Citizenships promoted in Chilean schools institutional Educational Projects

Abstract

The Chilean educational system is characterized by segregation, with institutions organized according to educational modality and administrative dependency. For this reason, in the secondary education sector, there are institutions that are oriented toward higher education and others toward the labor market. Similarly, there are private schools that are funded by the students' families, private establishments that are financed by public funds, and public schools. All of them have an Institutional Educational Project. This document serves to contextualize the national curriculum, to disseminate infor- mation regarding its educational approach, and to delineate the characteristics of the educational provision offered by the school. For this reason, the aim of this article is to examine the concept of citizenship as it is promoted in the Ins- titutional Educational Projects of establishments belonging to different admi- nistrative units and educational modalities. A documentary investigation was conducted on a sample of 25 Institutional Educational Project, employing a content analysis approach. The results are presented according to the different types of institutions, establishing that public administration establishments emphasize critical and liberal citizenship, whereas private administration establishment tend to espouse a conservative perspective. This is explained by the influence of the administrators' ideologies on the selection of knowledge transmitted in each institution. It is concluded that the public or private nature of an educational establishment's administration has an impact on the curriculum taught. For all these reasons, the article makes a contribution to the existing body of knowledge regarding the citizenship curriculum transmitted in the Chilean educational system.