Unionism and Pedagogy in the National Protests Against the Chilean Law on Teacher Professional Development

• In Event: Activism and protest as a fundamental part of education and a teacher’s responsibility

Proposal

Since the neoliberalization of the Chilean society during the 1980s, the development of the teaching profession has been exposed to two contradictory forces. On one hand, the official governmental discourse has promoted the notion of professional autonomy as the most desirable attribute Chilean teachers should hold, but on the other hand, the teaching policies have tended to create control mechanisms through performance evaluations whose results are tied to salary increases and the legal permit to exercise the profession (Ruffinelli Vargas, 2016). By analyzing the discourses (press conferences, slogans, songs, etc.) and the policy recommendations that emerged from the Chilean Teachers’ Union (congressional hearings) during the national strikes in 2015 and 2016 against the policy that the congress was discussing to regulate the teaching profession (Law on Teacher Professional Development), this paper will explore (a) the unions’ conceptualization of the contradiction between autonomy and control, (b) the union’s conception about the nature and role of the teaching profession, and (c) the pedagogical perspectives supporting the union’s discourses and policy recommendations. I will end the paper arguing that (a) the teacher identity and, therefore, the teachers’ conceptions about the nature of the teaching profession, is ungraspable without considering the educational project promoted by the government and (b) consciously or unconsciously, there are specific pedagogical perspectives at the very core of the teacher unionism.
Chile is well-known for being one of the first countries where neoliberal principles were applied to restructure the economy and society (Harvey, 2007). One salient characteristic of this process is the fact that these principles were imposed by a cruel military and civic dictatorship (1973-1990) that eliminated any chance to democratically resist the neoliberalization of Chilean society. In education, the changes imposed by the dictatorship consisted mostly of transferring the responsibility of producing and providing educational services from the government to private companies and transforming the national education system into a market (Belleï, 2015). Under this context, teachers lost their character as public servants and became private workers without any public statute regulating their profession (Ruffinelli, 2016). Additionally, the national teachers’ union (Sindicato Único de Trabajadores de la Educación) was proscribed and replaced by a politically controlled teachers’ organization (Colegio de Profesores de Chile). With the return of democracy, the new education system was consolidated, and, in 1991, the teaching profession was regulated by a special statute that involved a high-stakes teacher evaluation. Since then, the teaching policies have tended to associate performance measurements with salary and the legal permit to exercise the profession. The corollary of this process is precisely the Law on Teacher Professional Development enacted in 2016.
The transformations experienced by Chilean teachers have been understood as the replacement of the “organic” teaching model for the “management” teaching model (Ruffinelli, 2016). The former is associated with the cultural, ethical, and political dimensions of education and heavily relies on a trust on the self-regulation and professionalism of teachers, while the latter is built on the principles of efficiency, standardization, and performance measurements, and sees teachers as technicians whose only responsibility is to apply predefined strategies designed by external experts. When analyzing the literature that examines the changes produced by neoliberalism in the public administration, specifically in terms of the accountability practices, the replacement of the organic teaching model for the management model seems to be highly associated with the replacement of the political and bureaucratic public administration approach, which was predominant during the Keynesian welfare state, for the New Public Management (NPM) approach, which has been predominant since the emergence of the neoliberal state (Jann & Lægreid, 2015; Walker, 2002). While the accountability regimes in place during the Keynesian welfare state were hierarchical and bureaucratic, they relied mostly on implicit assumptions about mass education provision, meaning that the knowledge required to produce and deliver education was mainly implicit (shared experiences and routines) and, consequently, did not need accurate information about performance (Ozga, 2013). According to Ozga (2013), “the policy field of education did not – at this time and up to the late 1980s – lend itself easily to external scrutiny against indicators of performance; instead, accountability involved exchanges of ‘accounts’” (p. 303). The legitimacy of those accounts relied fundamentally on the discretionary powers that public officials, especially teachers, held because of their professional character (Molander et al., 2012) and not on measurements of performance (Ozga, 2013), as it has been the case under the NPM accountability regimes.
Both the discourses and the policy recommendations of the Chilean Teachers’ Union seem to be heavily aligned with the organic teaching model and, consequently, with the principles that organized the economy and society during the so-called Keynesian welfare state. Therefore, in considering the relationship between the government and the way in which teachers see themselves and act politically, this paper will contribute to the understanding of the political and ideological dimension of the protests against the Law on Teacher Professional Development, the foundations of the union’s conception on the teaching profession, and the pedagogical perspectives supporting both such conception and the union’s discourses and policy recommendations.

Author

• Sebastian Nunez, The University of Texas at Austin