A New Challenge: Surviving Educational Transformation

Abstract

In this article, I discuss certain perspectives that reduce the debate surrounding the Educational Transformation Project to an evaluation centered on its formulation and implementation. I argue that it is necessary to produce interpretations that make it possible to understand the substantial changes experienced by the subjects involved in educational practices and to identify the practical effects of educational policies.

In order to develop this understanding, I focus on the specific case of primary schools in the province of Río Negro, centering the analysis on changes in teachers’ school practices. Through the description of certain situations experienced by teachers during the 1990s, and particularly after the long teachers’ strike of 1995, I show some of these changes.

Basically, these changes consist of a substantial transformation of teachers’ work imposed by the provincial state, which affects features of teachers’ identity, redefines social relations, and causes harm in their everyday lives; a disruption of everyday school life encouraged by the actions and discourses of government authorities; and the emergence of new forms of reconstituting shared spaces for encounter, protest, and public denunciation among female and male teachers, mothers, and fathers.