Javier F. A. Vega Ramírez

This research addresses the empty signifier character that falls on the construct "quality education" within public discourse. To this end, it analyses Laclau and Mouffé's approach to empty signifiers, verifying the relationship between the signifier and the construct, and examining the use of the concept of quality education in public discourse in Chile, from its emergence on the educational agenda of the dictatorship in the 1980s to its appearance in connection with the UN's SDG 4.The evidence gathered shows that the content of the construct takes on a technical, economic or social character depending on the period or the group that administers it. Although this could be related to the floating signifier, the recent appropriation of discourse on social media by right-wing presidential candidates in Chile, Brazil and the United States has changed this possibility, as they have resorted to forms of discourse emptying that allow quality education to continue to be used for its reputation, filling it with variable content. This becomes evident when comparing its use in the government programmes of the last two presidential candidates in Chile, where it is used in clearly different ways over a period of four years.

This article analyses the official Catholic Religious Education (CRES) programmes in Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica and Colombia from the perspective of complexity sciences, using the concept of self-organisation as a central analytical axis. Given Latin American contexts marked by religious pluralism, cultural transformation, institutional crisis and youth subjectivities, it is proposed that the adequacy of CRES does not depend solely on content or methodologies, but also on the systemic architecture that articulates students, classrooms and institutions in relation to their environment. Methodologically, the study develops a framework of three thresholds of educational self-organisation—reactive, reflective, and ecological—and applies it comparatively to the four national programmes, examining how they distribute agency, learning capacity, and openness to context at the student, classroom, and school-environment levels. The analysis reveals that, although all programmes activate relevant forms of reactive and reflective self-organisation, only some partially enable thresholds of ecological self-organisation capable of sustainably integrating contemporary sociocultural and religious complexity. The results allow us to identify structural tensions between current curriculum designs and the demands of increasingly complex environments.

Se presentan los resultados de una investigación, cuyo objetivo fue determinar las singularidades y convergencias en las trayectorias profesionales de una muestra de seis docentes del sur de Chile que se desempeñan en contextos tanto urbanos como rurales, seleccionados bajo criterios de conveniencia. Desde las orientaciones metodológicas del enfoque de investigación biográfico narrativo, los participantes desarrollaron relatos de vida que fueron analizados desde su contenido categorial. Los resultados permiten identificar un marco de categorías que explicitan fases o trayectorias biográficas que se articulan en torno a tres ejes comunes: familia, experiencias y política educativa. Las vivencias más significativas alimentan decisiones personales y profesionales que difieren en función del sentido de identidad construido, contexto de desempeño y factores sociopersonales disponibles. Finalmente, se analizan y discuten implicancias político-educativas de los resultados para la formación y desarrollo profesional docente continuo, desde una comprensión profunda del mundo escolar desde el sentir de los actores. profesores, biografía, trayectoria, identidad, desarrollo profesional, Chile.

El contexto social del cambio entre los siglos XIX y XX en Chile estuvo marcado por fuertes tensiones sociales, políticas y económicas que sacudieron a la República en vísperas de su primer centenario. En este escenario, se hizo urgente una reforma educativa capaz de abordar cuestiones estructurales aún pendientes, como la ampliación de la cobertura, el acceso universal y el rol del Estado como garante del derecho a la educación. Los espacios de reflexión sobre estos temas fueron, entre otros, el Congreso Nacional y, de forma destacada, los Congresos Nacionales de Educación. A partir de una revisión sincrónica de fuentes oficiales, normativas y de prensa, este artículo ofrece una panorámica social de los años comprendidos entre el Congreso Pedagógico Nacional de 1889 y el Congreso General de Enseñanza Pública de 1912. Se propone así una comprensión más profunda de la complejidad de los cambios educativos del período, así como de su impacto en las transformaciones posteriores.

El presente artículo explora críticamente el proceso de acreditación de las carreras de pedagogía en Chile, analizando específicamente las limitaciones y obstáculos para la inclusión educativa y la interculturalidad en la Formación Inicial Docente (FID). Se plantea que existe una notable brecha entre la política educativa y las prácticas reales en las aulas, influenciada por una estructura normativa rígida que impide abordar adecuadamente la diversidad cultural y territorial. Los resultados indican que los procesos de acreditación privilegian criterios técnicos estandarizados en desmedro de aspectos fundamentales como la inclusión y la interculturalidad, afectando principalmente a las universidades regionales y los grupos estudiantiles más vulnerables.

This article offers the results of a bibliographical research generated with the intention of offering a methodological proposal based on the epistemological perspective underlying the Political Discourse Analysis, whose origin is found in the work of Laclau and other authors. For this purpose, an exhaustive review of the conceptualisations surrounding Discourse, Hegemony and Politics is made in order to, subsequently, present in detail the possibilities offered by Political Discourse Analysis as a tool for social analysis. Finally, based on the authors reviewed, a proposal of methodological steps to develop Political Discourse Analysis applied to focused social phenomena is presented. It is concluded that Political Discourse Analysis as a perspective of analysis is fully valid for both large and small phenomena, and that the proposed methodology can be dynamically adapted to each of the requirements presented.

The massive fragmentation of knowledge that exists in the current field of physical education enables us to research pedagogical and disciplinary aspects in the educational processes of teachers in training, as this has significant implications for future educational practices. This study proposes to assess the dimensions of knowledge (conceptual, procedural and attitudinal) that stem from the learnings that emerge in physical education teacher training in terms of the disciplinary standards proposed by the Chilean Education Ministry for the Preservice Teacher Education. The study methodology was descriptive and inferential, and the cohort was cross-sectional. A total of 750 fourth- and fifth-year students in training from 13 Chilean universities participated. Of these, 619 subjects were considered: 54.6% (338) men and 45.4% (281) women between the ages of 21 and 25. The questionnaire used for data collection was the “Questionnaire on Conceptual, Procedural and Attitudinal Learning in Preservice Teacher Education in Physical Education” (CACPA-FIDEF), prepared as part of Fondecyt project No. 11190537. The main results indicate that there are no statistically significant differences in the three dimensions in terms of students’ sex and type of schooling, with p values > 0.05. In conclusion, the study observed a weak conceptual management of the discipline in future teachers, revealing once again the need to seek out didactic alternatives that enable teachers in training to understand the importance of the conceptual dimension in their learning and teaching processes.

The levels of adherence to results in the implementation of public policies within educational communities can vary greatly depending on several factors: program coverage, funding level, the level of understanding of program goals, the duration of implementation, and the dissemination of results. In today’s digital society, the most relevant factor is precisely the communication of results, even when the way in which these are reached is overlooked. As a result, non-causal, high-impact relationships are installed in the collective consciousness. This article presents the results of a study that aims to measure the level of impact of the implementation of a public policy developed over two years in educational establishments in the Los Ríos Region of Chile, and it looks into the level of adherence to results three years after its implementation. The results explain that the differentiating factor is the type of dissemination of results, in direct correlation to the digital media used and the digital culture of the establishment, which allows to previously project the conditions of possibility for a type of adherence, even though we need larger scale measurements to determine with certainty this point of causality.