Chilean Educational System Research Articles

Depression, anxiety, and stress in the Chilean Educational System: children and adolescents post-pandemic prevalence and variables

The mental health of children and adolescents in the Chilean Educational System (ChES) has become a severe post-pandemic public health problem. This cross-sectional study, which included 1,174 children and adolescents from five Chilean regions, used the DASS-21 scale, focusing on determining the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress, as well as identifying associated risk factors. The results exposed a high prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress (60.2%, 63.6%, and 50.2%, respectively). Risk factors for depression involve being female, having separated parents, being in high school, having a cell phone, difficulty sleeping, ruminative thoughts, and low self-esteem. For anxiety, factors included being female, being 12 years old, owning a cell phone, having sleep problems, having ruminations, having low self-esteem, and being an atheist. For stress, factors were identified as being female, owning a cell phone, sleep problems, ruminations, low self-esteem, being atheist, as well as extensive use of social networks. The research underscores the urgent need for intervention by educational authorities, given the marked deterioration in the mental health of children and adolescent students in the ChES, to prevent long-term consequences.

EdTech companies and contemporary digital educational governance. Analyzing the expansion and role of the EdTech sector in the Chilean educational system

This article analyses the network of actors involved in the contemporary digitalization of the Chilean school system and the role of private EdTech corporations in this ecosystem. Using a framework based on new modes of education governance and contributions from the cultural political economy, three sources were triangulated: i) 22 semi structured interviews with key actors and policymakers, ii) a database of startups in the EdTech sector in Chile and iii) a systematization of the main digital education policies implemented in the country. The findings reveal a poorly coordinated network of actors, which has allowed the inorganic and heterogeneous growth of EdTech corporations, whose role encompasses not only the production of technology but also its articulation and management. To this form, EdTech companies play a central role not only as producers of technology, but also as articulators and administrators, illustrating a displacement of the State from some of its historic functions.

Teacher Training: (Dis)encounter between Theory and Practice

The preparation of teachers is a key process in the development of effective teachers, however, initial training always seems insufficient and outdated to produce the expected teaching profile and respond to the dynamic character of today's society. This article reports part of the research "teachers in the process of initial training" (2020-2021), developed in the context of a Faculty of Education Sciences, Chile. Based on a qualitative methodology and a case study research strategy, we worked with 120 pedagogy students in the process of training, who offered their representations regarding the theory-practice relationship in the context of the Chilean educational system. In a complementary way, 5 focus groups were administered with the intention of enriching ideas and perspectives. The criteria to choose them were to be studying a pedagogy program, with experience of practices in schools and that they accepted to participate voluntarily, after signing consent. The results show that the theory-practice relationship can be understood in various ways: dependence, disagreement and integration which influence the way teaching is understood and its exercise. In terms of projections, the need arises to think of a training that in a bidirectional way manages to theorize the practice and experience the theory.

Institutional Ethos of Less Selective Massive Private Universities in Chile: Organizational Identities in a Competitive and Marketized University System

This article aims to reflect on the institutional ethos of three Chilean, less selective massive private universities, analyzing their organizational identities, discourses, and practices and discussing how the dynamics of the competitive and marketized Chilean educational system influence this ethos. Through a qualitative design, which includes semi-structured interviews with key university staff members and direct observations in formal and informal instances, this article concludes that the ethos of these institutions is structured around four main axes: pluralism and student diversity; the pursuit of excellence as a competitive horizon; the construction of merit as a personal, family, and institutional effort; and education for employability, underpinned by professional ethics and social commitment. Furthermore, we find evidence that the logic of the university market shapes these private universities’ ethos transversally.

Scientific literacy in biology and attitudes towards science in the Chilean education system

