TEACHER EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT POLICIES: CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS FROM A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

MNICA E. PINI and JORGE M. GOROSTIAGA

Abstract The purpose of this study is to explore teacher education policies in dierent countries of Latin America and North America through the comparison of policy documents. The training of teachers, a key component of education, faces educational challenges as a result of various reform policies in dierent countries. Critical discourse analysis oers the possibility of illuminating certain aspects of educational policies in specic historic moments. A comparative perspective allows researchers to explore similarities and dierences between political statements from a number of governments and agencies, in order to characterize general elements and particularities of teacher education policies in the context of late capitalism. The corpus of this study consists of a selection of recent educational policy documents at national and international levels. This study continues a line of previous studies which apply critical discourse analysis to the research of educational policies.

Rsum POLITIQUES DDUCATION DES ENSEIGNANTS. ANALYSE CRITIQUE DU DISCOURS PARTIR DUNE PERSPECTIVE COMPARATIVE le but de cette tude est dexplorer les politiques deducation des enseignants dans dirents pays dAmerique latine et dAmrique du nord en comparant des documents politiques. La formation des enseignants, une composante cle de leducation, fait face aux des ducatifs resultant de diverses politiques de reforme mises en uvre dans dirents pays. Lanalyse critique du discours ore la possibilite dclairer certains aspects des politiques ducatives a` des moments historiques precis. Une perspective comparative permet aux chercheurs dexplorer les similitudes et les dierences subsistant entre les enoncs politiques dun certain nombre de gouvernements et dagences, an de caracteriser les lments gneraux et les particularites des politiques deducation des enseignants dans le contexte du capitalisme tardif. Le corpus de cette etude se compose dun choix des documents rcents de la politique deducation au niveau national et international. Cette etude est dans la droite ligne detudes precedentes appliquant lanalyse critique du discours a` la recherche de politiques educatives.

Zusammenfassung WEGE DER LEHRERBILDUNG. EINE KRITISCHE DISK-URSANALYSE AUS VERGLEICHENDER PERSPEKTIVE Diese Studie erforscht Wege der Lehrerbildung in verschiedenen Landern Lateinamerikas und Nordamerikas, indem sie verschiedene Grundsatzpapiere vergleicht. Aufgrund verschiedener Reform-praktiken in den unterschiedlichen Landern unterliegt die Lehrerausbildung als Schlusselkomponente der Bildungspolitik groeren Herausforderungen. Die kritische Diskursanalyse ermoglicht eine Inaugenscheinnahme bestimmter bildungspolitischer Aspekte in besonderen historischen Bedeutungszusammenhangen. Aus vergleichender Perspektive werdenhnlichkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen den Grundrichtlinien einiger Regierungen und Bildungstrager untersucht, um so allgemeine und besondere Elemente der Lehrerbildung im spatkapitalistischen Kontext zu charakterisieren. Als

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Grundlage dienen der Studie neuere bildungspolitische Dokumente auf nationaler und internationaler Ebene. Diese Studie bildet die Fortsetzung eine Reihe fruherer Studien zur Bildungspolitik mit der Methode der kritischen Diskursanalyse.

Resumen POLITICAS DE FORMACION Y DESARROLLO DOCENTE. ANALISIS CRITICO DEL DISCURSO DESDE UNA PRESPECTIVA COMPARADA El proposito de este estudio consiste en explorar las polticas de formacion docente en diferentes pases de Amrica Latina y en Estados Unidos mediante la comparacion de documentos de poltica educativa. La formacion de docentes, un componente clave de la educacion, enfrenta retos educativos resultantes de varias polticas de reforma en diferentes pases. El analisis crtico del discurso ofrece la posibilidad de iluminar determinados aspectos de las polticas educativas en momentos historicos especcos. La perspectiva comparada permite a los investigadores explorar similitudes y diferencias entre propuestas polticas de gobiernos y agencias, a efectos de caracterizar elementos generales y particularidades de las polticas educativas para los docentes en el contexto del capitalismo tardo. El corpus de este estudio consiste en una seleccion de documentos sobre poltica educativa reciente, a nivel nacional e internacional. El estudio continua una serie de estudios anteriores que aplican el anlisis de discurso a la investigacion de polticas educativas.

