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TITLE [Multidimensional Qualities to Improve Education.]INSTITUTION United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural

Organization, Santiago (Chile). Regional Office forEducation in Latin America and the Caribbean.

PUB DATE Apr 92NOTE 88p.AVAILABLE FROM United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization, Regional Office for Education in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean, Enrique Delpiano 2058(Plaza P. de Valdivia), Casilla 3187, Santiago deChile.

PUB TYPE Information Analyses (070)

EDRS PRICE MF01/PC04 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Comparative Educ4tion; *Cross Cultural Studies;

Curriculum Evaluation; *Developing Nations;*Educational Assessment; Educational Needs;*Educational Planning; *Educational Policy;Educational Resources; Foreign Countries; HigherEducation; Multicultural Education

IDENTIFIERS Caribbean; Latin America

ABSTRACTThis bulletin contains five essays on the theme of

expanding the challenge of improving the quality of education toencompass the curricular, administrative, institutional, and teachinglevels. The articles include: (1) "Educational Assessment Systems inLatin America: A Review of Issues and Recent Experience" (Robin Horn;Laurence Wolf; Eduardo Velez); (2) "Programme to Improve the Qualityof Primary Schools in Poor. Areas?. A ailean Experience" (MINEDUCChile); (3) "Bilingual Education Beyond National Frontiers,Bolivian-Peruvian Cooperation" (Lu.ls Enrique Lopez; Lucia D'Emilio);(4) "New Assignments for Technical and Professional Hi&I-1 SchoolEducation: Guidelines and Strategies" (Maria de Ibarrold); and (5)"Functional Illiteracy Requirements in Youth and Adults: Educationand Work in a Small Developing State" (Olabisi Kuboni). (EH)

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THE MAJORPROJECTOF EDUCATIONin Latin America and the Caribbean

SummaryPresentation 5

Educational assessment systems in Latin America.A review of issues and recent experienceRobin Horn, Laurence Wolff and Eduardo Velez 7

Programme to improve the quality of primary schoolsin poor areas. A chilean experienceMINEDUC Chile 29

Bilingual education beyond national frontiers.Bolivian - Peruvian CooperationLuis Enrique Lopez and Lucia D'Emilio

New assignments for technical and professionalhigh school education. Guidelines and strategiesMaria de Ibarrola

41

57

Functional illiteracy requirements in youth and adults.Education and work in a small developing state.Olabisi Kuboni 73

OREALC Activities 81

OREALC Publications 87

BULLETIN 27Santiago, Chile, April 1992

3

In order that this bulletinmay reflect in as complete and timely manner as possiblethe initiatives and activities carried outby each and all the countries of the regionin relation to the Major Project ofEducation in Latin America and the Caribbean,pertinent official bodies are invitedto send tothe UNESCO Regional Office for Education inLatin America and the Caribbeanall information they wishto have published in this bulletin.

The views expressed in the signed articles are those of their authors,and are not necessarily shared by IRVESCO.Reprint of this publication is authorized mentioning its source.

The publication of this bulletin has been made possible by the voluntary contribution of theSpanish Government to the activities of the Major Project of Educationin Latin America and the Caribbean.

4

Presentation

Strategies to improve the quality of education are taking onmultidimensional qualities. Consensus has broadened appreciably onthe need to deal with this challenge at a curricular, institutional,administrative and teaching level. This issue of the Bulletin contains aseries of contributions on this theme.First, we present a study by Robin Horn, Laurence Wolff and EduardoVelez that summarizes the techniques which have proven most successfulin implementing and using educational evaluation systems, and thatsuggests some future courses of actions in this field. It is based on thepremise that information obtained through educational evaluation is sopositive for the system that it is possible to reap enormous benefits if it islinked to a broader and more comprehensive programme for enhancingquality.This provides the framework for the report "Programmes for improvingquality in elementary schools in popular sectors ", in which the Ministryof Education of Chile gives an account of its recent efforts in this area.The programme is based on the concept of "positive discrimination ". Iteffectively demonstrates the potential of measurement systems toadequately target compensatory actions for which the centraladministration is responsible.Indigenous groups are among the most important target populations ofthe Major Project. Bilingual intercultural education is a strategy thathas proven significantly productive in this respect, from a curricular andmethodological standpoint. The article entitled Bilingual educationbeyond national frontiers, by Luis Enrique Lopez and Lucia D'Emilio,presents the case of the positive horizontal cooperation between twocountries in the region, working to implement an intercultural bilingualeducation programme for Aymara- and Quechua-speaking peasantpopulations.The article by Maria de Ibarrola analyzes the new tasks that lie aheadfor technical and professional education at high school level in theregion. She recalls the extensive and costly experience that exists on thesubject, and stresses the urgency of recouping it. This researcher statesthat high school technical education institutions require a neweducational administration which clearly pinpoints the actorsresponsible for bringing about innovation and change, and which

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pursues the building of institutional levels that guarantee the quality ofnew technological training.Olabisi Kuboni presents an analysis of the relation between educationand work from the standpoint of functional illiteracy among youths andadults in Trinidad and Tobago. His article sets forth the need to increasethe target population's capacity to integrate with its socio-economicenvironment. At the same time he mentions and discusses some specificskills.As usual, we also include the section on OREALC Activities.

EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS INLATIN AMERICA. A REVIEW OF ISSUES AND RECENTEXPERIENCE

Robin Horn, Laurence Wolff and Eduardo Velez*

The main objective of this review is to inform education decision-makers in LatinAmerica of the range and complexity of the issues involved in developing and imple-menting national educational assessment systems in this region. This review summa-rizes best practice in implementing and utilizing educational assessments, reviews theexperience of several Latin American countries in implementing national assessmentsystems, and comes up with a set of concrete suggestions for the future of educationalassessment systems for Latin American countries. These suggestions are designed tohelp ensure that educational assessments can in fact influence policy makers andteachers to improve the quality of education. This review is timely because manycountries in Latin America and the Caribbean are currently embarking on programs toassess educational achievement in primary education. Given their economic problemsand resulting constraints on public finances, these countries need to direct theirresources toward cost effective investments, programs, and interventions in education.Specifically, two countries, Chile and Costa Rica, have conducted national assessmentsfor the primary level. Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, Jamaica, Colombiaand Mexico have undertaken or are planning a variety of somewhat more limitedassessments of student learning. These countries, as well as Belize, Ecuador, NortheastBrazil and the state of Sao Paulo, are considering establishing larger, more systematicassessment systems.

Definitions

National assessments of student learning meas-ure the educational performance of a nation's orregion's students and evaluate the progress ofthe schools, school districts, municipalities, orstates in achieving curricular or other goals ofthe education system. National assessment sys-

Robin Horn is a World Bank consultant, currently workingfor USAID in Washington, D.C. Laurence Wolff andEduardo Velez are World Bank staff members.Case studies on educational assessments in Latin Americawere prepared by Joaquin Morales Frias (Chile), BlancaLilia Caro (Colombia), Juan M. Esquivel (Costa Rica),and Maria del Rayo Jimenez Victoria (Mexico).

tems differ from national certification examina-tion systems. The objective of national certifi-cation examinations is to identify students whohave successfully completed a certain level ofeducation or, alternatively, to select completersfor entry into the next higher educational level(e.g., from primary to secondary). To meet theirobjective, national examination systems mustuse the examination instrument to evaluate allstudents seeking a completion certificate orseeking selection into the next higher level ofeducation, for which there may be a restrictednumber of openings.

Testing for selection occurs in many LatinAmerican countries at the end of the secondarycycle, as a prerequisite for entrance to univer-sities. These testing and selection examinations

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BULLETIN 27, April 1992 / The Major Project of Education

generally are organized in such as way so as toprovide as little feedback as possible to studentsand teachers, beyond giving them a grade. Thisis in part because the designers of such tests areespecially concerned with security and test ad-ministration. Generally, Latin America countriesdo not have national or regional tests at theprimary level for purposes of certification orselection to secondary education. The exceptionsinclude Mexico, the Anglophone Caribbeancountries, and the Bogota metropolitan area ofColombia (for entrance into public secondaryschools in Bogota). In most of Latin Americaindividual teachers make judgments regardingwhether children will pass or fail at all levels ofprimary education.

If tests are already being administered forpurposes of certification or selection, it may bepossible to redesign or restructure the instrumentsand the overall design in such a way as to servesome of the same objectives of an assessmentsystem. In fact, the first step in consideringwhether to set up an assessment system in acountry is to determine whether existing certi-fication and selection tests can be adapted toserve assessment objectives. Piggy-backing onan existing testing program may be a cost-effective alternative to building a parallel as-sessment system, and should not be over- lookedin any strategy for achieving national educationalgoals.

It is also important to differentiate betweeneducational assessments, educational statistics,and educational research, all of which provideinformation of potential use to policy makersand practitioners. Typical educational statisticssystems often cover such elements as enrollmentsby grade and age, numbers of student graderepetitions, estimates of student flow, teachercharacteristics, physical facilities, equipmentand materials, and educational costs. The adventof the personal computer means that more datacan be gathered within a shorter period of time,and fairly sophisticated analyses can be under-taken to guide policy makers. Latin Americancountries, as is the case with most developingcountries, are only now beginning to go beyond

8 S

the rudimentary phase of educational statisticalanalysis.

Educational research is defined as the rigor-ous testing of hypotheses about causal relation-ships. In particular, much educational researchattempts to measure the determinants of studentlearning and achievement. State of the arteducational research requires complex samplingdesigns, sophisticated analytical expertise, andas well as sophi sticated computer modeling tools.Educational research, especially when under-taken on a longitudinal framework, can be quiteexpensive. In principle the aim of educationalassessments is not to support the testing ofhypotheses, although such hypothesis testingcan well be incorporated into them. In practice,as discussed below, the data developed by anassessment is so rich that significant benefits canbe achieved if these data are linked with acomprehensive research program.

How Educational Assessments Can Be Used

Obviously, by itself, measuring student learningdoes not yield increased achievement any morethan weighing grain will yield increasedagricultural output. It is, however, a necessarycondition to establishing quantitative targets,assessing the tradeoffs of alternative allocationstrategies, input combinations, and productiontechnologies, and allocating resources and ef-fort to achieve established targets. The potentialuses of educational assessment are describedbelow. Many of the uses of assessments can befound in theUnited States, which has the longesthistory and experience with assessments.

Using Assessments to Garner Public Supportfor Increased Efforts to Improve EducationalQuality

An educational assessment system that meas-ures student learning and reports on how wellstudent learning matches clearly stated andunderstood performance standards helps thepublic understand what students know, and al-lows them to track progress. Policy-makers can

Educational assessment systems in Latin America / Robin Horn, Laurence Wolff and Eduardo Velez

set clear targets, and the public can monitorprogress toward these targets. In particular, ifthe system is found to be deficient, then addi-tional funding and changed emphases can bejustified.

If assessment learning targets are set too high,then the public may become disillusioned whenreports indicate that very few students or schools(or only particular groups of student or schools)are achieving the targets. This dimension sug-gests careful planning. Involving a broadspectrum of well respected educationalists andleaders in the goal setting exercises, as well as inthe assessment policy board, and eliciting theparticipation of the press throughout the process,will help assure the public that the nationalassessment system and the national educationalgoals are developed in a fair and open process. Italso suggests that the audience(s) for the as-sessment reports should be clearly identifiedfrom the start, even before the assessment in-struments are designed, to assure that the kindsof questions likely to be raised by each audiencecan be answered by the assessment.

Using the Backwash Effects of an Assessment

An indirect way in which assessments can affectteaching and learning is through their"backwash"effects. Backwash effects is the term used todescribe the effects that an examination has onwhat teachers teach and what students make theeffort to learn. "Teaching to the test" exemplifiesbackwash effects. Backwash effects are alwayspresent in a school system that relies on anexamination to certify completion of one levelof education or to determine selection into asubsequent level of schooling (i.e., secondary topost-secondary), or into a particular trainingprogram (nursing or mechanical training). Inmany instances, the backwash effects of acritically important selection examination reachback through many years of schooling, such asa university entrance examination that effectsteaching from upper secondary down throughprimary school. If the examination is designedto measure the entire curricular domain, with a

variety of academic and nonacademicapplications, and higher order thinking skills,then it would make sense to capitalize on thebackwash effects of the examination.

Assessments, as discussed above, are not usu-ally combined with selection. Therefore, asample based assessment system whose out-comes do not yield consequences for the studentstaking the assessment tests, may not produceany backwash effects per se. Nonetheless, theassessment system may be designed to encour-age changes in the behavior of students or teacherssimilar to those yielded by backwash effects.First, if students, teachers, and parents takeeducational examinations seriously, then as-sessments may well exert powerful influence onwhat is taught and what is learned. By designingassessment instruments to examine the skillsand knowledge areas that all students shouldacquire, rather than only those skills relevant forstudents likely to advance into the next level ofthe system, the schools will increasingly findthemselves providing instruction that benefitsall children. Second, assessments may be de-signed to provide rewards, of financial or otherresources, or of prestige which may producebackwash-like effects. Finally, countries mayadminister assessment instruments to all studentsin all schools and then seek to combine assess-ment and certification objectives in a singlesystem, measuring the achievement of nationaleducational targets while simultaneously as-suring backwash effects.

A variation on the backwash effects of testingwould be "minimum competency" testing. Forexample, standards in the state of Alabama wereset indicating the minimal level of performanceon the Alabama assessment required of gradu-ating secondary school students in each subjectarea. The minimal standards targets were notestablished to punish poorly performing students.Rather, they were designed to help district officersand school principals monitor the progress ofAlabama students and to make sure that theyachieve a reasonable standard of education.Research in Alabama shows that students at allability levels, even advanced students, regis-

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tered marked improvements in assessment per-formance.

Diagnosing and Treating Learning Problemsand Improving InstructionalDesign and TeacherTraining

Another way in which assessment systems canbe designed to improve educational practice isby providing content diagnosis and specificfeedback from the assessment system to teach-ers, parents, students, and the community. Bysupplementing the feedback system with ananalysis of the types of errors students make andwith suggestions on techniques for improvedteaching to help students avoid these types oferrors, the educational assessment system canhave a direct and positive influence on studentlearning.

This was done with the Kenya examinationreform implemented in the late 1970s, withsuccessful results (Somerset, 1987)-a classiccase of utilizing a selection system to meetassessment-type objectives. First the examina-tions were revised to assess a broader range ofskills and higher order thinking skills. Thenthese new instruments replaced the older ex-aminations which were mainly measures ofstudents' rote recall. Subsequently, individualexamination items were carefully analyzed todetermine the types of skills in which Kenyanstudents were weak and appeared to consistentlylack comprehension. For instance, by means ofan analysis of the examination items, it wasdiscovered that while students were measuringup well in the area of formal mathematics theory,they were not capable of applying their mathskills to everyday situations. It was suggestedthat the curriculum and teachers were being tootheoretical and were devoting too little time topractical applications. In one issue of thenewsletter regularly distributed to the teachersas part of the examination reform program,teachers were advised of the problem, weregiven examples of the types of errors studentswere making, and were told of more effectivemeans of teaching the necessary skills. Annex 1

1010

provides an example of the feedback from Kenya.The Kenya feedback system has been criticizedas helping students to answer examinationquestions better rather than improving learning.However, to the extent that examination ques-tions measure fundamental higher level skillsthis is not a valid criticism.

Similarly educational assessment systems canbe used to provide information to educators thatcan help them improve instructional design andclassroom pedagogy. Recently, a number ofstates in the USA have developed in their as-sessment system a number of indicators designedto identify and accurately measure performancein a number of narrowly defined subject areadomains. In this way, educators can tell ifparticular practices, teacher training approaches,or curricular materials are effective. Based ogthis approach, for example, a school system canredesign its in-service teacher training system ina way that the assessment analysis indicates ismost effective.

Rewarding Good Performance

Assessments can also be used to reward goodperformance or help those with bad perform-ance to improve. Results from assessments havebeen used to hold regions, municipalities, dis-tricts, or even schools and school leaders (giventhe appropriate sample) accountable for per-formance in a number of states and districts inthe USA. Student assessments cannot be used tohold teachers accountable for good teachingbecause it is not unlikely that differences in thequality of students taught by teachers beingevaluated can be statistically controlled (Glass,1974). For example, in Boston and South Caro-lina, districts showing significant improvementin assessment scores (taking initial conditionsand school social indicators into account) arerewarded with additional finances; those dis-tricts that continue to perform below a certainstandard are sanctioned by transferring theirauthority to run their schools to an outside teamof experts. Another example was Michigan's1973 Chapter III plan (for educationally


disadvantaged students). The plan was designedto initially allocate funds on the basis of schoolswith high numbers of poorly performing students,and then to allocate funds on the basis of studentprogress from baseline levels.

One of the problems associated with systemsof rewards and punishments is that teachers,principals, and districts may have greater in-centives to cheat-to record or report higher scoresthat those which were or would have been actuallyearned. They can justify cheating if they believeit will help them obtain resources for their stu-dents or if they believe that the system is unfair.Obviously, test security would have to be seri-ously considered when implementing this typeof plan. Another problem associated with usingaccountability as a mechanism to raise schoolquality is that it would require all the nation'sschools to be included in the sample (unlessdistrict-level accountability is sufficient).Moreover, the use of the assessment to assignrewards or to dole out punishments would lendthe system a legitimacy for which legislators orother policy-makers may not be initially prepa-red. These burdens suggest that funding deci-sions-certainly on a school by school basis-should not be a part of a new assessment system,and should only be carefully introduced underany circumstances.

Using National Assessments in EducationalResearch and Development

As noted above the primary aim of educationalassessments is to measure progress in meetingthe curriculum goals of the educational system-not to support the testing of research hypotheses.However, considering the richness of the out-come measures gathered by an assessment, themarginal effort needed to generate and test re-search hypotheses suggests that all assessmentsshould include a research component.

It is true that assessments do not and cannoteffectively build in all of the statistical controlsnecessary to assure that good research can beconducted (especially as these controls areconstantly being discovered or refined). None-theless, national assessment efforts produce an

immensely powerful set of outcome measures.To the extent that assessments also provide anarray of control and background information onstudents and family characteristics, teachercharacteristics, and classroom factors, along withinformation on costs, it will be possible forresearchers to assess the effectiveness of alter-native inputs into the schooling process, andidentify cost-effective solutions to improvingstudent performance. Moreover, a key compo-nent of such a research agenda is analysis thatattempts to find links between educationalachievement and labor market productivity orother social outcomes. This type of researchwould allow policymakers to assess the economicrates of return associated with different measuresof educational skills acquisition. However, muchof this type of analysis requires fairly advancedresearch capacity. A fundamental strategy in thebuilding of an assessment system should there-fore be the funding of a research capability thatmay include skilled and experienced subjectmatter specialists, educational analysts, statisti-cians, psychometricians, econometricians,sampling experts, and computer programmers.However, a country that lacks a state of the arteducational research apparatus need not beconstrained to start one without a sophisticatedteam of highly advanced researchers and re-search tools since adequate and useful researchcan be done without the use of the most sophis-ticated techniques. Nonetheless, the more com-plex the questions being asked of the data, themore advanced the research methodology requi-red to answer them accurately, and the moresophisticated the research system will need tobe.

In short, while assessment systems are notspecifically designed as pure research instru-ments, they could be designed in such a way asto collect data that can be used by the researchcommunity to conduct basic research on edu-cation, to analyze the effectiveness of variouseducational inputs, and to estimate cost-effectiveways of increasing student learning. Adequatefunding should be built into the system to ensurethat such research is carried out.

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Technical and Management Issues inEducational Assessments

The following are the main issues and decisionswhich will need to be taken in the course ofimplementing educational assessments.

Defining Objectives

The objectives of educational assessments de-termine what should be measured and how itshould be measured. These objectives willtherefore need to be clearly articulated from thestart. As noted above assessment objectivescould include: monitoring and reporting on thenation's progress towards established perform-ance targets; providing quantitative ammuni-tion to encourage or to direct districts or schoolsto improve performance; furnishing educatorswith data and research for the purpose ofdiagnosing and treating learning problems or ofchanging instructional design and teachertraining; and developing materials that encourageteachers to improve their instructional contentand pedagogical practices. A decision will berequired on what levels and subjects would betested. A realistic five-year implementationplan will need to be prepared on the basis of theobjectives and modalities selected. Adissemination and follow up plan Should be anintegral part of the design.

The Nature of the Testing Agency

A decision will need to be taken on the locationand nature of the testing agency. One alternativeis to locate all the testing expertise in agovernment agency. This may be necessary ifprivate institutions do not exist. Another alter-native is to keep the central assessment agencyin Government very lean, with a few high qual-ity staff, and to contract out the major work ofundertaking an assessment to a non-profit au-tonomous institution. This second approach willhelp to ensure flexibility and high quality oftechnical personnel. Usually an independentassessment policy board overseeing the entire

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assessment process is established, as well assubject councils and advisory committees, onefor each subject area or academic discipline, toelucidate specific examination objectives withineach area.

Determining the Type of Tests to be Given

Achievement tests are examinations keyed tomeasuring the extent to which children learn theintended curriculum. Aptitude tests measurestudents' "innate" abilities. Achievement teststherefore would normally be used to serve theobjectives of an educational assessment.Achievement tests have greater pred ictive powerfor future educational levels than aptitude tests."Objective" tests, such as multiple-choice orshort-answer test formats, are mqre cost-effec-tive, reliable, amenable to statistical analysis,and easier and quicker to score than perform-ance tests, such as long essay examinations orskill demonstrations. However, performance-type items help to ensure the teaching and learningof writing, original thinking, analysis, and syn-thesis, and should be included if financially andtechnologically feasible. Criterion referencedtests measure whether particular or prescribedstandards are met. Norm referenced tests com-pare and rank student learning with average(mean) achievement levels. Criterion referencedtests are normally the preferred choice for as-sessments since they are designed to examinestudents' mastery of the system's educationalobjectives. The performance standards of crite-rion referenced examinations will need to bemade explicit and widely reported and under-stood.

Preparing and Administering the Test

The preparation of a detailed examinationsyllabus for each subject area and grade-level tobe assessed is the first step in instrument devel-opment. Objectives listed in the examinationsyllabus are normally distributed across all ofthe content, process, and context areas judged tobe of fundamental importance. How much em-

Educational assessment systems in Latin America / Robin /torn, Laurence Wolff and Eduardo Velez

phasis to place on recall of factual informationand terminology, and comprehension of basicconcepts and ideas, versus higher-order thinkingskills, problem analysis, and the application ofknowledge and skills will need to be decided.Table 1 provides an example of levels of thinkingskills. Test items will need to be generated bytrained item writers to correspond to the contentand process areas identified in the examinationsyllabus. Assessment instruments will alsonormally measure a variety of student, classroom,school, and community input and cost itemsdetermined on the basis of the assessmentobjectives and the feasibility of gathering suchinformation. Draft assessment booklets withaccompanying answer blanks will need to beprepared in multiple forms containing thebackground questionnaire, test items, andadministration instructions. Strict quality con-trols and test security controls should overseethe entire preparation process. A rigorous full-field pilot test conducted in a representative sub-sample of classrooms is needed to iron outdifficulties in the examination booklets and ad-ministration procedures, and to provide guid-ance for preparing the final versions of theexamination booklets. A decision will need tobe taken with regard to whether to test a sampleor a universe of students. If the assessment is notalso part of an effort at certification or selection,and is not designed to provide feedback to everyteacher about his/her class, then a scientificsample of students would achieve the objectiveof improving learning at a fraction of the costand effort of a full assessment of the studentpopulation. However, if the sampling isnot donerigorously, then the assessment may provideinaccurate and confusing results. For an assess-ment based on a sample, a stratified clustersample is normally most appropriate. Areas likelyto be less responsive than average would need tobe over-sampled and private schools could beincluded for comparison purposes. Multiplechoice items will need to be scored mechani-cally and essay items read and scored byprofessional readers backed up by supervisorsand a reliability system. Items will need to be

analyzed for quality and discriminability, initiallyon the basis of percentages and means, and later,depending on the testing agency's capacity, usingmore sophisticated techniques.

Disseminating and Following up onTest Results

What information to report, to whom it shouldbe reported, and how to report it is the first stepin the design of a national assessment. Reportsof results will need to be bold, clear, direct,concise, short, journalistic, balanced, graphi-cally illustrated, non-technical, tailored tospecific audiences, disseminated to the smallestlevel consistent with the sample, and presentedby background characteristics. For maximumimpact reports and results would need to beincorporated into pre-and in-service teachertraining and other programs and into guidelinesfor teaching and supervision.

Determining Costs

Table 2 provides very rough estimates of therelative costs of sampling compared to uni-verses and "objective" compared to performancetests. Depending on the modality selected andthe size of the universe, the costs for, say, aprimary level test in Spanish and mathematicscould range from as little as US$100 000 to asmuch as US$40 million. The least expensivesystem is one with "objective" tests directed at asmall scientifically selected sample. The mostexpensive system is a "performance" basedsystem directed at the universe of students.

With few exceptions, the costs of undertakingeven a large scale assessment are always a verysmall fraction (less than 0.1%) of the total billfor the educational system, of which most of thecosts are for salaries. However, these costs arediscretionary, with uncertain and sometimespolitically sensitive results.

It is quite important to prepare realistic costestimates from the start for a five to ten yearprogram and to try to get a commitment fromcentral government authorities to adequatelyfinance the assessment system over that period

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Table 1

A TAXONOMY OF EXAMINATION QUESTIONS

QuestionCategory

Level of ThinkingRequired from Student

Examples

1. RecallWho? Whatl?Where? When?

2. ComprehensionDescribe, comparecontrast, explain,rephrase, translate.

3. ApplicationApply, solve,classify, select.

4. AnalysisIdentifying causesor reasons, drawingconclusions, inferencesdeductions.

5. SynthesisPredict, propose,plan, write.

6. EvaluationJudge, evaluate,decide, appraise.

Recall of facts, observationsor definitions.

Giving descriptions, statingmain ideas, comparing, andcontrasting.

Applying appropriate rules andtechniques to solve problems;recognize principles in newsituation.

Making inferences, findingevidence to supportconclusions.

Solving problems, makingpredictions. Producing originalcommunications.

Judging the value of ideas, of asolution to a problem, of themerit of art and literature.

1. What is the capital of Chile?2. When did Paraguay become

independent?

1. Describe in your ownwords the theme ofa story.

2. Compare life in urban andrural areas of the country.

3. interpret a graph.

1. Juan and Marta can do apiece of work in 15 days. Theywork together for six days.Then Marta leaves and Juanfinishes the work in a further30 days. In how many days canJuan do the piece of work alone?

1. What is Garcia Marquez'views of society in his novelOne Hundred Years ofSolitude?

2. Following yourexperiments, what is yourconclusion about thefactors affecting the growthof seedlings?

1. What would happen ifthere was drought?

2. What actions could thegovernment take tocontrol populationgrowth?

1. Do you think thatnewspapers influence publicopinion?

2. Should the government takeaction to control populationgrowth?

Source: The World Bank, Examination Systems in Africa, 1991, adapted from Perrott (1982).

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Table 2

COMPARISON OF COSTS OF ADMINISTERING TYPES OF ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS'(/n dollars)

Tipe of test

Estimated costs for test administration (Orders of magnitude)

Fixed costfor test

preparation

Estimatedcost per

test

Number ofstudents ineducation

system

Cost forsample of

2 000students

Cost foruniverse

of allstudents

"Objective" test(student showsknowledge andskills by answer-ing multiplechoice and openended questions)

Performance test(student showsknowledge andskills throughessays, demon-strations,laboratory exercises)

100 000 1 400 000 102 000 500 000

2 000 000 102 000 2 100 000

4 000 000 102 000 4 100 000

50 000 10 400 000 70 000 4 050 000

2 000 000 70 000 20 050 000

4 000 000 70 000 40 050 000

Source: Derived from Lockheed, 1991, Table 2, and from Esquivel.I Costs are based on rough estimates in countries such as Costa Rica and Ecuador for a primary-level test in Spanish and

mathematics. Sample size will vary depending on the objective of the assessment, including how many sub-groups (e.g.,urban/rural/public/private, by region) are to be studied. A sample size of 2 000 will usually be adequate in terms of givingreliable estimates of scores if only a few sub-groups are to be studied.

of time. This will also influence decisions on thenumber of subjects and levels to be tested. Inad-equate financing may result in a one-shot as-sessment poorly integrated into the educationsystem and therefore with little impact onlearning.

Assessment Systems in Latin America

As noted Chile and Costa Rica have assessededucational attainment at the primary level at anational level. In addition to Chile and Costa

Rica, Honduras, Brazil, Jamaica, Colombia, andMexico have undertaken a variety of limitedassessments of student learning. These coun-tries, as well as the Dominican Republic, Belize,Ecuador, Northeast Brazil, and the state of SaoPaulo are considering establishing larger, moresystematic assessment systems. The followingsections summarize the experience of Chile andCosta Rica, which have implemented the mostcomplete educational assessments in LatinAmerica, in relation to the technical and mana-gerial issues described above. The sections also

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summarize the experience of Mexico, since ithas a long standing Government agency whichhas undertaken a variety of assessments basedon sample surveys, with mixed results, andwhich is currently facing major problems offinancing and personnel. Finally the experienceof Colombia is also reviewed. Colombia has avery strong and well organized university en-trance examination system. The institution re-sponsible for this program has expanded itsactivities to support an entrance examination tosecondary schools in the Bogota metropolitanarea. The example of Colombia is included,first, because of the high quality of its testingagency, and secondly, because it is a good exam-ple of a selection system which in the futurecould be utilized for assessment purposes.

