Jose Joaquin Brunner

« Junio 2007 | Main | Agosto 2007 »

Julio 31, 2007

Responsabilización de las escuelas por su desempeño

Artículo publicado en por J. Puryear y L. Moodey en Viewpoints Americas, una publicación de la Americas Society y el Council of the Americas, sobre un tópico --la responsabilización de las escuelas por su desempeño-- de máximo interés para el debate en curso en Chile.

Concluyen los autores*:

Latin America is a long way from establishing meaningful accountability in its school systems. To move forward, policymakers and specialists must learn from other countries, identify approaches that best match their circumstances, experiment, and evaluate the results. Most importantly, they will need to demonstrate enormous political resolve to confront vested interests that fiercely resist losing power.

Ver texto competo más abajo

*Jeffrey M. Puryear is vice president for social policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, and directs its Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL). He previously served as head of the Ford Foundation's regional office for the Andes and the Southern Cone, and has been a research scholar at New York University and at Stanford University.

*Laura Moodey is the Director for Educational Policy at Fundación IDEA, a Mexican think tank. Previously, she was a director in the national office of Teach For America, an elementary school teacher in New York City and an English grammar and conversation teacher in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Recursos asociados

Accountability en educación, 1 enero 2007

Accountability educacional: posibilidades y desafíos para América Latina a partir de la experiencia internacional, 4 agosto 2006

Sistemas de supervisión escolar: selección de materiales, 22 julio 2006

Accountability Rare in Latin American Schools
By Jeffrey M. Puryear and Laura Moodey
July 24, 2007

Promoting accountability is at the center of current debates on educational policy in Latin America. With the region’s education quality poor by every available measure, research suggests that accountability is a critical tool for improvement. Efforts to promote accountability in education are underway elsewhere—particularly the United States—and have not gone unnoticed among Latin American policymakers. Several initiatives are underway in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, and Brazil, but the concept is relatively new—and poorly understood.

One problem is that few understand what accountability means. No literal translation of the term exists in Spanish—rendición de cuentas being the closest equivalent. The standard definition — setting goals and holding people (students, parents, teachers, principals, and ministry officials) responsible for achieving them—describes a dynamic that is largely unfamiliar to the region’s public schools. Traditionally, education systems in Latin America have been a public monopoly managed by highly centralized and hierarchical national agencies. Emphasis has been on inputs (money, schools, and enrollments) rather than on outputs (learning). In the end, education providers and students have not been asked to achieve the proper goals or held responsible for attaining them.

Most experts agree that accountability in education requires at least four conditions: standards, information, consequences, and authority. Countries need to establish comprehensive education standards so that the public knows what schools are supposed to do and achieve. They need to produce reliable information so that the clients of education—students, parents, community leaders, and employers—can determine whether standards are being reached. To achieve these standards, there must be appropriate consequences for meeting (or failing to meet) certain benchmarks. Finally, schools, communities and parents should have the authority necessary to make decisions and implement changes. If not, it makes little sense to sanction them for shortcomings.

Last month, the Partnership for Educational Revitalization (PREAL) and Fundación IDEA, in collaboration with Mexicanos Primero, organized the international seminar “Accountability: An Opportunity for Quality Education” to discuss the state of educational accountability in the region. Held in Mexico City and opened by Mexico’s Secretary of Public Education Josefina Vázquez Mota, the 150 researchers, government officials and members of civil society concluded that, despite considerable progress, many of the building blocks essential to accountability in
education are not yet in place. This conference was yet another wake-up call for improving education.

No country has yet succeeded in establishing, disseminating and fully implementing national education standards that set high expectations for all students. Even when standards do exist, they have seldom been aligned with curriculum or national tests.

A few countries, notably Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, and El Salvador, are taking important steps in this direction and others have indicated their intention to begin the process.

The outlook is more positive in the case of public information. Nearly every country has established national student achievement tests that regularly monitor learning and publish the results for subjects such as reading and mathematics. At least eight countries have participated in global tests and some, including Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Chile, have done so repeatedly. Still, national testing systems remain underdeveloped and poorly funded, and test results are not widely publicized.

Very few countries evaluate the skills and performance of teachers (Colombia, Chile and Peru are notable—and recent—exceptions). At the same time, national education statistics and research programs are weak, making it difficult to monitor progress and evaluate new interventions. Too much of the information needed to assess school progress either does not exist or is not easily accessible.

Perhaps most noteworthy is the general absence of consequences in the region’s education systems. Good teachers are not paid more than bad teachers. Bad teachers are neither identified for remedial training nor sanctioned if they fail to improve. Students do not have to demonstrate mastery of subjects to graduate and schools are funded regardless of success or failure. Incentives for better performance are almost non-existent in the region’s schools.

Education authority is a more mixed picture. A number of countries, particularly Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and several states in Brazil have given communities varying degrees of authority over local education. Chile’s voucher system lets parents “vote with their feet” by choosing whether to send their children to a traditional public school or to a publicly financed private school. The government of Bogotá, Colombia, has contracted prestigious private schools to develop highquality schools for the poor. Still, the scope of schools’ authority is generally limited.

Most principals cannot select and manage their staff or make spending decisions. Teachers have limited authority to innovate in the classroom, while parents and communities have little say regarding the administration of local schools. Schools that lack authority to make fundamental changes important for improving performance cannot be held accountable for the results.

Mexico is near the bottom of the list in all four categories. Without public standards for measuring student achievement by grade level or subject, Mexico is hard-pressed to evaluate meaningfully or understand the performance of its students. Despite recently completing its second year of national standardized testing in certain grades—a huge leap forward—the results so far have been difficult to analyze and not widely accessible. Even if Mexico were to have valid, understandable evaluation tools, it lacks the proper incentives to inspire teacher and administrator improvement. Principals have no control over the hiring process at their school, and it is nearly impossible to fire a teacher, even for poor performance. They also lack authority over pedagogical and managerial decisions that could produce improvements in student achievement.

Latin America is a long way from establishing meaningful accountability in its school systems. To move forward, policymakers and specialists must learn from other countries, identify approaches that best match their circumstances, experiment, and evaluate the results. Most importantly, they will need to demonstrate enormous political resolve to confront vested interests that fiercely resist losing power.

Accountability is a revolutionary concept in public education, and revolutions are tough to create.

Posted by jjbrunner at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)

Julio 30, 2007

¿Acuerdo para sustituir la LOCE por fin?

La prensa informa durante las últimas horas en sus páginas electrónicas sobre el acuerdo alcanzado entre el Gobierno, los partidos de la Concertación y de la Oposición, para iniciar el estudio conjunto de las bases de la legislación que podría conducir al reemplazo de la LOCE por una nueva Ley General de Educación.

Registro de la prensa hoy

Gobierno quita urgencia a LGE y activa diálogo para consensuar cambios, La Nación, 31 julio 2007

Búsqueda de acuerdos: Gobierno quita urgencia a proyecto de Educación y negociará con Alianza , El Mercurio, 31 julio 2007

Ministra de Educación anuncia trabajo político legislativo junto a la alianza para abordar proyectos en materia educacional, sitio de noticias del MINEDUC, 30 julio 2007 (ver noticia completa más abajo)

Retiran urgencia a proyecto que reforma la LOCE: Gobierno y Alianza conforman comisión para alcanzar acuerdo en educación, El Mostrador, 30 julio 2007

Ejecutivo quita urgencia a proyecto de Educación, La Nación, 30 julio

Gobierno retira urgencia a Ley de Educación, La Segunda, 30 julio 2007

Gobierno quitará urgencia a proyecto de Educación para estudiar propuesta opositora, La Segundo, 30 julio 2007

Gobierno quitará urgencia a proyecto de Educación para estudiar propuesta opositora, Emol, 30 julio 2007

Recursos asociados

Preguntas y breves respuestas sobre el Proyecto de Ley General de Educación presentado por la Alianza, 18 julio 2007

Comentarios personales en torno al proyecto que sustituye la LOCE

Anuncios de política educacional: Ley General de Educación - Registro de Prensa día a día

Exposición ante la Comisión de Educación de la H. Cámara de Diputados sobre el Proyecto de Ley General de Educación, 21 junio 2007

La reforma al sistema escolar: aportes para el debate, 15 mayo 2007. Libro publicado por Mariana Aylwin, Harald Beyer, José Joaquín Brunner, Abelardo Castro, Cristián Cox, Loreto Fontaine, Jorge Manzi, Alejandra Mizala, Claudio Orrego, Carlos Peña, coordinado por José Joaquín Brunner y Carlos Peña, como un aporte para el debate sobre la nueva Ley General de Educación que se discute en el Parlamento.

Ministra de Educación anuncia trabajo político legislativo junto a la alianza para abordar proyectos en materia educacional

o La Secretaria de Estado anunció la creación de una comisión de trabajo “político –legislativa” que busca consensuar distintos puntos de vista y analizar las diversas propuestas educacionales presentadas para mejorar la calidad de la educación en nuestro país.

o La Ministra Provoste destacó que con el fin de establecer plazos convenidos, se le quitará la urgencia simple al proyecto de Ley General de Educación.

o “Estamos frente a la gran oportunidad de mejorar efectivamente la calidad de la educación de nuestros niños”, manifestó la titular de Educación.

o Por su parte el senador Larraín señaló que “hemos convenido con el gobierno trabajar en un acuerdo político legislativo, que nos permita darle a Chile una respuesta sólida de que la situación de la calidad de la educación en el país va a mejorar sustancialmente".

o Asimismo la vicepresidenta de RN, Lily Pérez, manifestó que “tenemos la mejor voluntad. Hoy es una expresión de voluntad tener la posibilidad de llegar a un acuerdo político-legislativo donde todos puedan confluir”.


La Ministra de Educación, Yasna Provoste Campillay, sostuvo en el día de hoy una reunión de trabajo junto a miembros de la Alianza y al Ministro Secretario General de la Presidencia, José Antonio Viera Gallo, para abordar el mecanismo de trabajo de la futura comisión político - legislativa que analizará el proyecto de Ley General de Educación y estudiará la propuesta presentada por la oposición.

El anunció lo realizó hoy la Secretaria de Estado, acompañada del presidente de la Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI), el senador Hernán Larraín y de la secretaria general de Renovación Nacional (RN), Lily Pérez. A la cita acudieron además, la Subsecretaria de Educación, Pilar Romaguera, el senador Baldo Prokurica (RN), el senador Andrés Chadwick (UDI), el senador Andrés Allamand (RN) y la sociologa Patricia Matte. Además estuvo presente el jefe del Departamento Jurídico del MINEDUC, Rodrigo González y el jefe Técnico del departamento de Currículo y Evaluacióndel MINEDUC,Pedro Montt.

Los equipos de la comisión político –legislativa van a ser integrados por los mismos grupos parlamentarios que trabajan en la Cámara Baja y en el Senado analizando los diversos proyectos de ley, a los que se sumarán los equipos técnicos de ambos sectores. En la medida que se vayan produciendo los acuerdos se van a ir alimentando los proyectos legislativos que se van a seguir tramitando en el Congreso, y por es motivo, la sede donde trabajará el recién creado equipo técnico legislativo será el propio Congreso Nacional.

La Ministra Provoste destacó en la oportunidad que con el fin de establecer los plazos convenidos, se le quitará la urgencia simple al proyecto de Ley General de Educación. “Lo hacemos con el objetivo de poder escuchar los distintos planteamientos, poder analizar las diversas propuestas, y poder buscar los espacios para alcanzar acuerdos, entendiéndose que entre ambas iniciativas hay amplias convergencias”, afirmó la titular de Educación.

Asimismo manifestó que el trabajo legislativo no se verá interrumpido por el trabajo de esta comisión. “Porque hemos señalado que vamos a buscar consensos por grandes áreas de interés y donde hay amplias convergencias, independiente del trabajo que seguirá realizando el parlamento al respecto”.

Finalmente la Ministra Provoste recalcó que estamos frente a una gran oportunidad de mejorar la calidad de la educación. “Estamos frente a la gran oportunidad de mejorar efectivamente la calidad de la educación de nuestros niños. La creación de esta comisión “político-legislativa” con la oposición busca lograr un sólido acuerdo nacional en materia de educación. Ya es tiempo de buscar esos importantes acuerdos, hay amplias convergencias entre las partes y no hay excusa para no lograrlos”, señaló Provoste.

Por su parte, el senador Larraín señaló que nadie puede restarse a realizar los mejores esfuerzos por mejorar la calidad del servicio educativo, y ayudar así a que miles de niños enfrenten el futuro con mejores expectativas y oportunidades. “Nosotros hemos preparado una iniciativa alternativa al la Ley General de Educación, que esperamos se analice minuciosamente en la comisión de trabajo, de todas maneras, no es nuestro afán ni el de ningún miembro de este recién formado equipo de trabajo, imponer nuestro proyecto por sobre el de la Concertación. Nadie puede imponer su proyecto al otro”, afirmó el presidente de la UDI.

En este sentido manifestó que “hemos convenido con el gobierno trabajar en un acuerdo político legislativo que sin suspender la tramitación de los diversos proyectos en el Congreso puedan buscar las convergencias que nos permitan darle a Chile una respuesta sólida de que la situación de la calidad de la educación en el país va a mejorar sustancialmente", agregó el senador.

Finalmente señaló que un acuerdo de esa naturaleza no sólo resuelve esas diferencias, sino que además le da una señal al país, de que cuando se trata de aspectos de esa importancia y envergadura, la Alianza está disponible para trabajar por el bien del país.

Asimismo la vicepresidenta de RN, Lily Pérez, manifestó que "hoy tenemos una buena noticia, porque nos hemos sentado a la mesa en conjunto Alianza-Gobierno a discutir sobre un asunto que es la calidad de la educación".

En este sentido Pérez recalcó que “tenemos la mejor voluntad. Hoy es una expresión de voluntad tener la posibilidad de llegar a un acuerdo político-legislativo donde todos puedan confluir, tanto los parlamentarios de la Alianza como nuestros técnicos, con las autoridades del MINEDUC y sus técnicos”.

Posted by jjbrunner at 07:50 PM | Comments (1)

Julio 29, 2007

Reflexiones para políticas de educación superior: Exposición ante el Consejo Asesor Presidencial

Transcripción resumida de la exposición verbal realizada en la Sesión del día 25 de junio 2007 ante el Consejo Asesor Presidencial de Educación Superior, exposición que fue acompañada por un conjunto de láminas de apoyo contenidas en la correspondiente presentación.

Bajar documento aquí. 40 KB

Recursos asociados

Actas y Avances del Trabajo del Consejo. Incluye:

-- Resúmen de avance Consejo Asesor Presidencial por la Educación Superior
-- ACTA Consejo Asesor Presidencial 28 mayo 07
-- ACTA Consejo Asesor Presidencial 24 mayo 07
-- ACTA Consejo Asesor Presidencial 17 mayo 07
-- ACTA Consejo Asesor Presidencial 10 mayo 07

Visión de los estudiantes: Acta CONFECH, Atacama, junio 2007 400 KB

Acta 8° Sesión
Consejo Asesor Presidencial Educación Superior
Fecha: Lunes 25 de junio de 2007

Horario: 9:30 a 13:30 hrs.
Lugar: Sala de Consejo, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

La sesión contó con la asistencia de los siguientes miembros: Carlos Peña, quien preside la sesión, Julio Castro, Víctor Pérez, Sergio Bravo, Mónica Jiménez, Alfonso Muga, Juan Pablo Rosso, Agustín Squella, Sergio Torres, Manuel Krauskopf, Andrés Bernasconi, José Rodríguez Jorge Carvajal, Juan Pablo Prieto, Fernando Montes, Sol Serrano, Matko Koljatic, Carlos Mujica, Marcelo Von Chrismar, Marcela Espinoza, Víctor Gonzalez, Pablo Cuevas, Giorgio Boccardo, Juan Cristóbal Palma, Claudio Muñoz, Javier Candia, Myriam Barahona y por parte de la secretaría técnica los abogados Maria Francisca Jimenez y Cristian Inzulza.

Posted by jjbrunner at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)

Julio 28, 2007

Más sobre blogs académicos en dos partes

Hace unos días informábamos sobre Blogs académicos: una realidad, el liderazgo de los economistas y ejemplos de interés en el mundo e Ibero América.

PARTE I. ¿Qué son los blogs académicos?

En un reciente posting (27 julio 2007) en The Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas Bartlett se pregunta: What Is an Academic Blog Anyway?.

Ver texto completo, comentarios iniciales y vínculos interesantes más abajo.

PARTE II. ¿Riesgos asociados a blogs académicos?

Otro interesante artículo publicado por The Chronicle of Higher Education el día 28 de julio 2006, se refiere a los potenciales riesgos del blogging académico.

En efecto, aquí un grupo de destacados académicos norteamericanos (cada uno, además, un bloggista), discute sobre el efecto que sobre la carrera académica de Juan R. I. Cole, professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and president of the Middle East Studies Association, podría haber tenido su polémico Blog, Informed Comment - Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion. donde ha expresado sus opiniones críticas a G.W. Bush sobre la Guerra de Irak.

Artículo completo y debate entre los académicos

Comment, four years ago, Juan R.I. Cole became arguably the most visible commentator writing on the Middle East today. A professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and president of the Middle East Studies Association, Cole has voiced strong opposition to the war in Iraq and to the treatment of the Palestinians, garnering him plaudits from the left and condemnation from supporters of Israel and President Bush's foreign policy. In the words of a colleague, Cole has done something no other scholar of the region has done since Bernard Lewis: "become a household word."

In the spring, Informed Comment took center stage in another arena — Cole's own career. After two departments recommended him for a tenured position at Yale University, a senior committee decided last month not to offer him the job after all. Although Yale has declined to explain its decision, numerous accounts in the news media have speculated that Cole's appointment was shot down because of views he expressed on his blog. We asked seven academic bloggers to weigh in on Cole's case and on the hazards of academic blogging.

The Lessons of Juan Cole, by Siva Vaidhyanathan

The Politics of Academic Appointments, by Glenn Reynolds

The Trouble With Blogs, by Daniel W. Drezner

Exposed in the Blogosphere, by Ann Althouse

The Invisible College, by J. Bradford DeLong

The Attention Blogs Bring, by Michael Bérubé

The Controversy That Wasn't, by Erin O'Connor

Juan R.I. Cole Responds

What Is an Academic Blog Anyway?

Is it any blog written by an academic, even if the posts are about the messiness of the blogger’s house (warning: The language is a little, um, rough)?

Is it a sober blog written by academics about their particular discipline – like this one.

Something in-between? All of the above?

And, as long as I’m asking rhetorical questions, does it make a blog better if you throw in a liberal dose of personal information? Do you, for example, care that I’m eating a sandwich right now? What if I told you it was a peanut-butter-and-honey sandwich?

I don’t know. I’m asking. Also, I’m eating.

Thomas Bartlett | Posted on Friday July 27, 2007 | Permalink

Comments

Hmmm…. According to the FAQ at Academic Blogs (for which Henry Ferrell is using a wiki, BTW),

What are the necessary qualifications for a blog to be listed? They’re pretty simple – the blog has to be written by an academic. That is to say, the author should be either a member of a third level institution’s faculty (i.e. community college, college, university, technical institute or whatever), or pursuing a doctoral degree, or employed by a third level institution to do academically relevant work (such as working as a university librarian).

Hence, my blogs (e.g., EBDBlog.com) apparently qualify, even though I treat them more as a public service than as an academic outlet.

I don’t know either, and I’m out of snack crackers.

— John Lloyd Jul 27, 04:05 PM #

How about a member of the Motion Picture Academy?

— Parker Jul 27, 04:30 PM #

Academic blogs differ from other blogs in that they can be just as stupid, but they will have letters after the writers (or school affiliations) name that will mislead a tiny fraction of the real world into thinking they are worth reading as opposed to the Left-nut bag blogs, the teenage sex blogs, and the predator lying blogs, and the pseudo politico blogs, the gamer blogs …urp.

A new concept: the blog clog created by a food dude eating McCrap while abandoning life for virtual gluttony.

— Muap Conners Jul 27, 05:16 PM #

Posted by jjbrunner at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

La discusión sobre el pago por mérito a los profesores en los Estados Unidos

Un artículo de Vaishali Honawar, publicado en la revista Education Week el día 26 de julio, informa sobre el debate que está teniendo lugar en los Estados Unidos sobre el pago por mérito a los profesores del sistema público de enseñanza. Se trataría, en breve, de vincular los premios salariales de los docentes al rendimiento de los alumnos, especialmente aquellos más vulnerables.

Según informa Education Week (ver artículo completo más abajo):

The measure would require states to set up data systems to track students’ academic progress. The systems would, among other things, link student-achievement data to teachers, allowing states to measure teacher effectiveness.

The bill also would give grants for programs that change teacher compensation, which could include better pay for more effective teachers, and incentives for the best teachers to teach in high-need schools. To close the achievement gap, the proposal also calls for a school-based rewards system for teachers, administrators, and other staff members that work to improve the most disadvantaged schools.

Por su lado, los críticos señalan que no existe evidencia que apoye la conveniencia de introducir este tipo de esquema de remuneraciones por mérito.

Critics say no evidence yet exists that paying teachers for performance actually leads to gains in student achievement. Some research is under way, including a three-year study of the merit-pay system in Texas and a few other locations that began earlier this year at Vanderbilt University.

States have also not rushed to adopt such plans. So far, only Florida, Minnesota, and Texas have done so, but many districts in those states have been reluctant to join in, despite the lure of additional funds.