ABSTRACT Background The development of scientific literacy in young people is seen as important in several countries. In recent decades, Chile’s educational reforms aimed at performance have led to a market-oriented funding and management system, worsening social inequality and segregation. Purpose The study looked at biology literacy and science attitudes in Chilean secondary school students, considering two aims: 1) to analyse the level of scientific literacy in biology and attitudes toward science posed by secondary school students, making comparisons by gender, age, socio-economic status (SES), and type of school; and 2) to evaluate the relationship between scientific literacy in biology and attitudes towards science. Sample 612 secondary school students in a central southern region of Chile, took part in the study. Design & Methods A quantitative method was used to analyse the students’ responses on two validated and adapted instruments; A test to measure biological knowledge (TOSLS) and Likert Scale Science-related (LSSr) to measure attitude towards science. These instruments were administered to secondary students, and descriptive and inferential analyses were conducted. Results The adapted TOSLS showed significant differences in SES, school type and slight variations by gender and age, although, no illiteracy level in biology was found among the Chilean students. The adapted LSSr showed significant differences concerning attitudes toward science were found in school type, and variations by SES and age, and gender. Also, the correlation analysis shows a weak positive relationship between scientific literacy in biology and attitudes towards science, although of moderate magnitude. Conclusion This study found that scientific literacy in biology does not necessarily impact attitudes towards science. However, SES and type of school can affect understanding and views of science and its role in society, which aligns with previous findings on social inequality in Chilean education.

Cartographies of the Able School

Abstract Using a cartographic approach, this article addresses ableism in the Chilean educational system. By analyzing audiovisual production, and specifically, the creation of storyboards, theoretical-methodological tools are provided for mapping desire flows and micro-movements produced in and about the public school toward and against the production of able educational institutions. Thus, the analysis stresses how human and nonhuman materialities mutually affect each other in an educational context. By focusing on the analysis of videos and storyboards, new discursive-material relationships appear in the school, which allow us to recognize and problematize ableist practices, and at the same time, open spaces for new creative approaches to challenge the able school norm.

Políticas Públicas Educativas en Chile desde la Mirada de Profesores

ABSTRACT This qualitative study on teaching trajectories explores Chilean teachers’ perspectives on public policies implemented in the education system during the past two decades. Findings reveal that teachers interpret and adopt policies in unique ways, with a contextualized characterization of policies identified. Three major processes of educational policy were identified: Educational Reform, General Education Law, and Teacher Professional Development Law. The study underscores the complex relationship between public educational policies and teacher practices in the Chilean education system. This research can inform education stakeholders and policy-makers about teachers’ perspectives and experiences with policy implementation.

Enriching cross-sectoral collaboration to foster inclusive cultures in schools: a Model to address the needs of diverse Chilean Students.

Inclusive education involves the interaction of diverse actors from different societal sectors, such as education, health, and policy. Inclusion laws and regulations in Chile are relatively new and have been taken as a regional model. However, the efforts to implement them have revealed some structural difficulties that must be discussed. This conceptual analysis article aims to provide insights to enrich cross-sectoral collaboration to foster inclusive cultures in Chilean schools. Considering the OECD Analytical Framework, which describes a systemic approach, we provide definitions for the critical components of the model and discuss the advances and challenges of current Chilean public policies in this field -including the Chile Crece Contigo and the School Integration Programs (SIP)-, the Chilean education system functioning, the social contexts, and students' needs and supports based on the available evidence. Building from inclusive education literature and previous experiences, we delve into the model to address the needs of students with disabilities, social and cultural disadvantages, students belonging to the indigenous population, and students with a low socioeconomic level to propose action guidelines with a particular focus on integrating inclusive practices at the school level.

Dispossession of Indigenous Knowledge in the Chilean Education System: Mapuche Experiences in Chile

ABSTRACT The article reports on the dispossession of indigenous knowledge in the public education system in Mapuche territory in La Araucanía, a southern region in Chile. The methodology is qualitative, 18 people were interviewed including Mapuche wise men and women, fathers, and mothers who experienced schooling processes in their younger years. The information analysis technique is content analysis, to identify explicit and latent meanings related to the schools they attended and the Chilean education system. Mapuche wise people and parents were consulted on the pedagogical practices of dispossession of ancestral knowledge that have been institutionalized. Main results show that schools have transmitted a Western Eurocentric-based knowledge which results in the dispossession of their own episteme and in their transformation into ordinary Chilean citizens who are unaware of their language and culture as a central axis of their sociocultural identity. Main conclusions account for the historical processes of schooling in an indigenous context, highlighting the consequences that this monocultural education has brought to families, communities, and new generations of indigenous. This poses the challenge of transforming the school curriculum, to transmit their truth, to advance in justice, reparation, and to ensure the non-repetition of the epistemicide of indigenous knowledge in the school.