Schools in a changing policy environment

The demand for education to address the needs and conguration of present societies, and the variety and pace of changes related to knowledge are features common to dierent countries and regions. Internationally, we have witnessed decades of educational reforms that are assumed to be the answer to the so called school crisis. Overall, this crisis is a consequence and a reection of uncertainties and conicts that go far beyond schools.

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Many of the policies for school reform have been dictated by neoliberal neoconservative agendas promoted by internacional agencies (especially the World Bank and the Internationally Monetary Fund). During the 1990s, several countries of Latin America developed policies such as the decentralization of the school system, promotion of school autonomy and managerialism, and the establishment of national evaluation systems. These policies converged with the insucient funding of schools and the elimination of State regulations that preserved the equality of educational opportunities.

With the new century and in the context of a post-neoliberal scenario in which the state plays a more active role, Argentina and other Latin American countries, have shown some important changes in the political context. Nevertheless, there are still continuities and deep social consequences that are hard to remove.

As part of a wider study, the purpose of this paper is to explore teacher education and development policies in Latin and North America through the comparison of policy documents. Teachers are key agents in educational processes, but they hardly ever have any participation in reforms. Teachers are today in the eye of the storm because they are in part blamed for students decits. The issue of teacher training and professional development is among the priorities of political decisions in education, including policies that dene what kind of institutions should educate teachers and under what professional and labor conditions. Since the theme transcends national limits, this work explores and compares dierent perspectives and specic proposals in recent documents from dierent agencies and countries.

The idea of studying relevant educational policy documents from North and Latin America, is based on our interest in exploring continuities and discontinuities in policy trends among countries. Typically, policy trends emerge in the USA and other developed countries and dene economic and educational policies in Latin America and other peripheral regions (see Ball 1998; Steiner-Khamsi et al. 2006).

This study continues a line of previous research that applies critical discourse analysis to policy think tanks and other sources of educational policies (Pini 2004, 2005; Pini and Vales 2005), and to mapping educational policy debates as inter-textual elds (Gorostiaga and Paulston 2004). In previous studies we had registered the ideological consistency between the strategies of marketization and privatization of education in the USA and those that were being promoted in Latin America (Pini 2005). This trend in the US seems to have shifted its focus to public-private partnerships and outsourcing of services (Burch 2005). However, Educational Management Organizations and Charter Schools are still popular, in part, because of the power of some corporations that look at education as a fertile eld to colonize.

Despite the fact that the political climate and the economic model have changed since the 1990s, democracies in Latin America continue being constrained by inequity and the lack of legitimacy of politicians. The dominant groups remain the same, but the era of the just one discourse has

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seemingly ended (Munck 2003). In this study, we aim at contributing to the public debate on the role of education in building a more just society by providing an analysis that increases understanding of teacher education policies. As Cochran-Smith (2005, p. 182) points out, the rhetoric of reform is not a simple matter of semantics. It is a vital part of understanding the politics of teacher education.

Methodology

This is a qualitative study based on critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1989, 1995; Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999) within the broader context of current hegemonic ideologies. Fairclough (1989) uses the term discourse to refer to the whole process of social interaction of which a text is just a part. This process includes in addition to the text, the process of production of which a text is a product, and the process of interpretation, for which the text is a resource (p. 24). Both, the process of production and interpretation are socially determined. Thus the analysis of the text is only one part of critical discourse analysis, since it also includes the social conditions of production and interpretation of the text.

Critical analysis of documents located in their context of production offers the possibility of illuminating certain aspects of educational policies in specic historical moments. In addition, a comparative perspective allows researchers to explore similarities and dierences among political statements from a variety of governments and agencies, in order to characterize general elements and particularities of teacher education policies in the context of late capitalism.

