António Teodoro

Curriculum policy in Portugal (1995-2007): global agendas and regional and national reconfigurations

This paper undertakes a critical analysis of recent education and curriculum policies in Portugal, focusing on the relationship between globalization, international agencies, and the curriculum. It aims to highlight not only changes in the organization of schools, but also the setting of a agenda structured at a global level for education in which the ability of supranational and transnational institutional forces to cross or go beyond national borders and the configuration of relationships between nations are all implicit. The paper contends that education and curriculum policies should be understood as a product of multiple influences and interdependencies; they are the result of a process of bricolage which reveals the interests, values, principles, and rules that, at any given moment, are dominant or not. Drawing upon this approach, the aim is to show, on the one hand, how the results of the large OECD research projects influence educational and curriculum policy‐making in Portugal, and, on the other hand, how these policies are affected by the ‘Europeanization’ process.

European and Latin American Higher Education Between Mirrors

This paper discusses some of the analyses and proposals presented by a large network of European and Latin American researchers that developed a broad programme on institutional equity and social cohesion in higher education institutions, between 2011 and 2013. The impact of higher education expan sion and diversification has been felt and questioned differently in the various countries, due to their history and place in the world system, to their education systems, to their organization, or their ability to react, to mobilize resources and to implement relevant policies. The article has Europe and Latin America as privileged locus of analysis, but acknowledges that many of the characteristics and issues described are part of a global agenda. It is assumed that neoliberalism has failed as a model of economic development, but it is recognized that, as policy for culture, it is (still) in force, derived from having become a common sense that shapes the actions of governments and education policy-makers. The University, as well as higher education policies, may have another sense and give an important contribution to the construction of fair societies, fighting for equality among human beings, fully respecting their differences. This is the sense of the nine proposals for a radically democratic and Citizen University the paper ends with. Keywords: higher education; academic networks; Europe; Latin America; citizen university.

Paulo Freire, or Pedagogy as the Space and Time of Possibility

We live, in the world today, in contradictory and paradoxical times. On the one hand, the nefarious consequences of the neoliberal politics consecrated in the Washington consensus are accentuated on all planes of human activity. On the other hand, in Brazil, one of the largest democracies in the world, we witness the election of a working-class, trade-union president who carries with him an immense amount of hope for the possible construction of a more just and cohesive society. In the present world context, the election of President Ignácio “Lula” da Silva and the affirmation of the Worker’s Party (PT) as the largest and most representative political power in Brazil has an unequivocal symbolic significance. First, it calls attention to the importance of the resistance of the common people in affirming a counterhegemonic way of thinking. Second, in a period marked by the flux and disorientation of the world Left, it represents the

Social and Cognitive Justice: The Social Relevance of the Higher Education in Latin America

Latin America, characterized by being a multicultural and multi-ethnic region, has become in these early years of the new millennium a demonstration of creativity and social innovation while a laboratory of experiments in privatization and marketing raised to the degree, product of neoliberal policies that plagued the state from the Chilean coup of 1973 onward. Currently, the region is drawn through the coexistence of the worst social inequality with self-organization of complex social justice experiences carried out both by minority groups as movements that have arrived to state power. The development of renewable forms of democracy present in Latin American countries strengthened since the second half of the twentieth century, and the processes of integration of countries in the region that since the end of this millennium have taken more autonomous courses while being integrated are demanding forms of social justice to expand and reach those sectors still lag behind. This chapter is a contribution to better analyze higher education in Latin America, the current challenges in social and cognitive justice, equity, and social cohesion from an Ibero-American perspective.

La medida de la calidad educativa: acerca de los rankings universitarios

En el presente texto se revisa desde una perspectiva critica la construccion de sistemas transnacionales de evaluacion de la calidad a traves de los rankings internacionales. En la primera parte, reflexionamos sobre el concepto de calidad y presentamos diferentes tipos de rankings: los denominados League Tables (ARWU, THE, QS) y los centrados en resultados de investigacion (SCImago Institutions Ranking). Una vez conocidas las caracteristicas y posibles utilidades de los mismos, analizamos dialogicamente una serie de riesgos a tener en cuenta para acabar incidiendo de nuevo en el modelo de calidad que proponen y sus posibles efectos.

Medir la educación: perspectivas desde la crítica sociológica

El interes y la preocupacion por una politica educativa gobernada por los numeros se reflejan claramente en una literatura academica creciente desde disciplinas que en muchas ocasiones atraviesan fronteras epistemologicas y dialogan entre si a nivel internacional. Si bien el problema acerca de la medida de la educacion no es nuevo, es cierto que la generalizacion y proliferacion de estudios, informes y pruebas que tratan de capturar resultados cuantitativos en la esfera educativa, estrechamente asociados a principios y criterios evaluativos, despierta tanto interes como inquietud. Recientemente se han desarrollado foros y debates que han planteado la necesidad de ofrecer alternativas a una corriente neopositivista que parece estar imponiendose en las ciencias sociales, con efectos e impactos en las politicas y en las practicas educativas.

Institutional Networks in Latin America

The creation of institutional networks in the recent history of Latin America has contributed decisively to the processes of developing and consolidating the social sciences as a whole and education in particular.