Zooming Into Research in Higher Education in Chile

• In Event: 30.044 - Research in Higher Education in the Global South: Scope, Themes, and Trends

Abstract

Chile appears in first place among Latin American countries in per capita publications (across Scopus Journals, as reported in Santelices, 2015) across all disciplines and field of studies. While Chilean science is productive, resources for R&D are among the lowest of OECD countries as a proportion of GDP. Following the Latin American pattern, almost all research in Chile is developed at universities (Santelices, 2015), especially a handful of them, the ones with the most intensive research mission.

Research in education has been expanding rapidly (Nussbaum & Gonzalez, 2016) specialized centers for research in education have been funded by the government, and there are sizable programs at the government level to increase advanced human capital through scholarships for graduate studies abroad and nationally. In the past few years many of these scholars have returned to the country, at the same time as universities tighten their standards for hiring so that a minimum standard for full-time, tenure-track faculty is to hold a PhD and exhibit some research productivity (Nussbaum & Gonzalez, 2016), something relatively new in our system.

However, little is known about studies in higher education, as a subfield of educational research generally. While higher education as a field of research in Chile is relatively new, it likely has benefitted as well from the said expansion of educational research opportunities and funding. This study will investigate trends in higher education research in Chile: themes, methodological approaches, profiles of authors, and extent of international collaboration, among other questions. Data will be obtained from the names and abstracts of research projects funded by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (Conycit) from 2008-2016, which is the main source of funding for researcher in the country. We will also investigate the published papers by authors with Chilean institutional affiliations indexed through the Web of Science, Scopus, and Scielo. Lastly, we will explore the similarities and differences between the research agenda and patterns in Chile, with those of the other countries and regions represented in this session, and with mainstream research.

Authors

• Daniela Véliz Calderón, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

• Andres Bernasconi, Universidad Catolica de Chile