The corpus of this study involves a selection of recent documents of educational policies at national and international level (we detail them below). The criteria for selection were pertinence and relevance for teacher education policies. We have taken into account the presence of common aspects which allow for comparison, as well as dierentiation of elements in the context, type of discourse, and topics.

The sample of documents includes dierent kinds of texts. Even though the Argentine Law is the only ocial and mandatory text included in the analysis, the other two documents are relevant because they were elaborated by agencies very close to governments, that have an important role in building agendas of educational policies. Another aspect to highlight is that teacher education and development is not the exclusive focus of any of the documents, although in all three documents teachers are dened as a key actor for improving education. The following table summarizes relevant information for each document included in the analysis (Table 1):

The National Education Law from Argentina was enacted in December 2006 (Republica Argentina 2007). Its sanction was result of a political decision from the Argentinean National Government to show signs of meaningful

Teacher Education and Development Policies

Table 1. Selection of documents

Title Geographic focus

Year Author

1. Ley de Educacion Nacional No. 26.206 (National Education Law)

Argentina 2006 Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, Argentina

2. Educacion de Calidad para todos: un asunto de derechos humanos (Education of Quality for Everybody: a HumanRights Issue)

Latin America

2007 UNESCO, Ocina

Regional de Educacion para America Latina y el Caribe, Santiago, Chile

3. Tough Choices or Tough Times

USA 2007 National Center on

Education and the Economy, USA

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change with reference to the 1990s educational reform. A previous initiative in the same direction was the sanction of the Law of Education Funding in 2005.

The second text, from the UNESCO oce in Santiago, Chile, is a document prepared for its discussion at the II Intergovernment Meeting of the Regional Project of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean, organized in Buenos Aires in March 2007. It was produced in collaboration with the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) and with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

The document from USA was elaborated by the Skills Commission for the National Center on Education and the Economy. The new commission1 on the skills of the American workforce released this report in 2007 after 2 years of research in the USA and other countries. The commissions work and research received the support and funding of several private foundations.2

The context

The context of production is one important element for the interpretations of texts. In the USA, the prevailing perspectives on education have been built for many years around the crisis of public education. These perspectives blame public schools for the declining of USA international competitivity, rarely taking into account how social inequality impacts student learning.

At the same time, the system has grown and created more opportunities for social groups that traditionally had no access to school. This expansion has increased heterogeneity and generated resistance from conservative groups to the democratization of education. Based on this crisis, since the early 1990s the main strategy of conservative groups has been to turn the administrations of public schools to private corporations. Nowadays, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, China and India seem to be the new menace, since their

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highly qualied workers could replace American technicians receiving much lower salaries. Again, responsibility for this situation is falling onto the educational system.

During the last decades, one of the main concerns regarding teacher education policies in the US has been the shortage of teacher applicants (Collinson and Ono 2001). At the same time, numerous American reports have armed that one of the reasons for public school failure is the poor quality of teachers and curricula (Apple 2000). According to Apple, the social pressure that this judgment implies has consequences for the way teachers complicated labor process develops (p. 115). Pre-structured curriculum determines the rst consequence, the separation of conception from execution, when teachers have to follow xed class plans. The second is closely related to the rst, the deskilling that occurs when any worker loses control over his/her work (p. 116). Professional skills atrophy due to lack of use. Apple (2000) calls this degradation of labor, which represents the increasing power of conservative ideologies and pressure to reduce teaching to the requirements of the tests. In Latin America, teachers have experienced similar pressures with the establishment of evaluation systems and performance measurement (Gajardo 1999).

The context of economic reforms including privatizations of public services, unemployment, reduction of domestic consumption, and regressive income distribution, became critical in Argentina at the end of the nineties. As a consequence of the last economic recession period (19982002), the Argentinean population had experienced a continuous growth in levels of poverty. The end of 2001 accelerated this process with the collapse of the Argentinean peso which had parity with the dollar.3

On the other hand, even though educational reforms established the extension of compulsory basic school,4 and the increased enrollment at this level, the educational gap between poor and non-poor became deeper, at all age groups.5

In Latin America, and particularly in Argentina, international agencies promoted since the end of the 1980s recipes to reform educational systems with similar orientations than those proposed for the economy: decentralization, evaluation systems, back to the basic education and development of work skills, eciency as the main criterion for managing funds, and dierent ways of privatization. The regulation of teachers work was through salary incentives and dierent mandatory training programs (Gajardo 1999).

