Social demand for change and educational improvement had never positioned itself in Chilean history as strongly as it has during the past decade. The emergence of Knowledge Society and the numerous student and social revolts have put education in the spotlight of public opinion and political agenda. Educational innovation – meaning any change in the teaching-learning processes aimed to improve them – turned into a fundamental concept, and teachers have become a key piece as agents of change. Paradoxically, Chilean educational system has advanced towards a model of standards-based reforms. While explicitly has been considered as a mechanism that aims to give grater autonomy to educational communities, making them protagonists of their own improvement, in reality, they are consolidated by rigid accountability mechanisms, pressuring schools and teachers to develop their work under an instrumental rationality. The difficulty of innovating becomes evident, since change requires empowered professionals who need to overcome the barriers imposed by educational standards. The main goal of this study is to identify, from a socio-critical and transformative perspective, the influence that power relationships exercised over teachers and teachers’ empowerment have in educational innovation processes in schools and high schools in Chile. We understand power relationships as attempts by one person or institution to control the actions of others – in this case, the pedagogical action – and teacher empowerment as the process of teachers to regain control over their own actions. We developed a sequential and transformative mixed methodology in two phases. In a first phase, we developed Narrative Productions with nine teachers, through which we learn their educational innovations, the associated power relationships and their forms of empowerment and resistance. We built on them the analysis categories for the second phase, a survey applied in schools and high schools in Chile, thus rescuing and exalting the voice of teachers. Results show that the teachers’ role demanded by the educational system and its institutions is far from what teachers consider as the ideal role. The educational curriculum, standardized tests for students and teacher performance standards have become mechanisms of constant pressure for teachers. Schools and their principals have formed structures to transmit and reproduce this pressure. Thus, teachers consider educational innovation as a resistance or an escape from these obligations, which they achieve by empowering themselves individually and collectively. The various power relationships and teacher empowerment processes influence how educational innovations develop, in their origins, goals, objects of change and sustainability.
Relaciones de poder y empoderamiento docente para la innovación educativa.
Pascual Medina , J. E. (Author). 20 Nov 2019
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis
Student thesis: Doctoral thesis