Recursos asociados

Evaluación del desempeño docente, Alejandra Mizala (Presentación), junio 2007 790 KB

Incentivos por Responsabilidades, Larry Lashway, ERIC Digest 152 - 2001

Remuneracion alternativa para los profesores (Alternative Teacher Compensation), Brad Goorian, ERIC Digest, ED469316 - 2000

Long Reviled, Merit Pay Gains Among Teachers , The New York Times, June 18, 2007

Gerstner Commission Endorses Teacher Merit Pay, Robert Holland, School Reform News, April 1, 2004

Stand by Me: What Teachers Really Think About Unions, Merit Pay and Other Professional Matters, Steve Farkas, Jean Johnson and Ann Duffett with Leslie Moye and Jackie Vine, 2003

Teacher Salary and Merit Pay, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

Merit Pay for Teachers: A Meritorious Concept or Not?, Kathy A. Johnson, 2000

Merit Pay Gaining Bipartisan Favor in Federal Arena
By Vaishali Honawar

Performance pay for teachers appears to be gaining favor with federal lawmakers of all political stripes.

Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., and Joseph I. Lieberman, IConn., put forth a proposal this month on major changes to the No Child Left Behind Act that includes incentives for states to look at performance-pay programs to attract teachers to underperforming schools.

Just days earlier, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois made headlines when he supported merit pay before the annual convention of the National Education Association, a majority of whose 3.2 million members are teachers.

Observers say the deepening interest from federal policymakers in the concept at a time when the NCLB law is due for reauthorization is significant and reflects the intense national discussion among educators on the topic.

But what is also shifting is the blurring of the political divide. In the past, supporters of performance pay have tended to be largely Republican, including the Bush administration, which has given out several Teacher Incentive Fund grants to districts that have implemented such programs.

Gary Huggins, the director of the Aspen Institute’s NCLB commission, said policymakers, regardless of political affiliation, appear to be attracted to performance pay in increasing numbers “because you want to use every tool on board” to attract new teachers to the profession and to improve troubled schools.

“This is one of the fascinating ways in which NCLB has changed the world,” Mr. Huggins added.

The Coleman-Landrieu-Lieberman bill, the All Students Can Achieve Act of 2007 , is slated for introduction before Congress starts its August recess. Its proposals are based largely on a list of changes to the federal education law that the bipartisan NCLB panel crafted for the Aspen Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.

The measure would require states to set up data systems to track students’ academic progress. The systems would, among other things, link student-achievement data to teachers, allowing states to measure teacher effectiveness.

Degrees of Opposition
The bill also would give grants for programs that change teacher compensation, which could include better pay for more effective teachers, and incentives for the best teachers to teach in high-need schools. To close the achievement gap, the proposal also calls for a school-based rewards system for teachers, administrators, and other staff members that work to improve the most disadvantaged schools.

“We are not trying to set up a merit-pay system. We are trying to give states an option,” said Stephanie Allen, a spokeswoman for Sen. Landrieu.

But Joel Packer, the chief NCLB lobbyist for the NEA, said the union is firmly opposed to the federal government getting involved in merit pay, even with a proposal that makes it voluntary for states or districts to join.

Even value-added models that track student growth over a period of years, he pointed out, are based on test scores and do not take into account the differences between individual students.

“Our position is that one or two test scores based on the NCLB test [requirements] are not comprehensive and a fair way to evaluate teachers,” Mr. Packer said.

The federal government should instead focus on providing hard-to-staff schools with a variety of tools and resources, such as high-quality mentoring programs and professional development for teachers, good working conditions, and smaller classes, he added.

How far the bill will advance in a field already crowded with pieces of legislation seeking changes to the No Child Left Behind Act also remains to be seen. Along with the powerful teachers’ unions, several members of Congress remain opposed to the concept of performance pay in varying degrees.

“You have to be careful with merit pay,” Edward J. McElroy, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said recently, adding that he does not support systems in which principals decide which teachers are rewarded, or those that use student test scores.

Prominent Democrats such as Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, have opposed performance pay based on student test scores.

After Mr. Obama’s speech to the NEA this month, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., another contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, issued a statement saying a performance-pay system would “encourage teaching to the test and discourage teachers from working in schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students.”

Critics say no evidence yet exists that paying teachers for performance actually leads to gains in student achievement. Some research is under way, including a three-year study of the merit-pay system in Texas and a few other locations that began earlier this year at Vanderbilt University.

States have also not rushed to adopt such plans. So far, only Florida, Minnesota, and Texas have done so, but many districts in those states have been reluctant to join in, despite the lure of additional funds.

On the other hand, the idea has gained support from some unlikely quarters: For instance, some local union leaders, particularly those belonging to the Teacher Union Reform Network, a network of affiliates from the NEA and the AFT, have touted such plans. And in districts such as Denver and Minneapolis, the locals worked hand-in-hand with the districts to create performance-pay systems.

Heather Peske, the director of teacher quality for the Education Trust, a Washington group that favors changing teacher compensation said the grants proposed by Sens. Coleman, Landrieu, and Lieberman would give states the option of looking at differentiated pay.

“We have a lot of evidence now that teachers leave the profession because they feel they are not recognized for their efforts,” she said. “There are effective teachers in high-poverty schools who are wondering why there are teachers in low-poverty schools whose salaries are the same.”

“At some point,”Ms. Peske said, “we … are going to have to respond” to those concerns.

Vol. 26, Issue 44, Pages 20-21

Posted by jjbrunner at 12:52 PM | Comments (2)

Julio 26, 2007

Publicaciones académicas: cambios en el horizonte para las editoriales universitarias y para los investigadores

Ithaka, un grupo non-profit de los Estados Unidos, viene de publicar un interesantísimo informe titulado University Publishing in a Digital Age.

Bajar el documento aquí 475 KB

Como se señala en el Resumen Ejecutivo del Informe (ver completo más abajo), la revolución digital está transformando la empresa editorial de las universidades y las prácticas de comunicación académica.

Al lado de las publicaciones científicas formales, aquellas que usualmente utilizan las "ciencias duras" y aparecen en revistas registradas por Thomson-ISI, se está extendiendo rápidamente el sector de la grey literature, empleada tanto por las ciencias naturales como por las ciencias sociales y las humanidades, que utilizan como soporte la Red y están dando lugar a una revolución de proporciones en las prácticas de la comunicación académica.

El Report de Ithaka explora estas transformaciones y analiza la forma como las universidades y sus editoriales pueden adapatarse al nuevo entorno emergente.

Sobre el Informe, The Chronicle of Higher Education del 26 de julio escribe:

Written by Laura Brown, a former president of Oxford University Press USA, and two members of Ithaka's Strategic Services group, Rebecca Griffiths and Matthew Rascoff, the report draws on research conducted in late 2006 and early 2007. It began as an in-depth look at the current state of university presses, but as its title suggests, it grew into "a broader assessment" of university-based publishing.

The report was sponsored by JSTOR, a widely used nonprofit archive of scholarly journals, and Ithaka. So it is likely to raise some eyebrows with its suggestion that "a powerful technology, service, and marketing platform" -- like JSTOR's -- might solve many of the problems it describes. JSTOR could play a role in creating such a platform, as Ithaka's president, Kevin M. Guthrie, lays out in the report's preface. But, Mr. Guthrie stresses, "this report has not been written, nor has the research been conducted, in an effort to provide justification for any JSTOR effort."

Resumen Ejecutivo

This report began as a review of U.S. university presses and their role in scholarly publishing. It has evolved into a broader assessment of the importance of publishing to universities. By publishing we mean simply the communication and broad dissemination of knowledge, a function that has become both more complex and more important with the introduction and rapid evolution of digital and networking technologies. There is a seeming limitless range of opportunities for a faculty member to distribute his or her work, from setting up a web page or blog, to posting an article to a working paper website or institutional repository, to including it in a peer-reviewed journal or book. In American colleges and universities, access to the internet and World Wide Web is ubiquitous; consequently nearly all intellectual effort results in some form of “publishing”. Yet universities do not treat the publishing function as an important, mission-centric endeavor. Publishing generally receives little attention from senior leadership at universities and the result has been a scholarly publishing industry that many in the university community find to be increasingly out of step with the important values of the academy.

As information transforms the landscape of scholarly publishing, it is critical that universities deploy the full range of their resources – faculty research and teaching activity, library collections, information technology capacity, and publishing expertise – in ways that best serve both local interests and the broader public interest. We will argue that a renewed commitment to publishing in its broadest sense can enable universities to more fully realize the potential global impact of their academic programs, enhance the reputations of their specific institutions, maintain a strong voice in determining what constitutes important scholarship and which scholars deserve recognition, and in some cases reduce costs. There seems to us to be a pressing and urgent need to revitalize the university’s publishing role and capabilities in this digital age.

We began this project with a set of hypotheses and views based on our own experience and prior discussions with people in the community. These hypotheses were tested through an extensive series of interviews with administrators, press directors, librarians, and other stakeholders on campus. We also conducted a survey of press directors to understand better their relationships to their host institutions, progress in getting online, and ability to develop new programs. Some of what we learned through this process confirmed our sense of how the world is changing, but we also heard views that we had not expected, particularly how critical many were of university presses and the difficulties they have had in adapting.

What the world looks like and where we are headed

Formal scholarly publishing is characterized by a process of selection, editing, printing and distribution of an author’s content by an intermediary (preferably one with some name recognition). Informal scholarly publication, by comparison, describes the dissemination of content (sometimes called “gray literature”) that generally has not passed through these processes, such as working papers, lecture notes, student newsletters, etc. In the past decade, the range and importance of the latter has been dramatically expanded by information technology, as scholars increasingly turn to preprint servers, blogs, listservs, and institutional repositories, to share their work, ideas, data, opinions, and critiques. These forms of informal publication have become pervasive in the university and college1 environment. As scholars increasingly rely on these channels to share and find information, the boundaries between formal and informal publication will blur. These changes in the behavior of scholars will require changes in the approaches universities take to all kinds of publishing.

Universities have traditionally participated in the formal publication of their intellectual output through a network of presses, but most publishing of this output has long taken place outside the university sector, especially in the sciences. For a variety of reasons university presses have become less integrated with the core activities and missions of their home campuses over the years — a drift that threatens to widen as information technology transforms the landscape of scholarly publishing. The responsibility for disseminating digital scholarship is migrating instead in two directions – towards large (primarily commercial) publishing platforms and towards informal channels operated by other entities on campus, mostly libraries, academic computing centers, academic departments, and cross-institutional research centers. While these entities all play a critical role in scholarly communications2, university presses have developed publishing skills and experience over many years that are also very valuable in this new context and that would be costly, if not impossible, to replicate. We hope to highlight those skills in this report and suggest how they can be adapted to the digital age.

Publishing in the future will look very different than it has looked in the past. Consumption patterns have already changed dramatically, as many scholars have increasingly begun to rely on electronic resources to get information that is useful to their research and teaching. Transformation on the creation and production sides is taking longer, but ultimately may have an even more profound impact on the way scholars work. Publishers have made progress putting their legacy content online, especially with journals. We believe the next stage will be the creation of new formats made possible by digital technologies, ultimately allowing scholars to work in deeply integrated electronic research and publishing environments that will enable real-time dissemination, collaboration, dynamically-updated content, and usage of new media.

Alongside these changes in content creation and publication, alternative distribution models (institutional repositories, pre-print servers, open access journals) have also arisen with the aim to broaden access, reduce costs, and enable open sharing of content. Different economic models will be appropriate for different types of content and different audiences. It seems critical to us that there continue to be a diverse marketplace for publishing a range of content, from fee-based to open access, from peer reviewed to selfpublished, from single author to collaboratively created, from simple text to rich media. This marketplace should involve commercial and not-for-profit entities, and should include collaborations among libraries, presses, and academic computing centers.

What will, or should, the future scholarly communications system look like? First, every university that produces research should have a publishing strategy, but that does not mean that it should have a “press”. Much of the content produced in the future will be disseminated electronically, and a new constellation of skills (including some that currently reside in presses, as well as those from libraries and IT groups) will be required to do this most effectively. Second, in the digital environment certain activities and assets (e.g. technology development, marketing) will be consolidated onto large scale platforms. These new digital publishing activities are central to the research and teaching missions of universities, and it therefore seems critically important that the university community be able to influence strongly the development of these platforms to insure that they support long held university values, rather than allowing them to be driven primarily by commercial incentives. And third, as the environment evolves, university presses will no doubt change. Some universities will encourage and enable their presses to grow and take more of a leadership role. Other institutions may decide to open new presses. Others may close their presses or let their presses evolve into more specialized enterprises with a focus on editorial and credentialing services while depending on others for core infrastructure and marketing services. What seems clear is that to succeed presses are going to need to be a more important partner in helping their host institutions to fulfill their research and teaching mission.

What needs to be done

In our interviews we detected significant detachment from administrators about publishing’s connection to their core mission; a high level of energy and excitement from librarians about reinventing their roles on campus to meet the evolving needs of their constituents; and a wide range of responses from press directors, from those who are continuing to do what they have always done, to those who are actively reconnecting with their host institutions’ academic programs and engaging in collaborative efforts to develop new electronic products. Many press directors have a sense of what needs to be done to jumpstart their new enterprises, but lack the financial capital, technical staff, and technological skills to pursue this kind of agenda. Librarians and press directors acknowledge that they have limited experience in collaborating effectively with one another and operate on different business models that make collaboration challenging, but at the same time we found that they have an appreciation for the unique skills and experience that each brings to the table. Finally, there was a strong sense that a new third-party enterprise or at least a catalytic force is needed to: facilitate the investment of capital; lead the community toward a shared vision of the scholarly communications landscape; help institutions find their place in that new system; marshal the necessary ongoing resources; and help motivate collaboration both within campuses and across institutions.

Administrators, librarians and presses each have a role to play (as do scholars, though this report is not directed at them). Senior administrators must provide strong leadership and embrace the fact that in this digital era, publishing, broadly defined, is a centrally important activity of any university. They will have to manage university assets and resources strategically if universities are to continue to exert the appropriate level of influence on the assessment and dissemination of knowledge and scholarship. Press directors and librarians must work together to create the intellectual products of the future which increasingly will be created and distributed in electronic media. Their efforts should be closely and intelligently connected to their campuses’ academic programs and priorities in order to ensure their relevancy and institutional commitment. All three parties should work together to create a shared electronic publishing infrastructure that will save costs, build scale, leverage expertise, promote innovation, and integrate the productive resources of universities to maintain a robust, diverse and collaborative university publishing environment.

Clearly this is too ambitious an agenda for institutions to pursue individually. Creating these sorts of platforms requires scale and investment of substantial capital, and commercial entities are far ahead of the university sector in investing the necessary level of resources. Each institution must determine what it can do locally, and if and when it should combine forces with other institutions. One of the objectives of this study was to gauge the community’s interest in a possible collective investment in a technology platform to support innovation in university-based, mission-driven publishing. This infrastructure could serve as the foundation for new forms of university-centered academic publishing in the digital age.

Notas
1 Please note that throughout this paper we use the term “university” as shorthand for both universities and colleges.

2 In the past, terms such as scholarly communications and scholarly publishing were often used to depict research outputs that met
certain criteria, such as certification, selection, and preservation. We argue here that the lines between formal and informal
publication are breaking down, and thus the definitions of these terms are in flux. We use them in this paper to refer to the broad
spectrum of ways that scholars share their research with one another.

Posted by jjbrunner at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)

Julio 25, 2007

Mercados Universitarios: conceptos, enfoques y resultados

Presentación usada como base para una discusión, en el Instituto de Investigación Social de la Universidad Diego Portales, del libro (en prensa): Mercados Universitarios: El Nuevo Escenario de la Educación Superior, el día 25 julio 2007. Este libro es producto de un proyecto FONDECYT.

Bajar la Presentación aquí 620 KB

Recursos asociados

Mercados universitarios: Bibliografía y referencias de la literautura reciente, marzo 2007

Escenarios futuros de la educación superior, septiembre 2006

Diversificación y diferenciación de la educación superior chilena en un marco internacional comparado, agosto 2006

El mercado avanza sobre la educación superior: un Reader dinámico, noviembre 2005

Guiar el Mercado. Informe sobre la Educación Superior en Chile, 2005

Posted by jjbrunner at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)

Educación Superior en Iberoamerica: Informe 2007

Se aquí pone a disposición de los interesados el libro Educación Superior en Iberoamerica: Informe 2007, cuyo lanzamiento se realizó hace pocos días en Seminario Internacional CINDA: "La Educación Superior: Antecedentes y Perspectivas"

Bajar texto completo del libro aquí 3,15 MB

Nota: Dos primeras páginas en blanco.

Ver más abajo los autores e Informes Nacionales.

Presentación del libro

El Centro Interuniversitario de Desarrollo–Cinda, ejecutó durante el año 2006 un proyecto con el propósito de analizar los antecedentes, situación y perspectivas de la educación superior en Iberoamérica.

En el contexto de este proyecto se efectuaron dieciséis informes nacionales sobre los siguientes países: Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, España, México, Panamá, Perú, Portugal, Puerto Rico, República Dominicana, Uruguay y Venezuela, y un informe global sobre la Educación Superior en Iberoamérica, que utilizó tanto los estudios nacionales como la literatura más reciente y significativa sobre el tema.

Los informes nacionales estuvieron a cargo de equipos de especialistas integrados por expertos en el tema y autoridades de universidades vinculadas con Cinda, con gran conocimiento
y experiencia de los respectivos sistemas.

La coordinación y preparación del informe global estuvieron a cargo de José Joaquín Brunner, consultor de Cinda.

Cinda agradece a todas las instituciones y personas que participaron en este esfuerzo.

Nuestro especial reconocimiento a Universia y a su Consejero Delegado Jaume Pagès, así como a los expertos y especialistas que participaron en el proyecto.

Iván Lavados Montes
Director Ejecutivo
Cinda
Santiago, Abril de 2007.

Autores del Informe y de los informes nacionales

Coordinador: José Joaquín Brunner, con la asistencia de Felipe Salazar.

José Joaquín Brunner, Chileno, Profesor Titular e Investigador de la Escuela de Gobierno de la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. Especialista en sistemas y políticas comparadas de educación superior. Ha trabajado en diversos países de América Latina, África, Europa del Este y Asia Central. Fue Presidente de la Comisión Nacional de Acreditación, del Consejo Nacional de Televisión y Ministro Secretario General del Gobierno de Chile. Autor de 16 libros. Premio Kneller – 2004 de la Comparative and International Education Society.

Felipe Salazar, Chileno, economista de la Universidad de Chile. Miembro del equipo de investigación de políticas
educacionales de la Escuela de Gobierno de la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. Ha participado en la elaboración de diversos informes nacionales e internacionales relacionados con el diseño, implementación y evaluación de resultados de políticas educacionales.

Argentina
Informe Nacional 210 KB

Carlos Alberto Marquís (especialista principal), Argentino, Licenciado en Sociología de la Universidad de Buenos Aires. Magíster en Sociología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Investigador del Sistema Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas de Argentina. Director Ejecutivo de FOMEC 1995–2000. Consultor de organismos internacionales en el área de educación, ciencia y tecnología.

María Victoria Gómez De Erice, Argentina, Doctora en Letras, Universidad París viii – Saint Denis. Especialista en Gestión Universitaria. Rectora Universidad Nacional de Cuyo 2005–actual.Jorge FloresArgentino, Magíster Universitario en Gestión Pública, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Candidato a Doctor en Ciencias Políticas. Vicerrector Universidad Nacional de Quilmes 2004 –actual.

Bolivia
Informe Nacional 812 KB

Ramón Daza Rivero (especialista principal), Boliviano, Bachiller Universitario en Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, España. Magíster en Planificación y Desarrollo de la Educación, Universidad Simón Bolívar, Venezuela. Profesor titular en varias universidades de América Latina. Viceministro de Educación Superior, Ciencia y Tecnología, 2001–2002. Especialista y Consultor Internacional en temas universitarios.

Vanya Mónica Roca Urioste, Boliviana, Magíster en Administración de Empresas, Universidad Privada de Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia. Especializada en Administración Universitaria. Directora Académica UPSA, 1997–actual.

Brasil
Informe Nacional 275 KB

Roberto Leal Lobo (especialista principal), Brasileño, Ingeniero Eléctrico, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Río de Janeiro, Brasil. Doctor Universidad de Purdue, USA. Profesor Titular Universidad de Sao Paulo, Brasil. Ex Director del CNPq / Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología. Rector USP hasta 1993. Consultor Internacional en desarrollo e innovación tecnológica y política y gestión universitaria.

Chile
Informe Nacional 382 KB

Luis Eduardo González (especialista principal), Chileno, Ingeniero Civil, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Doctor en Educación, Harvard University. Consultor permanente de Cinda.

Julio Arturo Mora Cerna, Chileno, Doctor en Ciencias Matemáticas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Director de Estudios Estratégicos, Universidad de Concepción.

Ester Fecci PérezChilena, estudiante del Programa de Doctorado Nuevas Tendencias – Dirección de Empresas, Universidad de Valladolid, España. Pro Decana, Facultad Ciencias Económicas y Administrativas, Universidad Austral de Chile.

Juan Pablo Prieto Cox, Chileno, Doctor en Ciencias, Ohio State University, USA. Ex Vicerrector Académico Universidad de Talca, Chile.

Olaya Ocaranza Manterola, Chilena, Ingeniero Civil Industrial, MBA. Directora de Análisis Institucional y Desarrollo Estratégico, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile.

Vladimir Marianov, Chileno, Ingeniero, Doctor en Filosofía, John Hopkins University. Director Académico, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

Colombia
Informe Nacional 480 KB

Luis Enrique Orozco (especialista principal), Colombiano, Diplomado en Sociología del Desarrollo y Doctor en Filosofía, Universidad de Lovaina, Bélgica; Vicerrector Académico Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá 1989–1996; Director del Magíster en Dirección Universitaria de la Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá (actual).

Alberto Roa Varelo, Colombiano, Magíster en Investigación y Desarrollo Educativo y Social. Ex Miembro del Consejo Nacional de Acreditación (CNA). Vicerrector Académico, Universidad del Norte de Colombia (actual).

