The Teaching Profession in Latin America: Education, Reform, and Policy Actors in Chile, Colombia, and Peru

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Context
Latin America and the Caribbean face significant challenges in providing quality education, as documented in the increased difficulties in achieving SDG 4 and stagnation in the recent progress in access, coverage, and completion. This panel is set to explore the extent to which the teaching profession, the reform of its conditions, the meaningfulness of its practices, and its reproduction through education are central to the efforts to respond to the dire circumstances in countries like Chile, Colombia, and Perú. Regional efforts to address these problems include the Santiago Declaration (2024) and the Commitment to Action on Basic Learning and its Recovery (Bogotá, 2023), where the Ministers of Education of Latin America and the Caribbean met to convene a framework for educational revitalization, recovery, and transformation. These roadmaps for education policy in the region point to the importance of three areas: providing teachers with high-quality training, supervision, and pedagogical support systems in the classroom; understanding education as a process not focused on cognitive learning but also on socioemotional and civic competencies; supporting teaching and learning processes that recognize Indigenous knowledge, different contexts, and critical thinking.

Panel Structure
This panel recognizes the urgent necessity of better supporting the teaching profession, as teachers play a critical role in advancing these goals and, more broadly, strengthening the region’s answer to the most pressing educational problems and the need for better education quality. We thus provide an opportunity to discuss recent perspectives, experiences, and empirical evidence from the teaching profession in Latin America, from the macro level to the transformation of practices at the classroom level. The panel starts by investigating Peruvian teachers’ perspectives on the Teacher Reform Law from 2012. A national teacher survey (2021) and interviews were used to explore teachers’ views on policy changes, participation in policymaking, and strategies to boost their influence, which are key to understanding their role in educational reform. The second presentation deepens the understanding of the Peruvian Teacher Reform Law, but this time from the policymakers’ perspective. It applies a critical discourse analysis of memoirs and interviews with Ministers of Education from 2011 to 2021 about their reasons for implementing or maintaining accountability policies in the country. A third presentation introduces a contrasting lens by directly addressing Perú’s geographical, ethnic, and linguistic diversity by examining the effectiveness of the Rural School Networks program in addressing challenges faced by Intercultural Bilingual Education schools in the Peruvian Amazon. The attention to non-urban communities serves as a bridge to the fourth paper, which examines rural Colombian teachers’ expectations, growth mindsets, and self-efficacy beliefs. Results are based on survey data from a professional development program to cultivate digital skills developed by Fundación Escuela Nueva and offered to teachers from towns affected by the conflict. Finally, the last paper documents academic leaders’ perspectives on implementing practice-based teacher education models, curricula, and pedagogies in Chile, hoping to provide more meaningful preparation to new teachers. Results reveal factors that support and challenge organizational learning at the individual, group, and institutional levels. This study also identifies implications for practice.

Research Questions
The transition from the policy level to the implementation of professional development programs and concrete changes in teacher education curricula allows us to highlight the difficulties, successful trajectories, and opportunities for systemic change in a region defined by demographic diversity, economic inequality, and unequal education opportunities. Therefore, transversal questions: Are teachers recognized as influential stakeholders in policy changes? Are there persistent obstacles to decreasing educational inequality, particularly in rural and Indigenous communities? What are the obstacles to implementing innovative teacher preparation and professional development approaches in the region? These questions are approached from different methodological perspectives, including the quantitative analysis of survey data, the documentation of the trajectories of educational leaders and the critical analysis of their discourse, and the ethnographic approach and survey of educational and community leaders that push forward the boundaries of Indigenous education and pedagogical innovation. In this way, the panel establishes a dialogue that is not limited to the region and the experience of teachers but attempts to open the discussion to how comparative education research can bridge dissimilar experiences and recover the voices and beliefs of agents of change.

Scholarly Significance
This panel contributes to scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers interested in understanding, re-imagining, and transforming the role of teachers in Latin America and the Caribbean by exploring concrete examples where non-cognitive skills, Indigenous knowledge, and changes in teacher education are the main drivers of educational change. The presentations, considered to blend in the SIG of Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession, advance crucial bodies of literature and empirical problems. The literature on education reform and governance by analyzing the Peruvian Teacher Reform Law. Peru’s experience with intercultural bilingual education in the Amazon opens a path to describe and evaluate teacher education strategies based on teacher mentorship networks. The Colombian case provides evidence on perceived returns to education and non-cognitive measures such as growth mindset and self-efficacy beliefs for rural teachers working in areas affected by the country’s conflict. Lastly, the Chilean case documents the adoption of evidence-based pedagogies to train teachers with the potential to spread throughout the region.

Sub Unit

• Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession SIG

Chair

• Jonathan Beltran, Teachers College at Columbia University

Individual Presentations

• Navigating Educational Reform: Teacher Perspectives in Shaping Policy under Peru's Teacher Reform Law (Ley de Reforma Magisterial) - Jose La Rosa Villacorta La Rosa Villacorta, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Understanding policymakers' perspectives on teacher professionalization: Insights from Peru's Teacher Reform Law - Gabriela Chacon Ugarte, Columbia University Teachers College

• The Rural School Networks Program on Intercultural Bilingual Education Schools in Peru's Amazon: Experiences and Challenges for Pedagogical Mentors and Teachers - Alejandra Cespedes Ormachea, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Teacher Expectations, Self-Efficacy, and Growth Mindset: the Experience of Colombian Rural Teachers from Fundacion Escuela Nueva - Jonathan Beltran, Teachers College at Columbia University

• Exploring Chilean Academic Leaders’ Experiences Implementing a Practice-Based Teacher Education Approach - Nina Yacher, Teachers College, Columbia U

Discussant

• Regina Cortina, Teachers College Columbia University