The Chilean Assessment System

History, background and results

In 1978 the Ministry of Education (MOE)commissioned a team from the UniversidadCatolica to develop a system to assess the qual-ity of the education focusing on factors thatinfluenced educational achievement. In 1980MOE conducted pilot studies in two regions,and the Programa de Evaluacion del Rendim ien-to Escolar (PER) started in 1982. In 1984, aseries of tests were administered nationwidecovering 390 000 fourth and eighth gradestudents in 3 200 schools. The main objective ofthe tests was to obtain information on cognitiveachievement (reading, mathematics, and socialand natural science) and to inform parents andsupervisors about achievement levels on a schoolby school basis. However the work was notsuccessfully completed because of inadequateadministration and resistance from teachers andsupervisors because of threats that teachers orschools would be punished for poor results onthe tests. Shortly after, the Centro de Perfeccio-namiento, Experimentation e InvestigacionesPedagOgicas (CPEIP), a MOE dependency, de-veloped the Sistema de EvaluaciOn de la Calidadde la EducaciOn (SECE), with the objective of

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identifying factors that could be used to improvethe quality of the education in preschool, pri-mary and secondary education levels. A weakinfrastructure and limited resources explainedwhy SECE also had a very short life. Only onetest application was administered among 9 300eighth grade students in 300 schools in 1986.

Based on these experiences MOE decided tostart a new assessment system (Sistema deMediciOn Sobre la Calidad de la Educacion,SIMCE) managed by the Universidad Catolica.The system was put in place to measure educa-tional outcomes (mathematics, Spanish, socialsciences and natural sciences) as well as affec-tive development, and internal efficiency indi-cators. In 1988, new improved achievementtests were applied to 233 000 fourth graders in5 600 schools; and a year later, in 1989, the testswere applied to 193 000 eighth graders in 4 600schools. SIMCE articulated the following spe-cific and very ambitious goals:

assist the MOE in its normative work and in itssupervision of the system;assist the regional and provincial authoritiesin supervision and technical support; andestimate quality in each educational institu-tion, compare these results, look for explana-tory factors, and evaluate the results ofeducational programs.The main conclusions of SIMCE were:public municipal schools scored lower than"aided" schools and much lower than privateschools;rural areas scored much lower than urban andsuburban areas;there was a high correlation between socio-economic status (s.e.s.) and scores on theassessment; andan analysis of the 100 worst school confirmedthat the common denominator was povertyand rurality.The results were interpreted to mean that

increased autonomy at the local level, as a meansof introducing a private-sector "mentality" to allprimary schools, might lead to increasedachievement. The Government has been imple-menting a policy with this in mind.


A dissemination plan was prepared and theresults were widely distributed. Each schoolreceived detailed results and parents were alsoinformed of the school results. Booklets, audio-visual materials, and opinion surveys were used.The cost of the program per year was estimatedat US$5 per student, or about 0.1% of the MOE' sbudget.

Future plans include improving the cognitiveinstruments, adding more attitudinal instruments,analyzing the worst schools in greater detail, andundertaking more research.

What was measured

Chile opted for achievement rather than aptitudetesting, and for criterion-referenced rather thannorm referenced tests. However, in addition tocognitive items, Chile decided to measure indi-vidual development; including self-concept andself-esteem in relation to school experience, andalso to measure opinions of students, parentsand teachers on the educational process. It is notclear what Chile gained in terms of operationalguidelines from these additional questions, ex-cept possibly greater political acceptance bythose taking the examinations.

Chile opted mainly for a multiple choice for-mat, but also included open-ended writing tests.Chile corrected only a random sample of 10% ofthe students' writing samplesa potentially costeffective approach to the problem of cost ofopen-ended questions. Information was not madeavailable on any problems of reliability relatedto marking the open-ended questions, nor wasany information available on how markers weretrained and supervised.

Designing the instruments

Chile has a centralized curriculum, applied in allregions of the country. For each grade level (4thand 8th) two criteria were used to identify thecurriculum objectives that should be measuredby SIMCE: that most schools covered theobjectives and that they could be measured in anobjective test format. Based on the official pro-

gram for each subject matter, education special-ists selected a list of fundamental objectives thatwere taught in most schools. Objectives thatneeded oral answers or demonstrations (i.e. theuse of tools or machines) were excluded.

A committee formed by teachers and re-searchers identified items for each objective.Each item was analyzed in terms of its corre-spondence with the objective and the adequacyof style and distractors. Through consensusitems were rejected when these two aspects werenot fulfilled. Finally, all selected items weretested in a pilot study among 3 500 students thathad finished 4th and 8th grade the previous year;each item was answered by 350 students. Eachitem was evaluated by its difficulty level (itemswere accepted for the final set if they werecorrectly answered by at least 30% of the stu-dents), the internal reliability of the whole test(the item-test correlation had to be greater than0.30), and the percentage of unanswered items(items that were not answered by at least 10% ofthe students were dropped of the final selection).The reliability of the final test, measured by theKuder-Richardson approach, is higher than 0.90.

Background questions measured characteris-tics of the students and their families, teachers,classroom, directors, schools and the commu-nity where they are located. As noted abovethere may have been an excessive number ofbackground questions.

With regard to booklet preparation and secu-rity, two parallel formats were assembled foreach test. Packages were organized by destina-tion identifying region, city and school, and a listwas provided to control the number of tests sentto each destination and the number of testsreturned. Overall security seems not to havebeen a problem.

Administering the assessment

In Chile all students in fourth and eighth gradestook the mathematics and Spanish tests, with theexception of isolated schools which wereexcluded from the assessment. Total coveragewas 90%. The social science and natural science

17


tests were applied to a sample of students usinga stratified sampling frame that controlled forsocioeconomic level; geographical location,including rural urban location; and type of school(public municipal, subsidized private, and non-subsidized private). This scheme will be kept forfuture applications. It was decided to assess allstudents in order to provide feedback to allteachers in the key areas of mathematics andSpanish. This approach led to relatively highcosts and could have been replaced, at leastpartially, by sample surveys. For the naturalsciences and social sciences, a random sampleof 10% of the students was selected. In addition,although the writing test was applied to allstudents only a random sample was corrected.

The field work lasted a week but all the testsare administered in two days, Wednesday andThursday. All 40 Direcciones Provinciales par-ticipated in the process with the collaboration ofthe supervisors (748) who selected and train thetest monitors and interviewers (9 000, selectedamong school teachers). Optical scanners at theUniversidad CatOlica were used to score themultiple choice tests. The results of the writingscores were mechanically added to the other testscores.

At the Universidad CatOlica the informationwas validated and print outs produced at thestudent, school, municipal and regional level.Using LOTUS and SPSS, basic frequencies areobtained, as well as cross-tabulation at differentlevels including students' socioeconomic sta-tus, school modality and school administration,and region. Little or no multivariate analysiswas carried out.

Disseminating the Results

In Chile reports of the average achievement (ona class by class basis) for each test were sent tocentral and regional educational authorities,supervisors, school directors, teachers, munici-pal authorities and parents. The reports summa-rized achievement by each learning objective,identifying the percent of students that reachedeach objective. To interpret the results two

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mechanisms are used: an explanation of how tocompare schools was provided in the reports andmeetings using audio-visual materials were heldwith supervisors, directors and teachers.

A manual on pedagogical implications of thetests was provided by SIMCE. Only 35% ofteachers reported using the manuals. On a scalefrom 0 to 10 points from not useful to highlyrelevant, teachers scored the results at an aver-age of 5.7, supervisors at 7.6 and provincialauthorities at 7.7.

Research and cost effectiveness analysis wasnot undertaken by SIMCE in spite of the po-tentially rich results. However the fact that pri-vate institutions did far better than public insti-tutions led to a major debate on re-organizingthe education system.

Managing the Assessment

In Chile SIMCE has been under the direction ofthe Universidad Catolica, and its director andthe academic and administrative directors areuniversity faculty members. An interdiscipli-nary group of educators, psychologists andsystem engineers from the Universidad CatOli-ca, MOE and consultants from UNESCOimplemented SIMCE. The university wasresponsible for test design, data collection andsystematization, data analysis, and data reporting.The Government is planning to transfer thesystem to the MOE (with technical assistancefrom the Universidad) and a proposed Bank loanwould include financing to help institutionalizethe system. This approach runs a risk ofexcessively bureaucratizing the system and willreduce flexibility. In any event there is a needfor a training program to improve the skills ofthe people involved in SIMCE as well as topromote the interdisciplinary work of psycho-metricians, system engineers and educators.

The Costa Rican Assessment System

History, Background and Results

Two factors gave origin to the assessment ofprimary education in Costa Rica. First, since the


educational reform in the sixties, teachers andparents thought that the quality of primary edu-cation had been deteriorating as a result of theautomatic promotion policy and the eliminationof the entrance exam to secondary education.Second, results from research conducted be-tween 1981 and 1986 by the Instituto de Inves-tigaciones para el Mejoramiento de la Educacionen Costa Rica (IIMEC), of the Universidad deCosta Rica, showed low education achievementamong primary students. In 1986 MOE askedIIMEC to test students from 3rd, 6th, 9th gradesin basic education and the last year in secondaryeducation in mathematics and Spanish. The testfor the last year of secondary education wasdesigned for purposes of certification and wasalso used for university entrance. In 1986 and1987 the universe of students were tested. In1989 a stratified sample was tested.

The objective of these surveys was neverclearly articulated. However it was clear that theMOE wished to make the public aware of thelow level of education and to have a nationaldebate on the question. A second, but not ar-ticulated objective, was to prepare the public forthe re-introduction of summative examinationsat the end of the sixth and ninth grades.

The results of the assessment were as followsthe achievement scores were low in compari-son with the nation-wide curriculum objec-tives. However, the low scores can be explainedin part by the fact that students had littleinterest in scoring well because tests wereknown to be diagnostic and not summativeand because teachers themselves were notadequately urged to motivate the students;there was widespread lack of basic knowledgein the fundamental areas of Spanish, math,science, and social studies;private institutions did best, followed by "semi-private" institutions which had some publicsupport. Public institutions did far worse thanthe private and semi-private schools;urban schools did much better than ruralschools, and larger schools generally did betterthan smaller schools;day time academic secondary schools did best,

followed by technical schools, agriculturalschools, and night-time academic schools;andachievement in later grades seemed to belower than achievement in the earlier gradesin comparison with the official curriculum.MOE did not provide feedback to individual

teachers and a long term assessment plan wasnot articulated. IIMEC undertook on its own toprovide to individual schools, but MOE staff didnot use the information, possibly because theinitiative for the assessment was very stronglyassociated with the Minister himself ratherthan the system. IIMEC sent information toeach school as well as to the press on its scores.In addition IIMEC sent information on the ex-tent to which specific curriculum objectiveswere being met through the test. The cost perstudent varied from US$1.34 to US$7.69. Thetotal cost was generally around 0.1% of theMOE's budget.

Subsequently MOE decided to abandon theidea of a centrally prepared and administeredtest in favor of tests developed by district on thebasis of national criteria. The objective of thesetests is to establish a minimum level of knowl-edge necessary for graduation from primary andsecondary school, and to improve quality throughgiving more responsibility to the student, parent,and teacher. These district level tests in the lastyear of primary education count 50% in the finalgrade a student receives, and therefore the im-plicit objective of the initial assessments appearsto have been met. They are prepared at thedistrict level by groups of teachers on the basisof national guidelines as well as locally defined"needs." However the district level tests are notscored by machine and therefore systematicfeedback is not possible, nor is there an objectiveway of comparing district by district results.There is also a potentially serious problem ofsecurity since many teachers participate in thepreparation of the test. For the future MOE hasproposed strengthening its own capacity fortesting and measurement and using IIMEC fortechnical assistance rather than as a programimplementor. In 1991, MOE began planning a

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new sample based assessment system, in con-nection with a World Bank financed project.

What Was Measured

Costa Rica's assessment was criterion-based,measuring what students learned with respect tothe intended curriculum. Initially only achieve-ment in mathematics and Spanish was covered.In the second year, natural sciences and socialstudies, as well as French and English for 9thgrade, were added. Only a small component ofthe Spanish test included an essay, with all theother tests based on a multiple choice format.

Designing the Instruments

Costa Rica has a centralized curriculum. Theobjectives of the test were selected on the basisof the official study programs. A group of 500teachers ordered the curriculum objectives fromthe most to the least important. Specific cogni-tive items corresponding with test objectiveswere selected by teachers and MOE personnel;a final group of 10 judges verified if they hadcontent and instructional validity before a finalselection was made. Three measures of reliabil-ity, including the Kuder-Richardson score, wereused to establ ish the quality of the items. Standardbackground questions identifying school andfamily characteristics were included.

Editing of tests was troublesome because MOElacked the technology to revise texts. Test printingand test storage was conducted by privatecompanies and security problems were observed,possibly lowering the overall validity of thetests. With regard to pre-testing, parallel tests,each with three items by objective, were appliedamong a sample of students to identify itemdiscrimination and difficulty.

Administering the Assessment

In 1986, the Costa Rican test covered the entirepopulation of students. In 1987 the test coveredall students, with the exception of multi-gradesingle-teacher schools (around 9%). In 1989 a

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stratified sample of students was used for theapplication of the tests.

IIMEC and MOE personnel together withhired teachers gave the tests. Teachers were notpermitted to give the tests in their own schools.The primary level assessments were scored byoptical scanner. The tests at the end of secondarylevel were hand scored. IIMEC undertook itemanalysis and descriptive analysis, including sim-ple cross-tabulations by student and schoolcharacteristics.

Disseminating the Results

In Costa Rica all schools got a summary of theirstudents' average achievement and a compari-son with other schools. Near 70% of the teachersreported that they had seen the results, but onlya small percentage of supervisors and teachersreported that they had used the results to improvethe way they teach in the classroom. Reportswere produced for the school, regional and centralauthorities. Based on the test results, MOE arguedin a variety of public forums for increasedinvestment in primary education and forincreased parental involvement. MOE used theresults of the initial tests to develop an in-serviceteacher training program which has not yet beenimplemented. No significant follow-up researchhas been undertaken, with the exception of somesmall scale analysis by IIMEC. With regard tofeedback, IIMEC benefitted from experience ofthe first three years of the program. MOE willutilize IIMEC in the design of the next stage ofassessment to be financed under the World Bankloan.


In Costa Rica MOE contracted IIMEC to developthe achievement tests and the statistical analysis,as well as the procedures for packaging,distributing and test appl icati on. MOE personnelconducted the actual field work. The Departmentof Evaluation at MOE does not have the technicalcapacity nor the resources to conductassessments. MOE now proposes to develop the

Educational assessment systems in Latin America /Robin Horn, Laurence Wolff and Eduardo Velez

"Sistema de Information Sobre la Cal idad de laEducation Costarricense", SICEC, based on theIIMEC experience. MOE does not have trainedtechnicians to conduct an assessment and toestablish a research operations includingpedagogical analysis of the tests. MOE is ex-pected to focus on strengthening IIMEC andestablishing within MOE only a very small highquality assessment unit (2-5 staff).

The Mexican Assessment System


Periodic assessments of the quality of theeducation in Mexico have been conducted forthe last 20 years, including experiences with the"International Association for the Evaluation ofEducational Achievement (IEA)", and theECIEL2 study of educational achievement. Since1972 Mexico also has had entrance exams tosecondary education. At that time 361 000students took the secondary entrance exam. Thenumber has since increased to more than 1 200000 in the 1980s.

The Direction General de Evaluacion y deIncorporation y Revalidation (DGEIR) hasundertaken several studies (varying in samplecoverage, academic subject evaluated, perio-dicity, depth of analysis, etc) designed to assessthe quality of different education levels. Someof the DGEIR studies assessing the quality ofeducation piggybacked on information from theentrance exams. Although a methodology hasbeen developed as a result of the experience, dueto the economic crisis, little was done during the1980s because DGEIR lost much of its special-ized human resources due to salary cuts. Todaymost of the staff lack training in relevant areas ofassessment and evaluation. Currently, with thesupport of the World Bank to recuperate thecapacity that deteriorated during the 1980s, atechnical assistance program is being design

2 ECIEL: Joint Studies on Latinamerican EconomicIntegration.

with the Educational Testing Service (ETS) tostrengthen DGEIR capacity to conduct assess-ment.

As a result of the Education ModernizationProgram, 1989-1994, DGEIR has been seekingto systematize its assessment in all 31 States,among others through the study "Evaluacion delAprendizaje en Education Prescolar, Primaria ySecundaria (EAEPPS)", which is part of theSistema Nacional de Evaluacion Educacional(SNEE). SNEE objectives seek to evaluate thelearning of subject matters at different gradelevels, highlight regional differences acrossStates, and evaluate the effectiveness of peda-gogy across schools. The results will identifydeficiencies and areas of excellence, which willbe used by the Secretarfa de Education Publica(SEP) to reallocate resources and refine itscurriculum, teaching and educational infra-structure improvement program. As dissemina-tion of the results of prior experiences was quitelimited, SNEE has started an awareness-raisingprogram among parents, students, but mainlyteachers and local authorities, so that they un-derstand the assessment process.

Similarly to other Latin American countries,the results of the-Mexican experience show thatthe majority of the students have low achieve-ment (i.e in a national study conducted in 1988among primary students, 69% scored a grade of6 or lower on an academic performance scalefrom 0 to 10), and that achievement is signifi-cantly related to student socioeconomic statusand school urban-rural location. At DGEIR thebasic level of analysis is distribution of fre-quencies so little information is available on thefactors associated with low achievement. Itshould be mentioned, however, that DGEIRconducts pedagogical analysis of the results andprovides feedback to the schools on detectedproblems.

The cost per student, around US$35, is higherthan the ones in other Latin American countriesbecause in the Mexican case the survey is alsoadministered to parents, teachers and headmas-ters. The current budget of DGEIR is less than0.1% of the SEP budget.

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What Was Measured

In Mexico a typical assessment study for pri-mary education measures cognitive achieve-ment and ability among a sample of sixth grad-ers (the last grade of primary education). Forexample the CEIS -80 study, a complement studyto entrance exams in 1980, measured cognitiveachievement in Spanish, mathematics, socialand natural sciences. The EAEPPS measurescognitive and affective aspects of students com-pleting preschool, cognitive achievement inSpanish, mathematics, social and natural sci-ences for students in each grade of primaryschool, and those four areas plus English forstudents in each grade of secondary education.Nearly all tests measure cognitive achievement(a few include aptitude measures), all arecriterion-referenced, and all use multiple choiceformats.


For the EAEPPS in Mexico, a group of expertsreviewed the study programs used during thelast 15 years to identify the contents presentduring this period. According to the criteria ofDGEIR experts some relevant contents wereincluded even if they were not present in allstudy programs during the period. The resultwas a desired academic profile for each gradefrom preschool to secondary. Once the testobjectives were identified, items were selectedby expert consensus. Item analysis, includingdegree of difficulty, reliability and validity hasbeen undertaken but not as a general rule, with aresult that, according to some experts in theDGEIR, the results of some studies are not valid.Recently the situation has deteriorated as DGEIRhas lost funding as well as expertise for itemdesign and analysis. Most studies include stand-ard sets of background variables, includingcharacteristics of the school, teacher, studentand family background, which have been testedand confirmed over time. DGEIR has standardprocedures to administer the test and to imple-ment the field work required to collect and

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systematize the information. Pilot testing isregularly undertaken.


In Mexico, with the exception of a test ofgraduates of teacher training schools, all assess-ment studies are based on samples which vary interms of size, geographical area, and samplingdesign. DGEIR officials report that, comparedto five years ago, today they have inadequateeconomic and human resources to select validsamples. Generally DGEIR uses large samplescovering at least a couple of states and Mexicocity. The typical unit of selection is the schooland a random sample is used to select students inthe classrooms. The tests are typically given bytrained interviewers that are hired for that par-ticular purpose. The computational capacityavailable to score and systematize the data islimited. There is access to software for statisticalanalysis but it is inadequately used. Test itemsare validated. The typical statistical analysis isthat of frequency distributions, but correlationalanalysis has been used at times.

Disseminating and Following-up the Results

In Mexico, reports on studies are distributedamong education authorities, supervisors andteachers. During the last two years DGEIRtechnicians have organized meetings to discussthe results. However there is very little educa-tional analysis and few, if any, pedagogicalrecommendations, are made. Local researchershave sometimes used the results of studies toundertake research. However the DGEIR doesnot undertake such research.


In Mexico, despite its far-reaching mandate,DGEIR's capacity to conduct assessments hasbeen decreasing and it is losing qualified techni-cians. Salaries have deteriorated and the privatesector has attracted many staff members. Cur-rently DGEIR has no sampling experts, and

Educational assessment systems in Latin America I Robin Horn, Laurence Wolff and Eduardo Velez

statistical analysts are badly out of date ontechniques for item design and statistical analy-sis. Under a proposed World Bank loan, DGEIR'scapacity will be strengthened.

The Colombian Testing System


As noted above, Colombia is of interest not somuch because it has undertaken assessments butbecause it has a well structured and organizedsystem of university entrance examinationswhich could be built upon for purposes of as-sessment. The system in Colombia began in1959, through a vocational guidance programunder the auspices of the National UniversityAssociation to help secondary education gradu-ates select university studies. The programincluded testing in topics such as verbal ability,mathematical reasoning, personality traits, ge-neral knowledge and university study prefer-ences. In 1962, the Educational Testing Service(ETS) at Princeton trained faculty membersfrom several Colombian universities on testdesign and analysis in order to improve thequality of the tests that at the time were beingimplemented among high school graduates whowanted to follow higher studies. About ten uni-versities participated in the program. In 1968,the Colombian Servicio Nacional de Pruebas(SNP-Colombian National Testing Service) wasestablished to administer a university entranceexam for all high school graduates seekinguniversity entrance. In 1984 SNP initiated apublic secondary education entrance exam inBogota in order to assign limited places. Up to1986 these secondary entrance exams measuredaptitudes (verbal, mathematical and abstractreasoning). From 1987 cognitive tests wereincluded in math, Spanish and natural and socialsciences. All tests are multiple choice with fouralternative answers. Annex 4 of this reportprovides samples of the background question-naire and instructions to students of one of thesehighly professionally prepared and administeredexaminations.

Like the other countries of the Region, inColombia the research capacity to analyze theresults of the tests is very limited. Typically onlyfrequencies and cross-tabulations are presented,and occasionally a more detailed analysis iscarried out by contracted research groups outsideof the SNP. The main results reported by recentstudies could be summarized as follows:

students from private schools get better scores,mainly in math and social studies;male students do better than female students;day time schools do better than night schools;technical schools get the higher scores fol-lowed by academic schools, agricultural andcommercial schools get the lowest scores;significant differences are observed by geo-graphical regions and by urbanization level;andyounger students and students whose parentshave higher education get better scores.In 1990 the cost of the university entrance

exams was near US$4 per student and each ofthem was charged with US$2.6 recovering asignificant proportion of the total cost. The examfor secondary entrance exam was US$2. perstudent, 10% of which was charged to the stu-dent. In any event, the total cost of both tests(US$1.4 million) in 1990 was less than 0.1% ofthe Ministry of Education budget.

What Was Measured

In Colombia the CNTS secondary school leaversexaminations, designed to select students forhigher education, measure verbal and math-ematical aptitude as well as achievement inbiology, chemistry, physics, Spanish, math-ematics and social studies (including philoso-phy, geography and history). All students takethese eight tests plus an elective from the follow-ing list: abstract reasoning, spacial relationships,mechanic aptitude, English, pedagogicalknowledge, agriculture, accounting, French,metalwork, and electricity. The CNTS tests aresimilar for primary school leavers in the Bogotaarea (selecting for entrance to public secondaryschools). Because their purpose is to select

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students, CNTS tests are norm-referenced; theemphasis is on the relative position of the stu-dents rather than on ability or on mastery of thecurriculum content. However the content of theachievement tests is based on the primary orsecondary curriculum. All tests are multiplechoice with five alternative answers in the caseof the university entrance exam and four alterna-tive answers for the public secondary schoolentrance exam.


Because Colombia has a centralized curriculum,applied in all regions of the country, the universityentrance exam is national and is based onsecondary school curriculum objectives. Themethodology to identify the test objectives hasbeen the same since 1968: SNP coordinates agroup of experts, including teachers and cur-riculum programmers, to identify curriculumobjectives according to Bloom's taxonomy. Foreach subject, once a list of fundamental objec-tives is established, a group of teachers andmeasurement experts identify items to measurememory, understanding, application, analysisand evaluation for each objective. Each yearsome of the proposed new items are included inthe exams to test their reliability and validity.Measurements of degree of difficulty and de-gree of item-test co-variance are used to deter-mine whether to include a new item in the itembank. The tests ask for identification of theschool, including geographical location, type ofadministration, nature, and modality, and socio-economic characteristics of the student, includ-ing gender, sex, age, marital status, familyincome, father and mother education andoccupation. The SNP has developed a series ofmanuals on procedures to organize andimplement the exams. There are manuals for thefield coordinator or delegate, classroomcoordinators, and instructions for roomsupervisors.


In Colombia the university exam is mandatory

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for all secondary graduates seeking universitystudies. The secondary level tests are requiredfor students wishing to attend a public secondaryschool in Bogota. For these reasons the testscover a universe rather than a sample. The numberof students taking the university entrance examhas increased from 28 000 in 1968 to 150 000 in1980 and 301 000 in 1990. The number of stu-dents taking the public secondary entrance examin 1984 was 60 000 and in 1990 74 000.

The SNP has developed a comprehensive se-curity system, starting with the management ofthe item bank, and including printing, packag-ing, transportation to school, distribution in theclassroom, gathering of answered tests, andtransportation back to the SNP headquarters. Aprivate security firm, Thomas de la Roux, isresponsible for most of these tasks.

Optical scanners are used to process the tests.Once the tests are validated, the results by stu-dent and schools are obtained by software devel-oped by the SNP. SNP undertakes simple sta-tistical analysis, including frequency distribu-tion and bi-variate analysis to contrast testsresults by some school and student socioeco-nomic characteristics. More efficient softwarelike SPSS or SAS is not yet used and could helpto improve the extent and quality of the currentstatistical analysis

Disseminating and Following-up the Results

In Colombia the SNP is highly efficient inproducing and disseminating testresults. Withinsix weeks of the test, SNP reports results to thestudent and her/his respective school. The SNPinforms the general public about the results atthe school level and annually the national presspublishes a list of the best 100 schools. Becauseof inadequate statistical analysis the reports pro-duced by the SNP are very descriptive and oflittle use for educational policy. The originalobjectives of vocational guidance has been for-gotten and the system is only used for selectionpurposes. There is no feedback to schools onpedagogical aspects, since the system is highlyfocussed on the selection objective. SNP evalu-

Educational assessment systems in Latin America I Robin Horn, Laurence Wolff and Eduardo Velez

ales each test application. A special format called"Closing of Program" has been developed forthis purpose. It includes statistics on numbers ofschools, students, etc., costs, dates, descriptionof problems during the application, and pro-posed solutions.


In Colombia, the support that MOE gave to theCNTS when it started in terms of resources andorganization, and the effort in shaping a team ofskillful technicians has been the key to thesuccessful experience of the CNTS. Out of the63 professional staff working in CNTS, 28 areresponsible for item design and analysis andresearch. While item design and analysis is welldone, almost no research is conducted. There isno education analysis of the results, no feedbackto the educational authorities, and therefore noexplicit effect on educational policy. It wouldseem that CNTS would be an excellent candi-date for the feedback experiment undertaken inKenya.

The Latin American experience:conclusions and recommendations

Chile has had the most successful experiencewith assessments. Chile initiated its program in1978. After initial problems, including resist-ance from teachers and students, the program, inplace since 1988, has successfully measuredlearning for universes among fourth and eighthgraders. The aim of the program has been toaffect educational policy and to strengthenteaching practice. The program included a strongdissemination effort involving civil servants,teachers, and parents. The program has influ-enced government policy and there is someevidence that it has affected classroom practice.The relative success of the Chile program ap-pears to be a result of the high quality of its staff,and a strong focus on providing feedback directlyto teachers, schools and districts and on informingthe general public of the nature and role ofassessment program. However, the program has

25

not included research on causes of school failureand has relied almost exclusively on high costcensuses rather than on samples. Furthermore,the relationship between the Ministry of Educa-tion (MOE) and the Catholic University imple-menting the program up to now requiresclarification.