Related to teachers professional development, the Red Federal de Capacitacion Docente (Federal Network of Teacher Training), created by the Argentine Ministry of Education in 1995, was the device through which the State tried to develop a policy on knowledge, abilities and practices of teachers. As a consequence, a more heterogeneous scenario of institutions and actors involved in teachers training was congured in our country, in which the National State has tried to have a leading role (Ministerio de Educacion 2001).

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Currently, there is an important switch taking place, at least in what relates to the political climate and to the economic model of the 1990s. As changes take place in the elds of human rights and citizenship, dierent conceptions of economics, politics, and education can be developed if society appropriates and follows the struggle for meanings in the public spaces. However, the social consequences of neoliberal policies are still profound, and democracies remain constricted by dierent forms of inequality.

The texts

The National Education Law legislates on all the topics related to the organization, government and components of educational system, except universities. The law is organized in 12 titles. Title IV includes two chapters about teachers and their formation. Chapter 1 on teachers rights and obligations and Chapter 2, teacher education. In general, the Law stresses the need for education to contribute to building a more just society, and to overcome inequalities and dierent forms of discrimination.

The UNESCO document has ve parts related to: education as a right, equal access and quality, teachers, funding, and policy recommendations. It is noteworthy in its critique of neoliberal economic policies previously implemented by Latin American countries, the recognition of the social exclusion that groups of Native and African descendance as well as women have suffered, as well as the stress on the dramatic inequalities and the percentages of people living in poverty that characterize the region.

The Skills Commissions text starts by arguing the necessity to change the school system, and it develops ten steps to follow in order to accomplish educational change. The steps mainly refer to: teacher recruiting, training and compensation; creating a set of Board examinations; improving eciency in the use of resources; developing curriculum and evaluation systems; providing universal early childhood education; giving strong support to the students who need it the most (p. 17); and providing new literacy skills for adult workforce.

As our goal is to focus on teacher education policies, we analyze and compare the documents sections that place special attention on the denitions of education and teacher education, and the sections that propose policies of teacher education that involve market conceptions of education.

Education: public good or market device?

The National Education Law establishes that education is a public good and a personal and social right, guarantied by the State (art. 2 ). The

UNESCO document denes education as a human right and public good, as a proposal of quality education longlife for everybody (p. 7). The Skills

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Commissions text explicitly states that improving education means developing high international standards, as the condition to successfully compete in the world market: It [the United States] would have to adopt internationally benchmarked standards for educating its students and its workers, because only countries with highly skilled workforces could successfully compete in that market. (p. 1).

The two rst denitions in the previous paragraph only dier on the qualication of right, personal and social right in the rst denition, and human right in the second. Document 3 does not elaborate conceptual denitions. Instead, it pragmatically addresses the issue of the purpose of education, and how it could be achieved. The document reects the main values of market ideology assuming that individual and national competitiveness and high performances are the main objectives of education. This stance expresses an instrumental conception for which investment in education is only valid if it yields high returns.

Both the Skills Commission document and the Argentine Law acknowledge the national relevance of education, but in the rst one it appears linked to competitiveness, eciency, and the primacy of market dening educational contents, since a swiftly rising number of American workers at every skill level are in direct competition with workers in every corner of the globe (p. 5), and in the second is related to social rights, public goods, and the State.

The Skills Commission text adopts an economic and technocratic perspective, which is illustrated, among other elements, by the vision of xing disadvantaged students through the provision of eyeglasses, hearing aids or therapy for dyslexia (p. 18), and diminishing the inuence of social structures inside and outside the school that maintain or reinforce inequality. On the other hand, the document proposes two measures that could have a positive impact in terms of equity: establishing a system of state funding instead of local funding of schools, and providing universal early childhood education.

