Latin American Curriculum Studies

This entry focuses on the main characteristics that approximate the productions of the curriculum [Page 529]field of Latin American countries, as well as some aspects that separate them, with special emphasis on the production of the more consolidated countries.

One of the difficulties of tracing an outline of the curriculum field in this region derives from the fact that it has been marked, since the 1990s, by a useful, but at times disquiet hybridism of theoretical perspectives. It is enormously difficult to define the field, and it is impossible to do so on the basis of epistemological questions. There is the possibility of working with Pierre Bourdieu's concept of intellectual fieldthat is, a space in which different social actors, holders of certain social and cultural capitals in the area, legitimate determined conceptions about the theory of curriculum and dispute between them the power of defining who has authority in the area. In that sense, the field produces theories about curriculum, the objectified cultural capital of the field, which are legitimated as such in competitive struggles fought at different institutionalized levels. Hence, in order to analyze the production of this field, it is necessary to objectify the knowledge produced by the subjects who are invested with the legitimacy to speak about curricula. This legitimacy is conferred by their presence in institutionalized venues.

In view of the option to treat the curriculum as a field, it is important to point out, regarding Latin America, its minor institutionalization. In the great majority of the countries, there are few journals, research associations, and even graduate programs that deal specifically with the subject. As for the latter two, for example, the evaluation and development systems are recent: In Brazil, they were instituted in 1975; whereas in Mexico and Argentina, they date from the 1990s. And it is in those countries that, in past decades, the curriculum field has broadened consistently.

Some general movements of the field are occurring in Latin America, particularly due to international policies directed to it. Although experienced in a different way, the military dictatorships were, between the decades of 1960 and 1980, the political reality of different Latin American countries. The rightist governments and the dictatorships were maintained with strong U.S. support and materialized in the educational field by interventions sustained by international agencies or by aid programs, such as the Alliance for Progress. Those interventions created real conditions for academic faculties to study in the United States and also allowed for the translation of countless works into Spanish and Portuguese. Thus, the influence of U.S. literature in the curriculum field was very strong in the different countries. The most important reference was, without doubt, Ralph Tyler, but also Hilda Taba, Robert Mager, Benjamin Bloom, and William J. Popham had influence. Also, the curricular projects captained by Jerome Bruner were the subject of transfers guaranteed by official financing. With the end of the dictatorships, in the majority of countries in the 1980s, neo-Marxist literature may have gained prominence in education and in the curriculum field. Nevertheless, echoes of Tylerian rationality continued to be felt in different ways in the various countries.

...