Javier Medina Vásquez, Colombiano, Magíster en Administración de Empresas, Doctor en Ciencias Sociales, Pontificia Universidad Gregoriana. Profesor Titular en Ciencias de la Administración, Universidad del Valle.

María Dolores Pérez, Colombiana, Master en Política Social, Universidad Externado de Colombia. Secretaria de Planificación Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (actual).

Costa Rica
Informe Nacional 320 KB

Gabriel Macaya Trejos (especialista principal), Costarricense, Doctor en Ciencias, Universidad de París. Premio Nacional de Ciencias de Costa Rica. Ex Rector Universidad de Costa Rica. Ex Presidente Junta Directiva de Cinda. Presidente Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Costa Rica.

Ecuador
Informe Nacional 450 KB

Gaudencio Zurita (especialista principal), Ecuatoriano, Master en Matemáticas y en Ciencias Estadísticas, Universidad de South Carolina, Columbia, USA. Miembro de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias. Director del Centro de Estudios e Investigaciones Estadísticas de la Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL.

Washington Macías, Ecuatoriano, Especialista en Planificación Estratégica, Asesor del Rectora de la Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL.

México
Download file 315 KB

Manuel Gil Antón (especialista principal), Mexicano, Doctor en Ciencias. Asesor Académico de la Rectoría General de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana de México. Profesor del área de Sociología de las Universidades de la UAM.

Panamá
Download file 210 KB

Vielka De Escobar (especialista principal), Panameña, Doctorada en Ciencias de la Educación. Subdirectora de Evaluación y Acreditación de la Universidad de Panamá. Especialista en Docencia Superior.

Perú
Download file 630 KB

La responsabilidad del estudio nacional de Perú estuvo a cargo del Consorcio de Universidades. El especialista principal fue mEduardo Paredes Bodegas, Peruano/Español, Master y Doctor en Medicina de la Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.

Puerto Rico
Download file 280 KB

Ana Helvia Quintero (especialista principal), Portorriqueña, Doctora en Filosofía, Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts, USA. Catedrática del Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad de Puerto Rico. Ex Subsecretaria de Educación. Ex Director Centro de Investigación e Innovación Educativa, Consejo General de Educación.

República Dominicana
Download file 370 KB

Altagracia López Ferreiras (especialista principal), Dominicana, Doctora en Educación de Nova Southeastern University (NSU). Ex Rectora Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC). Directora Centro de Innovación en Educación Superior de INTEC.

Radhamés Mejía (especialista principal), Dominicano, Licenciado en Sociología de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Río de Janeiro y Master en Investigación Social de la Universidad de Kansas; Vicerrector de la Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra y fundador y Director del Centro de Investigaciones de esta universidad.

Uruguay
Informe Nacional 500 KB

Enrique Martínez Larrechea (especialista principal), Uruguayo, Doctor en Relaciones Internacionales (c), Universidad del Salvador de Argentina. Ex Director de Educación, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura de Uruguay.

Venezuela
Informe Nacional 290 KB

Carmen García Guadilla (especialista principal), Venezolana, Doctorado en Estudios Sociales de la Educación, Universidad René Descartes de París. Ha sido Directora de la Revista de Educación Superior y Sociedad de Unesco/Iesalc. Directora del Centro de Estudios del Desarrollo, CENDES, Universidad Central de Venezuela.

Leonardo Montilva Venezolano, Doctorado en Ciencias Médicas Universidad del Zulia, Venezuela. Especialista en Salud Pública y Educación Superior. Vicerrector Universidad Centroccidental Lisandro Alvarado, Venezuela.

María Lourdes Acedo, Venezolana, Doctorado (en curso) Universidad de Sevilla, Área del Conocimiento: Investigación Didáctica y Organización de Instituciones Educativas. Responsable de la Maestría en Educación Superior Universitaria, Universidad Simón Bolívar de Venezuela.

España
Informe Nacional 155 KB
Francisco Michavila (especialista principal), Español, Doctor Ingeniero de Minas, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, España. Director Cátedra Unesco en Gestión y Política Universitaria, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Rector Honorario Universidad Jaume I de Castellón. Ex Secretario Consejo General de Universidades de España.

Jorge Martínez, Nacido en México. Es Licenciado en Economía especializado en Finanzas Corporativas por la Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara, UAG (México) con un Master en Gobierno y Administración Pública por el Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset. Actualmente es Subdirector de la Cátedra Unesco de Gestión y Política Universitaria de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid y es autor de diversas publicaciones, ponencias y comunicaciones en coloquios internacionales sobre educación superior.

Cástor Méndez Paz, Español, Doctor en Filosofía y Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, España. Catedrático de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras (Psicología) en la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela. Ex Vicerrector de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.

Joan Cortadellas, Español, Licenciado en Sociología y Diplomado en Gestión Pública. Director Técnico Cátedra Unesco de Dirección Universitaria de la Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, España.

Portugal
Download file 575 KB

La responsabilidad del estudio nacional de Portugal estuvo a cargo del Instituto Superior Técnico, IST.

Posted by jjbrunner at 11:25 AM | Comments (3)

Julio 24, 2007

Cómo enseñar mejor en la escuela

La prensa especializada da cuenta de la aparición del libro Teaching the Best Practice Way de los autores Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar, bajo el sello editorial de Stenhouse Publishers.

Bajar el primer capítulo --How to Teach-- aquí 125 KB

Índice del libro

Contents
Contributed Pieces
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1. How to Teach
2. Reading-as-Thinking
3. Representing-to-Learn
4. Small-Group Activities
5. Classroom Workshop
6. Authentic Experiences
7. Reflective Assessment
8. Integrative Units
Epilogue
References
Index

Autores

Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar teach at the Center for City Schools of National-Louis University in Chicago. Both former public school teachers, Harvey and Marilyn now collaborate with a network of twenty-five schools seeking to implement progressive teaching methods. Along with a team of six full-time teacher-leaders, they offer classroom consulting, staff development workshops, and leadership development for parents and principals. In 1995, they helped found the Best Practice High School, a new 400-student Chicago public school where methods do matter - to kids, teachers, and parents. Between them Harvey and Marilyn have authored or co-authored nine other books, including Best Practice: New Standards for Teaching and Learning in America's Schools, Thinking in Context, and Literature Circles: Voice and Choice in Book Clubs and Reading Groups, second edition. In the summer, Harvey and Marilyn help lead the Walloon Institute in Petoskey, Michigan, which gathers progressive educators from around the country to review and renew classroom practices.

Presentación del libro por la Editorial

Everyone talks about "best practice" teaching—but what does it actually look like in the classroom? How do working teachers translate complex curriculum standards into simple, workable classroom structures that embody exemplary instruction—and still let kids find joy in learning?

In Teaching the Best Practice Way, Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar present seven basic teaching structures that make classrooms more active, experiential, collaborative, democratic, and cognitive, while simultaneously meeting "best practice" standards across subject areas and throughout the grades. Each section begins with an essay outlining one key method, providing its historical background and research results, and then describing the structure's vital features. Next, several teachers representing different grade levels and school communities explain how they adopted the basic model, adapted it to their students' needs, and made it their own.

Fully updating and expanding Methods that Matter (Stenhouse, 1998), Teaching the Best Practice Way adds the stories of twenty more celebrated teachers, including James Beane, Donna Ogle, Franki Sibberson, and others from around the country. A brand-new chapter focuses on reading as thinking, detailing the ways teachers can nurture strategic readers—readers who not only deeply understand the printed materials they encounter in school, but who also bring these cognitive strategies to their "reading" of film, art, music, and their experience of the world. The book also shares new research studies that validate the principles and activities of best practice teaching, along with lists of recommended materials that support each of the seven methods.

Unique in the field, Teaching the Best Practice Way speaks to all teachers, K–12, with stories, examples, and practical classroom materials for the teachers of all children. This is the book for teachers, schools, and districts that believe the big ideas about teaching really do cross all grade levels and subject areas. Education professors will also find this an ideal resource for use in methods courses.

Recurso asociado

The Power of Our Words: Teacher Language that Helps Children Learn

By Paula Denton, EdD

NEFC, 2007, 180 pages

Libro disponible en línea, por capítulos.

Tabla de contenido

Acknowledgement and Dedication
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 General Guidelines for Teacher Language
Chapter 2 Envisioning: Language as a Spyglass
Chapter 3 Open-Ended Questions: Stretching Children's Academic and Social
Learning
Chapter 4 Listening: Understanding the Message in the Words
Chapter 5 Reinforcing Language: Seeing Children and Naming Their Strengths
Chapter 6 Reminding Language: Helping Students Remember Expectations
Chapter 7 Redirecting Language: Giving Clear Commands When Children Have Gone
Off Track
Epilogue Putting It All Together
Appendix A Examples of Effective Teacher Language
Appendix B The Process of Developing More Effective Teacher Language

Ver presentación de este libro más abajo

The Power of Our Words: Teacher Language That Helps Children Learn
An adapted excerpt from NEFC's new book, The Power of Our Words: Teacher Language That Helps Children Learn, by Paula Denton, EdD.

Language is one of the most powerful tools available to teachers. We can use language to stretch children’s curiosity, reasoning ability, creativity, and independence. One effective way to do this is by asking open-ended questions—those with no single right or wrong answer. Instead of predictable answers, open-ended questions elicit fresh and sometimes even startling insights and ideas, opening minds and enabling teachers and students to build knowledge together.

In this article, I give examples of open-ended questions, explain what makes them so powerful, and offer some tips on how to use these questions to bolster children’s learning.

Open-Ended Questions in Action

Ms. Nunn’s class is about to read a new story, and the children have opened their books to the first page. To spark their curiosity about the story, she asks a series of open-ended questions (shown here in italics) that draw out their thoughts, knowledge, and feelings.

“Before we start,” Ms. Nunn says, “take a look at just this page. What interesting words do you see?” After a few quiet moments, hands go up.

“Castle!” shouts Raymond. “Castles are cool! I have a model castle.”

“I can tell that’s an important word for you, Raymond. What clues does this word give you as to what the story might be about?”

“Knights? Usually castles have kings and knights.”

“Maybe it’s a fairy tale,” Keira adds.

“Hmm. Interesting,” Ms. Nunn muses. “What makes you think it might be a fairy tale?”

After the children have shared some thoughts on the nature of fairy tales, Ms. Nunn brings them back to her original question. “What are some other interesting words on this page?” she asks.

“Milkmaid,” offers Arnie. “What’s a milkmaid?”

“Hmm, what might a milkmaid be? Any guesses?”

“My grammy tells me a story about a milkmaid. It’s a girl and she works hard and she’s poor.”

“Oh, those might be some clues,” says the teacher. “What other clues could help us understand this word?”

The conversation continues with the children deeply engaged. Fifteen minutes later, the group has discussed context clues, compound words, historical jobs, fairy tales versus historical fiction, gender roles, and more. The students have been prompted to think, share their knowledge, analyze information, and connect ideas. Their interest in the story has grown, and their teacher has learned a great deal about what they know. Much of this richness derived from Ms. Nunn’s use of open-ended questions.

What Makes Open-Ended Questions So Powerful?

Children’s learning naturally loops through a cycle of wonder, exploration, discovery, reflection, and more wonder, leading them on to increasingly complex knowledge and sophisticated thinking. The power of open-ended questions comes from the way these questions tap into that natural cycle, inviting children to pursue their own curiosity about how the world works.
Open-ended questions show children that their teachers trust them to have good ideas, think for themselves, and contribute in valuable ways. The resulting sense of autonomy, belonging, and competence leads to engagement and deep investment in classroom activities.

Tips for Crafting Open-Ended Questions

Learning any new language habit takes reflection, time, and much practice. The Power of Our Words: Teacher Language That Helps Children Learn offers comprehensive guidelines on how to frame open-ended questions and make them a regular part of your classroom vocabulary. Here you’ll find just a taste of these guidelines.

Genuinely open up your curiosity about students’ thinking. For open-ended questions to be effective, it’s critical that we ask them with real curiosity about children’s thinking. Once I asked some fourth graders, “How might you use the colored pencils to show what you know about butterflies?”

“You could draw a butterfly and show the different parts,” one child said. Others suggested, “You could make a map of Monarch butterflies’ migration paths,” and “You could make a chart showing the butterfly’s life cycle.” Then another student offered, “You could write a story about a butterfly’s life and use different colors for different times in its life.”

Truly surprised by this last suggestion, I realized that if I hadn’t felt and conveyed genuine curiosity in all reasoned and relevant answers, that child probably wouldn’t have done the creative thinking that led to such a great idea. Because of it, students’ learning was stretched and our butterfly projects were richer.

Children can tell when their teachers are genuinely interested in their ideas. If we’re truly interested, over time children learn to trust that we really do want to know what and how they think. When they know this, they’re more willing to reason and reflect, they gain more practice in thinking for themselves, and they gradually become more skillful, creative thinkers.

Clarify the boundaries. Suppose when I asked, “How might you use the colored pencils to show what you know about butterflies?” a child had answered, “You could pretend that the colored pencils are butterflies and make a play about them.” Making such a play would have met the goals of this lesson, and in terms of the question I asked, this response is just as valid as the others. But because of the potential chaos and safety issues, having students “fly” colored pencils around the room was more than I wanted to deal with.

Fortunately, no student really gave such an answer. But the way to prevent such a response would have been first to clarify to myself the boundaries of what I wanted the children to think about, and then articulate these boundaries to the children. The resulting wording might have been “How could you use these colored pencils to draw or write something that shows what you know about butterflies?” This is still an open-ended question; it just has boundaries based on what I might see as appropriate options for a particular group of students.

Use words that encourage cooperation, not competition. Sometimes an open-ended question leads to competition to see who can give the best answer. Although well-managed competition has a place in certain school arenas, teachers usually use open-ended questions when the goal is for students to collaborate, to learn from and with each other, not to compete.

To keep discussions from turning into competitions, phrase your questions carefully. Competition often arises from questions beginning with “who” or “whose” (“Who knows a good way to use clay?”); using words such as “better,” “best,” or “most” (“How can we make this graph the most beautiful?”); or somehow elevating some students above others (“Kerry, what strategies for writing neatly can you show the class?”). These natural-seeming ways of talking assume some answers will be better than others, which encourages competition.

A simple rephrasing helps. Instead of “Who can tell me a good way to use the clay?” try “What are some good ways we could use the clay?” Replace “How can we make this graph the most beautiful?” with “What are some different ways to make this graph beautiful?”

Watch out for pseudo open-ended questions. These sound open-ended but have behind them the teacher’s desire for a certain answer. I once had a student who loved magenta. Everything she colored, painted, or modeled in clay prominently featured magenta. Perhaps because I’m not crazy about magenta, or because I wanted her to buck the “girls are pink, boys are blue” stereotype, one day, seeing another magenta-infused drawing, I asked, “What do you think would happen if you used a different color?” Only when she replied, “I think I wouldn’t like it as much” did I realize I had wanted her to say, “I think it would look better.” It took me a moment to resist the urge to explain my thinking and to become genuinely curious about hers. “Hmm. Why do you say that?” I managed to ask.

“This color stands out,” she replied. “You can see it from far away, not like pink or yellow.”

“Not like pink,” I repeated to myself. I was so wrong, thinking this student was going for “girly” pink when she was going for standing out. Her explanation gave me real insight into her thinking.

Fortunately, in this instance, I caught myself after the student said “I think I wouldn’t like it as much.” But what if a teacher doesn’t catch herself? When we fish for specific answers, children soon realize we’re not really asking for their thoughts, knowledge, or perceptions, but for them to articulate our own. Many then stop thinking and become less engaged. Or they respond by guessing wildly at the answer the teacher wants. Except for the child who guesses correctly, the children—and their teacher—will likely feel discouraged after such an interaction. Not much will have been learned, or taught. All would have turned out differently if the question had been truly open-ended and the teacher’s intention truly to hear what the children thought.

Leading the Way to True Learning

Open-ended questions power academic and social learning. Such questions encourage children’s natural curiosity, challenging them to think for themselves, and inviting them to share their view of the world. The result: engaged learners who are motivated to learn and whose responses enlighten their classmates and their teacher.

Paula Denton has taught since 1985 and has been a Responsive Classroom workshop presenter and consultant since 1990. She is currently manager of program development for NEFC. Paula is the author of Learning Through Academic Choice and The Power of Our Words, and co-author of The First Six Weeks of School.

Posted by jjbrunner at 07:59 PM | Comments (1)

Innovación: Requerimientos de capital humano

Presentación empleada para una exposición de este tema ante la Comisión de Innovación Tecnológica y Desarrollo del Instituto de Ingenieros de Chile, el día 24 de julio 2007.

Bajar presentación aquí
475 KB

La Comisión de Innovación Tecnológica y Desarrollo es presidida por el Sr. Juan Carlos Barros. Su labor principal es debatir y concluir respecto a las barreras que existen actualmente para el desarrollo de la Innovación Tecnológica en Chile. El resultado del trabajo de la Comisión se materializará en la presentación de proposiciones que permitan fortalecer el desarrollo de la innovación en el país y en su posterior difusión y discusión pública.

Algunos de los principales temas que ha abordado la Comisión son los siguientes: Antecedentes Generales del Proceso Innovador, Ciclo de desarrollo de proyectos de innovación, Relación entre Innovación y Desarrollo País e Indicadores de Gastos de I+D, Comparaciones Internacionales, Vínculo Universidad-Empresa, El rol del Estado en la innovación, El rol de la empresa privada en la innovación, Financiamiento de la innovación, Recursos Humanos para la Innovación, Barreras sicológicas a la innovación.

Durante 2007 la Comisión centra sus actividades en lo siguiente:

Realización de Seminario de Difusión y Discusión: Si el Instituto desea que sus propuestas sean consideradas, es necesario que ellas sean difundidas y discutidas al más alto nivel. Se propone para ello la realización de un Seminario a fines de 2007.

Preparación de Libro con Presentaciones y Discusiones del Seminario: Las diferentes posturas planteadas por el Instituto y los relatores en el Seminario quedarán reflejadas en un documento.

Recursos asociados

Innovación para la Competitividad, Informes del Consejo Nacional de Innovación Para la Competitividad, añpo 2006 y 2007, marzo 2007

Hacia una estrategia de desarrollo basada en capacidades tecnológicas, capítulo de libro, J.J. Brunner, 2002

Chile: Informe de capacidades tecnológicas, J.J. Brunner, 2001

Posted by jjbrunner at 03:56 PM | Comments (0)

Julio 23, 2007

Nuevo estudio pone en duda la politica de mejoramiento de la calidad educacional en los Estados Unidos

Un reciente estudio publicado por los economistas Derek A. Neal y Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach de la Universidad de Chicago muestra que los estudiantes pertenecientes al 20% más rezagado, así como los del grupo más talentoso, no se han visto favorecidos por la política del Gobierno impulsada la No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Incluso, sostienen, el primer grupo, el más vulnerable, podría haber haberse visto negativamente afectado.

Título del estudio: “Left Behind by Design: Proficiency Counts and Test-Based Accountability"

La revista Education Week resume de la siguiente forma los resultados del estudio:

To measure the impact of the new systems, the researchers compared reading and mathematics scores for students in 5th, 6th, or 8th grades in the year, or years, after the changes had taken place with those made by similar cohorts of students a few years earlier. The idea was to determine whether the changes in students’ tests scores were larger or smaller than what might have been expected had the school system conducted business as usual.

The post-reform pattern, in all cases, was consistent: Students in the middle of the pack made the largest test-score gains, compared with students in previous years. The bottom 20 percent of students made the least progress and, in some cases, even lost ground. The top 10 percent of students made either no academic gains or improvements that were smaller than those of students in the middle, depending on the subject matter.

For the least-able students, the situation was only slightly better in the post-1998 reform period. Those students’ scores improved more then, the researchers believe, because the standards had been set at lower levels. They speculated that teachers may be more likely to write off low-achieving students when the likelihood that they will ever meet the achievement target is more distant.

Ver texto completo del artículo de Education Week más abajo.

Obtener el estudio completo de Neal y Schanzenbach aquí

Abstract
Many test-based accountability systems, including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), place great weight on the numbers of students who score at or above specified proficiency levels in various subjects. Accountability systems based on these metrics often provide incentives for teachers and principals to target children near current proficiency levels for extra attention, but these same systems provide weak incentives to devote extra attention to students who are clearly proficient already or who have little chance of becoming proficient in the near term.

We show based on fifth grade test scores from the Chicago Public Schools that both the introduction of NCLB in 2002 and the introduction of similar district level reforms in 1996 generated noteworthy increases in reading and math scores among students in the middle of the achievement distribution. Nonetheless, the least academically advantaged students in Chicago did not score higher in math or reading following the introduction of accountability, and we find only mixed evidence of score gains among the most advantaged students. A large existing literature argues that accountability systems built around standardized tests greatly affect the amount of time that teachers devote to different topics. Our results for fifth graders in Chicago, as well as related results for sixth graders after the 1996 reform, suggest that the choice of the proficiency standard in such accountability systems determines the amount of time that teachers devote to students of different ability levels.

Recursos asociados

¿Mejoran los resultados de aprendizaje en los Estados Unidos?, 17 jubio 2007

Informe de la Comisión No Child Left Behind, 14 febrero 2007

El discurso del logro académico, 16 diciembre 2006

NCLB Seen as Curbing Low, High Achievers’ Gains
By Debra Viadero

A new study of Chicago students suggests that the federal No Child Left Behind Act may indeed be leaving behind students at the far ends of the academic ability spectrum—the least able students and those who are gifted.

The study by University of Chicago economists Derek A. Neal and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach lends some empirical support to the common perception that schools are focusing on students in the middle—the so-called “bubble kids”—in order to boost scores on the state exams used to determine whether schools are meeting their proficiency targets.

“The whole point is that the details of how you calculate `adequate yearly progress’ matter for how teachers will allocate their effort across students,” said Mr. Neal, who presented his paper today at a conference hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank based here. “Anytime you keep score by looking at the number of kids who pass some proficiency standard, that will shape whom teachers teach.”