Costa Rica initiated its program in 1986 and1987 and assessed the universe of third, sixthand ninth graders. The program did not have aclear articulated goal, but its implicit goals in-cluded using the assessments as a tool to arguein the public arena for additional funding forprimary education, and convincing the public ofthe need to re-introduce the use of partlystandardized tests for certification of secondaryschool graduates. The assessment did not includethe objective of using the assessment as a directtool to improve classroom practice. Feedback toschools and teachers has been ad hoc. CostaRicahas a limited human resource base, especially inGovernment, for this kind of activity.

The Government of Mexico has undertakennumerous assessments and evaluations over atwenty year period. It has also analyzed thenational secondary school entrance examinationfor assessment purposes. The agency responsi-ble for most of this work recently lost many of itsgood staff and has had an inadequate budget. Ithas been disseminating results, but on an ex-cessively theoretical and general basis. It is nowhoping to strengthen its staffing and is planninga stronger awareness raising program for parents,teachers and school authorities.

Colombia has an excellent autonomous agencyundertaking university entrance examinationsand examinations for entrance to public sec-ondary schools in the Bogota metropolitan area.Colombia's exams are a model of modern com-puterized test preparation and scoring. The chal-lenge for Colombia is to build on this capacitythrough utilizing selection examinations forpurposes of assessment, similar to that of Kenya,as well as to develop a primary school levelassessment system.

None of the four countries has adequatelyincorporated research into assessment and test-

25


ing. This means that much of the value of theireffort is being lost because of a lack of additionalcomplementary inputs. Furthermore there is anoften unnecessary tendency to test the universeof students rather than to use less expensivesamples. Using sample survey methodology willdepend on good statistical expertise which is ascarce commodity. Furthermore these fourcountries have not put enough effort into dis-semination and follow-up of test results. Chilehas the best record but could still do much moreto have an impact on classroom behavior.Mexico's dissemination efforts, while wide-spread, have been excessively general andtheoretical and data on a per school or per districtbasis have not been systematically provided.Costa Rica's dissemination efforts were under-taken on an ad hoc basis by a testing agencyoutside Government.

Recommendations

Coupling the four cases with the issues de-scribed earlier, the following are the main rec-ommendations for Latin American countriesseeking to establish assessment systems.

From the start educational authorities willneed to define clearly the objectives of theassessment, including specifically how theassessment is expected to lead to improvedclassroom practice. They will also need toprepare a five-year implementation and costplan, and act to ensure continuous and fullsupport from the highest governmentauthorities. The cost plan should specificallyinclude funds for dissemination and follow-up.From the start the managers of the assessmentwill need to design a full dissemination andfollow-up plan. The managers will need to

2626

identify the various clienteles who will use theassessment, hire expert writers and reportersfor dissemination, and plan for in-servicetraining programs of teachers based on theassessments. A strong effort will need to bemade to educate all concerned parties as to thefact that an assessment is not designed toaward or punish, only to assist, and that lowscores in a region, city, or school, may noreflect on the teachers since there are manyoperating external factors.In principle most of the assessment design andimplementation work should be contractedout to an independent, stable non-profit agencyand the testing department inside governmentshould be very small. If such an agency doesnot exist, then efforts should be made to buildone up over time.Education authorities should seriously con-sider using sample surveys rather than cen-suses, especially when the objective is tomeasure performance of groups of students,schools, and the system as whole. But sampleshad best not be undertaken if the samplingmethodology is inadequate.Assessment programs should include fundsfor research, as well as agreed upon coopera-tive programs with local and/or foreignindependent non-profit research institutions.Latin American governments should considerfinancing the training of psychometriciansand statisticians. Contracting with non-profitagencies will help to ensure that this expertiseremains available to government, since it isdifficult for government to retain qualifiedstaff with these scarce skills.Countries such as Colombia with well man-aged selection examinations should considerutilizing these examinations for assessmentpurposes


References and further reading

Beaton, et al. Expanding the new design, NAEP(National Assessment of Educational Progress),U.S. Department of Education, Princeton 1988.

Bejar, I. I.. Achievement testing: Recent advances,Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1983.

Berk, R. A. A guide to criterion-referenced testconstruction. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.

Calfee, R. C. "Assessment of independent readingskills: Basic Research and practical applications,"chapter in A.S. Reber and D.L. Scarborough(Editors), Toward a psychology of reading,Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1977.

Carey, L. M. Measuring and evaluating schoollearning. Allyn & Bacon, 1988.

Espinola, V. "Issues and practices in planning thequality of education in Argentina, Chile, and Co-lombia", an area study presented at the IIEPInternational Workshop on Issues and Practices inPlanning the Quality of Education, Paris, November,1989.

Glass, G. V. "Teacher effectiveness," chapter in H. J.Walber (editor), Evaluating Educational Perfor-mance. Berkeley: McCutchan, 1974.

Horn, R. S. and C. Winter. "Institutionalizing nationaleducation indicators," paper presented at the 1991Comparative and International Education Societyannual meeting, Pittsburgh, PA, 1991.

Levin, H. M. Cost effectiveness: A primer. BeverlyHills: Sage Publications, 1983.

Lockheed, M. "Multidimensional evaluation:Measures for both right and left sides of theequation", paper prepared for the InternationalSymposium of Significant Strategies to EnsureSuccess of All in the Basic School, Lisbon/Estoril,May 20-24, 1991.

Lockheed, M. and A. Verspoor. Improving primaryeducation in developing countries. OxfordUniversity Press, 1991.

Lord, F. M. Applications of item response theory topractical testing problems, Hillsdale: Erlbaum,1980.

Middleton, J. et. al. Building educational evaluationcapacity in developing countries, The World Bank,Policy Planning and Research Working Papers,No. WPS 140, February 1989.

Perron, E. Effective teaching: A practical guide forimproving your teaching. Longman, 1982.

Pollit, E. Malnutrition and infection in the classroom.UNESCO, 1990.

Popham, W.J. EducationalEvaluation. Prentice-Hall,1975

Popham, W. J. "Key standard-setting considerationsfor minimum competency testing programs". Paperpresented at the 1977 Winter Conference onMeasurement and Methodology at the Center forthe Study of Evaluation, University of California,Los Angeles, January, 1978.

Popham, W. J. Modern educational measurement. Apractitioner's perspective. 2nd ed. Prentice Hall,1990.

Purves, A. C. and D. U. Levine. Educational policyand international assessment: Implications for thelEA surveys ofachievement. Berkeley: McCutchan,1975.

Ross, K. N., et. al. "Improving data collection,preparation, and analysis procedures: A review oftechnical issues". In K. Ross and L. Mahlck (edi-tors). Planning the quality of education: Thecollection and use of data for informed decision-making, Paris: Pergamon Press for UNESCO,1990.

Ross, K. N. and L. Mahlck (editors). Planning thequality ofeducation: The collection and use ofdatafor informed decision-making, Paris: PergamonPress for UNESCO, 1990.

Schiefelbein, E. "Repetition: The key issue in LatinAmerican primary education", The World Bank,Latin America and the Caribbean TechnicalDepartment, Human Resources Division WorkingPaper, May 12, 1989.

Shepard, L. "Purposes of assessment," in Studies inEducational Evaluation, Volume 5, No. 1, 1979:pp. 13-26.

Shepard, L. "Reporting the results of statewideassessment", in Studies in Educational Evaluation,V. 6, No. 2, 1980: pp. 119-125.

Somerset, A. Examination reform: The Kenyaexperience, World Bank, Education Department,1982.

Somerset, A. "Examination reform in Kenya", WorldBank Discussion Paper, Education and TrainingSeries No. EDT64, 1987.

Suen, H. K. Principle of test theories. LawrenceErlbaum, 1990.

Wiggins, G. "A true test: Toward a more authenticand equitable assessment," in Phi Delta Kappan, V.70, No. 9, 1989: pp. 703-713.

Willett, J. B. "Questions and answers in the

27BEST COPY AVAILABLE

27


measurement of change," In Review of Research inEducation, Volume 15, edited by Emst R. Rothkopf,Washington DC: American Education ResearchAssociation, 1988.

Windham, D. Indicator of educational effectivenessand efficiency, US AID IEES Report, Washington,D.C., 1988.

Windham, D. H. Levin, and Z. B athory, "Issues in the

design and development of educational informationsystems". In K. Ross and L. Mahlck (editors),Planning the quality of education: The collectionand use of data for informed decision-making,Paris: Pergamon Press for Unesco, 1990.

The World Bank, Primary Education: A World BankPolicy Paper, September, 1990.

The World Bank, World Development Report 1990.

Annex 1

SAMPLE FEEDBACK FROM KENYA

In analysing the science questions in the 1979General paper, an interesting fact was discov-ered about differences in performance betweenboys and girls. As you may remember from p 26of this Newsletter, the performance gap betweenboys and girls was higher in science than in anyother subject. In English, the average gap wasonly 3.6%; in mathematics, it was 7.1%; but inscience it was as high as 7.7%.When the science questions were analysed sepa-rately, however, it was found that girls performedquite well in most of the reasoning questions.For example, the question about bases and acidswas answered correctly by 46.2% of boys and43.6% of girls, so the performance gap was only2.6%.By contrast, girls tended to do badly in most ofthe questions which gave an advantage to pupilswho had carried out practical observations andexperiments. For example, the question about

how a card would hang from a nail was answeredcorrectly by 58.6% of boys, but only 40.5% ofgirls. thus the performance gap as a high as18.1%.When the scores of boys and girls in all reasoningand all observation questions were compared,the results shown in the Table were got.As you can see, the average performance gap inquestions which tested mainly reasoning wasonly 4.4% which is only a little higher than thegap for English. By contrast, in the questionswhich tested mainly the results of observationsor experiments the gap was as high as 14.1%.These results suggest strongly that the mainreason why boys perform better than girls inscience is not that they have superior reasoningability, but rather that they have had more expe-rience in carrying out observations and experi-ments.

Questions testing Average markBoys Girls

Mainly reasoning

Mainly observation orexperiment

46.4%

56.5%

42.0%

42.4%

PerformanceGaps

4.4%

14.1%

28 28-7: 4 s:, '

PROGRAMME TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF PRIMARYSCHOOLS IN POOR AREAS. A CHILEAN EXPERIENCE

MINEDUC Chile*

"At this time in Chile, those who can pay get a better education. A democraticsystem cannot solidify if access to education depends on the capacity to pay."Therefore, the question is how to set up an educational system that provideseverybody with an equal opportunity, where quality is the main concern andeducation is distributed equitably. The challenge of providing equal opportunity forall has to be faced already at the primary level, with a quality and equitableeducation that gives everyone access to the benefits of culture ". (From a speech ofRicardo Lagos, Chile's Minister of Education, given 20 September 1990 in Mexicoto a meeting of Ministers of Education and Culture from throughout the continent).

From the mid-1800s up to the end of the 1960s,Chile worked to build a national system capableof educating every school-age child. Achievingthat kind of coverage was seen as a requisite ofdemocracy and the basis for economicdevelopment.

The Primary Education Law of 70 years agospoke of the need for a policy that would makeit possible for every child in the country to go toschool. This goal was more and more realized asthe years went by. The number of years ofobligatory schooling also increased with time,reaching eight grades at present.

Today, this goal, for all intents and purposes,is realized: 96.4% of all children between theages of 6 and 14 attend primary school. For thosewho do not, the reasons are extreme poverty orbroken families, not a lack of schools to attend.

The challenge today is more one of quality andhow to deal with the internal and externalinequalities that characterize both the studentsand the schools that receive them.

Traditionally, it has been part of the national

Ministry of Education, Chile.

culture to see education as the road to upwardsocial mobility and a better future. Parents arewilling to make great sacrifices to send theirchildren to school, and hopefully, on to college.They believe that if their children are going toschool, they are building their future.

It is also socially accepted that justice demandsthat a capable, intelligent child apart from hisor her socio-economic status be able to becomea university-educated professional or at leastacquire the skills and competencies necessaryfor a productive job and a decent wage.

The reality of today, however, is that being ahigh-school graduate is no guarantee of upwardsocial mobility, entrance into the university, oreven a job. There is no basis in reality forbelieving that access to education in itself willrealize those goals. Attending school does notmechanically provide knowledge useful forparticipating in society and continuing to learn.

For example, it has been shown that manychildren finishing the first four grades of primaryeducation have not reached the expected levelsin reading, writing and arithmetic. Without theseskills, their possibilities of successfullycontinuing their education are certainly limited.

Statements like this are based on the results of

2929


different student tests. The results of thePerformance Evaluation Test of 1982 and 1984and of the System to Measure the Quality ofEducation (SIMCE) of 1988 and 1990 werediscouraging. The average fourth grade studentat the national level answered correctly only54.2% of the questions on Spanish and 51.8% onmathematics.

Those were national averages. Although theinformation available does not allow for ananalysis by socio-economic strata, it can bestated that there is a difference of more than 25percentage points between the averages forschools that charge tuition and those that arefree.

Behind those statistics are the inequalitiesboth external and internal to the system that putlow-income students at a disadvantage. Childrenarrive at school with social and culturaldifferences which are not taken into conside-ration. They are all submitted to the sameacculturation process, which only accentuatesthe inequalities within the system.

Internal differences depend on whether schoolsare urban or rural or belong to a rich or poormunicipality. The wealth of the municipalitydetermines what educational materials andteaching methods will used to transmit thecurriculum, thus producing disadvantages forthe poor.

Added to this the proven fact that schoolperformance is related to real factors such asnutrition and the cultural level of the student'senvironment, it becomes clear that the only wayto overcome these differences in the short terminto apply a criterion of positive discriminationor affirmative action to those who are at adisadvantage. That is the only possible way toproduce closer final results, in spite of inequalitiesat the outset of the educational process.

Equalitarian treatment is not enough ifschooling is to produce a just result. Those whohave greater learning problems need moresupport than others, which means the schoolswith poorer students need more resources thanschools with better-off students.

The situation in Chile is just the opposite: poor

303

students go to the schools with the least resourcesand lowest-paid teachers.

Objectives of educational policy

The challenge today is to ensure that studentsreally learn in school and develop the basic skillsand competencies needed to live in a societymoving into the next century.

This challenge is the basis of the three mainobjectives of the Chilean Government'seducational policy:

Improve the quality of education, to ensurethat children really learn the basic skills andcompetencies needed to live in a democraticand developing society.Distribute education equitably, which impliesdealing with the differences that exist betweenchildren entering the system, giving moresupport to those who most need it in order toensure acceptable learning levels.Make education everybody's task. In otherwords, the State is seen as leading a process inwhich the whole community is invited toparticipate.

Programme of the 900 schools

The above describes what is behind theProgramme to Improve the Quality of PrimarySchools in Poor Sectors, inaugurated on 12March 1990. Its main purpose is to support thepoorest free schools in Chile. The programmewas made possible by grants from theGovernments of Sweden and Denmark.

The Programme is also known as theProgramme of the 900 Schools, or P-900 forshort, because of the number of participatingschools at the outside. It supports a variety ofactions designed to raise the quality of education.It targets the schools with the least quality andthe most poverty, thus putting into practice theprinciple of positive discrimination. Even thoughit is known that such actions are insufficient inthemselves and need to be complemented byothers, there is no doubt that they tend to improvecritical situations.

Programme to improve the quality of primary schools in poor areas. A Chilean experience / MINEDUC Chile

This programme is the first response to theneeds uncovered by analysing the situation ofeducation in Chile. It attempts to raise quality,distribute education equitably and involve thecommunity in the task.

The programme concentrates on the first basiccycle first through fourth grades and seeks toimprove learning in reading, writing andarithmetic, considered basic for all furtherlearning.

The option to centre attention on these firstyears is based on the conviction that a schoolwith good teachers and educational material canoffset the disadvantages that children may bringwith them from their earlier training. Moreattention, greater availability of textbooks andteaching materials and teachers who areconstantly updating themselves make up forpoorer pre-school preparation.

From the viewpoint of the cultural future ofthe pupils, what is important is not so much thelevel at which they start but rather that they learnto dominate basic skills. Once they can handlethese, they can move on to learn other things. Inthis sense, access to reading, writing andarithmetic are the basic keys. It is difficult tolearn these skills outside of school. Theypresuppose a systematic process, the formationof habits and other aspects hard to achieve in anyother way.

Educational principles

The educational strategy of the Programme ofthe 900 Schools can be summed up in threepoints:

Although it is known that new languages arelearned on the basis of those already known,this principle is not always followed. Childrenfrom poor neighbourhoods have a problem:there is a gap between the culture (language)of the school and that of their environment.Therefore the programme wants the teacher tobe not only concerned about what he or shesays, but also about what the child actuallyhears. The language of the children is thestarting point: they should be heard and

encouraged to express themselves.Teaching the spoken and written mother tongueshould begin by respecting and recovering thelanguage of the child. The knowledge ofarithmetic already acquired by the pupil ineveryday life should be taken into account.Learning should start with concrete experience,generalize and then return to the particular toenrich it with new meanings and possibilities.This is seen, for example, in the use ofeducational games and materials, in solvingmath problems on the basis of the students'own experience, or in applying what is learnedto everyday life.Learning should enhance the children's self-esteem and positive self-image.The ideas in the Program me of the 900 Schools

are based on these principles. Value is given tothe way work was done in the past, how historyand tradition are remembered and how theyserve as the basis for building the future. Whatbreaks this continuity, this meaning, tends to berejected. Any innovation that makes possible apractice considered to be progress tends to beaccepted.

Thus the programme builds on prior situationsand respects and values the knowledge andexperience of the different actors involved, suchas supervisors, teachers or school principals.This does not, however, mean that newmethodologies and contributions from theoreticalreflection and research are not introduced. It israther a question of, along with including newelements, giving value to what teachers andsupervisors already know, and of allowing themto contribute and work together on what is newbased on what already exists.

It has also been taken into account that thequality of education cannot be upgraded withoutthe good will, commitment and enthusiasm forthe task on the part of all involved. Therefore,activities are presented as shared tasks. Teachershave been encouraged to value the culturalenvironment of their pupils and to overcome thenegative characteristics connected with poverty.Emphasis is given to the fact that the programmesupports and strengthens two key agents: the

31 31


supervisor, as the person who provides technicaland educational support, and the teacher, as theperson responsible for the education of eachchild.

In 1991, the programme is reaching 1 278schools in all 13 administrative regions of thecountry, and 107 establishments with only oneor two teachers involved in a pilot project.

Some 219 594 pupils in the first four years ofprimary school 20.2% of the total number arebeing reached; as well as 2 897 pupils in the firstsix years, in the case of the one- and two- teacherschools.

Throughout the country, 7 267 teachers par-ticipate in the programme.

The following tables present the schools, pupilsand teachers involved in the programme, alongwith percentages of coverage for the years 1990and 1991.

According to 1989 figures, there were1 987 758 primary school pupils in 8 469educational units throughout the country. Ofthese schools, 94.2% received funds from theGovernment, either as administered bymunicipalities or as subsidized private schools.

These pupils were served by 76 209 teachers:67 664 in the classroom and 8 545 as inspectors,heads of technical-pedagogical units and studentcounsellors.

Lines of action

The programme has seven basic lines of action:Improvement of infrastructure and equipment:school buildings are repaired, with emphasis onthose aspects that most influence the quality ofeducation.Workshops for teachers: in-service training isgiven to first through fourth grade teachers forteaching reading, writing and arithmetic; othertopics include understanding the culturalenvironment, enhancing school-communityrelations, promoting creativity and developingthe children's self-respect.

These workshops provide professors with theopportunity to work together autonomously, insuch a way that they can appropriate their own

32 32

practice, innovate and create, assuming aprofessional responsibility for the results. Theyalso encourage the teachers to come to knowwell the social and cultural reality of theirstudents, by conducting research on thecommunity, reflecting about the culture of theirsector and the possibility of incorporating othersin the educational task.Textbooks: schools are provided with a minimumof educational materials indispensable forincreasing the productivity of the learningprocess.Classroom libraries and educational materials:first and second grade classrooms are providedwith children's books and materials to aid inteaching reading, writing and arithmetic. Taperecorders to be used in teaching and spiritduplicators or mimeograph machines for makingeducational materials are also provided.Learning workshops: third and fourth gradepupils who are behind in their work are helped inworkshops held after regular class hours. Theseworkshops are conducted by young people fromthe community, chosen by the schools themselvesand previously trained for the task.

The workshops are held in small groups ofpupils, led by two youngsters. The goal is toreinforce what is learned in school and, at thesame time, enhance the children's creativity andself- esteem.

The young people are supported by supervisorsfrom the Ministry of Education and are providedwith special educational materials. Theworkshops function twice a week from Augustto December. The participants are pupils whofell behind in their school work during the firstsemester.Support for teachers and administrators: a va-riety of educational materials are elaboratedwhich allow the administrators of each school tocarry out an autonompus project for educationalimprovement, integrating the programme's linesof action and enriching them with theparticipation of the teachers, parents and studentsof each school.

The proposed methodology tends to generatein each school a highly participativeand creative

Programme to improve the quality of primary schools in poor areas. A Chilean experience I MINEDUC Chile

Table 1

SCHOOLS, PUPILS AND TEACHERS

School Schools Pupils1st-4th Grades

Teachers

Schools 1990 969 160 182 5 237Schools 1991 309 59 412 1 8921 or 2 teacher schools 107 2 897' 138

Total 1 385 222 491 7 267

a 14 to 6th grade

Table 2

PARTICIPATING SCHOOLS AND PUPILS(Percentages of totals)

Region

1990 1991

Schools Pupils Schools Pupils

I 9.3 16.9 13.2 25.7II 10.3 11.0 14.2 14.6III 9.4 8.0 12.3 12.0IV 13.3 30.2 17.2 37.8V 10.5 11.9 14.5 17.2

VI 13.8 17.7 15.6 17.9VII 11.7 13.4 15.2 21.8VIII 13.6 16.5 18.2 20.6

IX 12.0 24.6 15.1 33.2X 11.9 27.3 15.0 34.4

XI 12.7 18.9 18.2 32.0XII 7.0 12.8 12.3 25.6MR a 10.2 10.0 12.5 12.6

TOTAL 11.8 15.2 15.1 20.2

'Metropolitan Region

reflection on how to improve the quality ofeducation.Support processes: as a way to support theprogramme's actions, an evaluation andcommunication process has been developed.There are three lines of evaluation: a conti-nuous evaluation carried out by the partici-pants themselves; and two external evalua-tions, one for the programme in general andthe other specifically for the learning

33

workshops. Participants as well as publicopinion are kept informed of the programme'sprogress.

Activities

The programme was planned in detail in March1990 and different teams were set up. A cen-tral office was established at the Ministry ofEducation building.

33


Technical teams

The teams formed to design the programmewere drawn from among groups of universityprofessors with broad experience in languageand mathematics teaching, as well as from amongindependent academics with educationalexperience from non-governmental organiza-tions. For example, one team had 12 years ofexperience developing learning workshops, theInterdisciplinary Programme for EducationalResearch (PIIE). Another had a good deal ofexperience in evaluating projects connected withthe learning process, the Centre for EducationalResearch and Development (CIDE).

The programme, then, brings together peoplefrom government, the universities and the privatesector.

Administration

The administration of the programme was givento the existing structure and personnel of theMinistry of Education, so that the experienceand learnings acquired in the programme wouldremain among the permanent staff.

Even though the programme is conductedfrom a central office where high-level specia-lized teams function proposals are alwaysformulated in such a way that they can be easilyapplied on the regional and provincial levels ofthe Ministry of Education.In each region, theregional ministerial secretary designated aregional coordinator and a prov incial coordinator.Supervisors were then named to carry out theprogramme. Each supervisor was responsiblefor an average of three schools.

Training the supervisors

Although the main lines of the programme weredrawn up by a central team, those who are inpermanent contact with the schools are theseemployees of the Ministry of Education. Thecentral team and the technical teams providethem with on-the-job training. They are taughthow to organize and carry out updating

3434

workshops for language and mathematicsteachers, and train young people to work withchildren, hold learning workshops and useeducational materials.

Three workshops a year are held to providethese supervisors with technical orientation andgeneral proposals, which they then adapt to thereality of their different regions and schools. Allthe supervisors in the programme participate inthese workshops, which last five days and areheld in a conference centre that provides roomand board, to allow for maximum interchange.

Training for these supervisors is not limited totheory. Each workshop gives them the chance topractise what they will later do in their schools.To put what they learn into practice, they areprovided with educational materials which givethem a feeling of security in their work, andwhich also help them maintain the programme'sbasic technical orientation.

Selecting the schools

Schools were chosen to participate in theprogramme on the basis of the following criteria:scholastic performance as indicated by theSystem to Measure the Quality of Education in1988; the disadvantaged socio-economicbackground of the students (only schools incategories C and D of S IMCE' s socioeconomicindex were considered); size and accessibility ofthe school.

Using these criteria, a number of schools werepreselected to form a group from which the finalparticipants would be chosen by the central andregional teams. Some 10% of the schools of eachregion fit the criteria. No distinction was madebetween private schools subsidized by the Stateand municipal schools.

Additional schools were incorporated into theprogramme in 1991. Each region was assigned aquota according to the criteria of poorperformance and the level of poverty, as well asaccording to the number of supervisors alreadyworking in the programme, since no newsupervisors were to be added.

Other criteria were added to the selection

Programme to improve the quality of primary schools in poor areas. A Chilean experience MINEDUC Chile

process during this second year: the number ofstudents failing to pass the year and the numberof drop-outs, which are also indicators of poorquality.

First steps

The programme began with a technical meetingto choose the participating schools and name theregional and provincial coordinating teams.Efforts were made to make the programmeknown. The coordinating teams visited theschools chosen to present the programme tothem and ask them to participate.

Each regional ministerial secretary and theprovincial departments of the Ministry ofEducation organized inaugural ceremonies withthe participation of those who were going towork in the programme, political authorities andregional educational officials. Working meetingswere then held with the technical teams ofsupervisors from the Ministry of Education ineach provincial department.

The dissemination process also includedmaking known the new educational policy of therecently installed democratic Government.

Work in the schools began immediately afterthe selection process was completed. The firstactivity was a visit from the supervisor, who metwith administrators, teachers and members ofthe school community to explain the programme,establish a first contact and request them toparticipate.

Once that phase was completed, the firstworkshop for supervisors was held, lasting twodays, to:

Provide them with a better knowledge of thelearning workshops, clarify the criteria forchoosing the young people to work in themand for choosing the pupils to participate.Make known the general lines of the workshopsfor updating teachers.Prepare a study to aid parent-teacherassociations to reflect on the question of schoolperformance and carry out concrete steps toimprove it.

Developing the lines of action

35

Physical plant

The first step was to establish criteria and amethodology for determ ining whatkind of repairswould be made and how to go about them. Aquestionnaire was drawn up to send to the schoolsso they could make known their needs in thisregard. The questionnaire included a prioritylisting of repairs needed, to be drawn up by theteachers council in each school.

The responses were processed both on theregional and central level, to arrive at a defini-tive estimate of needs. Once that was done,US$ 3 686 000 overall was granted to improveinfrastructure in participating municipal schools.The private schools in the programme wereexcluded from this benefit, since their propertybelongs to private individuals or organizations.Municipalities that already had approved fundsfor this purpose were also excluded.

On the other hand, private as well as municipalschools were among the recipients of the 4 058bookcases bought to facilitate the use of theeducational materials given out.

New furniture and brightly coloured schoolrooms, or any of the other improvements madeto the infrastructure, produced positive effects.Such changes provoke positive attitudes aboutthe school among students as well as their parents.The children improve their personal hygiene,take better care of the materials and generallyseem more content. Parents, seeing the physicalchanges, are more likely to offer theircollaboration to the school.

Teacher updating

Once the updating teams were established, ge-neral guidelines for the teachers workshops weredrawn up. These were then submitted tospecialists in reading, writing and arithmetic fortheir comments.

Three manuals with contents and guidelineson methodologies for language teaching' havebeen already produced, and another three for

35


teaching mathematics.' The texts were graduallyput together as needs arose during the course ofthe programme. New manuals were written basedon the experience of using those already inexistence and to answer new needs as they arose.

A set of cards with technical data was alsodrawn up, with a guidebook for the supervisorswho put on the workshops in the schools.

The workshops are basically for the firstthrough fourth grade teachers, but in manyschools those from other grades also attend.Twelve sessions of two hours and fifteen minuteseach are planned for each year. Each session alsoinvolves practising what is learned in a classroomsituation.

Some 5 237 first through fourth grade teachersattended these workshops the first year of theprogramme. This number will rise to 7 209 in1991.

"The programme has given new life to aspectsof our teaching that we normally weren't doingvery well. We were simply explaining things.We teach differently now". These words from ateacher in Puerto Varas express the feeling ofmost of the teachers who have participated in theworkshops. They feel that what the programmeis proposing has reconnected them with pastpractices and they do not see it as somethingcompletely new. This helps teachers accept theprogramme and value the updating as a chanceto participate and recover their role as educators.

They feel that this kind of updating allowsthem to exchange their ideas; it gives them asense of contributing their experience to the restof their colleagues. The teachers generally statethat they have been given useful elements fortheir classroom work. They claim they preferthis kind of updating to the traditional kindwhere they sit and listen.

Another product of this kind of updating hasbeen that teachers and supervisors are coming to

I "Tugar-tugar", "Models and projects", and "Reading theworld".

2 "Problems", "Renovating Math Class","OperationalArithmetic".

