ABSTRACT

Ideas about educational improvement are contextual and contested. This study proposes a critical and pragmatic framework to analyse systemic improvement, taking into account the paradoxes and limitations of quantitative sources. The study compared 83 subnational educational systems of three federal countries in Latin America: Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico. Based on a mixed methodology, we analysed the evolution of multiple educational indicators in 2004-2019. Then, we applied an expert’s consultation process to select four cases of systemic improvement for further analysis: Ceará and Pernambuco in Brazil, Córdoba in Argentina, and Puebla in Mexico. Each case was studied in its context, with a multi-level analysis that links it to national educational policies. Instead of a series of policy recipes, we find that constructing a solid platform for education governance is the critical element shared by the studied cases where there is subnational systemic improvement over a long period.

摘要

关于教育改进的想法是有背景的和有争议的。本研究提出了一个批判和务实的框架来分析系统改进，同时考虑到定量来源的悖论和局限性。该研究比较了拉丁美洲三个联邦国家（阿根廷、巴西和墨西哥）的 83 个地方教育系统。基于混合方法，我们分析了 2004-2019 年多个教育指标的演变。然后，我们应用专家咨询流程，选择了四个系统改进案例进行进一步分析：巴西的 Ceará 和 Pernambuco、阿根廷的 Córdoba 和墨西哥的 Puebla。每个案例都在其背景下进行了研究，并通过多层次分析将其与国家教育政策联系起来。而不是一系列的政策配方，