Teaching during the pandemic: The case of Chilean mathematics teachers

This study sought to explore the implementation of remote teaching activities in mathematics classrooms in Chile and its outcomes in this neoliberal country during the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenges that teachers encountered when trying to carry out their remote teaching are also presented. By attending to different types of schools in the Chilean education system, the results of a comparative analysis of frequencies show differences in the use of two options of synchronous and asynchronous teaching activities, software, and in the challenges experienced by the participating teachers from three different school sectors. The results highlight a tendency and flexibility to mix synchronous and asynchronous activities coupled with all available tools from WhatsApp to Zoom. Likewise, findings suggest that the socio-economic segregation in the Chilean education system makes a difference when employing the simple and free access tools by teachers in public schools.

Re‐examining the functioning of educational markets: Does the private‐subsidised sector contribute to school diversification?

AbstractThis article offers new empirical evidence regarding the limits of the premises of educational privatisation policies. Educational markets rely on the assumption that private participation has the potential to boost school diversification and open new educational opportunities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Using a fresh empirical approach, we draw on the Chilean case to investigate this rationale, which remains a controversial issue in the global educational discussion regarding privatisation. We examine the assumption of diversification by analysing three aspects: the attributes used by private subsidised schools to position themselves in the educational market (‘Value Proposition’), the extent to which they embody these stated attributes and the alignment between them and parental preferences. Based on surveys and administrative records, our findings suggest that although schools display clear identities to position themselves in the educational market, there is also a mismatch between what some types of schools offer and what families receive. Our data also reveal a high level of social stratification between school types which cannot only be explained based on parental preferences or school admissions. We interpret the unfulfilled promise of diversification as a failure in the privatisation process. Based on these findings, we discuss the policy‐related factors of incoherent and unequal diversification in the Chilean educational system.

Mapudungun, Interculturality and Inclusiveness in the Chilean Educational System

Mapudungun is one of the heritages that defines the identity of the Mapuche people. Their survival over time is mainly due to the re-ethnification processes that have occurred in the last decade. However, it is necessary to follow the strategies briefly developed in this work, in order to maintain its validity and revitalization in the Chilean sociocultural context. A maintenance program for this indigenous language must have the proper state support to become a healthy and self-sufficient language. All this will allow the continuation of the way of life of its users, as well as the faithful reflection of their culture within the multicultural world.

The Idea of a Probability Model for a Population

Applying a phenomenological methodology, we investigate the nature and existing connections between the main objects of study that appear as a foundation in the teaching and learning of applied statistics in the first three levels of education in the Chilean educational system.

New and old educational inequalities in socio-cultural minorities: exploring the school choice experiences of families under the new school admission system in Chile

ABSTRACT In 2016, the Chilean Ministry of Education implemented the new School Admission System (SAS) designed with the goal of equalizing access to schools for the most disadvantaged families and reduce educational segregation. Yet it is not clear if the SAS is sensitive to socio-cultural minorities and their particular conditions. Hence, in this article we explore the school choice experiences of parents from three socio-cultural minorities under the new SAS: Mapuche – indigenous families, Latin American migrant parents, and parents with children with disabilities. Using an intersectional theoretical approach and a qualitative research design, we show that while in some cases the implementation of SAS impedes previous discriminatory processes, in others this new system alone has not yet overcome long-established and inherent educational inequalities in Chilean education. Besides, SAS has also resulted in new challenges in the school choice processes of these parents. Their experiences with the SAS express the intersection of different axis of inequality, according to the conditions and historicities of each group of families. Finally, we reflect on the challenges that the policy faces in regard to develop an educational policy that is fairer to all families, in the context of the unequal and marketized Chilean educational system.

Chile: Universal Collection, Open Access, and Innovation in the Use of Attendance and Absenteeism Data

In Chile, attendance is recognized as an important component of school quality and educational equity. The Chilean education system has clear, standardized definitions that apply country-wide, and a good registration system for school attendance that compiles national databases containing student-level, daily attendance, absences, and withdrawals for all children attending public schools. Moreover, these data are publicly available via open access, which allows the entire education community and the Ministry of Education access to all schools’ data in an organized, centralized manner. These data contribute to ongoing scholarship about the impacts of attendance and absenteeism on education outcomes. In practice, schools use attendance data to monitor progress toward goals. The Ministry of Education uses data to calculate and pay school subsidies that are linked directly to average monthly attendance in accordance with Chilean law, and to classify schools into categories of education quality. Chilean Fundación Educacional Oportunidad uses attendance data and continuous quality improvement methods to promote attendance and prevent chronic absenteeism with more than 150 schools via a regional Learning Network. Meanwhile, the Learning Network fills an important gap by repurposing the nationally reported data to calculate and focus on individual-level attendance and by creating opportunities for practitioners to learn together how to promote attendance and prevent chronic absenteeism. This paper describes the context of Chile and its educational system; the definition, recording, reporting and use of attendance data; and the methods, outcomes and lessons learned by the regional Learning Network.