36

36

understand one another better. The supervisorsare perceived as trying to help the teachingprocess. Before they tended to be seen asinspectors controlling what went on at school.

The supervisors also have a more positiveattitude. The programme has allowed them tocarry out actions in the educational sphere, givingthem more prestige.

Other aspects are less positive. For example,sometimes too much importance is given to theactivities and not enough to analysing themeaning of the updating and its purpose. Othertimes the workshops are poorly conducted bythe supervisors, and learnings are not properlysummarized and integrated.

Educational materials

Educational materials are given to the schools inclose connection with and in function of theteachers' updating. The programme so far hasprovided the following materials:

Textbooks: 125 000 textbooks were given tofirst through fourth grade pupils in 1990.Another 185 000 were handed out to the samegrades in 1991.Classroom libraries: following educational,technical and aesthetic criteria, 80 titles werechosen to provide 2 697 libraries to first andsecond grade classrooms. Each first gradelibrary contained 35 books and each secondgrade library 45. Another 1 110 libraries wereadded in 1991. A pamphlet was given to theteachers explaining the proper use of theselibraries.Educational materials: the updating team choseand elaborated materials for arithmetic, readingand writing. A total of 172400 units, each with11 different kinds of materials, were handedout in 1990, with another 70 000 being addedin 1991.Tape recorders and mimeograph machines:1 700 tape recorders, 40 mimeograph machinesand 739 spirit duplicators were distributed tothe participating schools in 1990, and another850 tape recorders and 480 spirit duplicatorsin 1991.

Programme to improve the quality of primary schools in poor areas. A Chilean experience l MINEDUC Chile

Technical books: a list was drawn up of basicbooks which every support library forsupervisors should have. Each provincialdepartment was given 20 books donated byUNESCO, and 17 others donated by Spain.These materials are greatly appreciated. One

teacher from the city of Vicuna put it this way:"Thank you for the materials. My classes arelivelier because I can do different kinds of workwith my students. The children changed thisyear; I've given them more autonomy".

Teachers, supervisors, workshop monitors andschool principals share this positive judgementabout the books as well as the other teachingmaterials.

However, evaluations have shown that in someschools these materials have not been used muchin practice. Some children say they have neverworked with them. In other schools they are usedsystematically.

The classroom libraries also are used indifferent ways. Some teachers use themsystematically; others once a week or sometimesto relax the children after a lesson that requiresa lot of concentration on their part.

The same is true for the tape recorders andmimeograph machines.

In general, it can be said that teachers areslowly putting to use the new materials, hangingup written material in the classroom, having thestudents read in silence and do arithmetic in thehead all educational practices proposed by theprogramme.

Learning workshops

Even though PIIE had more than a decade ofexperience in learning workshops, incorporatingthem into the educational system was the mostnovel part of the programme. It was also theaspect that provoked the most resistance.

In the beginning, many school principalsidentified the programme with these workshops.They were rather suspicious of the workshopsand in some cases simply rejected them. Theprincipals felt that the young people from thecommunity simply lacked the training needed to

run these workshops.The situation changed little by little. Today,

most administrators have a good opinion of theworkshops. Factors that helped them to changewere their participation together with theteachers in choosing the young people and thegood results of the workshops themselves.

Once the initial suspicion was overcome, theseworkshops became one of the strongest aspectsof the programme.

Before the workshops began to function, theteam met with the supervisors and elaborated amanual for working with the children usingpreviously tested materials.' This manual wasrevised by different specialists. Also revisedwere the pamphlets for the young workshopmonitors and three workbooks for the pupils.4 Avideo was also made to help the workshopmonitors.

As happened in the case of the updatingmaterials for the teachers, the ongoing evaluationof results and needs of these workshops led tothe elaboration of three texts to aid the youngpeople: "Educational skills and communica-tion" , "Some basic conditions for the educationof children" and "Creative instruments forworking with children ".

Three criteria were followed in selecting theyoung people who would run these workshops:

that they be young less than 30 years old inorder to facilitate contact with the children;that they have the confidence of the schoolprincipal and teachers;that they live near the school, in order toensure a real link between the school and thecommunity.Among those applying for the position, priority

was given to certified teachers who were notalready working or university students majoringin education. A high school diploma was theminimum educational level required.

Once selected, the workshop monitors went

3 "Discovering what we are and how we live"."My family and I", "My country and I" "The placewhere I live and I".

3,7 37


through a training session before the workshopsbegan. Another training session was held afterthe workshops were under way. Some 2 086young people were trained in 1990.

The workshops continued to develop in 1991,with the number of monitors rising to 2 766.These young people were paid US$ 50 a monthfor the five months they worked, August throughDecember.

Besides participating in the trainingworkshops, the monitors receive ongoing trainingfrom the supervisors, with whom they plan andevaluate their work.

The first year 34 000 children attended theseworkshops which averaged 28 sessions, eachlasting two and a half hours. Close to 50 000children are attending in 1991.

Over and above what they do for the children,these workshops provide another benefit: theyprovide training for the young people who pre-pare and carry them out. One of the monitors putit this way at the end of a training session:

"It's hard to put into perspective what we'velived through these days. I would like to thankeveryone for allowing me to be here to learn andshare. I hope we can carry with us to ourcommunities the fraternal and friendlyatmosphere we created here. Coming to knowthe kids, become one with them, living togetherwith them makes us kids again and recoverssome of that innocence. Ours is a difficult task,but we have to have confidence that we can doit, especially if we have the support of whatwe've learned here and contact with thesupervisors".

Support for administrators

Not enough attention was given at the beginningto working with administrators. Attempts weremade to correct that during 1991 by giving theparticipating schools a set of educationalmaterials elaborated with the help of the Centrefor Educational Updating, Experimentation andResearch.

This material consists of five folders to guidethe efforts of teachers and administrators, along

38 38

with parents and students, to elaborate aprogramme for improving their school.

The themes of the folders are: the mission andidentity of the school; quality of education I;quality of education II; communication' andleadership in the school, and participatoryevaluation.

Communications

A logo was designed for the programme andposters printed to hang in public places and inthe schools. One such poster read "In this schoolall the children learn"; and another "Qualityeducation for all".

A bulletin was launched during the secondsemester of 1990, called "Learning together". Itis sent to the different schools, regional ministe-rial secretariats and provincial offices of theMinistry of Education. Circulation is 6 000.

Towards the end of July 1991, the schoolswere asked their opinion about the value ofthis bulletin, how they used it and what kind ofinformation or contents would they like to seein it. The response was positive, both becauseof the number of schools that answered thesurvey and because the bulletin was valued as amedium of information, motivation andorientation.

An 18-minute video was also made to helpdisseminate the programme. A copy was sent toeach provincial department of the Ministry ofEducation.

Five educational videos are currently beingmade to support the learning process: one dealingwith the methodology of the teachers workshops,two for arithmetic and two for language.

Measuring learning

The pupils' progress can be measured by com-paring the results of the SIMCE given to fourthgrade students in 1988 with the results of thesame test given in 1990. However, it would beincorrect to give too much weight to this com-parison, since the 1990 test was given only a fewmonths after the programme was put into practice.

Programme to improve the quality of primary schools in poor areas. A Chilean experience / MINEDUC Chile

A comparison of these test results points to theconclusion that 38.3% of those schools thatparticipated in the programme from the beginningshowed significant improvement; 16.2% showedsome progress but continued to be deficient; and45.5% showed no progress whatsoever at theend of the first year.

Another test is presently being revised tomeasure learning in language, writing andarithmetic, designed especially for the third,fourth and fifth grade students in the schools ofthe programme.

Achievements

From the evaluations made by the specializedteams and each provincial department, it can bestated that the overall balance of the programmeis positive.

This can be summarized in the followingpoints:

The Ministry of Education has established aneffective presence to the most needy schools,putting into action an educational policy thatgives top priority to quality and equity ineducation.The teachers workshops are appreciated as anopportunity for responsible participation bythe teachers and an efficient method forupdating.The learning workshops, despite the initialskepticism, were well accepted in the schools.They were successful and the children whoparticipated in them clearly changed for thebetter. They displayed an increase in creativityand initiative, as well as enthusiasm for goingto school. The young monitors also valuedtheir own participation highly.The educational materials, textbooks,classroom libraries, together with the updating,motivated the teachers to make a special effortto ensure that their pupils learned.

Publications

Note: The programme uses the followingpublications. The titles referred to in the text and

footnotes were translated into English for theconvenience of the reader. All of thesepublications, however, are only available inSpanish.Tugar-Tugar: Manual for speaking and writingbetter. M. Condemarin, V. Galdames and A.Medina. Ministry of Education, Santiago, Chile,July 1990.Modelos y proyectos: Manual for speaking andwriiting better. M. Condemarin, V. Galdamesand A. Medina. Ministry of Education, Santia-go, Chile, May 1991.Leer el mundo: Manual for speaking and writingbetter M. Condemarin, V. Galdames y A. Medina.Ministry of Education, Santiago, Chile, July1991.Problemas: Manual for improving arithmetic G.Galvez, P. Zanocco, S. Navarro. Ministry ofEducation, Santiago, Chile, August 1990.Problemas: Problems selected by supervisorsMinistry of Education, Santiago, Chile, March1991.Renovar la clase de matematica: Manual forimproving arithmetic G. Galvez, P. Zanocco, S.Navarro and M. Riveros. Ministry of Education,Santiago, Chile, May 1991.Operatoria aritmetica: Manual for improvingarithmetic G. Galvez, P. Zanocco, S. Navarroand M. Riveros. Ministry of Educacion, Santia-go, Chile, August 1991.Cinco materiales para aprender matematica:Description and ideas for its use. G.Galvez,S.Navarro, P. Zanocco and M. Riveros. Ministryof Education, Santiago, Chile, January 1991.Descubramos nuestra forma de ser y nuestramanera de vivir: Manual for learning workshopmonitors. L. Vaccaro et. al. Ministry ofEducation, Santiago, Ch ile, Jul y 1990. 2nd revisededition, June 1991.Descubramos nuestra forma de ser y nuestramanera de vivir. "Yo y mi familia", "Yo y mipals ", "Yo y el lugar donde vivo": Child'sworkbook for learning workshops. L. Vaccaroet al. Ministry of Education, Santiago, Chile,August 1990.2 °d revised edition, August 1991.Descubramos nuestra forma de ser y nuestramanera de vivir: Manual for learning workshop

39 39


monitors. L.Vaccaro et al. Ministry of Education,Santiago, Chile, July 1990.Habilidades educativas y de comunicacion:Action training for learning workshop monitors.Technical team for learning workshops. PIIEMinistry of Education, Santiago, Chile, June1991.Algunas condiciones basicas para el aprendizajede los nifios: Action training for learningworkshop monitors. Technical team for learning

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workshops. PIIE Ministry of Education, Santia-go, Chile, July 1991.Instrumentos creativos para el trabajo con losnifios: Action training for learning workshopmonitors. Technical team for learningworkshops. PILE Ministry of Education, Santia-go, Chile, June 1991.Biblioteca de aula: Explanatory pamphlet. Feli-pe Alliende. Ministry of Education, Santiago,Chile, July 1990. 2nd edition, May 1991.

BILINGUAL EDUCATION BEYOND NATIONAL FRONTIERS.BOLIVIAN-PERUVIAN COOPERATION

Luis Enrique LopezLucia D'Emilio*

In this article, the authors describe the beginning of a case of horizontalcooperation between two countries of the region intent on establishing anintercultural bilingual education programme for Aymara- and Quechua-speakingpeasant populations. The article begins by describing the Bolivian situation and theachievements in the field of bilingual education in the Peruvian Department of Puno- which borders on Bolivia and whose population is mostly made up of Quechua andAymara speakers. It also describes the scope and implications of the agreement onmutual cooperation signed in Lima between the Bolivian and Peruvian Ministers ofEducation in March 1990. It then raises a series of considerations regarding theeducational attention of indigenous populations divided by national boundaries. TheBolivian-Peruvian example is seen as providing an important background forguiding this type of bilateral action. The authors also maintain that internationalagencies concerned with education and culture, and in particular those belonging tothe United Nations system, should promote this type of cooperation both at the levelof the State and private institutions and specialized professionals, recognizing theirconcern for populations such as indigenous peoples which have been neglected fornearly five hundred years. Within this framework, the reinforcement of the ethnicand cultural identity of these peoples through educational programmes thatcontribute to overcoming the fragmentation presently affecting them, could alsocontribute to bringing about the longed for Latin American integration.

Within the Latin American context, Bolivia iscomparable only to Guatemala in terms of thehigh percentage of indigenous population out ofthe total national population. The national ma-jorities in these two countries are indigenous. Alarge number of them still maintain their lan-guage and other manifestations of their ancestralculture. Many even conserve their condition as

Lucia D'Emilio. Education Officer of UNICEF in Boli-via.Luis Enrique Lopez: Specialist in applied sociolin-guistics. Director of the bilingual education programmeat the U. TOcnica del Altiplano. Puno (Peru). Advisor ofthe GTZ.This article expresses the opinions of their authors andnot necessarily those of the institutions in which theywork.

monolingual vernacular-speakers. Thus, forexample, in Bolivia, according to sources fromthe last Census (Albo 1980), 63% of the popula-tion speaks one of the 32 languages existing inthe country. The majority speak Quechua orAymara.

In terms of education, Bolivia has high rates ofilliteracy, dropping out and school marginali-zation, compared to the other countries of theregion. These rates are even higher in rural andsuburban areas, where the population is pre-dominantly indigenous.

Despite the sociolinguistic characteristicsmentioned and the obvious need to improve thequality of education, to date, vernacular speak-ers have not been offered a wide and differenti-ated attention at the formal educational level.

41 41


Recent initiatives are still at an experimentalstage.

Fortunately, vernacular languages have playedan important role in popular education andparticularly in radio-broadcasted educationalsystems. In 1983, during the Popular DemocraticUnity Government, the State itself began a lit-eracy programme in Quechua and Aymara whichstandardized the respective alphabets and madethem official. It was thanks to this programme,undertaken by the National Service of PopularEducation and Literacy (SENALEP) that dis-cussion began and the purely hispanicizingconception of primary schools was challengedat both the level of official agencies and teachingunions.

As some authors maintain, two stages can beidentified in bilingual intercultural education inthe country: "The first, involves the period up to1983, in which some specific experiences oc-curred, in spite of the lack of consistent positionsor proposals by interested institutions and socialsectors and, thus, in a climate that was not sofavourable for its development and extension.The second stage covers the period from thatyear onward. It is characterized by an almostinverse dynamic: a great openness in terms ofthe development of new approaches and strate-gies, accompanied by the absence of concreteand sustained initiatives" (Amadio and aiiiga1989, pag 49).

Among the most important previous experi-ences, at the level of formal education, mentionshould be made of the Rural Educational Project(PER I) for the Quechua population, undertakenbetween 1978 and 1980 by the Ministry ofEducation, with support from USAID, and theHighlands Integrated Educational Project withthe Aymara population and with World Banksupport. The latter was interrupted prior to theend of the third year. The Church also undertooka bilingual education Project (Bilingual RuralTextbook Project) in seven Aymara schoolsbetween 1981 and 1986, through the EpiscopalEducation Commission.

At the conclusion of their experimental phase,none of these projects succeeded in establishing

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themselves as alternative modes to the tradi-tional educational system. Instead, the schoolsinvolved returned to the previous hispanicizingmodel.

New Stage

From 1988 onward, there began in the country,perhaps a new stage in bilingual interculturaleducation. With the technical and financial sup-port of UNICEF, the Ministry of Education andCulture began planning a new project, which in1990 was implemented in over one hundredrural schools located in areas where the threemain national vernacular languages are spoken:quechua, aymara and guarani. In 1990 around3 000 first grade students were attended to, andthis coverage will double over the next schoolyear since work will also include second gradestudents.

Unlike previous experiences, this initiative isoccurring under more favourable political con-ditions, owing to the sustained support fromboth teacher and peasant union organizations,and in the Guarani case, also by the activeparticipation of an ethnic organization: theGuarani People Assembly.

The participation of the few non-governmentorganizations directly involved in bilingualeducation has been sought and only partly ob-tained. Such is the case with CIPCA (Centre forResearch and Advancement of the Peasantry),CEE (Episcopal Education Commission), thistime involved in an experimental BilingualIntercultural Education project (EIB) with theQuechua population, the "Masis" Cultural Cen-tre, CENDA (Andean Development Communi-cation Centre). The collaboration of the Teko-Guarani NGO (Guarani Communication andEducation Workshop), for example, has provendecisive for the functioning of the project in theGuarani area. With the exception of the Guaranicase, the relations of the organized teachingbody with NGOs are still not very productiveand it is hoped that this will improve over time.

From the start, the implementation of theBilingual Intercultural Education Project is linked

Bilingual education beyond national frontiers /Luis Enrique Lopez and Luck! D'Emilio

to collateral efforts underway in other countries.One of its principal strategies has been capital-izing on national and international experiences.Highly useful, for example, was the series ofSupport Materials for Teacher Training inIntercultural Bilingual Education, prepared byvarious specialists of the region, in conjunctionwith UNESCO/OREALC, since there were notexts available in the country for the training andfurther training of teachers along these lines.These materials were particularly devised tosupport the training and further training at regio-nal level of personnel interested in these subjectsareas.'

The horizontal cooperation came about, first,in response to the lack in terms of number andquality required of human resources in thecountry, specializing in bilingual education.While it is true that it is not enough to speak alanguage to be able to teach it and use it as aninstrumental language in the educational proc-ess, it is also true that it is not enough to havestudied an indigenous language to prepare ma-terial for school-age children. Amadio andZailiga(1989, pag 57) comment on this aspect,almost calling upon Bolivian universities, whenthey state that: "A distinction should be madebetween specializing in linguistics, where theemphasis is on the study and theoretical analysisof human language in general (...) and special-izing in applied linguistics, where the objectiveis to study a variety of aspects relating to teachingand learning a language (...). The implementa-tion of EIB will require more professionals inthe field of applied linguistics than in theoreticallinguistics". This albeit relevant observation,warrants a special explanation: strictly speaking,in Bolivia, professional training does not exist assuch in the theoretical, descriptive or applied

The series is made up of five texts: Culture, Language,Bilingual Education, Community, School andCurriculumand Literacy. These were tested on vernacular-speakingnative youths who were working as teachers or who wereattending teacher-training centres in Bolivia, Costa Rica,Guatemala, Nicaragua or Peru. For more information onthis series refer to Amadio 1988.

branches of linguistics. The only university ofthe country that offers several linguistics coursesas part of its programme for training specialistsin native and some foreign languages, in themanner of North American or European trainingprogrammes of Bachelors in modern languages,is the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in LaPaz (L6pez, 1989).

It was evident, in principle, that one could notundertake a bilingual educational project with-out having a national technical team. It was forthis reason that, thanks to the support of UNICEFand the Deutsche Gesellschaft tilt. TechnischeZusammenarbeit (GTZ), six one-year scholar-ships were awarded to six Bolivian teachersfrom the Andean area and a two-year scholarshipwas granted to a Linguistics graduate fromUMS A, to study in the postgraduate programmeof Andean Applied Linguistics in Education, ofthe Universidad Nacional del Altiplano in Puno,Peru. Upon completing their studies, theseteachers returned to Bolivia and formed theNational Bilingual Intercultural Education teamof the Ministry of Education.

It was thanks to this team that the necessaryactivities could be undertaken and the bilingualintercultural education project could be imple-mented, which, from this standpoint, began be-yond national frontiers.

Peruvian developments

At the time when in Bolivia the issue of taking upbilingual education at the formal education levelwith renewed vigour was proposed, in Peru thismodality was going through one of, its mostinteresting stages of development at a technicallevel and in terms of proposals and developmentof educational materials and human resources.The existence of the postgraduate course inAndean Linguistics and Education in Puno madethe trip of the Bolivian teachers possible in mid1988.

The collaboration with the Ministry of Edu-cation and Culture of Bolivia was made possibledue to the fact that GTZ had been technically andfinancially supporting the implementation of a

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Quechua-Spanish and Aymara-Spanish bilin-gual education programme with peasantpopulations from the Peruvian Highlands. Bythe time this cooperation was started up, thePuno Bilingual Education Programme had al-ready been in place ten years in the region andoperating for eight years at the classroom level.

In the course of the first ten years, the PunoProgramme concluded its experimental stage.During this time, educational material was de-veloped. in Quechua, Aymara and Spanish, forgrades one to six in the five main subjects of thebilingual education curriculum: Mother Tongue,Spanish as a Second Language, Mathematics,Natural Sciences and Social Sciences. Thus, itbecame the only bilingual education experiencein Latin America to use teaching material on andin the indigenous language for the entire primaryschool. This fact also points to the efforts atstandardizing Quechua and Aymara attemptedin Puno to make them polyfunctional languages;i.e., not only for informal means of communi-cation, but also for education and cognition2(Lopez, 1991). The Puno project has just beenevaluated by various teams of specialists, in-cluding among these, two groups of independ-ent professionals: one composed of an anthro-pologist, two teachers and two sociolinguists

2 In this regard, those who understand the difficulty ofsuch tasks as these, acknowledge that: "This is arevolutionary step forward. Never before has the PeruvianSchool had textbooks available for teaching Quechuaand Aymara as subjects in all primary school grades (. .)Note that it is not a matter of using the autochthonoustongue to eventually resolve a problem of a momentarylack of comprehension; note that it is not a matter ofusing autochthonous tongues only in the early gradeswhen its use is necessary; it is the instrumental use ofautochthonous tongues and Spanish to impart knowledgethroughout the entire elementary schooling, from gradesone to six. What an mammoth effort must have beenrequired to create target-languages in order to teachmathematics, natural sciences, history and social sciences,in languages limited to the transmission of traditionalknowledge! It was necessary to develop the ancestrallanguages, building up the lexicon, whether by recoveringancient terms that had fallen into disuse, coining newterms or using borrowed ones (Pozzi-Escot, 1990 page5 ss; emphasis in the original text).

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from the Department of Educational Researchof the National Polytechnical Institute of Mexico,and another composed of four national special-ists in Anthropology, Descriptive Linguistics,Applied Linguistics and Education (Ibid). Andas a result of this, the project has entered into theconsolidation stage in the Puno region and itsexpansion to other areas of the country withsimilar characteristics, within the framework ofa new educational project, resulting from anagreement between the World Bank and thePeruvian Government.

Training in Highland Schools

The Puno Bilingual Educational Programme inall its activities also included the development ofteacher training courses for those who had toimplement this bilingual education, based on theancestral culture in highland primary schools. Itwas this type of work and the reflection it led to,which gave rise, first, to the organizationtogether with the Puno Higher Education Insti-tute (ISP) of a bilingual education specialtywithin its teacher training programme. Subse-quently, with this same institution, substantialchanges were introduced into the study plansand curricula of the teacher upgrading program-me for those teachers without a degree, so thatnow, all primary school teachers that undergotraining or upgrading in the Puno ISP, alsoreceive specialized training in bilingual educa-tion. This is with regard to both the teaching andthe instrumental use of vernacular languagesand Spanish as a Second Language, vis-a-vis theinclusion and treatment of Andean cultural con-tent. This first incursion into the field of profes-sional training in bilingual education has alreadyproduced two groups of 35 young teachers each,and three groups of a total of under 900 teachersgraduating.

It was precisely within this context of concernfor substantially improving the quality of humanresource development programmes related tothe implementation of bilingual education in theregion, that operation was started up in the thennovel Postgraduate School of the Universidad

Bilingual education beyond national frontiers / Luis Enrique Lopez and Lucia D'Emilio

Nacional del Altiplano, of an area intended topromote research and human resource devel-opment at the level of a second specializationand Masters in Applied Linguistics for Andeanregion education. The Area of Andean Linguis-tics and Education of the UNA-P has been incontinuous operation since 1985 and is currentlyorganizing its third postgraduate class. Twogenerations of approximately 60 students havepassed through its lecture halls, among whichare the seven Bolivian professionals who arenow part of the Bolivian Ministry of Educationand Culture National Technical Team for Bi-lingual Intercultural Education.

The UNA-P Programme has brought togetherthe best Peruvian specialists and several foreignresearchers from Latin America, Europe andNorth America. The courses offered capitalizeon both the advances achieved in linguistics andanthropological research and in the applicationof bilingual education in Peru. This modalityhas behind it five decades of work with ver-nacular-speaking populations, both in the Andeanarea and in the Amazonian region. Bilingualeducation in Peru began precisely in the PunaHighlands when, in the thirties, a group ofQuechua- and Aymara-speaking visionaryteachers began their first attempts at using theindigenous languages of the region to teachreading and writing to peasant children andadults.'

The present

From those early actions up to the present day,

3 The first literacy primers in vernacular for peasant child renand adults which we know about, were prepared byDaniel Espenia Velasco, in Juli and published in Puno in1931. Various educational materials in Aymara, Quechuaand Spanish were later produ ced in Puno, where, between1939 and 1951 the most lasting and interesting Aymara-Spanish bilingual education experience of those timestook place, as a result of an initiative of the rural teacher,Maria Asuncion Galindo. This was a pioneeringexperience in Peru, both for its proposals for tackling theeducational problem from a comprehensive perspectiveand for the serious manner in which it was implemented.(Lopez., 1988).

despite its being totally ignored by the hegemonicsociety that still marks its implementation, bilin-gual education in Peru has come a long way.There are now educational materials available inQuechua, Aymara and in various Amazonianlanguages to attend to indigenous students, par-ticularly at the elementary level. In addition tothis, there are four teacher-training centers twoin the Andean area and two in the Amazonianregion with programmes aimed specifically atteacher training in bilingual education (Lopez,1989). Many Peruvian students now receive abilingual education, as a result of the operationof experimental programmes in Apurimac,Ayacucho, Huancavelica, Lambayeque, Cuzcoand Puno, in the Andean area, and in Loreto,Junin and Madre de Dios in the Amazonianregion, as well as through the actions beingundertaken by the Peruvian Ministry of Educa-tion itself in some Andean area departments,within the framework of the Peru-IBRD IIProject, and with the support of the SummerLinguistics Institute (ILV) in virtually all de-partments of the Amazonian region. However,it is estimated that the current coverage of thismode does not exceed 15% of the school-agevernacular-speaking population requiring thistype of education.

Much still remains to be done in Peru to getbilingual education out the experimental stagethat typifies it and, in particular, to achieve closeties between these efforts whic h generally seemmore academic than not and the claimsmovements of peasants and ethnic organiza-tions from both the sierra and the jungle. Yet, itis necessary to recognize the important role thatthis country has played in advancing LatinAmerican bilingual education.

The Peruvian know-how in bilingual educa-tion also owes much to the interest placed by itsuniversities and research centers particularlyover the last three decades - in field studies inrural areas and in disciplines which, like lin-guistics, are pivotal for developing this type ofeducation. With regard to its third pillar, teaching,the interest of Peruvian educators in the educa-tion of their native populations increased during

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BULLETIN 27, April 1992 I The Major Project of Education

the seventies, within the context of the PeruvianEducational Reform (1972-1980). This estab-lished the framework within which legal instru-ments such as the National Bilingual EducationPolicy (1972), the Bilingual Education Regula-tions (1973), the Law Making Quechua Official(1975) and the Supreme Resolution that approvedthe Official Quechua Alphabet (1975), wereprovided, setting a new precedent in LatinAmerica.

Background for Horizontal Cooperation

The Peruvian-Bolivian cooperation in the areaof education goes back almost four decadeswhen, in 1945, the Peruvian Minister of Educa-tion, Luis E. Varcarcel, renowned anthropolo-gist and supporter of Indian interests and rights,met in Arequipa, Peru, with his Boliviancounterpart and the directors of the Peruvian-North American Cooperative Education Serv-ice and the Inter-American CooperativeEducation Service, to sign an agreement thatwould permit the development of a joint ruraleducation plan. This agreement did nothingmore than make official the informal contactsthat had always existed between Bolivian andPeruvian teachers concerned with the educationof the peasant population. We know, for example,of visits that were carried out in the mid thirtiesfrom one side of Lake Titicaca to the other byrenowned teachers such as Maria AsuncionGalindo, true pioneer in bilingual education inPeru, and El izardo Perez, precursor of the CentralSchool System in Bolivia. Contact betweenPuno and La Paz was, in any case frequent, andits development led to mutual influences thatbenefitted the rural educational system of bothcountries.

With the agreement signed in Arequipa, theexchange between teachers became even morefrequent. Several groups of teachers were in-volved in a constant sharing of experiences thatmade the Peasant Central School (NECs) a re-ality. The latter was in response to the needs ofthe peasant population that demanded greateraccess to the school system. At that time, Peru

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had a population of six million, 64% of whichwas rural. This figure rose to 76% if one onlytook into account the sierra situation. Puno,original NEC headquarters in Peru, had a ruralpopulation of 92.3% and 88% illiteracy amongits 6 to 14 year-old population (Pozzi-Escot1988). For its part, in 1950, Bolivia's totalpopulation was slightly over two and a halfmillion, 64% of which were considered to beindigenous and, therefore, speakers of a ver-nac ular language. This percentage increased evenmore if one only took into account the Andeanregion. There, approximately 75% of the popu-lation spoke Quechua or Aymara (Alb& 1980;Montoya 1983).

