Alejandro Carrasco (University of Seville, Spain), Germán Fromm (University of Chile, Chile) and Helen M. Gunter (University of Manchester, UK)

What is the problem? How does the chapter support your thinking about the problem?

The key issue for this chapter is to show the way in which worldwide reforms known as the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) have had impact on national educational systems such as Chile. As we argue in the chapter, Chile is regarded as a laboratory where many of those reforms were tested out before being adopted by other national systems (see Carrasco and Gunter, 2018). In the chapter we help you to take a critical approach to the relationship between the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) and head teachers as leaders of schools in Chile. In particular, we examine the structure, context and consequences of Chilean educational leadership development policies. We undertake a critical approach by using two case studies of head teachers in Chile, where we provide evidence that they are immersed in a system that pushes them into standards compliance and implementing centralized decisions. We use a critical approach to examine the focus on standardization, and the impact this has had on the selection and evaluation of head teachers, and on professional in-service training in order to illuminate how the education system imposes regulation techniques and steering rationales through framing and judging the identities and practices of educational leaders. Overall, the claim is made this is helping head teachers to meet the standards but, in reality, it is inauthentic problem-solving for schools.

What are other ways to think about this? Where can I go next to follow these up?

Chile has developed a complex, politically legitimized, and legally conformed set of educational policies. Therefore, GERM reforms can be seen through a range of policy devices. The following works show the different ways in which GERM reforms is taking place and shaping important areas of school life, teaching, and learning:

GERM reforms beyond leadership policies

School community

This article analyses how education quality assurance policies shaped school life in controversial ways:

Lopez, V., Sisto, V., Baleriola, E., García, A., Carrasco, C., Núñez, C.G. and Valdés, R. (2021) A struggle for translation: An actor-network analysis of Chilean school violence and school climate policies. Educational Management Administration & Leadership. 49 (1): 164-187

School external support

Chilean educational privatization has expanded and reached unthinkable areas. This chapter shows how the state support to school was externalized to private organizations:

Parcerisa, L., Verger, A., & Falabella, A. (2020) High-stakes accountability and the expansion of a school improvement industry in Chile: A public-private sector comparison. In: A. Hogan & G. Thompson (eds.). Privatisation and Commercialisation in Public Education: How the Public Nature of Schooling is Changing New York: Routledge. 119-133.

School accountability

GERM reforms in Chile has reconfigured school collaboration, school change, and school purposes. These articles discuss analytically the role of the critical policy endeavours in Chile: vouchers, schools’ classiof Comparative and International Education, DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2020.1851593

Falabella, A. (2020) The ethics of competition: accountability policy enactment in Chilean schools’ everyday life, Journal of Education Policy, 35:1, 23-45.

Parcerisa, L., & Falabella, A. (2017). La consolidación del Estado evaluador a través de políticas de rendición de cuentas: Trayectoria, producción y tensiones en el sistema educativo chileno. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 25(89). http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.25.3177

Carrasco, A. & Fromm, G. (2016). How local market pressures shape leadership practices: evidence from Chile. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 48(4), 290-308. DOI: 10.10180/00220620.2016.1210584

School evaluation

A preeminent way in which GERM reform has transformed education in Chile is the reconfiguration of the meaning and operation of learning evaluation. This paper offers a critical insight about the increasing role of the Chilean SIMCE national standardized test:

Falabella, A. (2016) ‘Do national test scores and quality labels trigger school self-assessment and accountability? A critical analysis in the Chilean context’. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37:5, 743-760, DOI: 10.1080/01425692.2014.976698

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