Mapudungun, Interculturality and Inclusiveness in the Chilean Educational System

Mapudungun is one of the heritages that defines the identity of the Mapuche people. Their survival over time is mainly due to the re-ethnification processes that have occurred in the last decade. However, it is necessary to follow the strategies briefly developed in this work, in order to maintain its validity and revitalization in the Chilean sociocultural context. A maintenance program for this indigenous language must have the proper state support to become a healthy and self-sufficient language. All this will allow the continuation of the way of life of its users, as well as the faithful reflection of their culture within the multicultural world.

Mapudungun, Interculturality and Inclusiveness in the Chilean Educational System

Mapudungun is one of the heritages that defines the identity of the Mapuche people. Their survival over time is mainly due to the re-ethnification processes that have occurred in the last decade. However, it is necessary to follow the strategies briefly developed in this work, in order to maintain its validity and revitalization in the Chilean sociocultural context. A maintenance program for this indigenous language must have the proper state support to become a healthy and self-sufficient language. All this will allow the continuation of the way of life of its users, as well as the faithful reflection of their culture within the multicultural world.

Validation of a Measurement Scale on Technostress for University Students in Chile.

The main aim in this research was to validate a scale for measuring technostress in Chilean university students under the context of hybrid education. There were 212 university students as participants from the central-south zone of Chile. For measuring technostress manifestations, a technostress questionnaire for Chinese university professors and its adaptation for Spanish university students was used as a base instrument to adapt the scale. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis generated an adequacy of the psychometric scale by eliminating three items from the original scales but generated important changes by reordering the other 19 items into only three factors, establishing an important local difference with previous versions that contemplated five factors, but retaining as a central axis the stress produced by a misfit between the person and his or her environment. The resulting scale was based on factors such as Abilities-Demands Techno-Educational, Needs-Supplies Resources, and Person-People Factor. It also has a good internal consistency with a scale that allows for the continuation of technostress measurements in the local context; adding to studies on this topic which have already been carried out on diverse actors of the Chilean educational system; proposing a reliable and valid psychometric scale of technostress in Chilean university students; and giving researchers and academic managers the ability to know the adverse effects of the use of technologies and propose mitigation actions.

Teacher Training in Chile: Where Are Universities Looking? A Narrative Review.

Initial Teacher Training (ITT) has been a recurring theme in recent years in Chilean educational policy and the field of educational research, mainly due to its impact on the Chilean educational system. Under its relevance, this article analyzes ITT and some aspects of its improvement through the revision methodology described by Kart and Kart (2021). Among the main findings, it is possible to mention that the research provides evidence on the decisions that should be made around the teaching profession and the improvement of initial training not only at the institutional level but also at the educational policy level. At the same time, it highlights the need for comprehensive support for future pedagogues and the importance of using the data obtained through the ‘National Diagnostic Evaluation’ for decision making.

The historical inclusion of Mapuche children in the educational system: challenges and tensions in policy and practice

ABSTRACT The study presented in this paper examines the historical experiences of school inclusion of the Mapuche people in the Chilean educational system. It focuses on the tensions between securing high-quality education for indigenous children while simultaneously providing culturally relevant education in ways that their cultural identities and ways of knowing are preserved and sustained over time. A narrative inquiry approach is adopted to document such experiences and to honour the oral tradition in the Mapuche culture. We do so by retrieving the oral memory of two Mapuches in two distinct and traditional communities located in La Araucanía, Chile, the Mapuches’ historical land. This oral memory is accompanied by a documental inquiry that sought to examine the historical experiences of schooling as captured in photographs preserved in Santa Magdalena Capuchin Archive located in Altötting, Germany. We use these stories to examine the current efforts of educational inclusion for Mapuche children in Chile and to discuss their limits and possibilities.