It is for the purpose of responding to situationssuch as these that the Peruvian-Bolivian bilateralagreement looked at education from a compre-hensive viewpoint: the education of the peasantrywas seen as a "State problem involving socio-economic, sanitation, roads, agrarian, educationaland juridical aspects. The solution to this prob-lem will require the best efforts of all Stateagencies in both republics" (Aparicio 1955, pag219, quoted in Lopez, 1988). Likewise, "theright to cultural sovereignty, based on the defenseof the very core of the culture itself" was thenconsidered as the inalienable right of the indig-enous population (Valcarcel, 1981, pag 352,quoted in Lopez, 1988). The design of the peas-ant central school drew upon the experiences ofWarisata, Bolivia and of the Seventh-Day Ad-ventist schools of Puno, particularly in connectionwith the adjustment of the school calendar tocoincide with the productive calendar, the or-ganization of teacher-training programmes inthe months of heaviest agricultural work and theorganization in centric and satellite schools.

In Bolivia, Warisata, with his School-Aylluscheme, maintained that the school should makeits action felt beyond its boundaries and proposeda school rooted in peasant community issues:"Who knows whether the ultimate secret of eachhistory with men be this: organization. Theschool should organize the sector in which it hasto act, and if it does not organize it, it is not aschool. Its action, therefore, does not end at the

Bilingual education beyond national frontiers / Luis Enrique L6pez and Lucia D'Emilio

door of the building, but rather, it only beginsthere. Beyond the school is the school. The vastworld of our ayllu is the true classroom: theindian teaches us that. Thus, the school goingbeyond itself to make its action gravitate towardsthe living domains of the economy, religion,home, art, politics of the native indian, fulfills asocial mission that every modem school shouldhave, since educating does not consist of teaching,but rather awakening, engendering, encourag-ing, pushing..." (Perez, 1962, quoted in Rivera,1987, pag. 74).

In Peru, NEC action, in its early years, alsoincluded the initial native tongue literacy pro-grammes for which Yateqatidni andYachasunchis primers were produced, based onthe materials developed in Aymara by teacherMaria Asuncion Galindo, in the thirties andforties, for her Ojherani experiment (Lopez,1988). The use of students' own native tongueconstituted one of the building blocks of thecentral school's educational action as well as ofher work on communal projection, since it wasconsidered that in working with peasants "noother intellectual vehicle remained but theirnative tongue" (Varcarcel 1981, pag. 350),quoted in Lopez, 1988). The defense of things-indigenous was a repeated concern of those whowere involved in this Andean educational ex-perience. Thus, Valcarcers plea for a change ofapproach in dealing with the native indian, es-timated that "the native should not be incorpo-rated into civilized life... but rather Westerncivilization should incorporate itself into the lifeof the native indian, respecting and enhancingthe eminent virtues of this human group that hasbrilliantly enriched universal culture... (It isnecessary to consider that) each man is bornwithin a given culture and only voluntarily canhe adopt elements of another... (From thisstandpoint), defending the conservation of thecultural personality of indigenous groups doesnot mean proposing that they be set apart orsegregated from national life, but rather thatthey be included in it without renouncing theirpersonality, because a nation cannot simply bethe sum of homogenous units, but rather the

active coordination between different groups"(Ibid).

Ten years work

The Peruvian-Bolivian cooperation within theNEC framework involved over ten years ofcontinuous exchange. Subsequently, when thePuno Programme for Bilingual Education wasalready fully implemented, trips by profession-als concerned with teaching Quechua- andAymara-speaking populations, recommencedwhen Bolivian specialists, linguists, teachersand distinguished reverers of Andean languageswere invited to participate in both the trainingcourse organized in Puno and in workshops fordeveloping educational materials in vernacularlanguage, with the understanding that it wasnecessary to opt for common solutions in thetreatment of peoples artificially separated by thePeruvian-Bolivian frontier.

The construction of the Aymara alphabet, forexample, was a precedent in the pursuit forcommon solutions. In 1983, a happy coincidenceoccurred once again, since in both Peru andBolivia meetings were organized to review andmake Quechua and Aymara alphabets official.In Bolivia, this occurred within the frameworkof the literacy campaigns implemented bySENALEP and, in Peru, as a result of eight yearsof application of the 1975 Official QuechuaAlphabet. In Bolivia, meetings were held inCochabamba and La Paz. They concluded withthe approval of the Aymara and Quechua al-phabets in August 1983.4 In Peru, the event wasorganized by the Universities of San CristObalde Huamanga of Ayacucho and San Marcos ofLima, in October 1983.

When in Peru the discussion revolved aroundthe writing of Quechua and Aymara, the Boliv-ian meetings had already reached an agreement.

Representatives of the Puno Programme were also invitedto the Cochabamba seminar, both to share informationwith their Bolivian colleagues regarding EIB in Peru andalso to exchange points of view on the Quechua-Aymaraalphabet (A1b6, 1987).

47BEST COPY AVAILABLE

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BULLETIN 27, April 1992 1 The Major Project of Education

Thus, despite the technical and political consi-derations that recommended the formulation ofa common alphabet for Peruvian Quechua andAymara, the same alphabet had, months earlier,been decided on for Bolivia. For this reason, itwas always born in mind that it was in the lattercountry where the Aymara constituted a majorityand where precisely the Aymara metropolisChuquiyawu (La Paz) was to be found (Lopezand Llanque, 1987). From then on, Aymara iswritten on both sides of the Lake following thesame conventions, given that the official Bolivianand Peruvian alphabets fully coincide. It is to behoped that in the near future a similar solutionmay be arrived at, so that all documents writtenin Quechua can be read from Ingano territory inthe south of Colombia all the way to Santiago delEstero in the north of Argentina.

The mutual Peruvian-Bolivian support wasenhanced when the Puno Universidad Nacionaldel Altiplano invited two Bolivian linguists tosupport the running of the Postgraduate Class inAndean Linguistics and Education, by givingsome courses and seminars. On the other hand,several Peruvian linguists participated in aca-demic events held in Bolivia, and have alsosupported the implementation of bilingual edu-cation programmes in that country.

The new agreement and its implementation

New ties were forged between Bolivia and Peruwhen, in March 1990, the two EducationMinisters signed a cooperation agreement inLima. Thanks to this agreement, teaching mate-rial can be adopted, adapted or reproduced inQuechua, Aymara and Spanish as a SecondLanguage that has already been produced or isbeing produced on one or the other side of LakeTiticaca.

Following are the salient parts of this agree-ment:

"Art.I: The two Ministries agree to mutuallysupport each other in developing Interculturaland Bilingual Education, promoting the per-manent exchange of experiences and Quechuaand Aymara educational material.

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Art. II: The Ministry of Education of Peruauthorizes the adaptation and/or reproductionof Puno Bilingual Education material for useby the Ministry of Education and Culture ofBolivia (...).Art. III: Likewise, the Ministry of Educationand Culture of Bolivia reciprocally pledges infuture to send the Ministry of Education ofPeru any materials it produces on BilingualEducation for its adaptation and/or repro-duction (...).The reasons that prompted this agreement

arose from the need to take advantage of thegreat experience accumulated in the Puno Pro-gramme in connection with the development ofeducational material. As is well known, thisproject dedicated its efforts primarily to thisaspect. But, according to the results of itsevaluation, it was considered that more empha-sis needed to be given to directly working withteachers in service and with the communitiesthemselves. The time it takes to produce theeducational materials in itself an arduous anddelicate task is considerably increased andneeds specialized personnel, owing to the diffi-culty of preparing educational materials in pre-standardized languages such as Quechua andAymara, and of using them to develop an edu-cational process that has them as vernacularlanguages. In other countries, as for examplethose in Southeast Asia, the tasks of idiomaticdevelopment and standardization, such as thoseinherent in the Puno work, are normally promotedby the national States themselves and imple-mented through their specialized agencies andhigher education centres. In Latin America,challenges such as these are still far from beingassumed by the State, and the fate of nativetongues is left to isolated academic efforts andexperimental projects in bilingual education. InPuno, for example, the preparation and valida-tion of educational material for all elementarygrades took twelve years. And; as stated, thetask took on such importance that it neglectedother equally important and necessary aspects ofthe work (Lopez, 1991).

In the case of a new project such as Bolivia's,


it would not have done to start from scratch anddedicate time to pursuing linguistic and techno-logical solutions that have already been foundby others, at the risk of repeating the samemistakes vis-à-vis the direct service to teachersand heads of households. Therefore, it wasconsidered timely to take advantage of the expe-rience on the other side of the border, and to payattention to those aspects most related to in-fieldmonitoring and to the task of advocacy in bi-lingual intercultural education. It is hoped thattime will prove that in Bolivia all the importance,time and care required have been able to bededicated to teacher training and to permanent insitu accompaniment. Hopefully, those involvedin implementing this legal instrument, will notbe moved by the human urge to reinvent thewheel, insisting that everything be done anew,investing time and resources which are never inabundant supply, when it comes to carrying outa true educational reform.' We believe that it isnecessary for those of us who are involved indeveloping bilingual educational or rural educa-tional programmes to become aware of the di-mension of the task at hand: more than the mereimplementation of a new, experimental educa-tional programme, it is a matter of laying thegroundwork for a true educational reform in, for

5 These constraints also occur within the countriesthemselves. Thus, for example, one is surprised to learnthat in Bolivia, when the MEC, EIB Project had alreadydeveloped and implemented for an entire school year,grade one material in Aymara, the University of SanAndres, within the framework of an OAS-financedproject, in November 1990, published teaching materialin the same language and again for grade one students.Likewise, in the Puno area in Peru, after more than eightyears of the afore-mentioned project implementation,two other rural educational programmes one funded byFAO and the Government of Switzerland and the otherby the Government of Sweden began to be implementedwithout being closely coordination with the bilingualeducation experience that was then at the stage of beingconsolidated and expanded. Oftentimes, this is the resultof, on the one hand, a lack of coordination amongfinancial agencies, and on the other, of personal and/orinstitutional attitudes that seek to put their stamp onactivities aimed at cultures in which the collectivesupersedes the individual.

and with indigenous populations. And withinthis framework, all tasks are equally important:the development of educational material, thetraining of teachers and the heightening of theawareness of heads of households.

Adaptation and use

Within the framework of the new agreement, theadaptation and use of Puno materials in Boliviais made possible and even necessary by thehistoric and cultural continuity that character-izes the Quechua and Aymara peoples, and sincethe cultural content included in these textbooksalso reflects the cultural heritage of the Quechuaand Aymara peoples across the border. On theother hand, variations in dialect between thePuno Quechua and the Bolivian varieties ofQuechua are less prominent than the variationsin dialect within the same Peruvian context(Caron, 1987). With regard to the Aymara, thisproblem is virtually nonexistent.

It is important to point out that, when theagreement of mutual cooperation was signed,the EIB Project of the Ministry of Education andCulture of Bolivia was already about to beintroduced into Quechua, Aymara and Guaraniclassrooms, but it still lacked the completepackage of teaching material for the first schoolyear. Neither the Ministry's Technical Team northe Episcopal Commission on Education had thetime to for instance develop material inMathematics, since the main efforts had concen-trated on reading and writing and on manuals fororal Spanish as a second language. On the otherhand, there was no research done in the countryat a grass-roots and evaluatory level similar tothe research that had been done in Puno tosupport and accompany the decade of bilingualeducation.

At a year from the signing of the contract,various activities have already been carried out.The educational material developed in Quechuaand in Aymara for the grade one Mathematicscourse has been adapted. And, to date, the text-book and manual developed in Puno for teach-ing Spanish as a Second Language in Grade Two

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are being adapted. Likewise, the teams in chargeof preparing Quechua and Aymara materials forthe same level have the proposals, methodolo-gical designs and activities from the Puno booksto fall back on.

The utilization of the Peruvian experience isnot limited to the EIB textbooks and manuals. Italso involves the utilization of other auxiliarymaterial. Such is the case of the Yupana, anabacus from Incaic times, recovered by the Punoprogramme for teaching mathematics within thebilingual education in the Andean area. As oc-curred years before in Peru, the widespreadacceptance of the Yupana, both in the ruralcontexts by those for whom it was recovered,and in urban areas where it was also adopted. InBolivia this instrument has had greater accept-ance than expected. For this reason, despite itsbeing an Andean abacus, the Yupana is also beingused in Guarani schools, since EIB projectteachers consider it to be a useful tool for teach-ing Mathematics.6

It is important, here, to make some referenceto the role played by intellectuals and coopera-tion agencies in connection with joint activitiesfor nations divided by frontiers. While someaim at enhancing the ethnic identity beyondState limits and promoting agreements such asthe one mentioned and linguistic standardiza-tion, taking advantage of all experiences towardsunifying this "Profound America"to paraphraseBonfil Batalla (1989) others consider that eachcountry should make its own efforts, getting lostin outmoded nationalisms. With the heighten-ing of Creole-bourgeois nationalisms one losessight of the unity of indigenous peoples.

Hopefully, Inds Pozzi-Escot's invocation(1990, pages 8-9), which appeared in the speechdelivered on occasion of the above-mentionedagreement we mentioned, will come true overthe next few years:

"An educational conception such as this

6 In Peru, this abacus has already been commerciallyproduced, and it can also be found in urban privateschools.

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Intercultural Bilingual Education and a collec-tion of materials such as these, are annulled ifthere are no teachers trained or educated whounderstand them and incorporate them intoclassroom life (...) Consequently, it is my pleathat the mutual aid programmes between oursister republics of Bolivia and Peru, carefullytake on the plans for teacher training and furthertraining in the immediate future, as well asmeasures to achieve the greater stability andsocial recognition of Andean rural teacherswithout whose cooperation and mystique nochange would be possible. They must also feelthat justice is finally being done by them. Not allhas been said and done. But with these materialsand the intercultural bilingual education whichthey put into effect, Bolivia and Peru will fulfilla very important stage in the demands of theindigenous peoples of Latin America".

Scope of the horizontal cooperation in bilin-gual intercultural education

The Bolivian strategy to advance bilingualeducation, based on the previous experiencesundertaken in a neighbouring country, is anexample of how in Latin America efforts can bejoined towards a better implementation of aneducational mode that still cannot break throughthe constraints of experimentation, isolation andlimited coverage. Now, in Bolivia, less empha-sis needs to be placed on a task that is in itselfarduous, such as the development of educationalmaterials in indigenous languages and in Span-ish as a Second Language. Instead, other equallyimportant areas can be reinforced: teacher train-ing, EBI dissemination and promotion and, linkedto this, working side-by-side with those primarilyinvolved i.e., indigenous societies and their grass-roots organizations. In this way, it is also possibleto reallocate ever-scarce financial and humanresources to deal with aspects such as the afore-mentioned. These are essential for the future ofthe modality, in terms of its definitive and realinsertion into official plans and programmes andinto the national educational system.

It was precisely in addressing these same


arguments that in mid 1990, the National Bureauof Bilingual Intercultural Indigenous Educationof the Ministry of Education and Culture ofEcuador, contacted the Peruvian authorities torequest authorization to adapt and reproduce thetexts of Spanish as Second Language, developedin the Puno Bilingual Education Programme forgrades three and four, for use in the primaryschools of the EBI Project of that country. Thanksto this decisions, the team responsible for pre-paring the EBI Second Language material wasable to dedicate greater time to teacher training.And now that the Ecuadorian version of thesetextbooks is in use, they will also be able tosupervise its implementation, help the teachersand gather data that will allow for its improve-ment.

But, in addition to the practical advantagessuch as those mentioned, it is also necessary tomention other projections that derive from acooperation such as the one described here.Here we refer primarily to the standardization ofindigenous languages and the heightening of theindigenous identity, in connection with the at-tention to border populations.

As is well known, there are numerous cases ofAmerican Indian peoples, whose ancestral ter-ritories are crossed over by the national frontiersof current Latin America republics. These situ-ations affect the normal development of variousmacroethnic groups, which is the case of theQuechuas, Aymaras, Quiches, Zapotecs,Mapuches, etc. The Quechuas are perhaps theclearest example of this situation.

The Quechuas

Despite the difficulty of obtaining reliable figuresto get an idea of the indigenous demographicreality resulting from the conditions ofoppression and social exclusion under which thepopulation currently lives and which promptsthe negation of the respective ethnic or linguisticaffiliation some estimate the total Quechuapopulation to border on nine million inhabitantsat least (CerrOn-Palomino, 1987). Others, how-ever, consider that the latter could easily exceed

fourteen million (Rodriguez, 1983).Whatever the case, it is clear that the Quechuas

are currently divided among five different coun-tries at least: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Boliviaand Argentina. While most are found in Ecua-dor, Peru and Bolivia, which in itself contributesto their survival, this division seriously affectstwo peripheral groups that are true minorities intheir respective countries: the Inganos in Co-lombia, barely exceed seven thousand inhabit-ants, and the Argentine Quechuas of Santiagodel Estero, Salta and Jujuy currently do notexceed one hundred and twenty thousand (1983and 1987 estimates by Rodriguez and Cerron-Palomino, respectively). Should the existenceof Quechua speakers be confirmed in westernBrazil (Gnerre 1979, quoted in CerrOn-Palomino,1987), their condition in Brazil would be evenmore precarious, since they could number nomore than seven hundred.

Just like the majority indigenous groups of theAndean Region or Central America could seethemselves affected by their location in differentcountries, this also occurs with minority indig-enous groups. In fact, rather than being theexception, it is the rule for most Amazonianindigenous peoples. Thus, for example, the Bora,which number no more than fifteen hundred(Rengifo, 1983), are separated by the Peru-Colombia border; the Choroti (Matacos), onlysix thousand (Ibid), are separated by the Para-guay-Bolivia border and Paraguay-Argentinaborder; the Yanomami, twenty-five thousand(Ibid), by the Venezuela-Brazil border and theMyba territory, with eleven thousand inhabit-ants (Ibid) is divided by the Paraguay-Brazilborder and Paraguay-Argentina border.

The indigenous groups themselves have beenthe ones who called our attention to these factsand to the ways in which the situation affectstheir normal development. In the two meetingsheld in Barbados, several American Indian lead-ers stressed "the problems (stemming from thelack) of territorial unity of the Indian nations,problems originating with the colonial andneocolonial allotment of these historic spaces"(Barbados Group, 1978, page 14). In the Decla-

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ration of Barbados II, the problem was statedwithin a greater context:

"The problem of our population is summarizedas follows: A situation of cultural and physicaldominance which varies from subjugation by awhite or Creole minority, to the danger of ex-tinction in countries in which they constitute asmall percentage of the population.

Indo-American peoples are divided internallyor amongst themselves owing to the action of:integration, education and development policies,western religious systems, economic categoriesand the frontiers of national States" (lbid, page391).

Fateful Consequences

This fragmentation has dire consequences interms of the means of expression of these soci-eties. On the one hand, the physical isolationitself and the need to respond and to relate todifferent hegemonic metropolises and centresalso leads to a linguistic fragmentation and to agradual differentiation which, day by day, makesthe likelihood of mutual comprehension moreremote. Contributing to this are both the dysglosiaand the asymmetry that prevail in the socioeco-nomic and cultural relations between indigenouspeoples and the hegemonic societies of thecountries in which they are inserted, in terms ofthe agraphic nature of their societies.

Within this context, indigenous languages aredramatically influenced by the dominant lan-guage. This fact is not only detrimental to theircreative and productive mechanisms, but it alsoaffects the very internal structure of these lan-guages, now reduced to minorities. The situationbecomes more complex in those situations inwhich the language of the hegemonic societywith which the indigenous language is perma-nently in contact and in conflict is not the same.

This is the case, for example of indigenoussocieties that are located on both sides of aborder separating a country, that has Spanish asan official language, from Brazil or anothercountry that has a different European languageas a hegemony. Within these contexts the posi-

52

tion of the indigenous language is weakenedeven more, and linguistic processes are gener-ated that contribute to a greater distancing be-tween their dialects.

On the other side, the often exacerbated na-tionalist sentiments of countries and the veryhistoric background that determined the estab-lishment of political frontiers at the edge ofethnic boundaries, make it difficult for possiblebilateral understanding to occur, and for thecapitalization of experiences and works under-taken in the various nations which the speakersof a same language are now a part.

This is what happens, for example, with theconstruction of alphabets for many indigenouslanguages and with the definition of idiomaticand educational policies for the various segmentsof the same ethnic and linguist group. To illus-trate this, it is enough to refer to the problemscurrently faced in both Central America and inthe Andean Region, in relation to the stand-ardization of writing for the Mayan and Quechualanguages, and the notable differences that existin terms of educational and linguistics policiesbetween Chile and Peru/Bolivia, in terms of theattention afforded the Aymara-speaking popu-lation. The existence of differentiated policies,as can be understood, leads to the underminingof ancestral languages and, in fact, has a corre-lation at a more psychological and social level.

The language fragmentation described, thelack of common solutions for working with oneand the same nationality and also the interven-tion of linguists with purified descriptivisttraining, who in their work ignore the diachronicperspective,' all help to form attitudes and opin-ions among the indigenous population that tend

7

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This is precisely one of the reasons why, with duereason, the work of the Linguistics Summer Institute(ILV) with indigenous languages of America is criticized;descriptivism at all cost leads them, more often than not,to conceive of indigenous languages as overly fragmentedentities that do not allow for intercommunication beyondsmall communications whose interrelation and contacthave not been interrupted, thus wishing to ignore boththe historical conditioning factors themselves that led to


towards the negation of their own heritage and tothe overvaluation of the hegemonic, within acontext which is, in itself, unfavourable to theethnic and cultural revitalization of these peoples.

The view that is generally held by vernacularspeakers regarding their own languages runscounter to this, and disproportionately favoursdominant languages and cultures, which areseen as the only means for social mobilizationand for overcoming the stigma of being a nativeindian. "Colonial history and its neocolonialextension, transmitted in a prejudiced mannerwith regard to indian populations, in terms oftheir scientific knowledge, their philosophies,their languages, their social structures, etc., andwhich is the socially accepted one by the Creole-mestizo populations as history and true knowl-edge, has led a sector of the indigenous populationto introject part of the whole set of justifyingideological principles used by the colonizer-dominator, and take them to be the historic andexplanatory truth of their daily lives. This in turn

this fragmentation and to the evolution of Europeanlanguages and their current unification. And the fact isthat, institutions such as these do not separate theirlinguistic work from the ideological motivations theyserve: i.e., the assimilation of indigenous populations tothe flow of hegemonic societies of the continent.Unfortunately, many Latin American linguists, perhapsunwittingly, make the same mistakes under the pretext ofscientific objectivity. As Rodriguez clarly pointed out(1982, page 189) "Added to the systems of colonialfragmentation (territorial, administrative and religious,etc) is linguistic fragmentation, ideologized by thescholars of indian languages, most of who maketaxonomic-type studies prevail over the overall reflectionsof the specific contents of a language that is expressedand inserted into a culture. There is a certain"forgetfulness" of the fact that language serves tocommunicate knowledge, and emotions, memories andthoughts from and about men and nature; the social factof language is left to one side, favouring its synchronicstudy, voiding its content. The work of linguists cannotand should not be removed from the rest of socialdisciplines as a whole, given the real circumstancesraised by the current multilinguistics, and much less ofthe reality of native speakers". With regard to theobjectives of the ILV linguistic task, refer, among otherdocuments, to the "Politica Coloniasta de ILV" in Bar-bados Group, 1979, pages 397-400.

imposes upon them attitudes of rejection to-wards their own language" (Rodriguez, 1982,page 187).

Paths Towards Advancement

It is due to this type of evidence that efforts havebeen made with indigenous populations in recentyears, and in virtually all countries in thecontinent, to find paths that will contribute toovercoming the current fragmentation of theancestral languages of America, as a means toalso achieve a heightening of the psycho-socialand cultural identity of their speakers. To date,these efforts have exclusively related to theimplementation of bilingual education pro-grammes. They also derive from a concrete andpragmatic need: the teaching of and in vernacu-lar is destined to become a task that will be trulyimpossible to implement at the scale and cover-age required, if it is considered indispensable todevelop different educational materials for smallgroups of students, each of which uses a givendialect within a same language.

If one truly wishes to arrive at qual ity educationfor all indigenous students of the continent, itwill be imperative to also design an economicallyfeasible strategy. Language planning processessuch as the written standardization of indig-enous languages contribute to this end, sincethey make it possible to prepare educationalmaterial in indigenous languages for sizablenumbers of the student population.

As an example of this it would be enough tomention the efforts undertaken in Peru towardsconstructing a standardized system of writingfor the Quechua that would allow peasant studentsto be educationally catered to in their own lan-guage. These students inhabit the entire regionknown as the "Indian stain" which extendsfrom Ayacucho up to the border with Boliviaand in which the majority of the Quechua-speaking population in that country is concen-trated.

The achievements obtained in Ecuadorthroughout the course of the decade in whichEIB was implemented, provide a real background

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for efforts such as the Peruvian one. They haverecourse to standardized writing, regardless ofthe differences at the surface structure levelbetween the different oral varieties of Ecuado-rian Quechua.

In the case we are now dealing with, Bolivianbilingual education can now be enriched notonly by the Ecuadorian historic background, butalso by one that is much closer to it, whichdeveloped within a more similar idiomatic andsociocultural context, as is the case of theQuechua- and Aymara-speaking PeruvianCollasuyo.

It is thus necessary to state that the writtenstandardization of any language which is dia-lectically fragmented, transcends the level ofalphabet definition and actually involves theentire task of coding. An example of this wouldbe what occurred almost five centuries ago withSpanish and with other European languagessuch as German. In the case of indigenous lan-guages, the scope of such an undertaking todaybecomes much larger, since it involves con-verting them into polyvalent means of commu-nication. These will have to respond to present-day challenges, and specifically, to the need tobecome valid tools for transmitting and creatingknowledge; in other words, we are attempting toconvert these languages into instruments forcommunicating and forcognition within a contextof dysglosia that daily limits their expressivecapacity.

Encouraging efforts

This is why it is encouraging to learn aboutefforts aimed at standardizing the written sys-tems of indigenous peoples separated by borders,and of highlighting the importance of bilateralagreements such as the Bolivian-Peruvian one.

In recent years, workshops have been held inboth Ecuador and Colombia to discuss the Awaalphabet, and in Colombia and Venezuela todiscuss the Wayuu alphabet (Guajiro).

Occasions such as these remind us of requestsmade to governments and international agenciesin specialized events. This was the case, for

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example, of the regional seminars promoted byUNESCO in 1985 and 1987 in Lima and BuenosAires, respectively. Thus, in the one held inLima, it was agreed that international agenciesbe requested to "foster and promote encountersbetween government delegates, specialists andmembers of ethnic groups whose territories arcdivided by frontiers" (UNESCO/OREALC,1986, page 45). And in the one held in BuenosAires, one of the committees specifically con-sidered that: "The standardization of writing inundivided indigenous languages that are crossedby current political borders...should be pro-moted". In addition, a basic table of symbolswas presented that could prove useful in devel-oping alphabets for Amerindian languages(UNESCO/OREALC, 1987, pages 47ss).

At this same event, it was also proposed that aproject be implemented, aimed at providingadvisory services for the implementation of bi-lingual intercultural education for the wayuuethnic group from the Colombian-Venezuelanborder. This action was later sponsored byUNESCO/OREALC ( /bid).

But, in addition to concern for the standardi-zation of writing, over the last decade the needhas been increasingly raised in Latin America tolinguistically and stylistically develop indigenouslanguages with a view to standardizing themboth in a purely language sense andsocioculturally.

In the Andean area as we mentioned theseactions have been successfully undertaken inboth Ecuador and Peru, within the framework ofspecific bilingual education projects.

With regard to Bolivia, the task of standardi-zation and the development of bilingual educa-tion have recently begun. But they already havethe advantage of having recourse to significantbackground information that can and shouldsteer their action, both with respect to the Quechuaand Aymara. On the other hand, Bolivia con-vened an important meeting in which there wasanalysis and some initial agreement on formu-lating criteria and even adopting certain spe-cialized lexicons, to make it possible to teach theindigenous language itself and to use it to teach


other subjects. This occurred within the fra-mework of an important regional seminar heldin Santa Cruz de la Sierra in October 1989(MEC/UNES CO/ICl/UNICEF, 1989).

It is hoped that all Bolivian, Ecuadorian orPeruvian institutions which undertake bilingualeducation actions will adhere to the Santa Cruzagreements, so as to make the standardization ofAndean languages possible in spaces that alsotranscend national frontiers.

Standardization

But the fact that the standardization of ancestrallanguages of America is seen as an unavoidabletask does not only respond to a pragmatic andprominently linguistic nature. Laying thegroundwork for and making the standardizationof a language viable albeit at a written level, isintimately tied to possibilities thatgo beyond thelevel of communication. To put indigenous lan-guages on an equal level of expression as the so-called languages "of culture" also presupposesencouraging the emergence of psychosocial andcultural processes within current indigenoussocieties for overcoming the conditions of ethnicand language shame that are often generated asa result of oppression, marginalization andsilencing that have prevailed in the contactbetween vernacular and Spanish-speakers.

