Transformative Initiatives in Vulnerable Schools: Notes for the New Public Management

Abstract

The Chilean educational system stands out for the early implementation of the New Public Management System (npm), which emphasizes accountability by schools and the academic performance of students, relying on strict evaluation and monitoring regimes. This model discourages the school autonomy and underestimates the challenges of education such as social equity and the care of vulnerable communities. The objective of this article is to explore, in a specific and contextualized way, the transformative initiatives of vulnerable schools in the context of the New Public Management (npm) in Chile. The results obtained from eight educational ethnographies show that, despite the limited margin of autonomy allowed by public policies, vulnerable schools manage to execute their own initiatives to address the demands of their community. According to the analysis of the data, these initiatives are guided by three logics: recognition of school actors, redistribution of power and reciprocity among its members, achieving multiple o transformations of the organizational limits established by the npm. Finally, in the discussions, we show how the demands and needs of a community mobilize and empower its members to develop transformative initiatives