Policies, curricular actions and Educational Reform in Chile

Abstract

This article reflects on and interprets the curricular proposals born of the public policies that orient and set the standards of the Chilean Educational Reform. It also attempts to analyze the complexity of the education quality enhancement from a two side perspective: the modernization processes and our country’s return to democracy. The article emphasizes the difficulties in the integral change process of the theory and curricular practice approach that the new and in-service teacher-training programs imply.

It is assumed that curricular policy decisions aim at solving the problems of education quality that are produced by the incorporation process into modernity and are also related to our own historical processes. The idea is to incorporate teachers into a better use of the spaces of freedom conferred by public policies in order that they take part in curricular decision-making with degrees of flexible autonomy and according to the type of man and society that they consciously want to help building.

The development of the curricular proposals in the context of the interpretation of the public policies attempts to contribute to the overcoming of the gap that characterized teacher training programs during almost two decades in regard to the political, socio-cultural and historical basis of education.