Global education governance versus the dynamics of the education systems: the circulation of the Mediterranean Regional Project in Latin America

• In Event: Global Education Reforms Across Time and Space: Tendencies, Drivers, and Explanations In Comparative and Historical Perspective (Part 1)

Proposal

Between 1950 and 1970, Latin America became a focus of intervention by international organisations for the introduction of discourses and policies aimed at economic development and educational reforms. In particular, in the 1960s, UNESCO proclaimed the "Decade of Development", given the issue's relevance on the organisation's regional agenda (Bustos, 2022; Causa, 2011; Ossenbach & Martínez Boom, 2011).

The strategies for the circulation of ideas and educational practices adopted by international organisations were diverse and attested to the emergence of a global education governing complex (Centeno, 2017; Elfert & Ydesen, 2020; Nóvoa & Yariv-Mashal, 2003; Tröhler, 2014; Ydesen, 2019). In alliance with other organisations, such as the Organisation of American States (OAS), UNESCO held meetings and seminars within and outside the region to promote and train education system resources in the direction suggested. Along the same lines, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) promoted studies on education and development in continuity with what was taking place in Europe through the Mediterranean Regional Project (MRP) (Gómez-Escalonilla, 2020). An example was the seminar ‘Problems of Human Resource Planning in Latin America and the Mediterranean Regional Project’ (Lima, 1965), which aimed to help other countries profit from the OECD's experience.
This paper examines the articulation between the MRP and the guidelines for change in educational policies in the Latin American region between the late 1950s and the late 1970s. More specifically, the paper seeks to i) describe the ideas circulating in the production of international organisations involved in the region in the relationship between development and the expansion of secondary education; ii) characterise the proposals for the reorganisation of this level of education concerning the prevailing trends of change at the time; iii) explore the participation of organisations or programmes such as MRP in the transformation of secondary education.
The paper argues that the ideas circulating about changes in secondary education oscillated in a tension between the search to move towards more integrated structures that would mitigate secondary education's elitist and selective origin and the proposals to extend technical education, in line with the agenda of educational developmentalism and the MRP. Understanding this tension implies considering the role of the education system’s dynamics and historical matrices of institutional models since they are driving forces that not only filter but hinder and re-orient policies and serve to understand its variations. In this sense, through the analysis of the MRP trajectory, the paper also proposes an analytical model to study the circulation of education policies through time and space that pays attention to the internal forces of education systems, emphasising their trajectory in each particular context.

The paper looks at both primary and secondary sources. The primary sources are i) the MRP documents on secondary education for the European region; ii) the proceedings of the MRP/OECD Seminar (Lima, 1965); iii) the proceedings of the OAS Inter-American Seminar on Secondary Education (Santiago de Chile, 1955). Secondary sources are previous studies on quantitative and qualitative changes in secondary education in the MRP and Latin American countries.

Author

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