Priority Education Policies: Contributions from a European analysis to the Chilean case

Abstract

This paper proposes an international comparison between the analysis realized in Europe about Priority Education Policies (PEP) and the Chilean case. The discussion related to “inclusive education” is framed in the analysis of educative dispositives that are focused on social segments with major needs, defined as “prior”. The author proposes a bibliographical revision of Chilean priority programs between 1980 and 2017, to realize a criss-crossed comparative analysis between European PEP theory and Chilean case. From the socio-historical perspective, I analyze secondary sources as discourses and dispositives, producing an archive and a genealogy. First I address the evolution of Chilean case using the European definition of the object “PEP”, which reveals similarities and differences, both in the roles assigned to the State and in the successive generations of PEP. Second, I analyze three dimensions of the Chilean PEP, raising tendencies associated to its deployment and its evolution over time. I develop here three main findings: (1) the expansion of the devices designed in the context of the PEP with a piloting function, (2) the semantic evolution of the notion of public, and (3) the privatization of the production of knowledge.