Ressources

This report has three purposes, the first, to describe the contexts and challenges of education for citizenship education in Latin America; secondly, to describe the process of implementation and creation of the Latin American version of the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) test and compare the categories of both evaluation tools; lastly, to characterize, in a comparative way, the citizenship education curricula of Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, and the Dominican Republic. The results of the report rise from the analysis of secondary sources on the socio-educational contexts in which citizenship education is based upon in Latin America, as well as a comparative analysis of the original educational curricula of the six countries of this project. The structure of the chapters and the sections of this document are arranged according to the referred purposes. The first chapter focuses on the sociocultural context of the educational system that is in charge of shaping citizens. Recent evidence on beliefs and democratic practices in the region will be examined. Later, the evolution of the school systems in the last decade and a half will be described. Finally, in order to establish a “base line” on the role of citizenship education in education policy, first the curricula, pedagogies, and teacher formation and evaluation will be examined. The second chapter focuses on the process of generation of the Latin American evaluative method, part of the ICCS test. Then, in a detailed manner, a comparative analysis of the categories or evaluation criteria of both tests will be presented in order to show the predominant opinion of citizenship education in the 6 countries. Trying to identify certain patterns, the report concludes with a chapter that makes interpretations and projections about the tendencies observed in current curricula and propose new criteria for the development of new education curricula.