Birth pains: emerging school leadership policies in eight school systems of Latin America

Abstract

School leadership has a core position within education policy worldwide. Comparative research in this area has been mainly focused on developed countries and has tended to neglect the situation of developing nations, including Latin American countries. Considering the above, this article presents the current status of school leadership policies in eight systems of Latin America: Argentina, Ceará/Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Peru. The results highlight that, while in the majority of these systems measures aimed in this direction have been implemented, school leadership policies are still at an early stage, with several problems, contradictions, and lack of internal and external coherence. The article ends with a discussion about the tensions embedded on the translation of the Anglo-Saxon discourse of school leadership to the particular context of Latin America and suggests the need to rethink a regional local–response to the goal of promoting principal leadership.

Notes

1. Following the order of the school systems, researchers in charge were: Claudia Romero, Sofia Lerche/Eloísa Vidal, Macarena Hernández, María Victoria Angulo, Eduardo Fabara, Sylvia Ortega, Ancell Scheker and Ricardo Cuenca.

2. Teachers training also presents, as new research shows (OREALC-UNESCO, 2012), weaknesses and a low regulation of its quality.

3. There are also opinions who question this restricted version of instructional leadership in developed countries (Horng & Loeb, 2010).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

José Weinstein

José Weinstein, Faculty of Education, University Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. He is a sociologist from the University of Chile and with a PhD in Sociology from the Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium). He was Chile’s Undersecretary of Education (2000–2003), and Chile’s first Minister of Culture (2003–2006). He has created and directed programs on improvement in secondary education, leadership development in vulnerable schools and new opportunities for culture development in youth. His experience and expertise have been requested by important international organizations. He has published over 50 articles in books, reviews and periodicals focusing on education, poverty, youth and culture. He is currently the director of the Doctorate in Education at Diego Portales University, where he is professor. His recent work has focused greatly on school leadership development and capacity improvement of vulnerable schools.

Macarena Hernández

Macarena Hernández, Faculty of Education, University Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. Macarena Hernández is a sociologist and MA in policy studies in education. Currently, she is a research assistant at the Faculty of Education – University Diego Portales, Chile. During the last years, she has participated in several studies related to school leadership in Latin America and Chile, and training and professional development of principals.