We have moved from an era in which international organizations (World Bank 2017 and 2021; OECD 2015 and 2022) financed public education, to a subsequent one in which national and international corporations and governments of developed countries promote the privatization of education. This constitutes a form of “governance” characterized by regulated autonomy, accountability, private sector (business) management techniques, and freedom of school choice, to shape and improve educational systems and provide education for citizenship and professional development, without ignoring cultural contexts and crucial ethical aspects that contribute to educational policies of equity and social justice.
The focus of this monograph is to delve into different contexts—political, administrative, educational, and training-related—to identify, analyze, and understand educational policies related to school practices, understood as the fundamental right to education, combating vulnerability, dependency, and domination (Silva, 2019; Fernández Pavlovich, 2019).
School stratification occurs when students are grouped into different classes, schools, or programs based on their ability, interests, and other characteristics, leading to the classification of students by socioeconomic level. School choice policies, admission criteria, early differentiation in educational pathways (tracking), and grade repetition all contribute to this. These measures increase school segregation and are the factors with the greatest negative impact on the equity of educational systems. The correlation between socioeconomic context and student performance determines high levels of segregation in primary and secondary education (Eurydice, 2021).
Furthermore, professional development and continuing education should be an inherent part of the teaching profession. To address this issue and create contexts of greater curricular equity, studies using narrative inquiry (Clandinin et al., 2006; Davis & Murphy, 2016) have been developed that focus not on curriculum design, but on how the curriculum takes shape in classroom experience. These studies have led to the construction of what has been called the “two curricular worlds”: the curriculum plan and the lived curriculum (Martin-Alonso et al., 2021). The curriculum plan establishes the objectives that teachers must achieve, giving them the responsibility of promoting experiences that are meaningful for each student and lead them to the stated objectives.
The growing interest in controlling and standardizing the teaching profession has led to teacher training in Europe being developed through professional competencies and external evaluations, which determine professional development (Eurydice, 2015, 2018). This professional development is understood to refer only to the training and conditions under which teachers carry out their work. Equity aims to develop an educational system that responds to students, from their access to schooling, through their life trajectories, and to the outcomes of a valuable education.
Themes
- Equity Educational Policies: We develop the lived curriculum, based on narrative inquiry, as the construction that students make of their classroom experience.
- Influence of Equity Educational Systems: Stratification and privatization of school groups, with homogeneous or heterogeneous policies that can lead to selection based on socioeconomic levels and school segregation.
- Equity in teacher training and professional development: Teacher training with autonomy, considering life trajectories, and with the necessary institutional conditions.
- Qualitative methodology: Case studies and/or focus groups and/or questionnaires, examining the trajectories of teachers, educational administrators, and education policymakers who promote equity and social justice. Analysis of government documents, legislation, and publications in various contexts: international, national, and local, their implementation, and the mechanisms that guide them toward equity.