What do we know about the middle-tier from low-and middle-income countries in Latin America?

• In Event: Leveraging the middle-tier of education systems for teaching, learning, and equity in Latin America

Proposal

In this paper, we systematically review academic and grey literature in English, Spanish, and Portuguese from Latin American countries to understand what research exists on the role of the middle-tier, what practices the actors engage in, and whether those practices influence outcomes for students. We systematically searched for studies from 2004-2023 from several databases, including Scopus, Web of Science, UNESCO IIEP, and major Latin American academic databases like SciELO and Dialnet. We found 217 articles after removing duplicates that discussed the middle-tier of management in Latin American countries. After applying a quality appraisal criterion on the articles, similar to Author et al. (2023), we were left with 61 documents. Using a framework of building state capacity through both mechanistic approaches to leadership that emphasize performance-based management and incentives (e.g., Finan et al. 2012) and support and trust-based approaches (e.g., Bryk et al. 2013 ), we coded the studies to understand what kind of research exists on the middle-tier. The codes were preliminary, and we emphasized emerging themes in our analysis.

Our preliminary findings show that more than half of the studies were published in the last 5 years, indicating a renewed interest in the middle-tier of management in the region. The papers can be categorized in multiple disciplines and there is a methodological divide. For example, papers from economics use quantitative methods, while those from education administration are largely qualitative.

We coded for the typology of the middle-tier to understand their position in the education hierarchy, their size, their jurisdiction, and the process by which actors at the level are selected. Overall, we find that countries in Latin America are governed by complex hierarchical education systems that have implications for governance for the middle-tier and the schools. We present vignettes for Brazil and Chile, most overrepresented countries in the papers. We found overwhelming evidence on decentralization reforms in papers across Latin America. We find that several papers discuss a push towards decentralization, both administrative and fiscal. However, the papers highlight several challenges to decentralization and autonomy to the middle tier. Accountability-focused practices emerged as a major theme in our analysis. We have evidence that data-collection, monitoring, and observations of schools are key practices of municipal education directors in Chile (e.g, Donoso and Benavides 2017). Similarly, articles discuss teaching and learning practices, such as classroom/pedagogical support, professional development, and curricular development spearheaded or implemented by the middle-tier for the schools (e.g., Uribe et al., 2022) and emphasize the role of capacity development in improving these practices. Finally, we identify a gap in the literature that unpacks the relationship between the middle-tier structure, practices, challenges or capacity building and student outcomes.

Author

• Minahil Asim, University of Ottawa