But Doug Mesecar, the acting assistant secretary in the Office of Planning, Evaluation, and Policy Development at the U.S. Department of Education, said it’s too soon to conclude that the law’s accountability mechanisms aren’t working as they were intended.

“I don’t think it tells enough of the whole story to support the generalizations that were made,” said Mr. Mesecar, who was part of a panel formed by the AEI to discuss the report. “We need to know more, to continue to study, and have more data to do these kinds of analyses, and then, if we do find it is a problem, we need to go in and rectify it.”

‘The Irony’
For their study, the Chicago researchers zeroed in on two time periods during which the 421,000-student school system was changing its testing-and-accountability system. The most recent period was 2002, when the school system, seeing that passage of the NCLB law was imminent, made the Illinois Standards Achievement Test a high-stakes exam and set proficiency cutoffs that students would be expected to meet.

The earlier period was 1998, after city school officials tried much the same approach with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. While the ITBS cutoff points were considered lower, the 1998 accountability system also upped the stakes in a slightly different way by requiring 8th graders who did not pass the tests to attend summer school.

To measure the impact of the new systems, the researchers compared reading and mathematics scores for students in 5th, 6th, or 8th grades in the year, or years, after the changes had taken place with those made by similar cohorts of students a few years earlier. The idea was to determine whether the changes in students’ tests scores were larger or smaller than what might have been expected had the school system conducted business as usual.

The post-reform pattern, in all cases, was consistent: Students in the middle of the pack made the largest test-score gains, compared with students in previous years. The bottom 20 percent of students made the least progress and, in some cases, even lost ground. The top 10 percent of students made either no academic gains or improvements that were smaller than those of students in the middle, depending on the subject matter.

For the least-able students, the situation was only slightly better in the post-1998 reform period. Those students’ scores improved more then, the researchers believe, because the standards had been set at lower levels. They speculated that teachers may be more likely to write off low-achieving students when the likelihood that they will ever meet the achievement target is more distant.

Also, while the federal law mandates that schools ensure that all students reach proficiency levels by the 2013-14 school year, “there’s no evidence to show that schools are taking that seriously,” Mr. Neal said.

"This is the irony of the `soft bigotry of low expectations,`” he added, quoting a line from President Bush. “Having lower standards is actually beneficial to low-advantage children."

Teaching to the Middle
Another panelist, Charles Murray, AEI’s W.H. Brady scholar, said he found Mr. Neal’s finding “persuasive.”

“This strikes, I hope, a major blow to the chest of proficiency counts as a measure of progress in education,” added Mr. Murray, who recently published studies suggesting that achievement gaps between children of different races may be immutable. “To ask children to perform at levels at which they are incapable is one of the cruelest things you could ask a child to do.”

A more pointed critique of the study, however, came from Susan L. Traiman, the director of education and workforce policy at the Washington-based Business Roundtable and a supporter of the NCLB law. Like Mr. Mesecar, she said more years of data are needed to determine if the patterns Mr. Neal found in the early years of testing-and-accountability changes are consistent.

“Teaching to the middle is nothing new,” she added. “It’s what most beginning teachers do.”

While the law requires most states to gauge students’ academic progress by counting the number of students who reach proficiency targets, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in recent years began to allow some states and districts to experiment with other accountability models. Currently, for example, nine states have waivers to try so-called “growth models,” which typically give schools credit for gains that students make toward proficiency.

A better variant on that model, Mr. Neal said, might be one that takes into account previous achievement differences among students, their peers, and other factors in the same way that golfers are assigned handicaps to account for differences in golf courses or in their ability levels.

“You need some handicapping system that allows you to say that teacher A had a bad year or teacher B had a good year, regardless of whether they taught in New Trier, Ill., or some inner-city school in New Jersey,” he said.

Posted by jjbrunner at 08:37 PM | Comments (0)

Julio 21, 2007

Northwester introduce radical reforma al curriculum de enseñanza del periodismo

El Chronicle of Higher Education anuncia hoy que la Universidad de Northewestern ha aprobado, tras un año de intensa discusión y un conflictivo debate, un nuevo curriculum para su carrera de periodismo en la Medill School of Journalism, que pone al centro las actividades multimediales y el marketing.

Según comenta The Chronicle, el nuevo modelo adoptado por Medill busca responder a los cambios que se están produciendo en el entorno de los medios de comunicación, al declive de la prensa escrita y el surgimiento de la Red.

Los cambios adoptados por la Escuela han provocado una fuerte controversia entre sus alumnos y profesores y entre académicos y observadores externos.

Ver el comentario completo del Chroncile of Higher Education más abajo.

Puede leerse la visión del Decano reformista aquí.

Journalism Dean at Northwestern U. Develops Curriculum With Increased Emphasis on Multimedia and Marketing
By KATHERINE MANGAN
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Friday, July 20, 2007

At a time when newspaper readership is steadily declining and many readers are bouncing from blogs to Internet video to get their news, the new approach will send student reporters out into the field with video iPods and digital camcorders, as well as spiral notebooks. The most controversial change, though, is the increased emphasis on marketing. This fall, lessons in audience behavior and motivation will be taught alongside drills in crafting leads and meeting deadlines. Students will be encouraged to connect with readers by writing out of storefront newsrooms in diverse Chicago neighborhoods.

Some praise the changes as long overdue; others dismiss them as a sellout. But what irks critics the most is the way they were devised. Last year Northwestern's president and provost announced that they were suspending faculty governance in the journalism school for three and a half years to give the new dean "free rein" to revamp the school.

At the center of the controversy is John Lavine, who became dean in January 2006 after founding and directing Northwestern's Media Management Center, a center that provides media research and executive education.

He says the faculty has, in fact, spent hundreds of hours working with him to remake the curriculum and that the changes will make Medill's training more relevant to the 21st century. The curriculum will integrate multimedia techniques and the study of "audience understanding" throughout core courses, and it will focus more heavily on online content.

"It's not enough to train reporters to write for the evening broadcast news show or for the features section of a daily newspaper," says Mr. Lavine. "Our job is to create journalists who can win and hold the attention of media consumers faced with limited time and abundant media choices."

A New Era for Journalism

When he was editor of a daily newspaper in 1964, "nearly 90 percent of the households in that town subscribed to the paper, and people would get up in the morning and read it," Mr. Lavine says. With one radio station and one television station nearby, he says, "there were only three places you could go to find out whether the world had survived overnight. We assumed that what we were doing was right because everyone turned to us."

But those days are gone. Now journalists must understand what their audiences are interested in, as well as the best way to grab their attention. The dean believes that Medill is uniquely poised to straddle the line between journalism and marketing since it consists of both a school of journalism and a program in integrated marketing communications.

Critics contend the changes, which affect both undergraduate and graduate-level programs, will dilute the schools' focus on strong writing and reporting -- a charge the dean disputes. They bristle at the informal name change: Since Mr. Lavine took over, the Medill School of Journalism is now referred to simply as the "Medill School."

Medill's transformation is being closely watched by journalism schools nationwide, says Thomas Kunkel, dean of the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism and the incoming president of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication.

"Medill has always been one of the nation's leading journalism schools, and the introduction of substantive change is going to be traumatic," he says. "Every responsible journalism program is trying to ratchet up what it does in the realm of digital journalism and multimedia platforms, but it's very tricky. Journalism educators don't have any better idea of where this is heading than the industry does."

The blending of journalism and marketing is more controversial and viewed by some as "a mingling of priorities that wouldn't be healthy for journalism," he says. "Journalists hold that journalists do the content, and the business people do the business, and to the extent possible, they need to work on their own side of the wall so there isn't a sense that newspapers are writing stories to make advertisers happy and that the publisher isn't dictating the stories."

Free Rein Given to Dean

Many faculty members read, in the fall 2006 issue of the university's alumni magazine, that Mr. Lavine had been granted considerable power at Medill at the same time that faculty oversight was suspended.

The university's General Faculty Committee unanimously approved a resolution last month calling that move "unacceptable and in violation of the University Statutes."

The resolution stated that major curricular changes should require deliberation and a vote by the faculty, and it predicted that the suspension would demoralize professors, damage the school's national reputation, and make it difficult to recruit faculty members. Both the president and provost have declined to comment on the resolution.

Mr. Lavine cites several examples of faculty involvement in the plan, Medill 2020. It was based on a report that the faculty voted on in 2005 that called for, among other things, more emphasis on real-world experience and a better understanding of the audience, he says. Twelve faculty committees each examined a piece of the curriculum last year, and their recommendations shaped the new version. Last spring, all Medill faculty members participated in a 10-week course on producing multimedia reports and integrating the technology into their courses.

"We've managed to make enormous, sweeping changes in the past 18 months, and the faculty made it happen," the dean says.

Objections From Faculty

Skeptics say the committees may have examined small pieces of the puzzle, but the faculty as a whole never had an opportunity to vote on the entire curriculum.

Clarke Caywood, who served on the faculty governing body when the resolution was drafted, believes the dean's ideas for revamping the curriculum aren't the problem. "The changes are probably going to be good for the school. What I object to is the process," says Mr. Caywood, director of Medill's graduate program in public relations.

But the dean has plenty of support from other professors. David L. Nelson, an associate professor, says his only complaint is that the changes "should have happened a long time ago."

"Lavine's on a limited time frame. I wish he would move with as much dispatch as possible and not worry about bruised egos," Mr. Nelson says. "This is an audience that you can't win over, so I think he should just go ahead and do it."

Mr. Nelson says some senior faculty members who have objected to the changes "don't get the technology" and don't want to expend the effort learning it. "This is a very interesting time to be a teacher," he says, "and to put your head in the sand and ignore the changes is wrong."

In an article published on Northwestern's Web site last year, Mr. Lavine outlined the goals of Medill 2020, and dealt with questions about whether marketing should have any place in a journalism course.

"Marketing is a tool that can be used for ill if it allows advertisers to influence the news, or it can be used for good if it tells consumers about important news and information they would not otherwise know about," he wrote.

He expanded on that idea in a lengthy interview with The Chronicle in which he defended the notion that journalists need to understand their audiences: "You can have the finest news story in the world, but if no one reads it, what good is it? No journalist is going to say, 'I've written this great story, but I don't care if anyone reads it.'"

Meanwhile, alumni and student blogs and listservs have been burning with comments -- many of them scathing -- about the change in focus at Medill. The dean admits there were bumps in the road as faculty and students learned to navigate the new multimedia equipment, "and we're taking the complaints seriously."

Mixed Response From Students

Steve Aquino, a journalism major who will be a senior at Medill this fall, says some students cringe at the dean's marketing-oriented language, including references to readers and viewers as "consumers."

"Reporters like to think of themselves as writers rather than manufacturers of goods, and that kind of language is kind of a punch in the gut," he says. He has mixed feelings about Medill 2020. He likes the idea of learning how to be adept at technology and understanding what makes readers tick, but he objects to the way the plan is being carried out.

"When I first heard about it, it left a sour taste in my mouth," he says, "but I can see the value of being as versatile and employable as possible when we graduate." He also objects to the requirement that all incoming students purchase their own laptops, software, video iPods, and digital camcorders, which he says cost around $3,600. The school does not reimburse students for that equipment but considers those expenses when allocating financial aid.

Peter Sachs, who received his master's degree from Medill in December and is working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Bend, Ore., , says some of the school's new emphasis may be misplaced: "The key to my getting a job was not that I could handle an iPod, video camera, and tape recorder all at one time. It was being able to write a complete story on deadline."

Focus on Versatility

Some professors share his concern, despite the fact that the new version calls for more writing labs for freshmen, as well as more hands-on reporting experience.

"In the sophomore news-writing class I taught, it took the whole 10 weeks to get students to write clearly, without any obviously clumsy constructions," says Robert McClory, a professor emeritus who still teaches an occasional magazine-writing class at Medill.

"When you throw in all this other stuff -- students are not only writing the story, but filming it, editing it, and putting it on the Web -- that's extremely stressful for many professors."

But Mr. Lavine and his supporters insist that versatility is key in today's media industry. "Employers are saying, 'We're not going to hire people who can only do one of those things when we're going to do all of those things," Mr. Lavine says.

"The focus is not the technology," he continues. "We could be wizards at technology, and it would be a loss if we didn't tell better stories and have better marketing."

That doesn't mean pandering to readers' basest instincts about what makes a juicy story, according to Mary Nesbitt associate dean for curriculum.

"If you really listen to people, you soon learn that they are not stupid," says Ms. Nesbitt, managing director of the Media Management Center's Readership Institute, a think tank that helps daily newspapers increase their readership. People "do want to know about important things," she says. "They just don't want it presented in a way that makes it difficult to assimilate."

Fred Barbash, a lecturer at Medill who spent his career as a reporter and editor at The Washington Post, doesn't see anything wrong with asking what readers want.

"I don't think of it as marketing. I think of it as the questions we used to ask in news meetings: Who are we writing this for? Is it intelligible?" That approach isn't new, he says.

"When I was covering the Supreme Court, my editor would say 'Barbash, take off your robe.' That had to be pounded home to me -- that I'm not writing for judges and lawyers. I'm writing for the people who have to live with these decisions."

That message is even more important today, he says. If readers are bored or confused, he says, "all they have to do is Google the topic and five more versions of the same story will appear. You won't get another chance."

Copyright © 2007 by The Chronicle of Higher Education

Posted by jjbrunner at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)

Julio 19, 2007

Blogs académicos: una realidad, el liderazgo de los economistas y ejemplos de interés en el mundo e Ibero América

Suele estimarse en nuestro medio (chileno) que los blogs académicos (ver más abajo tres artículos de interés sobre estos blogs), esto es, aquellos blogs producidos por miembros de la academia y dirigidos de preferencia a públicos universitarios y profesionales, son una actividad que se hallaría por debajo de la 'seriedad' propia del quehacer intelectual y de sus productos típicos: publicaciones en revistas con editores exigentes, libros y capítulos de libros, presentaciones en congresos científicos, etc.

Por el contrario, la cada vez más amplia difusión de este otro medio --el del blog académico-- revela que la comunicación esotérica de conocimientos está siendo complementada por la presencia de los profesores universitarios en la red, así como, crecientemente, en los espacios de prensa, televisión y radio.

En los Estados Unidos, los economistas parecen llevar la delantera en este nueva ola de comunicación y expresión académica.

Van aquí algunos blogs de refrerencia y la manera como sus autores, economistas reputados, los presentan:

Dani Rodrik's weblog - Unconventional thoughts on economic development and globalization

Greg Mankiw's Blog - Random Observations for Students of Economics

Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal

The Becker-Posner Blog - A blog by Gary Becker and Richard Posner (ese último, Senior Lecturer in Law, Universidad de Chicago, y judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit)

Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

Blogs académicos iberoamericanos

Simon's Blog, de Simón Schwartzman, en combinación con su sitio de publicaciones

Roberto Rodríguez Gómez, blog sobre temas educación superior

Tiscar.com, Tíscar Lara, profesora ayudante de Periodismo en la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid en las asignaturas de Producción Audiovisual y Tratamiento de la Información en Televisión

Otros Blogs académicos de interés

Crooked Timber - Out of the Crooked Timber of Humanity no Straighyt Thing was Ever Made Blog colectivo de un grupo de académicos de diversas nacionaloidades y disciplinas:

-- Chris Bertram, Professor of Social and Political Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, and Head of the School of Arts at the University of Bristol

-- Michael Bérubé, Teaches American literature and cultural studies at Penn State University

-- Harry Brighouse, Professor of Philosophy and Affiliate Professor of Educational Policy Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison

-- Daniel Davies

-- Henry Farrel, Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and Elliott School of International Affairs of the George Washington University.

-- Maria Farrel, Brussels office of ICANN

-- Eszter Hargittai, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Studies, Department of Sociology, Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University and Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Science(Stanford, CA)

-- Kieran Healy

-- John Holbo

-- Scott Mc Lemee, Columnista, Inside Higher Ed

-- John Mandle, Chair, Departmen of Philosophy, University at Albany, SUNY

-- Monatgu Norman, (psuedónimo)

-- John Quiggin

-- Ingrid Robeyns, Senior Researcher in Political Theoy, Radboud University, Nijmegen

-- Belle Waring

-- Brian Weatherson

ACADEMIC PRODUCTIVITY is a survival guide for the 21st century researcher. Written by a small team of academics focusing on the topics on knowledge acquisition, production and dissemination, new technologies and productivity strategies. Autores: Jose Quesada, Department of Psychology, Sussex University; Sjane Lindsay, DPhil Student in Psychology, University of Sussex; Dario Taraborelli, Postdoctoral fellow at UCL, editor of the European Review of Philosophy

Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog
News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture...and a bit of poetry Brian Leiter holds the Hines H. Baker and Thelma Kelley Baker Chair in Law at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also Professor of Philosophy and Founder and Director of the Law and Philosophy Program.

Lessig Blog Lawrence Lessig is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and a Professor at the University of Chicago.

PressThink - Ghost of Democracy in the Media Machine Jay Rosen teaches Journalism at New York University, where has been on the faculty since 1986. From 1999 to 2005 he served as chair of the Department.

TRES ARTÍCULOS SOBRE EL BLOGING ACADÉMICO

The Blogosphere as a Carnival of Ideas
By HENRY FARRELL
The Chronicle Review, for the Chronccle of Higher Education
October 7, 2005

In July 2004 an anonymous blogger revealed his identity when he allowed his photograph to be taken at the Democratic National Convention. "Atrios," the writer of a prominent left-wing blog, Eschaton, turned out to be Duncan Black, an assistant professor of economics at Bryn Mawr College. Black had worried that a trenchant political blog might be perceived as inappropriate for a young academic and also wanted to avoid invasions of his personal and professional life. He went public only when he had quit the academy to join Media Matters, a watchdog organization.

Many young academics who are thinking about blogging share Black's dilemma. Is it a good idea to blog if you're on the job market or have a nontenured position? Tenured academics who blog face relatively little risk when they express controversial opinions -- they have job protection. It's a different story for academics without tenure who want to blog. They may worry that their colleagues would find their blogs objectionable, damaging their career chances, and either blog under a pseudonym, like Black and the law professor "Juan Non-Volokh," or not blog at all. Younger scholars may also worry that blogging would eat up time that could be devoted to publishing articles or working on a book. Few if any academics would want to describe their blogging as part of their academic publishing record (although they might reasonably count it toward public-service requirements). While blogging has real intellectual payoffs, it is not conventional academic writing and shouldn't be an academic's main focus if he or she wants to get tenure.

But to dismiss blogging as a bad idea altogether is to make an enormous mistake. Academic bloggers differ in their goals. Some are blogging to get personal or professional grievances off their chests or, like Black, to pursue nonacademic interests. Others, perhaps the majority, see blogging as an extension of their academic personas. Their blogs allow them not only to express personal views but also to debate ideas, swap views about their disciplines, and connect to a wider public. For these academics, blogging isn't a hobby; it's an integral part of their scholarly identity. They may very well be the wave of the future.

Look at what's happening in the disciplines of law and philosophy. According to a recent count by Daniel J. Solove of George Washington University, 130 law professors have active blogs. David Chalmers of Australian National University lists 85 philosophy professors or Ph.D. students with blogs, mostly oriented to the discussion of philosophical issues. In both of those disciplines, those who don't either blog or read and comment on others' blogs are cutting themselves out of an increasingly important set of discussions. Casual empiricism would suggest that blogs play a less important role in the social sciences, the humanities, and the hard sciences -- for the moment. But in those disciplines, too, blogs are becoming more prominent and more widely accepted.

Why are so many academics beginning to blog? Academic blogs offer the kind of intellectual excitement and engagement that attracted many scholars to the academic life in the first place, but which often get lost in the hustle to secure positions, grants, and disciplinary recognition. Properly considered, the blogosphere represents the closest equivalent to the Republic of Letters that we have today. Academic blogs, like their 18th-century equivalent, are rife with feuds, displays of spleen, crotchets, fads, and nonsenses. As in the blogosphere more generally, there is a lot of dross. However, academic blogs also provide a carnival of ideas, a lively and exciting interchange of argument and debate that makes many scholarly conversations seem drab and desiccated in comparison. Over the next 10 years, blogs and bloglike forms of exchange are likely to transform how we think of ourselves as scholars. While blogging won't replace academic publishing, it builds a space for serious conversation around and between the more considered articles and monographs that we write.

What advantages does blogging offer over the more traditional forms of academic communication? Blogging sacrifices some depth of thought -- it's difficult to state a complex thesis in the average blogpost -- but provides in return a freedom and flexibility that normal academic publishing can't match. Consider the length of time it takes to publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal. In many disciplines, a period of years between first draft and final publication is normal. More years may elapse before other academics begin to publish articles or books responding to the initial article. In contrast, a blog post is published immediately after the blogger hits the "publish" button. Responses can be expected in hours, both from those who comment on the blog (if the blog allows them) and from other bloggers, who may take up an idea and respond to it, extend it, or criticize it. Others may respond to those bloggers in turn, leading to a snowballing conversation distributed across many blogs. In the conventional time frame of academe, such a conversation would take place over several years, if at all.

Once you get used to this rapid back-and-forth, it can be hard to return to the more leisurely pace of academic journals and presses. In the words of the National University of Singapore philosophy professor and blogger John Holbo, the difference between academic publishing and blogging is reminiscent of "one of those Star Trek or Twilight Zone episodes where it turns out there is another species sharing the same space with us, but so sped up or slowed down in time, relatively, that contact is almost impossible." Which is not to say that blogs and more conventional forms of publishing can't complement each other very nicely. Lawrence Solum's Legal Theory Blog and Alfredo Perez's Political Theory Daily Review are excellent examples of how blogs can improve the circulation of ideas in a field, by highlighting new, interesting papers and giving brief descriptions of their contents.