The meaning of teacher education

The Argentine Law denes teacher education as a key factor for improving the quality of education (art. 73), since its goal is to prepare professionals who are able to teach, generate and transfer knowledge and values that are needed for the integral formation of each person, for national development and for building a more equal society. Teacher education will promote the construction of a teacher identity based on professional autonomy, in the context of contemporary culture and society, team work, commitment with equality, and trust on students learning capabilities (art. 71). Before the broad statement of professional expectations, the previous enumeration of teachers rights (art. 67) free and in service professional development and

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worthy work conditions and salary, among others appears as very pertinent, since without the right conditions better results are not possible.6

The UNESCO text species that the quality of teachers and the learning environment they generate is one of the most important factors that explains students learning results. The implication is that the policies oriented to improving educational quality could only be feasible if the eorts concentrate in transforming, not only teachers but also the culture of schools. Besides, it is emphasized that no reform would be successful without teachers participation (p. 10). The document remarks the importance of teachers quality for learning and for safeguarding the right to education. Dierent forms of participation are also included among teachers rights in the Argentine law.

The American text arms that:

it is simply not possible for our students to graduate from our schools by the millions with very strong mathematical reasoning skills, a sound conceptual grasp of science, strong writing skills, world-beating capacity for creativity and innovation, and everything else we talk about in this report unless their teachers have the knowledge and skills we want our children to have (p. 12).

The quality of teacher education is determined by students results, according to standards and general examinations. The wider debate about this lineal connection between teaching-learning- and tests scores is not taken into account in the document. Nevertheless, the authors recognize other factors which can inuence results. They are especially worried about the problem that most teachers are recruited from the less able of the high school students who go to college (p. 12). The Commission relates this situation to the wider opportunities for women and minorities in American workforce.

Teacher education policies

The objectives established by the Argentine law for teacher education policies (art. 73) are aligned with the aim mentioned above oriented to prepare professionals who are able to teach, generate and transfer knowledge and values that are needed for the integral formation of each person, for national development and for building a more equal society. The objectives seem to respond to the laws denition of education and of teacher training.

These objectives are: to upgrade and revalue teacher education; to develop the required capacities and knowledge for teaching work; to provide incentives for educational research and innovation linked to teaching tasks; to oer a variety of in-service training programs and mechanisms that favor professional development; to promote further studies in university institutions; to plan and develop the pre-service and in-service teacher education system; to implement accreditation processes for education institutions and programs which license for teaching; to coordinate and articulate academic

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and institutional cooperation actions between teacher training institutes, universities and other educational research institutions (art. 73).

Some of these general objectives could represent a qualitative leap if they were implemented in a collaborative manner with teachers and students, and educational institutions. In contrast to these very general guidelines, we nd in the same Law more concrete regulations that establish a two-cycle structure for teacher education, the extension from 3 to 4 years of training for primary and initial education teachers, and the requirement of face-to-face encounters in distance education (a rare case in teacher education) (art. 75).

In addition, the Law indicates that the National Ministry of Education and the Federal Council of Education should build agreements upon teacher training policies, guidelines and actions (art.74). This is a very important decision for a federal country. At the same time, the Law creates the National Institute of Teacher Education which is responsible for implementing many of these policies and actions (art. 76). The Institute, which started to operate in May 2007, has very broad functions and counts with an advisory board that includes representatives of dierent sectors.

While the Argentine Law mentions other factors related to teacher education, the UNESCO document addresses this policy through an approach that integrates the three basic issues that are considered to aect teaching practices:

Achieving a good professional performance demands addressing in an integral manner a group of elements that are fundamental for the development and the strengthening of teachers cognitive, pedagogic, ethic and social capacities. Three of them require priority attention from national governments: an articulated system of permanent education and professional development; a transparent and motivating system of professional career and teacher evaluation; and an appropriate system of labor conditions and welfare (p. 10).

