Civil Society Organizations In Latin American Education

Examining the roles, impacts and challenges of civil society organizations (CSOs) in Latin America, this volume provides a broad perspective on the range of strategies these organizations employ and the obstacles they face in advocating for and delivering educational reform. Building on previous research on international and comparative education, development studies, research on social movements and nongovernmental organizations, chapter authors provides new insights about the increasing presence of CSOs in education and offer case studies demonstrating how these organizations‘ missions have evolved over time in Latin America.

This history of popular education looks at one of the most successful social movements to use popular education, the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) in Brazil. It highlights the importance of popular education to the "new" social movements based around identity, such as women's and indigenous organizations

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The key to sustained and equitable development in Latin America is high quality education for all. However, coalitions favoring quality reforms in education are usually weak because parents are dispersed, business is not interested, and much of the middle class has exited public education. In Routes to Reform, Ben Ross Schneider examines education policy throughout Latin America to show that reforms to improve learning--especially making teacher careers more meritocratic and less political--are possible. Several Andean countries and state governments in Brazil achieved notable reform since 2000, though on markedly different trajectories. Although rare, the first bottom-up route to reform was electoral. The second route was more top-down and technocratic, with little support from voters or civil society. Ultimately, by framing education policy in a much broader comparative perspective, Schneider demonstrates that contrary to much established theory, reform outcomes in Latin America depended less on institutions and broad coalitions, but rather--due to the emptiness of the education policy space--on more micro factors like civil society organizations, teacher unions, policy networks, and technocrats.

Civil society organizations have risen up the global education agenda since the international community adhered to the 'Education For All' Action Framework in the 'World Education Forum' that was held in Dakar in 2000. With the foundation of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) civil society advocacy has sought to ensure that national governments, donors and international organisations make the necessary efforts to guarantee quality education for all children in the world. This book explores the strategies and actions, as well as the challenges and impact of civil society organizations in the achievement of the 'Education For All' international commitments. It does so by specifically focusing on seven national coalitions affiliated to the GCE. From Africa, to Asia to Latin America the book shows how these coalitions work and manage the differences between their different types of constituencies, explores their varied tactics and strategies, and explains their successes and failures after more than a decade of coordinated action. The book also provides a concise and comprehensive synthesis of findings from the distinct case studies and offers a series of lessons learned that are vital for education practitioners, academics, activists and policy-makers committed to more equitable and relevant education systems around the world.

This book presents pioneering research that is designed to show, from a qualitative and ethnographic perspective, how new information and communication technologies, as applied to the school system and to local governance initiatives, merely reproduce traditional pedagogical approaches and the dominant forms by which power is exercised at the local level. The studies thus constitute points of departure for further thinking about the need to promote an Internet culture based on the social application of a "right to communication and culture" and an "Internet right," that will permit the establi.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The key to sustained and equitable development in Latin America is high quality education for all. However, coalitions favoring quality reforms in education are usually weak because parents are dispersed, business is not interested, and much of the middle class has exited public education. In Routes to Reform, Ben Ross Schneider examines education policy throughout Latin America to show that reforms to improve learning--especially making teacher careers more meritocratic and less political--are possible. Several Andean countries and state governments in Brazil achieved notable reform since 2000, though on markedly different trajectories. Although rare, the first bottom-up route to reform was electoral. The second route was more top-down and technocratic, with little support from voters or civil society. Ultimately, by framing education policy in a much broader comparative perspective, Schneider demonstrates that contrary to much established theory, reform outcomes in Latin America depended less on institutions and broad coalitions, but rather--due to the emptiness of the education policy space--on more micro factors like civil society organizations, teacher unions, policy networks, and technocrats.

"How do poor people in Latin America participate in politics? What explains the variation in the patterns of voting, protesting, and contacting government for the region's poorest citizens? Why are participation gaps larger in some countries than in others? This book offers the first large scale empirical analysis of political participation in Latin America, focusing on patterns of participation among the poorest citizens in each country, and comparing those patterns to those of individuals with more resources. Far from being politically inert, under certain conditions the poorest citizens in Latin America can act and speak for themselves with an intensity that far exceeds their modest socioeconomic resources. We argue that key institutions of democracy, namely civil society, political parties, and competitive elections, have an enormous impact on whether or not poor people turn out to vote, protest, and contact government officials. When voluntary organizations thrive in poor communities and when political parties focus their mobilization efforts on poor individuals, they respond with high levels of political activism. Poor people's activism also benefits from strong parties, robust electoral competition and well-functioning democratic institutions. Where electoral competition is robust and where the power of incumbents is constrained, we see higher levels of participation by poor individuals and more political equality. Precisely because the individual resource constraints that poor people face are daunting obstacles to political activism, our explanation focuses on those features of democratic politics that create opportunities for participation that have the strongest effect on poor people's political behavior"--