Academic blogs should be especially attractive to younger scholars, to whom they give an unparalleled opportunity to make their voices heard. Cross-blog conversations can turn the traditional hierarchies of the academy topsy-turvy. An interesting viewpoint expressed by an adjunct professor (or, even more shocking, an "independent scholar") will almost certainly receive more attention than ponderous stodge regurgitated by the holder of an endowed chair at an Ivy League university. Prominent academics who start blogging do have an initial advantage; they're more likely to attract early attention than people without established reputations. But if they want to keep readers and attract other bloggers' links over the medium term, they need to provide provocative and interesting content. Otherwise, they're likely to fall by the wayside.

By the same token, less-well-known academics, and nonacademics with interesting things to say, have a real opportunity to speak to a wider public and to establish a reputation over time. In this respect, the blogosphere resembles not only the Republic of Letters (where a printer's devil could become an internationally renowned intellectual), but the "little magazines" in their golden age, when established scholars, up-and-comers, and amateurs rubbed shoulders on a more or less equal footing. This openness can be discomfiting to those who are attached to established rankings and rituals -- but it also means that blogospheric conversations, when they're good, have a vigor and a liveliness that most academic discussion lacks.

The recent debate on the Theory's Empire anthology, organized by the Valve, demonstrates how blogospheric argument can work. Theory's Empire is an ambitious volume, which seeks to provide a dissident's version of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism and to argue against the perceived pre-eminence of "theory" in literary criticism. The book is now beginning to attract attention from the mainstream media and will probably be the subject of symposia and debates over the next couple of years. A semi-organized symposium on the Valve, the blog of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics, allowed a wide-ranging and active debate on the book within several weeks of its publication. The debate included responses from authors of pieces in Theory's Empire, as well as from prominent academics like John McGowan (an editor of the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism) and Michael Bérubé, both of whom have successful blogs. But it also included, on an equal footing, responses from nonspecialists, like the Berkeley economics professor Brad DeLong, and from nonacademic bloggers with an interest in the topic, like Kevin Drum of The Washington Monthly. The result: an unusually high level of intelligent discussion around a topic more usually associated with stale pro- and anti-theory polemics. As McGowan describes it, "This is not yet another round in the culture and theory wars. ... Is it possible that academics interested in such questions have won their way through to a place where they can be discussed and examined calmly? As someone whose most usual stance has been a plague on both your houses, I am hopeful."

Most important, the scholarly blogosphere offers academics a place where they can reconnect with the public. The links between academic argument and wider public debates are increasingly tenuous and frayed. It's far harder than it used to be for academics to become public intellectuals (not that it was ever very easy, or very common). This has malign consequences, not only for the quality of debate on both sides of the divide, but also for public perceptions of the academy. It's also a source of considerable frustration to many academics, who either believe that their academic expertise could be valuable to a wider audience, or resent the distorted public perception of what they do. Blogging democratizes the function of public intellectual. It's no longer necessary for an academic to lobby the editors of The Washington Post's op-ed page or The New York Review of Books in order to make his or her voice heard. Instead, he or she can start a blog and (with interesting arguments and a bit of luck and self-promotion) begin to have an impact on the public conversation.

This past summer saw an excellent example of that. Many scientists have started to blog because of their frustration with the treatment of science in the mainstream media; several of these bloggers objected strongly to a recent article in The New York Times on the politics of evolutionary theory. In the eyes of these scientists, the article gave the impression that there was a real debate between evolutionary biologists and intelligent-design proponents, rather than a controversy that had been cooked up by fringe figures for political reasons. Their objections soon attracted a response from the article's author, who sought to defend the piece in the comments sections of the group blog Cosmic Variance and on P.Z. Myers's Pharyngula. The ensuing debate not only illustrated how badly suited the "he said, she said" style of journalistic writing is to topics where there is an overwhelming scientific consensus on one side of the question, and a congeries of cranks and crackpots on the other; it also provided a point of tangency between science journalism and science as it is practiced by scientists, allowing a back-and-forth argument between the two positions.

Nor are scientists the only academics who have taken up blogging in order to connect to broader public debates. Literary theorists who lament the problematic public image of their field should look to the example of Bérubé and McGowan, who are happy to weave discussions of critical theory and its significance into their more general blogging. Scientists who are dismayed at the sloppy treatment of science in the media have set up group blogs including the Panda's Thumb (evolution), RealClimate (global warming and climate science), and Cosmic Variance (physics). Other disciplinary group blogs include Savage Minds for anthropologists; the Volokh Conspiracy, Balkinization, and Prawfsblawg for legal scholars; the Duck of Minerva for international-relations theorists; and Cliopatria for historians. All of those blogs weave back and forth between the specialized languages of academe and the vernacular of public debate. They are creating a space for dialogue between the two, connecting them together, and succeeding, to a greater or lesser degree, in changing both.

Both group blogs and the many hundreds of individual academic blogs that have been created in the last three years are pioneering something new and exciting. They're the seeds of a collective conversation, which draws together different disciplines (sometimes through vigorous argument, sometimes through friendly interaction), which doesn't reproduce traditional academic distinctions of privilege and rank, and which connects academic debates to a broader arena of public discussion. It's not entirely surprising that academic blogs have provoked some fear and hostility; they represent a serious challenge to well-established patterns of behavior in the academy. Some academics view them as an unbecoming occupation for junior (and senior) scholars; in the words of Alex Halavais of the State University of New York at Buffalo, they seem "threatening to those who are established in academia, to financial interests, and to ... well, decorum." Not exactly dignified; a little undisciplined; carnivalesque. Sometimes signal, sometimes noise. But exactly because of this, they provide a kind of space for the exuberant debate of ideas, for connecting scholarship to the outside world, which we haven't had for a long while. We should embrace them wholeheartedly.

Henry Farrell is an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and a member of the academic group blog Crooked Timber.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blogging and the Disciplines in Academic Life. How far is it from "always link" to "only connect?"
Jay Rosen

This session continues a thread begun here by Michael Watkins and crowd. We will be about blogging and academic life, but in between those two terms I have placed a third one-- "the disciplines." Otherwise known as your department.

Everyone who understands the modern university, anyone who has been immersed in an academic field, is familiar with these terms. A discipline is an organized area of study. It's also the people who study in that area, those who are said to be "in" the discipline. To know your discipline is the first requirement for membership in the academic community at its advanced levels.

And if you want to get an ID card, you better know what department and school you belong to. The disciplines rule the unversity because people in the university belong to them.

But also because they "form" people in their image. Political science begets political scientists. Then the scientists raise little ones. They publish journals, of course. They form assocations, and those associations endure. They meet annually in New York, Las Vegas, Atlanta. The disciplines, some have argued, even sink deeply into the self. For sure they perpetuate themselves across generations. They permit the mind to specialize and build up advanced knowledge. They also orient scholars to each other to create a sense of "belonging," even though some of the most talented people have always had an urge to rebel against the boundaries and other conceits of a discipline.

We believe in the disciplines-- that is, the institution does and we accept that. And we rebel against them because they are silos too. We know that university life is dominated by the disciplines because universities and the people at them are forever struggling with how to create "inter-disciplinary" experiences and "cross-disciplinary" course work. How to bust out: no one's ever really solved that problem.

Well, here comes blogging. And not to get too cute about it, but blogging has a discipline to it, too. How far is it, really, from "always link" to "only connect?" What do the big disciplines think about blogging and the Internet? Should we tell them what's happening? Do the disciplines care if some stray academics are blogging up a storm? (And why are some disciplines so over-represented? I bet you have your theories about that!)

Suffering from their own link death for a long time

We know there are all kinds of academics doing it. (Just look at Crooked Timber's List, organized by--well, what else?--discipline.) But we don't know what it means that academics can now blog-- especially, what it means for work in the academic disciplines, which have been suffering their own link death for a long time. Students of the modern research university--and Stanford, the host campus, is one of those--sometimes call it "the iron law of the disciplines." It's a way of saying they always win out, in the end, no matter what comes along.

So along come the bloggers, and the new Republic of Letters they call the blogosphere. Does it even make sense to blog within a discipline? Does disciplinary training help you blog? Or is the discipline what you overcome in order to blog and blog well? Is there something in the act of blogging that forces the blogger to address a broader public, or is that just a conceit?

Anyway, this a session about blogging and academic life with a third term, the disciplines (including your discipline) as point of departure. And there will be more departures, more points, before BloggerCon meets and at the event.

Tell me what you think of these questions and my rough sketch of the puzzle. We'll take it from there. I'm Jay Rosen. I write this weblog and I have a PhD. Been an academic since 1980. I'll be your moderator. I did it once before.

# Posted by Jay Rosen on 10/6/04; 11:19:08 PM - --

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Academic Blogging: Some BloggerCon III Afterthoughts
Eric Briys

I have not been blogging in a while. Well, reason is that we went with my business partner on a Cyberlibris round-the-globe tour visiting leading/rising business schools. Fascinating and inspiring believe me. Check forthcoming posts as we'll share our enthusiasm and information for what's happening there. On our way we made a stop at the Stanford Law School and attended the BloggerCon III conference. This was the third of its kind and it gathered many very active members of the blogging community.

In our view, the best session was the one devoted to Academic Blogging. The discussion leader was a "veteran blogger": Jay Rosen. Jay is a Professor of Journalism at New York University. He also runs a famous blog named PressThink.

Jay did a great job and lots of key issues were debated. The first thing that struck us was the small number of people in the room. The other sessions attracted a lot more people. This came to us as a surprise. Indeed, blogs seem to be part of the "compulsory panoply" of any academic especially most of the students already have their own blogs. The second thing that was cool is precisely the high percentage of students in the room. refreshing indeed!

The main points covered in the discussions were the following:

Why should academics blog ? : Seems to be the obvious number one question. Was funny to see that most of the academics in the room did not have a straightforward answer to this. Our view is simple: They should in order to extend the richness and reachness of their pedagogy. The best answer came from the students themselves (they were from the Law School, the School of Medicine etc...): We think our professors should blog because this is a great way to know them better (that's right: a blogging professor sticks his/her neck out).
What changes for academics when they blog ? : This is the point: Academics are afraid more often than not of what could change the pace of their academic life. One professor in the room said that blogs were "disruptive for the Ivory Tower". Great, that's what we want! Another professor added that "the University has never been great at distributing knowledge". That's why they nicknamed it the Ivory Tower. Well, it doesn't have to be so, especially in the so-called knowledge economy. Blogs are wonderful tools to expand the reach of knowledge. This would be an oxymoron not to take advantage of it.
What’s the potential effect of blogging in the academic world ?: Well, we don't know yet but we can try to anticipate some effects. First, it will make academics more visible and more accessible to society as a whole. There is no reason why the academic community should remain a remote tribe almost as difficult to access as some African tribes in the XIXth century. Second, it will provide academics with a straight access to ideas, suggestions, comments and challenges (stemming not only from their colleagues but also from people outside their "specialized world" which will eventually improve the quality and relevance of their teaching and writing. In a sense, a blog is a place where the academic accepts to be a "primus inter pares." Not always easy to accept when you're supposed to be the one who knows. A blog is a good way for an academic to put him/herself at risk. in the course of doing so, some nice and unexpected rewards (famous law of unintended consequences) may be reaped.
Why do academics make good bloggers ? : Well, the question should be "why would they make good bloggers?" Bad news first: They may not be good bloggers after all if they are not willing to stick their neck out of the Ivory Tower. Good news then: Most academics do write and do communicate. A blog is a great addition to the panoply.
Blogs vs. Blackboard : One faculty member in the room was asking whether e-learning platforms such as Blackboard or WebCt had any future now that we have blogs and wikis. Well-taken question indeed! Unless these e-learning firms do embrace the blog trend, it will become more and more difficult to see what their added value to the end user is all about (especially when you factor the sheer price of their platform in the equation). This boils down to the forever debate: Home-made vs. ready-made.
Publish or perish ? : One professor noted that "Academic journals should have their blogs. Professors could post comments, reviews on articles. Everybody could look at these discussions and expand on them." This would indeed be a major breakthrough for most academic journals. After all, a published (refereed) paper has been evaluated by a handful of people. Would not it be nice if people could post their views, criticisms etc..., publicly on a blog, even after the paper has supposedly earned its credentials? The peer community would expand as a result. Blogs are also a great way to disseminate one's research. Think for instance of the success of the SSRN (which is not a blog) and it should be obvious what blogs could achieve in the field of academic research too. That's where we disagree with the notion of academia creating value through scarcity. SSRN is precisely the opposite!
How do blogs affect the value of attending university ? : Blogs are a unique way of leveraging the value of attending university. You should not think of blogs as competing with the university system but as a unique opportunity to revisit it and make it even more attractive.
How can we make blogs more attractive to academics ? : Make them simple to use and lead by example. There are already a few good blogs around (e.g. Walter Baets, Nouriel Roubini, James Mahar etc...)
Who should be the audience ? : This a matter of individual choice. Some professors want to reserve their blog in-house (to their students only) while some other want to make it public, open to a broader audience. But again there is no rule except the famous one: Just do it!
Blogs as a student learning tools : Many students do have blogs. Hence, it should not prove too difficult to convert them to blogs as learning tools. Professors could even learn one or two things from their students.
University policy towards blogs? :Here is how Claude Muncey, one of the participants, summarized the issue "In the end, summing up, what becomes clear is the disruptive effect that blogging has on the academic world, which is founded on the idea of control, more than dissemination of information is an "attack on the DNA of the university" and we will see attacks on blogging in academia and attempts to simply graft blogs onto current publishing and control structures" (See also jzip's account)

We are not sure that we are willing to share the pessimism of this last point. Yes, faculty members are reluctant to change. Yes, scarcity has often been the major currency traded by the academic world. But, things change: Most kids, these days, blog. The challenge for faculty members will be to adapt, to be on the same page as today's kids when these kids will show up in the amphitheater. Moreover, the dividends from academic blogging are numerous, as the session run by Jay at BloggerConIII has shown: What matters is the willingness to capture them, not to say to invent them.

As usual, (academic) attitude can and must defeat (academic) latitude!

Posted by jjbrunner at 08:53 PM | Comments (1)

Julio 18, 2007

Preguntas y breves respuestas sobre el Proyecto de Ley General de Educación presentado por la Alianza

Notas en respuesta a un cuestionario enviado por el El Mercurio para la crónica Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Educación propuesta por RN y la UDI como alternativa a la LGE del Ejecutivo: Falta de incentivos a la integración es la principal crítica al proyecto de la Alianza , publicada el día 16 de julio.

Preguntas y respuestas

1. Patricia Matte nos señala que el sistema de aseguramiento de calidad que contiene esta propuesta está basado en sus planteamientos. ¿Ve uested esa influencia, a la luz de lo que se conoce?

R.: Más bien, creo que en este punto específico la propuesta de la Alianza toma diversos elementos del Informe Final elaborado por la Comisión Asesora Presidencial para la Calidad de la Educación. Esto es positivo, pues muestra una actitud de apertura y facilita los necesarios acuerdos. Puede ser que algunas de las ideas allí reflejadas hayan estado presentes también en formulaciones que yo mismo, y otros, presentamos ante el Consejo. De ser así, ¡bienvenido sea!

2. De las ideas presentadas, ¿cuáles le parecen rescatables y por qué?

R.: Aprecio positivamente que la propuesta de la Alianza acoja la idea de que es necesario aumentar significativamente la subvención escolar y que para tal efecto diseñe un mecanismo para el cálculo de dicha subvención. Hay otros aspectos interesantes: un mayor énfasis en la autonomía de gestión de los colegios, más información para los padres y la propuesta de revisar la duración del ciclo básico. También se acogen o prefeccionan varias de las innovaciones contenidas en el proyecto del Ejecutivo, como la necesidad de establecer un órgano independiente que ejerza la autoridad curricular nacional y apruebe estándares de aprendizaje. Por último, me parece atendible la idea de incluir en la ley general de educación todo lo relativo a las bases del sistema de aseguramiento de la calidad.

3. ¿Pueden compatibilizarse las ideas que usted recata con el actual proyecto que presentó el Ejecutivo?

R.: Sí, por cierto. Se podría estar creando, espero yo, un espacio para alcanzar acuerdos y sustituir, de una vez, la LOCE que ya no tiene defensores en ningún sector. Todo depende, ahora, de la voluntad de los actores políticos.

4. ¿Qué puntos le parecen más discutibles o negativos de este proyecto paralelo y por qué?

R.: Pienso que la propuesta de la Alianza --hasta donde hoy se conoce-- no se hace cargo suficientemente de los problemas de segmentación social que afectan a nuestro sistema escolar. Tampoco establece con claridad mecanismos suficientes que permitan una mejor rendición de cuentas de los establceimientos subvencionados. Tampoco presta la debida atención a los mecanismos que habría que usar para desarrollar capacidades en las escuelas y así fortalecer el ejercicio de su atonomía, especialmente en el caso de las escuelas más crónicamente deficitarias.

5. ¿Qué opina de que esta propuesta vaya a presentarse al Congreso justo el día en que se debe votar en general el proyecto de LGE?

R.: Si se presenta con el deseo de encontrar acuerdos, y no meramente de bloquear la iniciativa legislativa del Gobierno, podría convertirse en un oportuno aporte.

Recursos asociados

Texto completo del Proyecto de Ley que dicta una nueva Ley Orgánica Constitucional de Educación de la Alianza por Chile, Julio 2007. Bajar aquí 174 KB

Información proporcionado por Instituto Libertad y Desarrollo:

-- Proyecto Alternativo de la Alianza

-- Tabla Comparativa de Ambos Proyectos

-- ¿Por qué el Proyecto del Gobierno es un Retroceso?

Anuncios de política educacional: Ley General de Educación - Registro de Prensa día a día

Comentarios personales en torno al proyecto que sustituye la LOCE

Noticias relacionadas

Ley General de Educación pasó su primera prueba, La Nación, 18 julio 2007

Comisión de la Cámara: Por 7 votos a 6 aprobada idea de legislar de proyecto de ley que reemplazará a la LOCE , El Mercurio, 18 julio m2007

Yasna Provoste: "Es tal la coincidencia entre los proyectos que se pueden ver frases textuales" , El Mercurio, 18 julio 2007

Comunicado del Instituto Libertad y Desarrollo

Equipo técnico liderado por Patricia Matte:

ALIANZA POR CHILE PRESENTA PROYECTO DE EDUCACIÓN ALTERNATIVO

Como respuesta al proyecto de Ley General de Educación enviado por el Gobierno al Congreso, un equipo técnico liderado por Patricia Matte, consejera de LyD, elaboró la propuesta alternativa la Alianza por Chile en esta materia que como puntos centrales fortalece la autonomía y la responsabilidad de la comunidad escolar para lograr una mejor enseñanza, aumenta los incentivos, y modifica el modo en que se calcula la subvención escolar, tomando en cuenta las características psicosociales del alumno, el tipo de escuela y su ubicación geográfica.

También conformaron el equipo técnico Carolina Velasco y Paula Pinedo, investigadoras de LyD; Harald Beyer, Loreto Fontaine y Bárbara Eyzaguirre, investigadores del CEP; Luz María Budge, decana de Educación U. Finis Térrea. Dentro de los alcaldes consultados estuvieron: Raúl Torrealba, de Vitacura; Manuel José Ossandón, de Puente Alto; Pablo Zalaquett de La Florida y Mario Olavarría, de Colina.

En tanto, los parlamentarios que participaron activamente en la propuesta fueron Andrés Allamand, Carlos Cantero, senadores de RN; Andrés Chadwick, senador de la UDI; Marcela Cubillos, diputada de la UDI y Germán Becker y Germán Verdugo, diputados de RN.

El proyecto de la Alianza consagra una política de Estado para la educación chilena a través de crear un Consejo Nacional de Educación con personeros que representen un consenso nacional y le otorguen a las políticas educacionales una mirada de largo plazo. La educación de los niños de Chile no puede estar sujeta a los intereses políticos de corto plazo.

Según la propuesta, para mejorar la calidad de la educación se necesita elevar el monto de los recursos destinados a ella. Para esto se propone un mecanismo objetivo para fijar el monto de la subvención escolar debiendo corresponder éste a los estándares de calidad que el país se define y a los costos de proveer esta educación de calidad para los distintos grupos socio-económicos, sectores geográficos y modalidades educacionales. Asimismo, se mantiene que la subvención se entregue de acuerdo a los niveles de asistencia, pero se introduce una flexibilidad permitiendo que se otorgue el nivel máximo habiendo cumplido un 95% de asistencia. Con esta propuesta los sectores de menores ingresos y las escuelas que los atiendan -principalmente municipales- contarán una mayor cantidad de recursos para financiar la educación de calidad que merecen. Gracias a esta política se proyecta que en el mediano plazo en promedio la subvención por alumno sea duplicada.

Por otra parte, sin la participación y autonomía de todos los componentes de la comunidad escolar: padres y apoderados, asistentes de la educación, profesores , directivos, sostenedores y alumnos no se podrá mejorar la calidad de la educación. Para ello se consagra una mayor autonomía de los establecimientos, el derecho de los padres a recibir la información sobre los resultados de aprendizaje de sus hijos y se fortalece el principio de la libertad de elección.

También se establece un Sistema para Asegurar la Calidad de la educación a través de permitir que expertos diagnostiquen la realidad de los establecimientos y propongan a estos los instrumentos para mejorarla cuando no alcanzan los estándares mínimos. Junto a lo anterior se establece a través de la creación de una Superintendencia mecanismos de fiscalización y de sanción para quienes no alcancen los niveles de calidad mínimos que la sociedad chilena se ha definido.

El proyecto contempla también nuevas instancias de participación de la comunidad escolar en las definiciones de la política educacional, creando un Comité Asesor Escolar conformado por representantes de los profesores, estudiantes, sostenedores, padres y apoderados, directivos y asistentes de la educación. En este sentido también propone aumentar el rol del equipo directivo y docente en los procesos educativos, haciéndose cargo del consenso existente en torno a la importancia de los directivos y su equipo docente en el perfeccionamiento de la calidad.