Under these circumstances, vernacular speak-ers may see their own language and culture asdiminished tools lacking real value within thesocioeconomic context in which they currentlylive. These feelings have serious repercussionsin their self-esteem and self-confidence.

Engaging in bilingual intercultural education,from the standpoint of language standardizationand ethnic and cultural revitalization can con-tribute to reversing apparently inexorable proc-esses and to building secure individuals with adefinite identity. Several case studies undertakenin the area of bilingual education programmeswithin the continent already show us how it ispossible, within the school, to promote the per-petuation of essential values, secure the use ofone's own language and instill self-confidence

in indigenous students so that they can activelytake part in the development of their educationand even adopt elements from the surroundingsociety, without this necessarily proving detri-mental to their own heritage. And if, in addition,a feeling of belonging to a people that goesbeyond national borders is fostered and a feelingof pride is awakened in native students of be-longing to an ancient civilization that has con-tributed much to universal culture, then we willbe faced with unimagined situations, that nev-ertheless will tend to overcome the isolation andmarginalization to which the indigenous survivalin the continent seems destined.

A Lesson in Tolerance

Who knows if in the face of the incapacityshown by those of us who belong to hegemonicsectors of the continent to make Latin Americanintegration a reality, it will not be the nativepeople who will once again give us a lesson intolerance vis-a-vis differences and in how totruly and respectfully coexist with others andtheir cultural, religious and linguistic manifesta-tions. After all, the indigenous populations havethe greatest experience in Latin America inpermanently interacting with different peoples.

If international agenciess in particular thosethat belong to the United Nations system andbilateral projects take into account the conditionsof indigenous peoples separated by borders,who knows whether we would not soon put an

8 The role that international agencies could play in theseprocesses was described in the Buenos Aires workshop,thus: "With regard to the cooperation between borderingcountries in which the same ethnolinguistic groups exist,divided by borders (...) one would have to heightenawareness in this regard, in order to take advantage of theexisting experiences and material on a same ethnic groupthat is divided among two or three countries, and tocreate a favourable climate for undertaking initiativeswhere still no major action has been taken. The backingand support that international agencies could offer aredeterminant for this purpose and a more active role ontheir part was recommended". (UNESCO/OREALC,1987, page 81).

55 55


end to all these histories of border conflicts andmisunderstandings that do no-one any good. Inorder to make this Utopia possible, from thevantage point of education, it will be necessaryto give the indigenous peoples back their self-

References

Alb6, X. "Problematica linguistica y metalingtiisticade un alfabeto quechua: una reciente experienciaboliviana. In Allpanchis 29/30. Year XIX. 431-465. 1987.

"Lengua y sociedad en Bolivia 1976". LaPaz: Institute Nacional de Estadistica. 1980.

Alb6, X. and D'Emilio, L. "Lenguas auteoctonas yeducacion en Bolivia". In Perspectivas. QuarterlyEducation Review. (Paris, UNESCO). 1990.

Amadio, M. "Materiales de apoyo para la formaciOndocente". In Pueblos indigenas y educacion No. 6,5-23. 1988.

Amadio, M. and Zilfiiga, M.La educacion interculturalbilingiie en Bolivia: experiencias y propuestas. LaPaz: UNESCO/Ministry of Education and Culture/UNICEF. 1989.

Barbados Group (eds.) "Indianidad y descolonizacionen America Latina". Proceedings from the SecondMeeting ofBarbados. Mexico City: Editorial NuevaImagen. 1979.

Bonfil Batalla, G. Mexico profundo. Una civilizacionnegada. Mexico City, Grijalbo-National Councilfor Culture and the Arts. 1989.

Bonfil Batalla, G. et al. America Latina:Etnodesarrollo y etnocidio. San Jose, Costa Rica:Ediciones FLACSO. 1982.

Cerron-Palomino, R. Linguistica quechua. Cuzco:Bartolome de las Casas. 1987.

D'Em ilio, L. "La conquista de la escuela. El proyectoeducativo de los guarani-chiriguartos". In JaimaNo. 52-53/54/55 La Paz, Bolivia. 1990.

Lopez, L. E. "La escuela en Puno y el problema de lalengua: excurso historico". In L.E.L6pez (ed.)Pesquisas en lingidstica andina. Lima-Puno: UNA-P/CONCYTEC. 79-106. 1986.

"El desarrollo de recursos humanos para laeducacion bilingue en los wises andinas". WorkingDocument. Quito: Cuenca University-CEDIME.Mimeo. 224 pp. 1989.

Lopez, L. E. and Llanque Chana, D. "Desarrollo de un

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confidence, which even to this day we continueto take from them. Following this route, bi-lingual intercultural education is destined toplay an essential role, also beyond nationalfrontiers.

sistema de escritura para el aimara". In Pueblosindigenas y education 2. 35-58. (Quito). 1987.

Ministry of Education and Culture/UNICEF/OREALC-UNESCO/AECI-ICI. Normalization dellenguaje pedagogic° para las lenguas andinas.Regional Workshop Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.23-27 October, 1989. La Paz.

Montoya, V. "La educacion bilingiie en proyectosintegrados". In Rodriguez, N.; Masferrer, E. andVargas, R. Educaci6n etnias y descolonizacibn enAmerica Latina. 57-82. 1983.

Po zzi-Escot, I. "La educacion bilingtie en el Peru: unamirada retrospectiv a y prospectiv a". In Lopez, L.E.,(ed.) Pesquisas en lingaistica andina. Lima-Puno:UNAP/CONCYTEC. 37-78. 1988.

Education bilingtie intercultural. Speechdelivered at the ceremony of the signing of theAgreement for Cooperation on Bilingual Educationsigned between the Ministers of Education of Peruand Bolivia. Lima: UNICEF. 1990.

Rodriguez, N. "La fi-agmentaciOn lingiiistica: Pro-longacion de la fragmentaciOn colonial". In G.Bonfil, et al. 185-206. 1982.

"Cuadro territorial y demografico de lapoblaciOn indigena en America Latina". In Edu-cacion, etnias y descolonizacion en America Lati-na, Vol. 2, Mexico City: UNESCO/III 559-588.1983.

Rivera Pizarro, J. Una pedagogia popular para laeducacion intercultural bilingiie.Quito: EBI-MEC-GTZ Project. Ediciones Abyayala. 1987.

UNESCO/OREALC. Seminar on educational andcultural policies and strategies with indigenouspopulations. Lima, Peru, 13-19 November, 1985.Report. Santiago, Chile: UNESCO/OREALC.

Regional workshop on the preparation ofintercultural curricula and preparation of teachingmaterial for teaching of and in the mother tongue.Buenos Aires, 13-17 October 1986. Final Report.Santiago, Chile: UNESCO/OREALC. 1987.

NEW ASSIGNMENTS FOR TECHNICAL AND PROFESSIONALHIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION. GUIDELINES AND STRATEGIES

Maria de Ibarrola*

The experience of Latin American countries with technical and professional highschool education has been a long and costly one. It is necessary to recover thisexperience in order to reverse the situation and to deal with the new socialrequirements that open the way for the recommendations proposed to this effect.The history and establishment of concrete institutions that administer this type ofeducation, to a large extent determine the limits and possibilities of change.This experience has very distinct characteristics:Significant "heterogeneity" between countries and within them.In the past, the growing number of graduates from primary schools and theburgeoning and socially heterogeneous high school population in educationalsystems, led to the creation of schools that differed from general ones. Often, theyemerged to train popular sectors for their immediate incorporation into moremodern jobs, while at the same time excluding them from higher education. But the

pressures these sectors of the population exerted in order to have access to moreadvanced levels of education progressively forced the creation of a wide variety ofhigh school technical education institutions some bivalent and others terminal.

Latin American heterogeneity is expressed inthe following traits:

The different role played by technical andprofessional high school education in terms of:

the number of grades in elementary (or basic)mandatory education, which in some coun-tries only includes five grades, while in othersit extends to eight or nine grades. The periodfrom which this greater duration of basicschooling dates also differs;the terminal efficiency of the preceding level,which determines the effective size of possi-ble demand;

Maria de Ibarrola. Educational Research Department ofthe Centre for Research and Advanced Studies of theNational Polytechnical Institute, IPN, Mexico.Agreements from the subregional consultation on newtasks for technical and professional high school education.UNESCO/OREA LC. Santiago, Chile, 18-20 November1991.

The unequal contribution in its quantitativegrowth and in national coverage;

The establishment of institutional limits anddifferences according to very different criteria.On occasion, by area of working activity towhich the training is oriented (agricultural, in-dustrial, services, commerce), in others by sourceof financing: public, private; by geographicscope, in terms of the administrative govern-mental divisions (federal, state, municipal).

The nature of the relationship that is estab-lished between general high school, technicalhigh school and vocational or professional train-ing at the same level, in terms of the institutionallimits and areas mentioned in the previousparagraph. In some countries, technical educa-tion is integrated at an institutional and curricularlevel to general education, while in others it isleft out altogether of the formal educationalsystem.

Different weights of State or private responsi-

57


bility for this type of education. The Chileanexperience is noteworthy in this respect, al-though it still has not been evaluated in overallterms, where the administration of technicalteaching establishments passed on into privatehands linked to enterprises, while the State re-tained financial responsibility, subsidizing themper student registered.

The different modes for obtaining and chan-nelling funds between countries and even be-tween institutional modes within the same coun-try.

The heterogeneity of the results obtained,essentially according to the institutional modes

and particularly according to specific educa-tional establishments within the countries. Al-though one may generalize as to the existence ofresults that are very much inferior to the onespursued, some technical high schools meet theirobjectives very efficiently.

The difference in the (legal and real) value ofthe certificate granted, in particular with respectto the possibility of continuing on to highereducation.

Constants

Despite the heterogeneity, there are some char-acteristic constants in Latin American high schooltechnical education:

The fact that technical education does notarise from a distinctive social experience, butrather from centralized governmental decisions,which, in adopting the international recom-mendations at the time, consider the former to bean important factor in the economic develop-ment of the countries. The preceding forces oneto carefully espouse the recommendations pro-posed.

The conceptual confusion, arising from a realconfusion, in the terms that undividedly desig-nate it as "technical" and "high school", both atthe educational level and at the working level.This confusion is frequently combined with theassigning of very diverse, disperse, contradic-tory and ambitious institutional objectives.

The curricular orientation and the training

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rationale of this type of education is mainlyderived from the objective of orienting its gradu-ates directly to employment (not to work):

for various reasons, the thrust favoured hasbeen that of gearing institutional trainingtowards very specific actions, preset in posi-tions, and areas of activity within the mostmodern sections of the services sector in theproduction system. These positions are ge-nerically and simply assigned the term "inter-mediate" within the working hierarchy;the training offered has attempted to dignifycertain occupations, increasing the educationthat leads to them in an attempt to establish alink between the high school level and theintermediate level foreseen in the workinghierarchy;likewise, attempts have been made to innovatecertain occupations at intermediate level,declared to be necessary for the economicdevelopment of the countries, or for the solutionof certain social problems.An important characteristic has been the es-

tablishment of models furnishing educationalinstitutions with sophisticated imported equip-ment that has contributed, to a large extent, to thevery high cost of this type of education. Besides,this equipment is inadequate both from thestandpoint of teaching and from the possibilityof its use, depending on the resources (of allkinds, including know-how) available for thispurpose.

Quality of the process

The enormous disparity between the statedobjectives and the consolidation of the institu-tional levels that would guarantee the quality ofthe educational process:

the (stated) objective of favouring employ-ment, has proven inefficient in the face of theserious Latin American problem in this re-spect and of the heterogeneity of workingsectors. Work, for a long time conceived asemployment, orients educational action onlyas a point of arrival for the graduate; a longprocess was needed before actually using it as

New assignments for technical and professional high school education /Maria de Ibarrola

a curricular source and as a point of learning;the training offered proves ineffective andweak in terms of its consequences, impor-tance and social relevance;there has been a notable lack of institutionalsupport for building and consolidating thespecifics of an educational mode that, in allrespects, seemed to be an innovation in LatinAmerican countries;there was an indiscriminate shift in teachingschemes from general education to technicaleducation. For example, the organization ofknowledge to be taught with a heavydisciplinary load, schedules geared predomi-nantly to "classroom" work, excessively rigidschool administration and legislation, vis -a-vis the flexibility that would be required bythe implicit innovation in teaching andthe stated coordination with the productionsystem;significant discrimination occurs between theacademic teacher (who works exclusively inthe classroom and has a university degree inhis c.v.) versus the "technical" teacher (whoworks in the workshop and whose c.v. featuresworking experience over university training).The great disparity between the institutional

and financial efforts dedicated to this type ofeducation and the results obtained in terms of:

the scarce demand that technical schools elicit,as compared to general propaedeutic, scien-tific-humanistic schools;the low prestige they achieve as compared togeneral propaedeutic, scientific-humanisticschools;the tension that is generated between thenumber of careers and working areas that theyintend to include, and the replay of supply anddemand, in keeping with which registrationand institutional efforts are concentrated intovery few careers, mainly service-oriented ones;the cost of technical education is higher thangeneral education.The socioeconomic segmenting that arises as

a result of the population that mostly registers inthem and the jobs to which they are oriented; inany case, this is conducive to a certain educa-

tional mobility, that favours the new generationsfrom popular socioeconomic sectors.

In short, high school technical education hasdeveloped on the basis of constant tensionsbetween what the institution says it wants, theeducational supply that it succeeds in forming,the national and sectoral distribution of the lat-ter, students requests and what graduates achievein the labour market.

Boost to technical education

National governments have played the mostimportant role in promoting high school techni-cal education in most countries, and their deci-sions have determined the priority that it has orhas not reached at varying times in its recenthistory.

The structural adjustment that States havebeen undergoing, which begun to be manifestedin the early eighties, led to radical declines in thefinancing schools required and in the outrightdevaluation of teachers wages. The develop-ment of high school technical education wasaffected to a greater extent than other technicaland educational modes.

In light of the lack of resources and the ex-tremely discouraging results of these schools,there is serious questioning as to their veryexistence; national priorities concentrate onbasic education, on the one hand, and on scienceand technology at an advanced level, on theother.

It is suggested that high school education bestandardized under the general scientific-hu-manistic education model. Efforts are made todelegate the financing of technical education tostate or local government or to production sec-tors. This kind of "decentralization" is assumedexclusively for financial reasons, and not forefficiency and teaching quality.

Lack of research

Some of the main problems attributed to techni-cal education are not supported by sufficientresearch.

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It is known that technical education involvesa higher cost than general education, attributedto the installation and operation of the techno-logical infrastructure with which it has beenequipped. Ultimately, the sectors that determineit are unknown, given the sizable temporal vari-ations that result from construction times vis -a-vis those of subsequent development, for ex-ample, or the weight of full time teachers com-pared to part-time ones. No studies have beendone on the differences between the modesimplemented for financing it, nor on the impactthese have had in terms of the cost of educationor in terms of the quality of the training achieved.

It is argued that graduates from technical highschools have less chance of finding employmentthan those from general propaedeutic, scien-tific-humanistic schools. But, in fact, no researchhas been done that takes into account the dif-ferences by sector of the labour market, bygeographic area, by type of career, by type ofinstitutional mode, by dynamic and businesscycle variations, etc.

In the evaluations of technical high schooleducation no consideration has been given to thelong-term effects that the latter may have.

Achievements

In its recent history, which in some countriesbegan in the late fifties, technical high schooleducation has had significant experience lead-ing to the following results, which can be quali-fied as achievements, compared with other modesof high school education:

It is the one that has best experienced a train-ing based on the exact sciences and on techno-logical development; this experience includesaspects of:

physical infrastructure and equipment, withsignificant emphasis on the high number ofworkshops and laboratories per number ofclassrooms and in hours of practice per hoursof theory;a curriculum structured to a large extentaccording to labour problems and not those ofthe academic disciplines, and which has gen-

60 6

erated significant opportunities for learning inworkshops and laboratories and even outsidethe school;a teaching body qualified in the specificteaching areas that the training requires, wherework is seen as pivotal.It is the educational mode that has best ach ieved

a much broader valuation of work; for some timenow, it has afforded greater integration betweenintellectual and manual work and which nowclearly shows up as characteristic of the newtechnological developments.

It is the educational mode that most breakswith the traditional orientation of high schoolgraduates towards university careers or workbased on the social and management sciences;its graduates mainly sustain those areas of work-ing activity or higher level careers most tied tothe technological development of countries(engineering and the exact sciences).

In many countries, it is the educational modethat provides the broadest opportunities for ahigh school education for socioeconomic sec-tors that traditionally have been left out of thislevel.

There are indicators that show that its gradu-ates have a greater capacity for autonomousproductive and working management in the in-formal sector of the economy.

New nature of possible relations

The diversity of empirical research carried out inrecent decades affords a new clarity in terms ofthe nature of the possible relationships betweentechnical high schools and the various institu-tions and demands of the production and workingsector.

There are important points of coordinationbetween the objectives, functions, processes andresults of technical schools and those of thecountry's production system. Albeit deficiently,technical schools anticipated the vital role thatknowledge would play in productivity and, inparticular, the fact that technology does notmechanically result from the exact sciences butrather requires its own teaching.

New assignments for technical and professional high school education /Marfa de Ibarrola

However, an important caveat is that the dif-ferent nature of educational and working institu-tions does not permit "linking" them in the strictsense of the word; i.e., a chaining or subordinationof the school's interest to those of the productivesystem. It is structurally impossible to hope formechanical, linear, specific, director immediaterelations, given that the institutions and theestablishments responsible as a whole for de-veloping education or production have differentobjectives: different organizational rationale,interests and capabilities of actors undertakingeducation or production, who cannot be thesame, different dynamics, tempos and times forachieving their own objectives.

The projects

The educational projects of a country are shapedby school institutions. The latter have shownthemselves to have their own important dynamic;different actors build the educational high schoolinstitution in time and space, from the overallshape to the daily work. Therefore, each schoolwill not likely adjust to the designs of educationalstate planning and much less to the demands ofthe productive system. In turn, the production ofa country is shaped by extremely heterogenousproduction establishments, which leads to thepursuit of very different production objectivesand forms of organization at a working, technicaland hierarchical level. This heterogeneity of theproductive apparatus of a country determinesthe fact that one cannot put forward universal"demands" for schools.

The two preceding points provide the basis forthe conclusion that in Latin American countriesan important social mistake was made by pro-posing that technical high schools should offerdistinct training for a large number of specificoccupations. On the one hand, the tasks forwhich the technical school trains do not onlyexist in very small spaces of the labour market;they do not constitute vacant working activities,rather these are occupied by personnel that wasgradually trained for them through mechanismsoutside the technical school; lastly, many of the

occupations that were innovated within the tech-nical school do not guarantee social consolida-tion, nor respect for the social resources neces-sary for supporting the training for this type ofactivity, nor respect for the existence of occu-pational functions that are sufficient or evennecessary in the various labour markets.

On the other hand, the requirement that spe-cific occupational training be provided, gaverise to an institutional and curricular structurethat adversely affected the training possibilitiesof these schools by making training for employ-ment compete with general training in terms oftime, school spaces, institutional resources andin the energy of teachers and students.

Work is one of the essential dimensions ofhuman activity. Therefore it is an important partof the training that schools should impart. How-ever, the responsibility is not exclusively theirs;it is not even their foremost objective. There aremany other forms and opportunities for ap-prenticeship beyond that of the school; thespecific requirements for a job are better learnedthrough actual, hands-on experience or throughcourses directly and immediately prepared inthis respect. Businesses must assume their na-tional responsibility in training the work force.

Within the various objectives the school pur-sues, training for work is not the exclusivedomain of technical education. All educationallevels meet this function to some extent. Train-ing for work does not end upon completingjunior or senior high school; it is important toinstill an outlook of continuous, permanenttraining in both of these.

New challenges faced by technical highschools in Latin America

New reality

The new trends in world development are aninescapable fact. Perhaps the most importantaspect of the new trends we see in world devel-opment and the one most relevant to technicaleducation is that of the determining impact ofscientific and technological knowledge on pro-

61 61


ductivity, but also on all aspects of life whetherit be social, political or cultural. The impressivedevelopment of microelectronics, teleprocess-ing, computerized control of processes, DNArecombination techniques and its many uses,new material, flexible production methods, thedisappearance of frontiers due to satellite com-munications; in short, the overwhelming pen-etration of new technologies affects all socialgroups whether as producers or consumers.

The foregoing has opened the door to all kindsof influences and interventions on the culturalidentities of people everywhere.

The universalization and the transnationa-lization of the economy are already an everydayfact, and has meant hitherto unknown worldinterrelations in production and trade and a newinternational division of labour. As a trend, itmakes it truly possible for there to be greatercommunication and concertation between LatinAmerican countries.

Within this context an important change hasoccurred in the internal organization of produc-tion establishments that demands greater re-sponsibility of each worker on the whole, where,at the same time, greater democratic participa-tion is called for, and requires broader channelsof communication between everybody. Largeenterprises become increasingly dependent uponthe contribution of small ones. In fact, a growingboost has been given to the small and interme-diate-scale enterprise. But it involves partici-pation that means greater technological re-quirements for production, since it incorporatesthem into the market as completely responsiblefor part of the final product, necessarily inte-grated or coordinated with other enterprises interms of times, rates, costs, organization andquality control.

Therefore, the potential arises for the equita-ble association of medium or small-scale enter-prises.

The foregoing requires fundamental changesin the collective ways of protecting workers andof the right to work.

The other side however, is still a possibility:the risk of new and more accelerated dynamics

62

of economic, social and cultural distancing be-tween countries and within countries; the risk ofdispensing with the region in the universaliza-tion of the economy.

Characteristics preserved

Latin America societies conserve certain char-acteristics that require the role of technicalschools.

Despite all the afore-mentioned changes, LatinAmerica retains its characteristic profoundstructural heterogeneity at a social, economicand cultural level. At the economic level, thereare different rationales for orienting production,according to the possibilities there are for the useof resources, locally available knowledge andcultural forms of integrating work with othersocial levels. These have allowed a large part ofthe Latin American population to subsist, albeitunder conditions of extreme poverty. Very fewsectors are still historically, technologically,economically, politically and culturally incor-porated into the prevalent flow of development.The essential problem continues to be incorpo-rating the population into jobs that lead to betterliving conditions.

Very difficult processes of democratizationand of concertation are being experienced be-tween heterogeneous groups that have corneredthe energies, interests and motivation of popula-tion groups.

In particular, over the last decade, the stagna-tion of Latin American development had seriousconsequences not only for the economy, but alsofor education. Despite this, the educationalsystem continued to broaden its levels of cov-erage.

The continent attempts to become incorpo-rated into the new forms of economic develop-ment with the burden of external debt servicing.

The incipient industrialization and the preced-ing models of modernization that did not becomewidespread, left tremendous gaps and culturallacunae in their wake that pose a special challengeto technological education, due to the diversityof the starting points from which they would

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New assignments for technical and professional high school education / Maria de lbarrola

have to begin in the attempt to contribute to theassimilation of a new technological culture.

The demographic composition of LatinAmerica still features a predominantly youngpopulation, while at the same time its mostdistinctive trait has been the growing participa-tion of women in education and in the economy.These two groups are the most affected byproblems of unemployment.

Orientation of technical education

Despite the foregoing, Latin American coun-tries have repeatedly defended a series of valuesthat orient the development styles desired:

Conserving and enhancing their cultural iden-tity.

Insisting upon the democratization of theirstructures and processes: quest for basic agree-ments and the substantial participation of thevarious social sectors.

Insisting in that efforts at changing the pro-ductive structure make no sense and wouldhave a very limited real scope in time if:

greater equity and justice are not achieved inthe production and distribution of expectedwealth;it is not based upon their own competencies,deeply assimilated among the populations ofcountries.Insisting upon the development of the poten-

tial of all members of society.Placing particular emphasis on the quality of

life, in all its aspects, particularly that of respectfor the environment.

In most countries greater participation by theprivate sector in the financing and conduction ofsociety is pursued; at the same time there is apursuit of a profound respect for the public,social and national sense of the actions to beundertaken.

Limits and possibilities

The description of the preceding points allowsone to arrive at a three-point conclusion.

Technical high schools were created and de-veloped in Latin America within the context ofdisproportionate and mistaken expectations with

respect to the objectives they should meet; scantattention was paid to the construction of specificinstitutional levels of this type of education;higher cost are involved than those of othermodalities at that level and there is a majordisparity between the financial and the institu-tional efforts undertaken and the results ob-tained.

However, in various countries there is animportant institutional infrastructure created inthe course of the past years that has an experi-ence which has not been sufficiently evaluatedand which it is necessary to recover, since, rightfrom the start, it has been oriented by the princi-ple of incorporating a more intensive use ofscientific knowledge into productive processes.Given the importance of acquiring a necessarytraining in technology in these times, this expe-rience could be productively channelled in orderto take the maximum advantage of the possi-bilities of the technical school without goingagainst the limits that its nature as a schoolimposes upon it.

On the one hand, the failure of technicalschools in formal occupations oriented to veryspecific preset activities; on the other, the exist-ence of a significant institutional experiencewith respect to technical high school and, ulti-mately, the magnitude of the challenges thatLatin American societies face, force one to re-consider what can be expected from the techni-cal school.

The three preceding conclusions point to theprinciple that technical high schools should beresponsible for imparting a general, basic andpolyvalent training in technology that can bevalid and relevant to the various sectors of theheterogeneous production structure, and whoseorientation does not respond to the specificdemands of a supposed labour market, but ratherdevelops with a public, national and social sense.

Recommendations

A new conception of technological educationwithin a newconception of high school education

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The increasingly larger population entering highschool requires an integral training that is able tosupport and sustain, on its own, the requirementsof a high level of education, the responsible,competentand creative performance of a complexworking activity and the likewise aware andqualified participation of these youths in allwalks of life.

A new technological conception, in keepingwith its nature, turns it into a new culturalelement, in addition to the sciences and humani-ties that high schools have worked with.

This conceptions arises out of:A better understanding of its nature. Technol-

ogy cannot continue to be seen as an "appliedscience" as if it were a linear derivation in theunique sense of physics, chemistry, mathemat-ics and biology. Technology can best be under-stood as the "science of productive work" andtherefore, it demands understanding work itself,its objectives, mediums, processes and collectiveorganization. Technology implies a new com-bination of many factors, among which knowl-edge constituted in disciplined fashion is only

one. Several disciplines and professions inter-vene in technology, with a different organiza-tion and coordination. This requires a very exactestimation of the resources and time that are infact, available; it requires a constant review ofproduction processes and of the characteristicsof the products achieved, of consumer demands,of the nature of the distribution processes ofgoods and services, of the typical laws andregulations that pertain to commerce. It requiresthe interactive and cumulative reinforcement ofvarious experiences, skills and knowledge.

In Latin American countries, technology facesa triple challenge; no doubt to promote the basicunderstanding of vanguard technological devel-opment, but, at the same time, to understand thetechnical progress that is required for resolvingage-old production and organizational problemswhich the just upgraded system did not solve orforesee. Further, to avoid the mistakes andproblems created by technological progress inindustrialized countries, which forcefully oc-curred in the nascent industrial development of

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developing countries: neglect of the qualitativeaspects of life-styles, destruction of the envi-ronment, concentration of power and income.

Thence that technology has to be integratednot only into the exact sciences but also intosocial sciences and the humanities in order toinstill in young people a full understanding ofthe world that surrounds them at present, and inorder to foster the capacity to master technol-ogy, explaining and deciding its interrelationswith society.

The two preceding considerations clearly pointto the main recommendation: work towards theintegration of a basic and general high schooltraining which, in keeping with the grades itincludes, promotes mastery among the youthsover three basic cultural elements: the sciences(exact sciences and social sciences), the hu-manities (in which a new ethic is forged) and thetechnologies. It is proposed as a trend towardsintegration because it is important to respect theinstitutional differences, limits and specific as-pects that up to now have divided teaching intothese areas of knowledge.

Advancing with the necessary speed

Technical high school education is the institu-tional mode best qualified in Latin Americancountries to advance with the necessary speed inbuilding the new technological training requiredby the challenges mentioned above.

Past experience has shown that it is not enoughto once again recommend a clear-cut distinctionbetween general education, technical education,propaedeutic or terminal high school education,particularly for those countries in which it hasnot been generated. But neither is it possible toignore the history and possibilities of the differ-ent technical education institutions in the nationsinto which education at this level was diversi-fied.

Hence that to take advantage of the experienceand the infrastructure of technical educationrequires implementing a technological trainingthat:

Fully frees technical schools from the imposi-

New assignments for technical and professional high school education /Maria de Ibarrola

Lion of forming an institutional supply, spreadout over numerous specific "careers".

Focuses on constructing basic technologicalareas that are defined on the basis of histories,languages, concepts, skills, knowledge, histo-ries and uses typical of distinctive technologicaldevelopments (for example, mechanics, elec-tricity, electronics, computer science, manage-ment).

Focuses on an analysis of the complete pro-ductive process: the knowledge that is requiredfor the proper choice of raw materials and theresources of production, collective organizationof the work process, relevant technical proc-esses, applicable (ecological, quality control)standards, distribution and marketing, etc.

