Reforming teacher education in Latin America and the USA: A comparative perspective through critical discourse analysis

MÓNICA PINI; JORGE M. GOROSTIAGA

Reforming teaching and learning: Comparative perspectives in a global era

Sense

Año: 2009; p. 9 - 22

The issue of teacher training and professional development is among the priorities of political decisions in education, including policies that define what kind of institutions should educate teachers and under what professional and labor conditions. Since the theme transcends national limits, this work explores and compares different perspectives and specific proposals in recent documents from different agencies and countries. The comparison shows similarities among the discursive features of the National Education Law (Argentina, 2006) and the UNESCO document, related to the definition of education and the meaning of teacher education. The policy discourses in these two texts look very different from the USA document, because they emphasize education as a social right, but in the light of educational and social realities in Latin America, their implementation is not guaranteed.