Abraham Magendzo, 2008
Santiago, Lom Ediciones
9000 Chilean pesos, US$16.70 (pbk), 292 pp.
ISBN 956‐282‐953‐3
Abraham Magendzo’s book, in which the current curriculum reform enacted in Chile is analysed, brings together the author’s wide experience in this field. It is the outcome of his experience gained in both academia and government—where all decisions on curriculum policy are taken—and the text is an invitation to establish and strengthen dialogue between the two. Whilst pointing to the importance of remembering their distinctive features, the author emphasises the need to build bridges and strengthen the connections between them.
The book is addressed primarily, but not only, to curriculum specialists—to university professors responsible for teaching curriculum and pedagogy, curriculum researchers, designers and planners, as well as teachers who have to implement it—as the book is intended to facilitate understanding of the new curriculum by all professionals involved in the curriculum reform process.
The 1990s involved major political, economic, social and cultural changes for all Latin American countries and Chile was no exception. These processes were sparked by the return of democracy and updating of production methods, in line with the opening up of markets linked to globalisation trends. In terms of education, the 1990s was the decade of educational change, a period of debates and the implementation of new proposals related to both administration and pedagogy.
Within this framework, at the beginning of the 1990s there were indications that social development patterns should be modified in order to make higher education more widely available, otherwise it would reach its ceiling. In this respect, Chile—like many Latin American countries—started to make a great effort to improve equality of access to education and its quality. Only later, by the middle of that decade, with the curriculum reform, was there an agreed‐upon version of the curriculum, which could be seen as a response to expectations of pervasive change as a result of the modernisation and democratisation processes already underway. There was thus general agreement about the need to begin by healing the serious damage that education suffered in its regression during the time of the military government, so the first educational activities involved improvement of quality, the opening up of equal access and projects to raise the low educational level of many institutions.
The curriculum reform is based on this goal and its implementation is still ongoing as curriculum components and other aspects remain under development. Most of what can be said is considered relative or provisional, as is shown throughout the book. Thus, the text does not complete the analysis; on the contrary, it explains the need for the reform to be backed up by research studies informing us how the curriculum is actually implemented in the classrooms of educational institutions. Moreover, the curriculum reform of the 1990s brought about the end of an era when policy tended to reposition school knowledge in relation to the demands triggered by the great changes of the time, an issue also analysed in the book.
The book is organised in nine chapters, representing the main curriculum features on which the curriculum reform focused during its outline, creation and development: the impact of social, cultural and political changes (globalisation, the knowledge society and the democratic society) on the official curriculum; curriculum centralisation and decentralisation; equal access to the curriculum and quality; selection of curriculum knowledge; structure of the curriculum; implementation of the official curriculum; its update and its evaluation. Each chapter has three sub‐sections in relation to its topic: the first, Conceptual Referents, deals with the detailed revision of curriculum literature; the second, Dialogues and Dilemmas, illustrates the topic’s challenges and encourages the building of related dialogues; the third, Curriculum Reform, offers wide‐ranging and objective comments on its approach.
The book focuses on the topics and core concepts for restructuring the new curriculum. In its pages there is a high degree of agreement with the reform, expressed in a sustained effort to offer conceptual arguments based on curriculum theories in support of decisions. This facilitates reading and may offer an important tool for non‐specialists. Moreover, in the sub‐section Dialogues and Dilemmas the text deals with some curriculum contradictions so as to show, in the last sub‐section of each chapter, how new approaches in teaching methods and curriculum content can transform such problems.
There are not many references related to citizenship education within this revision of classic curriculum activities. In Chapter V, ‘Selection of curricular knowledge’, the author shows that the process of change of the teaching system administration within the civil‐military government (1973–1990) did not correspond to the curriculum, which remained subject to traditional schemes, disconnected from the changes in technology and knowledge that were gaining strength around the world. With the return to democracy in 1990, there was general agreement on inclusion in the curriculum of those elements of knowledge students need to comprehend and relate to accelerated technological, production and value changes linked with globalisation, and recognition of the demands that the knowledge society makes on the curriculum. The curriculum was thus required to update its fundamental purposes and minimum basic content to incorporate those concepts, attitudes, values, intellectual skills and abilities required by modernisation processes. At the same time, as a result of the end of the civil‐military government, education needed to make its contribution without delay to the democratic rebuilding of the country.
In this sense, there was general agreement that the curriculum should promote the development of students aware of the principles of democratic life and able to act in their family, social, working and cultural environments, respecting rights, laws and duties and recognising the legitimacy of the others in relation to diversity, tolerance and non‐discrimination. Therefore, according to Magendzo, one of the challenges faced during the process of selecting curriculum content was to balance the curriculum between the orientations emphasising knowledge and ‘instrumental’ skills and those related to the education of a democratic people. He explains that this was no easy task and there was a perception that more attention was given to goals and content related to disciplinary knowledge rather than to those related to the formation of citizens. Magendzo observes that the Objetivos Fundamentales Transversales [Main Cross‐curricular Goals] (OFT) were intended to balance the curriculum between both orientations, but he also points out that the curriculum reform falls clearly in the paradigm of a curriculum as the sum of many unrelated disciplines, despite the possibility offered by the OFT of becoming an integrated curriculum.
Thus, in respect of values and attitudes, the main cross‐curricular goals related to democratic and civic education were introduced into the curriculum framework. The curriculum no longer includes the subject civic education as such, but education for citizenship is included within the whole school curriculum not only in history and social sciences but also in Spanish language and communication. Historically the first attempt by the Ministry of Education in 1992 to introduce the cross‐curricular concept was thematic, i.e. following the Spanish model, a series of cross‐curricular topics such as human rights, gender and ecology were identified. In a second attempt, in 1996–1998, the cross‐curricular concept changed substantially and was oriented to the achievement of both cognitive and ethical/moral skills. Magendzo remarks that the search for agreement during the process of selecting curricular content became tangible and evident in the formulation of the main cross‐curricular goals, precisely because the value and attitude goals were at stake, so this stage of the process involved many requests and revisions, with many of the criticisms being political ideological observations rather than technical issues of curriculum development.
On this particular point, in relation to the topic of education for citizenship, it would have been interesting to have found a deeper critical analysis, taking into account the outcomes of the cross‐curricular approach in Chile as well as in other countries. This applies all the more if we agree with those specialists who argue that the cross‐curricular concept (defined as the fostering and development of abilities through interdisciplinary curricular practices) has not been correctly understood by heads and teachers and, consequently, the inclusion of some content has been specific and disjointed in practice. On the other hand, it is worth remarking that in Chile education for citizenship was the focus of special attention by the influential Presidential Counselling Board for the Quality of Education. The Board’s recommendations include a justification for a national multicultural curriculum, the need to prepare citizens for democratic life and the skills required to achieve it (such as cognitive skills, social skills to foster the interaction of heterogeneous groups and personal skills for the exercise of autonomy).
To sum up, the book is an important contribution because the author enables the reader to find the key significant elements permitting serious analysis and evaluation of the curriculum reform undertaken. The book also provides some answers to fundamental questions of curriculum development whilst keeping others unanswered, as an invitation to continue pursuing this subject.
© 2009, Alicia Tallone