Finalmente, el proyecto logra la integración y cohesión social ya que permitirá a los sectores más modestos recibir una subvención mayor, sin hacer distinción entre las diferentes modalidades de organización de los establecimientos educacionales. Sí es muy estricto con aquellos que no cumplen los niveles mínimos exigidos por el Consejo Nacional de Educación, pudiendo llegar hasta el cierre de éstos.

Posted by jjbrunner at 07:34 PM | Comments (0)

Acreditación universitaria en los Estados Unidos: voces críticas

El Chronicle of Higher Education de 18 de julio 2007 informa sobre la reciente publicación del documento Why Accreditation Doesn’t Work and What Policymakers Can Do About It. Señala The Chronicle que:

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a conservative-leaning lobbying association led by Anne D. Neal, proposed in a report released on Tuesday (Julio 17) that a process of "expedited accreditation" might begin to repair a system that the council regards as detracting from academic quality rather than improving it.

El estudio publicado concluye que:

The federal government's system for accrediting colleges is a misguided failure that should be largely replaced with a simpler method that relies on key institutional data about cost and quality, a trustees group is arguing.

Bajar documento completo aquí 1,75 MB

El Prólogo de este estudio, firmado por Anne D. Neal, Presidenta del American Council of Trustees and Alumnies (ACTA) es el siguiente:

Th is paper is intended as a primer for policymakers on lessons learned from decades of experience with the federal system of higher education accreditation. It streamlines, updates and expands ACTA’s 2002 investigation, Can College Accreditation Live Up to Its Promise? At that time we found that accreditation did not ensure quality, was not protecting the curriculum from serious degradation, and was giving students, parents, and public decision-makers almost no useful information about institutions of higher education.

Our new investigation fi nds that things have only become worse. Recent stories abound— illustrated in “Stories from the Front Lines”—about the ills visited upon schools by accreditors, and about lapses in academic programs that accreditation has failed to prevent. Accreditation is giving students and parents a false sense of confi dence that certifi ed schools have passed a meaningful test when they have not.

Today, accreditation is bad education policy that undermines the autonomy of our educational institutions while doing nothing to ensure academic quality. Congress rightly wants to ensure that federal student aid funds do not go to “fl y by night” operations. But there are other and better ways to achieve that result—at less cost and with less damage to higher education. In the following pages, we outline “Why Accreditation Doesn’t Work” and “What Policymakers Can Do” to fi x the accreditation system now.

Ver más abajo Índice de Contenidos del documento.

Recursos asociados

Acreditación para el aseguramiento de la calidad: un informe mundial, 12 marzo 2007

Encuesta Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez-Fondecyt: Las universidades se autoexaminan, 24 diciembre 2006

Tendencias del aseguramiento de calidad en la educación superior de países de la OECD, 20 noviembre 2006

IESALC: Informe sobre la Educación Superior en América Latina y el Caribe 2000 - 2005, 12 julio 2006

Índice de contenidos del documento

STORIES FROM THE FRONT LINES
A Travesty Accreditation Failed to Prevent
A Teaching Accreditor Run Amok
Who’s in Charge at Auburn?
Law School Accreditor’s Illegal Standards?

WHY ACCREDITATION DOESN’T WORK
Accreditation does nothing to ensure educational quality
Accreditation examines inputs and ignores outputs
Accreditation undermines institutional autonomy and diversity
Accreditation contributes to ever-mounting education costs
Accreditation creates an unaccountable, federally-mandated monopoly
Accreditation is largely a secret process
Accreditation is a conflicted, closed, and clubby system

WHAT POLICYMAKERS CAN DO
Break the link between federal student aid and accreditation
Make accreditors prove their worth
Break the accreditor monopoly
Ensure student achievement
Tell the public what it deserves to know
Stop the homogenization of higher education
Create a consumer-friendly expedited alternative for reaccreditation
Don’t replicate a failed model
Reduce the cost of higher education

END NOTES

Nota de prensa que comunica el lanzamiento de este estudio

HIGHER EDUCATION ACCREDITATION. A FAILURE, NEEDS OVERHAUL

ACTA Tells “Stories from the Front Lines,” Calls for Reform

WASHINGTON, DC (July 17, 2007)—Federal accreditation is bad education policy and deserves a massive overhaul, according to a policy paper released today by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. The paper—“Why Accreditation Doesn’t Work and What Policymakers Can Do About It”—finds that federally-mandated accreditation does not ensure quality and gives students and parents a false sense of confidence. The paper, which has been delivered to every member of Congress, calls on policymakers to revamp the flawed system.

“Accreditation does not ensure quality—and it often visits all sorts of ills upon colleges,” said ACTA president Anne D. Neal. “Congress rightly wants to make sure that federal student aid funds don’t go to “fly by night” operations. But there are other better ways to achieve that result—at less cost and with less damage to higher education.”

ACTA’s paper opens with four recent stories illustrating how accreditors undermine educational quality by interfering with academic freedom and institutional autonomy. One case shows how it is possible for colleges and universities to be accredited and yet have one or more academic departments that are weak or dysfunctional. Another case recounts recent efforts by the accrediting arm of the American Bar Association to pressure law schools to skirt the law.

The paper then puts these stories into perspective by explaining why accreditation doesn’t work. It finds that federal accreditation fails to ensure educational quality, examines inputs while ignoring outputs, undermines institutional autonomy and diversity, contributes to ever-mounting education costs, creates an unaccountable (and federally-mandated) bureaucracy, and perpetuates a conflicted, closed, and clubby system. ACTA calls on policymakers to:

Break the link between federal student aid and accreditation.
Make accreditors prove their worth.
Break the accreditor monopoly.
Ensure student achievement.
Tell the public what it deserves to know.
Stop the homogenization of higher education.
Create a consumer-friendly alternative.
Don’t replicate a failed model.
Reduce the cost of higher education.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni is a bipartisan, national nonprofit dedicated to academic freedom, academic quality, and accountability in higher education. ACTA has a network of trustees and alumni around the country and has issued numerous reports including Can College Accreditation Live Up to Its Promise?, The Vanishing Shakespeare, Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action, The Hollow Core, and Losing America’s Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century. For further information, contact ACTA at 202-467-6787 or visit www.goacta.org.

Posted by jjbrunner at 06:59 PM | Comments (1)

Julio 15, 2007

Principios formativos

Columna de opinión publicada en Artes y Letras del diario El Mercurio el 15 julio 2009.

Ver texto completo más abajo

Recuros asociados

Estándares educacionales, 24 junio 2007

Superintendencia de Educación: fiscalizar o mejorar, 17 junio 2007

Calidad de la educación, 3 junio 2007

Superintendencia de Educación II, La Segunda, 26 mayo 2007

Educación: renovada prioridad, La Tercera, 23 de mayo 2007

SIMCE: ¿qué podemos esperar?, La Tercera, 13 mayo 2007

¿Seleccionar alumnos?, Artes y Letras, El Mercurio, 13 mayo 2007

Educación y lucro, Artes y Letras, El Mercurio, 22 abril 2007

Educación: ¿son posibles los acuerdos?, 18 abril 2007

Ídolos estructurales, Artes y Letras, El Mercurio, 11 marzo 2007.

Otros recursos

Exposición ante la Comisión de Educación de la H. Cámara de Diputados sobre el Proyecto de Ley General de Educación, 21 junio 2007

Superintendencia de Educación, 25 mayo 2007

La reforma al sistema escolar: aportes para el debate. El presente volumen, de las y los autores Mariana Aylwin, Harald Beyer, José Joaquín Brunner, Abelardo Castro, Cristián Cox, Loreto Fontaine, Jorge Manzi, Alejandra Mizala, Claudio Orrego, Carlos Peña, coordinado por José Joaquín Brunner y Carlos Peña, se presente como un aporte para el debate sobre la nueva Ley General de Educación que se discute en el Parlamento. 15 mayo 2007

Principios formativos José Joaquín Brunner

Una de las innovaciones más importantes contempladas en el proyecto de Ley General de Educación que actualmente se discute en el Parlamento es la obligación impuesta allí, conjuntamente al Ministerio de Educación y a la autoridad curricular nacional, de definir estándares para la enseñanza básica y media. Se trata de un desafío mayor. Y no sólo de carácter técnico, como suele decirse, sino también, y especialmente, en el terreno de los principios formativos que en adelante deberán orientar al sistema educacional. En efecto, se ha de plasmar, a través de los estándares, una visión sobre las capacidades que las personas deberían adquirir para desempeñarse con eficacia en la sociedad del siglo XXI.

Howard Gardner, el psicólogo de la Universidad de Harvard cuya fama se asocia con su teoría de las "inteligencias múltiples", acaba de publicar un libro -Five Minds for the Future- que bien puede contribuir a nuestra discusión. Plantea ahí que en el futuro las personas necesitarán desplegar cinco capacidades fundamentales, o tipos de mentes como él las llama, que las habilitarían para hacer frente a actividades previsibles y, también, a lo inesperado. ¿Cuáles son?

Primero, una mente disciplinada, en el doble sentido de esta palabra: que trabaja ordenadamente haciendo posible la adquisición de nuevas comprensiones y destrezas por un lado y, por el otro, que se halla formada en un modo distintivo de cognición característico de una disciplina académica, un oficio o una profesión.

Segundo, una mente sintetizadora, capaz de extraer información de múltiples y disímiles fuentes, entenderla y evaluarla objetivamente, organizándola de una forma tal que haga sentido para el propio sujeto y para otros.

Tercero, una mente creativa, en condiciones de proponer nuevas ideas, formular preguntas no triviales, desarrollar formas innovadoras de pensamiento y arribar a respuestas inusuales.

Cuarto, una mente respetuosa de las diferencias individuales, grupales y de culturas; abierta por tanto a los otros, capaz de apreciar la diversidad y de trabajar con, y en medio de, ella.

Quinto, una mente ética; es decir, dispuesta a considerar las necesidades de la comunidad e integrarse a la polis y de asumir derechos, obligaciones y responsabilidades en diversos contextos de interacción.

La propuesta de Howard Gardner apunta, en suma, a una educación -durante el período escolar y en la enseñanza superior y, posteriormente, a lo largo de la vida- que forma, cultiva, desarrolla y amplía las capacidades que vendrán demandadas por una sociedad globalizada, articulada en torno a flujos de información, que usa intensamente el conocimiento especializado y cuya sobrevivencia (sustentabilidad se dice ahora) dependerá de la innovación, el diálogo entre culturas y formas de vida diferentes, el control de los riesgos manufacturados por la civilización capitalista y el ejercicio responsable de los derechos y las libertades que la democracia expande continuamente.

A su turno, el desafío para los sistemas educacionales es cómo expresar y medir la adquisición de estas capacidades mediante adecuados estándares evaluativos y cómo organizar su formación y desarrollo mediante un currículo que logre moldear, simultáneamente, mentes disciplinadas, sintetizadoras, creativas, respetuosas y éticas en una población de alumnos con diversos talentos y diferentes orígenes socio-económicos y culturales. En este punto de la encrucijada nos hallamos situados.

Términos y Condiciones de la información
© El Mercurio S.A.P

Posted by jjbrunner at 09:20 PM | Comments (2)

Julio 14, 2007

El futuro de la biotecnología visto por Freeman Dyson

En su más reciente edición, la revista New York Review of Books (NYRB publica un interesante artículo de Freeman Dyson, dedicado al futuro de la biotecnología, bajo la tesis de que será esta rama del conocimiento la que, sustituyendo a la física, dominará en el campo de las ciencias y su aplicación durante el siglo XXI.

Ver texto completo más abajo

Nota biográfica del autor

Freeman Dyson has spent most of his life as a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, taking time off to advise the US government and write books for the general public. He was born in England and worked as a civilian scientist for the Royal Air Force during World War II. He came to Cornell University as a graduate student in 1947 and worked with Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman, producing a user-friendly way to calculate the behavior of atoms and radiation. He also worked on nuclear reactors, solid-state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics, and biology, looking for problems where elegant mathematics could be usefully applied.

Dyson's books include Disturbing the Universe (1979), Weapons and Hope (1984), Infinite in All Directions (1988), Origins of Life (1986, second edition 1999), and The Sun, the Genome and the Internet (1999). He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a fellow of the Royal Society of London. In 2000 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

Otros artículos publicados por Freeman Dyson en NYRB (Textos completos).

Recursos asociados

Carl R. Woese, A New Biology for a New Century, Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, June 2004, p. 173-186, Vol. 68, No. 2

Nigel Goldenfeld, Carl Woese, Biology's next revolution. Slightly expanded version of invited essay published in Nature 445, 369 - 369 (25 Jan 2007).

The New York Review of Books
Volume 54, Number 12 · July 19, 2007

Our Biotech Future
By Freeman Dyson

1.
It has become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology. Two facts about the coming century are agreed on by almost everyone. Biology is now bigger than physics, as measured by the size of budgets, by the size of the workforce, or by the output of major discoveries; and biology is likely to remain the biggest part of science through the twenty-first century. Biology is also more important than physics, as measured by its economic consequences, by its ethical implications, or by its effects on human welfare.

These facts raise an interesting question. Will the domestication of high technology, which we have seen marching from triumph to triumph with the advent of personal computers and GPS receivers and digital cameras, soon be extended from physical technology to biotechnology? I believe that the answer to this question is yes. Here I am bold enough to make a definite prediction. I predict that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next fifty years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous fifty years.

I see a close analogy between John von Neumann's blinkered vision of computers as large centralized facilities and the public perception of genetic engineering today as an activity of large pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations such as Monsanto. The public distrusts Monsanto because Monsanto likes to put genes for poisonous pesticides into food crops, just as we distrusted von Neumann because he liked to use his computer for designing hydrogen bombs secretly at midnight. It is likely that genetic engineering will remain unpopular and controversial so long as it remains a centralized activity in the hands of large corporations.

I see a bright future for the biotechnology industry when it follows the path of the computer industry, the path that von Neumann failed to foresee, becoming small and domesticated rather than big and centralized. The first step in this direction was already taken recently, when genetically modified tropical fish with new and brilliant colors appeared in pet stores. For biotechnology to become domesticated, the next step is to become user-friendly. I recently spent a happy day at the Philadelphia Flower Show, the biggest indoor flower show in the world, where flower breeders from all over the world show off the results of their efforts. I have also visited the Reptile Show in San Diego, an equally impressive show displaying the work of another set of breeders. Philadelphia excels in orchids and roses, San Diego excels in lizards and snakes. The main problem for a grandparent visiting the reptile show with a grandchild is to get the grandchild out of the building without actually buying a snake.

Every orchid or rose or lizard or snake is the work of a dedicated and skilled breeder. There are thousands of people, amateurs and professionals, who devote their lives to this business. Now imagine what will happen when the tools of genetic engineering become accessible to these people. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners who will use genetic engineering to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also kits for lovers of pigeons and parrots and lizards and snakes to breed new varieties of pets. Breeders of dogs and cats will have their kits too.

Domesticated biotechnology, once it gets into the hands of housewives and children, will give us an explosion of diversity of new living creatures, rather than the monoculture crops that the big corporations prefer. New lineages will proliferate to replace those that monoculture farming and deforestation have destroyed. Designing genomes will be a personal thing, a new art form as creative as painting or sculpture.

Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but a great many will bring joy to their creators and variety to our fauna and flora. The final step in the domestication of biotechnology will be biotech games, designed like computer games for children down to kindergarten age but played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Playing such games, kids will acquire an intimate feeling for the organisms that they are growing. The winner could be the kid whose seed grows the prickliest cactus, or the kid whose egg hatches the cutest dinosaur. These games will be messy and possibly dangerous. Rules and regulations will be needed to make sure that our kids do not endanger themselves and others. The dangers of biotechnology are real and serious.

If domestication of biotechnology is the wave of the future, five important questions need to be answered. First, can it be stopped? Second, ought it to be stopped? Third, if stopping it is either impossible or undesirable, what are the appropriate limits that our society must impose on it? Fourth, how should the limits be decided? Fifth, how should the limits be enforced, nationally and internationally? I do not attempt to answer these questions here. I leave it to our children and grandchildren to supply the answers.

2.
A New Biology for a New Century

Carl Woese is the world's greatest expert in the field of microbial taxonomy, the classification and understanding of microbes. He explored the ancestry of microbes by tracing the similarities and differences between their genomes. He discovered the large-scale structure of the tree of life, with all living creatures descended from three primordial branches. Before Woese, the tree of life had two main branches called prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the prokaryotes composed of cells without nuclei and the eukaryotes composed of cells with nuclei. All kinds of plants and animals, including humans, belonged to the eukaryote branch. The prokaryote branch contained only microbes. Woese discovered, by studying the anatomy of microbes in detail, that there are two fundamentally different kinds of prokaryotes, which he called bacteria and archea. So he constructed a new tree of life with three branches, bacteria, archea, and eukaryotes. Most of the well-known microbes are bacteria. The archea were at first supposed to be rare and confined to extreme environments such as hot springs, but they are now known to be abundant and widely distributed over the planet. Woese recently published two provocative and illuminating articles with the titles "A New Biology for a New Century" and (together with Nigel Goldenfeld) "Biology's Next Revolution."[*]

Woese's main theme is the obsolescence of reductionist biology as it has been practiced for the last hundred years, with its assumption that biological processes can be understood by studying genes and molecules. What is needed instead is a new synthetic biology based on emergent patterns of organization. Aside from his main theme, he raises another important question. When did Darwinian evolution begin? By Darwinian evolution he means evolution as Darwin understood it, based on the competition for survival of noninterbreeding species. He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution does not go back to the beginning of life. When we compare genomes of ancient lineages of living creatures, we find evidence of numerous transfers of genetic information from one lineage to another. In early times, horizontal gene transfer, the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent. It becomes more prevalent the further back you go in time.

Whatever Carl Woese writes, even in a speculative vein, needs to be taken seriously. In his "New Biology" article, he is postulating a golden age of pre-Darwinian life, when horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not yet exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them. Evolution was a communal affair, the whole community advancing in metabolic and reproductive efficiency as the genes of the most efficient cells were shared. Evolution could be rapid, as new chemical devices could be evolved simultaneously by cells of different kinds working in parallel and then reassembled in a single cell by horizontal gene transfer.

But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell, anticipating Bill Gates by three billion years, separated itself from the community and refused to share. Its offspring became the first species of bacteria—and the first species of any kind—reserving their intellectual property for their own private use. With their superior efficiency, the bacteria continued to prosper and to evolve separately, while the rest of the community continued its communal life. Some millions of years later, another cell separated itself from the community and became the ancestor of the archea. Some time after that, a third cell separated itself and became the ancestor of the eukaryotes. And so it went on, until nothing was left of the community and all life was divided into species. The Darwinian interlude had begun.

The Darwinian interlude has lasted for two or three billion years. It probably slowed down the pace of evolution considerably. The basic biochemical machinery of life had evolved rapidly during the few hundreds of millions of years of the pre-Darwinian era, and changed very little in the next two billion years of microbial evolution. Darwinian evolution is slow because individual species, once established, evolve very little. With rare exceptions, Darwinian evolution requires established species to become extinct so that new species can replace them.

Now, after three billion years, the Darwinian interlude is over. It was an interlude between two periods of horizontal gene transfer. The epoch of Darwinian evolution based on competition between species ended about ten thousand years ago, when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the main driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence which we call globalization. And now, as Homo sapiens domesticates the new biotechnology, we are reviving the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species other than our own will no longer exist, and the rules of Open Source sharing will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before separate species and intellectual property were invented.

I would like to borrow Carl Woese's vision of the future of biology and extend it to the whole of science. Here is his metaphor for the future of science:

Imagine a child playing in a woodland stream, poking a stick into an eddy in the flowing current, thereby disrupting it. But the eddy quickly reforms. The child disperses it again. Again it reforms, and the fascinating game goes on. There you have it! Organisms are resilient patterns in a turbulent flow—patterns in an energy flow.... It is becoming increasingly clear that to understand living systems in any deep sense, we must come to see them not materialistically, as machines, but as stable, complex, dynamic organization.
This picture of living creatures, as patterns of organization rather than collections of molecules, applies not only to bees and bacteria, butterflies and rain forests, but also to sand dunes and snowflakes, thunderstorms and hurricanes. The nonliving universe is as diverse and as dynamic as the living universe, and is also dominated by patterns of organization that are not yet understood. The reductionist physics and the reductionist molecular biology of the twentieth century will continue to be important in the twenty-first century, but they will not be dominant. The big problems, the evolution of the universe as a whole, the origin of life, the nature of human consciousness, and the evolution of the earth's climate, cannot be understood by reducing them to elementary particles and molecules. New ways of thinking and new ways of organizing large databases will be needed.

3.
Green Technology

The domestication of biotechnology in everyday life may also be helpful in solving practical economic and environmental problems. Once a new generation of children has grown up, as familiar with biotech games as our grandchildren are now with computer games, biotechnology will no longer seem weird and alien. In the era of Open Source biology, the magic of genes will be available to anyone with the skill and imagination to use it. The way will be open for biotechnology to move into the mainstream of economic development, to help us solve some of our urgent social problems and ameliorate the human condition all over the earth. Open Source biology could be a powerful tool, giving us access to cheap and abundant solar energy.

A plant is a creature that uses the energy of sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide and other simple chemicals into roots and leaves and flowers. To live, it needs to collect sunlight. But it uses sunlight with low efficiency. The most efficient crop plants, such as sugarcane or maize, convert about 1 percent of the sunlight that falls onto them into chemical energy. Artificial solar collectors made of silicon can do much better. Silicon solar cells can convert sunlight into electrical energy with 15 percent efficiency, and electrical energy can be converted into chemical energy without much loss. We can imagine that in the future, when we have mastered the art of genetically engineering plants, we may breed new crop plants that have leaves made of silicon, converting sunlight into chemical energy with ten times the efficiency of natural plants. These artificial crop plants would reduce the area of land needed for biomass production by a factor of ten. They would allow solar energy to be used on a massive scale without taking up too much land. They would look like natural plants except that their leaves would be black, the color of silicon, instead of green, the color of chlorophyll. The question I am asking is, how long will it take us to grow plants with silicon leaves?