Moreover, this text stresses the importance of recruiting qualied candidates, making reference to studies that show the increase in the number of students coming from impoverished social sectors, but it frames this issue within a explicitly political logic:

In order to attract well qualified candidates, retain the best professionals and guarantee their permanent development, it is not enough to implement partial or occasional actions; what is required is state public policies, integral and systemic, and with an inter-sectoral perspective. For the viability of these policies it is essential that they are formulated with social and political consensus that guarantee long term solutions, encourage a culture of joint responsibility, and translate into concrete agendas and commitments (p. 12).

As we have already pointed out, the issue of candidates qualications has a prominent place in the Skills Commission document: recruiting, training, and deploying a teaching force recruited from the top third of the high school students going to college (p. 12) is one the three priorities in which

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the savings resulting from a more ecient use of available resources would be used.7 As in the other documents, the topic of teacher education is linked to other issues such as: changing the compensation system toward increasing salaries of beginning teachers and introducing incentives, in some cases tied to teacher productivity in terms of student achievements. In addition, we nd some distinctive elements in the US document: (a) a rigorous evaluation of teaching performance; and (b) opportunities for teachers to form their own organizations for the operation of schools (p. 14). We further elaborate on these issues below.

With regard to specic policies on teacher education, the document proposes a radical shift from the current situation in which teacher education takes place in universities. In this proposal, each state would create a Teacher Development Agency in charge of recruiting, training, and certifying teachers. These Agencies would contract out among dierent public and private agents: the state would launch national recruiting campaigns, allocate slots for training the needed number of teachers, and write performance contracts with schools of education, but also teachers collaboratives, school districts, and others interested in teacher training (p. 14).

Professionalism and evaluation

All three documents dene teachers as potential professionals in dierent ways. While the Argentinian law promotes a teaching identity based on professional autonomy (art. 71), the US document calls for a better salary for teachers willing to work the same hours per year as other professionals typically do. (p. 13). Nevertheless, it is the text by UNESCO which makes the strongest and detailed call for advancing toward professionalization, including under this conception the development of rational competencies, pedagogic techniques, responsibility and commitment toward student learning, which would allow teachers to exercise their citizen right in decisions about education, the school and their own practices (UNESCO 2007, p. 51).

In discussing the issue of professionalism, we need to consider that professions typically develop strategies for minimizing the intrusion of non-professionals into denitions and routines of work (Esland 1980). Therefore, the professionalization of teaching may imply restricting the participation of other actors like community members in educational policy and practice (see Ginsburg and Gorostiaga 2003).

On the other hand, during the last decades there has been a visible growth of control over teachers (Apple 2001) in dierent countries, which may be seen as undermining the conception of teachers as professionals. Even though we need to acknowledge that historically teachers were conceived as agents who were part of a bureaucracy and lacking any autonomy (Tenti Fanfani 2006), the change from licensed autonomy to regulated autonomy occurred since teachers work is more highly standardized,

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rationalized, and policed .... Under the growing conditions of regulated autonomy, teachers actions are now subject to much great scrutiny in terms of process and outcomes (Apple 2001, p. 51), a phenomenon also present in Latin America where it has led to the expansion and intensication of tasks in precarious and deteriorating working conditions (Andrade Oliveira 2006).

Furthermore, the three documents consider the establishment of evaluation systems that include assessing teachers performance. The Argentinian Law does not specify much about this, while the UNESCO document stresses the need for making teachers accountable for student performance, linking the evaluation of teachers to their professional development and their career ladders (p. 56).

According to the proposal of the Skills Commission document, every teacher would have to pass a rigorous teaching performance assessment. In the United States, educational evaluation at all levels (from classrooms to central oces) is based on standards. These standards imply uniform results to be reached that are established by each state and, in most cases, evaluated through tests implemented by big private companies. This form of evaluation, which quanties complex processes, has been criticized as an application of economicist models that reduce knowledge to its measurable aspects and limits learning processes to the contents that can be assessed through these procedures (Anderson 1998; Apple 2000). Although it is recognized that examinations and assessments need to be improved in order to measure qualities like creativity, innovation and self-discipline, the text stresses that it all starts with the standards and assessments (National Center on Education and the Economy 2007, p. 15).

