Secondary education reforms in Argentina’s provinces: between big mottos and daily policy-crafting

• In Event: Experiences, contexts and data use: Revisiting the study of education policy implementation in comparative and international education

Proposal

The sanction of Argentina’s National Education Law (NEL) in 2006 configured a new education paradigm. While its guiding discourse portrayed inclusion and social justice as core elements, the new legislation reinforced the state’s central position as duty bearer of the right of education (Tenti Fanfani, 2009). Within this shift, the NEL introduced a set of reforms oriented to secondary education by extending compulsory K-12 education from Year 9 to Year 12. However, while Argentina counts with a National Ministry of Education, each of its twenty-four provinces is legally bound to administer and fund K-12 education within its territory since 1991, so political and socioeconomic conditions across provinces, the historical contexts and the oscillating relationships with the national governments affect the policy landscapes. At the same time, despite multiple policies at national and provincial levels, Argentina’s secondary education still shows historical signs of structural segmentation, and difficulties to guarantee students’ completion and minimum learning standards (Acosta, 2012; Braslavsky, 2019).
This article aims to understand the enactment of education policies oriented to secondary education in Argentina’s provinces. We are interested in examining the ‘jumbled, messy, contested, creative and mundane social interactions linking the texts to practice (Ball et al, 2011), so as to grasp those elements emerging beyond normative approaches to policy. In particular, we ask how provincial ministers and high-level policymakers in secondary education negotiate, contest and struggle with different groups within and outside the formal machinery of official policymaking (Ozga, 2000).
We used a qualitative design based on semi-structured interviews and document analysis. A total of ten provinces –out of twenty-four– were selected to span over diverse jurisdictional profiles based on their demographic and educational indicators. Data collection involved interviewing each province’s Director of Secondary Schooling Education (n=10). Additionally, we selected two provinces to conduct interviews with other high-profile policymakers in provincial ministries of education involved in the advance of secondary education reforms (n=13). We complemented these sources with legislation and other ‘policy texts’ produced at national and provincial level. Data was examined using critical discourse analysis to examine the relation between discourse and other social elements, such as history, power, values and social relations, in a normative and in an explanatory critique (Fairclough, 2013).
Findings show how ‘big mottos’ addressing ‘secondary education transformation’ at national and provincial levels face multiple and contingent forms of policy (re)negotiation. By interrogating actors about more specific measures like modifications in curriculum regimes, new approaches to assessment, reorganization of teachers’ working conditions and students-support systems, we grasp how these entail practices of micro-political ‘convincing’ and the resignification of normative texts. Rather than following a linear and scale-up temporality, changes in secondary education are enacted in teacher-training sessions, informative meetings, supervisors’ in-person work at schools, Whatsapp chats and daily practices named by an interviewee as ‘policy evangelization’. Comparison between the provinces allows us to appreciate the commonalities and variations through which regulations and programmes are translated and retranslated to foster their implementation in schools.

Authors

• Delfina Garino, IPEHCS CONICET UNCo

• Ivan Matovich, Monash University

• Felicitas M Acosta, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento & NORRAG