If the natural evolution of plants had been driven by the need for high efficiency of utilization of sunlight, then the leaves of all plants would have been black. Black leaves would absorb sunlight more efficiently than leaves of any other color. Obviously plant evolution was driven by other needs, and in particular by the need for protection against overheating. For a plant growing in a hot climate, it is advantageous to reflect as much as possible of the sunlight that is not used for growth. There is plenty of sunlight, and it is not important to use it with maximum efficiency. The plants have evolved with chlorophyll in their leaves to absorb the useful red and blue components of sunlight and to reflect the green. That is why it is reasonable for plants in tropical climates to be green. But this logic does not explain why plants in cold climates where sunlight is scarce are also green. We could imagine that in a place like Iceland, overheating would not be a problem, and plants with black leaves using sunlight more efficiently would have an evolutionary advantage. For some reason which we do not understand, natural plants with black leaves never appeared. Why not? Perhaps we shall not understand why nature did not travel this route until we have traveled it ourselves.

After we have explored this route to the end, when we have created new forests of black-leaved plants that can use sunlight ten times more efficiently than natural plants, we shall be confronted by a new set of environmental problems. Who shall be allowed to grow the black-leaved plants? Will black-leaved plants remain an artificially maintained cultivar, or will they invade and permanently change the natural ecology? What shall we do with the silicon trash that these plants leave behind them? Shall we be able to design a whole ecology of silicon-eating microbes and fungi and earthworms to keep the black-leaved plants in balance with the rest of nature and to recycle their silicon? The twenty-first century will bring us powerful new tools of genetic engineering with which to manipulate our farms and forests. With the new tools will come new questions and new responsibilities.

Rural poverty is one of the great evils of the modern world. The lack of jobs and economic opportunities in villages drives millions of people to migrate from villages into overcrowded cities. The continuing migration causes immense social and environmental problems in the major cities of poor countries. The effects of poverty are most visible in the cities, but the causes of poverty lie mostly in the villages. What the world needs is a technology that directly attacks the problem of rural poverty by creating wealth and jobs in the villages. A technology that creates industries and careers in villages would give the villagers a practical alternative to migration. It would give them a chance to survive and prosper without uprooting themselves.

The shifting balance of wealth and population between villages and cities is one of the main themes of human history over the last ten thousand years. The shift from villages to cities is strongly coupled with a shift from one kind of technology to another. I find it convenient to call the two kinds of technology green and gray. The adjective "green" has been appropriated and abused by various political movements, especially in Europe, so I need to explain clearly what I have in mind when I speak of green and gray. Green technology is based on biology, gray technology on physics and chemistry.

Roughly speaking, green technology is the technology that gave birth to village communities ten thousand years ago, starting from the domestication of plants and animals, the invention of agriculture, the breeding of goats and sheep and horses and cows and pigs, the manufacture of textiles and cheese and wine. Gray technology is the technology that gave birth to cities and empires five thousand years later, starting from the forging of bronze and iron, the invention of wheeled vehicles and paved roads, the building of ships and war chariots, the manufacture of swords and guns and bombs. Gray technology also produced the steel plows, tractors, reapers, and processing plants that made agriculture more productive and transferred much of the resulting wealth from village-based farmers to city-based corporations.

For the first five of the ten thousand years of human civilization, wealth and power belonged to villages with green technology, and for the second five thousand years wealth and power belonged to cities with gray technology. Beginning about five hundred years ago, gray technology became increasingly dominant, as we learned to build machines that used power from wind and water and steam and electricity. In the last hundred years, wealth and power were even more heavily concentrated in cities as gray technology raced ahead. As cities became richer, rural poverty deepened.

This sketch of the last ten thousand years of human history puts the problem of rural poverty into a new perspective. If rural poverty is a consequence of the unbalanced growth of gray technology, it is possible that a shift in the balance back from gray to green might cause rural poverty to disappear. That is my dream. During the last fifty years we have seen explosive progress in the scientific understanding of the basic processes of life, and in the last twenty years this new understanding has given rise to explosive growth of green technology. The new green technology allows us to breed new varieties of animals and plants as our ancestors did ten thousand years ago, but now a hundred times faster. It now takes us a decade instead of a millennium to create new crop plants, such as the herbicide-resistant varieties of maize and soybean that allow weeds to be controlled without plowing and greatly reduce the erosion of topsoil by wind and rain. Guided by a precise understanding of genes and genomes instead of by trial and error, we can within a few years modify plants so as to give them improved yield, improved nutritive value, and improved resistance to pests and diseases.

Within a few more decades, as the continued exploring of genomes gives us better knowledge of the architecture of living creatures, we shall be able to design new species of microbes and plants according to our needs. The way will then be open for green technology to do more cheaply and more cleanly many of the things that gray technology can do, and also to do many things that gray technology has failed to do. Green technology could replace most of our existing chemical industries and a large part of our mining and manufacturing industries. Genetically engineered earthworms could extract common metals such as aluminum and titanium from clay, and genetically engineered seaweed could extract magnesium or gold from seawater. Green technology could also achieve more extensive recycling of waste products and worn-out machines, with great benefit to the environment. An economic system based on green technology could come much closer to the goal of sustainability, using sunlight instead of fossil fuels as the primary source of energy. New species of termite could be engineered to chew up derelict automobiles instead of houses, and new species of tree could be engineered to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into liquid fuels instead of cellulose.

Before genetically modified termites and trees can be allowed to help solve our economic and environmental problems, great arguments will rage over the possible damage they may do. Many of the people who call themselves green are passionately opposed to green technology. But in the end, if the technology is developed carefully and deployed with sensitivity to human feelings, it is likely to be accepted by most of the people who will be affected by it, just as the equally unnatural and unfamiliar green technologies of milking cows and plowing soils and fermenting grapes were accepted by our ancestors long ago. I am not saying that the political acceptance of green technology will be quick or easy. I say only that green technology has enormous promise for preserving the balance of nature on this planet as well as for relieving human misery. Future generations of people raised from childhood with biotech toys and games will probably accept it more easily than we do. Nobody can predict how long it may take to try out the new technology in a thousand different ways and measure its costs and benefits.

What has this dream of a resurgent green technology to do with the problem of rural poverty? In the past, green technology has always been rural, based in farms and villages rather than in cities. In the future it will pervade cities as well as countryside, factories as well as forests. It will not be entirely rural. But it will still have a large rural component. After all, the cloning of Dolly occurred in a rural animal-breeding station in Scotland, not in an urban laboratory in Silicon Valley. Green technology will use land and sunlight as its primary sources of raw materials and energy. Land and sunlight cannot be concentrated in cities but are spread more or less evenly over the planet. When industries and technologies are based on land and sunlight, they will bring employment and wealth to rural populations.

In a country like India with a large rural population, bringing wealth to the villages means bringing jobs other than farming. Most of the villagers must cease to be subsistance farmers and become shopkeepers or schoolteachers or bankers or engineers or poets. In the end the villages must become gentrified, as they are today in England, with the old farm workers' cottages converted into garages, and the few remaining farmers converted into highly skilled professionals. It is fortunate that sunlight is most abundant in tropical countries, where a large fraction of the world's people live and where rural poverty is most acute. Since sunlight is distributed more equitably than coal and oil, green technology can be a great equalizer, helping to narrow the gap between rich and poor countries.

My book The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet (1999) describes a vision of green technology enriching villages all over the world and halting the migration from villages to megacities. The three components of the vision are all essential: the sun to provide energy where it is needed, the genome to provide plants that can convert sunlight into chemical fuels cheaply and efficiently, the Internet to end the intellectual and economic isolation of rural populations. With all three components in place, every village in Africa could enjoy its fair share of the blessings of civilization. People who prefer to live in cities would still be free to move from villages to cities, but they would not be compelled to move by economic necessity.

Notes
[*] See Carl Woese, "A New Biology for a New Century," in Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, June 2004

Posted by jjbrunner at 03:10 PM | Comments (0)

Julio 13, 2007

Innovación, financiamiento basal y participación del Consejo de Rectores: Notas sobre una Polémica

Respuestas preparadas en función de un cuestionario del diario La Segunda, 11 de julio, 2007.

1.- ¿Qué le parece que los rectores de las ues tradicionales no sean parte del Consejo de Innovación? ¿es legítima su queja o están sobre reaccionando?

R.: Me parece que la composición del Consejo se ajusta a la naturaleza y funciones del organismo. Éste debe entregar con independencia recomendaciones de política, estrategia y financiamiento de la innovación. Sus miembros expresan a mi juicio un adecuado equilibrio entre el Gobierno, la academia y sus investigadores, la empresa --directivos y trabajadores--, y especialistas en análisis de políticas públicas y requerimientos de capital humano avanzado.

La mayoría de los consejos de esta naturaleza (Australia, Finlandia, Holanda, India, Irlanda, Japón, etc.) tiene una composición similar y en ellos no participan los rectores. Allí donde tienen presencia, siempre limitada en número (como ocurre en Canadá, Estados Unidos, Inglaterra y Nueva Zelanda), se espera que ellos actúen no como representantes institucionales sino como consejeros a título de sus méritos propios. Por cierto, los rectores deben aportar sus ideas y formular propuestas. Y el Consejo tiene el deber de escucharlos con atención, igual que a los demás actores del sistema nacional de innovación.

Sería interesante conocer –más vale tarde que nunca-- la opinión de fondo de los Rectores respecto de los dos informes que hasta aquí ha entregado el Consejo, uno al Presidente Lagos, el otro a la Presidenta Bachelet. En suma, me parece que el malestar expresado por los Rectores en días recientes necesitaría acompañarse de un análisis en profundidad, por parte de las autoridades universitarias, de las propuestas que viene formulando el Consejo. De lo contrario aquel malestar podría interpretarse nada más que como una reivindicación de intereses corporativos o como una equivocada apreciación del rol que cabe al Consejo.

2.- ¿Qué riesgos puede generar esta situación para la investigación en Chile?

R: En verdad, no veo riesgos aquí sino, por el contrario, nuevas oportunidades que se abren para la comunidad de investigación. De hecho, hay más recursos, una mayor prioridad gubernamental para la ciencia y la tecnología y una mayor diversidad de instrumentos de apoyo para los innovadores. Sería inexcusable que por motivos de un orden menor desperdiciáramos estas oportunidades.

3.- Ellos han amenazado con no participar en el proyecto de Conicyt sobre financiamiento basal ¿Qué problemas podría traer eso?

R: Bueno, habrá que esperar y ver. La posibilidad de contar con estos financiamientos llamados basales o institucionales ha sido una larga y hasta ahora insatisfecha demanda de los investigadores. Sería incomprensible que ahora, cuando están al alcance de la mano, la autoridades universitarias, en vez de dar curso a los proyectos que los investigadores están preparando, cierren las puertas o corten el diálogo con el Gobierno.

4.- ¿Cuánto de cierto hay, a su juicio, que el pedir a los nuevos centros de investigación que tengan personalidad jurídica distinta a la de las universidades implique "privatizar" a los investigadores o "desmantelar" a las universidades de su masa crítica?

R: No puedo creer que una formalidad como ésta --que por lo demás ya está presente y ha sido bien aceptada o, al menos, no objetada, en el caso de los centros Milenio y del programa de Fortalecimiento para Centros Regionales de Desarrollo Científico y Tecnológico-- pudiera tener consecuencias tales como privatizar a los investigadores o desmantelar a las universidades de sus grupos más dinámicos y de mayor excelencia. Sin duda se trata de una exageración. ¿Acaso las propias universidades no crean fundaciones, corporaciones, servicios anexos, regímenes de consultoría para sus académicos y variadas instancias para actuar con mayor celeridad y flexibilidad o para cooperar entre sí o con la industria privada? En verdad, hace falta una mejor explicación.

5.- ¿Es posible que este proyecto le abra el apetito a los investigadores para "independizarse" de las universidades? ¿Es ese el temor de los rectores?

R: Es bien sabido que, en el mundo entero, los investigadores tienen puesta su primera lealtad en la disciplina y la comunidad de pares de la cual forman parte antes de que en su universidad. Es un hecho de la causa. Pero los investigadores, al menos en Chile, no poseen un mercado amplio y fluido. Ni pueden tampoco, ni quisieran creo yo, independizarse, pues su trabajo supone en la mayoría de los casos interacción en grupos, costosas infraestructuras y equipos, identidad con núcleos de investigación que no son fáciles de reemplazar, etc. En suma, me parece que el temor expresado es tan excedido como lo es la creencia de que un vínculo jurídico puede amenazar la estabilidad de las instituciones. Nuestras mejores universidades son bastante más fuertes, creo yo, de lo que parecen suponer quienes manifiestan estas aprensiones.

6.- Si usted estuviera a cargo de una universidad ¿tomaría la misma postura que la del Consejo de Rectores?

R: Pienso que no. Pero, claro, es fácil decirlo cuando no se está en la posición. En cualquier caso, me parece que buscaría hacer valer mis puntos de vista de una manera más constructiva y propositiva, partiendo del hecho de que aquí que se abren nuevas oportunidades y que no estamos frente a cuestiones de fondo sino frente a una discrepancia de los rectores respecto de procedimientos e instrumentaciones.

7.- ¿Qué razones puede tener el gobierno para plantear esta estrategia? ¿mayor trasparencia en las platas? En definitiva ¿a quién el sirve? ¿y por qué?

R: Las razones son claras, me parece. Se trata de fortalecer grupos, redes o centros dinámicos y de frontera a través de un financiamiento basal, que cubre gastos de infraestructura y de operación. En seguida, de incentivar una gestión eficaz y transparente, dotada de flexibilidad para responder a entornos cambiantes y donde el uso de los recursos pueda ser justificado y medido en función de productividad, resultados e impacto. A la larga toda la organización de las universidades --y sus diversas partes-- debiera funcionar bajo criterios como éstos, senda en la cual se encuentran ya varias de ellas que han logrado importantes avances. Al final el país se vería beneficiado mediante la expansión de sus capacidades para producir y aplicar conocimiento.

Recursos asociados

Innovación para la Competitividad, 12 marzo 2007. Contiene los dos Informes preparados por los Consejos de Innovación para la Competitividad (2006 y 2007)

Programa de Financiamiento Basal para Centros Científicos y Tecnológicos de Excelencia (PFB) , CONICYT, Mayo 2007 (Ver breve resumen más abajo)

Programa de Financiamiento Basal para Centros Científicos y Tecnológicos de Excelencia (PFB)

El Programa de Financiamiento Basal para Centros Científicos y Tecnológicos de Excelencia (PFB), es una de las principales iniciativas en el contexto de la creación de un Programa de apoyo a la asociatividad en la investigación de Excelencia el que contempla además, Anillos de Investigación, Programa de Equipamiento Mayor y Programa de Fortalecimiento de Ciencias Sociales.

Objetivos generales del PFB

• Incrementar el capital científico y tecnológico de alto nivel existente en el país para contribuir al aumento de la competitividad de la economía chilena.

• Otorgar respaldo y fortalecer la actividad desarrollada por los grupos de investigadores de excelencia, fomentando la vinculación entre la investigación científica y tecnológica de alto nivel y el desarrollo económico de Chile.

Fortalecimiento del Eslabón Superior

• Se toma en consideración que existen restricciones para que las actividades de los grupos de investigación de alto nivel alcancen la escala necesaria para la sustentación y consolidación de masas críticas de investigadores capaces de aplicar o producir el nuevo conocimiento.

• Debido a las características del proceso de generación y apropiación del conocimiento científico se requiere complementar las actuales líneas públicas de apoyo y la acción eventual del mercado.

Posted by jjbrunner at 06:49 PM | Comments (0)

Julio 12, 2007

Presentaciones en Seminario Internacional CINDA: "La Educación Superior: Antecedentes y Perspectivas"

Con ocasión del lanzamiento del libro Educación Superior en Ibero América: Informe 2007 [Portada] durante el Seminario Internacional - La Educación Superior: Antecedentes y Perspectivas organizado por CINDA los días 12 y 13 de julio 2007, se abordaron diversos temás de interés para el actual debate sobre la educación superior.

José Joaquín Brunner, Educación Superior en Ibero América: Informe 2007

Senen Barro, La responsabilidad social corporativa en la universidad 590 KB

Luis Eduardo González, El Proyecto Educativo de las Universidades 57 KB

Jaime Baeza, Nuevas Iniciativas en Materia de Fomento a la Investigación e Innovación en Chile 106 KB

Carlos Williamson, Financiamiento de la Educación Superior en Iberoamérica 244 KB

Antoni Giró, Financiamiento de la Educación Superior en Iberoamérica 159 KB

Alfonso Muga, Gobierno (gobernabilidad?) y gestión (administración?): tendencias en universidades maduras (o de base pesada) 205 KB

Alberto Roa, Gobierno y Gestión 210 KB

María José Lemaitre, Aseguramiento de la calidad en la educación superior iberoamericana 300 KB

Jacques L'Ecuyer, Tendencias en el campo de la calidad, 90 KB

Carlos Angulo, Desafíos fundamentales de la Educación Superior Contemporánea 340 KB

Luis Guzmán-Barrón, Desafíos fundamentales de la Educación Superior Contemporánea 50 KB

Posted by jjbrunner at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)

Julio 11, 2007

Educación Superior en Ibero América: Informe 2007

Presentación de base empleada en el Seminario Internacional - La Educación Superior: Antecedentes y Perspectivas.

Bajar Presentación aquí 221 KB

Recursos asociados

Issues in higher education policy 2006. An update on higher education policy issues in 2006 in 10 Western countries, 20 junio 2007

Declaración de Caracas sobre la Educación Superior, 3 junio 2007

Educación Superior Internacional Comparada (Escenarios, Temas y Problemas), libro de Francisco López Segrera, 30 mayo 2007

Proceso de Bolonia: Trends V Report, 23 mayo 2007

Recientes publicaciones sobre finanaciamiento de la educación superior (OECD), 19 mayo 2003

Posted by jjbrunner at 07:44 PM | Comments (0)

Seminario Internacional - La Educación Superior: Antecedentes y Perspectivas

Los días 12 y 13 de julio tendrá lugar en Santiago de Chiloe el Seminario Internacional - La Educación Superior: Antecedentes y Perspectivas, organizado por el Centro Interuniversitario de Desarrollo (CINDA).

En él se dará a conocer la publicación "La Educación Superior en Ibero America: Informe 2007", trabajo que se describe más abajo.

Programa del Seminario

Jueves 12 de Julio

09.00 – 10.30 hrs. Inauguración y Visión Global
- Iván Lavados, Director Ejecutivo CINDA
- Jaume Pagès, Director Delegado UNIVERSIA
- José Joaquín Brunner, Coordinador Proyecto

10.45 – 12.00 hrs. Proyecto Educativo de las Universidades
- Senén Barro, Rector Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, España
- Luis Eduardo González, Consultor de CINDA

12.15 – 13:30 hrs. Investigación y Desarrollo
- Gabriel Macaya, ex Rector Universidad de Costa Rica
- Jaime Baeza, Vicerrector de Investigación Universidad de Concepción, Chile

15.00 – 16.15 hrs. Financiamiento
- Carlos Williamson, Pro Rector de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
- Antoni Giró, Rector Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, España

16.30 – 17.45 hrs. Gobierno y Gestión
- Alfonso Muga, Rector Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile
- Alberto Roa, Vicerrector Académico Universidad del Norte, Colombia

Viernes 13 de Julio

09.00 – 10:15 hrs. Aseguramiento de la Calidad
- María José Lemaitre, Secretaria Técnica Comisión Nacional de Acreditación de Chile y Consultora de CINDA
- Jacques L’Ecuyer, Experto en Educación Superior, Canadá

10.30 – 12.30 hrs. Mesa Redonda “Desafíos Fundamentales de la Educación Superior Contemporánea”

􀂾 Celso Garrido, Representante Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, México
􀂾 Carlos Angulo, Rector Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia
􀂾 Carmen García Guadilla, Representante IESALCUNESCO
􀂾 Luis Guzmán-Barrón, Rector Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú

13.00 hrs. Presentación del IAC

Recursos relacionados

Issues in higher education policy 2006. An update on higher education policy issues in 2006 in 10 Western countries, 20 junio 2007

Declaración de Caracas sobre la Educación Superior, 3 junio 2007

Educación Superior Internacional Comparada (Escenarios, Temas y Problemas), libro de Francisco López Segrera, 30 mayo 2007

Proceso de Bolonia: Trends V Report, 23 mayo 2007

Recientes publicaciones sobre finanaciamiento de la educación superior (OECD), 19 mayo 2003

EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR EN IBERO AMÉRICA: INFORME 2007

I. ANTECEDENTES Y OBJETIVOS

1. Durante el año 2006 CINDA desarrolló un importante proyecto sobre la Educación Superior en Ibero América.
El informe correspondiente será publicado próximamente.

