Secondary Teacher Education in Chile

1. Secondary Teacher Education in Chile An assessment in the light of demands of the knowledge society

2. Inclusion / Exclusion Information – communication Globalisation - Environment Ideas Collective intelligence

3. Secondary Teacher Education in Chile: its history • Historically: a university-based career • Limited growth during the first half of the 20th century • Oscillating policies during the Military Regime (1973-1990) affect quality • Renewal programmes (1997-2002)

4. Trajectories (Semesters)

5. Some features of STE • Mostly offered in public universities (80+%) • 2004: 15,219 students • Specialising in maths and science: 23% rest in Language, S. Sciences, Arts, English, Physical Education

6. Quality Assurance • System of Accreditation of teacher education programmes (voluntary basis) • Standards to assess graduating teachers (not compulsory)

7. Secondary teacher education for the knowledge society Stakeholders’ Views: Academics, student teachers, policy-makers, teachers

8. General competencies (view of teacher educators & academics) • Personal: flexibility, emotional, interpersonal, positive self-image • Social: teamwork capacity, entrepreneurship, leadership, democratic & ecological sensitivity • Cognitive: clear thinking, intellectual autonomy, knowing how to learn and find information • Planning and teaching • Instrumental: foreign language, ICT.

9. Specific competencies • Preparing to teach: content knowledge & deep understanding, knowledge about students and needs • Appropriate classroom environment: all students can learn, freedom to express views, empathy • Teaching for learning: constructivist learning approaches – build on prior knowledge –problem solving – stimulation of divergent thinking • Teacher professionalism: School participation, team work.

10. How well is teacher education performing? • Institutional structures: • the divide between specialist departments and the education department • student teachers’ ambiguous self-image: specialists or teachers?

11. How well is teacher education performing? • The curriculum: • Need for greater focus, less emphasis on quantity and more on depth, especially in subject-matter preparation • Some good experiences with PBL • Pedagogic Content Knowledge not well provided

12. How well is teacher education perfoming • Teaching approaches: improvement from the past – moving towards more flexible & open forms • Practicum: improved but still insufficient in terms of progression, quality of experiences and supervision / mentoring • Teacher educators: better prepared – weakeness in the area of PCK

13. Conclusion • In terms of teachers for the knowledge society: better conditions than in other developing countries – • Agreement on what is needed in line with demands of knowledge society – but there is a distance with what happens in reality • Institutional and curriculum fragmentation require dealing with • Central policies to orient teacher education are needed as well as an institutional location at Ministry of Education.

14. How well is teacher education performing? • Teaching approaches: improvement in relation to the past – more in line with principles of autonomous learning • Practicum: improved from the past, but still insufficient in time and quality of supervision • Teacher educators: improvement, but still inadequate preparation in PCK. • Resources and ICT: improvement – much better conditions than 10 years ago.