Marketization

The proposal made by the Skills Commission for the formation of teachers organizations to manage schools looks like a euphemism of charter schools. In the document, Step 5 explains that in the new governance and organizational scheme for creating high performance schools and districts, public schools would be operated by independent contractors, many of them limited-liability corporations owned and run by teachers (p. 16). As previous research (Pini 2000, 2004) explains, during the past 10 years there have been many attempts to impose the charter schools model, in the USA. This trend has opened public education to market by allowing private companies, including big corporations, to manage schools and districts.

The reasons behind the arguments in favor to increase autonomy for better performance, and to provide freedom of school choice among parents, are:

There is a large amount of money moving around the educational system that attracts business people.

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Teachers nd dicult to manage complex administrative procedures and controls so they end up contracting private companies for these tasks.

An educational industry specialized in schools has developed following the logic of any other industry.

This model is the one proposed by the Skills Commission document for teaching education, allowing state Agencies to openly contract in the market, following a logic of prot that is opposed to the logic of education as a right and as a public good.8

The Argentine Law and the UNESCO document seem to espouse the perspective of education as a public good, but there are aspects of the realities of education and teaching in Latin America that may question to what extent those general guidelines are translated into practices. We need to be aware of the increasing participation of private companies, through dierent organizations and negotiation mechanisms, in the decisions about educational policy. There is a silent advance of companies and corporations promoting dierent kinds of educational projects, sometimes in association with universities and other private institutions.9 This advancement includes programs and actions for teacher education and training implemented by big companies and their foundations, both local (Noble Foundation; Argentine Banks Association) and multinational (Microsoft Argentina; Coca Cola; Santillana; Fundacion Telefonica, etc.).

Final comments

The comparison shows similarities among the discursive features of the National Education Law (Argentina) and the UNESCO document, related to the denition of education and the meaning of teacher education. The policy discourses in these two texts are very dierent from the USA document, because they emphasize education as a social right, but in the light of educational and social realities in Latin America, their implementation is not guaranteed. In the case of Argentina, the text of the law is too generic and the Institute that has been created concentrates too many functions for a federal country. At the same time, the power of big companies and the huge social inequalities have not disappeared, in spite of changes in the economic model.

The ndings that emerge from the comparative analysis of educational policy documents are signicant. Even though each context is dierent, the ideological inuence of the USA policy context and nancial agencies has been traditionally important for the development of policies in Latin America.

Regarding teacher education policies, a rst look shows very dierent approaches. However, the general character of the Argentinean Law statements, as well as the current social and educational scenarios for Latin America, demand a constant struggle for achieving policies that respond to the right to a quality education for all.

440 Monica E. Pini and Jorge M. Gorostiaga

During the last decades, in almost every Latin American country, including Argentina, evaluation systems have promoted the regulated autonomy of teachers work. They have not produced better students learning, but more pressure and worse labor conditions for teachers. For both the American and the Latin American cases, the recommendations and policies that the three documents express do not seem to foster the development of teachers as intellectuals nor to acknowledge their political role.

Corporations in the US have proted from education through the provision of auxiliary services, textbooks, tests, training, evaluation, and even instructional programs (Molnar 1996; Spring 1997; Boyles 2000). Meanwhile, the neoliberal agenda has found a fertile eld for market-oriented practices in education in Latin America. In addition to changes in the role of the state, corporations have developed expansion policies increasing their capacity to inuence regulations for their own benet. This is the case of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and with the naturalization of the idea of education as a private good. As Ball (1998) has pointed out, education is not simply modeled on the methods and values of capital, it is itself drawn into the commodity form (p. 126).

Education as a public good can be claimed and lived as a right, while as a private good it is just a right for those who can pay for it. Education as a public good is potentially inclusive, it brings social benets, and helps to build a society of active citizens who are capable of participating in political life. Instead, education as a private good, generates individual advantages, contributes to the formation of elites, and casts citizens as passive consumers.