Takes advantage of the elements of generaleducation that it already incorporates and trans-forms them, tending increasingly to the confor-mation of a sustained basic curriculum in thethree areas mentioned: science, humanities andtechnology, respecting institutional specifics,local and regional demands and the possibilitiesof each establishment.

A new management

Technical high school education institutionsrequire a new educational administration that:

clearly acknowledges the actors on whom thepossibility of innovation and change of tech-nological education effectively falls;foresees and promotes the fact that these actorsundertake the necessary coordinated, system-atic and continuous construction of the differ-ent institutional levels that guarantee the qual-ity of a new technological training, within acomprehensive high school education.

Actors in the change

It is imperative to recognize the true actorsinvolved in the change: teachers, authorities,students, and specific interest groups withintechnical high schools: heads of households,local businessmen, local trade unions, alumni,technology experts. All of these within the limits

and forms of organization that mark the histori-cal, legislative, budget and organizational con-text of concrete institutions, that significantlymark the dynamic of the relationship betweenthese actors and local, regional and nationallevels of school action.

The dilemma of centralization versus decen-tralization as ends in themselves is a false one.What is important is to achieve the proper coor-dination between decentralization and integra-tion.

It is essential to conceive the school (estab-lishment) as the organizational unity of educa-tional action; to foster the greatest professionalautonomy and responsibility of its teachers andauthorities for everyday administration and itsrelations with the surrounding community; toavoid clear-cut divisions between planning (incentral offices) and execution (in schools).

The autonomous management of the budgetshould be fostered at the level of school estab-lishments, both in terms of the capacity to ad-minister their own income and that which itreceives from the central institution.

The organizational preparation of eachschool's annual planning must be encouraged inall areas: financial, administrative, teaching,relations with the .productive sector, teachertraining, contact with other institutions, etc. aswell as the preparation of its self-evaluation of itresults.

Greater coordination should be encouragedbetween the education for formal work and non-formal work at the level of relations between theschool and its community.

Integrating mechanisms

Central agencies should base their actions on theintegrating mechanisms of the system (not oncontrol):

Carry out research on the relations of techni-cal high schools with society. Emphasis shouldbe placed mainly on the characteristics ofheterogenous working sectors and on the re-quirements forknowledge posed by their techni-cal and organizational production processes;

65 65

BULLEIMI 27, April 1992 / The Major Project of Education

on the path to work that graduates follow; onthe incidence of graduates in the working proc-esses.

Carry out comparative research on the internalinstitutional procedures, with a view to recoverfrom the experience the forms of managementmost suited to the technological training re-quirements.

Encourage the experimenting and develop-ment of curricular, educational, teaching, man-agement and institutional evaluation alternativesthat are, on the one hand, viable, and on the otherhand productive in offering school establish-ments a wide range of alternatives with whichthey can selectively enrich their administrativeautonomy.

Undertake studies on the nature of the studentpopulation that has an increasingly generalizedaccess to high school; on the heterogeneity oftheir interests, expectations, previous experi-ences and their relation with curricular andteaching alternatives that best guarantee a de-mocratization in the appropriation of techno-logical cultural elements.

Establish channels and mechanisms for therecovery, systematization and fluid and continu-ous communication of efficient experiencesbetween schools and teachers, as the best way toguarantee an increasingly sounder training ofthe academic personnel.

Create mechanisms for the retribution andpromotion of the best experiences in whichindividuals and their schools are rewarded.

Support the work of technical groups andexperts in close contact with the various schools,in order that research, experimentation and thedevelopment of curricular, teaching and teachertraining alternatives be supported in a produc-tive interrelation among the direct actors andeffectively qualified (not "armchair") externaltechnical groups.

Establish evaluation and quality controlmechanisms for the results from different schools,in keeping with the public responsibility criteriaof the schools and their appointed institutions,which clearly take into account the resourcesand conditions of each establishment.

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Recover, systematize, conserve and analyzethe institutional information that allows for anever-greater knowledge of the system.

Understand the possibilities and limitations ofeach school, and not establish a single require-ment for all, but gradually encourage the con-struction of the quality of each, insofar as theircapacities allow (resting on the initiative andresponsibility of each school's teaching bodyand school board and on appropriate centralsupports).

Establish specific strategies and policies fortraining school boards, not only of the headteacher but also of the collegiate academic ad-ministrative bodies (at the level of the school,area, region, etc) in all aspects relative to insti-tutional administration: academic planning,school administration, teacher training, specif-ics of technical teaching, coordination with en-terprises, etc.

Promote and administer the qualified partici-pation of members of the production sector ininstitutional design, curricular construction, thepreparation of teaching material and the openingup of learning opportunities for teachers andstudents within productive establishments; theparticipation of actors from the productive sec-tor in training activities within schools; voca-tional orientation activities; evaluation of an-nual and diagnostic institutional projects for theemployment and follow-up of graduates.

Breaking of routines

Each of these cases of participation requires acomplex specific administration, since it im-plies breaking up each institution's own (educa-tional and working) routines and the investmentof money, time, personnel and efforts in favourof the other.

Work in preparing a particularly flexible insti-tutional legislation that emerges from an analy-sis of the organization of schools that functionbest, and that will have to include:

curricular aspects: foresee the participation ofactors from the productive sector in decision-making, and foresee the specific time and

New assignments for technical and professional high school education / Maria de Ibarrola

resource requirements for teaching in thesetypes of schools;aspects of academic certification: promote therecognition of learning outside the school,greater fluidity and flexibility in the sequenceof learning, real equivalents in schoolcertificates;establish the type of insurance for studentsand teachers in line with the learning activities:foresee the risks of both, not only in schoolestablishments but also in productive estab-lishments, and the handling of tools, machin-ery, raw materials, etc. (legal status ofprofessional practices in productive establish-ments);guarantee the autonomy of school boards inadministering and obtaining resources for theschool, including the autonomous administra-tion of the institutional subsidy and the corre-sponding responsibilities (without stifling ini-tiatives);open up the possibility for all kinds of pilotexperiences;teaching statutes should recognize workingactivities outside the school a valid andfavourable experiences whose value is notnecessarily inferior to that of a universitydegree and whose undertaking does notnecessarily truncate teaching continuity.Innovation proposals, the notion of curricular

construction and that of a new teaching identity,a new legislation, new forms of financing, etc.,all require that a plan of action be drawn up inschools and in central institutions that does notfalter in the face of the magnitude of the chal-lenge, but rather resolves it on the basis ofcontinuous monitoring and evaluation of theinnovations proposed, recognizing different timescales in the institutional construction.

The educational institution cannot implementinnovation on its own. It requires the support ofdifferent "social groups" for various actions. Ofnote here are the actions of "social conviction"in connection with the fact that basic training isthe best guarantee for a good performance in theworking world. This conviction must reach theheads of households and students that make up

the immediate demand, but also even the teach-ers and planners of the educational system. Thisconviction goes through different social circula-tion mechanisms, for example, mass media, andalso includes a comprehensive strategy for vo-cational orientation. Commitments are avoidedthat place the responsibility for youths' em-ployment on the school.

Innovative teaching

To foresee and propose the construction by theseactors of all the curricular elements at the variousinstitutional levels, in order to guarantee theinnovative teaching of technology as a thirdcultural element.

It is essential to recognize that the content thatwould make up the teaching and the learning ofthe technology as a basic curricular area (and ofthe different technological areas in their ownright) must be processed and constructed withinthe school, and that although technical schoolshave made important headway in this respect,they have not succeeded in consolidating qualitytraining.

It is imperative to radically change the ap-proach from one of multiple and different spe-cific careers, supposedly derived from presetactivities in the working (modern) sector, to oneof basic elements that make up the most importanttechnological areas in the curriculum.

It is necessary to recognize that, in keepingwith the new conception of technology, it is notpossible to start off with an abstract idea and itsuniversal validity; by proposing its incorpora-tion as a basic curricular area, different, evencontradictory objectives become possible.

Technologies are, in turn, the object of discus-sion and selection. They can be oriented toopposite ends such as aid and cooperation versusearnings; immediate profit versus concern forthe environment; prevalence of global organi-zation of work processes, together with a greaterdemocratization of the conduction of the pro-ductive establishments etc. A new meaning ofthe concept of competitiveness seems to beachieving the delicate balance between seem-

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ingly contradictory trends. Those technologiesthat best permit the above-mentioned culturalvalues to be achieved, involve extremely com-plex processes. Thus, youths should be preparedfor a responsible participation in the democraticdebate, in connection with the technologicalfuture of the countries.

Curricular construction of the basic techno-logical areas requires working systematicallywith five different curricular elements on whoseproper coordination will depend the educationalinstitution's ability to guarantee the best learn-ing opportunities:

selection, apportioning, sequence, continuityand integration of knowledge, skills and values.

It essentially implies the formation of techno-logical "modules" (according to the definitionand priorities raised) and overcoming the forceof academic disciplines as the easiest and struc-tured source of curricular content. The principleof "teaming to produce by producing" that guideda good part of the activities in these schools,omitted the numerous factors that have an effecton production, over and above knowledge. It isvital to recover the notion that there is no me-chanical or automatic step from knowledge tosuccessful production.Delimitation of the most appropriate spaces,times and sequencesTechnical education requires ample workingperiods in the workshop, laboratory or profes-sional practice and time blocks that fully respectthe rationale of the activity that is being under-taken. It is essential to break with time unitsbased on teaching criteria typical of workingwith subjects and in the classroom, and requiresthe formation of different learning groups witha different dynamic for rotating use of the facili-ties themselves.

It is important to emphasize the educationalpotential of learning opportunities that the tech-nical school has been generating, but at the sametime it is imperative to identify and recover theexperiences which have succeeded withinthem in resolving the contradictions betweenthe school rationale and the production ration-ale, preparing viable and fruitful strategies for

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learning what is productive within the educa-tional dynamic. What is involved is an attempt tounderstand that it is not the availability of aworkshop equipped according to some modelwhich will guarantee learning, but rather thecapacity to develop certain processes in it thathave yielded positive results. Professional prac-tices are very positive when enterprises take onthe join t responsibil ity of training students. Someproductions in schools are very useful in teaching,but not just any one, of note now is the so-calledstudent production projects. On the contrary, theassigning of the responsibility for production toschools without analyzing the attendant diffi-culties, for a long time led to useless equipping,wasted resources and the possible learning of theincapacity to produce.

Teacher training for mastery of these contentsand the handling of the most productive teach-ing methods, techniques and strategies.

The principle of the construction of curriculainvolves the active participation of teachers.This training is undertaken at the same time asthe curriculum is constructed, and it focuses onit and is guided by it. At the same time, it mustbe based on the notion that educational method-ology cannot exist at an abstract level. Rather,the educational content determines its own spe-cific method. Basic technological training inparticular, work in workshops, student projects,the manipulation of technology allows and atthe same time demands new hitherto unexploredlearning relationships.

Appropriate teaching materials

Technical schools in Latin America opted fordisproportionate and unattainable teachingmodels, based on the handling of sophisticatedimported equipment. This is one of the factorsresponsible for the high cost of this type ofeducation. The establishment of this modelproved seriously detrimental to the training pos-sible since, on the one hand, there are very fewschools that in effect were equipped in accord-ance with the model, and on the other hand,empirical research points to the significant dis-

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New assignments for technical and professional high school education /Maria de lbarrola

use and wasting of this equipment, with un-known consequences of the effects of this "hid-den" curriculum (the incapacity to use the tech-nology available in the school) on the training ofstudents. One of the main activities that must becarried out by technical schools is a seriousanalysis of the inventory available in terms of itsuse in teaching and its relevance to the curricu-lum. At the same time, it will be vital to generalizethe use of materials that have been successfullyexperimented with, while the inventory that hasno educational use in the schools should bemade available to productive establishments orresearch centers, and in any case, coordinatewith them regarding some educational use ofthis equipment.

Mechanisms for certifying knowledge

This field is generally ignored in curricularconstruction. However, it is worthwhile to insiston the need to incorporate mechanisms to over-come the double reductionism of examining inaccordance with what proves easiest and mosteconomic for the teacher to observe, and ofmanipulating for school administration. Thesocial value of technical education certificateswill depend upon the capacity they have torecover and express the quality of the processesthat led to the basic mastery of the technology.

To achieve technological teaching with cul-tural elements requires the social construction ofa new professional identity: that of the teacher oftechnological areas. Recruitment policies shouldbe established (prominent among which is theadequate valuation of previous training), to-gether with policies on wages, professional de-velopment and proper institutional conditionsfor them to engage in their work, which guaranteethem a status equivalent to that of teachersfocusing on "purely academic" activities. Animportant discussion arises on whether theteacher should work on a full time and exclusivebasis or whether his external working activitycan contribute to shaping his teaching identity.

This demands the continuous upgrading ofteachers through collective and organizational

working strategies within schools and betweenschools, fostering the institutional time for col-lective work and the valuation, systematizationand promotion of experiences.

It requires the study of those contents thatguarantee real equivalents between the variousactivities and learning processes in order toestablish the effective use of the concept ofacademic credit, according to which the mostcan be made of learning in and outside the schooland recognition be given to their true dimension.

Financing

Acceptance of the fact that this new conceptionof technical education and the quality that shouldguide its performance require proper financing.

It is essential to achieve a national agreementto grant technical education the resources inkeeping with the role it is playing. For this, it isworthwhile to de-mystify the role that has gen-erally been attributed to the complex and sophis-ticated imported equipment, and it is necessarythat the sectors that effectively determine thenecessary costs for a quality process be madeknown.

It is recommended that an end be put to thecentrally-decided practice of purchasing im-ported equipment, based on a dubious "economyof scale" and without an adequate analysis of theprovisions and possibilities of their effective useby schools and technical training areas.

It is essential to thoroughly review the criteriaand procedures for obtaining and allocating re-sources, which in fact have explored the entiregamut of possibilities without the differentialefficacy of each one of them being known.Criteria of efficacy in this respect depend on theefficacy of the national fiscal policy, on the onehand, and of the internal administration of insti-tutions on the other.

A diversity of financing sources must inevita-bly be sought, as in all levels and lines ofeducational activity and generally in the expen-ditures that, up to now, have been assumed bythe State. By considering the diversity of sources,the diversity of items of expenditure and the

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different ways of promoting provisions and ex-ercising control over the use of expenditure,there will be greater wealth and social partici-pation in financing this mode.

Fluid, flexible and balanced mechanismsshould be established to obtain and channelfunds, which at the same time as they fosterschool autonomy, should not question its sub-stantive functions. Demands for school produc-tion and the sale of services to the productivesector for resolving problems of financing seri-ously distort educational action.

Therefore, it is essential that the State guaran-tee an equitable redistribution of resources,planning and national outlook and quality con-trol. At the same time, it should guarantee thenecessary subsidies in order for educationalactivity to go beyond an immediate economicperformance, and in order to avoid educationbeing intended exclusively for those who candirectly assume all its costs.

Exchange mechanisms

Establish Latin American mechanisms of ex-change and technical cooperation encouraginggroups of researchers and teachers.

It is imperative that there be greater under-standing of technical schools and of their poten-tial. Thence the importance of recommendingthe undertaking of activities that allow forcomparisons and international cooperation:

Bibliography

Cariola, L.M. "La educaci6n secundaria en procesode masificacion". Paper presented at the seminar"Challenges and prospects for research and policiesin the nineties", organized by the Red Latinoame-ricana de Educacion y Trabajo. Buenos Aires, 2-5July 1991 .

De Simone, J.A. "Educac ion, trabajo y region". Paperpresented at the International Meeting "Educationand Work in Regional Integration". Salta, Argen-tina, 7 - October 1991.

De Ibarrol a, M. "Las relaciones y la cooperation entrela enserlanza tecnica y profesional de nivel medio

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comparative research;educational development programmes indifferent sectors: institutional administration,teacher training, teaching materials,curriculum, school equipment, etc.production and exchange of publications andall types of materials. Important emphasisshould be placed on the production and use ofvideos.

Specific proposals

Promote specific programmes for professionalor trade specialization at high school level.

Clearly, Latin American countries requirespecific professional or trade specialization pro-grammes at the high school level. Althoughtechnical schools can collaborate closely withthe working sector on this, the latter shouldaccept and assume the main responsibility. Itshould therefore:

participate significantly in the design,financing, implementation and evaluation ofthe programme;be careful not to confuse the objectives and thespecific dynamics of these programmes withthe school dynamic. Specific professionaltraining programmes in which schools partici-pate should clearly establish the length of thestudies, the permanence of the supply, theadmission requirements and the nature of thecertificates granted.

y la industria en Mexico ". UNESCO/OREALC.September 1991 (reference 840.452.)

Faletto, E. and Martner, G. (coordinators) Repensarel futuro. Estilos de desarrollo. Editorial NuevaSociedad, Caracas, 1986.

Gallart, M. A. "Los desaffos de la articulacion entreeducacion y trabajo en la decada de los 90. Algunostemas cruciales a investigar". Paper presented atthe firs t reg ional seminar workshop on Employmentand Labour. PMET OEA. Brazil, 3-7 June 1991.

Gonzalez, L.E.; Toledo, I.; Kliwadenki, N.; Parra, V.;Baeza, M.Las relaciones y la cooperation entre la

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New assignments for technical and professional high school education /Maria de lbarrola

educaciOn media tecnico profesional y laindustria.UNESCO/OREALC. Santiago de Chile,1991.

Namo de Mello, G. and da Silva, T.R. "La gestic% dela escuela en las nuevas perspectivas de las polfti-cas educativas". Paper presented at the international

seminar "La gestidn pedagagica de los plantelesescolares: practicas, problemas y perspectivas".Mexico, 3-5 June 1991.

UNESCO/OREALC. "The Major Project of Educationin Latin America an the Caribbean. Progress,limitations and challenges". Bulletin 24, April 1991.

7 171

FUNCTIONAL ILLITERACY REQUIREMENTS IN YOUTH ANDADULTS. EDUCATION AND WORK IN A SMALLDEVELOPING STATE'

Olabisi Kuboni*

In an attempt to address the unemployment problem among youth of the country, theGovernment of Trinidad and Tobago has set up the Youth Training and EmploymentPartnership Programme (YTEPP) with a view to increasing the employability ofthose targetted. This paper makes a case that in addressing the area of training infunctional literacy skills, attention must be directed to improving the capability ofthe target population to interact with the socio-economic environment of which theyare a part. In this regard some specific skills are highlighted and discussed. Thepaper also draws attention to factors within the society that can erode theindividual's ability to maintain and /or enhance functional literacy skills and twoexamples are discussed.

During the 1960s Trinidad and Tobago embarkedon a programme that was intended to bring aboutfundamental changes in the economicorganization of the society. With the adoptionand implementation of the Puerto Rican modelof industrialisation by invitation (Ryan,1988),Trinidad and Tobago had set itself on a courseaimed at transforming its economy from onebased mainly on theproduction of primary goodsand services to one based, to a greater extent, onmanufac tureand commerce. Over the succeedingthree decades, the pattern of economicdevelopment would evolve into the mixedeconomy model, with increased stateparticipation in the industrial and commercialsector, and eventually arrive at the currentposition where the State is setting the stage for

Olabisi Kuboni. Faculty of Education The University ofthe West Indies St. Augustine. Trinidad and Tobago.An earlier version of this paper was presented- at aSymposium on Literacy in the Modem world, May 4 andMay 11, 1991, hosted by the Faculty of EducationU.W.I., St. Augustine.

the divestment of some of its holdings.(Rampersad, 1988).

Simultaneous changes in the education systemwere influenced, in part, by developments in theeconomic sector. The Draft Plan for EducationalDevelopment in Trinidad and Tobago, 1968-1983 (Government of Trinidad and Tobago,1968) noted that the country was "supposed toproduce citizens who are intellectually, morallyand emotionally fitted to respond adequatelyand productively ... to the changes which arebeing brought about rapidly in the economicfoundations of civilization, particularly thechallenges of Science and Technology" (p.5).The Draft Plan also made the observation that"one of the fundamental requirements for theeconomic future of Trinidad and Tobago is askilled and employable labour force" (p.54).Thus the Plan endorsed the recommendation ofthe 1964 UNESCO mission to the country whichproposed the establishment of "a new type ofschool (i.e. Senior Comprehensive school)encompassing both academic and technicalcourses" (p.33). These intentions were reinforced

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in the succeeding Education Plan, 1985-1990(Ministry of Education, 1985).

The Senior Comprehensive School has,however, failed to fulfill its intended function.Indeed, it has been suggested that there has been"severe under-utilization of the largeexpenditures which have been incurred in theeducation of the young people," and that thissituation was due, to some extent, to "the failureto train the population to meet the specificdemands of the kind of production structure towhich economic strategy was targeted"(Rampersad,1988, pagell).

It is against this background that, in 1988, thestate introduced the Youth Training andEmployment Partnership Programme (YTEPP)whose objectives were defined in a laterdocument as follows:

To redress the growing sense of disillusionmentand self-destructiveness among the youth.To address short-term unemployment amongthe youths, 15 to 25 years.To provide education and training skills forincome-generating activities - for both jobemployment and self-employment.To provide technical assistance to youthemphasising self-help projects.To source funds for entrepreneurial endeavoursof youth. (Ministry of the Economy, 1991).

Training and Employment

YTEPP was therefore set up to address theproblems of youth unemployment. However,whatever structures a country sets up for thispurpose, state intervention cannot be limited totraining in job-related skills. YTEPP itself hasdeveloped a curriculum that places equalemphasis on the acquisition of competenciesother than the technical (Government of Trini-dad and Tobago, 1990). In this regard, onesuggests that an important set of skills to beconsidered are those which allow individuals tobuild and maintain interactive communicationlinks with the socio-economic environment ofwhich they are a part. Further, these links mustbe capable of facilitating optimum information

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flow to meet the need that individuals have tosatisfy their material well-being and to promotetheir social and spiritual development. In thecontex t of this paper such skills would be referredto as functional literacy skills.

Succeeding UNESCO documents reflect thatorganization's evolving understanding of theconcept of "literacy" beginning with literacyitself and ultimately leading to "functionalliteracy". In 1958, the UNESCO position was,"a person is illiterate who cannot withunderstanding both read and write a short, simplestatement on his everyday life. "(UNESCO,1959, page 93.) Its 1978 definition'introducedthe term "functional illiteracy" and provided amore detailed statement. It stated: A person isfunctionally illiterate who cannot engage in allthose activities in which literacy is required foreffective functioning of his group and communi tyand also for enabling him to continue to usereading, writing and calculation for his own andthe community's development."(UNESCO,1979, Annex 1, page 18).

Brand (1987) in assessing functional illiteracyin the European Economic Community in the1960s, has a perspective similar to that outlinedin the 1978 UNESCO definition in that hedefinesthe problem mainly in terms of a lack ofcompetence in the area of reading and writing.

Even though a new expression had beenintroduced, there was little difference, if any, atthe conceptual level, between functional illiteracyand the earlier view of illiteracy. Bhola (1989),in reacting to the 1978 UNESCO definition andits continued focus on what is commonly referredto as the 3Rs, makes the comment, "... the goalswere (still) clearly conservative. The focus wason reading the word, not on living in the world"(page. 485).

In spite of the restricted perspective thatpersisted in 1978 at the official UNESCO level,there had been prior discussions under theumbrella of the same organization that sought toarrive at a broader view. Indeed, it was at theUNESCO-sponsored 1965 Tehran WorldConference of Ministers of Education on theEradication of Illiteracy that the expression

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Functional illiteracy requirements in youth and adults / Olabisi Kuboni

"functional literacy" was coined and describedas "an essential in overall development... closelylinked to economic and social priorities and topresent and future manpower needs" (quoted inBhola,1989). The conference report expanded:"(The delegates) accepted the new concept offunctional literacy, which implies more than therudimentary knowledge of reading and writing...Literacy instruction must enable illiterates, leftbehind by the course of events, to become sociallyand economically integrated in a new worldwhere scientific and technological progress callsfor ever more knowledge and specialization"(UNESCO, 1965).

Significant position

This official Tehran position, while not reflectedin the 1978 definition, was significant in that itrepresented an advance on the narrower reading-writing-arithmetic perspective. Essentially, itrecognised the need to be aware of the overallpurposes for which literacy is to be used.However, in spite of this advance, there was animportant minority view at the same Conferencewhich regarded the dominant official position asbeing too work-oriented, or as Bhola (1989)commented later, it represented "the profes-sional ization of labour in the interests ofindustrialization processes" (page. 486). Thus,this minority lobby advocated a more universalapproach "directed towards achieving greaterhuman and cultural integration." In theiropinion,"literacy work should not be regarded as an endin itself but as an indispensable means ofpromoting the general, harmonious developmentof illiterate masses" (UNESCO, 1965).

In 1975, at the tenth anniversary of the TehranConference, this latter view had evolved into themore focused literacy for liberation. Influencedby the thought and work of Paulo Freire (1970),participants at the 1975 Conference were nowdemanding that literacy should teach criticalconsciousness and make people capable of"acting upon their world, transforming it"(Bataille, 1976). James (1990) displays a similarpoint of view as he expresses doubts about the

valueof literacy programmes which, in his view,are "more adaptation -oriented rather thantransformative in nature" (page. 24).

Bhola (1989), in an attempt to reconcile theseemingly divergent work-oriented andliberation perspectives, points towards thepossibility of the emergence of a "concept ofliteracy with generalized functionality - a fullyfunctional literacy - which teaches all social,economic and political skills for more food,fairness, fulfillment and freedom" (page. 486).

Bhola's all-encompassing statement, mergingthe two perspectives, closely parallels the viewexpressed earlier regarding the need for theindividual to develop skills capable of facilitatingoptimum information flow between the self andthe socio-economic environment for the purposesof attaining material advancement and socialand spiritual development. It is against thisbackground that Bhola's position is consideredbest suited as a basis for further discussion.However, one cannot but observe that a clear,precise definition of functional literacy has stillnot yet been articulated. Indeed, in the movementaway from the 1958 UNESCO statement, theredeveloped a tendency for positions to beexpressed in more ideological and lessdefinitional terms (see also Torres, 1989,page.24). This is not to minimize the importanceof the ideological debate. On the contrary, allbehaviour is and must be grounded in ideology.However, in addition to ideology, there is alsoneed for clarity of definition as a prerequisite fortransferring theory into practice.

Consequently, functional literacy is heredefined as the capability that an individualpossesses to harness and manipulate languagewhether through speaking, writing, listening orreading in order to engage in an act ofcommunication between the self and some otheragent, for the purposes of attaining optimuminformation flow between the two parties. Inaddition, functional literacy is seen as a measureof the extent to which this act of informationexchange is capable of supporting and facilitatingthe individual's quest for "food, fairness,fulfillment and freedom" (Bhola, 1989). In

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summary therefore, functional literacy isregarded as embodying a collective of language-based skills which qualify for inclusion underthis heading not because of some absolute criteriabut because they can be expected to serve thelanguage-using needs of the individualinteracting with his/her milieu. Some of theseskills are discussed below.

Functionally literate

One of the main skills that an individual shouldpossess in order to be classified as beingfunctionally literate is an ability to recognize thedistinction between the public and private usesof language and to apply the appropriateconventions when manipulating language ateither level. One situation is worth noting here.

Traditionally, a significant part of thepopulation of societies like Trinidad and Tobagohas found self-employment in the technicalareas of work. Communities have producedtheir own mechanics, seamstresses, bakers,carpenters to service their own local needs.These self-employed individuals would havelearnt their skill in an apprenticeship situation ina one-to-one relationship with a master craftsmanand would have practiced mainly in a localizedsetting, serving people with whom they areacquainted.

With the development and expansion of theindustrial and commercial sector, these sameskills are also being practiced at a more imper-sonal and public level. Thus there is a co-existenceof two modes of operation, with the resultingareas of tension between the localized craftpractice and the more generalized public practice.One aspect of tension that is often overlooked isin language differences. The language oftransaction of the self-employed community-based craftsmen and women would tend to bemore free-flowing and intuitive. Theseindividuals would not feel the need to engage inan:exchange with the client in which they areexpected to justify their expertise continuously.Except there is obvious evidence to the contrary,authority and competence would not normally

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be challenged. Hence, usually, the interaction isbased on trust and goodwill.

On the other hand, employees practising asimilar skill in some larger manufacturing,commercial or service organization must bemore focussed in their communication. Theymust display precision and economy in theirchoice of vocabulary and structure. They mustbe able to identify the key elements of informationto be presented and organize these strategicallyin order to achieve optimum clarity andpurposefulness in the communication. At thislevel one cannot rely on mutual goodwill. Onemust display competence. This requirement isnecessary whether the transaction is taking placeorally or through the written word. It applieswhether it is the technician in a motor vehicleservicing company updating the client on thecondition of his vehicle, or a worker in a foodprocessing and packaging concern reporting to asupervisor on her area of work. It also applies inthe current thrust towards self-employmentamong the youth, in situations where they needto seek assistance from some previouslyunknown source to establish their businessconcerns.

