Last meeting first paragraph
This study seeks to understand why and
how local school communities of teachers,
students, and parents in the periphery of
Chile contest Educational policies adopted
by the Chilean government in direct
response to the mass social movements
emerging over the last 15 years. My
approach faces these concerns by focusing
on the particular case of the Law of
Educational Inclusion (LEI), one of the most
significant pieces of legislation passed in
response to social movements, facing
problems for being embraced in the
country. With that in mind, I focus on the
city of Lota, a strong left-wing heritage
community which, under current
dominance of neoliberal, nation-building
and conservative-authoritarian discourses
of modernisation (post-colonial neoliberal
discourses), has become a shifting political
landscape in which left-wing and
conservative forces share predominance,
setting the ground for heterogeneous
contestations. Addressing this concern is
vital not just for developing a more
grounded view of the enablers/constrainers
of social movement-motivated education
reforms in the periphery, but for exploring
how people’s everyday practice constructs,
maintain, adapt or rupture contemporary
discourses of inclusion/exclusion and social
justice. In doing so, I emphasise that
studying contestation on schools may offer
micro-political insights into how alternative
forms of being develop pluriversal
imaginaries in mature post-colonial
neoliberal contexts.
New first paragraph
This study seeks to understand why and
how local school communities of teachers,
students, and parents in the periphery of
Chile contest Educational policies adopted
by the Chilean government in direct
response to the mass social movements
emerging over the last 15 years. My
approach faces these concerns by focusing
on the particular case of the Law of
Educational Inclusion (LEI), one of the most
significant pieces of legislation passed in
response to social movements, facing
problems for being embraced in the
country. With that in mind I focus on the
city of Lota, a peripheralized shifting
contentious political landscape in which
left-wing and conservative forces set the
ground for heterogeneous contestations.
Addressing this concern is vital not just for
developing a more grounded view about
how progressive social movements impact
education in the periphery; but for
exploring how everyday practice on schools
embody, rupture or sustain discourses of
inclusion/exclusion and social justice
emerging under this cycle of protests. In
doing so, I emphasize that studying
contestation on formal education offer
micro-level insights into how social
movement desires to reshape society are
evoked and sustained in contested mature
post-colonial neoliberal contexts. Also, it
offers a picture of the relevance of youth
and intra/inter-generational dialogues for
the sustainability of social transformation.
And it highlights the role that social
movements have on the discussion about
educational policy, reform and
transformation.