While the State does not guarantee good teacher education for every teacher nor adequate regulations for those who prepare teachers, corporations expand their power and provide a good image to the public while saving taxes at the same time. In unequal societies such as those in Latin America, the laws themselves are not enough to ensure the universal right of education. The power of big corporations is strong and the huge social inequities continue, in spite of changes in the economic model moving away from neoliberalism.

Neoliberal educational reforms in Latin America produced a restructuration of teachers status and work lives (Andrade Oliveira and Feldfeber 2006). The expansion of access to school was accomplished o the backs of teachers, eroding their already battered professional and social role. Counter-hegemonic initiatives are needed to defend and improve public institutions. These initiatives should seek a redenition of the social goals of those institutions, criticizing and challenging growing instrumentalization from the private sector and promoting an authentic participation of teachers and students (Anderson 1998). New discourses are needed to critique the growing inuence of marketization in Latin American education systems. This also requires new social networks of communication (e.g. think tanks, bloggs, etc.) and solidarity among those working for a more just and democratic society.

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Notes

1. The rst commission released a report in 1990, called Americas Choice: high skills or low wages!

2. Annie E. Casey Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Lumina Foundation for Education.

3. According to SIEMPRO (2003), by the last 4 years, more than 27% of the Argentinean population became poor by income. Between 1998 and 2001, 8.6% became poor, and between 2001 and 2002 another 18.6% of the population descended under the poverty line. The loss of home equity, higher prices, and increasing inequity of income are the main factors that have contributed to the growth of poverty.

4. It includes K-9.5. Children, adolescents, and adults.6. Art. 2 inc. i of the Law of Education Funding establishes as one of its priorities improving work conditions and teachers salaries, as well as professional career and teacher education.

7. The other two would be: building a high-quality early childhood education system and giving disadvantaged students the resources they need to reach international education standards.

8. This is not to say that schools organized by teachers, parents and/or community members may not have, in some cases, a progressive character. Whitty and Power (2002) argue that The Kura Kaupapa Maori in New Zealand and some of the alternative US charter schools provide examples where self-determination by communities and professionals has brought about innovative and potentially empowering educational environments (pp. xiiixiv).

9. Universidad y empresas: el nuevo romance, Clar Economico, 16/5/04.

References

Documents

National Center on Education and the Economy. 2007. Tough Choices or Tough Times [Electronic Version]. Washington DC: National Center on Education and the Economy.

Republica Argentina, Ministerio de Educacion, Ciencia y Tecnologa. 2007. Ley de Educacion Nacional No. 26.206/06. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educacion, Ciencia y Tecnologa.

UNESCO, Ocina Regional de Educacion para America Latina y el Caribe. 2007. Educacion de Calidad para todos: un asunto de derechos humanos [Electronic version]. Santiago, Chile: UNESCO.

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The authors

Monica E. Pini is Professor at the School of Graduate Studies at the Universidad Nacional de San Martn, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. There, she is the Director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Studies in Education, Culture and Society and also of the Master in Education, Languages and Media. She earned a Master in Public Administration from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and a Ph.D. in Educational Thought and Sociocultural Studies from the University of New Mexico.

Contact address: Escuela de Posgrado, Universidad Nacional de San Martn, Belgrano 3563, San Martn, CP 1650, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. E-mail: [email protected]

Jorge M. Gorostiaga holds a PhD in Social and Comparative Analysis in Education (University of Pittsburgh). He is an Associate Professor of Education Reform and the Assistant Dean for Academic Aairs at the School of Graduate Studies of Universidad Nacional de San Mart (Argentina). His research focuses on dierent aspects of educational reform in Latin America. He is the co-editor (with Mark Ginsburg) of Limitations and Possibilities of Dialogue among Researchers, Policy-makers and Practitioners: International Perspectives on the Field of Education (New York: Routledge Falmer, 2003).

Contact address: Escuela de Posgrado, Universidad Nacional de San Martn, Belgrano 3563, San Martn, CP 1650, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. E-mail: [email protected]