Latin America’s pressing education challenges and possible futures: New privatization trends, public education for all, sociolinguistic tensions, and migration crises

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Objectives and Significance

Latin American education systems face as many challenges as there are cultures in the continent. The political, social, economic, and environmental convulsions experienced by the region pull education in different directions, weakening the systems’ capacity to protect the most vulnerable students and teachers. While many scholars have focused in recent years on the Covid-19 emergency, its effects on education, and the coping strategies of different actors, other problematic situations continue to develop and/or strengthen. As a result, Latin America’s education systems are today not only struggling with the consequences of the pandemic, but also with privatization trends, insufficient support to public education, migration crises, socio-linguistic tensions and many other contemporary challenges rooted in historical and environmental dynamics that affect the region. To better understand these pressing issues and how they affect the contemporary education systems of Latin America, the objective of this panel is to provide insights on their nature, dynamics, and consequences. The significance of this panel is that it brings into focus, and into conversation, mulitiple areas of difficulty with which governments, schools, teachers, and communities across the region are struggling.

Overview

Concretely, this panel will explore four different country contexts: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Paraguay. First, however, the panel begins with a study on the general trends of privatization that have been affecting the region since 2013. This is followed by the second presentation—on teachers’ movements and struggles for public education in Colombia. The third presentation then shifts to highlight sociolinguistic challenges that emerge when education systems in Paraguay have to accommodate students and families from Brazil. The fourth presentation examines the provision of international aid in the context of education in emergencies, specifically focusing on the treatment of Venezuelan migrants in Peru and Colombia. Lastly, the final presentation highlights a range of voices that reflect on the contemporary challenges facing higher education in Latin America (climate change, threats to democracy, and increasing inequality) as well as possible futures for this level of education. The voices of diverse stakeholders are represented, including university leaders, administrators, students, professors, and researchers. The common thread that connects these five papers is the analysis of the impacts that the broader political and economic forces have on education. A variety of research methods are employed in this panel, namely a systematic literature review, critical realist analysis, semi-structured interviews, and holistic comparison. The different perspectives and methods employed in these studies responded to the needs of each context and were guided by the nature of the questions being asked. Together, the researchers provide a comprehensive picture of the pressing challenges and possible paths for action that need more attention going forward.

Structure

Each panelist will present for 12 minutes. Then, a discussant will provide comments on each paper, grounded in her expertise related to education in Latin America. This will be followed by time for the public to engage with the presenters by asking questions or providing their on insights.

The titles of the four presentations are:
1- Educational Privatization in Latin America during 2013-2023: Trends, Resistance, and Enabling Factors
2- Morphogenizing the study of educators’ activism for public education in Colombia: Some methodological considerations from critical realism
3- Educational challenges near the Paraguayan-Brazilian border: What happens in a place where political and cultural boundaries are misaligned?
4- The Role of International Aid in Education in Emergencies: The Hosting of Venezuelan Migrants in Colombia and Peru

Sub Unit

• Latin America SIG

Organizer

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii

Chair

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii

Individual Presentations

• Educational privatization in Latin America during 2013-2023: Trends, resistance, and enabling factors - Mauro C Moschetti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii; Xènia Gavaldà Elias, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Aya Marie Lorraine Kouao, The University of Hawaii at Manoa; Carl Moog, University of Pennsylvania

• Morphogenizing the study of educators’ activism for public education in Colombia: Some methodological considerations from critical realism - Juan David Parra, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Educational challenges near the Paraguayan-Brazilian border: What happens in a place where political and cultural boundaries are misaligned? - Juan David Martinez Zayas, University of Kansas; Bryan Mann, University of Kansas

• The role of international aid in education in emergencies: The hosting of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia and Peru - Patricia Grillet, University of Hawaii / East-West Center

• Possible futures of higher education in Latin America: Diverse perspectives, tensions and opportunities - Jorge G Baxter, Universidad de Los Andes

Discussant

• Axel Rivas, Universidad de San Andres