Who rules? Actors, movements, and struggles behind education governance in Latin America (Part 2)

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

How, by whom, and under what ideals education systems are governed are questions that lie at the heart of the CIE community. For the most part of the 20th century, the answer to these questions were found in analyzing the State, who controlled it and under what principles. However, over the last decades a mushrooming set of non-state actors have fought and conquered spaces that once belonged to the State. Philanthropists, corporations, NGOs, and also community-based organizations of different types have gained legitimacy to promote, craft, and implement education policies, and consequently, advacing their own ideas, values, and priorities within school systems (Avelar & Patil, 2020). Although not a new phenomena, these live forces keep reshaping the State and, more importantly, education governance as a whole. Hence, in times where the State has long lost its hegemony upon school systems and when power and legitimacy over education governance is disputed by a myriad of non-state actors, addressing this threefold puzzle remains a timely and pressing issue.

This double panel investigates the changing landscape of education governance in Latin America, a region where school systems have historically constituted an arena of contestation, political struggle, and social change. In particular, the legitimacy of the State in Latin America to govern school systems has frequently been challenged due to its varying capacity, inneficient bureaucracy, or weak organization to effectively rule over the education sector and its actors (Edwards et al., 2025). In the past, Latin American countries have endured pressures to adopt global agendas advocating for education decentralization, the spread of market forces as regulatory principle of school systems to improve student attainment. The 1990s wave of decentralization policies have produced severe power shifts among education actors in the region, while also opened room for new sites of political contestation or involvement of non-state actors (Falleti, 2009). Among them, philantropists have entered the scene with great force, deploying their agendas both regionally and locally, by partnering with subnational governments, NGOs and even international organizations across the region (Matovich & Esper, 2025).

However, these policy movements and actors also found resistance across the region, as teacher unions, community organizations or political parties rallied against them, seeking to limit their influence (Ornelas, 2019). Likewise, Latin America has also witness dozes of civil conflicts, and keeps facing complex emergencies such as mass migration due political crises, which give raise to numerous responses from both the international community but also local organizations. Schools become then a critical site for those seeking refugee, but also for agents interested in supporting or shaping their future (Díaz Ríos et al., 2024). Hence, these parallel and sometimes opposing forces are those at play in the region’s education sector, resulting in a mutli-layered and heterogenous governance topography.

Therefore, in examining education governance in the region, the panel intends to capture its complexity by analyzing the circulation of actors, policies, ideas, and material conditions influencing school systems, but doing so cross-scalarly – from the international arena and into the classroom –.

In particular, the panel seeks to answer a wide range of questions that address the shifting governance landscape in Latin America from multiple viewpoints:
In the context of ongoing political turmoil and recurring crises that erode the State legitimacy and cast doubts upon the realization of educational promises, what forces are driving the current direction of education governance in Latin America?
Amistd a myraid of state and non-state actors disputing their views over education, which of them and through what mechanisms are more successfull in articulating their influence on schools?
In light of the evolving and non-linear nature of policy reforms, in what ways have past reform movements evolved and how countries have institutional legacies both changed and condition reforms and outcomes?

The first panel examines how the role of the state in education governance is redefined through the participation of philanthropists, international organizations, and community-based actors. Felicitas Acosta incorporates the global and regional perspective by examining the circulation and re-contextualization of the Sustainable Development Goals in Latin America. Acosta’s paper interrogates the role of regional organizations in the adaptation or dismissal of this global agenda. Patricia Grillet investigates the Venezuelan migration crisis in Barranquilla, highlighting how international organizations, state agencies, and community associations interact in providing education to migrant children, exposing the tensions and gaps that arise when governance is distributed across multiple actors and scales. Diana Rodríguez-Gómez explores insurgent governance in eastern Colombia, where the ELN guerrilla exercises authority within a public school, alternately reinforcing or contesting state mandates. Collectively, these contributions show governance as multi-scalar, contested, and shaped by actors operating alongside or against the state.

The second panel turns to the role of state reforms, labour regimes, and philanthropists in reshaping education governance. Brent Edwards and colleagues examine the decentralization–privatization nexus in Colombia, showing how uneven subnational capacities have fostered reliance on private providers and, in turn, deepened inequalities across territories. Rocío Fernández analyzes the transformation of teachers’ labour regimes in Chile in the context of digitalization, highlighting how the expansion of the EdTech industry introduces new governance arrangements that reconfigure work relations, authority, and accountability in schools. Lluís Parcerisa, Cristóbal Villalobos, and Isidora Vasquez analyze the emergence of Fundación Olivo, a pioneering venture philanthropy organization in Chile, showing how practices anchored in long-term funding, strategic accompaniment, and investment logics are reshaping public–private boundaries and redefining the role of foundations in education. Taken together, these papers underscore how reforms and market-oriented logics interact with structural inequalities, powerful non-state actors, and historical legacies to redefine education governance in the region.

By examining governance across scales and actors—from philanthropists and insurgent groups to state reforms and international interventions—this double panel highlights the complexity, instability, and contested nature of education governance in Latin America. Together, the contributions demonstrate that understanding governance today requires moving beyond state-centered views to account for the dynamic interplay of actors, ideas, and institutions that continuously reshape school systems.

Sub Unit

• Globalization & Education SIG

Organizer

• Tomas Esper, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Chair

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii

Individual Presentations

• Educationalisation, Fictional Expectations, and Regional Mediation: Understanding SDG4 in Latin America - Felicitas M Acosta, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento & NORRAG

• A sandwich between International organizations and community-based associations with the State in the middle in contexts of education in emergencies - Patricia Grillet, University of Hawaii / East-West Center

• Rebel School Governance - Diana Rodríguez-Gómez, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Advanced datification of education in Uruguay, a public dropout awareness and the hurdles of teachers´ data agency - Alejandro Artopoulos, Universidad De San Andrés

Discussant

• Jorge G Baxter, Universidad de Los Andes