![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Abstract
In the last four years teacher performance evaluation in Chile became a major policy issue involving teachers, politicians, the media, school management, and education authorities. The discussion highlighted the unresolved question of how to insure teaching quality and reduce incompetence in classrooms and schools to the benefit of pupil learning and education. At the time of writing this paper, the three main partners involved in the discussions—teachers represented by their union, municipalities as managers of publicly funded schools and Ministry of Education authorities—have signed an agreement to implement a system of teacher performance evaluation. To reach this point has meant a host of transactions on the part of all those concerned as well as an enormous change in the traditional understanding that teachers have of themselves and of their work. It also signals a different concept of the role of the State as guardian of education to the one that dominated practically all of the twentieth century. This paper traces the three major concepts involved: teacher identities in relation to the State, teachers as professionals responsible for the quality of their work, and the current dominant principles of competitiveness and accountability. In so doing, it focuses historically on policies related to the teaching profession as well as on key political change situations that provide light on the current situation.
Notes
* PREAL, Alsacia 150, Depto 33, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile. Email: [email protected]
In his historical study of teachers Núñez (Citation1990) refers to teachers holding simultaneously to different views of themselves—as public servants, professionals and employees—with some of these roles predominating over others at different times during the twentieth century.
Shift from export of raw materials to finished products and decrease of dependence on imports.
Currently, these two branches have a common general curriculum for the first two years, with specialisation in the Arts and Sciences or Technological education occurring afterwards.
The structure of syllabus for each curricular area included a statement of desirable behavioural objectives to be attained, contents, suggested learning activities, bibliography and required teaching materials (Núñez, Citation1990).
This was based on Herbart’s lesson structure involving these five steps: preparation, presentation, association, generalisation and application (cf. Connell, Citation1980, p. 59).
The Congress was largely made up of members of the Popular Unity coalition that was in government with on and off participation of Christian Democrat teachers.
For discussion on this proposal see Fisher (Citation1979).
Public secondary and higher education was free and State financed until then.
The effect on teachers of this measure, as they declared in interviews at the time, was to entice them to ‘forge’ attendance lists and to lower standards (Cerda et al., Citation1991).
Currently, 58% of all schools are public municipal schools, which is slightly higher than what was the situation at the time of municipalisation.
Well into the nineties, teachers still resisted the authoritarianism of their heads and the irrelevance of the Technical‐Pedagogic Unit, as documented in an ethnographic study of secondary schools by Edwards et al. (Citation1995).
This situation began to change in 1985 when two of the Academies derived from the University of Chile were upgraded to Pedagogical Universities. Towards the end of the 1990s the Organic Law in Education reinstated teacher education as a university career leading to a Licentiate degree.
Approved by the Military Government just days before leaving office (10 March 1990).
Studies during the eighties had shown problems with the teaching and teaching conditions in Basic Education schools (see López et al., Citation1986). Also, before designing the Secondary Improvement Programme a set of diagnostic studies were undertaken one of which unveiled the poor situation of school management and teaching in secondary schools (Edwards et al., 1994).
The SIMCE assessment examines mathematics, language and social studies achievement in 4th and 8th grade in the Basic School and in the second year of the secondary system.
In line with this approach a fund to reward school improvement projects prepared by teachers and the school community was established and awarded on a competitive basis.
Throughout the decade of the nineties and into the new century, teachers have argued strongly for a return to the salary positions they had in the early seventies. Despite the fact that today municipal teachers earn 60% more than what was the case in 1990, dissatisfaction continues.
An indication of this move towards greater involvement in educational policy and practice of the teachers’ union was launching of journal for teachers (Docencia) that has been recognised as one of the leading educational publications in the country.
An important regional report produced by UNESCO and ECLAC (UN Economic Commission for Latin America) in 1992 was suggesting the need for radical changes in education if it was to meet the needs of economic growth in a knowledge society and of equitable distribution of resources in Latin America (ECLAC, Citation1992).
The policy was announced in President Eduardo Frei’s address to Parliament in 1996.
The System of Measurement of Education Quality (SIMCE) is administered in the fourth and eighth years of Basic Education and in the second year of Secondary Education.
Chile has participated in the Third International Mathematics Study known as TIMSS, in the IEA Civic Education Study, in the First International Comparative Study in Language, Mathematics and other factors Learning (UNESCO/OREALC) and recently in the PISA study. All of these studies show unsatisfactory learning results of Chilean Basic Education students.
It is located at the Centre for Public Studies (CEP) in Santiago and relies heavily from ideas of American conservative educators such as E. D. Hirsch and Diane Ravitch, as well as from organisations such as the Hoover Institute in the United States.
It is not too difficult to see the similarities between these arguments and those put forth by Ravitch (Citation2002) in relation to what is needed to guarantee results in the American education system: ‘incentives and sanctions based on its performance’.
Each teacher was to have a ‘life‐history record’ where any irregularities in their conduct as school employees would be noted along with in‐service courses taken. This record was to be one of the sources of evidence for teacher evaluation.
The teachers had reason to fear that something of the sort could happen, as they had experienced the dismissal of 8000 of their colleagues by the municipal authorities in 1986, of which 30% were fully qualified teachers.
This change of mood was stimulated through learning about existing systems of teacher evaluation with a formative focus and through the experience of the standards‐based performance evaluation being introduced in the initial teacher education reforms (Avalos, Citation2001).
These standards are generic and outline what teachers need to know and be able to do in four dimensions of teaching tasks: a) preparation, b) setting an appropriate classroom environment, c) classroom interaction for learning and d) professional related responsibilities.
The full set of responses can be found in the Ministry of Education’s web page: www.mineduc.cl.
Compliance with these will be checked through the pertinent provisions in the Teachers’ Statute
However, the agreement as worded opens the possibility that these issues may be dealt with at a later stage.
This uneasiness is what the conservative opposition has criticised.
Around 55% of the total teaching force, though around 20% of these teachers also work in private or subsidised schools.