The Translation of Policies in Low-Performing Public Schools in Chile: An Ethnographic Study

• In Event: Roundtable Session 57
  In Roundtable Session: Educators and Policy Reform, Translation, and Analysis

Abstract

This study analyzes the process of translation that educational policy discourse face when it reaches school communities at the local level. We studied two public urban schools from Chile that represent themselves as “being in the Intensive Care Unit,” due to the conditions in which they work. Using ethnographic techniques we characterized them. While school communities recognize the need for external support, they consider that what they get is just surveillance. Nevertheless, policy makers cannot see the specific difficulties they face in their everyday practice. Educational communities are not homogenous, but constituted in complex and even contradictory ways, and as they translate policy into their everyday experiences, they find themselves trapped in contradictory policy discourses.

Authors

• Paulina Contreras, Universidad de Chile

• Eduardo Santa Cruz, Universidad de Chile

• Felipe Acuña, Universidad de Chile

• Jenny Assael, Colegio de Profesores