An important factor to be noted, is that onecritical feature that distinguishes the informalprivate use of language from the more formaltype required for public transactions, is that theagents that act as sender and receiver in theformer type of communication do not functionin the same way as their counterparts in thelatter. In the former the divide between the twois less rigid, with both agents sharing theresponsibility for deriving meaning from themessage being transmitted. Thus, whileinterjections like "you know", "you understand"on the part of the sender, may be a sign of a lapsein that person's ability to encode the message,they may also represent an expression of anunspoken understanding that the sender is free todraw on the stored knowledge and experiencesof the receiver who is not just a passive entity butan active participant in the shared act of extractingthe meaning of the message. In the latter, theonus is on the sender to ensure that the message

75


is clearly transmitted. No assistance should beexpected from the receiver.

This recognition of a duality of language styleshas important implications for instruction in thetechnical-vocational subjects both at thesecondary school level and in the YTEPPprogramme. It is even more important since alarge proportion of the students in theseprogrammes themselves come from a socio-economic background where the traditionalcraftsman or woman still functions. Conse-quently, the extent to which technical-vocationalgraduates succeed in the wider workenvironment, or in any other sphere of life,would be partly determined by their sensitivityto the distinctions between the two languagemodes described above and to their competenceat manipulating language appropriately.

Transition

The transition from the localized world of humaninteraction to a broader more impersonal worldalso represents a transition from a lesser to ahigher degree of classification of information,with its attendant implications for language use.The extent to which individuals are able to drawon and make efficient use of the informationavailable in the public domain is significantlydetermined by their skill at concept definitionand discrimination, by their awareness about theway information is classified and by theircapability at manipulating the system ofclassification. For, in spite of the popular adagethat there is an information explosion in today'sworld, this commodity is only accessible to theextent that one has acquired the competency foraccessing it, which is itself a skill in the use oflanguage. This skill becomes important, forexample, when the ordinary citizen has the needto make contact with the Ministerial system ofgovernment. One can only benefit from thiscategorization of services provided by the Stateif one can accurately define the overall purposesof a specific ministry and even furthercan identifythe appropriate lower-level services subsumedunder that ministry then make the connection

between one's individual needs and the relevantservices.

It is important to realize that, while none of theskills identified above, or any other functionalliteracy skill, is context specific, ability tofunction at any point along the "food, fairness,fulfillment, freedom" continuum cannot be takenfor granted. Rather, such an ability would dependon individuals being able to recognizeopportunity for skill transfer, to effect suchtransfer and in the process to enhance and extendtheir own network of skills. In this regard, onemust be aware that the existing socio-economicenvironment in most modern States is notalwaysconducive to skill enhancement and that thereare societal factors that can undermine the bestefforts of an individual. Two examples arediscussed below.

The ability of the individual to improve theskills of accessing information becomes an areaof concern when viewed in the light of theamount of time spent interacting with the mostpopular medium of communication in mostsocieties, namely the television. Salomon (1984),on the basis of a study conducted among childrenin San Francisco, suggests that children'sperception about the demands made by a givenmedium influences the amount of mental effortthey invest in processing information from thatmedium. Specifically, the findings of Salomon'sstudy strongly support his initial thesis thatchildren are likely to learn more from print thanfrom television, not because of characteristicsinherent in the respective media, but becausechildren perceive the task of getting informationfrom print as requiring more mental effort thanperforming the same task using television.Salomon notes that in the case of the lattermedium children could learn less because theydo not perceive television as demanding muchmental effort from them to process informationcoming from this source and thus do not expendmuch energy when interacting with this medium.

While one cannot make broad generalizationson the basis of this single study, the findings areworth noting not only in relation to children ofother populations but also in relation to adults.

76 77


Given long exposure to television, the populationas a whole, and in particular those who are notpart of a formal learning environment may losecompetence in deeper level processing becausethey fail to perceive the need to, and therefore donot expend much energy in the task of drawinginformation from the television medium.Consequently, young adults living in acommercial television environment would needto make a conscious effort to acquire, maintainand enhance the literacy skills required inaccessing information.

A second area of concern has to do with therelationship between the individual andknowledge. Chandler (1990), in examining theway the computer impacts on education, assertsthat the computer denies the human origin ofknowledge and that it should be firmly statedthat it is "human beings who create informationby interpreting the evidence of their senses andthrough negotiating with other human beings"(page. 166). While not denying the importanceof the statement Chandler makes about thecomputer, this technological tool cannot beregarded as the only instrument that challengesthe authority of the human being as a creator ofknowledge. Society seems to have conditioned

References

Bataille, L. (ed.). (1976). A turning point for literacy.Proceedings of the international symposium forliteracy. Persepolis, Iran. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Bhola, H.S. (1989). "Adult literacy": from conceptsto implementation strategies. Prospects, 19 (4), 479-490.

Brand, E. (1987). "Functional illiteracy in industrial-ized countries". Prospects, 18 (2), 201-211.

Chandler, D. (1990). "The educational ideology ofthe computer". British Journal of EducationalTechnology, 21 (3), 165-174.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. NewYork: Seabury Press.

Government of Trinidad and Tobago (1968). Draftplan for educational development in Trinidad andTobago. 1968-1983.

(1985). Education Plan. 1985-1990.

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its members to accept that a few key institutionshold exclusive rights to the functions of creatingand disseminating knowledge, thus effectivelydenying same to the ordinary person.Consequently, young adults need to recognizeand acknowledge that they have a responsibilityto contribute to the public pool of knowledgeand to develop the capability not only foraccessing from other sources but also forgenerating and disseminating.

In the face of the high failure rate amongstudents at the Senior Comprehensive level,much attention has been focussed on studentweaknesses in the rudimentary skills of reading,writing and arithmetic and the need forremediation at this basic level. While one cannotobject to this view, those responsible for shapingeducational policy in relation to this sector of thepopulation, must realise that competence at thislevel only will still not equip the individual tofunction efficiently within the society. Onetherefore proposes that the broader perspectiveof functional literacy discussed above providesa more appropriate and meaningful frameworkfor designing educational programmes aimed atfacilitating the overall development of thedisadvantaged youth of the nation.

(1990). YTEPP: General informationbooklet.

(1991). Report to the National PlanningCommission on Social Programmes. Port of Spain,Ministry of the Economy.

James, M.D. (1990). "Demystifying literacy: Read-ing, writing and the struggle for liberation". Con-vergence, 23 (1), 14-25.

Rampersad, F. (1988). "The Development Experience- Reflections". In S. Ryan (ed.) Trinidad and To-bago: The Independence Experience, 1962 -1987.Trinidad: University of the West Indies.

Ryan, S. (1988). "Dr. Eric Williams, the People'sNational Movement and the independence experi-ence: A retrospective". In S. Ryan. 1962-1987.Trinidad: University of the West Indies.

Salomon, G. (1984). "Television is "easy" and print is


"tough": the differential investment of mental ef-fort in learning as a function of perceptions andattributions". Journal of Educational Psychology76 (4), 647-657.

Torres, R.M. (1989). "National adult literacy actionin Latin America: a critical review". In Bulletin 19.The Major Project of education in Latin Americaand the Caribbean. UNESCO/OREALC, Santiago,Chile.

UNESCO (1959). Records of the General Confer-

ence. Tenth Session. Paris. 1958. Resolutions. Paris:UNESCO.

(1965). World Conference of Ministers ofEducation on the Eradication of Illiteracy. Tehran.8-19 September: 1965. Final Report. Paris:UNESCO.

(1979). Records of the General Conference.Twentieth Session. Paris, 24 October 28 Novem-ber. 1978. Vol. 1: Resolutions. Paris: UNESCO.

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OREALC Activities

REDALFRegional network for training of personnel and specific supportin literacy and adult education programmes

Regional Project for Basic Adultand Youth Education (BAE)Sub-project involving innovationsin basic adult education

A Seminar-workshop on the sys-tematization of BAE innovationswas held on January 13-16, 1992.Participants included representa-tives from 8 institutions from Ar-gentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador,Honduras, Mexico and Venezuela,selected for their innovative expe-riences.

OREALC presented the researchproposal prepared in 1991 to sys-tematize these experiences. Thiswas reviewed and approved by thegroup. In turn, participants presen-ted the main innovative features tobe analyzed and monitored untilthis coming December, when theworkshop's activities will concludein Honduras.

Awareness and teacher trainingactivities surrounding innovationsin the field of basic adult and youtheducation will be undertaken dur-ing the development of nationalstudies.

Participating institutions enjoytechnical support from OREALCand financial support from theCooperation of the Government ofSpain. The aim is to end up withanalytical records on each situationdealt with, as well as annotatedbibliographies on the systematiza-

tion and innovations in this modal-ity that will give an account of theprocess at regional level.

Horizontal cooperation

In-service training provided by theNational Department of AdultEducation oft he Ministry ofC ultureand Education of Argentina andOREALC

Specialists from Bolivia, Colom-bia, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico andNicaragua underwent in-servicetraining on basic adult education,in connection with the work beingdone in Buenos Aires and in theprovinces of Mendoza, Entre Riosand Rio Negro.

This training took place fromNovember 11- 21,1991 and focusedon the knowledge of experienceson education and work and com-munity organization and culturalrecovery.

During the in-service training,attendants visited schools and adulteducation and basic adult educationcenters that operate in agreementwith businesses, trade associationsand other State agencies in themunicipality of Buenos Aires andin the provinces mentioned.

Besides interviews with the rep-resentatives of the sectors involved,the trainees obtained a thoroughknowledge of the education project

of the Federal Programme of Ar-gentina, particularly in terms ofeducational supply, adult teacherprofiles, training strategies, cur-ricular development and materialsused. The evaluation, follow-up andsystematization o f these educationalmodes were also part of the studyundertaken.

Course-workshop on research inadult education and its links to de-velopment

A course-workshop on researchon adult education and its links todevelopment was held in Patzcuaro,Michoacan, Mexico, with financialand technical support fromOREALC and the Center for Re-gional Cooperation on Adult Edu-cation in Latin America and theCaribbean (CREFAL).

Participants included specialistsfrom 14 countries: Argentina, Be-lize, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba,Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico,Nicaragua, Honduras, Paraguay,Peru, El Salvador and Venezuela.

The general objective was toanalyze the theoretical and meth-odological approaches of socio-educational research and its uses inliteracy programmes, basic adulteducation, bilingual education andeducation-and-work.

The specific objectives were toanalyze the conceptual and meth-odological bases of the differentapproaches used in research on

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BULLETIN 27, April 1992 / The Major Projet of Education

adults, to study concrete examplesof research recently undertaken inthe region and to design researchprojects relevant to each country

participating in the course-work-shop.

The review of recent projectsand studies in the region included,

among others, the research carriedout by OREALC in the field ofbasic youth and adult education,functional illiteracy and in-tercultural bilingual education.

REPLAD.Regional network for the training, innovation and research in the fields ofplanning and administration of basic education and literacy programmes

Project II. Training of keypersonnel

Area: Theory and practice ofeducational planning and manage-ment

1. An experimental workshop onthe "GESEDUCA" model will beheld in the Province of Mendoza,from May 18-22, 1992, to pursuenew kinds of management for edu-cational establishments. This modelconsists of four components thatcombine the organization's strate-gic progress cycle with the man-agement improvement cycle: vi-sion, planning, operations man-agement and quality of processes.

The objective of the workshop isto train those responsible for theeducation centers selected for pilottesting on the methodological andinstrumental aspects of the model.2. The Centre for Studies on Im-proving Higher Education (CEPES)of the University of La Habana iscurrently preparing a course on thePlanning and Administration ofHigher Education Institutions,scheduled to take place from June8-26, 1992 and from November 29to December 17, 1993.

The programme is composed oftwo blocks of disciplines: Admin-istration of Higher Education In-stitutions and University Planning.The first block of disciplines in-

82

eludes the study of some basicprocesses that take place in the ad-ministration of higher educationinstitutions such as academic ad-ministration, human resourcesmanagement and financial resourcemanagement.

The second block is made up ofdisciplines regarding the interrela-tion of national and regional levelswith the planning and educationaldevelopment of higher educationinstitutions. To these ends materi-als are included that relate topopulation, higher education andemployment, development, plan-ning and institutional evaluationand organization of scientific workin higher education institutions. Inaddition, some subjects are includedon the use of computers in univer-sity administration and planning.

In addition, conferences are of-fered on the development of Cubaneducation, the economic crisis inLatin America and the Caribbeanand new tasks and improvement ofhigher education in Cuba.3. Within the framework of theProject on Educational Materialsbeing developed by the Secretariatof the Andres Bello Agreement(SECAB) in various Latin Ameri-can countries, an InternationalSeminar on Educational MaterialsProgramme was held from March30 to April 3, 1992, in Paipa, Co-lombia, with the collaboration of

80

the GTZ Foundation of Germany.Its main objectives were to analyzethe situation of quality and accessto educational materials and to out-line strategies that would allow forthe development of a self-sustainedstructure to produce these materi-als.

Seminar proceedings may bedirectly requested from Mr. RicardoHevia, Coordinator of the EducationSector of SECAB.4. The Center for Educational Ad-ministration of the University of.Concepcion, (Chile), sponsored bythe ANDES Foundation, is under-taking the "Project for the Trainingand Further Training of Leaders forCurricular Administration andCreativity for Technical and Pro-fessional Teaching in the 8th Re-gion". Phase one of this Projecttook place on January 6-17, 1992,and was attended by 36 teachingdirectors from technical and pro-fessional schools in the 8th Region(Chile).

The basic purpose of the Projectis to develop a methodology ofcurricular administration based ona dynamic and functional creativ-ity, that must operate through in-novative leadership capable ofharmoniously combining the ex-pectations of productive and serv-ice institutions with the occupa-tional and vocational interests ofstudents.

OREALC Activities

Project IV. Horizontalcooperation

Network coordinators were re-quested to verify and ratify the ac-

tivities offered and the demandsthat arose during the last TechnicalMeeting of REPLAD V that tookplace in November 1991 in Santo

SIRIRegional Information System

Area: Database of qualitative andstatistical educational informationCourse of action: Educationalstatistics base by country

Replies were received from 1500Chilean academics on their activi-ties at university level. These arebeing processed with the collabo-ration of the Carnegie Foundation.Tabulations are expected to beavailable by May, 1992.

Information will be gathered onsecondary education in order toprepare the next report on the"Educational Situation in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean 1980-1991", thus fulfilling the agreementby representatives of countries atthe PROM EDLAC IV meeting heldin Quito (April, 1991). The ques-tionnaires will be sent in the secondhalf of 1992 and their processingwill begin in early 1993, in order tosubmit a preliminary version to thecountries at PROMEDLAC V.

Area: Analysis of statistical anddocumental informationCourse of action: Publications

OREALC-SIRI, in conjunctionwith ECLAC, estimated the re-sources necessary to undertake thestrategies required by the economicdevelopment of the region. Thisinformation appears in Educationy Conocimiento: eje de la trans-

formacian productiva con equi dad,that was jointly published by bothinstitutions and reviewed at themeeting of Ministers of Economythat took place in Santiago (May 8-15, 1992).

Resources in Education (RIE) isa monthly publication of the U.S.Government Printing Office thatincludes summaries of OREALCpublications containing regionalstatistical information. The corre-sponding microfiches are part ofthe ERIC system and are availablein over 600 higher level institutionsof that country.

The Yearbook of InternationalOrganizations will include the Re-gional Information System (SIRI)in its 29th edition (1992/1993). Thiswill facilitate the exchange of in-formation and international com-parisons.

The World Bank will publish thearticle Repetition in Latin Ameri-ca' s primary schools: magnitudes,causes and possible solutions in its"A view from LATHR" series. Apreliminary version was discussedat a seminar held in WashingtonD.C. on May 8, 1992.

Information y toma de de-cisiones en Educacion is a publi-cation in which A. Rojas analyzesinterviews with education execu-tives from four countries. It is partof an attempt to understand thedegree to which it circulates. The

Domingo, Dominican Republic, inorder to reconcile and negotiate thenational activities of the REPLADPlan.

information is used in educationsystems.

Area: Analysis of statistical anddocumental informationCourse of action: Informationprocessing and report preparation

An analysis of the "Asignacidn derecursos para la educac i6n basica ymedia: el caso de Chile" ("Resourceallocation for basic and secondaryeducation: the case of Chile") wasprepared for a group headed by J.Batista Oliveira and C. MouraCastro. This report is of interest forthose interested in decentralizationprocesses in the handling of finan-cial resources.

Information will be gathered ontraining, the time devoted to teach-ing and teaching techniques usedby teachers in three countries. TheCentre for Education Studies ofMexico, the Chagas Foundation ofBrazil and FLACSO of Argentinawill carry out these studies in thecourse of 1992. To a large extent,the information will be comparableand will permit a better under-standing of the role of teachers inteaching. Progress reports are ex-pected for late 1992.

Area: Exchange and use of infor-mation and documentationCourse of Action: Identification ofinformation needs

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BULLETIN 27, April 1992 I The Major Projet of Education

SIRI presented 12 educationalindicators for monitoring progressin National Targets in Favour ofInfancy at the Technical Meetingon Monitoring organized by theUNICEF Regional Office in March24-27, 1992. Most of the indicatorscan be estimated using the infor-mation gathered annually by theMinistries of Education. Those in-terested may request further infor-mation from E. Aranibar, P.O. Box7555, Bogota, Colombia.

The World Bank is preparing areport on Secondary Education.Nine groups have been hired toanalyze the curriculum, the teach-ing of science, lobbyists for change,academic achievement factors, therelations with higher levels, theeconomic effects of investing insecondary education and the his-toric perspective. OREALC willcollaborate with regional casestudies and an analysis of the trendsin student flows.

Area: Yxchange and use of infor-mation and documentationCou t ;e of action: Informal ion sub-netwo.lcs

Information on the factors that de-termine repetition and achievementlevels will be gathered by OREALCand the Wall Bank in collabora-tion with RETJC-associated cen-tres. A new issio of MonothematicAbstracts will be published as partof this data-gatIvu ing effort.

The Northern 'emisphere Re-search Advis)ry Group(NORRAG), which collaborateswith similar groups in developingregions, will meer. in Geneva, Swit-zerland, from June 12-13, 1992.NORRAG is a source of informa-tion on research in education re-lated to decision-making. It is co-ordinated by K. King, University

84

of Edinburgh, 40 George Square,Edinburgh, EH8 9LL, U.K.

The Information System onProjects and Programmes of Coop-eration and Integration in LAC(PESICRE) operates in the Secre-tariat of the Latin American Eco-nomic System (SELA). It is a sup-port mechanism on political sci-ence matters with which SIRI col-laborates. It is coordinated by JoseKutos F., Apartado 17035, Caracas1010A, Venezuela.

Area: Exchange and use of infor-mation and documentationCourse of action: Programmesforthe analysis and projection of in-formation

The Michelangelo virus that wasactivated on Friday, March 6, 1992,reminded Data Bank operators ofthe need to have some type of pro-tection.

A computer programme for con-sulting on research results in devel-oping countries was discussed in aworkshop on "Simulation modelsand information software for edu-cational policy design" organizedby CIDE/CONICYT/B RIDG ES/OREALC in Santiago (May 4-5,1992). Programmes for trainingplanners through design simulationand policy implementation (EPIC)were also presented.

SIRI has begun to study the wayin which students born in the sameyear advance through the educa-tional system over time, (cohortflows). A computer programme isbeing reviewed using the LOTUScalculation sheet, which permits oneto estimate the average promotion,repetition and desertion rates ofeach cohort. Information by gradeand by age for each year over aminimum 8-year period is neededto operate it.

82

Area: Management InformationSystemsCourse of action: Design and up-dating of systems

Bolivia has begun the decentral-ized entry of statistical data sub-mitted by schools. Microcomput-ers provided by UNICEF for eachregion allow data to be entered andprocessed using a common pro-gramme. The first results are ex-pected by mid 1992, and the centralconsolidation during the second halfyear. A new OREALC missionsupported this activity in April,1992, and worked with a team ofexperts to complete the design ofthe Information System for theMinistry of Education (SIMEC).

Area: Management informationsystemsCourse of action: SeminarsICon-gresses

The communication betweendocumentation centers in the re-gion was reviewed in a seminarorganized in Lima (November 24-25, 1991) by the Institute for LatinAmerica (IPAL), sponsored byUNESCO.

A regional workshop on the useof software for processing educa-tional statistics will take place inSantiago in November 23- 27,1992.It is organized by UNESCO throughits Statistics Division and byOREALC. The invitations topresent candidates have been sentto UNESCO's national commis-sions.

The meeting of Basic LearningNeeds (BLN) was reviewed at aseminar organized by OREALCand the International DevelopmentResearch Center (IDRC) o f Canada.30 experts from the region exam-ined the new teaching and manage-ment strategies necessary to re-spond to this challenge.

OREALC Activities

PICPEMCERegional network for the training, in-servicetraining and further training of teachers

New focal institution inArgentina

The National Centre for TeacherTraining of the Ministry of Cultureand Education of Argentina hasbecome a new focal point of thePICPEMCE network. Its institu-tional objectives are to promote,execute and support all actionsaimed at the permanent training ofteachers, coordinating with otherMinistry bodies for specific func-tions. This will be achieved througha service that addresses the variousinterests, needs and expectations ofthe different jurisdictions, in orderto establish policies, courses of ac-tion and strategies that work to-wards educational change.

The new focal point involves acentral body that has 42 specialistsbelonging to the different areas ineducation and who participate inthe CENCAD and PROCIENCIAprojects. This central body has itsheadquarters in Buenos Aires.

At the same time, there are thirtyIns titutional Training Centers (CCI)located throughout the country. Thetraining actions of these are coordi-nated by two coordinators and op-erate within the framework of edu-cational change policy advancedby the Ministry of Culture andEducation.

Its programming for 1992 in-volves the preparation of projectsfor the different areas, which willuse various strategies for attractingstudents, such as distance educa-tion, workshops, group-thinkingsymposiums, use of multimedia,publications, etc. Among theprojects scheduled are those in-

volving the updating of scientificcontent and teaching models in thedifferent subjects: social sciences,mathematics, language, chemistry,physics, biology, shorthand andtyping. Seminars will also be heldon participatory research with na-tional, provincial and private sec-tors, based on key topics such asschool failure, harmonious rela-tions, rural and marginal areaschools, etc.

Other activities scheduled willdeal with the training of directorsand supervisors, the revitalizationof the PICPEMCE Network, im-plementation of the Plan for train-ing by partial attendance multime-dia and distance training.

Special Education

The OREALC Special EducationProgramme has prepared a seriesof videos entitled "Learning to-gether", which deal with the topicsof integration into a common schoolof children and youths with specialeducational needs (handicapped).This series has been conceived assupport material to accompanyprogrammes imparting informationand training in this area.

The material may be used forvarious target populations whichare involved, in one way or an-other, or are preparing to integratestudents with learning disabilitiesinto a school setting. The videoseries seeks to be thought-provok-ing and to stimulate analysis andthe exchange of ideas betweenteachers, directors, supervisorsfrom the regular education system,professionals from various disci-

plines, social workers, students,parents, etc.

The series "Learning Together"is composed of five modules, thatfocus on different, though clearlyinterrelated aspects of the integra-tion process. The modules last from15 to 20 minutes each and may beused separately or as a whole.

Environmental education

The International EnvironmentalEducation Programme (PIEA) isbeginning its eighteenth biennialphase (1992-1993). Designed in1975 by UNESCO in conjunctionwith UNEP, it seeks to respond toresolution 96 of the 1972 UnitedNations Conference on HumanEnvironment. The development ofenvironmental education is, in thecriteria of the organization, stronglylinked to environmental conserva-tion, the sound use of natural re-sources and to achieving environ-mentally sustainable development.Thus, UNESCO has actively par-ticipated in the preparation ofthe United Nations Conferenceon Environment and Develop-ment, to take place in Brazil in June1992.

OREALC is responsible forstarting up PIEA in Latin Americaand the Caribbean. It has carriedout a series of activities on environ-mental education of interest toMember States of the region. Thesehave essentially focused on:

teacher training,- preparation of teaching pro-

grammes and teaching materi-als,

- research and experimentation

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BULLETIN 27, April 1992 I The Major Projet of Education

- environment-related informa-tion.

Improving quality

In considering the educationalconditions of Latin America, PIEA,along with fulfilling its world-wideobjectives, has supported regionalefforts aimed at improving thequality of education within theframework established by the Ma-jor Project in the Field of Educa-tion. Improving the quality of edu-cation implies, among other things,meeting basic learning needs, manyof which can be consolidatedthrough a process of environmen-tal education. Thus, programmeactivities have particularly aimedat incorporating environmentaleducation into primary education,which is considered the most ap-propriate level for developing atti-tudes and skills aimed at an ad-equate interaction with the envi-ronment. The need to train citizenswho are aware of the need for soundmanagement of natural resourcesand what this entails in terms ofenvironmentally sustainable eco-nomic development, is a basic im-perative for dealing with the pov-erty of the population and the dete-rioration of the quality of life. Thedevelopment model of productivechange with social equity recentlyproposed by ECLAC for the regionincludes the concept of environ-mental sustainability that must beincorporated into educational ac-tivity through environmental edu-cation.

In primary education

In this respect, OREALC has un-

86

dertaken a series of activities withinthe framework of PLEA, aimed atincorporating environmental edu-cation into general primary educa-tion. Among these activities is theanalysis of the initial training offuture primary teachers, studyingwhat type of curricular adaptationwould be necessary in the differentteacher training institutions -teacher training schools, universityinstitutions, etc., in order to incor-porate environmental educationinto teacher training, and what themajor difficulties would be forteachers to start up environmentaleducation in the classroom. Thesetopics were among those dealt within two subregional workshops heldin 1991 (Quito, Ecuador, July 29 toAugust 1; Antigua, Guatemala,November 4-7). They served as away to make known the fact of theenvironmental training of primaryschool teachers in 17 countries inthe region. In addition, teachertraining institutions in Brazil, Chile,Cuba and Panama are undertakingprojects on the incorporation of en-v ironmental education into primaryschool teacher training,

On the other hand, the NationalPedagogical University of Colom-bia is developing a prototype cur-riculum for the initial training ofprimary school teachers, as well asone for primary schools. A similarproject, but for secondary schools,is being undertaken by the Uni-versity of Costa Rica.

Information and research

In the field of information on theenvironment, OREALC publishesthe Spanish version of the Environ-mental Education Bulletin "Con-

84

tacto" that informs on activities atworld level in the field of educationand the environment. Likewise, thePIEA module series on environ-mental education is published inSpanish with local adaptations ofthis material essentially aimed atteacher support.

OREALC fosters the develop-ment of national strategies and ac-tion plans on environmental edu-cation for the purpose of support-ing the instituting of activities whichare often carried out in isolation byso many government agencies,nongovernment organizations anduniversities in the different coun-tries of the region. To this end,national meetings have been heldon the subject in Argentina, Chile,the Dominican Republic and Ecua-dor, and these activities are sched-uled to continue in other countries.What is intended is that the differ-ent national agencies related to thesubject, prepare a national proposalon environmental education thatcan be incorporated into the edu-cational and environmental policiesof each country.

In secondary education

At the present stage, and withoutcutting off support for the introduc-tion of environmental education atelementary school level and for thedevelopment of national strategieson environmental education,OREALC will promote the incor-poration of environmental educa-tion at the secondary school anduniversity undergraduate level.Likewise, it will continue to carryout local adaptations of teachingmaterial to support the teacher'swork in the classroom.

Publications OREALC

Hacia una pedagogia desolucian de,problemas en laeducaci6n ambiental. Envi-ronmental Education, ModuleNo. 15. UNESCO /UNEP,Santiago, Chile. December1991, 106 p.

Docentes y docencia. Las zonasrurales. Marcela Gajardo andAna Maria de Andraca.UNESCO/FLACSO. Santiago,Chile, January 1992, 156 p.

A la educacion por la comu-nicacion. La practica de la

comunicacion educativa. MarioKaplun. Santiago, Chile, Ja-nuary 1992, 236 p.

Educacion y conocimiento: ejede la transformation producti-va con equidad. UNESCO/ECLAC, Santiago, Chile, March1992, 270 p.

Education and knowledge:Basic pillars of changingproduction patterns with socialequity. UNESCO / ECLAC,Santiago, Chile, March 1992,258 p.

Medicion de la calidad de laeducacion: zpor qug, c6mo ypara qug?. Vol. I, REPLAD,Santiago, Chile, February 1992,90 p.

Informacian e Innovation enEducaci6n. International Bureauof Education, IBE. Santiago,Chile, December, 1991, 8 p.

EFA 2000, No. 6, enero-marzo1992. World Conference onEducation for All Bulletin(WCEFA). UNESCO, Santiago,Chile, March 1992, 8 p.

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The Major Project of Education in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean has resulted

from a consensus on the part ofgovernment representatives of the

countries of the region concerning thenecessity for a renewed, intensive and

sustained effort to make gooddeficiencies and to meet unsatisfied basiceducational needs between now and the

year 2000 as a prerequisite for thedevelopment of the those countries in line

with objectives shared by all and bymeans of actions in which each country's

own effort may be benefited byhorizontal, subregional, regional and

international co-operation.

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