Professional Development of Rural Teachers in contexts of Educational Reforms

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.22533/at.ed.5584182431058

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• Keywords: -

• Abstract:

  In 2017, the law creating the public education system was enacted, transferring municipal schools to Local Public Education Services (SLEP). As Ball and Maroy (2009) point out, the implementation of educational policies implies tensions between the objectives of the reform and their translation by educational actors. Likewise, a characteristic feature of Chilean rural schools, among others, is their organization into Microcenters, that is, groups of territorially close schools that meet monthly to share pedagogical experiences, in order to improve their teaching.
  In such a context, this paper seeks to analyze how microcenter meetings provide professional development opportunities to those in charge of rural schools (RSE) during the implementation of an educational reform that changes their labor dependence. Based on 31 reflective interviews, it is concluded that the current microcenter meetings have a fundamentally administrative nature and the instances of exchange of pedagogical practices have been reduced. Due to the above, teachers consider that their autonomy, opportunities for peer learning and professional development have decreased. These results tend to confirm the observation of Ball and Maroy (2009) and empirically exemplify such tensions.