Berkeley Review of Education

Chile experienced massive student protests against market-based education in 2011. In 2013, center-left President Michelle Bachelet proposed tuition-free higher education for Chile’s bottom 70%, fueling controversy due to the uncertainty and unexpected medium and long-term consequences. This study analyzes how the free-tuition policy was developed, the actors involved, the political discourse deployed during its implementation, and the strategy used to make this policy a reality. Using semi-structured interviews with key actors, such as policymakers and scholars, and a review of newspaper columns, we wanted to explore how politicians and bureaucrats translated the students’ demands into the free-tuition policy. Our findings suggest that the policy translation process involved former student leaders, free-tuition policy prioritization, and a quick, straightforward implementation process that enabled the government to fulfill its promise.

The recent wave of teacher activism and strikes across the United States is unprecedented. While it has been commented upon and understood in various ways, this essay departs from actor-centric modes of analysis that have been taken up. Instead, I read recent teacher activism efforts through a Foucauldian analytics of protest which examines the rationalities used to justify political action in order to understand how, in some ways, teachers paradoxically reified the logics of education reform efforts which they sought to oppose. Following this I offer several examples of protest which exist in much different forms which unveil political possibilities beyond the logics of reform. Through doing so, I invite not only an understanding of past actions but also a future engagement with transformative modes of teacher activism which have become only more necessary since the 2018 strike wave.

To understand the experiences of educators during the 2020 extended school closures, we interviewed 40 teachers from across the country in public, charter, and private schools, at different grade levels, and in different subject areas. Teachers articulated three main concerns about emergency remote schooling: 1.) student motivation; 2.) professional loss and burnout; and 3.) exacerbated inequities. As the climate emergency makes school disruptions more common, school systems must learn from the tragic school closings under COVID-19 to prepare for an uncertain future. We propose five design considerations to build school systems with greater resilience for the long-term: center equity, focus on relationship-building, address student motivation, address staff motivation and burnout, and mitigate uncertainty.