Investments in education across countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have transformed the lives of millions of girls and the prospects of their families and societies. Unleashing the full economic potential of women is nevertheless still a curtailed issue in the region: just about half of women are unable to participate in paid work. The majority of the population out of the labor market is women between the ages of 24 and 45. This is the largest share of the available pool of unused human capital countries have, and where mothers of young children are concentrated. This book argues that more and better childcare constitutes a fundamental policy option to improve female outcomes in the labor market, but countries need to pay particular attention to the design and features of such services. First-rate educational programs will be useless if children are not enrolled or do not attend formal education centers. A large program expansion will be wasted if parents cannot enroll their children because they are unable to reach the center, don’t trust its quality, if the program is too expensive, or if work and care schedules are not compatible. Through an integrated framework applied to each country and an overview of the existing evidence, this book addresses the why and what questions about policy relevant instruments to achieve female labor participation. Parts I and II of the book lay out the motivation for Latin-American and Caribbean countries to act depicting their current situation both in terms of women’s labor participation and the use and provision of childcare services. Moreover, this book tackles the how question contributing to the incipient evidence about factors affecting the take-up of programs and demand for childcare services and other informal care arrangements. Part III of the book explores how to improve services and implement more and better formal, center-based care arrangements for young children. It looks at international benchmarks, discusses different experiences and proposes specific actions to solve potential inequalities in access to childcare.

Based on studies of higher education in seven countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru), the volume identifies opportunities for raising Latin America's profile on the global stage"--Jacket.

This book presents a vision of bilingual education in six South American nations: three Andean countries, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, and three 'Southern Cone' countries, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. It provides an integrated perspective, including work carried out in majority as well as minority language contexts, referring to developments in the fields of indigeneous, Deaf, and international bilingual and multilingual provision.

"Higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean has expanded dramatically in the past 15 years, as the average gross enrollment rate has more than doubled, and many new institutions and programs have been opened. Although higher education access has become more equitable, and higher education supply has become more varied, many of the 'new' students in the system are, on average, less academically ready than are their more advantaged counterparts. Furthermore, only half of higher education students, on average, complete their degree, and labor market returns to higher education vary greatly across institutions and programs. Thus, higher education is at a crossroads today. Given the region's urgency to raise productivity in a low-growth, fiscally constrained environment, going past this crossroads requires the formation of skilled human capital fast and efficiently. 'At a Crossroads: Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean' contributes to the discussion by studying quality, variety, and equity of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean. The book presents comprehensive evidence on the recent higher education expansion and evolution of higher education labor market returns. Using novel data and state-of-the-art methods, it studies demand and supply drivers of the recent expansion. It investigates the behavior of institutions and students and explores the unintended consequences of large-scale higher education policies. Framing the analysis are the singular characteristics of the higher education market and the market segmentation induced by the variety of students and institutions in the system. At this crossroads, a role emerges for incentives, information, accountability, and choice."

"Examines the relationship between private education and public policy in Latin America by combining conceptual analysis with empirical research, and incorporating case studies from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela"--Provided by publisher.

"This volume of the World of Science Education gathers contributions from Latin American science education researchers covering a variety of topics that will be of interest to educators and researchers all around the world. The volume provides an overview of research in Latin America, and most of the chapters report findings from studies seldom available for Anglophone readers. They bring new perspectives, thus, to topics such as science teaching and learning; discourse analysis and argumentation in science education; history, philosophy and sociology of science in science teaching; and science education in non-formal settings. As the Latin American academic communities devoted to science education have been thriving for the last four decades, the volume brings an opportunity for researchers from other regions to get acquainted with the developments of their educational research. This will bring contributions to scholarly production in science education as well as to teacher education and teaching proposals to be implemented in the classroom"--

Published in 1998. In recent years research, as well as the results of practical programmes, has led to a clearer understanding of the relationship between child work and education. It is increasingly evident that child work is not entirely the result of economic need or exploitation. Frequently is the failure of educational system to offer adequate, stimulating and affordable schooling that encourages children to drop out in favour of work that appears to offer advantages more relevant to their everyday lives. Parents too may undervalue the role and purpose of a school that provides inadequate preparation for the future and often see a job, including home-based work, as a positive alternative to crime, delinquency or begging. Consequently, while a distinction needs to be made between ‘formative child work’ and ‘harmful child work’, in certain situations and cultures the phenomenon is not always seen as negative. Yet, although gratifying in the short term and sometimes even providing the means for a younger child to attend school as well as a way of learning discipline and responsibility, often these jobs provide no useful experience and do not lead to an improvement in the personal development of life chances of a child. The situation is therefore complex and requires a more realistic evolution of the relationship between archaic pedagogy, dropout rates and child work. These five case studies from Latin America all reveal the effects of inappropriate school curricular. Desertion of the educational system for the labour market leads to inadequate training and perpetuates the poverty trap. As part of the commitment to combating work which is detrimental to the child, major educational reform is needed. Improvements in coverage, quality and affordability should lead to greater acceptance pf schooling at all levels of society and provide a greater incentive for parents and children alike to participate more fully in the system. Moreover, in cases of severe economic hardship and forced or harmful labour, practical assistance with subsides and scholarships should be considered to remove children from such work.