Este Informe se concibe como una contribución para el diálogo, el análisis y la proyección hacia el futuro del espacio iberoamericano de educación superior. Su propósito es reportar sobre la realidad actual de este espacio, reuniendo en un solo volumen la información más reciente disponible sobre algunas dimensiones claves de los sistemas de educación superior:

• Los desafíos de la educación superior en el espacio iberoamericano (Capítulo A)

• La plataforma institucional de los sistemas (Capítulo B)

• El acceso y las oportunidades que ofrece la educación superior (Capítulo C)

• La formación del capital humano avanzado (Capítulo D)

• El rol de la universidad en las actividades de investigación y desarrollo (Capítulo E)

• El financiamiento de la educación superior (Capítulo F)

• El gobierno y la gestión de los sistemas e instituciones (Capítulo G), y

• El aseguramiento de la calidad en el ámbito de la educación superior iberoamericana (Capítulo H)

Se incluyen en este Informe 15 países*:

• Argentina
• Bolivia
• Brasil
• Chile
• Colombia
• Costa Rica
• Ecuador
• México
• Panamá
• Perú
• República Dominicana
• Uruguay
• Venezuela
• España
• Portugal

* El estudio de Puerto Rico fue realizado en conjunto con los otros 15 mencionados. No obstante, la falta de datos comparables para este país en las fuentes estadísticas utilizadas en este Informe ha hecho imposible incorporar esos antecedentes.

En su conjunto estos países representan un 92,7% de la matrícula total de educación superior en Ibero América.

Además, con propósitos de comparación internacional, las tablas y gráficos incluyen cinco países de fuera del área iberoamericana, pertenecientes a diferentes regiones del mundo; cuatro países del grupo de alto ingreso --Australia, Canadá, Gran Bretaña y la República de Corea-- y un quinto país, Estonia, de ingreso medio alto y alta competitividad.

Para el tratamiento de cada una de las ocho dimensiones claves de los sistemas enunciados más arriba, los correspondientes capítulos del Informe presentan una breve introducción al tema y luego proporcionan un conjunto de datos estadísticos --bajo la forma de tablas y gráficos-- los cuales se acompañan con un sucinto comentario descriptivo. A continuación cada capítulo es enriquecido con antecedentes adicionales, análisis y evaluaciones extraídos de los respectivos informes nacionales. Naturalmente, aunque éstos abordan en cada capítulo un mismo tópico, ellos son de muy diversa naturaleza, respondiendo al tratamiento ofrecido por cada uno de sus autores. En cada caso, estos comentarios nacionales se han incluido en toda su extensión, con el mínimo de edición posible,
y sin atender al hecho de sus diferentes enfoques y longitudes. Se trata, en efecto, de recuperar para cada país los análisis y evaluaciones de los expertos nacionales, que enriquecen las comparaciones y dan viveza y color local al Informe.

Al final de cada capítulo se incluye un apartado con información y recursos complementarios de consulta disponibles en la Red, referidos tanto a la situación del respectivo tema en la educación superior iberoamericana como a su tratamiento en los países desarrollados.

Desde el punto de vista de su producción, este Informe fue elaborado con el auspicio de UNIVERSIA y bajo la responsabilidad del Centro Interuniversitario de Desarrollo, CINDA, institución académica internacional, formada por un grupo de universidades de América Latina y Europa, cuyo propósito es la realización de estudios, la cooperación entre las universidades miembros y la activa promoción de innovaciones institucionales.

El Comité Académico del Informe estuvo integrado por:

Iván Lavados, Director Ejecutivo de CINDA, quien lo dirigió
Jaume Pagés, Consejero Delegado de UNIVERSIA
Carlos Angulo, Rector de la Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia, y Presidente de CINDA;
Alfonso Muga, Rector de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso;
Antoni Girò, Rector de la Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña, y
José Joaquín Brunner, Profesor de la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile, Coordinador del Informe.

El proceso de elaboración del Informe contempló las siguientes etapas y modalidades:

• Diseño de un marco temático de referencia y de categorías estadísticas para recoger, en cada uno de los países participantes, la información relevante en las ocho dimensiones incluidas en el Informe;

• Preparación de los informes nacionales por uno o más expertos de cada país;

• Reunión para analizar los resultados preliminares de los informes nacionales, celebrada en Santiago de Chile los días 11 y 12 septiembre 2006, con participación de autores de dichos informes, autoridades universitarias e investigadores de la educación superior;

• Revisión y complementación de los datos contenidos en los informes nacionales con aquellos provistos por las principales fuentes internacionales de estadísticas sobre la educación superior; en particular, el Instituto de Estadísticas de la UNESCO, el Instituto Internacional de la UNESCO para la Educación Superior en América Latina y el Caribe (IESALC), la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE), el Banco Mundial, el Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID), y el Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD).

• Reunión de rectores de las universidades afiliadas a CINDA y un grupo de expertos, realizada en la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela el día 16 de octubre 2006, con el propósito de definir los lineamientos generales del
informe.

• Elaboración del Informe dentro de las orientaciones y a partir de los antecedentes reunidos a lo largo de las fases anteriores, a cargo de CINDA y bajo la coordinación de José Joaquín Brunner.

2. El seminario internacional tiene los siguientes objetivos:

- Difundir en la comunidad académica, en los gobiernos y en los sectores productivos de Ibero América el Informe mencionado.

- Analizar y discutir, a partir de la información entregada, las tendencias y los desafíos principales de la educación superior contemporánea.

- Sugerir orientaciones para la continuación de este esfuerzo.

Posted by jjbrunner at 02:42 PM | Comments (3)

Redes Formales e Informales de Producción y Diseminación de Información

Trabajo de Francisco Téllez realizado para la VIII Reunión del Diálogo Regional en Educación del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo, 7 y 8 de Noviembre del 2005.

Ver documento completo aquí 750 KB

Tiene como finalidad explorar las distintas redes de información que existen en América Latina y el Caribe y estimar la utilidad que han tenido para el diseño de políticas educativas. Específicamente, se trata de determinar cuáles son los medios a través de los cuales circula la evidencia sobre políticas y programas educativos que han dado resultados positivos en los países de la región y fuera de ella. Así, no sólo redes de información son identificadas para este estudio, sino que también portales de sitios web de instituciones nacionales e internacionales que ofrecen recursos de información potencialmente útiles para los países dela región.

Para este efecto se estudiaron redes de información y portales de Internet que ofrecen recursos de información relevante o pertinentes para el diseño y ajuste de políticas y programas educativos en la región.

Se distinguieron dos tipos de redes de información: redes formales y redes informales. Redes formales de información son aquellas que se constituyen con el propósito explícito de compartir información en un área determinada. Los miembros de estas redes, ya sea en su calidad de productores o usuarios de la información, cumplen el rol de hacer circular datos e información a través de medios principalmente digitales.

Por otro lado, redes informales son aquellas que en la práctica funcionan como red pero no existe el propósito explícito de hacerlo. En otras palabras, son nodos potenciales dentro de una red global que sólo se hace efectiva cuando dos o más de sus miembros toman contacto y comparten información. Es el caso de expertos o consultores en educación que van de país en país llevando consigo información sobre experiencias de políticas y programas que pueden ser potencialmente interesantes de observar y analizar por parte de otros países. También es el caso de reuniones internacionales donde tomadores de decisión, como parte o no del programa de la reunión, se transfieren información sobre sus programas y políticas.

Para este estudio se hizo una identificación y análisis sólo de redes formales de información. Las redes informales sólo fueron incluidas en las entrevistas a tomadores de decisión.

También se consideraron portales con información educativa nacionales e internacionales, que pudieran ser objeto de interés para tomadores de decisión o equipos técnicos de entidades públicas en la región, por los recursos de información que ofrecen relacionados con programas y políticas, y estudios empíricos.

Se analizan 27 portales y redes de información. Entre ellos se incluye este Blog, con la siguiente descripción:

Información, Análisis y Discusión sobre Educación y Políticas Educacionales. Blog Personal de José Joaquín Brunner

El sitio recoge la producción académica del autor, que es bastante fructífera. Los materiales que en este blog se ofrecen son clasificados según las diversas publicaciones que el autor tiene en revistas especializadas, medios de prensa escrita, libros, y publicaciones digitales. El autor también ofrece publicaciones de otros autores queconsidera relevantes para el análisis de políticas en Chile y en países en desarrollo. Por ejemplo, el documento “Reforma de la educación superior europea: el proceso de Bolonia y sus múltiples lecciones”, que según Brunner “es una suerte de caja de herramientas sobre las políticas de transformación de la educación superior y la formación técnicovocacional en curso en Europa y sobre las múltiples lecciones que dicho proceso arroja para la política pública en Chile y los países en vías de desarrollo”. El autor se ha especializado en políticas de educación superior, lo que se refleja en la infromación que su blog proporciona.

Introducción

En las últimas décadas, el volumen de información disponible sobre investigaciones educacionales ha crecido enormemente debido, en parte, a las redes y portales de información en Internet. La Red Latinoamericana de Información y Documentación en Educación, REDUC, fue fundada en los años 70s con el objetivo de diseminar investigaciones educacionales y otros tipos de documentos relevantes para tomadores de decisión en los países de la región. REDUC hacía circular esta información a través de volúmenes con resúmenes analíticos que se publicaban periódicamente y se distribuían a los distintos centros asociados a la red. El modelo de distribución de información utilizado por REDUC está hoy totalmente obsoleto. En esta así llamada era de la información, cada institución o investigador independiente puede poner a disposición de la “aldea global” sus informes de investigación, análisis, opiniones, lo que sea, en texto completo y con acceso inmediato. Asomarse al mundo virtual de Internet significa entrar, entre otras cosas, a una gran biblioteca digital con numerosos recursos de información y que demanda ciertas habilidades para navegar en ella y así no perderse en la búsqueda que se está realizando.

Este acceso casi total a la información a través de un computador personal conectado a Internet , no ha significado necesariamente que en los procesos de construcción de políticas y programas educacionales haya aumentado la utilización de información relevante. Varios estudios sugieren que la difícil relación entre investigación y toma de decisiones no se facilita con el sólo hecho de hacer más disponible la información al tomador de decisión.

Este estudio tiene como finalidad explorar las distintas redes de información que existen en América Latina y el Caribe y estimar la utilidad que han tenido para el diseño de políticas educativas. Específicamente, se trata de determinar cuáles son los medios a través de los cuales circula la evidencia sobre políticas y programas educativos que han dado resultados positivos en los países de la región y fuera de ella. Así, no sólo redes de información son identificadas para este estudio, sino que también portales de sitios web de instituciones nacionales e internacionales que ofrecen recursos de información potencialmente útiles para los países dela región.

Las hipótesis sobre las cuales se estructuró el estudio son las siguientes:

1. Hay un exceso de información disponible para tomadores de decisión y se requiere una mediación para ayudar a los buscadores de información.

2. Los tomadores de decisión en América Latina están ahora mucho más conscientes de lo que sucede en la región que en el pasado, pero saben poco de programas y perspectivas en el mundo como un todo, en parte porque la mayoría de la información no está en español.

3. Tratar de encontrar información sobre una materia requiere navegar en varias sitios web.

4. Las redes informales tienen un impacto mayor que las redes formales especialmente para definir estrategias de políticas.

5. Hay carencia de información sobre meta-análisis de lo que funciona en políticas y programas educativos.

6. Puede ser que el área más débil de fuentes de información es la educación superior, excepto para modelos de préstamo estudiantil.

Este estudio se desarrolló en base a los datos recogidos de los portales y redes de información identificados, y a las entrevistas realizadas a tomadores de decisión, coordinadores de redes de información, y funcionarios del BID que trabajan en el sector educación en distintos países de la región.

Posted by jjbrunner at 01:44 PM | Comments (3)

Relación Empresa-Universidad: una grieta a sellar

Relación Empresa-Universidad: una grieta a sellar, entrevista a J.J. Brunner por Verónica Inoue para Learning Review, con ocasión de la Apertura Oficial del V Congreso Nacional de Gestión Humana, celebrado los días 7 y 8 de mayo en Argentina.

Ver extracto de la entrevista más abajo.

LEARNING REVIEW tuvo la oportunidad de entrevistarse con José Joaquín Brunner luego de su visita a Buenos Aires, en mayo pasado.

El especialista en sociología de la educación fue el invitado especial en la Apertura Oficial del V Congreso Nacional de Gestión Humana, celebrado los días 7 y 8 de mayo en Argentina. Posteriormente al acto de inicio, Brunner brindó la conferencia "Nuevas Realidades / Nuevos desafíos", donde se explayó sobre la problemática que enfrenta la educación continua y educación superior en el ámbito regional.

Dada la expertise internacional que posee Brunner, lo consultamos acerca de la vinculación entre empresas y universidades, y del "fracturado" escenario que se viene proyectando en esta región latina.

Learning Review: Actualmente la relación entre empresas y estudiantes-graduados universitarios de los países de Latinoamérica, es bastante distante, ¿cuál sería la forma más efectiva de lograr una integración?

José Joaquín Brunner: Las universidades deben hacer un esfuerzo mucho mayor para acercarse al mundo del empleo y de los empleadores. Para ello necesitan, primero que todo, hacer un seguimiento más sistemático de la inserción laboral de sus propios graduados. Y, enseguida, preocuparse de cómo evoluciona la demanda por personal profesional y técnico desde el lado de la demanda.

Asimismo, deberían las universidades invitar a representantes de las empresas y del mundo del empleo a participar en la definición de la currícula de formación profesional, particularmente en términos de las competencias más usualmente requeridas por las diversas ocupaciones.

"Chile ha avanzado relativamente bien en cuanto al uso de las TIC en el sistema escolar, pero no así en el caso de las instituciones de educación superior, ni en el campo de la educación continua", afirma Brunner.
Por último, pueden organizar de una manera mucho más efectiva las prácticas profesionales de sus estudiantes, si acaso dan el paso de trabajar conjuntamente con las organizaciones que proveen empleos.

LR: En su opinión, ¿las Universidades están formando profesionales con las competencias y habilidades que el mercado está requiriendo, o la brecha sigue siendo grande? ¿Cuáles serían algunas posibles soluciones?

JJB: No contamos en América Latina con información sólida sobre estos asuntos. Es una falla múltiple, pues compromete a los gobiernos, a las instituciones de educación superior, a las empresas y a los organismos encargados de proporcionar información sobre el mercado laboral.

En general, puede sostenerse que las Universidades tienden todavía a definir sus currículas nada más que desde el lado de la oferta y en términos de "contenidos", sin preocuparse de la demanda ni de definir claros perfiles de competencias (genéricas y específicas) requeridas por el mercado laboral. De allí la brecha.

Posted by jjbrunner at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)

Nuevos aportes al debate sobre educación y ciudadanía

Venimos siguiendo el debate español sobre educación y ciudadanía por la importancia que reviste, también, para varios países latinoamericanos y, en particular, para Chile.

En efecto, la implementación del decreto real sobre educación y ciudadanía, de 2006 (ver texto extractado más abajo), ha dado lugar a una intensa discusión en España.

En juego están asuntos fundamentales en cuanto al rol del Estado democrático en el campo de la educación de valores ciudadanos y a la relación entre el derecho a la educación y la libertad de enseñanza.

Ambos tópicos son objeto de debate en Chile en el marco de la discusión parlamentaria de la nueva Ley General de Educación y del proyecto de ley que crea la Superintendencia de Educación.

Hoy damos cuenta de las evoluciones más recientes del debate español, en especial respecto de las posiciones asumidas dentro de la comunidad católica y de los sostenedores privados subsidiados.

Los críticos con Ciudadanía aseguran que ya cuentan con 10.000 objeciones, ABC, 11 julio 2007

Los padres católicos se rebelan contra sus colegios y piden objetar en Ciudadanía, ABC, 10 julio 2007

Objeción, ABC, 10 julio 2007

Manuel de Castro: «La objeción de conciencia en los centros católicos carece de sentido», entrevista a Manuel de Castro, sacerdote salesiano y secretario general de la Federación de Religiosos de la Enseñanza-Centros Católicos (FERE-CECA), ABC, 9 julio 2007

El Consell y la derecha religiosa censuran la asignatura de Ciudadanía, El País, 9 julio 2007

La Comunidad [de Madrid] propone que los objetores a Educación para la Ciudadanía hagan voluntariado, El País, 9 julio 2007

CONTENIDOS DE LA ASIGNATURA “EDUCACIÓN PARA LA CIUDADANÍA Y LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS”

LOS CONTENIDOS EN EDUCACIÓN PRIMARIA SE ORGANIZAN EN 3 BLOQUES: (EXTRACCIÓN LITERAL DEL REAL DECRETO 1513/2006, DE 7 DE DICIEMBRE)

Bloque 1: INDIVIDUOS Y RELACIONES INTERPERSONALES Y SOCIALES

􀂃 Propone un modelo de relaciones basado en el reconocimiento de la dignidad de todas las personas, del respeto al otro aunque mantenga opiniones y creencias distintas a las propias, de la diversidad y los derechos de las personas.

􀂃 A partir de situaciones cotidianas, se aborda la igualdad de hombres y mujeres en la familia y en el mundo laboral.

􀂃 Un aspecto prioritario, relacionado con la autonomía personal, es siempre la asunción de las propias responsabilidades.

Bloque 2: LA VIDA EN COMUNIDAD

􀂃 Trata de la convivencia en las relaciones con el entorno, de los valores cívicos en que se fundamenta la sociedad democrática: respeto, tolerancia, solidaridad, justicia, igualdad, ayuda mutua, cooperación y cultura de la paz.

􀂃 Trata de la forma de abordar la convivencia y el conflicto en los grupos de pertenencia (familia, centro escolar, amigos, localidad) y del ejercicio de los derechos y deberes que corresponden a cada persona en el seno de esos grupos, identificando la diversidad, rechazando la discriminación y valorando la participación y sus cauces.

􀂃 Asimismo, desde el reconocimiento de la diversidad cultural y religiosa presente en el entorno inmediato y asumiendo la igualdad de todas las mujeres y hombres en cuanto a derechos y deberes, se puede trabajar el respeto crítico por las costumbres y modos de vida distintos al propio y permite proporcionar elementos para identificar y rechazar situaciones de marginación, discriminación e injusticia social.

Bloque 3: VIVIR EN SOCIEDAD

􀂃 Propone un planteamiento social más amplio: la necesidad y el conocimiento de las normas y principios de convivencia establecidos por la Constitución.

􀂃 El conocimiento y la valoración de los servicios públicos y de los bienes comunes. o Las obligaciones de las administraciones públicas y de los ciudadanos en su mantenimiento. o Algunos de los servicios públicos y de los bienes comunes reciben un tratamiento específico adecuado a la edad de este alumnado, es el caso de la protección civil, la seguridad, la defensa al servicio de la paz y la educación vial.

LOS CONTENIDOS EN EDUCACIÓN SECUNDARIA SE ORGANIZAN EN 5 BLOQUES : En Educación Secundaria se desarrollan y amplían, atendiendo a la mayor edad de los alumnos, todos los contenidos de la asignatura en Educación Primaria, añadiendo algunos otros, como los siguientes:

Bloque 1: APROXIMACIÓN RESPETUOSA A LA DIVERSIDAD

􀂃 Entrenamiento en el diálogo, el debate y la aproximación respetuosa a la diversidad personal y cultural.

Bloque 2: RELACIONES INTERPERSONALES Y PARTICIPACIÓN

􀂃 Trata aspectos relativos a las relaciones humanas, desde el respeto a la dignidad personal y la igualdad de derechos individuales, el reconocimiento de las diferencias, el rechazo a las discriminaciones y el fomento de la solidaridad.

􀂃 Se aborda la participación y representación en el Centro escolar

Bloque 3: DEBERES Y DERECHOS CIUDADANOS

􀂃 Conocimiento de los principios recogidos en los textos internacionales.

􀂃 Identificación de situaciones de violación de los derechos humanos.

􀂃 Actuación que corresponde a los tribunales ordinarios y a los Tribunales Internacionales, cuando se producen situaciones de violación de derechos humanos.

Bloque 4: LAS SOCIEDADES DEMOCRÁTICAS DEL SIGLO XXI

􀂃 Funcionamiento de los Estados democráticos, centrándose particularmente en el modelo político español. Se analiza el papel de los distintos servicios públicos

Bloque 5: CIUDADANÍA EN UN MUNDO GLOBAL

􀂃 Aborda alguna de las características de la sociedad actual: la desigualdad en sus diversas manifestaciones, el proceso de globalización e interdependencia, los principales conflictos del mundo actual, así como el papel de los organismos internacionales en su prevención y resolución.

Más información en el Real Decreto 1631/2006, de 29 de diciembre 2006 (texto compelto, PDF).

Posted by jjbrunner at 09:58 AM | Comments (1)

Julio 07, 2007

Educación para la ciudadanía: el debate español

Un mes atrás dábamos cuenta del tema Educación ciudadana en España: contenidos y textos, tema en torno al cual ha venido desarrollándose en este país un intenso debate. Se trata, en breve, del debate en torno a los contenidos valóricos de la educación en un régimen democrático, laico y pluralista.

Ver a continuación una selección de artículos

Educación para la ciudadanía, Luis María Ansón, El Cultural, 5 julio 2007

¿Ciudadanos o feligreses?, Fernando Savater, El País, 4 julio 2007

La escuela católica matiza a los obispos, Reportaje, El País, 2 julio 2007

Educación para la Ciudadanía, Manuel Pascua, El País, 2 julio 2007

Creyentes y ciudadanos, Reyes Mate, El País, 1 julio 2007

Un camino desacertado para la educación en valores, Manuel de Castro Barco, El País, 1 julio 2007

Educación para la Ciudadanía y los Derechos Humanos, Luis María Cifuentes, El País, 18 septiembre 2007

Cañizares: "Los centros religiosos que impartan la nueva asignatura colaborarán con el mal", El País, 26 junio 2007

Educación para la Ciudadanía, Daniel Pizá Cortizo, El País, 23 junio 2007

Objeción de conciencia ante Educación para Ciudadanía: aumentan los objetores y también las amenazas gubernamentales, Scriptor.org, 13 junio 2007

La escuela católica. Oferta de la Iglesia en España para la educación en el siglo XXI , LXXXIX ASAMBLEA PLENARIA de Obispos de España, Madrid, 27 de abril de 2007 (Texto íntegro).

Ver texto en versión PDF (210 KB) aquí

Posted by jjbrunner at 09:57 AM | Comments (2)